One Hot Murder

by Lorraine Bartlett

  He grabbed her by the arm with one hand and opened the office door with the other. “Sure it does. You’re one of the most curious women I’ve ever met in my life—next to my late wife—and you have a knack for getting people to spill their guts. Get Mrs. Wheeler to spill hers.” He pulled her into the vendors’ lounge. Luckily there was no one there to listen in on their conversation.

  “But what if she’s too heartsick to talk?” Katie asked.

  “Compare notes. Your husband really disappointed you before his death—”

  “As far as we know, Dennis Wheeler is still alive,” Katie pointed out, ignoring the dig.

  “He won’t be if she gets her hands on him,” Davenport said. “She’s got to be pretty pissed off by now—especially if he’s been hiding from her, too.”

  “What if he fled to their house and she’s now harboring him?”

  “It’s a possibility. Damn, I wish I could send you in there with a wire.”

  “Surely you met the woman. You did buy her business.”

  “His business,” Davenport corrected. “It was in his name alone.”

  Katie frowned. “That seems strange. I mean, during the winter months she was at the store every weekday while he worked at the high school.”

  “Maybe he paid her to work there.”

  “And maybe he didn’t,” Katie grated. The injustice of the situation annoyed her.

  “Let’s go,” Davenport urged her, giving her a slight shove in the back.

  “You can’t come with me.”

  “I’ll stay in the car,” he said.

  “Oh no you won’t. If she sees you, she’s likely to clam up for sure.”

  “Then I’ll park down the block. I can drop you off.”

  “I’ll drive myself.”

  “All right. Then we can meet back here.”

  “I really don’t want to talk about it here.”

  “Your place?” he suggested.

  “I really don’t want to talk about it there either.”

  “Well, there’s nowhere else to talk around here.”

  “Okay, my place. But if Andy wants to know why I’ve invited you up there, you’re going to have to come up with a reasonable explanation. He won’t be thrilled to hear I’m helping you and I want to put off the moment of telling him for as long as possible.”

  “Whatever,” Davenport said, and urged her to move.

  “We have to stop at Tanner’s bakery first.”

  “What for?”

  “When I spoke to Abby at the library the other night, she said that because nobody knew if Dennis was dead or alive, none of her neighbors or friends had consoled her or even brought over as much as a bagel.”

  “So you’re going to bring her a bagel?”

  “I was thinking about taking some cupcakes. Cupcakes are always comforting, especially if the frosting looks like a rose, don’t you think?”

  “No. I’d prefer macaroni and cheese, but there’s no time for you to make it. I’ll check out Chad’s Pad while you go to the bakery. But hurry it up. We haven’t got all day.”

  “Excuse me, but I’ll be doing you a favor by talking to Abby.”

  “And I appreciate it,” he said, giving her a nudge. “But we aren’t finding out what she knows if you aren’t there actually talking to her.”

  Katie sighed. Being friends with Davenport was going to be a major pain in the butt. But then it seemed like just about everybody she knew was being a major pain in the butt of late.

  “Cupcakes. The more frosting the better,” Katie said, and marched out of her office. And maybe she’d score one for herself as well. If she was going to have to put up with Davenport, she was going to need some kind of reward.

  Fourteen

  Sweat trickled down the back of Katie’s neck as she tapped the dull brass knocker on the Wheelers’ front door. She held the bakery box tight and took a look around her, taking in the weeds that grew along the side of the house. No one had cut the lawn or whacked the weeds in a few weeks. That was probably Dennis’s job. But the rest of the place looked unkempt, too. Paint was peeling around the soffit and around the trim. It looked like more than a few household tasks had been left undone of late.

  Abby’s car was still in the drive, so surely she had to be home. Katie knocked again and looked around once more. She saw the curtain at the window move. She couldn’t blame Abby for being careful, or for simply ignoring people intruding on her heartache—especially if they were from the local press. She started counting, figuring if she got to twenty, Abby wasn’t going to open the door. She got to eighteen when the handle turned. The door opened on a chain. “Katie, is that you?” Abby whispered.

