Jenny looked around. “Who wants a piece of Marnie’s flourless chocolate cake?”
There were yeses all around. Matthew pushed away from the table. “I’ll clear the dishes.”
“And I’ll serve the dessert,” Jenny added.
Over coffee and dessert everyone agreed that this was the best chocolate cake they had ever eaten. This seemed to pacify Marnie a bit, and by the time the party broke up, she was her usual charmingly gruff self.
“Okay,” she said, as she was leaving. “Anybody in favor of me running them out of town with my baking?”
“Be my guest,” Jenny said. “I’d be ever so grateful.”
They continued chatting on their way down the stairs.
“Bye, everyone. See you tomorrow,” I said.
A chorus of thank-yous and good-byes replied.
“Bye, Winnie.” He didn’t even look back. I closed the door and headed for bed.
• • •
The next morning was the third Tuesday in September, still a long time away from it being officially winter, but the day brought a chilly wind, a hint of the season ahead. I buttoned myself up in a red wool jacket and wrapped a long white silk scarf around my neck. I looked a bit dressed up by Briar Hollow standards, but my wardrobe was full of clothes from my days of living in Charlotte. I wasn’t about to chuck them out.
Across the street from the Coffee Break, I stopped by a newspaper vending machine and picked up a copy of the Belmont Daily. I glanced at the headline, and just as I’d expected, there, in big bold typeface, the headlines screamed, LOCAL MAN ENTERS STATE ELECTIONS. Underneath the caption was a picture of Bernard Whitby standing on the third step of his staircase and smiling to the camera. I remembered that Bunny Boyd had sidled up to him, but all that remained of her in the picture was her right elbow and a wisp of her hair. The woman had been cropped out. She wouldn’t be pleased about that, I thought, stifling a chuckle.
I folded the paper under my arm and hurried across the street to the McDermotts’ shop. I hated to be late. It wasn’t eight o’clock yet, but no more than a minute or two away. Mrs. McDermott had made a point of wanting me to drop by before the shop opened. I glanced at their window. It looked on to a seating area—the ubiquitous leather armchairs and dark wood coffee table. It looked nice and modern but no different from every other coffee shop in the country—except for Coffee, Tea and Destiny, I thought.
When Jenny and I had first agreed to share the shop, I’d given her one of the two large windows that looked on to Main Street. I had decorated mine with an armoire full of skeins of colorful yards, a small loom from which hung tea towels and place mats, and a large wicker basket filled with an assortment of rolled-up rugs in a fanlike arrangement. It was so attractive that people often popped in just to compliment me on my display.
A few feet away, Jenny’s window was furnished with a small shabby-chic tea table and two antique wing chairs slipcovered in a large pink, cabbage-rose chintz. On the table was a crystal ball, a teapot and teacups. Neither of our windows would attract the testosterone set, I had concluded upon studying them, but that hardly seemed to matter. Most of my clients were women. Only rarely did men walk in, and when they did, they usually hurried out, much the way they do when they accidentally find themselves strolling through the lingerie department of a store. As for Jenny, she had wisely pointed out that, since most of the career people worked out of town, it left mainly stay-at-home mothers in town during the day. It was good business to go after the female clientele. She must have been right because her business was flourishing.
I walked into the dark interior of the Coffee Break and hesitated. That was odd. If they’d already unlocked the door, why hadn’t they also turned on the light?
“Hello? Rhonda?” I called out, advancing a few steps. “Mr. McDermott? Anybody here?” I stood uncertainly halfway between the entrance and the counter until the door behind the counter opened.
Rhonda McDermott appeared, flicking on the lights. “Oh, hello, Della.” She looked around, puzzled. “Where’s Philip? Didn’t he give you your purse yet?”
“I didn’t see him. I just got—” Before I could finish, Rhonda screamed. And then she dropped behind the counter. I rushed over.
I rounded the counter and froze. Mr. McDermott was lying on the floor in a pool of blood. His face was ghostly white, his strangely dark gray eyes staring blindly and his white shirt soaked red. My pulse raced. For a second I thought I might faint.
