Book 42 - Cotton Candy Fluff Murder_KDP

by Gillard, Susan

  “Dad,” Suzanne said. “You’re being rude.”

  “Like I give a –”

  “What do you need to know?” It was the first time Pammy had spoken and her words came out soft, with a lilt of an accent Heather didn’t recognize. Could it be Scottish?

  “We just want to talk about Fred.” Heather took a seat on the sofa. She didn’t bring out her tablet this time. It felt a little disrespectful and she’d prefer the hands-free thing for now. That way she could examine their reactions to her questions.

  “Fred,” Suzanne muttered. “Everybody wants to talk about Fred.”

  “Quiet,” Mr. Nolan said.

  “It’s not enough that Fred took everything when he was alive. All the attention, all the money.” Suzanne gave a bitter laugh. She was probably in college too or she should’ve been. “Now, he’s dead and he’s still getting it all. Fred, dearest Fred.”

  “Quiet!” Nolan roared.

  Suzanne sat back and folded her arms across her chubby midriff. She wore a printed shirt, decorated with cartoon horses.

  “Let’s start again,” Heather said. “Let me say that I am terribly sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you,” Pammy whispered.

  Neither of the other two gave a reply.

  “I want to know if there was anyone who had a problem with Fred. Anyone who didn’t like him or might’ve wanted to hurt him.”

  “Fred was a loner,” Suzanne said and leaned forward again, eyes glittering. “He thought he was special. Won most of the prizes at competitions. Liked all the attention. All the attention.”

  Donald went red as a raspberry. “I told you to –”

  “Mr. Nolan, it’s quite all right. These questions are for all of you.”

  “I won’t have her disrespecting my son. I won’t have it.” He pounded his fist into his palm.

  “Of course you won’t,” Suzanne said. “Precious Freddy’s gone now, dad. Gone and over and soon he’ll be ashes to ashes and dust to dust and you can bet that I won’t shed a tear for him. I won’t even –”

  Donald Nolan rose from his seat and kicked the coffee table across the room. It cracked against the wall and one of the legs flew off and struck the front grate of the fireplace.

  “Heavens!” Amy yelped.

  “Wow, dad. Real smooth,” Suzanne said. “Real smooth. You’re so coolheaded. Such a good role model. No wonder Fred was such a mess. Ha, he modeled himself after you.”

  “Young lady, I’m going to make you regret that.” Donald’s chest heaved big gulps of air in and out.

  “What are you going to do?” Suzanne asked. “Murder me?”

  It was as if they’d signed up to watch a horror movie. Heather couldn’t look away. She wanted to be anywhere else, yet she was glued. Her hunch about talking to the family this soon had been correct.

  “Take that back,” Donald said, in a voice that would’ve iced a fireball.

  “No.”

  “Please, stop,” Pammy whispered. “Please. For Fred’s sake.”

  Nobody paid any attention to her. Suzanne got up and ran to the fallen table. She kicked it to the other side of the room. “There, daddy, is that what you want? Broke stuff, right? I’ll do you one better.” She darted out of the living room.

  Heather got up and backed away from the two-seater. She bumped into Ames, who steadied her with a nudge.

  Suzanne streaked back into the room carrying a trophy. It was massive and the plaque on the front read: FRED NOLAN.

  “Don’t you dare,” Mr. Nolan said. “Don’t you dare. You touch that and I’ll kick you out of this house.”

  Suzanne hoisted the trophy above her head. “See ya, Fred,” she yelled, then launched the golden effigy of a horse and rider across the room. It whizzed past Heather and Amy, then crashed into the window and rolled out onto the lawn.

  Suzanne let out a hysterical laugh.

  “Can we go now?” Amy asked.

  Heather didn’t answer. She readjusted the straps of her handbag and ran for the exit.

  Chapter 7

  Heather kept her eyes on the road and her thoughts on her daughter’s words, rather than the abject debauchery which’d taken place that afternoon. Never in the entirety of her investigative career had she encountered a trophy-tossing equestrian.

  “Thanks for picking me up, mom,” Lilly said. “Are we going to Eva’s?”

