by Jessica Beck
Ashton looked from Grace to me and then back at her again. “I find that difficult to believe.”
“So did we, but it is the police’s official opinion, and we agree. Someone poisoned her.”
“Well, I certainly didn’t do it,” he said gruffly. “I suppose I have the perfect alibi, since I can prove that I’ve been out of town for the past week.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” I asked him.
“Yes I would, but the implication is that you think I’m wrong.”
“Spot on,” I told him. “Someone tainted Maggie’s medication, so it could have been done sometime in the last month for all we know.”
Ashton growled a little before he spoke again, and then he stood up from behind his desk. “While it’s true that the woman was a thorn in my side, she had a great deal of money invested here. The truth of the matter is that I wouldn’t even give her a cross look over an eight-dollar fee, let alone kill her for it.” His tune had certainly changed from a few minutes earlier when he hadn’t known that Maggie had been murdered.
“But what if she threatened to pull all of that money from your bank?” Grace asked. “That wouldn’t look good for you, would it?”
“That’s nonsense. People move their assets around for many reasons,” Ashton said. “In the end, it all evens out. Besides, she’d been threatening to withdraw her money for years. I never took her seriously.”
“Is that really why the two of you hated each other so much?” Grace asked him softly.
“I didn’t hate her,” the banker said, trying his best to keep calm. “She wasn’t my favorite customer, but believe it or not, I have some who are worse. A great deal worse, as a matter of fact.” He leaned forward and hit a switch on his telephone. “Stella, find out if Maggie Moore is recently deceased.”
“How on earth can I do that?” she asked.
“Just call someone in April Springs and ask,” he said before slamming the button down again. “Now, if you two will excuse me, I’ve got a mound of paperwork to catch up on, and then I’m going home to bed and sleep for the next eight hours.”
We were ushered out of his office and shown the door rather efficiently, and I had a hunch this wasn’t the first time he’d thrown someone out of his office.
Once we were outside, I asked Grace, “Is there any way he killed her over eight dollars?”
“No, if he was telling us the truth,” she said.
“About what, exactly?”
“Any of it, Suzanne. We have to confirm that he was at that conference, that he just got back today, and that his only beef with Maggie was over a fee she didn’t think she owed. That’s three big ifs, if you ask me.”
“How do we confirm any of that?” I asked her.
“Simple. Wait right here,” she replied as she put on her jacket, did something with her hair, and strolled back into the bank.
I stood there at the Jeep looking silly, so I finally decided just to sit in the driver’s seat to wait for her. At least I’d be a little less conspicuous that way. As it was, I felt as though I looked like I was about to be the getaway driver in a bank heist.
Grace came back out less than five minutes later and grinned at me as she walked toward where I was parked.
“What are you smiling about?”
“I spoke with a teller who was quite chatty,” Grace said. “Why don’t you head back toward April Springs, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
Once I got us pointed in the right direction, I glanced over at Grace. “Okay, spill it.”
“Evidently everything Ashton Belle told us was true. Trudy, that’s the teller I spoke with, confirmed that he just got back in town and that she knew it for a fact because she’d been up for hours after driving to Charlotte to pick him up at the airport after his red-eye flight came in from the coast. She was quite grumpy about it and more than willing to vent a little to a sympathetic ear.”
“Nice work,” I said. Grace was so abrupt occasionally that sometimes I forgot just how charming she could be when she set her mind to it. “What about the animosity between Ashton and Maggie?”
“Evidently Maggie was not averse to making a scene,” Grace said. “She came in just before Ashton left for the coast, and the two of them practically had a screaming match in the lobby about that eight-dollar fee he charged her. She was taking it personally, and he wasn’t backing down.”
I shook my head in wonder. “And you got all of that in less than five minutes? I’m not sure I could have uncovered that much in five days.”
“I got lucky picking a chatty teller,” Grace said, deflecting a little of my praise. “So, what do we do with the information? I know from what you’ve told me that Maggie could be pretty abrasive, but even given all of that, it’s hard to imagine him killing her over eight dollars.”
“I have to agree, unless there’s something we don’t know about their relationship.”
Grace looked horrified by the thought. “Suzanne, do you really think they had a relationship?”
“Not that kind of one,” I said. “I mean a professional one.”
“I guess so,” Grace said. “So, we move him down the list, but not entirely off of it. Is that how you want to handle him?”
“It’s all we can do at the moment,” I said. “I can’t believe that one of our first two solid leads has been relegated to the also-ran column.”
“Don’t be so glum,” Grace said. “That still leaves us with Crusty and Jane to go along with Beatrice.”
“And not just them,” I reminded her.
“Do you honestly think that Leanne could have done it?” she asked me.
“At this point I doubt it, though it’s still a possibility, but the point I was trying to make was that we can’t forget Gabby, either. The two cousins were not on good terms when I saw them together yesterday.”
“But what might Gabby’s motive be?” Grace asked.
“I’m not sure, but I do think it’s something we should check out. Discreetly, of course.”
“Of course,” Grace answered. “My, we still have quite a bit of work to do today before we’re finished, don’t we?”
