A Deadly Inside Scoop

by Abby Collette

  “Excuse me?”

  “Stephen Bayard,” I said. “He worked for you.”

  “You heard me tell the police that I didn’t know a Stephen Bayard.”

  “I heard you tell the police a lie,” I said.

  He looked as if he was about to say something, but instead he just turned and walked away.

  I turned on my heels and followed him.

  “You know they think my father killed him.”

  “Killed Stephen?” he asked. He turned and glanced at me, but didn’t stop walking.

  “Yes. But I’ve been thinking maybe you did it.”

  “What part of ‘I don’t know him’ don’t you understand?” he said.

  “So,” I said. “Do you know the Pink Panther?”

  “What is it that you want?” This time he stopped moving.

  “I want to know if you killed Stephen Bayard.”

  “No, I didn’t,” he said. “Now if that’s all . . .” He started walking again.

  I followed him.

  “Is your plan to follow me until I confess?” he asked, a wicked smile on his face.

  “Mrs. Keller told me how you got the restaurant.”

  “How I got the rest— Oh,” he said, and nodded. “I didn’t do anything illegal. Foreclosing on tax-delinquent properties is set up by the court. It’s done all the time.”

  “That part was probably legal, but what you had Stephen Bayard do, offer Mr. Keller a way out with no intentions of making good on it, was wrong.”

  “That was all on Stephen Bayard,” he said.

  “The man you didn’t know,” I said.

  “The man I didn’t know,” he said.

  “Was Stephen Bayard blackmailing you?”

  “You sure are full of information,” he said. “What makes you think that?”

  “You had to have a reason to kill him.”

  He noisily pulled up air through his nostrils. I could see them flare. He didn’t like my questions.

  “I didn’t kill him, but there were a lot of reasons that I could have.”

  “You wanted to?” I asked.

  “As I’m sure a lot of people did. But I didn’t do it,” he said. “I just needed him to leave me alone.”

  “Leave you alone,” I said. “How was he bothering you?” I wanted to laugh at the thought.

  “Look, Stephen Bayard was a bad guy,” he said. “And for a while I was traveling down that same path. Right with him.” He raked his fingers on his beard. “We did some things together. In the past. Things I wasn’t proud of. But I have a different life now. A life I like, and I wasn’t turning back, and that’s what he wanted me to do.”

  “How did he want you to turn back?” I asked.

  “You’re not going to stop, are you?”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “I’ll tell you because I didn’t do it.” He shrugged. “I have nothing to hide.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Tell me.”

  “He wanted to get his old crew together. Do another job. But I wasn’t in on it. He came here to convince me. But it didn’t work.”

  “Is that why you killed him?”

  “I didn’t kill him,” he said.

  “Where were you the night he died?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business,” he said, “but I was at home. I wasn’t feeling well, so I stayed in. By myself. And before you ask”—he glanced over at me—“I don’t have anyone to corroborate my story.”

  He walked off, and this time I didn’t follow. We had made it to a parking lot and I assumed it was where he’d parked. I stood and watched as he got into his car and drove off, not moving a muscle until he was out of sight.

  Then I thought about how uncomfortable it was going to be to work with him at the President’s Dinner.

  “Hey, Win.” I turned at the sound of my name to see who had called me.

  “O,” I said. I would run into him.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  I turned to make sure Ari had driven off. I didn’t want him to see me standing around. Then I turned back to speak to O. “Just finalizing everything with Clara Blackwell for the event.”

  “President’s Dinner.”

  “Yes.” I nodded. “Thank you again for that,” I said. “It couldn’t have come at a better time.”

  “No problem,” he said. “I was happy to recommend you.”

  “She’s also booked us for an ice cream social for a sorority that’s coming up. So that’s two things to thank you for.”

  “I’ll be there,” he said.

  “At the ice cream social?” I asked.

  “No.” He chuckled. “At the President’s Dinner.” He put his head down. “Although, I could stop through at the other event. But it is a, you know, undergraduate event.”

  Why was he telling me he could stop by? This was getting weird.

  “Well,” I said, looking up at the sky. The universal sign of noting the weather. “I guess I’d better be going. It’s too cold to be standing around out here.”

  “Where’d you park?” he asked. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

  All I needed was for Maisie to see me with O. All she’d known to say after we’d met him was that he liked me.

  “Oh no, you don’t have to,” I said. “I’m only parked out by the registrar’s office.” I stretched out my arm and pointed. “I can make it.”

  He took my extended arm and moved it forty-five degrees to the right. “The registrar’s office is that way.” He looked back toward where I’d come from. “You’re heading the wrong way. Have you been wandering around?”

  “Um . . . no.” I didn’t want to tell him about my little detour. I looked around to get my bearings and realized I’d strayed more than I thought following behind Ari.

  “I can walk you back,” he said, and gave me one of his lopsided grins. “I don’t mind.”

  Oh brother . . .

  “Okay,” I said, and gave him a slight smile. “That’ll be nice.”

  No need for me to be rude.