  “It’s me, and I’m alone. Can we talk?”

  The door closed and the chain rattled. Abby threw open the door and quickly ushered Katie inside before slamming it shut again.

  Unlike the outside, the inside of Abby Wheeler’s home was immaculate. Perhaps Abby had whiled away the hours relentlessly cleaning while waiting for word on her husband’s fate. Despite working a sixty-hour week at Kimper Insurance, Katie had occupied the rest of her spare time during her separation from Chad cleaning and baking. The apartment had been spotless and the larder full—and she’d had no one with which to share either of them.

  “I hope I haven’t come at a bad time,” Katie said, following Abby into the dim living room. After being exposed to ninety-degree temperatures for hours on end, the air-conditioned room felt downright cold. Abby, dressed in a sweater, slacks, socks, and penny loafers, turned on one of the lamps and seated herself on the couch. Katie took one of the matching wing chairs that faced the curtain-shrouded picture window. “I brought you some cupcakes from Tanner’s.” She offered the box.

  “Thank you, Katie. That was very thoughtful of you,” Abby said and accepted the box, setting it on the coffee table. “To tell you the truth, I could use a friend right now. This whole ordeal has really shaken me. I don’t know what to think—who to talk to that can understand what I’m going through.”

  Katie nodded. Although she could guess, she really didn’t know what Abby had endured these last few days. “Losing trust in someone you love can shatter your world,” she began. “That’s how I felt when my late husband invested all our savings in Artisans Alley.”

  Abby sighed. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been shattered by Dennis’s actions.”

  “I was surprised to hear Dennis had sold Wood U.” Katie could feel a blast of cold air coming from the register on the floor nearby and gave an involuntary shiver. Had Abby worked up a sweat dusting and polishing and set the temperature to sixty-five? With little humidity, it felt arctic cold.

  “No more than me. But then I always wondered why a man who disliked children would become a teacher.” She shook her head. “Dennis’s father constantly belittled him while he was growing up. He did the same to his students. I’m surprised he wasn’t fired long ago,” she said bitterly. “I’d always wanted children, you see. I didn’t know Dennis’s feelings until we’d been married for over a year. I’m Catholic. I don’t believe in divorce. That’s why I concentrated on my career. These last few years I looked forward to our retirement. Now it looks like everything we’d planned for the future will never happen.” She sighed. “At least I don’t have the shop hanging over my head anymore.”

  “You didn’t like running the business?” Katie asked, surprised.

  “I hated it. I had no choice when my career was taken away from me, thanks to layoffs. Dennis had the shop and his teaching career—and he was intent on keeping them both until he retired.”

  “Which was last month,” Katie said. Abby nodded. “What were his plans for retirement?”

  “To buy a condo in Key West and get away from winters in western New York.”

  Not surprising. A lot of people did just that.

  “Do you think he might’ve taken off for Florida?”

  Abby ran a hand through her bleached blonde hair, suddenly look
ing very tired. “I don’t know. If he killed someone at Wood U, he’d be smart to disappear. He’d have to know I’d mention his plans to that detective. He knows that I’m a real law-and-order freak and I can’t stand it when criminals get away with stuff. Look at how they treat shoplifters with just a slap on the hand and maybe make them go to a few group therapy sessions. They don’t even make these people pay restitution. How does that stop crime?”

  It sounded like Wood U had had more than a few light-fingered customers for Abby to be so angry about it. She never came to Merchants Association meetings, and Dennis had never mentioned it when the subject came up during the holiday rush back in December. Funny how it bothered his wife more than him. And yet when people thought of Wood U, they usually thought of Abby, not Dennis, as the owner simply because she ran the shop on a day-to-day basis.

  Abby sighed. “I just can’t come to terms with the idea of Dennis killing anyone. But everything the officers told me last night points to that fact.”

  “Such as?” Katie prompted.

