Mint Juleps, Mayhem, and Murder

by Sara Rosett

  “How do you know it couldn’t be Colonel Barnes?” Mitch asked with his dark gaze focused intently on me. “We didn’t see him today, but he could be upstairs. Anyone could have tied floss around the trophy, waited until I took these stairs, pulled it down on me, then returned to their office upstairs. Or they could even have left the building using the front stairs.”

  “I know. That’s all possible, but I know Colonel Barnes isn’t in the squadron because he’s at his house. Remember, I went to meet Bonnie this morning for an organizing consultation?” This morning seemed so long ago. “Colonel Barnes showed up right after she left. There were some papers that Bonnie accidentally gave me…well, it’s a long story, but the bottom line is that Colonel Barnes doesn’t really want the commander position.”

  “What? Of course he wants it. It’s practically all he can talk about.”

  “Then he’s putting up a good front.” I explained about the papers I’d seen and the encounter I’d had with Colonel Barnes.

  “Colonel Barnes has written a book?” Mitch said, then shook his head. “No way. Not possible. The guy can barely sit still for the commander’s call. There’s no way he’d be able to sit down and write a book.”

  “I wouldn’t have believed it either, but I saw it in their house. Reams of double-spaced pages. Of course, I didn’t realize what it was at the time.” I noticed several tiny red dots on the stair step beside me. Blood. I ran my finger lightly over one. It was already dry.

  “That’s amazing,” Mitch said, shaking his head.

  “And we know Carrie didn’t have anything to do with this because she’s still in the hospital,” I said.

  “You know that for sure, or you’re assuming she’s still in the hospital?” Mitch asked.

  “I called her at the hospital as I drove over here. I know what she did was stupid and she armors herself with her anger, but I know she’s got to be hurting, too.”

  “What happened when you called?” Mitch asked.

  “She hung up on me.”

  A small smile crossed Mitch’s face. “Typical.”

  “I know, but I had to try.”

  “So she’s still in the hospital?”

  “Yes. After she hung up on me, I ordered a plant for her and checked with the reception desk at the hospital to make sure Carrie would still be there to get it. She’s not being released today.” I scratched at a dried blood drop with my fingernail.

  “Well.” Mitch sat down slowly on the step beside me and I pulled my hand away from the faint blood traces. He pulled a sheaf of papers from the pocket of his flight suit and handed them to me. “I did some research of my own.”

  I unfolded the thick stack of papers and raised my eyebrows. He shrugged. “Slow day. I plugged every name we’ve tossed around into a search engine and printed out what looked significant.” He tapped a photo on the top page. “Look at that. I think you’re right. We can mark Carrie off our list.”

  The photo accompanied an article from the North Dawkins Standard about the protests Peace Now had staged outside Taylor’s front gate. “That’s Carrie, alright,” I said. Even in the dim light of the stairwell, I could make out her small figure. The camera had caught her with her mouth open, probably shouting a slogan, and her balled fist raised in the air. I quickly scanned the article, then frowned. “This doesn’t tell us anything new. We already knew she was involved in the protests.”

  “See the bank clock in the background?” Mitch pointed to the edge of the photo.

  “Yes.” The digital readout from the bank down the street from the base was visible behind the line of protestors. “So it was five minutes after two when this photo was taken.” I still didn’t see what Mitch was getting at.

  “Look at the date.” He pointed at the dateline at the top of the story.

  “Last Saturday. I still don’t see—oh.” I stopped because I finally understood. Last Saturday was when Colonel Pershall died. “But are you sure about the time? She could have slipped away for a while.”

  He pulled the next paper from the stack, the article about Colonel Pershall’s death, also from the local newspaper. The golf course confirmed that Colonel Pershall had returned his golf cart at one-forty, bought lunch at the restaurant, then exited the building. Another golfer called nine-one-one from the parking lot at ten after two when he discovered Colonel Pershall’s body beside his car.

