Mountains, Marriage and Murder (The Darling Deli Series Book 23)

by Patti Benning

  David executed a cautious U-turn, and they headed back the way that they came. No one in the vehicle objected, even though it would mean missing their flight. They could always buy new tickets, but nothing could replace someone’s life.

  Moira tried to call the cabin whenever they hit a patch of cell phone service, but the line rang through to the voicemail machine every time. She had to force herself to breathe slowly and deeply, trying to avoid having a panic attack. She should have trusted her instincts when she thought that something was up with Brian. Why wouldn’t Eli have told anyone? she thought. She felt a spark of anger towards him, but shook it off. Brian’s his best friend. And he did tell someone — he told Reggie.

  David was already unbuckling his seatbelt as he pulled into the driveway. Moira got out of the car the instant it came to a halt, and the two of them hurried to the door. It was locked. Normally, she would have been glad that her daughter had remembered to lock the door, but right now it was nothing but an annoyance. She had left both sets of keys with Candice and her friends, so she and David had no way to get inside.

  “They must have already gone out on their hike,” David said. “What do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Moira turned to survey the wilderness around them. Just a couple of days ago, she had loved the seclusion of the cabin. Now, it felt frightening. Somewhere out there were her daughter and her son-in-law with a suspected killer, and she didn’t have the slightest idea of how to find them.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  * * *

  David and Denise helped Reggie from the car to the wooden swing on the front porch while Moira dug through her suitcase, looking for her tennis shoes. She couldn’t very well go hiking through the rocky forest in her sandals. A twisted ankle would do nothing but slow them down. As she tied her laces, her mind raced, coming up with horrible images of her daughter, injured or dead, at the bottom of a cliff somewhere. If Eli decided to confront Brian while they were out there, there was no telling what might happen. It would be easy for the man to make a death look like an accident. A tiny push was all it would take, in some places.

  “Are you ready to go?” David asked.

  “Yes,” Moira said. “Is Reggie going to be okay waiting here?”

  She was reluctant to leave the older man behind, but there was no question of him coming with them. She couldn’t chance anything slowing them down.

  “Yes, he’ll be fine. He’s got bottled water, a blanket, his walker, and even a bag of chips in case he gets hungry. He told us to go and do whatever we have to do. He thinks that you’re overreacting a bit, but he would never say it to your face. He likes you too much.”

  “I’m not overreacting. I know my daughter. If she finds out that Brian is the one that punched Paul, then she’s going to say something about it. I don’t know Brian well enough to say what he would do, but I do know that fear is a powerful motivator.”

  She was thinking about Logan, Denise’s nephew. She knew that her friend had understood what she was talking about. She saw the emotion flash across Denise’s face. “You’re right. Even good people can to bad things when they’re frightened.”

  Moira turned to go, then hesitated, looking back at her friend. “Denise, will you stay here? We may need someone to call the police if things go wrong, and I don’t feel right leaving Reggie alone out here.”

  Her friend shook her head. “I want to help.”

  “You will be,” Moira said. “I’d be more comfortable leaving someone else here just in case they come back. You can come out looking for me and David to tell us that they returned. Reggie can’t.” Reluctantly, Denise nodded in agreement. She would stay behind with Reggie.

  “All set? The longer we wait, the farther ahead they’re getting,” David said. Moira nodded and stood up.

  “Let’s go find our daughter — and our son-in-law.”

  Neither Moira nor David had any experience in wilderness tracking. There were a couple of trails leading away from the cabin, and it took them longer than Moira would have liked to figure out which one was most likely. At last, David pointed out a rock that had been wiped clean of dirt.

  “It looks like someone might’ve sat down here, maybe to tie their shoes,” he said. “It’s probably our best bet.”

  “All right, I’ll trust your instincts,” she told him. “This trail it is. Let’s go.”

  They started off down the path, both of them silent as they listened for voices. With any luck, they wouldn’t be too far. She had no idea how long it would take her and David to reach them, and that was if they had even chosen the right trail to go on. Why had she ever thought it was a good idea to leave without seeing the murder case solved? She should have delayed their flight from the beginning.

  They had been walking for a good half hour when she froze. She had finally heard something besides bird song. “David, do you hear that?”

  “I think it’s them,” he replied in a low voice. “I’ll let you decide what to do.”

  Moira bit her lip. She had been so sure just a little bit ago, but now that they had found the group, she began to wonder if Reggie was right. Was she overreacting? Would Candice think that she was being overprotective? She didn’t want to wreck her relationship with her daughter, not just when things were going so well. For a long time, she had been the overcontrolling, overprotective mother that any child would have hated. Was this going a step too far? If she was wrong about Brian, would Candice ever forgive her?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  * * *

  Then they heard the scream. All of her concerns of being annoying or controlling left Moira’s mind. She rushed forward with David at her side. They burst around a bend just in time to see Eli shove Brian back a step. The entire group was standing in a small clearing, and they were all staring at the best man.

