“I think Ryan would disagree with you,” Rossalyn smiled.
“He’s a good kid.”
“Yeah, he really is. I feel so bad for him sometimes though,” she sighed. “He’s on the verge of becoming a young man, and he doesn’t have anyone to show him what that means.”
“My mom raised me and I came out alright,” Tom shrugged.
Rossie stared at him, eyebrow raised, and he smiled.
“Little rough around the edges maybe.”
“A little bit,” Rossie agreed, touching her glass to his in a toast.
“Who do you think it is?” Tom asked, sobering, gazing into the deep red liquid.
“The stalker? I have no idea. I haven’t met anyone lately, there’s no one from my past, that I know of, who would do such a thing, I don’t have any weird customers with crushes…your guess is as good as mine,” Rossalyn sighed.
“Think it’s the cop?” he guessed, taking a small sip.
“Morgan? Definitely not. He’s as by-the-book as they come. Once I said no, I really think he just gave up.”
“So he did ask you out,” Tom observed.
A soft pink flushed her cheeks. “Yeah, he did.”
“So, why did you say no?”
“None of your business,” the automatic response came out.
“True enough,” he inclined his glass toward her, then took another sip.
“I just feel so conflicted,” she swirled the wine round and round, not noticing how intently Tom watched her.
“Why?”
“I feel…I don’t know, like it’d be disloyal of me to date. I mean, I still miss Will. I still love him,” she confessed, taking a gulp of her wine.
“You think that’s gonna just go away?”
Rossie met his gaze and shook her head.
“You may love him forever, but that doesn’t have to mean that there ain’t room for someone else.”
“I suppose. But, I just don’t look at Morgan Tyler that way, you know? He doesn’t make my heart beat faster.”
“Well, that makes it easier to avoid the issue, but what happens when your heart does beat faster?”
Rossie stared at him, her hand going unconsciously to her throat, where her pulse had sped up more than she wanted to admit.
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
Their eyes locked for a moment, and Tom was the first to look away, putting his half full glass on the coffee table. His voice was a bit hoarse when he spoke.
“I gotta get up early in the morning,” he stood and headed for the door.
Rossalyn followed.
“Thank you. For today. For watching over Ryan. For…everything,” she bit her lip and blushed, inwardly cursing the reddened cheeks that betrayed her.
“Yup,” Tom opened the door.
“Can you…” she began.
“Yeah, I’ll make sure he gets back and forth to school okay until you can figure out what’s going on,” he stepped onto the porch.
“Thanks.”
“Yup,” he trotted down the steps, raising a hand in farewell, but not looking back.
She watched him go, her hand once more going to her throat. After she locked the door, Rossie plopped down onto the sofa, gazed at Tom’s glass, and with a small shrug, picked it up and dumped the contents into her own. Hopefully she’d sleep tonight.
CHAPTER TWELVE
*
Rossalyn came downstairs after a restless night, where she dreamt that someone had come in the house, but when she woke, heart thumping in her chest, of course there was no sound, and nothing wrong. Falling back to sleep had taken awhile, and once she had, she tossed and turned for the rest of the night, restless even in her slumber. Coming down the stairs in the morning, bleary-eyed with lack of sleep, she stopped halfway down, with the distinct feeling that something was…off. Taking the last few steps slowly, not making a sound, she slipped into the living room to check there, then made her way to the kitchen and gasped. Ryan’s model boat, which had been barely started last night, was perfectly finished and displayed on the counter.
There was no way that Ryan could have come down in the night and finished it so expertly, and she knew by the way that Tom had beat a hasty retreat, he certainly wouldn’t have done it. She padded around the silent home, where Ryan slumbered peacefully upstairs, and found that every window and door was still locked, just like she’d left it. Alarmed, she flew up the stairs to check on Ryan, and when she carefully opened his bedroom door, she heard soft, reassuring snores from the lump of blankets in the middle of his bed.
Rossie put her hands to her temples and closed her eyes outside her son’s bedroom.
