Cake Tastings and Killers

by A. R. Winters

  This was going way too far. If I didn't do something, Caroline would have a brother and a fiancé in jail by dinner.

  I walked toward the desk. Jason, the officer behind the desk, and Reid seemed to notice me for the first time.

  "Laura, you have to tell them! I didn't do this." Jason bucked forward, nearly wrenching himself from Reid's grip. "Tell them I didn't kill anybody."

  "I believe you." Not that it did him any good. Without evidence, Reid wasn’t going to budge.

  "Don't say anything else until I get a lawyer," Simon said.

  "That's a good idea, Mr. Lambert," Reid said. "This is a time to bring in a professional." On the last word, his eyes slid to me.

  Simon ignored him. "Just hang in there, bro. We'll be having steaks and beers before midnight."

  Jason froze and blinked in shock as if it had never occurred to him neither Simon nor I could stop what was about to happen to him. His shoulders slumped and he lowered his head, sobbing softly. Reid continued leading Jason down the hall. This time, he didn’t fight.

  When things had calmed down again, the officer behind the desk sat down. "Everyone's big and bad when they do the crime, but they all fold when they have to do the time."

  "Don't talk about him like he's a criminal," Simon snapped. "If you knew Jason at all you'd know how ridiculous this all is!"

  Simon stomped past me and back toward the entrance. He pushed the door open with such force it slammed into the bush beside it.

  "Was there something you wanted, ma’am?" the officer behind the desk asked.

  I shook my head. There was no way my plan to vouch for Jason would work now. If I wanted to make him believe Jason Delany was innocent, somehow I was going to have to prove it.

  If Jason didn't kill Charlie, and I didn't, then who was left? Who had the best motive to kill Charlie Porter? Who stood to gain the most?

  Simon Lambert, but Carl Hawkins was right behind him.

  Taking a breath, I went outside to the parking lot and hoped Simon hadn't gone far. Lucky for me, he was pacing the path between the lot and the entrance, all the while typing furiously on his phone.

  "Are you gonna be all right?" I asked as I approached Simon.

  I had to tread carefully here. Caroline Delany swore she couldn't get married without her brother. How would she feel if he were saved because her fiancé was guilty? I couldn't know for sure, but it was easy to guess. There may have been no way to solve Charlie Porter's murder without hurting Caroline Delany.

  But this case needed to be closed. The longer it was open, the more people got hurt. More lives could be destroyed when Charlie’s old dirt bubbled to the surface. Simon's head jerked in my direction. He stared hard at me for a while, his gaze narrowing slightly. “I know you, right? You work for the Paradise Bed and Breakfast? You're the one that's supposed to be doing the photos.”

  I nodded and extended a hand. "We haven't really been introduced yet. I'm Laura Fisher, Danielle's sister."

  Simon looked back at his phone. "This is insane. Nobody in their right mind would believe Jason could hurt anybody. Let alone kill them."

  "You don't have to convince me," I said, lowering my unshaken hand. "I believe you."

  "The kid just doesn't have it in him. He couldn't even stand up." Simon's thumbs moved faster over the screen, picking up speed and rhythm until he punched a button with his index finger.

  After his phone blooped, Simon Lambert looked up again. He stared at me, lips slack and eyes blinking in disbelief. I didn't blame him. When he and Caroline Delany woke up this morning, neither of them could have been expecting their world to be rocked.

  "This is gonna destroy Caroline," Simon whispered. "And Jason. He can't handle jail. This is insane! How can they arrest a man for something he didn't do?"

  I raised an eyebrow. “Reid wouldn’t have arrested Jason unless he thought he had solid proof.”

  “Proof from an anonymous tip who just happened to know about Charlie’s stash? That’s not suspicious at all.”

  “I know you care about Jason. I know you love his sister, but is there any chance you read this wrong?"

  Simon shook his head. “Zero. I've known both of them for years. If Charlie had put me through half of the things he put Jason through, I'd have broken his nose years ago. Jason’s never so much as thrown a punch.”

