by Kaye George
“I’m asking how you could tell they were yours.”
“That’s the kind I use. They’re extra long, twelve inches. I haven’t seen another pair like them anywhere. I sort of lost it. I wasn’t thinking straight. I didn’t want to see them there a second longer, so I pulled them out.”
The detective waited for her to continue. She was lost in thought, though, and didn’t notice the silence. Eventually, he had to bring her back. “And you hid the weapon in your cooler.”
“No! I didn’t hide them there. I didn’t take them anywhere. I wiped them off—not good enough, I guess, since there was still a smidge of blood on them.”
“And?”
Lackey leaned forward, stroking his goatee so she would notice him, but she ignored him and plunged ahead.
“And I stuck them on the shelf in Tally’s cupboard. That’s the last I saw of them.”
“So…they jumped into your cooler themselves?”
“I have no idea how they got there. I’ll try to give you the names of everyone I know who’s been in my shop since then. If I can remember them all.”
“There is one set of fingerprints visible on the weapon. How do you explain that?”
She didn’t like to hear her scissors called a weapon, but had to admit that’s what they were.
“I can’t explain it for sure. But wouldn’t the killer have either wiped them off afterward or have worn gloves?”
Detective Rogers shook his head. “It’s hard for me to believe that a killer came prepared with gloves, but didn’t bring a weapon.”
She avoided looking at the lawyer, even though she could see him staring at her, trying to get her attention, in her peripheral vision. She had to say this. “Maybe he did. Maybe he thought he’d use that instead when he saw it lying there. Or maybe he wrapped the handle in something so he wouldn’t leave prints.” That sounded perfectly reasonable to Yolanda. What didn’t sound reasonable was that someone knew where she’d put them and then moved them. And then Allen had found them in her shop. That gave her an idea. “You’re sure Allen didn’t kill Gene? He’s the one who found them. Maybe he knew where they were.”
“I’m not sure of anything right now.”
Her lawyer stood. “We’re done here.”
Yolanda agreed.
As soon as she got inside Bella’s Baskets, she texted Tally saying she wanted to bring lunch over to her place for both of them. She had to find out what Tally had said to the detective.
* * * *
Tally welcomed the break, clearing off a place on her island counter for the yummy-smelling Reuben sandwiches, oozing with coleslaw and accompanied by fat kosher dill pickles, that Yolanda brought over. Andrea was done with her lunch break and was handling the sales floor.
Tally poured lemonade for both of them and climbed onto the stool next to her friend, noticing her pinched, worried face. She also noticed Yolanda’s black leggings and long black top. She could go to a funeral in that outfit.
“Are you doing okay?” Tally asked.
“No. How could I be? That detective thinks I killed Gene Faust because the killer used my scissors.”
Tally hesitated one tick too long, because she knew the detective could be right. He wasn’t, she scolded herself. But he could be. “The scissors were right there. Anyone could have used them.”
Yolanda nodded and took a small bite. She wiped her left eye as a tear spilled out. “There aren’t any fingerprints on them but mine.”
“So what?”
“So…”
Tally grabbed a tissue for her and hugged her. “Have you been questioned again?”
“Yes, right after you this morning.”
“Oh, you saw me there?”
“I saw you leaving. I hate that man.”
Tally smoothed Yolanda’s dark, springy curls, then twisted one around her finger like Yolanda sometimes did. “The detective?”
Yolanda nodded under Tally’s hand.
“He’s only doing his job. He has to keep asking everyone questions.”
“Until what? Until someone wears down and admits they did it so he’ll stop?”
Tally started to laugh, but realized Yolanda was serious, and distraught. “You would never kill anyone. He’ll see that eventually.”
Yolanda straightened, and Tally’s hand dropped from her head. “What did he ask you about?”
“The same things he asked you, I suppose. He asked me to go over everything again. I think they like to see if our stories match when we’ve told them eleven thousand times.”
