Dr. Shine Cracks the Case (A ChiroCozy Mystery, #1)

by Cathy Tully

  “Who is it?” Larraine asked, as Tina peered out one of the side windows.

  “It’s Bitsy,” Tina said, and threw the door open.

  “Why are you banging on my door?” Susannah asked. “Why didn’t you park in the rear like the rest of us?”

  “No way, sister.” Bitsy shook her finger at Susannah as if she were scolding a child. “A chill came over me after I left here the other day, and it would not leave. I refuse to take chances with a spirit who is not resting in peace. I will park in your poltergeist-free lot, thank you very much.”

  “Whatever,” Susannah muttered, backtracking down the hall. “Come on, then. We’re set up in the back. I made my blueberry muffins.”

  “Uh-hmm,” Bitsy said. “That’s okay, ’cause I already got my quota of gluten-filled baked goods this morning.”

  Tina giggled, and Susannah threw a look over her shoulder.

  “Well, let’s get started.” Susannah removed the plastic top from her cup and sipped at the latte. A smattering of foam smudged her upper lip. “I have some news about Anita. It seems she had disputes with half the merchants in Peach Grove. But Fiona told me about one woman in particular. I hope one of you can help me find her.”

  “Ooh.” Bitsy rubbed her hands together, an expectant gleam in her eyes. “This is exciting.”

  “What’s her name?” Tina asked. She grabbed a latte with a sparkle in her eyes that rivaled Bitsy’s. Susannah was glad to see she wasn’t twisting her wedding ring.

  “Olivia Franklin,” Susannah said.

  “Oh,” Bitsy said, her face falling. “I thought it would be someone scary. Olivia ain’t scary.”

  “You know her?”

  “You know her too. She used to be a member of the Business Association, a long time ago. Back when we first joined.” Bitsy and Susannah had opened their businesses within a few months of each other and joined the Business Association the same year. “I guess you don’t remember.”

  “No, I don’t.” Susannah drummed her fingers on the table. What kind of investigator would she be if she had a faulty memory? She racked her brain for an image of Olivia Franklin but could not find one.

  “I don’t think Olivia is much of a suspect, either,” Larraine said. “But I know where she’ll be in two days.”

  “You do?” Bitsy and Tina spoke in unison.

  She nodded, a mischievous grin crossing her face, the wrinkles around her eyes deepening. “At the church picnic. Remember, I invited all y’all? And I never heard back from any of you.” She raised an eyebrow and tried to look stern but failed. “So now you don’t have any reason to stay home.”

  “I guess not,” Susannah agreed. “We’ll be at the picnic Saturday morning.”

  Larraine said, “Good, that makes me feel better about ‘interviewing’ Miss Holliday.” She made air quotes around the word interviewing.

  “Do tell,” Bitsy said, picking up a muffin and taking a blueberry off the top.

  “She’s a neighbor of the Rogers family. Knew Colin when he was a young’un.” She tipped her head at Susannah. “You owe me for this, by the way. I invited her to the house and had to listen to her gossip for over an hour. Thank goodness Charles was out. I must have been red in the face listening to her tell her tales out of school.”

  Bitsy perked up again. “Now, this sounds good. What did she say?”

  “No.” Larraine held her hand up and wagged her finger at Bitsy, the same way Bitsy had scolded Susannah. “That family has had a lot of awful luck and tragedy, and more than one of them has taken up the bottle.”

  Bitsy shook her head but held her tongue.

  “Is that it?” Susannah asked.

  “According to Miss Holliday, the entire family keeps to themselves and are not the sharpest tacks in the box. She called them ‘lazy boozers,’” she said, using finger quotes again. “She told me she had been inside their house many times. I asked if they were outdoorsmen or if mama was a gardener because I reckoned that if they could hunt, or fish, or can food, Colin might have picked up the skills to poison someone. But according to her, none of them can cook worth a lick. They live on junk food and takeout. She said they rarely leave the house.”

  “Did she say anything about Colin?”

  “No. Just that she thought he shouldn’t have charged her so much for a tune-up.”

  Susannah turned to Bitsy. “What about you?”

