Beignets, Brides and Bodies

by J. R. Ripley

  ‘It’s true,’ Markie sobbed, ‘Lisa and I were having an affair. I didn’t mean to.’ He looked embarrassed. ‘It was one of those workplace things that just happens.’

  Yeah, I thought, to people who cheat on their spouses. I nodded like I understood. Like my dead ex-husband, Brian, had cheated on me. I didn’t think I’d ever forgive him. ‘What really happened here the morning Lisa was killed?’

  Markie laid his hands on the desk and shrugged. Tears pooled under his eyes. ‘I don’t know. Like I said, I was in my office. On the phone with a client.’

  ‘Any witnesses? Ben, Reva? One of the other assistants?’

  ‘No. I didn’t see anybody. When I came out of the office the workroom was empty.’

  ‘And you didn’t see or hear anything?’

  He shook his head. ‘Nothing. Until the police arrived.’

  ‘What about Clive? You didn’t see Clive?’

  Markie shook his head again. ‘I must have been on the phone when he showed up. I didn’t see him. My door was closed.’

  I leaned back in my seat. If what Markie said was true it bolstered what Clive had told me earlier. He said he came upstairs, found no one, heard loud voices coming from the stairs and headed that way. ‘Who were you on the telephone with?’

  ‘Samantha Higgins. We were talking about her cakes.’

  ‘Cakes?’

  He nodded. ‘Wedding cake and groom’s cake.’

  ‘Speaking of cake …’ I fished the bridal gown material from my purse and spread it flat on the desk. Markie’s fingers were drawn to it. ‘Johnny and Clive asked me to bring it by.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Markie wiped his eyes with his sleeves.

  I headed for the door but Markie’s hand on my elbow stopped me.

  ‘You won’t tell my wife, will you, Ms Miller?’ His eyes pleaded with me.

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t even know your wife.’

  He beamed a thousand-watt smile. ‘Oh, thank you, Ms Miller! You are wonderful!’ He smacked me on the cheek with his damp lips. ‘Just a sec—’ Markie dashed to his desk and scooped up the Slinky Dog. He held it out to me, balanced in his cupped hands. ‘I want you to have this.’

  I narrowed my eyes. ‘Your Slinky Dog?’ My heart jumped. I’d always wanted a fifties-looking, tail-wagging Slinky Dog. The adorable dachshund had a metal slinky for a mid-section and a matching Slinky tail, too.

  He nodded vigorously. ‘I noticed you admiring it the other day.’

  I wet my lips and felt my hands extending forward of their own volition. ‘Are you sure?’ I stroked its tail and got a childlike thrill watching it go boing-boing.

  He pushed it toward me. ‘Please.’

  I was smiling all the way to the elevator, out the door and to the car.

  OK, so I’m a kid at heart. Trust me, more people should be.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I set Slinky Dog on the front seat of the BMW then crossed the parking lot connecting the Entronque building to the lower outdoor mall area that made up the rest of the sprawling Navajo Junction complex. I’d decided to go see Mrs Higgins before heading back to the café. I wanted to confirm what Blake Sherwood had said, and what Markie had said, too, while I was at it.

  I checked the big map attached to a lamp post in the center of the parking lot while the September sun washed over me. The hand-carved and painted map – that’s what you get when you order a map from a bunch of artist types – included a directory of every shop in Navajo Junction.

  Her swanky gallery, Higgins Fine Art, was located in the old train station, redone now to house fine art galleries and high-end boutiques. You probably needed to be a millionaire just to get in the place. I hoped they didn’t notice my lack of credentials. The vaulted ceilings of the grandiose station were accented with rows of stained-glass windows along the edges. Builders believed in making things look sharp back in the eighteen hundreds.

  Mrs Higgins was posing near a large canvas hung on the wall in the middle of her gallery. The focal point of the painting was a bent and twisted ancient juniper that stood at the edge of a cliff as if struggling to maintain its balance, against a blazing red rock background. The artist’s keen eye and a bold hand had captured every detail vividly.

  I smelled perfume and money. The gallery itself oozed quiet luxury. So did the elderly couple she was speaking to – a silver-haired gentleman in light brown trousers and a tweed jacket, despite the heat, and a small woman with wispy blonde hair who lightly held his left arm. She wore a more appropriate sleeveless navy-blue linen-stripe shift with a thin red belt.

