by Cathy Tully
Roman placed two fingers in his mouth and whistled, and two more riders came into view. Detective Withers sat a chestnut mount, holding the reins in gloved hands. Next to her, Ginger swept into view, carrying Randy Laughton.
“He’s that way.” Susannah waved the gun in the direction from which she had come as Shadow fidgeted. She tried to calm him, but he skittered to the side as Roman’s horse broke into a run. Ginger followed Roman’s mount, nodding at Susannah and whinnying in approval before he trotted off with Randy in tow.
Fiona edged Bitsy out of the way and calmed Shadow, stroking him as she maneuvered a rope halter over his head. She cooed, “There’s a darlin’,” patting his cheek as she fastened the halter.
Detective Withers moved her mare next to Shadow and removed the gun from Susannah’s trembling hand.
“Get her to the ambulance,” she said to Fiona, pocketing the pistol before she disappeared over the hillock.
“Come on,” Fiona said, holding Shadow’s rope and her reins in one hand. She directed them both back toward the barn.
Susannah sighed, throwing her arms around Shadow’s neck and finally allowing the tears to flow.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
“So you’re telling me that Mr. Billy tried to poison you by giving Tina a supersized unsweetened tea.” Bitsy blinked at Susannah while licking chocolate frosting off her fork.
“Yup.” Susannah nodded solemnly, yawning. “That’s what I’m saying.”
She gazed around Bitsy’s kitchen and inhaled, pulling in every scent the room offered. Her favorite people gazed back; the family-sized table brimmed with smiles and laughter. The ER doctors had kept Susannah overnight, testing her blood every few hours to determine how much digitalis she had ingested and treating her accordingly. She was thrilled to be here. Even the elusive Roman Broady was present, holding hands with Bitsy as she manned her dessert fork with the other hand.
Tina, who had experienced worse at the hand of Billy and come out smiling, leaned into Keith, fitting perfectly into his side. Roman finally released Bitsy’s hand and sat back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest. A lopsided smile brightened his face as he watched Bitsy make easy work of a second piece of chocolate cake. Larraine yawned, her glasses perched on the end of her nose, and peered at her watch. Susannah knew she had been up for early service and still had coordinated this supper with Andrea. Bitsy, despite her fervent desire to stay away from germs, had remained by Susannah’s side through the ambulance ride to the hospital and her treatment in the Emergency Department.
“It would have worked, too,” Tina said, looking wide-eyed at Susannah. “But Billy didn’t know that I was pregnant and had given up sweet tea.”
The last twenty-four hours had been difficult on all of them, particularly Tina, who had barely opened her eyes when Detective Withers began a nonstop line of questioning designed to implicate Susannah in Anita’s death but instead implicated Billy Jones in Tina’s illness. Once the detective had latched on to Billy as a suspect, Bitsy did not have to convince her to lead the search for Susannah using her Find a Friend app.
“Stop right there. This here is the part where I don’t follow,” said Bitsy.
“Auntie Bitsy,” Andrea said, picking up her cake plate and taking the fork out of her hand. “Listen up.”
“I swear,” Roman laughed, his freckles standing out across his cheeks, “this girl is a food-lovin’ fool.”
“I’m a fool for you,” Bitsy said, her freckles matching his as a smile lifted her cheeks. “I guess I was more interested in the dessert than the details.” She touched Roman’s arm, turned back to Susannah, and batted her eyes innocently. “Go on.”
“Like I said before, Billy knew I drink my tea unsweetened,” Susannah said, “so when Tina told him she was ordering for the office, he naturally thought the unsweetened tea was for me and put a load of his foxglove brew in it.”
Larraine shook her head. “Lord forgive him.”
Keith pulled Tina closer, but she sat up energetically, taking up the story. “But they were both for me,” she said, continuing the narrative in one breath. “On account of the doctor made me give up sweet tea, but I had a really bad hankering for one and—”
“And you snuck-drank the sweet tea in the car by yourself,” Bitsy finished for her. She grabbed the serving spoon and scooped up a mess of peach cobbler put it on her plate. “I gotcha.”