  Bitsy shook her head. “My cousin Denise thinks Anita might have come to her shop to get her nails done, but she can’t be sure. I have to get her a picture.”

  “I’ll text you one.” Susannah scrolled through her phone and pulled up a selfie she had taken with Anita. It seemed like long ago, but it was only a few months. She gazed at the image and then pressed send. Bitsy’s phone toned.

  “Got it.”

  “What about you, Dr. Shine?” asked Tina. “Did you learn anything new?”

  Susannah removed the notepad from her pocket and pushed it across the table to Tina. “Fiona told me that Anita was extremely particular about the goods and services she purchased. Seems she had disputes with half of Peach Grove. I made note of a few names. Maybe you could call and see what you can find out? If you come up with something, then I can go check them out.”

  “I’ll give it a shot,” Tina said, reading off the names of Anita’s hairdresser, insurance agent, house painter, and saddlemaker.

  “Is that it?” Bitsy asked.

  Susannah took a sip of her coffee and reached for a muffin. “She told me that Tomás and Anita bickered all the time, which goes along with what he told us. Anita never complained about him to Fiona, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have a grudge against her.”

  The phone rang, and Larraine rose from her chair, cup in hand. “I better get that.”

  Tina stood and swiped at her phone. “I’ll get on this right now,” she said, and disappeared into the file room.

  Bitsy scooped up a muffin with a napkin and stashed it in her shoulder bag. “I have to get back to Peachy Things. I’ll let you know what Denise thinks about this picture.”

  Susannah closed the door behind her and made her way to her office, where she picked apart her muffin while silently watching Henry the Eight swish around his tank. So far, they were coming up with dead ends. Hopefully, the church picnic would change that.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Olivia Franklin stood looking over the dessert table in the fellowship hall of the Peach Grove Baptist Church. The accountant wore her ash-blond hair in a short bob with blunt bangs. Small square eyeglasses with black-and-gold frames slid down her nose as she prodded various dishes with a bony finger. A flowing white skirt and oversized blue blouse obscured her slight frame; the blouse’s drop collar added another layer of fabric where it tied in front.

  “That’s Olivia over there, with her fingers in the banana pudding,” Larraine said, tilting her head down and pursing her lips. She glared across the cavernous gym-sized room like a referee at a basketball game. Susannah knew that if she had a whistle, she would have called foul. “She best keep her mitts out of my potato salad.”

  Susannah pulled her shoulders back, stretching her neck. Traipsing across the church campus toting ten pounds of potato salad while clutching a plastic salad bowl against her chest had given her neck a kink. Larraine had refused to give up her blue ribbon dish at first, but Susannah insisted. Letting her carry that heavy container would have been like allowing her mother to carry the catering tray of lasagna to the family Christmas party. The younger generation had their crosses to bear. Susannah said, “Let’s put this stuff down and go talk to her.”

  Before Larraine could answer, Bitsy shoved herself between them, and Susannah lost her grip on the salad bowl, which hit the floor and spilled half of its contents. Bitsy bobbled the aluminum pan she was holding but recovered.

  “Why’d you stop short like that? Didn’t you see me coming up behind you with the ribs?” She teetered on her Christian Louboutin knock-off spike sa
ndals and wrinkled her nose at the frilly green mess. “What is that stuff? It don’t look like no salad I’ve ever seen.”

  “It’s kale salad. It’s good for you.”

  “Well, dropping this tray of ribs won’t be good for me.” She pivoted on her faux heels, searching the room. “Where is Roman? He was supposed to be helping me.”

  Susannah, who now had a free hand, steadied her tray. “I don’t see him.”

  “Hmmph! We made up, but we’re gonna be arguing again soon.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Dr. Shine,” Larraine said, grabbing the bag containing the potato salad and hefting it with a bulge of her biceps. “It’s not the first culinary experiment gone wrong, bless your heart. Go on, I’ll get the cleanup crew.”

  Susannah raised her eyebrows, but Larraine scooted away. All around the edges of the room, people had stopped to watch, but Olivia vanished, spooked like a cat treed by a dog.