  “No,” Heather replied. “I had a rough morning. I’m going to take the rest of this afternoon off.”

  “Rough? What happened? It’s not more of those articles, is it?”

  “No, hon. Just some work stuff. Nothing you need to worry your little ol’ head about,” Heather said and flicked on her indicator. She turned into their road and cruised up to the house. “How was school?”

  “Very schoolish,” Lilly quipped. “I got an A on my English paper. I submitted my King Dinosaur and – oh, what’s that?” She pointed at the front of their house. “Are those cupcakes?”

  Heather pulled into their driveway, then put the car in park. “Oh for heaven’s sake.” An anecdote she’d mumbled constantly over the course of the past few days. This time it was warranted.

  The entire front window of their house, the living room window where Cupcake the cat and Davey boy usually sat to welcome them home, had been pummeled with cupcakes.

  Red velvet cupcakes, of course. Each one stuck to the window pane by the cream cheese frosting, displaying their cute cupcake frill holders to the world.

  Lilly snorted. She bit her bottom lip. She burst out laughing. “Mom, mom, are those cupcakes? Are those actual cupcakes?”

  “Yes, dear, those are actual cupcakes,” Heather said. “What a waste.” There were plenty of hungry folks in town who would’ve jumped at the chance for one of those red velvets.

  “Who would do that?” Lilly asked, and cut the laughter. She hiccupped once to cover the last throes of mirth. “Why would they do that?”

  One of the cupcakes fell off the window and plopped onto the sill, exposing a section of cream cheese smeared glass. Cupcake the cat sat on the sofa’s edge inside and licked the other side of the pane desperate for a taste of the frosting she’d never get.

  “Mean people do things like this,” Heather said and took the keys out of the ignition. “Come on, love. Let’s get inside. I’m going to have to hose this down while you do your homework.”

  “I could help.”

  “You can do your homework,” Heather replied and winked at her.

  Lilly sighed and unclicked her seatbelt. She opened the car door the traipsed up the stairs and waved at the cream cheese obsessed kitty in the window.

  Heather followed her daughter up the stairs, shaking her head with each step. It was ridiculous. It was one thing to harass Heather at work, but at her own home? Had Kate lost her mind?

  “There’s a note,” Lilly said and whipped it off their front door. She handed it over.

  Stay out of it or else.

  Or else? How original. The note had been typed instead of written, but it was Kate’s handiwork, all right. Miss Laverne still thought she could scare Heather out of business or town.

  “All right, the show's over,” Heather said. “Let’s get you inside.” She unlocked the front door, then hurried in and disarmed the alarm system.

  “We don’t have any cupcakes do we?” Lilly asked.

  “No. But there’s some chicken Caesar salad in the fridge.”

  “Yuck.” Lilly wandered up the hall, and finally, Dave and Cupcake appeared. They’d managed to detach themselves from the tempting view at last.

  Heather chuckled, then shut their front door and double checked the locks. Why would Kate do this? Why would she think it was all right to plaster a person’s window in baked goods?

  She had to realize that Ryan would find out and book her for vandalism. They could technically press charges for this. Heather flick-flacked the paper and read the words on the page one more time.

  “That’s it,”
she said. She whipped out her cell and dialed Kate Laverne’s store.

  “Red Velvet –”

  “I need to speak to Miss Laverne,” Heather said. “Now.”

  “I’m afraid she’s not taking any calls, ma’am,” said the woman on the other end of the phone. She sounded mildly terrified. It might’ve been Heather’s tone or just a constant state of existence for Kate’s employees.

  “Tell her it’s Heather Shepherd calling.”

  The tinkle of a Beach Boys song filtered through the receiver. Oh yeah, her name had been the magic entry passcode to Kate’s office. Laverne never backed down from a fight.

  “What do you want, Shepherd?” Kate said, in her nasal tones.

  “I want to know what you think you’re playing at. Throwing cupcakes at my house? Have you lost it?”

  “I warned you,” Kate whispered.

  “I could have you arrested for this.”

  “Go ahead and try. It’s my word against yours, Shepherd. I’m a respected business owner.”