  “So she had nothing to do with it. There’s no way she could have gotten from Taylor to Five Pines in that amount of time.” I slapped the stack of papers against my leg, frustrated that we’d been sidetracked. “We’ve spent so much time thinking about and focusing on Carrie and Colonel Barnes. Now it turns out neither of them had anything to do with Colonel Pershall’s death.” I rubbed my forehead because there was a minor ache behind my eyes. “I need some medicine and chocolate, not necessarily in that order,” I said, digging in my tote for a chocolate kiss.

  “Hey, I’m the one who’s supposed to have a headache here,” he said, pointing to his bandage.

  “You’re going to milk that for all it’s worth, aren’t you?” I said.

  “Of course.” His upbeat tone faded with his smile. “You’re sure Colonel Barnes won’t still be a suspect?” Mitch asked as he waved away my offer of chocolate. His good eating habits never failed to amaze me.

  “Pretty sure. He was genuinely upset about Colonel Pershall’s death and he really doesn’t want the commander position,” I said, retracing the crease in the papers.

  “He still had the opportunity. He was there, at the golf course,” Mitch countered.

  “I know, but I think we’re leaving something out. What’s the link between you and Colonel Pershall? Why would someone want to harm both of you? Carrie had a reason—she hated Colonel Pershall because he didn’t pull Ryan off the deployment and I thought she was upset with you because you sort of represented the squadron to her. You said she went ballistic when you tried to give her Ryan’s organizer and then the dry ice bomb went off in your car, so I thought she was still angry at the squadron and she’d transferred her fury from Colonel Pershall to you. It’s still hard for me to take in that it was a random thing. It’s amazing that she picked your car out of all the ones in the squadron parking lot.”

  “Well, even if she recognized it and put it in there on purpose, she didn’t have anything to do with Colonel Pershall’s death and we know she didn’t pull that trophy down on me,” Mitch said as he touched the bandage and winced. “And now Colonel Barnes is in the clear, too.”

  Mitch looked so disheartened that I shifted around so that I could rub his shoulders. “We just have to keep looking,” I said, using deep strokes to knead out the tension in his neck. “We’ll go through that stack and see if there’s anything else we missed. There’s got to be something and I think we’re on the right track. We have to stay focused on anything that will link you and Colonel Pershall, that’s the critical point that we’ve been overlooking.”

  He nodded, head down. I gave his shoulders a few final passes, then kissed him on the cheek. “There you go. That should help.”

  He caught my hands before I pulled away and twisted around to give me a real kiss. He stood and pulled me up. “Come on, let’s go home,” he said as he picked up the papers. “We can look over this stuff, and I think I do feel a headache coming on. I might need to lie down.”

  I rolled my eyes as we walked into the parking lot. We were about to separate to go to our cars when I noticed a group of people gathered around a hulking SUV. “What’s going on over there? Isn’t that Denise’s SUV?” I asked, squinting against the contrast of the bright sunlight after the dimness inside. “Hey, that’s Montigue,” I said. “And Waraday.” There were a few other people in the group I hadn’t seen before, including a security police officer. As we got closer I heard Waraday say, “Denise Pershall, you are under arrest for the murder of Lewis Pershall. You have the right to remain silent…”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  It happe
ned so quickly. I was still stunned into speechlessness as the car left the parking lot with Denise handcuffed in the backseat. I swiveled toward Mitch and tried to shake off the paralysis that held me. “They arrested her. Denise! Denise did not kill Colonel Pershall. Should we follow them? Meet them at the sheriff’s office? Or would it be the OSI office?”

  “Ellie, they’re not going to let us talk to her,” Mitch said gently. “She’ll call a lawyer. That’s the only person who can help her right now.” Mitch looked after the car, then glanced back at the squadron building. “Ellie, I know you’re her friend and I know how loyal you are, almost to a fault…” His voice trailed off and he gave me a pitying look.

  “You think she did it?” I couldn’t believe it. “Mitch, we’re talking about Denise. Denise! Denise, who went to bat for the wives so we didn’t have to do those stupid things that were ‘traditional’ for spouse clubs. Denise, who loved her husband. Denise, who didn’t want to turn over those hateful letters from Carrie because she wanted to protect Carrie. There’s no way she killed Colonel Pershall.”