Tina nodded.
“But what were you doing with the unsweet tea? It don’t make no sense to sneak-drink an unsweet tea on top of the sweet one.”
“It was my decoy tea.”
Bitsy’s mouth fell open, her fork dangling in her hand. “I never heard of decoy snacks. Tell me more.”
Tina looked up at Larraine, her brown eyes watery under dense, dark lashes. She grasped Keith’s hand and squeezed. He squeezed back and dipped his head, indicating she should go on. There was a cheerful gleam in his eyes.
“I thought if I walked in with no drink, Ms. Larraine would notice I didn’t have one and ask me about it.” Her words came in one long, unbroken stream. “And I’m a terrible liar, and she knows how hard I’ve been trying to be good. She’s helped me so much; I didn’t want her to be disappointed in me.”
Larraine looked over her glasses at Tina. “Oh, sugar, you wouldn’t ever disappoint me.”
“So I got the unsweet tea to pretend I was being good.”
“I follow, I follow,” Bitsy nodded. “But why did you actually drink it?”
“Because I reckoned if I didn’t drink it at all, and it sat on the desk all afternoon, Ms. Larraine would notice that, and if I spilled it all out on the ground, she would notice that too.”
“Oh darlin’.” Larraine shook her finger at Tina. “What a tangled web we weave.”
“So I sipped a little, and I spilled a little. And then I fell a little!”
Laughter erupted from around the table.
“Well, thank goodness the doctors finally listened to Keith and did the right tests,” Roman said.
“Oh, they didn’t listen to me,” Keith grumbled. “They claimed they did the tests, but it wasn’t until Iris convinced the detective that they really took notice. She let her know that Anita’s labs were irregular, and the detective went on a rant about how Dr. Shine had poisoned them both.” There were murmurs of disbelief around the table.
Andrea leaned against the sink, which was filling with soapy water, a mound of bubbles growing behind her. “So that means Billy became suspicious of you way before you realized he was the one who poisoned Anita?” She looked at Susannah, folding her arms across her chest, one hand covered by an elbow-length pink rubber glove.
“Yup,” Susannah said. “I only suspected him after I saw the enlarged photo at the Independence Day Festival. But he had been keeping tabs on me because he thought I was the perfect fall guy.” Her face darkened as she looked from Larraine to Tina. “When I told him that I had met Hayle at the high school on Career Day and that she was going to give me riding lessons, he snapped.”
Bitsy pointed at Susannah with her fork, crumbs of cobbler flying across the table. “He didn’t want you going to the stable because it was too close to his house?”
When Detective Withers finally made it to Billy’s house, she had discovered, hidden behind a row of crepe myrtle trees, a healthy foxglove garden in the far corner of his yard—the same yard Susannah had seen on her horseback ride with Fiona, and the same house she had considered fleeing to when she escaped from his camping shed in the trees. She shivered. Thank goodness she hadn’t been able to locate it in her terror.
“I think that was part of it,” Susannah answered slowly, biting her lip, deep in thought. “He also didn’t want me seeing Hayle’s car because I had seen it the day of Anita’s memorial lunch. Colin also mentioned seeing Anita get into a blue sedan, so I was on the lookout for it.”
Bitsy stood. ”Well, I am done running pie-eating contests,” she said, shaking her head. “If I had
n’t let Marcie keep those pies at the Wing Shack, none of this would have happened. I never would have asked you to go get those pies—”
“I wouldn’t have gone either,” Susannah interrupted her. “But he wasn’t supposed to be there.” She shivered again and scratched at the back of her hand, where the ant bites had swelled. “I thought he was still at the hospital. Even though I hadn’t worked it all out, I had him figured for a cheater, and it made me rethink everything I thought I knew about him and Marcie. I wouldn’t have gone if I knew he was there.”
“That must have been horrible, locked in that shed, bugs and varmints climbing all around,” Larraine said, hugging herself and then rubbing imaginary bugs off her arms.
“It wasn’t a picnic.” Susannah looked at her fingers and wrists, which were bruised and abraded. Tiny red welts from the ant bites decorated her arms, shoulders, and face. “Thank goodness for dry rot and termites.”