Rhonda was kneeling next to her husband, almost as pale as he was. “Philip, look at me.” She shook him. “Philip, say something.” But her husband remained motionless.
I stood frozen for a moment, horrified at the scene before me. The poor woman was beside herself. My eyes took in the details. The blood had come from at least one wound in the man’s chest—a knife, a gun? I didn’t know. I glanced around but saw no weapons. Nor were there any spent cartridges. If Mr. McDermott had just come in to open the store, that would mean the attack had happened a short time ago, maybe only minutes before I walked in. Yet I hadn’t heard any gunshots. A few feet away from the body, a bundle of soiled bar towels littered the floor. I knew better than to touch them. They were now part of the crime scene.
I crouched and felt the man’s wrist, not really expecting a pulse. Nobody could survive the loss of so much blood. He was still warm, almost normal. I told myself he might still be alive, though, looking at the amount of blood, I had my doubts.
Mrs. McDermott looked across her husband’s body at me, tears quivering on her lashes.
I cleared my throat. “I think we should call an ambulance—and the police,” I added.
• • •
The ambulance arrived in minutes, which felt more like hours. During the wait, Rhonda had tried to check her husband’s pulse. This had resulted only in spreading more of the victim’s blood all over the crime scene and also his wife, who was now almost as bloody as he was. The attendants, two young burly men, burst into the shop.
“Where is the patient?” asked the first one.
“Over here.” I popped my head out from behind the counter.
They raced over, dropping into crouches and immediately checking the victim’s vital signs.
“Sorry, ma’am. You’ll have to get out of our way,” the fair-haired attendant said, opening an emergency kit.
“Come with me,” I said to Rhonda. “We have to give them room to work.” Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, I guided her to one of the tables and onto a chair.
“Who could have done that?” she asked, looking dazed. “Who could have wanted to hurt my Philip?”
I had no answer for her.
Seconds later, a police car screeched to a halt in front of the door, siren still blaring. The officers came running in only to stop short at the sight of the ambulance personnel still working on McDermott.
“Pulse?”
“Negative.”
“Respiration?”
“Nil.” With every pronouncement, their voices grew more ominous.
I suddenly became aware of the crowd that had gathered at the window. A dozen or so people were peering through the glass, staring at Rhonda and me. The poor woman had enough on her mind without having to contend with curiosity seekers.
I leaned toward her. “Can I get you something? A glass of water? A cup of coffee, maybe?”
“Coffee, yes, that’s a good idea,” she said, and then she surprised me by jumping to her feet. “I’ll make it.” She scurried off toward the coffee counter from the opposite side. Soon she reappeared carrying a pot of coffee and a stack of paper cups. “I made coffee for everyone,” she announced with a shaky voice. She was holding on to her self-control by a very thin line.
The older of the two policemen, a heavy, balding man with beagle eyes, came toward us. Rhonda looked up at him, her eyes filled with hope.
She let out an anguished wail and ran toward her husband’s body. The other officer stepped in front of her, blocking her way.
“Sorry, ma’am. You can’t go there.”
“But he’s my husband,” she cried, trying to get around him. “He needs me.”
“There’s nothing you can do for him now,” he said firmly. Behind him, the attendants were putting away their medical equipment. He turned to them. “I think this lady needs help.” They dropped what they were doing and gently guided her away.
“Don’t touch the body,” the same officer said to nobody in particular, which was odd, considering that whatever part of the crime scene Rhonda had not already contaminated, the emergency attendants had destroyed.
I stood nearby uncertainly. “Is it all right if I leave now?”
“Not right away,” the officer said, and I sat back down.
The older policeman, who had made a phone call as soon as the victim was declared dead, hung up. “The coroner is on his way.”
The coroner in Briar Hollow was Dr. Cook, a general practitioner, not a medical examiner of the type we’re now used to seeing on TV. I’d been shocked when Matthew first told me that coroners were appointed in many small towns, and they were not necessarily professionally trained. He’d even heard of cases where the local coroner had no more training than a weekend seminar, and according to him, knew less about medicine than a butcher.
Mrs. McDermott was now crying openly. She shouldn’t be with strangers at a time like this. I wondered if she had friends or family I could call.