  “The shirt they showed me. I bought it as a birthday gift for Dennis in May. And the fact that every cent Dennis made from the sale of Wood U was withdrawn from our bank account the day this whole mess began,” Abby continued. “I wonder if he took off for a country with no extradition.”

  Katie had wondered the same thing. “Do you have enough money to get along in the meantime?”

  Abby shook her head, her face crumpling. “Not if Dennis doesn’t come up with some kind of support—which isn’t likely if he’s skipped the country, or if he ends up going to jail. I’m going to have to find a job pretty quick if I’m going to make the next mortgage payment. And what can I do? I gave up any hope of continuing my career to help Dennis in the shop.”

  “What did you do?” Katie asked.

  “I was an office manager for a construction company in Rochester. Right now my skills are rusty. Nobody is going to hire me to do more than a minimum-wage keyboarding job. I sacrificed so much for that man and look how he repaid me.”

  “I’m so sorry, Abby,” Katie said and shivered. It was downright cold in the room. Abby could save some money by turning off the air-conditioning.

  “Still, it doesn’t make sense—especially if he’s guilty of murder.” Abby shook her head. “I believe Dennis has taken off. With everything that’s happened, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a girlfriend on the side and had been planning on leaving me all along. I mean, what if the woman couldn’t leave right away? Maybe that’s why he’d be hiding at the Alley.”

  Katie clasped her arms. “Maybe.”

  “Are you cold?” Abby asked.

  “A little,” Katie admitted.

  “Sorry. I hate this whole menopause thing. I’ve been having wicked hot flashes. They make me absolutely miserable. I’m either boiling hot all the time or freezing.” She indicated her sweater. “You caught me in one of my freezing moments. But any minute now I’ll be peeling it off.” At Katie’s startled expression she laughed. “I have a sleeveless shell on underneath.” She pulled back the neck of her sweater to show off the light blue shirt. She sank back into the couch. “Menopause. The time of life when your husband looks at you with a jaundiced eye and wonders what happened. Where the wrinkles came from. The weight you just can’t seem to take off. And he thinks, ‘I’m going to be stuck with this old woman for the rest of my life.’” She gave an ironic laugh. “It’s a pity that kind of man doesn’t look in the mirror and see that he’s deteriorated, too.”

  This wasn’t a conversation Katie was interested in continuing. She stood. “I’m sorry, Abby. I’ve taken up way too much of your time.”

  “I’m glad you stopped by,” Abby said, then stood and walked Katie to the door. “I feel so cut off from everyone and everybody. I even miss working at the store, which is something I never thought I’d say. And I miss being on the Square. The smell of chocolate and jellies and fresh-baked bread. I miss waving to my shop neighbors. I miss hearing the gossip. Speaking of which, besides the fire, has anything new happened on the Square?”

  “The Webster mansion has been sold. It’s going to be a bed-and-breakfast called Sassy Sally’s. It’s supposed to open in November.”

  Abby’s eyes lit up. “Just in time for the holidays. And what a great name. Oh, darn. I’m going miss seeing it transformed from a wreck to the beauty it deserves to be.”

  “Artisans Alley’s Christmas in July party for the vendors and the Square’s merchants is on for Saturday evening. We’d love to have you join us.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Abby said with a wan smile.

  “Oh, and we have a new Big Brown delivery guy.”

  Abby blinked. “What happened to Jerry?”

  “I heard he retired.”

  Abby looked thoughtful. “That seems odd. He never mentioned it to me the last time I saw him.”

  “That’s what Gilda Ringwald-Stratton said, too.”

  Abby shrugged, and then she bit her lip for a moment. “I know I’ve never worked with you at the Alley or at the Merchants Association, but would you mind if I put you down as a character reference on a job application? I’ve decided that first thing Monday morning I’m going to seriously start looking for work.”

  Katie hesitated but saw the look of fear in Abby’s eyes. Her future livelihood might depend on it. “Sure.” She dug into the pockets of her shorts and came up with a wrinkled business card. “You can use this number.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you, Katie. Dennis always said you were one hell of a woman. Now I know he was speaking of more than just your physical appearance.”