“Why is this happening? Who is doing this, and are they dangerous?” she wondered.
The worried mother made her way back downstairs, not knowing what to do. She stared absently out the kitchen window, lost in thought, and noticed something. The lawnmower had lost a wheel last weekend, when Ryan tried to do the first mowing of the season. It had been sitting out on the porch, waiting for the repairman to come pick it up tomorrow, and now, the wheel was attached, all the dust from have sat out in the garage all winter had been brushed away, and it looked as good as new.
“Are you kidding me?” Rossie murmured, standing stock still, a filter for the coffee pot dangling from her fingertips. “Do I suddenly have a fairy godmother or something?” she shook her head, frustrated.
It had to be Morgan Tyler. He was the only man who’d expressed interest in her recently, and it made her very uncomfortable to think that somehow the officer had seen fit to let himself into her house last night. Even more awkward was the thought of addressing it with him. One thing was certain, she wouldn’t be telling Tom that his suspicions about Morgan had been correct. Somehow, she just couldn’t face the thought of an “I told you so,” from the biker. She didn’t know what had happened with Tom last night, but the rush of things that she’d felt when sitting across from him had scared her and made her feel terribly disloyal to Will. Being a widow was no picnic – she didn’t need Morgan Tyler and Tom Hundman making them even more complicated.
“Wow! Mom, did you do this?” Ryan’s astonished voice broke into her thoughts.
He’d seen the model. Rossalyn Channing had made a vow never to lie to her son, no matter what, but right now she was in a quandary, she didn’t want to lie to Ryan, but the truth that someone had mysteriously come into their house and finished his model just might scare him, and she didn’t want that either.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Oh, Mr. Hundman did?”
“I don’t know,” Rossie bit her lip, knowing that she wasn’t handling this very well.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Ryan grinned slowly, waiting for the punchline.
“It was like this when I got up this morning,” she confessed, deciding that honesty was the best policy, no matter what.
Ryan frowned, then brightened. “Oh, so it had to be Mr. Hundman,” he deduced. “He hung out here after I went to bed, right?”
Rossie silently cursed the blush that rose in her cheeks and nodded. “Yep, he did.”
“Ha!” the teenager exclaimed. “You like him, I can tell,” he smirked.
“Don’t be silly. We’re neighbors, that’s all,” Rossie turned away and started pulling items out of the fridge for breakfast.
“Uh-huh, whatever you say, Mom,” he shook his head with a knowing grin, but let it go. “Can’t we just eat at the café this morning? Jose makes the best breakfast ever.”
“Better than mine?” Rossie raised an eyebrow, glad for the sunshine distraction that her all-too-naïve son provided.
“Nah, almost as good, but with more bacon.”
Rossalyn laughed. “That’s for sure. I never knew there were so many ways to use bacon. Go get showered, we’ll leave here in about half an hour.”
She felt guilty about allowing Ryan to come to his own conclusions, but for now, it was better than having him jumping at shad
ows. Maybe it had been Tom, which would still make her feel strange, but not in the same way. Shaking her head to clear it of confusing thoughts, made her way back upstairs for a quick shower before heading to Hawg Heaven. Ryan liked to help out on the weekends, and Jose and Garrett enjoyed the company, so it worked out well.
**
Officer Morgan Tyler was getting closer to identifying a suspect in the murder of Deedee Delario, he could just feel it. When the toxicology reports came in, he ripped open the envelope, feeling as though he’d just been handed the keys to the city.
The substance that killed Deedee Delario was cyanide, and it was found in large quantities in the water cooler and coffee pot at the accounting firm. Deedee’s death saved the lives of her coworkers because the staff was escorted from the building before they could partake of either the coffee or the water. Interestingly, significant amounts of cyanide were also found in Ruth Venkman’s bottle of scotch, as well as her teapot. She was fortunate to be among the few people in the population who had the genetics that enabled them to smell and taste the deadly substance, and had spat out her scotch, rather than swallowing it. This simple action had saved her life, because the concentration in her drink had been profound.