That brought a slight smile to Yolanda’s sad face.
“Your glass is empty,” Tally said. “You want more lemonade?”
Yolanda nodded and Tally hopped off the stool, landing with one foot on the backpack Yolanda had brought with her. “Oops! I hope I didn’t break anything.”
“Nothing in there to break. Just my shoes.”
“Shoes? You carry spare shoes?”
Yolanda shrugged. “I always carry an extra pair. Being on my feet most of the day, I need to change them sometimes.”
“Makes sense.” Tally went to get the lemonade from the refrigerator, suppressing a shudder. The shoes in the bag were soft, like tennis shoes. When she returned, Yolanda had twirled her seat around to face her.
“I have to tell you something. I had to tell the detective. And my lawyer.”
Tally poured carefully, cocking her head to listen to what Yolanda was going to tell her, hoping it wasn’t something very bad.
“I told them I took the…weapon.”
“You did?” Tally splashed some lemonade onto the counter. “You told them that? Did you have to? So what was the detective’s reaction? What does he think now?”
“I did. And now he thinks I killed Gene.”
“Of course you didn’t. But how did the scissors get into your shop? You didn’t put them there? Did you come back and get them later?”
“No, I put them in your cupboard. I have no idea how they got moved.”
“No one saw you take them, right?”
“I didn’t see anyone there. No one else could have been there. But now, with them turning up in my cooler, that makes me look so suspicious. I hid them here, on a cupboard shelf. That’s what I did. I didn’t kill anyone.” Yolanda fished a wadded tissue from her pocket and blew her nose. Hard. Unattractively.
Tally agreed, but thought Yolanda would look suspicious at any rate, even if she hadn’t moved the weapon, since it belonged to her. “If only you had left them there. And screamed so we could come running. Or something.”
“I know!” Yolanda started wailing, and Tally gathered her in her arms as they both had a good, long cry.
Chapter 18
When Tally got home after work, she was relieved to find that Cole was gone. Not that she didn’t love her brother, but she needed some quiet, alone time in the house to process things. She kicked off her shoes and stretched her legs out on her navy-blue couch, propping herself up on the end pillows. Nigel jumped up, his purr engine revved to top speed.
“I hope you’re happy to see me and not telling me that you haven’t been fed for ages.” She scratched his head between his ears, and he seemed satisfied with that. Good, Cole was feeding him. Her brother could be absentminded about chores.
She wiggled her toes against the fluffy pillow, free of her shoes. “You know, Nigel, carrying around an extra pair of shoes isn’t a bad idea. I wonder if I should change during the day. It might do my feet good.”
Nigel turned his head in her direction and half closed his bright amber eyes.
“So, you agree. I wonder how you know anything about shoes, though, since you never wear them.” A chilling thought froze her for an instant. “Nigel! That shoe in the alley! I wonder if it was…no, I won’t even go there.” She shook her head
to get rid of the thought. It didn’t work. She was picturing Yolanda’s bag with the extra pair of shoes.
“Okay, buddy, let’s brainstorm. We’ll assume Yolanda didn’t kill Gene. Or Mart. So, who did? Here’s the list I gave to Detective Rogers. Allen Wendt, Andrea Booker, Martha Zimmer, and Yolanda Bella. And Dorella.”
She held up her pointer finger, not with the hand that was petting the cat. “Okay, Allen. He was angry that Gene wasn’t paying him. He couldn’t have been too far away. He was around the morning that Gene was killed. If he needed money, he might have been helping Mart steal from me. So, why would he kill her? Because she was going to tell people she knew he killed Gene? Tell people he was stealing money?”
She held up another finger. “How about Andrea? She was there, of course. She was mad at Gene for going out with Mart, but that doesn’t make her unique. I guess if she was mad enough about that, she could have killed both of them.”
She added a third finger. “Mart Zimmer. Well, she didn’t kill herself. If she killed Gene, why would someone else kill her? That doesn’t make much sense.