“Yes,” I admitted, “but at least the rest of it is going to take place in April Springs. These commutes are killing me.”
“I said I would drive,” she replied.
“Thanks, but it helps me think when I’m behind the wheel.”
“Just save a little of that concentration for the road, if you don’t mind,” Grace said with a smile.
“I could, but then what fun would that be?” I asked.
“Crusty, would you like some donuts?” I asked as I offered him a box of ten. The man certainly lived up to his name, both in appearance and in disposition. His beard was not white and snowy like Santa’s but a bit yellowed and stained instead. Crusty was thin and relatively short, and no one would ever hire him to play jolly old Saint Nick if they saw him. The long-sleeved jacket he was wearing was quite a bit too big for him, and he appeared to be swallowed up in it as he kept trying to free his hands from the folds of clothing.
Crusty looked at my offered box of treats, and then he jacked one eyebrow heavenward. “How much do you want for them? Before you name some outrageous price, I know these are old and stale, so I won’t pay more than ten cents on the dollar.”
I nearly laughed, but since the man was being dead serious, I knew that I had to respond in kind. “Believe it or not, they aren’t even going to cost you that much. They’re free, right here and right now, and the offer can expire any second.”
He reached out and grabbed the box out of my hands before I could get the final word out. Without a moment’s hesitation, he flipped the lid off and looked inside. “There are only ten in here.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Grace said. I could hear a scolding coming on her voice, but we need
ed information from this man, so I had to cut her off before she could say anything he might take offense to.
“Haven’t you heard? Ten is the new twelve,” I said lightly. What was that supposed to mean? I didn’t know myself, but it seemed to satisfy Crusty.
“Good enough,” he said, and then he started to walk away.
“Hang on a second,” I called out to him.
“Is there more?” he asked, looking greedily at my empty hands.
“Did you hear about Maggie Moore?” I asked him. There was no real opportunity to be subtle about it. Crusty wasn’t exactly sophisticated when it came to the art of conversation.
“Yep,” he said, scratching his beard as though a mouse had infiltrated it and had set up camp. “It’s a real shame. Poison is a coward’s way to kill.”
“Are you saying that it’s not your chosen method, then?” Grace asked him archly.
“I’m not about to kill anybody, but if I were to do it, I’d be facing them so that they’d know it was me. I surely didn’t kill Maggie, but if I were to do it, it wouldn’t have been like that.” Crusty frowned for a moment and then shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it. What’s done is done. The woman’s gone, and no amount of talking is going to bring her back.” He seemed a bit cavalier about the whole thing to me, and evidently Grace felt the same way.
“Even though she recently dumped you, you still must feel bad about her passing away,” Grace said, trying to feel him out a bit.
“Who told you she ended it with me?” Crusty asked her, a steel edge coming out in his voice.
“We prefer to keep our sources of information confidential,” I told him, “just as we will with whatever you choose to tell us.”
“I don’t care who you tell,” he said with a bit of a cackle in his voice. “For the record, Maggie didn’t get rid of me. I thought she was getting a little too serious, so I told her she had to back off. A man needs room to strut, do you know what I mean?”
His reference to strutting matched perfectly with his bantam size and cocky attitude, and I had to smile, though it was only for a split second.
Crusty still managed to catch it, though. “Something I said seem funny to you, Suzanne?” he asked me, staring at me intently.
“No, I know full well that some men aren’t meant to be tamed and tied down,” I told him. I wasn’t sure how I managed to keep a straight face as I said it, and I only hoped that Grace would be able to do the same.
After a moment of consideration, Crusty seemed to take that at face value. With a brisk nod, he accepted my statement with a slight smile of his own. “What can I say? It pays for a man to keep his options open.”
“Like with Jane Preston?” Grace asked him.
That seemed to throw Crusty off his stride. “What are you talking about?”
“We heard that you were wooing her as well,” Grace said.
Crusty took that in for a moment before responding. “A gentleman wouldn’t comment on something like that.”
I felt like telling him that I knew that, and also that the rule didn’t exactly apply to him, but I managed to bite my tongue. “Even if you did recently break up with Maggie, that doesn’t mean you can’t mourn her loss to the world,” I said. Though Maggie had been a pain in my neck, albeit briefly, it still didn’t mean that she was completely without virtue or that the memory of her should just vanish like a drop of water in a hot skillet.
“What makes you think I’m not?” Crusty asked me. “Not all of us mourn with tears and hysterics,” he added.
“When exactly did you two stop going out?” Grace asked him.
“I fail to see how that is any of your business,” Crusty said, pulling his box of donuts closer to his chest. “I appreciate the gesture, but if you’ll excuse me, I have things to do.” No one really knew how Crusty managed to scrape out a living, and I wasn’t about to ask him.
“How many women are you seeing at the moment?” Grace asked him.
Crusty didn’t even answer. Instead, he turned and walked away from us with his unmistakable walk. I’d seen roosters do the exact same thing, and I had to wonder if Crusty had come by it naturally or if he had painstakingly cultivated it over time.