  I nodded to Mrs Higgins who looked quite slinky herself in a black A-line frock with a jewel neck. She returned my look with a blink, never losing step with her clients. I walked over to a fat leather-bound portfolio spread open on a pale gray marble plinth beside a pecan wood desk.

  It was a catalog of the gallery’s work. I began flipping through it. Not that I could afford to buy any art but it didn’t hurt to look. The only original art I owned was taped up on my fridge and created by my two nephews when they were still in elementary school.

  The portfolio was divided alphabetically by artist name. I spotted a number of photographs of pieces by Blake Sherwood. The woman was no slouch when it came to painting. Toward the back of the book I came to a section headed with Lisa Willoughby’s name. She wasn’t bad but she was no Rembrandt. Lisa Willoughby’s subject matter included landscapes, cakes – no surprise, and men – again, no surprise. After that there was nothing but empty plastic sleeves.

  I heard the sound of gentle chimes. Mrs Higgins came around to her desk. Her customers were gone.

  ‘No sale?’ I said. ‘Too bad.’

  ‘We’ll see.’ Samantha Higgins flashed a business card from her customers and placed it in a neat Rolodex atop her desk. ‘Not everyone wants to spend twenty thousand dollars without thinking it over.’ She smiled. ‘It may take a day or two but I believe they’ll be back.’

  ‘Did you say twenty thousand?’

  Mrs Higgins nodded. ‘It’s called Among the Red Rocks, by a local artist, naturally.’

  ‘Naturally,’ I repeated, my mouth drying up. Twenty thousand dollars. I could buy a ton of real red rocks for that amount of cash. A whole dump truck full, I’d bet. ‘That’s a lot of money.’

  ‘They’ve got money.’ She smiled knowingly.

  My brow went up. ‘How can you tell?’ I mean, they didn’t look like bums or anything but that didn’t mean they had twenty grand to drop on a picture of a tree and some rocks.

  ‘Oh, I can tell.’ Her eyes sparkled with confidence. She settled into her chair and adjusted her scarf. ‘So what can I do for you, Ms Miller?’ She waved her arms around the store. ‘I don’t suppose you’d be interested in buying something? For your home or your place of business, perhaps?’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t suppose so, no.’ Not without robbing a bank first.

  She leaned in, folding her hands under her chin. ‘Are you certain? I have a piece or two here that would look simply delightful in your café. Trust me, they could really add a certain ambience …’ she waved her right hand in a circle, ‘… a charm, if you will, to your place.’

  I shook my head again. ‘Trust me, I couldn’t begin to afford any of these pieces. Any one of them probably costs more than I spent building out my entire café.’

  Mrs Higgins snickered with amusement. She motioned for me to sit and I did. ‘So why are you here?’

  I cleared my throat. ‘I was speaking with Blake Sherwood this morning.’

  Mrs Higgins smiled benevolently. ‘I know Ms Sherwood.’ She pointed to a large framed canvas on the wall over my shoulder. ‘That’s one of her pieces there.’

  I nodded. I recognized the style instantly. It was a masterful rendition of Montezuma’s Castle, one of the area’s most famous Sinagua Indian ruins. The national monument is located in the Verde Valley about fifty miles south of Flagstaff. ‘Nice.’ I turned back to Mrs Higgins. ‘She ment
ioned that you were at her studio the morning of Lisa’s murder.’

  Mrs Higgins sighed. ‘Yes, earlier.’ That jibed with what the artist had told me. ‘Isn’t it sad?’ She shivered. ‘And kind of spooky.’

  Her hands clasped a gold ballpoint pen. ‘I mean, one minute a person is alive and the next …’ Her shoulders rose and fell. ‘What if the killer had seen me? I could have been next.’ Her hand went to her throat.

  I agreed and said so. ‘So you didn’t see or hear anything unusual either?’

  She appeared to give this some thought. ‘Not a thing, I’m afraid. I wish I could help. I told the police the same thing.’

  ‘I understand.’ I nodded toward the portfolio. ‘I see Lisa was a client of yours.’

  Mrs Higgins nodded somberly. ‘She was going to be. We were just pulling together some pieces for an exhibition. Who knew she’d be lying dead beneath some frivolous bird cake a few days later.’