This made Morgan Tyler’s search for the killer much more focused. Either Howard Parker had tried to poison Ruth Venkman, because she was the wife of Marvin Venkman. whom he thought was having an affair with his ex-girlfriend, Carissa Mooney, which seemed farfetched, except for the fact that he worked at a facility that manufactured and sold cyanide; or, quite simply, Deedee’s irascible and bitter husband, Ronnie, had killed his wife rather than escaping his dysfunctional marriage some other way.
More good news had hit his desk this morning as well. The manufacturer of the defective envelopes which had contained three of the threatening letters had confirmed that the batch that had slipped through quality control had consisted of less than five hundred envelopes, meaning that the chance of someone getting a defective box was extremely rare, so if Morgan found the envelopes, chances would be quite good that he had found the murderer.
Howard Parker opened the door to his rundown shack of a house on the outskirts of town and was less than pleased to see Morgan Tyler, accompanied by three other officers and a forensics team.
“What’s this about?” he demanded. “You guys gotta stop bothering me, this is harassment,” he folded his arms.
Morgan flashed the judge’s form in front of Parker’s face. “We have a warrant to search your home and office. Stand aside and let us in, or we’ll hit you with obstructing an official investigation, Tyler said calmly.
“You gotta be kidding me,” Howard was disgusted. “You ain’t gonna find nothing, but come on in and give it your best shot,” he threw his hands up in the air.
“You’re going to go have a seat in the kitchen with Officer Manus and have a little chat while we do what we need to do,” Morgan instructed, gesturing toward a very large policeman who had come in with him.
“What, you think I’m gonna try to stop you or something? Think I need a babysitter? This is ridiculous,” he protested.
“You can either cooperate here, or you can go to the station. Your choice,” Tyler replied levelly, staring Howard Parker down.
“Wow, ain’t no reason to be rude. I’ll talk to the man.” Howard and Officer Manus headed toward the kitchen while the rest of the team fanned out in the house.
Hours later, finding only normal envelopes, and nothing else that seemed even vaguely suspicious, Morgan and his team left, with boxes full of samples to sort through. The most interesting one was a small pile of a white substance on Parker’s countertop, which turned out to be flour. Strike one.
The hour was late, Morgan had spent the entire day at Howard Parker’s and had turned up what looked like a whole bunch of nothing. Unfortunately, that meant that he’d have to go through the same process all over again at Ronnie Delario’s house, which put him in a touchy situation. If Ronnie was the killer, it made the already tragic situation even more so, but if he violated the man’s privacy and seemed to advocate for accusing him of a crime, and happened to be wrong, his reputation was at stake. Accusing the spouses of murder victims, while usually accurate, was particularly devastating if the spouse was innocent. They not only had to suffer over their loss, but over the fact that the police had thought, even for a second, that they had killed their mate.
Ronnie Delario didn’t seem to be a flight risk, and since his victim had been his spouse, the public most likely wasn’t in danger, so a weary Officer Tyler decided that he’d just approach the man in the morning, when he’d just finished the night shift and his defenses would be down.
**
At first there was no response to Officer Morgan Tyler’s pounding on Ronnie Delario’s door, but just when he was ready to give up and call in a locksmith, a very disgruntled Ronnie opened the door, wearing baggy basketball shorts and a stained undershirt.
“What now?” he grumbled, clearly testy.
“I have a warrant to search your home, Mr. Delario,” Morgan’s tone was even in the face of evident hostility.
“You gotta be kidding me. I just get home from working all night and you come here expecting to search my place?” Ronnie was outraged.
“Mr. Delario, if you don’t cooperate, I’ll be forced to arrest you for obstructing a police investigation.”
“Deedee…she wasn’t much, I’ll give you that, but she’s all I had, and you got the nerve to come investigate me? What I’d really like is to tell you where to put your stupid warrant,” the red-faced, sweating man fumed.
“Mr. Delario,” Morgan started to reply.