  “So how is your little investigation going?” he asked.

  I coughed, surprised at his statement. “Excuse me?”

  Did he know we were trying to catch a killer?

  “You and Maisie, you were trying to find out some information.”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. I turned back to glance at where I’d last seen Ari. “It’s going, I guess.”

  “I can help,” he said. “I know a thing or two about the law.”

  “Yes, I know,” I said. “But we’re good.”

  “So what do you think about that murder around your parts? Pretty nefarious, huh?”

  I swallowed hard. Why had he brought that up? I certainly couldn’t let him know I was poking my nose into that. He kept showing up at the ice cream shop, and since he and my grandfather were getting chummy, I didn’t want him to let what I was doing leak.

  I shrugged. “I don’t think anything about it,” I said.

  “Really?” he asked. “Not curious at all.”

  “Well, I don’t know that I’d say that,” I said. “I mean, I am the one who found the body.”

  “I heard,” he said.

  I turned to look at him. “How did you hear that?”

  “The law community around here is pretty small. We all know each other.”

  “You know Detective Beverly?” I asked.

  “I do,” he said, and gave a curt nod.

  “Oh jeez,” I said. “What did he tell you?”

  “Not much,” he said. “He told me what the guy had been killed with.” He glanced over at me. “That’s a pretty unusual way to murder someone.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said. “Specific to only one thing.”

  �
�You mean the field of medicine.”

  I didn’t answer that question. And that answer was much too broad for what I was thinking.

  Specific to surgery, Mr. Law Professor.

  I didn’t know if O knew anything about my father. PopPop could have easily mentioned that he was a surgeon, but I didn’t want him connecting the two in case Detective Beverly hadn’t told him.

  “Why did Detective Beverly say anything to you about it?” I asked.

  “You know, I used to be a police officer,” he said. “And I teach criminal law over here at the law school.” He glanced at me. “And I may have written a book or two on crime here in Ohio.”

  “A book or two?”

  “Or three,” he said, and smiled. “You know, you don’t get a lot of murders over in Chagrin Falls.”

  “I know.”

  “So it’s important that the police catch someone.”

  “You mean anyone.”

  “In a way, that is what I mean. I teach my class about circumstantial evidence. You know what that is?”

  “I’ve heard about it,” I said. “Don’t know that I can explain it to you.”

  “If there is no snow on the ground when you go to sleep, but there’s snow there when you wake up, what do you think happened over night?” he asked.

  “That it snowed.”

  “Right. You wouldn’t know that for a fact,” he said. “But the circumstances—the snow on the ground—would tend to prove your point. It would be evidence.”

  “And why did you tell me that?” I asked.

  “Sometimes the police don’t have anything but circumstantial evidence. Can’t prove a person committed a crime beyond a reasonable doubt.”

  “But that’s what they have to do, isn’t it?” I asked. “Beyond a reasonable doubt. I’ve heard that before.”

  “No,” he said. “That’s not what the police officer is supposed to do.”

  I looked at him from the corner of my eye. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure,” he said. “The prosecutor has to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s not the police officers’ job. They collect the evidence. So sometimes, they get all they can and then give what they have to the prosecutors. Leaving them, and the jurors, to figure out what they can.”

  “Why did Detective Beverly contact you? Does he have circumstantial evidence or something?”

  “He called me for advice.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Hey! Hey!” It was Maisie, standing just outside the car, waving at us. We were still a good twenty feet away from it.

  “She seems happy to see you,” he said.

  “I don’t think it’s me,” I said.

  “You think she’s happy to see me?” he said, his eyes wide like he didn’t think that was a good thing.

  “Not exactly,” I said. “It’s complicated.”

  I’m sure Maisie was happy to see the two of us. Together. But I wasn’t sharing that with him.

  “Get back in the car, Maisie,” I said as soon as we got close to it.

  “I just wanted to speak to O,” she said. “Hi, O!”

  “Hi, Maisie.”

  She got back in the car but rolled down the window on the passenger side, where we were standing. “What are you two up to?” she asked, leaning across the seat.

  “Nothing,” I said. “He walked me back to the car.”

  “Oh,” she said, and did some kind of exaggerated wink before sitting back up.

  “I have to go,” I said to him. “I guess I’ll see you at the President’s Dinner.”

  “Oh, I was stopping by for ice cream this afternoon.”

  “I just bet you were,” Maisie said through the window.

  “You got any new flavors?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “I’ll be making more tomorrow if you want to come by then.”

  “I like the old flavors just fine,” he said. “I’ll see you later?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Bye, Maisie,” he said, bending over to look in the car window.

  “Bye!” Maisie leaned across the seat and waved.

  “See you later, Win,” O said.

  I climbed into the car and acknowledged him with a smile.

  “He likes you,” Maisie said.

  “You should stop saying that,” I said, rolling up the window. “He just likes ice cream.”

  “Yeah, right,” she said.

  “I saw Ari,” I said, buckling my seatbelt. I knew how to change the subject with her.