  Bitsy poked at a bit of kale with the toe of her shoe. “Now who would want to eat that?” she asked, moving aside for Iris Duncan, who stepped forward holding a triple-layer chocolate cake barely concealed under a swath of cling wrap. She nodded at Iris’s cake. “We’re here to sweet-talk information out of the congregation. Not make them think we’re spying on them for their cardiologist.”

  “There’s always one in the group,” Iris murmured, shaking her head. Her ponytail swayed in agreement.

  “One what?”

  “Health nut.” Iris skirted the mess and headed for the dessert table. “Come on, if I’m gonna consider joining this church, I have to see what kind of a spread they put out. Though having a shooting range on the campus is a big plus in my book.”

  Susannah placed her half-empty bowl on a table next to a wilted green salad and a carton of cherry tomatoes. She watched as Iris squeezed her cake in between a mound of brownies and two stacks of cupcakes. The desserts were crammed in four deep and six feet wide. Iris’s brown eyes gleamed as she mentally cataloged each morsel.

  At the entrée table, Bitsy peeled the aluminum foil back from the tray of ribs. She and Iris bowed their heads reverently, and then Iris dipped one hand into the tray and snagged a juicy rib. Caramelized meat barely hung on to the long, flat bone. Before she could take a bite, Bitsy slapped a paper plate into her other hand. “You’re in church now,” she said, maneuvering the plate under the dripping flesh. “It’s a sin to waste pork.”

  Larraine returned with the cleanup crew, and in short order the floor was kale free. She escorted the group outside, where parishioners gathered under a large pavilion. Weathered wooden picnic tables were heaped with bags of snack foods. A brigade of senior citizens seated in colorful canvas folding chairs clumped together under a large magnolia tree. Beyond them, a knot of tweens played Ultimate.

  “I suppose Roman went straight on to the shooting range.” Bitsy took in her surroundings, maneuvering her purse across her body like a bandolero. The purse—faux calfskin, trimmed in black leather—matched her faux-Boutin sandals and gave her a cowboy chic appearance. She dipped into the bag and retrieved a black semiautomatic Smith & Wesson. Releasing the magazine into her hand and racking the slide, she peered into the gun. Satisfied that the chamber was clear, she slid the magazine into her back pocket and dumped the gun back into her purse. “Safety first. I never take a loaded weapon to the range. Now, which way is it, Ms. Larraine?”

  Larraine pointed toward some small grassy hills, and Bitsy grabbed Iris’s arm and led her off, three-inch heels puncturing the turf as she went. Susannah noticed Olivia Franklin sitting by herself at the edge of the pavilion; the accountant perched, ramrod straight, on the edge of a picnic bench.

  Larraine collected two red plastic cups of pink lemonade and a plate of corn chips, which she placed on the table across from Olivia.

  “May I?”

  Olivia toyed with the bow on her blouse. “Yes, of course.”

  Larraine motioned to Susannah. “Olivia, you remember Dr. Shine, don’t you?

  “I should think so.”

  Susannah smiled and held out one hand. “We met at my first Peach Grove Business Association meeting, but I don’t remember seeing you after that.”

  “I don’t have much use for clubs,” she said, ignoring Susannah’s hand. Instead, she fingered the ends of the blue cotton bow that dangled off her blouse.

  Larraine cleared her throat. “Livvy was one of my Sunday School students when she was a young’un.”

  Olivia’s eyes darted up, and she gave Larraine a thin smile. “I always enjoyed your testimony.”

  “Livvy, Dr. Shine would like to ask you a few questions about Anita,” Larraine said.

  “Anita,” Olivia said with an edge of bitterness to her voice. “Now that she’s gone, everybody wants to talk about her.” She sniffed, keeping her eyes on her hands. She went silent for a moment while she plopped a floppy leather purse on her lap and pulled a Tootsie Pop from its depths. She dropped the crumpled wrapper, and a light breeze propelled it down the table. “Trying to quit smoking,” she said, still not making eye contact, as she tossed the candy around her mouth with her tongue.

  Susannah waited until the sucking subsided. “Sounds like you didn’t like Anita.”

  She lifted one shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “I worked for her. We weren’t friends.”

