He strode up to us, just as another police car turned the corner into the street. It parked behind his car and a second officer appeared, just as serious as Wilkes.
“Is there something we can help you with?” Bee asked, the shoe still dangling from her fingertips by its strap.
“I’m afraid both of you will have to come with me,” Wilkes said.
“Where to? And why?” I folded my arms.
“To the station,” he said. “For questioning.” The second officer stepped up next to him, silent but tense as if he’d leap at us at a moment’s notice. “Mrs. Snow has been attacked. You two were the last people to see her before it happened.”
“Is she all right?” I asked.
“I’m afraid I can’t answer that question, right now.” Wilkes nodded to the other officer, and the man came forward. “Miss Pines, you’ll go with Detective Banks. Miss Holmes? You’re with me.”
And that was it. We had to do what they said or things would only get worse.
A million questions skittered through my mind. Trouble was, I wasn’t the one who’d get to ask any of them. That was Wilkes’ job now. Were we suspects in the attack on Lori? In the murder case?
“Right this way, Miss Holmes,” the detective said, and directed me toward the back of his police car.
* * *
This was my worst nightmare.
I sat in the corner behind a table in the interrogation room, Detective Wilkes blocking me from a hasty exit—the door was at his back. I’d watched enough movies and true crime documentaries to know that when a detective sat like this, it meant that he was serious. And that he wanted to make his suspect uncomfortable.
“Before we begin,” Wilkes said, tapping his pen against his notepad. “I want you to know that you are free to leave at any time. Your presence here is appreciated, and any answers you give will help us with our investigation.”
“So, I’m not under arrest.” That made sense, since he hadn’t read me my rights yet.
“No, you are not.” He fell silent, his gaze boring into me.
“OK.”
Another length of silence followed. A clock on the wall ticked loudly and I shifted in my seat, discomfited. “What do you want to talk to me about?” That was a stupid question. “I mean, I know that poor Lori has been attacked, but is that all? Do you think whoever attacked her might have been the murderer?”
“That’s difficult to say,” he said, tapping his pen. “Miss Holmes, as I understand it, you were the last person to see Lori before the attack. Walk me through what happened.”
“Nothing happened. We met up with her, coincidentally, at the Melting Cheese and walked her home because she didn’t have a car and neither did I.”
“So you walked her all the way to her door?”
“No. We went our separate ways in the middle of town.”
“Why?” Wilkes asked.
“Because she was upset.”
“Why was she upset? Did you get into a fight?” Wilkes placed his pen on top of his notepad without writing anything down. Was that a good or a bad sign? I had no idea.
“Not a fight, no. She told us that she was having marriage troubles with Brent before he died, and that well… she believed that he had an affair and that Sarah might have done something to him because of it.”
“Walk me through that again.”
I explained what had happened, and how Lori had told us about Sarah and Brent, and Sarah’s attempted and then successful sabotage of Rose-Marie’s garden. Once the faucet had been opened, it was difficult to stop talking.
The detective didn’t take any notes, but watched me over fingers he’d pressed together in a steeple. After I’d finally finished talking, he remained quiet and watching for a few moments. “And you didn’t think to tell me any of this before?”
I pressed my lips together.
“All of what you’ve ‘discovered’ is relevant to my investigation.”
“Every time we’ve tried to talk to the police about this type of thing, it hasn’t ended well for us,” I said. “We didn’t do anything to hurt Lori. In fact, we were trying to help her.”
“Is there anything else you want to tell me?” Wilkes asked.
“Yeah. When we found Brent’s body at the Runaway Inn, we noticed a red stiletto lodged in the mud nearby. Tonight, after what Lori told us, we went over to Sarah’s place and found a shoe that matches the one we saw at the crime scene.” I’d had to omit where we’d found it, but I doubted Wilkes would let that slide.
For the first time, he wrote something down on his notepad. It was angled so that I couldn’t read what it said.
“Right,” he said. “And where did you find the shoe?”
“At Sarah’s house.”
“Where in Sarah’s house?”
“It was, uh, it was outside the house on the porch.”
“There was a red stiletto on the front porch,” he said, disbelief dripping from his tone.
“Yes.” That was what Bee and I had agreed on before the cops had pulled up. If I said something else, surely Bee would get in trouble, and I was pretty sure Bee wouldn’t break under pressure. Anyway, the last thing we needed was to get in trouble for breaking and entering on top of the suspicions the police had about us harming Lori.
Oh heavens, everyone in town would hear about this. It would be the same as it had been in New York, people glaring and whispering behind their hands. I gritted my teeth—not that it mattered. Lori was hurt, and Brent was dead, and Bee had been right—we had to help.
You’re selfish, worrying about what people think of you.
But wasn’t that a natural response in this situation?
“Let’s go over this again,” Detective Wilkes said.
He forced me to recite everything I’d said three times over and prodded me left and right, looking for holes in my story.
“Look,” I said, taken by frustration now, “we’re not the ones you should be paying attention to. Sarah Rowland is up to something. You don’t think it’s strange that just as Lori tells us about her affair with Brent, Lori’s attacked? It has to be her.”
“Sarah has an alibi.”