  “Don’t threaten my wife,” Eli said, looking more furious than Moira had ever seen him.

  “You shouldn’t have told her,” Brian said, crossing his arms. “I thought you were my best friend. I thought you would keep your mouth shut.”

  “You punched the guy that married us, and now he’s dead,” Candice said, standing behind Eli with her arms crossed. “I’m glad that he told me. You need to do the right thing, Brian. You need to tell the police.”

  Brian glared at her. No one seemed to have noticed Candice and David yet. “Yeah, that’s going to go over really well. What, I’m supposed to walk into the police station and say ‘Hey, by the way, I’m the one the punched the dead guy, but I didn’t kill him, I promise.’ You really think they’re just going to let me walk away?” He shook his head. “You know that’s not going to happen. I have a life to go back to, and a job that I worked hard to get. I’m not going to screw my future up by going to jail for something I didn’t do.”

  “So, what, you were never going to tell anyone?” Candice asked, frowning. “The police deserve to know. It’s a small town. Everyone is probably freaking out, thinking that one of them might have killed the guy. Besides, if they find out later that you’re the one that hit him, they’re just going to be more suspicious.”

  “And how would they find that out?” he asked, frowning at her.

  “Because they’re the police, and it’s their job,” she said. “I’m just saying I think it would look better if you told them.”

  “She’s right,” Allison said. “If you really didn’t have anything to do with his death, then you don’t have anything to lose by telling them about the fight you two got in. I’ve got to say; all of this lying is making you look guilty.”

  Brian’s face flushed. He looked over towards his girlfriend, and opened his mouth to say something. At that moment, Candice said, “Mom! What are you doing here? Is everyone okay? Did something happen?”

  “Reggie told us in the car about what Brian did,” Moira said. “I thought you might be in trouble.”

  “I’m not in trouble,” Candice said. “Brian’s being an idiot, but he’s not
dangerous. You guys are going to miss your plane, you should hurry.”

  “No, I think they should stay,” Allison said. “Think about it. Like, everyone knows that one of the worst things you can do if you’re innocent is to lie to the police. He should just have told them right away, he made himself look really guilty by hiding it. What if he really did kill him? We can’t just let this go. What do you think, Mr. Morris? You’re a private investigator.”

  “Well, obviously I think the right thing to do would be for you to go to the police,” he told Brian. “They’re right about that. Hiding this will just come back to haunt you in the future.”

  “Seriously, if I go and confess, they’ll put me in jail. I didn’t kill him, and that should be good enough for you guys. I don’t understand why it isn’t.”

  “Because someone did kill him,” Candice said, turning back to him. “My mom found his body stuffed in the pantry. He definitely didn’t put himself in there after falling down the stairs and breaking his neck.”

  “Well, I didn’t do it. Look, Eli, you know about the awesome job I just got. If I go to jail for this, they’re going to fire me on the spot. That’s my entire future. If you were in my shoes, what would you have done differently?”

  “I wouldn’t have punched someone hard enough to break his nose, and then lied to the police about it,” Eli said. “I wouldn’t be in your situation in the first place, because I don’t do stupid, rash things like assault someone for flirting with my girlfriend — or wife.” He glanced over at Candice.

  “Really, you wouldn’t tell one lie if it could save your entire future? Look, if you want, Victoria and I will leave right now. I don’t want to cause troubles for any of you, but I also don’t want to sacrifice my one shot at a better life than my parents have. If I did actually kill someone, even accidentally, I would confess. But I didn’t. Please, you’ve got to believe me.”

  Eli sighed. He glanced over at his wife, who frowned, then shrugged. “I guess I can see his side of things,” she said reluctantly. “It still doesn’t feel right to leave everyone wondering what happened. I saw his memorial in the restaurant. A lot of people knew him.”

  “I can vouch for Brian,” Victoria said suddenly, stepping to her boyfriend’s defense. “I was with him all night. He didn’t leave my side once.”

  “I already told you, you don’t have to lie for me, Victoria,” Brian said. “We weren’t together all night, and I don’t need anyone to be a fake alibi for me. I want my friends to believe me because they know what kind of person I am.”

  “I’m not lying,” Victoria insisted, clinging to his arm. “We didn’t leave each other’s side the entire night.”