  But the same wasn't true of Simon. Could his insistence have been nothing more than a guilty conscience? Did Simon kill Charlie?

  “And the evidence is even weirder,” Simon continued. “Arsenic on a pair of latex gloves. Why would Jason have any of that?”

  "Jason had access to Charlie's stash," I said. "He told me so himself.”

  "Yeah, him, me, Jean, and half the rest of the office." Simon rubbed his forehead roughly with his knuckles. "The combination was his freaking birthday. I begged him for years to change it. So did IT. Charlie said it was the only set of numbers he would remember."

  "Simon, if you know something that could help Jason, anything concrete at all," I said gently, "You need to tell Detective Reid. Caroline needs you right now, and this is only going to end when Reid figures out who killed Charlie."

  "I don't know who did it," Simon said through gritted teeth. "But to be honest if I did, I might give them a medal. At a minimum, I owe them a drink."

  "Because of what Charlie did to Caroline?"

  Simon blinked in surprise. "She told you about that? I was mad, but I made plans to handle it. After we got back from our honeymoon, I was going to offer Charlie a buyout offer, and I'm pretty sure he would have taken me up on it."

  "If that's true, why did you take out an insurance policy on him?" When Simon’s eyes widened, I shrugged in apology. "Jason told me that one. The night he died."

  "Blabbermouth," Simon grumbled. "I'm gonna have to have a chat with Jason about operational security. I bought that policy years ago when Charlie and I first went into business. Back then, it was just good business. I never imagined I'd cash in. At least I didn't until a couple of weeks before he died."

  "What changed?"

  Simon shook his head. "Sorry, I get that my fiancé and brother-in-law trust you, but I can't discuss the details of my business with a stranger."

  A flare of anger welled in my gut. The love of his life was at home crying her eyes out, and his employee and future in-law was probably fighting off a panic attack while they took his fingerprints. But I was the risk?

  "Look, I know you have absolutely no reason to trust me," I said, "but we want the same thing: Caroline to have the day she’s been dreaming about. Jason being there is part of that. Please, if you can think of anything that will prove someone else killed Charlie, you have to tell someone. If not me, then Detective Reid."

  A panicked look flashed in Simon Lambert's eyes. They darted from me to the parking lot and back. If he was hoping someone would pop out and say this was all a prank, I was right with him. I'd been there for weeks.

  "Two weeks before he died, Charlie acted out at our weekly meeting," Simon said. "At first, I didn't think anything of it. Those meetings were just the two of us, and it wasn't uncommon for him to show up high or hung over. By the end, it was a fifty-fifty chance."

  "What made that day different?" I asked.

  "Charlie was sober. I was so used to him being sideways, I didn't notice at first. But when I called him out on it, he said he was just distracted. Said he had a secret, but he didn't know what to do about it."

  "Did Charlie tell you the secret?"

  Simon shook his head. "Not even after I told him it was hard to help with a problem I knew nothing about. Whatever that secret was, as far as I know, Charlie took it to the grave with him."

  "You two are still here?" Reid's voice called from behind us. When I turned around, he was standing a few steps behind me with his arms braced on his hips. "There's not much else you folks can do today."

  Simon glared at Reid. “This isn’t over, Detective. I'll be back before lunchtime. With a lawye
r. I'm sorry, Laura, but I’m afraid Caroline and I will have to postpone the wedding until we’ve cleaned up this mess.” He turned and strode toward the parking lot coolly.

  And then it was just me and Reid. He'd looked tired when we last saw one another. I didn't know what emotion to call his expression now. It wasn't relief and it definitely wasn't satisfaction. He didn't look like a man who'd just solved a case that plagued him for two weeks.

  "This isn't right," I said before I could stop myself. "Jason Delany didn't kill Charlie Porter."

  "I can't discuss the details of an open case with you, Ms. Fisher," he said.

  "You mentioned that.”

  "Also mentioned that if you kept nosing around my case, I would have to arrest you." Reid crossed his arms. "Tell me why I shouldn't now."