“For tonight?”
“Yes. And for the night of the murder,” Wilkes said. “I’m afraid your accusation doesn’t hold any weight.”
And our breaking and entering hadn’t borne any fruit either. The harsh fluorescent lights in the room had already given me a headache, and the clock ticking away had me on edge. I exhaled. “I’m trying to help you here,” I said. “I’ve told you everything that I know, and I do firmly believe that Sarah is involved in this somehow.”
“So, you’re saying that at the time of Lori’s attack, you were at Sarah’s house looking for the stiletto?”
“Yes.”
“But if you found it on the porch, you’d have had ample time to get to Lori’s house,” he replied. “The timelines don’t add up, Ruby. May I call you Ruby?”
“Sure.”
“Level with me here. What really happened?”
“I told you what happened. I’ve told you everything.”
Again, Wilkes went quiet. The longer that silence held, the more pressure I felt to fill it, but I held back. This was ridiculous. We hadn’t hurt Lori and we didn’t have any motive to harm Brent either. “Is she OK?” I asked. “Can’t you just ask her who did this?”
“Mrs. Snow is unconscious.”
“Oh. Oh no,” I breathed.
“Oh no, indeed.” Detective Wilkes scribbled something else down. “Now, let’s start from the beginning, Ruby.”
If I walked out now, I’d only wind up looking guilty. It was going to be a long night.
17
The following morning…
I yawned and held my coffee cup in front of my mouth to hide it from… well, from no one except Bee. We had parked our food truck across from the duck pond later than usual this morning, and hadn’t had a single customer since we’d arrived.
There were plenty of people wandering through the park or seated beneath the trees or gazebo, but they cast wary looks in our direction or pursed them lips in disapproval.
News had spread fast.
That was the way of the small town. And it was exactly what I’d been afraid of all along. Except, I couldn’t run away from the frowns and the gossip, this time. Detective Wilkes had made it quite clear that we weren’t to skip town.
“I can’t keep my eyes open,” Bee said, shaking her head vigorously. “Detective Banks had me at the station until 3 am.”
“Wilkes didn’t let me go until an hour after that,” I replied.
We’d already discussed this, and the fact that we’d both told the detective the same story about Sarah’s shoe—we’d found it on the porch. And we’d both decided to stay in the interrogation room even though we’d had every right to leave.
“Did we do the right thing, Bee?” I asked. “Sarah has alibis for the morning of Brent’s murder and last night when Lori was attacked. She can’t be in two places at once.”
“No,” Bee agreed, “she can’t. We’re missing something. I just don’t know what it is.” Another yawn cracked her jaw and I followed suit.
“What if someone was lying for her?” I asked. “That’s possible, right? Someone could say that she was with them when really she wasn’t.”
“That’s not how alibis work. There has to be proof that she was at a certain place, several eye-witnesses, or some type of footage or record or anything that’s hard evidence. If they say she’s got an alibi, it means she has one. A good one.”
Frustration burrowed through my center. I opened the sliding glass window in the counter and removed two choc-chip cookies, then handed on to Bee. I took a bite of mine and let the sweetness console me.
“This is a waste of time,” Bee said, after a minute. “No one’s going to buy anything from us.”
“I knew this would happen, eventually.”
Bee reached over and squeezed my hand. “Don’t worry, Ruby, we’re not going to let this happen. I got us into this mess and I’ll find a way out of it.”
“You didn’t get us into this mess. We both tried to figure out what happened to Brent. Besides, we both know we’re innocent. Once Lori wakes up, things will probably get back to normal. The only trouble is what do we do until then?”
“We could speak to Mrs. Rickleston about catering a few of the breakfasts at the Runaway Inn.” Bee dusted cookie crumbs off her apron. “If she’ll even talk to us after the whole ‘Lucy incident.’ She’s been acting very strangely since then.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “Wouldn’t it just be easier to solve the mystery?” I asked. “I’d bet my last cookie that whoever attacked Lori also murdered Brent. I just don’t understand why. What did they stand to gain?”
“What about the mystery person Lori spoke to on the phone? It might be them. Someone who’s motivated by money.”
“Money,” I said. “If that’s the case, why kill Brent at all? Unless he knew something incriminating.”
“Like the fact that Sarah wanted to sabotage Rose-Marie’s garden,” Bee replied. “But that leads us right back to Sarah and her alibis.”
I was stumped, and Bee’s forehead had gone wrinkled too.
“I still think it’s her,” I said. “Why else would she have had the stiletto in her closet? It adds up that she wanted him out of the picture.”
“But it’s not her.”
I grabbed a cloth and wiped down the top of the glass cabinet that held our treats. The donuts glistened, the cookies bore their gooey chocolatey bits, and the macarons were cheerful in a range of colors. None of which would be enjoyed by our regular patrons.
“We should talk to her,” I said. “Even if it isn’t her, and she did nothing wrong, surely, she would have an answer as to why she had the matching shoe to the one that was found at the crime scene?”
“I agree.” Bee stripped off her apron and hung it up on the hook next to our oven. “And let’s take some donuts with us to sweeten her up. I’ve always felt that baked goods were an underrated interrogation tool.”