  ‘Do you have any idea who might have wanted Lisa dead? Did she confide in you at all?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ Mrs Higgins stood as the chimes announced another visitor to the gallery. ‘Be right with you!’ she called, then turned to me. ‘Is there anything else?’

  ‘Was Lisa any good?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Her paintings. Could she get twenty thousand dollars?’

  Mrs Higgins chuckled softly. ‘Oh, dear, no. A few thousand, perhaps. More once she became established – if she caught on.’ Mrs Higgins patted me on the shoulder. ‘The art-buying public is a fickle and undecipherable one.’

  Tell me about it.

  ‘One more thing!’ I called, my feet already out the door.

  ‘Yes?’ Mrs Higgins stood beside a young man whose shirt bore the Ferrari logo. I feared he was about to part with some money. But that was his problem.

  ‘Did you speak to Markie Gravelle the morning of—’ I hesitated. No point wrecking a potential sale and a big one at that. ‘You know.’

  Mrs Higgins ran a finely sculpted fingernail along the underside of her chin. ‘Yes, you were there, remember?’

  I bobbed my head. ‘I mean before.’

  She thought another moment. Apparently Mrs Higgins’ wheels didn’t turn too quickly. ‘We spoke on the phone earlier about Sabrina’s cake.’

  That was all I needed to know.

  And I was back to square one.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I was heading back to the café when I spotted Cody Ryan and a young lady friend as they passed me in a flashy yellow Corvette convertible that went zooming by like a bee late to a hive meeting. That reminded me – I still had a question or two for Cody. Like why had he ordered a bunch of my perfectly good beignets and dumped them in the trash just minutes later?

  I pressed the gas pedal and fell into line a couple of cars behind them so they wouldn’t get suspicious. His passenger was a real looker with long auburn hair. Definitely not Sabrina Higgins, who was a blonde, like her mother, I remembered from the photo she’d shown me.

  Fifteen minutes later Cody pulled into a public parking lot a block from Table Rock Town Square. I sluiced into a slot located at a diagonal from his and watched. He opened the passenger-side door. Wow, this girl could have been a model. She wore a short fitted black leather skirt and simple scoop-neck white blouse. Her heels were dangerous red.

  He said something and she laughed. It looked like trouble in nuptials land, if you asked me. They started walking. I locked up and hurried after them, not sure what I was going to do if I caught them.

  Once at the town square, they headed across Smile to Main. The sidewalks were crowded so I wasn’t worried about being noticed. The pair headed up a set of small, steep stairs and I followed. They climbed to the third floor, which was the top of the building. There was only one thing up there. High Steaks.

  For more than forty years, High Steaks has been Table Rock’s go-to steakhouse with a view of the square. I’d never eaten there – too pricy for my pockets – but it was a fave with residents and tourists alike. If you were foolhardy enough to wear a necktie to High Steaks, the reigning Mad Mary – as the locals had dubbed She Who Wields The Shears – would come running out of the kitchen with a big pair of scissors and clip you before you even knew you’d been clipped and nail your tie to the wall which, by this time, I guesstimated, held a couple thousand or so of all brands and colors.

  I waited from my vantage point on the second-floor landing until the hostess had led Cody and his young lady friend away then climbed the last flight of stairs. The smell of rib-eye and mesquite wood coming from the ovens set my stomach to protesting.

  ‘May I help you?’ A pretty young Apache woman proffered me a folded menu.

  I snatched it. ‘I’d like to take a look at the menu first, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Of course not.’ She smiled and motioned for me to move to the side, toward the busy bar, as she greeted her next customers.

  Under the guise of perusing the menu, I watched the happy couple. They were seated out on the belvedere. Their waiter brought a pitcher of water and bottle of wine. Cody’s hand fell across hers and she smiled. A couple passed in front of me and I took a step back, jostling a waitress who’d been scurrying behind me. She dropped the glass she’d been carrying to the bar and shrieked. The glass shattered against the floor and wet drops hit the backs of my legs.

  Cody and the woman turned toward the commotion.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ said the young waitress who’d done nothing wrong. ‘Let me help you.’ She bent to wipe my dripping calves with a towel she’d snatched from her belt.