“And your equestrian skills!” Bitsy said, holding up her phone, which displayed a picture of Susannah sprawled lopsided on Shadow’s back. Susannah blushed, grabbing at the phone, but Bitsy held it out of reach, grinning.
There was a knock on the door. Susannah, who sat at the end of the table, stood. “I’ll get it, don’t bother yourself,” she directed to Bitsy, who had already handed the phone off to Andrea and was beaming at Roman. Susannah was pleased that he and Bitsy had put their differences aside. For now, at least, all talk of moving had ceased.
As she opened the door, laughter erupted from the kitchen, and Susannah glanced back to see hands reaching across the table, vying to see who would get Bitsy’s phone next. Turning back to the door, she was startled to see Detective Withers standing there with her thumbs hooked over her belt.
CHAPTER FIFTY
“Dr. Shine, I thought you might be here. May I come in?”
Susannah backed away, letting the door swing open. A commotion rose from the kitchen as chairs scraped and mumbled apologies filled the air. Suddenly Bitsy appeared at her side.
“You have some nerve coming to my home,” Bitsy spat, one arm raised to block the detective’s entry.
“I understand that I haven’t made the best impression, but I’m here to apologize for any misunderstanding.”
Bitsy’s eyes widened. “Misunderstanding, I—”
“Come on in.” Susannah nudged Bitsy to the side and allowed the detective to enter. The group at the table gathered around the kitchen door, peering at them, Tina grasping Keith’s hand and scowling so deep that Susannah thought she would permanently crease her face.
The detective shoved her hands into her pockets, glanced at the crowd in the doorway, and nodded. “I only now came from the interview with Billy Jones. He confessed to everything, including damaging Colin’s garage and slashing the tires at the Long Branch Stable.”
“Why on earth did he do that to Colin?” Larraine asked.
The detective pulled her hands from her pockets and tapped a finger into the opposite palm as she spoke. “To cover up. You see, Billy used Hayle’s car when he met with Anita because he didn’t want to be recognized in his truck. He knew Colin frequented the bar at the Cantina and worried that he had seen him with Anita one night. She had arranged a rendezvous, and apparently, she had lost track of time and Colin was still drinking at the bar when Billy pulled up. That was the same night Tomás thought he witnessed Colin knock Anita down. She told Billy that she slipped trying to get Colin away from the door so he wouldn’t see him. According to Billy, Colin had done some work on Hayle’s car, and he was convinced the mechanic would remember who owned the car. He wanted to ruin Colin’s credibility. Ironically, Colin didn’t realize that it was Hayle’s car, but he did remember the model and color.”
“With the amount of drinking he does on the job, I’m not surprised about that,” Keith interjected.
The detective nodded and continued. “After that, Billy had it out for Colin.” The detective looked at Keith, then back to Susannah. “A lot of people knew about Colin’s drinking, and Billy was one of them. It wasn’t hard for him to start spreading rumors about Colin. He thought if he rattled Colin, it would push him over the edge and make him act crazy, and it did.”
“So he cracked and stabbed Billy at the festival, then got himself arrested,” Bitsy commented.
“Correct,” the detective replied.
“What about the stable?” Larraine asked. “His little girl worked there. Why did he want to damage those cars and frighten everyone?”
“To keep Dr. Shine from seeing Hayle’s car. When she told him that she was going to take riding lessons, he became afraid that she was on to him.” She faced Susannah. “He’s been stalking you since Anita’s death. He wanted to find out if you remembered anything from that day. He became obsessed with the thought that you would remember seeing him at your office. He swore a blue streak, blaming you for messing up his plan.”
Susannah stepped back, perplexed, and the detective stepped further into the entrance. “How could I have messed up his plan? He had been poisoning her for a while, right?”
“Correct. But when you showed up to your office, Anita was already quite ill from the dosage he had given her earlier that morning, and he was trying to convince her to go home and lie down. He hoped if she died in her own bed it would look like natural causes, and there would be no investigation.”