  Mitch sighed and said, “Think about it, Ellie. They’re not going to arrest her on a whim. They have to have some solid evidence. I know you want to defend her, but we’ve considered every other possibility. Don’t discount her, just because she’s your friend. What if she is the one?”

  “Mitch,” I began again, but he put his hand on my arm.

  “Just think about it on the drive home. I’ll meet you there.” He kissed me quickly and headed to his car.

  I stood there, fuming. How dare he be so logical and…and…measured…when a friend was in trouble. Didn’t he see that Denise needed help and support, not condemnation from us? I watched him walk down the aisle to his car, then carefully check around it, even getting down on his hands and knees to look under the car. When I saw him do that, I blew out a breath and went to the minivan, some of my irritation draining away. I slammed the door shut and watched in the rearview mirror as Mitch started his car and backed out. It was boiling hot inside the minivan and I pushed the air conditioner to the max, angling the vents so they hit my face.

  I pulled out of the parking lot. Okay, Mitch seemed to think my support of Denise was based on feelings. It was—she was my friend and I couldn’t take my feelings out of the equation, but I could show him, logically, that it didn’t make sense to suspect her.

  Following the train of thought I’d been on earlier, I tried to think of something that would link Colonel Pershall and Mitch, something that Denise would care enough about that she’d murder her husband and then try and hurt or kill Mitch.

  I covered five miles of state highway as I wracked my brain for something to connect that triangle, but in the end, I had nothing, which was a strong argument for her innocence, in my book.

  So what evidence did the investigators have that gave them so much confidence that they’d arrested Denise? Mitch was right on one point. They wouldn’t arrest her unless they had hard evidence. Waraday liked physical evidence and he wouldn’t move unless he had something solid.

  I frowned as I entered the shadowy portion of the road where Mitch’s car had run off the road. I slowed down and carefully navigated the swoops in the road as the sun and shadow flicked over the windshield. When I was back on the straight portion of the road and out of the copse of trees, I called Mitch.

  “I can’t decide if ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’ is better or worse than ‘Danger Zone,’ he said, referring to the new ringtone I’d set on his phone.

  “Worse. Much worse,” I said, smiling briefly. “Hey, I’m thinking things through your way—only to prove to you that I’m right, of course—”

  That made him laugh. “Of course,” he agreed.

  “So, I think you should call Gary and see what you can find out about Denise’s arrest. You’re right, they have—”

  “What was that? Did you say I was right?” Mitch teased.

  “Yes. I can even say it again.” I could be magnanimous. “You’re right. Now, keep in mind that I’m not saying I’m wrong, just that you’re right on one point,” I said lightly. I brought the van to a stop for a red light.

  “Oh, I see. Should have known there’d be conditions,” he said.

  I turned serious. “We need to find out what evidence they’re basing the arrest on. Is it those knitting needles? Because if it’s those, Denise said they weren’t hers. Someone could have planted them in her house. Not Colonel Barnes, it wasn’t him, but apparently it wasn’t too hard to find out about that key they had hidden outside. Anyone watching the house when they were out of town could have figured out where it was and used it to get in to plant evidence.”

  The light changed as Mitch said, “That’s true. I’ll call Gary and see if he can tell us anything.”

  I hung up and turned into the neighborhood, trying to look at the case against Denise from the investigators’ point of view. They’d see evidence of a woman who’d made preparations for divorcing her husband, a woman who didn’t have an alibi. Carrie’s insinuations that Denise was having an affair had been false, so Denise had nothing to worry about there. I shifted in my seat, remembering how Denise had carefully stepped around the truth when Abby and I first arrived at her house after our “stake out.” Denise had been protecting the boy she was tutoring, but if she could have worked it out where she didn’t have to tell us about him, she would have. That thought made me uncomfortable.

  I slowed as I drove through our neighborhood. An image of Denise at the funeral popped into my mind, her face set and unemotional. She hadn’t shown an ounce of grief at the funeral and that couldn’t look good to the investigators, but I knew she was grieving for her husband in private. How she handled her grief shouldn’t have an impact on the investigation.