“Nah, forget it. Come in, destroy my house, do what you gotta do. Just hurry up and get done with it so that I can get some sleep and try to live my life in peace,” Ronnie Delario muttered, turning around and walking into his living room, leaving the door open behind him.
“Mr. Delario, do you have a desk or home office where you write letters, pay bills, that sort of thing?” Tyler asked, after Ronnie sank morosely into his recliner.
“Nah. I never did none of that stuff, Deedee did it all. Guess I’ll have to figure out how to do it now, though,” he mused, sounding sad and annoyed at the same time.
“Do you know where she kept her office supplies?”
Ronnie shrugged. “She kept a bunch of junk in a dresser in the dining room, maybe in there. Ya gonna arrest me if I watch TV?” he asked, grabbing the remote.
“No, go ahead, but we’ll eventually need to check the chair you’re sitting in, as well as the entertainment center.”
“Figures,” Ronnie muttered.
Snapping on a pair of nitrile gloves, Morgan went first to the “dresser in the dining room,” which was actually a sideboard with a bookcase beside it, and opened the drawers, finding Deedee’s office supplies almost immediately. There was a box of envelopes, but they were from a different manufacturer and didn’t have any flaws. The forensics guys were busy in the kitchen, and Morgan headed to Deedee’s sewing room next, stopping in the living room for a moment on his way.
“Mr. Delario, do you have a typewriter?”
“What would I do with a typewriter?” the man tore his eyes briefly away from the television to fix the policeman with a glare. “I don’t even know how to type. Ain’t much call for that in my line of work.”
“Did Deedee have a typewriter?”
“Not here she didn’t. I suppose she probably did at work, I dunno.”
Morgan nodded and turned toward sewing room, where once again, he came up empty-handed. After spending the bulk of his day searching and finding nothing unusual, the officer sent a team to Howard Parker’s office, and back to Deedee Delario’s office, frustrated beyond belief.
**
“Hey Ruth, how are you holding up?” Rossalyn asked, when she saw the somewhat disheveled accountant walk in the door at Hawg Heaven.
“I’ve had better weeks,” she sighed, plopp
ing down in a chair and resting her chin on her hands.
“I bet a good cup of Jose’s coffee and a hot breakfast might help,” Rossie suggested.
Ruth shook her head. “I don’t think I should drink coffee for a while. I think this whole murder thing is giving me ulcers,” she wrapped her arms around her stomach, looking ill.
“Are you not feeling well?” Rossie sat down across from her with a frown.
“My stomach hurts all the time, and I just don’t want to eat.”
“Ruth, do you think that it might be related to the strange tasting scotch? Maybe just getting the taste of whatever was in the bottle had a bad effect on your stomach.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I was probably imagining it. Marvin says it’s probably just nerves,” she shrugged, looking miserably down at the sparkle-flecked black tabletop.
“Have you been to the doctor?”
“No, I’m just going to try to eat better and tough it out. I’ll be fine,” she waved a hand dismissively.
Rossie sighed, but Ruth was a grown woman who could make her own decisions.
“How about some cheddar grits? That should be gentle on your stomach. And maybe some scrambled eggs?”
“You don’t have to go to any trouble for me,” Ruth demurred.
“It’s no trouble at all. You’ve been through a lot, sometimes letting someone else help makes all the difference in the world. You sit tight, and I’ll be right back with your breakfast. Do you want some milk with that?”
“No thanks, but water would be nice.”
“Coming right up,” Rossie gave her a reassuring smile, thinking how awful it must be to be dealing with the death of a coworker.
When she came back out into the eating area, she saw a younger woman who looked really fit, sitting down with Ruth.
“Good morning,” she greeted the new arrival with a smile, setting down Ruth’s breakfast. “Can I get you something?”
“Uh, no. I just came here to see Ruth.”
“Oh, I didn’t know you were meeting someone here Ruth,” Rossalyn commented, curious.
“I wasn’t,” Ruth mumbled, poking at her delicious-looking pile of grits with a spoon.
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