  I wanted to scream at him. To tell him that he was being unreasonable. That his blind devotion to evidence when it so plainly had to be wrong was nuts, and it was getting a lot of people hurt.

  But that wouldn’t get Jason out of jail. It wouldn’t save Caroline and Simon’s wedding or Danielle and Simon’s business. It probably wouldn’t even make me feel better.

  "You've been combing through Charlie's last days and worst hits for weeks. Have you met a single person who's sorry he died?"

  "Questions like that are above my pay grade, Ms. Fisher," he said. "Even the wicked deserve justice. Sometimes visited upon them, sometimes done in their name."

  The weight of Reid's words hit me more heavily than I expected. For a few seconds, I had no response to them.

  Yes, Charlie Porter was a hard man to like.

  Yes, he hurt just about everyone he came across, enemy and friend alike.

  And yes, there was a heaping pile of justice with his name on it that would forever go unserved.

  But who was I to say that meant his death should go unanswered? Who was I to say his killer should stay unnamed?

  “Wish I could see the world as black and white as you do.” I turned to walk back to my car.

  Sometime in the next hour, Caroline was going to call Danielle back and put her wedding on ice. Unless I found a way to prove her brother didn't kill the biggest bully in the Keys.

  "Laura," Reid called from behind me. "You’re officially in the clear now. Don't do anything stupid to put that at risk."

  It's good advice, I thought as I kept walking.

  Too bad I had no intention of taking it.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  As soon as I got home, I filled Granny and Danielle in on everything that had happened at the Sheriff's department. I told them I wanted to go through everything I knew again, starting with the day Charlie turned up on the front porch of the Paradise up to that afternoon.

  Danielle didn’t argue. I guess my big speech about trying to save Jason Delany made an impression.

  Granny didn't argue either, but since she'd been in on this whole amateur private investigator thing from the beginning, I hadn't expected her to.

  Danielle called Andrew and grabbed her laptop. Granny made us a lunch of ham and cheese sandwiches, plain chips, pickles, and extra-large glasses of sweet tea. Andrew pulled us back whenever our theories veered too far out of the realm of reality and too far into the realms of television. Coral curled up on the table next to Danielle’s phone. I took notes.

  None of the details I knew about Charlie Porter's death or the lives of the potential suspects made any sense. Someone had to be lying, or more likely, everyone had given me a sliver of their truth, and the objective version was just out of my reach.

  After about an hour, we came up with three theories that met Andrew’s standards.

  The first was that Charlie had lied about going to find me the day he died. If Charlie had gone to the beach looking for me, it would have been obvious I hadn't gone there. That should have led him deeper into the grounds, where I was. Not to the side of the house. Which suggested whoever passed the arsenic to Charlie was on the grounds of the Paradise when he died.

  Since I hadn’t killed Charlie, that theory made Simon and Jason the most likely suspects.

  "You said Detective Reid found the gloves in Charlie’s stash?" Danielle asked as she bounced Ben on her knee to keep him calm. "Maybe Jason brought it with him and Charlie went off to… you know… top off?"

  Only my kid sister would use such a practical metaphor for recreational drug abuse.

  "Simon said Charlie had a secret and he didn’t know what to do about it. I can believe Charlie was stressed. He was definitely hungover, but I don’t see how he could have gotten high. Jason didn't have a bag with him that day," I said. "Even if he had, I definitely would have run into Charlie on his way back from the car. We didn't cross paths until I found his body."

  “Must’ve been a big secret if it gave a man with as many skeletons as Charlie pause,” Danielle said. “I wonder what it was.”

  “Simon said he didn’t know. And if he was willing to speculate, he didn’t do it with me.”

  "I still don’t think that fits,” Granny said. “It doesn't account for Carl Hawkins's affair.”

  “We don't know for sure that happened, Granny Margaret," Andrew said. “Right now, the only person saying that is Paige, which makes it hearsay.”

  I rolled my eyes. This process went a lot faster when there was no professional in the room. "Well, they looked like they had split up. Why would Paige lie about that?"