“Yolanda? No.” She didn’t put up a finger. Her clock ticked, remaining calm and steady, helping keep Tally from sheer panic.
“Dorella?” She put up her pinkie. “I hope not! If so, my brother is probably having dinner right now with a killer.
“What are we going to do, Nigel?”
She noticed his purring had subsided to a gentle whirr. It wasn’t even purring. It was snoring. He was fast asleep.
“Wait!” Nigel flinched at her yell. “Gene’s parents. I forgot. One of them could have done it. They’re the people closest to him, right? Aren’t they always the most likely to commit murder?”
Nigel blinked.
“Right, I agree. They seem to have lame alibis. Mayor Faust wasn’t on the golf course because it rained. Mrs. Faust wasn’t at the hairdressers’ place very long—came late and left early. But she had car trouble. Let’s think about this. She’s unlikely, but maybe possible.”
Nigel butted his head against Tally’s motionless hand, and she resumed petting him.
Before the pair of couch detectives could resume investigations, the front door flew open and Cole and Dorella came in, laughing about something.
“What’s so funny?” Tally asked.
“Oh, you’re here,” Cole said.
“I live here.”
“Right, I didn’t know you were home. The lights aren’t on. No date with Allen?”
“Not tonight. Probably not in the future, either.” Nigel swished his tail. Did her decision annoy him?
“Why?” Cole asked, frowning. “What’s wrong?” He switched on two of the lamps.
Tally waved her hand. “Never mind. Dorella, thank you for the vase. I love it. You do beautiful work.”
Dorella beamed. “Thank you. It’s just a hobby.”
“Did you two have a good day? What did you do?”
They looked at each other. “Well,” Cole began.
“We’ve been talking a lot. Your brother is worried about you,” Dorella said. “He’s afraid this business of Gene dying in your shop is getting to you.”
“Why wouldn’t it?” Tally stared at her. “I would be pretty cold if it didn’t. Weren’t you close to him? Isn’t it bothering you that he was murdered?” Dorella was annoying her.
Dorella plopped down on the chair across from Tally’s and Cole perched on the stuffed arm. “Of course it bothers me. But not in the same way, I wouldn’t think. I was mad enough at him to kill him, but I don’t seem to be a suspect. The police haven’t questioned me.”
That, Tally thought, will change soon. “They still might.” I’m sure they will after they get done with Yolanda and Cole.
“I wasn’t even there, though.”
“Where were you? You were there earlier that day. You came into the shop looking for him.”
“Like I said, I was mad at him. I was enraged. I’d just found out that he ran up a few thousand dollars on the credit card I loaned him. There’d been other times when I thought he was using me, but he always sweet-talked me into seeing him again. This time, though…there wasn’t enough sweet talk in a sweet tea factory to talk me out of this one. When he obviously didn’t even want to talk to me, I left and walked. I walked and walked, for hours.”
Dorella didn’t know that Tally never even delivered her message. She felt a pang of guilt about that. Tally wondered how many hours she walked. Gene was probably killed a few hours after she left.
Cole asked the question. “How long, Dorella?”
“I didn’t keep track, but it was dark when I decided to go home. I was so tired I couldn’t be angry anymore. I didn’t even eat supper. I fell into bed as soon as I got home and slept all night.”
Tally had to admit, her story sounded truthful. If she walked until dark, she couldn’t have done it. Maybe Dorella hadn’t kill him.
Dorella left soon after that. Cole dropped her at home and came right back.
“What do you think?” he asked Tally, who was petting Nigel, still in a quandary about who could have killed Gene, and still avoiding going to the place in her mind that suspected Yolanda might have done it.
“About what?”
“Dorella. Is she telling the truth or not?”
Tally was surprised Cole questioned his new girlfriend’s veracity. He’d always defended her before.
“Do you think so?” she asked. “It sounded like she was, to me.”