  “Oh…well, thank you. I think.” She smiled. “If you need anything, the Merchants Association is…” She was about to say willing to do anything it could to help. But technically Dennis was no longer a member and no longer eligible for assistance. Katie forced a smile and changed tacks. “Call me.”

  “I’ll do that,” Abby said and opened the door.

  Katie caught sight of Davenport’s car halfway down the block. She turned back to face Abby. “We’ll talk soon.”

  “I’d like that,” Abby said. Letting out a big puff of air, she began unbuttoning her sweater.

  Katie could see a light sheen of perspiration on her forehead. “Another flash?”

  “Hardly a flash. They seem to last for at least five minutes.”

  “You have my sympathy.”

  “And you have mine. You’ve still got this to look forward to.”

  Hadn’t Rose said the same thing? Katie didn’t want to think about it.

  The door closed and Katie walked down the stone path to her car at the curb. She got in and buckled her seat belt. She looked back at the Wheelers’ house, but there was no one peeking through the curtains.

  She started the car and pulled back into the street, eyeing her rearview window. When she got to the stop sign, she could see Davenport’s car slowly rolling behind her. She turned and steered the car toward Artisans Alley, wondering what she was going to tell Davenport. She’d learned nothing of any real value—except that Abby believed her husband to be a louse. Well, Katie had been leaning that way for the past day or so anyway.

  But she didn’t like the idea of facing her new pal Davenport. Would he be angry? Would he think her incompetent? Or maybe her lack of anything interesting to report would convince him that he should work on this little project by himself.

  She could but hope. And Andy was sure to be just as disappointed when she told him of the conversation with Abby.

  It was turning out to be one very disappointing day.

  As predicted, Davenport was distinctly unhappy. He paced the confines of Katie’s kitchen, scowling, the wrinkles in his forehead multiplying in an alarming number. Was this the look his gave his children when he was upset with them? Had they needed extensive psychiatric care during their young lives because of it?

  “I had hoped for better,” he said, using a distinctly fatherly tone. A disappo
inted father.

  Katie wasn’t buying into that and shrugged. “Sorry. What’s the next step?” she said, and cut her ham sandwich into triangles. “Do you want one?”

  Davenport shook his head and continued to pace her small kitchen/dining area, his footsteps heavy on the creaky old wooden floor. The term “flatfoot” seemed appropriate. What would Andy think as he sliced and diced his veggies and meats for that night’s pizza sales down below?

  “I’m going to have to think about what we do next.”

  Katie sat down at the table. “Well, while you’re thinking, think about joining us at the Merchants Association meeting tonight. As a member, you can nicely”—she stressed the word—“interrogate everyone under the guise of educating yourself on the organization.” She bit into her sandwich, chewed, and swallowed.

  “That’s true,” he said.

  “And you’ll have a nice meal and a couple of glasses of wine. But not too much wine, you have a long drive home.”

  Davenport merely grunted.

  “We’re meeting at six thirty at Del’s Diner.”

  “I know the place.”

  “And you’ll be there?”

  Davenport sighed. “I’ll be there.”

  “And try to be nice. But don’t smile too much. You’ll freak everyone out.”

  Fifteen

  As usual, the dinner conversation around the big table in Del’s Diner’s function room, for the Merchants Association’s monthly meeting, was boisterous. The group had given Nick and Don a warm welcome. However, Katie wasn’t exactly sure the welcome mat was out for Detective Davenport. Was it reticence on his part, or were the other members actually avoiding talking to him? Since he’d been seated on one end of the table, with Katie on the other, there wasn’t much she could do to include him in the various discussions—at least not without shouting.

  Nona Fiske sat as far away from Katie as she possibly could, while Vonne and Francine sat to Katie’s left, as far away from Nona as they could be. Vonne kept shooting daggers at Nona, who seemed oblivious. That was just as well. Katie wasn’t eager for open warfare to break out before the meeting even began.