  “I have the note you printed out. It would be pretty easy to prove you wrote it,” Heather said.

  Kate stalled on the other end of the line. “What note?”

  “Don’t play dumb, Laverne.” She kept her tone low – Lilly didn’t need to hear any of this.

  “Shepherd, you’ve got some nerve calling me dumb when you’ve lost your darn mind. I didn’t write you a note. I don’t have time to waste on love letters to you.”

  “Only personal cupcake deliveries, right?”

  Kate hung up and the dial tone greeted me. There was no arguing with that. But if Kate hadn’t written the note, who had?

  Chapter 8

  Ames bustled into the living room with a box clasped between her hands. Her Donut Delights t-shirt flopped loose, untucked from the front of her jeans. “I come bearing gifts,” she sang.

  “Yay!” Lilly hopped off the sofa and put her pink typewriter on the coffee table. She took the Donut Delights box from Ames, then lifted the lid and took a whiff of the treats inside. “Awesome.”

  Heather shifted her laptop and crooked a finger at her bestie. “I need your eyes,” she said.

  “No rest for the weary.” Amy hurried over and plopped down on the sofa beside Heather. Cupcake leaped from the floor and into her lap, right away. The minute those fluffy white paws hit Amy’s lap the purring started up.

  “What’s happening?” Amy asked.

  “You want to tell her, Lils?” Heather grabbed a handful of popcorn from the steel bowl on the sofa beside her, then shoveled it into her mouth. She crunched on the kernels and relished the saltiness.

  “Tell me what?”

  Lilly’s lips twitched upward at the corners. She’d definitely adopted her father’s sense of humor. “Miss Laverne cupcaked the house.”

  “What do you mean cupcaked? Is that even a word?”

  Lilly shrugged. “She threw a whole bunch of those red velvet cupcakes at the windows. Mom had to hose them off.”

  “Is that why Dave is in the hallway?” Amy asked.

  Dave had run out mid-hose party and galloped around beneath the window, gobbling as many moist cupcakes as possible. Heather had sprayed him down to get him to stop, and now, he’d been relegated to the proverbial dog box. The hall.

  “She left a note too,” Lilly said.

  “Hon, will you go get Amy something to drink, please?”

  “Sure. I’ll make hot chocolates.”

  They didn’t usually have them apart from on their movie nights – which wasn’t tonight – but Heather let it slide this time. She needed her bestie’s undivided attention.

  Lilly trooped out of the room and Dave pattered down the hall after her.

  “She left a note?” Amy asked.

  “She denies it,” Heather replied, and for once she believed Kate’s claim. “And here it is.” She handed her bestie the typed note. “I haven’t told Ryan any of this yet. He’s got a late shift.”

  “Okay,” Amy said. “I’m sensing there’s more to this than meets the eye. What’s going on?”

  “You sensed right. Kate didn’t leave the note. Someone else did. And I checked the surveillance camera footage from our front porch to confirm it.”

  “You have a camera?” Amy blinked and let the note fall on top of Cupcake’s head.

  “Of course. I’m sure I told you that,” Heather said.

  “You most definitely did not tell me that.” Amy shuddered. “You know how I feel about unseen eyes. They give me the creeps.”

  “And you’re not in the least bit interested in what I found? Prefer to keep whining about Big Brother all night?”

  “Fine, fine, lay it on me.”

  Heather clicked back on the bar on her Windows Media Player. “See here? This is Lilly and I leaving this morning. No cupcakes and no note.”

  The two of them trudged down the front stairs, Lilly with her backpack slung over one shoulder and smiling, Heather with her brow wrinkled.

  “You should stop frowning like that,” Amy said. “You’re going to wrinkle.”

  “Couple years late on the lecture, Ames.” Heather forwarded a few minutes. “Watch the bottom right of the screen. Now.”

  A shrouded figure appeared dressed in what looked like a hoodie and nurse’s pants, a backpack slung over their shoulder. He or she kept their head bowed and rushed up to the front door. The person pasted the note to the wooden panels then backed down the porch stairs.