* * *
The sunlight shimmered down from above, reflected on cars and windows, baking the roofs of houses up and down the street. Sarah’s street. How surreal it was to be back here after what had happened last night.
The place was just as grand in the morning light—with its brick walls, its garden filled with flowers and exotic decorations. No doubt, it cost a lot to maintain a garden like this, but now that Sarah had cheated her way into that $10,000 cash prize, she could do whatever she wanted with the place.
“Are we ready for this?” I asked. “We don’t want to upset her.”
“Upset her?” Bee rolled her eyes. “The woman is impervious to insult. You saw what she was like with Rose-Marie after the attack—she was practically grinning from ear-to-ear.”
“But she’s our last chance at figuring out who did this,” I said, nudging my friend with the reminder. Bee’s brashness helped a lot in many instances, but not with people like Sarah. “She’s the type of person who likes to have her ego stroked. If we do that, we’ll probably get more out of her. More sugar than stick.”
“More donut.” Bee lifted the pastel-striped box we’d brought with us.
I opened the gate and we walked up the pathway toward the front of the house. The living room windows were still open as they’d been the night before, and the one to the right of the front door had its curtains drawn back to allow light in.
The gentle hum of music—something slow and romantic—eased out from the gap between sill and pane.
I opened my mouth to say something, but Bee put a finger up to her lips. Her hazel-colored eyes had gone wide. She pointed to the window, her movements slow like she didn’t want to startle me. Or someone else?
Two people stood inside the living room, wrapped in each other’s arms. Sarah was one of them, her long, gray hair flowing just past her shoulders. The other was a man, whose arms were broad, muscly and tan.
They parted, and I caught sight of the guy’s face. I swallowed a gasp.
It was Joseph! The gardener who worked for Rose-Marie, and who had helped Sarah sabotage her. Well, here was the motivation for why he might have wanted to help her. They were clearly in a relationship. Or participating in a sordid tryst.
Bee had gone the color of a ripe tomato. The box slipped in her fingers and I caught it before it dropped and drew attention to us.
Thankfully, Joseph and Sarah were too busy canoodling to take notice of the sudden movement I’d made.
I grabbed Bee’s arm and guided her back down the steps and onto the path. We didn’t stop until we’d reached the sidewalk when Bee pulled herself free of my grip. “Well,” she said, “well, that was… well.”
“Sorry, Bee.”
“For what? There’s no reason to apologize. You haven’t done anything wrong.”
But she’d definitely had a crush on the young man. Not that she’d want me to bring that up, now.
“What do you think?” I asked. “Maybe Sarah was working with Joseph to get the money? She worked with him on the sabotage of Rose’s garden. We might have a Bonnie and Clyde situation on our hands here.”
The color disappeared from Bee’s cheeks, bit-by-bit. The question was in her wheelhouse. “That might be the case. Either way, it doesn’t look like we’ll get much information out of her now.”
“Then what options do we have left?” I asked.
Bee wriggled her nose. “Hmm.”
“What is it?”
“Lori’s house. She was on her way back there when she was attacked. And if we calculate the timing of when the police came to find us, and how long it would have taken her to get there…” She paused, ticking off items on her fingers. “Yes. That makes sense.”
“What does?”
“That Lori would have already been at home when she was attacked,” Bee said. “If we want to f
ind out what happened to her we have to—”
“Break in to another person’s home?” I whispered.
“You put it like that. I call it, reconnaissance.” Bee set off down the sidewalk, popping the box of donuts open and reaching in for a treat. She stopped after a few paces. “Are you coming?” she called, holding out the box. “We’ve got work to do, Miss Holmes.”
18
Breaking into Lori’s place wasn’t technically ‘breaking in.’ The back door had been left wide open. Perhaps, it had been in the rush to get Lori to hospital, or perhaps the cops hadn’t noticed it, but there it was.
We had our in, and, strangely, it made me feel more anxious about searching for evidence here, than less. The house on Lavender Road was as small as it had been the last time we’d been here, and Bee and I mounted the back steps, stopping just short of the open doorway. It looked into the hallway next to the kitchen.
“See any evidence of a… struggle?” The last thing I needed was another encounter that left me squeamish. Bee was liable to think I’d gone soft since we’d come to Muffin.
“No blood, if that’s what you’re asking.” Bee nudged the door open with her elbow, then entered.
I followed her, but pulled up short. “Oh my gosh.” I covered my nose and mouth. The inside of the house smelled so strongly of bleach my eyes watered.
“Someone’s been doing some cleaning. Let’s hope it was Lori, before anything happened to her,” Bee said. “Though, how she’d do that with a broken leg is another question. Try to keep as quiet as possible. You never know who might be here.”
My heart tha-thumped against the inside of my chest, and I reached into my pocket and touched my fingers to the cool side of my can of mace. If push came to shove, I’d be ready. Hopefully. Assuming that whoever it was didn’t have a gun.
That only made me think of the room full of guns across the hall, and the fact that one of them had been stolen earlier in the month.
Bee and I walked down the hallway, and I peered into the kitchen. It was entirely neat and clean—no sign of a struggle.
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