  "Maybe she and Carl split for some other reason and Paige was too embarrassed to say," Danielle offered. "If I were in her shoes, I don't think I'd want to talk about it much."

  "And I only found out about it because of my big fat mouth," I said. "But what would she have to gain by lying? It's not like I knew either of them."

  “People lie for any reason and no reason at all,” Andrew said. “It may have been nothing more complicated than Paige wanting to save face.”

  "About her husband's affair?" I asked in astonishment. “If that's the case why mention it to me?”

  I could hear the shrug in Andrew’s voice. “Maybe in that moment it suited her to be the victim. She was trying to clear out her house. You were there for a sale. A good story could only help her chances.”

  “No way. I get that you and Reid have come across some rough people, but Paige isn’t a criminal mastermind,” I said. “She’s just a baker. Why lie?”

  "Because people do,” Andrew said. “About everything. That's why Reid keeps defaulting to the evidence. We can't prove the affair happened, we can’t prove it's why Carl and Paige separated, and we can’t prove Charlie told her about it."

  "Maybe not, but you can prove that Charlie and Paige were friendly," I countered.

  "And they were still on speaking terms after his nasty comment about her," Danielle said. "I saw them talking through the window."

  "Did you hear what they said?" Andrew asked.

  “No.”

  "Then we have no way of knowing whether the conversation was about business or personal matters."

  Danielle shrugged. "It couldn't have been anything but personal. She gave him something, and they hugged through the window before he walked off. With a smile on his face.”

  "It's still not enough," Andrew said flatly. "And even if it were, it would give Paige motive, but neither means nor opportunity. What's theory number two?"

  I switched the font on my notes from regular script to strikethrough. "Simon Lambert and Jason Delany killed Charlie together. It fits Andrew’s theory about the murderer being the one who stood to gain the most. Simon ditches a business partner and gains a life insurance payout, Jason loses a bully and gains a corner office."

  "Together?" Danielle asked with a furrowed brow. "Not one or the other?"

  I shrugged. “They both have basically the same motive and Simon said everyone in the office could have tampered with Charlie's stash. Meanwhile, Jason…”

  “That boy couldn't raise a hand to anybody," Granny said. "If he did, then I'm the queen of England.”

 
"Well, you two are the same age." I twisted away just in time to dodge the pillow Granny threw at me. "Anyway, if Jason could get that violent with his bully, why go through years of abuse?"

  "Charlie was his boss,” Andrew said.

  "Technically, but since his sister accepted Simon Lambert's marriage proposal, Jason's a few weeks away from Charlie's partner being part of the family,” I said. "From what he told me, nobody at the company would have cared if he stepped away. Except maybe the receptionist.”

  “For some people, a miserable job is better than no job at all,” Andrew said.

  “I don’t know about that, honey,” Danielle said. “You didn’t meet them, but the Delany family didn’t look like they were hurting for money.”

  “It doesn’t have to have been money,” Granny said. “Pride will make a person act against their own best interest faster than cash in my experience.”

  “Charlie’s death definitely seemed to give Jason an ego boost,” I said. “But judging by how he’s been acting since, he’s still getting used to it. He snapped at the receptionist when she didn’t follow his orders fast enough and he started pouting when our date went south.”

  “I don’t know a lot of men who wouldn’t react badly to both, Laura,” Andrew said.

  “Well… he still could have been nice about it,” I grumbled.

  “And now we know why Auntie Laura’s dates end the way they do, Ben,” Danielle said, rolling her eyes.

  I stuck my tongue out at her. “So Andrew, you’re saying that Simon and Jason both had the same motive, namely that Charlie was a pain in their rears?”

  "The motives are similar," Andrew said, "But the opportunity isn't. I don't know why Reid is mistaking who had access to Charlie's stash, but in the end it doesn't matter. It’s the arsenic that killed him, not an overdose."

  "How can the murder weapon not matter?" I asked.

  "Well… It might be more accurate to say that the existence of the arsenic doesn’t naturally point to anyone,” Andrew said. “It’s that it's just as unlikely for any of them to have arsenic.