  I pulled into the garage beside Mitch’s car and walked inside. Since I’d caught several red lights he’d arrived first and already picked up Nathan from Dorthea’s house. Nathan ran to me and clutched his arms around my knees. I swept him up in my arms and asked him if he’d had fun.

  He nodded and wiggled, ready to get back to his game of chasing Rex around the living room—good thing all our low tabletops had only unbreakable things on them. Mitch was in the kitchen, still in his flight suit, but with the sleeves rolled up, making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

  “I had to promise him food. It was the only way I could get him to leave without crying.”

  “He does like Dorthea. I’m surprised she didn’t feed him.”

  “Oh, I think he ate a zoo’s worth of animal crackers,” Mitch said, pulling slices of bread out of the bag.

  Since Mitch seemed to have lunch under control, I poured milk in a sippy cup for Nathan, then tall glasses of iced tea for us.

  “Okay, approaching this logically—and rather coldly, I might add—I can see why Montigue and Waraday are interested in Denise, but I think they’re missing something—the link between the things that have been happening to you and Colonel Pershall,” I said.

  Mitch shrugged as he twisted the lid back on the peanut butter. “I can’t think of any connection I have with Colonel Pershall that would drive Denise to kill him and then want to kill me, so that’s a point in her favor, at least with us,” Mitch agreed reluctantly.

  “Why was she in the squadron today, do you think?” I asked. “She had that big box…maybe she was picking up Colonel Pershall’s things?”

  “Could be. I didn’t see her until she came down the stairs. I didn’t even know she was there,” Mitch said, replacing the jelly in the fridge.

  “But isn’t the squadron commander’s office on the second floor?” I asked as I leaned against the kitchen island.

  Mitch stopped and looked at me. “It is.”

  We stared at each other for a few seconds. The hum of the refrigerator sounded loud in the quiet kitchen. I shook my head. “There are plenty of reasons for her to be on the third floor. There’s a storage closet up there. She could have been picking up something she’d lef
t there. Or maybe she needed to see someone up there. Or drop off something.”

  “It was deserted up there. We were all at the meeting.” Mitch finally put into words what we were both thinking. “She was the first one to come down the stairs after the trophy fell.”

  I sighed, hating to even think she had something to do with it. “She could have been the person who set up and pulled the floss.” I admitted.

  “And who was the person who led the whole group to The Nest?”

  I didn’t like where these thoughts were headed. “Denise. And then she was the first one back to clean up the mess. She could have removed the floss before we got back there.”

  “Did you notice she handled the trophy, too? Her fingerprints will be all over it.”

  I closed my eyes for a moment. I didn’t want to think Denise was involved in this. “There has to be some other explanation.” I pulled out a bar stool and took a seat, feeling exhausted as I tried to sort through these confusing and uncomfortable thoughts. “Any word from Gary?” I asked.

  He stopped slicing a sandwich and looked at me. “Yeah. Of course he couldn’t tell me much and if anyone asks, we didn’t hear it from him. He said they found Denise’s prints on the murder weapon, those weird needles.”

  “But she said those weren’t hers.”

  Mitch shrugged and cut carrot sticks to go with the sandwich. “That’s what he said.”

  I frowned. “But…why would she kill Lewis?”

  She didn’t want a divorce anymore. Or that’s what she told me. The thought popped into my head and I wanted to immediately reject it, but I forced myself to examine it. Could she really have wanted to be free of Colonel Pershall all along and she’d lied to me? Had her “reconciliation” been an act? I didn’t want to think so, but if her fingerprints were on the cord that killed him…I jumped up and began to pace around the kitchen. I didn’t want to think these thoughts. A divorce could mean possible alimony and splitting their assets while his death would ensure everything went to her. And there would be survivor benefits, insurance, things like that. What if there was a large life insurance policy on Colonel Pershall? Something beyond the standard policy that all military personnel had? Denise would be the beneficiary. I began to see why the investigation had focused so closely on her.