  “Where?” she said, turning to look at me. “Here?”

  “Yep,” I said, nodding. “He’s the caterer.”

  “Did he say something to you?” she asked.

  “I said something to him.”

  “You did not!” She had a big grin on her face like she was proud of me. “You didn’t just watch him?”

  I rocked my head back and forth. “I did that, too.”

  She laughed. “And did you find out anything that way?”

  “No,” I said. “Looks like you’re right about actually having to talk to someone to get any information.”

  “Asking questions. Not a bad concept, huh?”

  “No, Maisie. Not a bad idea at all.”

  “So tell me, what did Ari say?” She started the car. “Tell me everything.” She looked over the back seat to pull out of the parking space, then glanced at me. “Did he confess to killing Stephen Bayard?”

  “No. He just said he hated him enough to do it.”

  “I knew it!” Maisie said. “He’s the killer. Now we just have to figure out how he did it.”

  chapter

  THIRTY-TWO

  I brought you something to nosh on.” Rivkah stood at the table, a bowl of boiled eggs in her hand. She set them in the middle of the table. “You look hungry.”

  “Savta,” I said, “we just ordered food.” I pointed toward the server, Daiyu, who was heading back into the kitchen.

  We were at Rivkah Solomon’s Village Dragon Chinese Restaurant. It was all red with golden dragons everywhere and mural landscapes on the wall. Maisie and I sat in our favorite booth. The one we’d claimed as our own since second grade.

  We had stopped by the ice cream shop after we’d gotten back from Wycliffe, but not for long. My mother and father were behind the counter with a sprinkle of people lined up and sitting at the tables. PopPop and Bobby were playing backgammon in a booth. If O had stopped by, I didn’t know about it. Maisie and I headed right back out and I didn’t ask.

  Rivkah waved a wrinkled hand at us and said, “When was the last time you ate?” She put her hand on top of mine. “A few eggs won’t hurt.”

  I had to admit, I hadn’t been eating lately. The only reason I was getting food now was because Maisie and I had decided to rendezvous at the restaurant before we went on our stakeout mission. Maisie, like her grandmother, was all about a body having enough fuel to make it through.

  Maisie, in an earlier undertaking, while I pretended to be busy at the ice cream shop, had found out what time Glynis got off from work. Seemed as if she worked twelve-hour shifts and would be at the senior facility until seven thirty. She must’ve just gotten to work not too long before we saw her there. If we wanted to follow her to see where she was going, we needed to kill some time or sit in the car for hours.

  “You don’t have to worry, Savta,” Maisie said. “We’ve been eating.”

  Rivkah shook her head and held out her hands. “What kind of mother would I be if I didn’t worry?”

  “Doesn’t she know she’s your grandmother?” It was Riya, who walked in as Rivkah walked off. She sat down next to Maisie, forcing her to move over. Rivkah headed back into the kitchen, no doubt to see about our food.

  “How did you know we were here?�
� I asked.

  “I didn’t,” she said. “I came in to get tofu.”

  “Do you always dress like that to go out to get tofu?” I asked.

  Riya looked pretty. She had on makeup—mascara, dark red lipstick and some kind of sparkling amber-colored eye shadow and black eyeliner that complemented her olive-toned skin and shiny black hair. She wore blue jeans, a rust-colored turtleneck and fringed suede boots of the same color.

  “I got stood up,” Riya said. “So I felt like pigging out.”

  “On tofu?” I asked.

  “Someone stood you up?” Maisie asked. “Are they still standing upright?”

  Riya’s temperament didn’t tolerate people doing her wrong, not without repercussions. But she was working on that and it seemed like her stint as an emergency room doctor at Lakeside Memorial had been good for her. The quick thinking needed in that type of work kept her mind busy and calm.

  “The whole concept about being stood up, Maisie,” Riya said, “is that the person doesn’t show up. So that means I didn’t see him. Thus”—she slammed her palms on the table—“I couldn’t do anything to him. Not that I was going to.” She made her voice soft. “Although, I actually had an ulterior motive for seeing him.”

  “And what was that?” I asked.

  “To question him.”

  “What?” Sleuthing seemed to be contagious.

  “I don’t know if I should say . . .” Riya looked at the two of us. “Where are you two dressed up to go? All in black.”

  “We’re going on a stakeout,” Maisie said.

  Riya looked across the table at me. She knew that Maisie had a tendency to not always say what she meant. She could learn a thing or two from the Mad Hatter—say what you mean, mean what you say. But I gave a nod, confirming that was what we were doing, and added, “I just have on a black top. I have on blue jeans.” I patted my thighs. “But it wasn’t my intention, it just happened to be what I put on.”

  “Why are you two doing a stakeout?” Riya asked.

  “To prove that Win’s family isn’t in the mob,” Maisie said.

  “The mob?” Riya said, amusement dancing in her eyes.

  “Yeah, that they didn’t put out a hit on Dead Guy,” Maisie finished her explanation.

  “Dead Guy?” Riya asked. “You don’t know his name?”