“So I interrupted that conversation,” Susannah said, more to herself than to her friends who were oozing further out the kitchen doorway with each word. “But what set the alarm off?”
“Ah, Billy didn’t have a direct answer for that, but he did mention that he doesn’t like cats,” she shrugged. “I think he threw a rock at your tabby and probably hit the back window. When you showed up, he heard you walking along the side of the building, and he grabbed a flashlight he keeps in the truck and hit you with it.”
“My goodness,” Larraine exclaimed, grabbing the nearest hand, which happened to belong to Keith. He swallowed her up with a reassuring hug, which she had to extricate herself from to keep up with the story.
“When Anita saw what Billy had done,” the detective continued, “she got so upset, she collapsed. He thought about trying to revive her to get her home, but she didn’t respond.” She shook her head, a few frizzy blond hairs falling over her eyes. “He’s a sick man. He left her there to die.” She paused, and the house went silent as everyone digested this tidbit. She picked up the report in a subdued voice. “He loves his daughter but seems to despise every other woman he knows. Especially his wife.”
“If he despises his wife,” Bitsy said, moving to Roman’s side, “and I’m not saying I blame him there, why did he kill Anita?”
“It was all about money, Ms. Long.” Detective Withers shifted her gaze to Bitsy, who seemed to have forgotten she didn’t want the woman in her house. “I’ve seen it dozens of times.”
“Not all about money,” Susannah spoke up, and every eye shifted to her. “She killed his dreams of opening a classy restaurant. They went to culinary school together, where he studied French cuisine and dreamed of running a five-star restaurant.”
The detective shifted her weight and lifted her hand as if she was going to interrupt, but Susannah continued. “I managed to track down an alumni website from their cooking school and spoke to two classmates this morning. Neither of them knew that Anita had gotten pregnant. She dropped out of school suddenly at the end of the term, very close to graduation. They were both saddened to hear that she had passed but thrilled to learn that she had achieved her dream of running an authentic Mexican restaurant. They were both stunned to find out that Billy ran a takeout joint. When they graduated, he told them he was going home to arrange the financing to open a bistro in Atlanta, and they both thought he was being modest. One of them said she wouldn’t have been surprised if he earned a Michelin star within two years.”
“Then why did he stay here? Why didn’t he leave?” Andrea asked, while removing the pink rubber glove and
folding it over her arm.
“I seem to remember his mama and daddy talking about giving him a trip to Europe as a graduation present,” Larraine offered, “but now that I think on it, they had some kind of emergency come up and couldn’t afford it.”
“True,” the detective cut in. “We’ve done some digging and learned that the Jones family owned land but had little money. When Billy’s father had a stroke, the family’s savings were eventually depleted. They kept the land, which included that shed where he kept you.” She nodded at Susannah. “Billy called it an old hunting camp, but it was more of a storage shed.”
Roman laughed, and all eyes turned toward him. “I’m sorry, but I’ve been at a few of those backwoods ‘hunting camps.’ They only get used after the hunting is all done. They’re usually just big enough to store some chairs and keep a few bottles of moonshine to nip on. Keeps the seedy behavior away from the wife and kids.”
Bitsy quirked one eyebrow. “Kinda like a man cave.”
Detective Withers continued, “Billy’s family had already sold some land off to a cousin who built the stable. In the end, his family had some land to hunt on, but not enough to finance the kind of operation he believed he deserved.”
“So he married Marcie for her money?” Andrea asked.
“Marcie’s family is wealthy. Billy knew that Marcie had inherited a substantial amount of money from her grandmother, which she would gain control of when she married. I think he found the money more attractive than he found Marcie, but he must have put on one heck of a show.” She shook her head, and Susannah was surprised that what she had thought of as a serpentine movement on closer inspection appeared a tad graceful. Just a tad. The detective addressed Andrea now. “However, after they married, Marcie balked at laying out the amount of money he wanted, and once she found herself pregnant, she refused to leave Peach Grove.”
“I reckon Billy resented Marcie for keeping him here,” Larraine said. There were murmurs of agreement around the doorway.