Once he was gone, Grace looked at me and frowned. “Sorry I drove him off.”
“That man was looking for a way to escape the moment he got that box of donuts,” I said. “I doubt we would have gotten a straight answer out of him with the use of brute force.”
“I guess the real question is, was he hiding his true emotions from us, or did he really not care that Maggie was gone?” Grace asked.
“I’m not sure. He seemed to be a little too casual about the whole thing to me. Maybe Mrs. Preston will be able to shed some light on his true attitude,” I said. “If she were dating Crusty as well, something I have an impossible time believing even still, she might be able to help us.”
“Then by all means, let’s go find her,” Grace said. “It’s a good thing we’ve got one final box of donuts left.”
“They’ve been having mixed results, haven’t they?” I asked her.
“Well, at the very least they act as an icebreaker. It sure beats walking up to someone and asking them point-blank, ‘Did you poison Maggie Moore?’”
“I suppose,” I said, “but I know you prefer the direct method of questioning.”
Grace laughed. “Suzanne, you’ve known me my entire life. Has subtlety ever been my strong suit?”
“Not that I recall,” I agreed.
Chapter 12
We were in transit to Mrs. Preston’s house when Grace’s cell phone rang. “Hello? Yes. Of course. Okay. Don’t worry about it. We’ll do it another time. I understand completely,” she finished, and then she put her phone away again.
“I’m guessing the chief cancelled on you again,” I said, trying to sound as sympathetic as I could manage to.
“No worries, Suzanne. After our little chat, I was fully expecting it,” Grace said, seemingly unfazed by two broken dates in a row. “Besides, I’m still full from lunch, so it works out in my favor anyway.”
“We don’t have any leftovers to take him tonight, though,” I reminded her.
“Do you want to know something? I don’t have a problem with that. After all, it won’t kill him to fend for himself one night,” Grace replied with a grin. “Besides, who are we kidding? If we’d allowed Angelica to give us anything to take with us, we would have already eaten it all by now, regardless of how full we might be.”
“You’ve got a point,” I said, happy that Grace was taking Chief Grant’s second delay so well. At least I knew she wouldn’t sit at home alone tonight pining away for him, not that she would have anyway, but we had an active case ourselves. The fact that it involved the same murder was almost irrelevant.
“Hi, Mrs. Preston,” I said when our former teacher answered her door. Even though I hadn’t been in her classroom for donkey years, it was a hard habit to break whenever I spoke with her. She had aged over the past year since her husband had died, but she was still a vibrant woman.
“Suzanne. Grace. How lovely to see you both. Please come in.”
Mrs. Preston stepped aside and allowed us into her modest bungalow. It had been decorated much as I’d expected, with bright colors and cheerful artwork adorning the walls. Her furniture, though dated, was neat, and nothing in the entire living room appeared to be out of place. Clearly she ran her home as she had kept her classroom, warm and welcoming, but at the same time organized down to the last detail.
A photo of her late husband was displayed prominently over the mantel. “You must miss him terribly,” I said. The devotion that couple had felt for each other was legendary in April Springs.
“Every day. Garrison was the love of my life, my true one and only,” she said wistfully as she looked at the photo for another moment
before turning back to us. “Would you ladies care for some tea? I was just about to have a cup of Earl Grey.”
“That would be delightful,” I said as I handed her the remaining box of donuts. For some insane reason, I felt the need to apologize for the lack of a true dozen. “I’m sorry to say that there are only ten there,” I said, using the same tone of voice I would have used for explaining why my homework wasn’t completely finished in time.
“Ten sounds absolutely perfect,” she said as she flipped the lid open and peered inside. “Ooh, shall I serve us some right now, or have you had your fill for the day? I can’t imagine the temptation you must face each and every day. I know I couldn’t do it.”
That was hard to believe, especially since she was as tiny as a bird and most likely had the corresponding appetite. “I’ll take the tea, but we just had a big lunch,” I said, which was strictly true, though a few hours had passed since we’d dined with the DeAngelis clan of women. Grace and I had both eaten so much that I doubted either one of us would be able to even eat any dinner. Well, maybe not a big one, anyway.
“Understood,” she said. “I’ll be right back. Feel free to make yourselves comfortable.”
We did as she suggested, and after Grace and I were sitting beside each other on the couch, I asked her softly, “Can you really see her with Crusty? I think Gabby’s lost her mind.”
“I’m not about to disagree with that assessment,” Grace answered with a grin. “I’m with you. It’s inconceivable.”
“What is inconceivable?” Mrs. Preston asked as she reentered the living room unexpectedly. “I’m afraid I’m out of Earl Grey. Would something else do?”
“We’re fine,” I said, not wanting to delay this painful conversation any longer than I had to. “Mrs. Preston, we just spoke with Crusty Lang.”
She went absolutely white when I mentioned the man’s name. Was it possible that Gabby had somehow been right after all?
“I don’t care to discuss that man with you, if you don’t mind,” she said, killing the conversation completely. At least that was what would have happened if we’d still been in her classroom, but she had lost her position of authority over us, so her word was not necessarily the last one anymore.