  ‘No, really, it’s OK.’ I tried to shoo her away, afraid to draw attention to myself. But it didn’t matter because it was too late. Cody and the woman had definitely seen me. It looked like he’d recognized me, too, because his eyes met mine and his face darkened.

  I took a deep breath and decided to take the offense. I couldn’t defend myself but I could attack. I marched to their table overlooking the busy square. ‘Hi, Cody Ryan, right?’

  He scooted back his chair and eyed me. His index finger toyed with the mole at the left corner of his lip. ‘Ms Miller from the beignet place?’

  ‘That’s right. I hear you and Sabrina Higgins are getting married this weekend.’ Or not.

  He blushed and glanced at his companion. ‘That’s right.’

  I turned to the young woman. Up close she was even more stunning. Her complexion was fair and unblemished. Her eyebrows looked like they’d been computer-designed, they were that perfect. I held out my hand. ‘And who have we here?’

  The young woman tossed her head and smiled as she shook my hand. ‘Paula Aldiss.’ Paula coolly pulled out a business card – thick oyster-colored vellum with platinum-embossed lettering. ‘Wedding planner.’

  My heart came to a stop, so I wasn’t sure what was now pumping all that red blood to my cheeks.

  Paula Aldiss held her smile, her eyes bouncing from Cody to me. ‘Cody and I are planning a surprise for his fiancé.’

  ‘A surprise?’ My voice cracked. ‘H-how nice.’

  ‘A brand new convertible, a Corvette,’ Cody boasted. ‘Velocity yellow, like mine.’

  Paula’s brow rose. ‘Are you all right, Ms Miller? Would you like some water?’ Her fingers went to the water pitcher.

  ‘No, thanks.’ I ran my parched tongue over my dry lips. That tiny pitcher didn’t hold enough water for me to go drown myself in. And drown myself was just what I felt like doing at that moment.

  ‘Was there something you wanted?’ Cody asked, his demeanor stiff.

  ‘I just wanted to say hi,’ I stammered, ‘and congratulations.’ I turned to leave, took two steps and stopped. No, I couldn’t let the kid rattle me. I marched back to the table.

  ‘Yes?’ Cody said.

  ‘When you came into the beignet café.’

  He raised his eyebrows.

  ‘You ordered a dozen beignets.’

  ‘So?’

&
nbsp; ‘So, a minute later I saw you walk out and watched you dump them all in the trash.’

  He chuckled. ‘Is that all?’ He shook his head. ‘My mom asked me to bring some to her weekly bridge game.’ He glanced at Paula. ‘The minute I walk out of the bakery, Mom calls and tells me her friend, Shelley, is sick and the game is canceled. What was I going to do with a dozen beignets?’

  Cody took a sip from his wine glass. ‘I ate one and tossed the rest. Seemed like a waste, but, hey, it’s Mom’s money. Gotta stay in shape for the honeymoon.’ His brow went up and down lasciviously as he patted his flat belly.

  Paula laughed.

  I headed for the stairwell. The stairs were narrow and boxed in on both sides. I thought I heard Cody calling my name and quickened my steps.

  I felt his hand grab my elbow and spun around, halfway between the third and second landing. The stairs were deserted.

  ‘Wait a sec,’ Cody demanded.

  ‘What do you want?’ I felt vulnerable and alone on the otherwise empty stairwell. Was this what had happened to Lisa Willoughby? My eyes went to his fingers on my elbow.

  ‘Oh, sorry.’ He released his grip, looking abashed. ‘You won’t tell, will you? Please, promise me you won’t, Ms Miller.’

  ‘Tell what?’ Was there something illicit going on between he and Paula, after all? Was he a killer?

  ‘Sabrina.’ He scratched his head. ‘About the car.’

  I breathed a sigh of relief. So that was what he’d chased me for. I patted his arm. ‘Don’t worry,’ I promised. ‘Your secret is safe with me.’

  A noisy throng came bounding up the steps. By the sounds of it they’d had a few pre-meal drinks. Several were singing cowboy tunes. I pushed against the wall. A foot shot out and I tumbled into the crowd coming my way. I fell, hitting my tailbone and elbow, in that order. A strong hand plucked me upright. I looked over my throbbing shoulder.