“It did, didn’t it? There’s one thing about her, though.”
When he didn’t go on, Tally had to prompt him. “What do you mean? One thing?”
“Well, she did say, a few times, how mad she was at him. Remember, I told you she has a temper. A bad one. Like a pent-up volcano.”
“Has she gotten mad at you?”
“No, not at me. But we were at her place earlier today, and she got a phone call from her credit card company. Gene did a number on her credit rating, and she’s trying to get it straightened out. The person on the other end of the line wasn’t helpful, I gathered. She stayed calm for a long time, arguing with him, then hung up and threw her phone on the counter.”
“Did she break it?”
“No, she didn’t throw it that hard.”
“So…that doesn’t sound too bad.”
“It was right after that. She kicked a hole in the door to her bathroom.”
“What?”
“I know! She drove her foot right through it. It’s not a thick door, but still…”
Quick temper, impetuous, violent. “That sounds like the kind of person who killed Gene. Grabbed Yolanda’s scissors and drove them into his chest. Are you changing your mind about her?”
“I don’t know.” Cole went into the kitchen to get a beer from the fridge.
Tally went into her bedroom to sleep.
Once more, it took ages for Tally’s mind to quiet, to slow down enough for her to fall into a troubled sleep.
Chapter 19
Saturday nights were usually Yolanda’s dinner nights with her parents. She didn’t know a single other adult woman who had dinner with her family every week. She fumed as she changed into a “nice” sundress. Her old-fashioned father thought women should wear dresses. So, even though she gritted her teeth while she pulled a pink- and purple-flowered frock over her head and tied the sash, she did it.
A tickle niggled at her throat, and she almost called to beg off. That wouldn’t go over well, and would be more trouble than it was worth. She supposed she felt well enough to endure another family meal.
She drove through the falling dusk to their large house a few miles outside town. After turning in through the gates, she wended her way up the driveway to the rustic, but large main house. The pool beside the house glinted in the dying light. When she got out of her c
ar, her father’s booming voice came from that direction.
“Yolanda! We’re out here. Come have a cocktail before dinner.”
Surprise, surprise. They were always having a cocktail at the pool before dinner, unless it was storming or freezing cold.
She went around to the pool and took a seat beneath the sun umbrella spread above them. Her father handed her a chilled margarita, not bothering to ask if she wanted one. She did, of course. It was the only way she got through these dinners. Her younger sister, Violetta, was home from Dallas for a summer vacation with her family for a couple of weeks.
Yolanda couldn’t imagine spending a summer break at the old homestead. She and Violetta were, as her parents noted so often, exact opposites. Sometimes Yolanda wondered if that was because they were seven years apart. But no, watching her sister sip her preferred drink, Coke, she knew they would not have been a bit more alike even if they had been born a year apart. She had to admit, she didn’t understand her baby sister, who didn’t drink alcohol and didn’t seem to date. Even when she was in college, Yolanda was pretty sure that Violetta hadn’t done any of those things. She loved her sister, but didn’t understand her. Without their father constantly comparing them, she often wondered if she might like her sister better.
Fireflies blinked and hovered over the pure blue pool water. Yolanda breathed in the smell of chlorine. She liked it. It was clean and fresh to her.
Yolanda studied Violetta’s profile. She had a smaller nose than her big sister, which made her prettier, Yolanda thought. But she projected a mousiness from being so shy and quiet. She had the same wild, curly dark brown hair that Yolanda did, but she straightened it. Even her bathing suit was the most modest one on the market, the kind with a skirt. Their mother dressed more daringly than Violetta.
Taking another glance at Violetta, Yolanda changed her mind. Vi usually was so dull and plain she was almost invisible, but there was a spark to her tonight. Her eyes seemed brighter than usual, and she had a pleasant softness on her face. Had she found someone? They had never talked about guys, and Yolanda wouldn’t have known how to open that subject with her.