  “What? They didn’t even turn around. Why?”

  “They knew the camera was there,” Heather said. “And I’ll tell you something else. This person, whoever they are, is a similar height to our killer. Couple that with the knowledge of cameras and their positioning…”

  “No way,” Amy said. “How do you know that’s not Kate?”

  “If you can picture Kate wearing anything other than her heels and pants suit then fine, we’ll consider it, but I see no reason she’d come to the house twice in one day. Check this out,” Heather said. She forwarded through the footage and stopped mid-afternoon.

  Kate Laverne rushed up to the front window and plastered it with cupcakes. The sight of her in her nine-inch heels in the flower bed brought a smile to her lips. Gosh, Kate was a kook. A dangerous one at that.

  “So it wasn’t her,” Amy said. “She didn’t leave the note.” She picked it up again and Cupcake resumed purring. “This is a threat, Heather. Someone’s telling you to stay out of the investigation.”

  “Like I haven’t heard that before,” Heather said. She’d been threatened, had her house broken into, her car stolen and used as a murder weapon, found a corpse on her front steps and her kitchen windows broken on multiple occasions. Not to mention the hate letters and precious notes she’d gotten over the past year.

  One vague threat didn’t scare her anymore. Stuff like this was the reason she’d bought the Taser and installed those cameras in the first place.

  “You’re not in the least bit freaked out about this?” Amy’s breath hitched.

  She wasn’t used to the extra attention.

  “Not freaked out, no. Wary, yes. Always wary. Can I suggest something, Ames?”

  “Yeah, sure. What is it?” Amy turned wide eyes on her best friend, tufts of blond hair sticking up on her crown.

  “Get an alarm system installed.”

  Amy huffed out a breath. “Boy, I’m going to sleep well tonight.”

  Chapter 9

  They’d consider it a field trip for the animals, but it was strictly part of the investigation for them.

  “I just got a text from Maricela,” Amy said, holding Cupcake in one hand and her phone in the other. “We got another order from Louisiana.”

  “Shoot. I’ve been so caught up in the case I’ve hardly had a minute in the store,” Heather said. She’d have to remedy that as soon as they’d finished investigating here. They needed to organize refrigerated trucks for long hauls or at least discuss whether there were enough out of st
ate orders to warrant that.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Heather said and adjusted her grip on the end of Dave’s leash.

  They set off across the field and toward the distance shape of a man beside the stables at the Hillside Equestrian Center. There hadn’t been a soul at the front desk, but they’d figured it was okay to enter since the gates had been flung wide open.

  Dave tilted his nose upward and sniffed the air. He strained at the end of the leash, desperate to get to the stinky stables and their horses.

  “Cool it,” Heather said. He ignored her as usual.

  “Hello,” Amy called out.

  The man at the front of the stables waved. He plucked a cigarette from between his lips, then crushed it in the scattered hay beneath his heel.

  They halted in front of him, Dave sniffing at his ankles and Cupcakes ocean blue eyes narrowed to slits. She meowed once. A suspicious meow, of course. She’d been raised in the Shepherd home.

  “Hi,” Heather said. “Are you in charge around here?”

  “In charge of the stables, maybe,” the man said. He pronounced ‘maybe’ as ‘mebbeh.’ “Name’s Joe. Who are you?”

  “I’m Heather and this is Amy,” she replied. “We’re investigators working on the murder case of Fred Nolan. It’s come to our attention that he used to ride here?” If they could figure out what’d caused Nolan’s initial accident, they could eliminate it as a first attempt on his life.

  And if they couldn’t that would give them another lead – a pathway which might lead them to the killer.

  “Oh, poor Fred. Poor kid,” Joe said, without much feeling.

  “You didn’t like him.” Amy tucked her phone back into her front pocket.

  “That I didn’t. Nobody liked him. Nobody round here, anyways. He had an attitude that would’ve put the stink in these stables to shame,” he said and jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

  “So he had enemies,” Heather said.

  “I wouldn’t call them enemies. But he wasn’t liked.” Joe sniffed and examined his nicotine yellowed nails. “Not a bit.”