  “I see.” Susannah glanced at Larraine, who gave her an almost imperceptible nod of encouragement. “Is it true that she fired you?”

  “Anita and I had a disagreement.” She lifted her eyes to Larraine and then inhaled, her words spilling out in a torrent. “I advised her many times to get right with the Lord, but she wouldn’t hear it.”

  “And she fired you for that?”

  Olivia locked eyes with Susannah and then shifted her gaze back to her hands. “I thought so,” she mumbled to herself. “I tried to help her. I told her she should get a partner to help run her business. She was there with Tomás all the time. I told her she should marry him and let him lead the business. A woman is supposed to be a man’s helpmate, not the other way around. That’s what the Bible tells us.” She blinked and raised her chin. “Isn’t that right, Miss Larraine?”

  “Well, yes, honey. It is,” Larraine said sympathetically, “but I suppose she didn’t want to hear that, did she?”

  “No,” she said, her voice flat. “They would have made a good partnership, but instead she spent her time with that Irish woman. An ungodly person if ever there was one.” She spat the last part.

  “Do you mean Fiona Bailey?” Susannah asked, slurping at her lemonade, feeling at once relieved and guilty that her status as an unmarried businesswoman was being ignored.

  “Who else? I suppose it makes sense that two Catholics would find each other.” She fisted her hands and then peered across the table at Larraine. “You know, I read that Catholics aren’t true citizens of the United States. Once they’re baptized, they are citizens of the Vatican, where the Pope lives. Do you suppose that’s true?”

  Larraine shook her head. “I have no earthly idea.”

  “Well, I think that woman turned her against the idea of marriage. Once she started spending time with her, Anita became a disgruntled person.” Olivia crossed her arms. Her lips turned down with a sour pucker. She leaned closer to Larraine. “She even told me she was thinking about firing Tomás because she suspected him of stealing.”

  “Stealing what?” Susannah asked.

  “Why are you asking so many questions?”

  Larraine shifted, placing her hand on the wooden bench. She threw Susannah a questioning glance before speaking. “That new detective seems to think Dr. Shine had something to do with Anita’s death.”

  Olivia tugged on her blouse. “I don’t want to interfere with the police,” she said. “Besides, I don’t know anything. She only mentioned it once.”

  “Did she say why she suspected him?”

  Olivia’s eyes migrated up, and the candy went silent. “Yes, now that I think about it, she asked m
e about programs to keep track of inventory. She said there was a discrepancy at the bar when Tomás closed. She couldn’t balance the sales with the inventory. She thought there was a glitch in her inventory tracking system.”

  “What did you think? Did you ever notice anything out of the ordinary?”

  “I’ve told you all I know,” she said, with a sigh, her shoulders slumped forward as if the question were a weight pulling her down. “I’m not a forensic accountant, and I didn’t do her bookkeeping. I specialize in payroll.”

  Susannah sat for a moment, letting that sink in. Anita had noticed something awry and suspected Tomás was involved. Obviously, Olivia did not think that disqualified him as a potential husband, but maybe Anita did.

  “I heard that Anita and Fiona had a falling-out,” Susannah said, hoping to move the conversation in another direction.

  “Is that right?” Olivia said, perking up.

  “She never mentioned that to you?”

  “Anita made it clear to me that conversations about her personal life were not welcome.”

  Apparently, Anita didn’t like being lectured. Susannah couldn’t blame her there. The women sat in silence for a few moments.

  A large neon-green Frisbee sailed close to the picnic shelter, and Susannah got up to retrieve it. It felt good to stretch her legs. She tossed the plastic disc back to a gangly boy who waved his thanks. When she turned back, Olivia was gone.

  “She never said what she didn’t like about Fiona,” Susannah said.

  Larraine nibbled on a corn chip pensively and then sighed. “Olivia is a God-fearing woman who is only trying to follow her convictions.”

  “I can see that,” Susannah said, sipping at her lemonade and mulling over the conversation. “But why the chip on her shoulder against Fiona? Why would she defend a man who Anita suspected of stealing but criticize a woman who did nothing wrong?”