  Brian shrugged her off his arm, looking annoyed. “You know perfectly well that you went upstairs to change and take a shower after you spilled that drink on yourself. I could have killed that guy then, for all you know. I mean, obviously I didn’t, but don’t lie to try to help me. It will just backfire if someone ends up telling the cops.”

  “Wait a second,” Delia said. “That was you? I remember seeing someone go upstairs with the guy who married Candice and Eli following them. I thought it was weird because he seemed super drunk and was wearing blue jeans. It was kind of late, and almost everyone else was either asleep or outside on the porch. You must have been one of the last people to see him alive.”

  Victoria looked back and forth between them, panic suddenly flooding her face. “You’re wrong, plenty of people saw him after that.”

  Now David was looking at Victoria, and Moira was connecting the dots in her own mind. She had seen Mr. Brown bothering Victoria earlier in the evening, and he must have made some sort of inappropriate advance for Brian to punch him like that. The last person that any of them remembered seeing with him was Victoria… and they had been walking up the stairs together.

  “You killed him, didn’t you?” Moira said.

  The entire group fell silent. One by one, everyone turned to look at Victoria. Her jaw dropped.

  “You have no right to accuse me of something –”

  “Victoria… don’t lie. Not to me. Did you do it?” Brian stared at his girlfriend with a shocked and horrified expression on his face. He had obviously connected the dots the same way that Moira had.

  “Look, I didn’t mean to,” she wailed. “He wouldn’t stop bothering me, and at the top of the stairs he grabbed at me, so I pushed him away. I didn’t know he would fall. When he didn’t move, I panicked and dragged his body into the kitchen before anyone saw him.” Sobbing, she reached for her boyfriend, but he backed away from her.

  “Young lady, I think you had better come with us back to the cabin,” David said. “We can drive down to the police station together and get this all sorted out.”

  “No,” she said, backing away from them. “No, I’m not going. They’re going to put me in prison for the rest of my life. I’m too young for that. I have a future, you can’t just take that away from me. It’s not my fault, the guy was a creep.”

  As she spoke, she had been moving slowly towards the trail. Moira realized what she was about to do, but it was too late. Just as she lunged toward Victoria, the woman took off running down back down the trail, towards the cabin.

  She was already gone by the time that David and Eli started running after her. The rest of the group trailed them, and caught up with them on a particularly steep incline. They had found the murderer, and just like that, she had vanished.

  When they returned to the cabin, all of them exhausted and sweating from their scramble back up the mountainside, Moira was terrified to find that the porch where they had left Reggie was empty, and that he and Denise were nowhere in sight. Both cars were still in the driveway, and the front door to the cabin was hanging open. Victoria must have had a key. She traded a horrified glance with David. What could have happened here? Had Victoria overpowered Reggie and Denise? She cared for both of them deeply, and was struck dumb with terror at the thought of what they might find inside.

  They entered the cabin, calling out Reggie’s name. Moira heard an answering shout from upstairs and hurried up the staircase, her exhausted legs screaming. There, they found Reggie in front of one of the bedroom doors. He had shoved his walker under the door handle and was leaning on it, preventing whoever was inside from opening it. Denise was standing next to him. As she turned, Moira saw blood covering the right side of her face.

  “Get out of my way, you old fogey,” Victoria shouted from inside the room.

  “How did you know to trap her?” David panted, joining them.

  “She ran up the path all in a hurry and hurried inside without saying a word to us. When she shoved Denise out of the way, it was pretty obvious that something was wrong.”

  “I followed her upstairs,” Denise said. She touched her fingers to her temple. “She threw something at me — a snow globe, I think.” Moira noticed for the first time that her friend was standing in a puddle of glass, water, and glitter. “I know it probably sounds silly, but I really thought I was dying. There was so much blood. Somehow Reggie made it up the stairs, and he shut the door and blocked it from opening with his walker while we tried to figure out what was going on. She started yelling and screaming, and I think we managed to pick up most of the story.”

  “I’ll go call the police,” one of the bridesmaids volunteered, vanishing back down the stairs.

  Moira turned to see Eli, Candice, and Brian watching them. Brian had a stricken look on his face, but didn’t make a move to help his girlfriend, who was now cursing at them all from behind the door. Eli tugged Candice closer to him, and she buried her face in his chest.

  Moira looked over to David and took his hand. She was shaken by everything that had happened — shaken and relieved. She had been right to trust those closest to her. They might all have struggles with their marriages and with each other in the future, but at least there was one thing she knew that she could always count on. Everyone in her family was a good person. She would tr
ust any of them with their life, and she would trust any of them to make the right decision when it came to something like this. They may not be perfect, but they had each other, and not everyone was that lucky.