Before I could ask, the beagle-eyed policeman joined me at the table. “Sorry to make you wait,” he said, pulling out a chair. “I hope you don’t mind answering a few questions.”
“Not at all.”
He handed me his card—Officer Bailey—and flipped open a small notebook. “Just for the record, your name is?”
“Della. Della Wright. I own a shop—Dream Weaver—up the street.”
He nodded and jotted down a few words. “Can you tell me what happened?”
I swallowed hard, still shaky from the sight of Mr. McDermott’s deathly pallor and of so much blood. “I was at Bernard Whitby’s party last night,” I said, and explained about the purse mix-up. “I didn’t even notice until she phoned me at home. We agreed that I’d stop by this morning to exchange them.” Officer Bailey was taking copious notes. “The door was unlocked when I got here, so I walked in. I thought it a bit strange that the lights were off, but I didn’t attach much importance to it. I called out a few times, and that’s when Mrs. McDermott came in and stumbled on her husband’s body. I called nine-one-one right away.”
“At what time was that?”
“It must have been a minute or two before eight.”
He jotted down a few more words and continued. “So you didn’t witness the victim being shot?”
That answered one question. McDermott had been shot and not stabbed. I shook my head.
“Did you happen to see anybody come out of the store?”
Again, I shook my head.
“What about on the street? Was anybody walking away from the store?”
I thought back, trying to picture the street as I’d made my way over. “There was someone walking away, but I wasn’t paying attention. I couldn’t even tell you if it was a woman or a man.”
“How far away was this person?”
I thought quickly. “Roughly a block and a half, maybe two.”
He nodded and seemed pensive for a few minutes. “Do you know of anyone holding a grudge against Mr. or Mrs. McDermott?”
Marnie Potter, I thought, and my mouth dried. But all I said was, “No, nobody that I know of.”
The questioning didn’t last more than ten or fifteen minutes, but by the time it was over, I was drained.
“I’ll call you if I think of anything else,” I said and hurried out, avoiding eye contact with anyone in the gathered crowd. I was in no mood to talk to anyone. I hoofed it over to the shop, where Winston greeted me with his usual overexuberance. I wasn’t even in the mood for a doggy kiss.
“I was beginning to wonder if you were going to show up today,” Jenny said. “Matthew just dropped Winston off.” She stared at me, tilting her head sideways. “Are you all right? You look as if you just saw a ghost.”
“Close enough,” I said, collapsing into a chair. “Mr. McDermott is dead—murdered.”
She blanched. “Oh, my God. That’s terrible. Ever since I got up this morning, I had a feeling something bad was going to happen. Didn’t I tell you? And you never believe me.” She studied me again, her eyes softening. “Let me get you some coffee, and then you can tell me what happened.”
“Thanks. I could use a cup right about now.”
She stepped toward the back, and Winston wandered over to me. He rested his head on my knees, staring at me with big, doleful eyes.
“Oh, Winnie,” I said, throwing my arms around him. “It was terrible.”
He whimpered sympathetically, and I pulled myself to my feet. “Okay, come.” He followed me to the counter, from under which I pulled out his cushion. “Here, Winnie, sleep.”
I opened the drawer to put away my purse and stopped. “Oh, shit.” Of all the stupid mistakes. I still had Rhonda McDermott’s purse. We’d never exchanged them. I was about to drop it in the drawer when it slipped out of my hands, its contents scattering all over the floor. I bent down to pick them up.
A moment later, Jenny was back with a steaming cup of coffee and a warm cranberry-lemon muffin. She frowned. “What are you doing?”
I was slipping credit cards back into the purse. “I dropped it; just putting everything back.” I paused to look at a wallet-sized photo of her husband. It brought a fresh wave of sadness.
She gasped. “Why are you looking through her stuff?” From the expression on her face, I might as well have been stealing her money.
“Don’t worry. It’s just a picture of Mr. McDermott. See?” I showed her. “I promise not to take her social security number or any of her credit cards.” Seeing the disapproval in her eyes, I chuckled. “Oh, all right. Here, I’m putting it a—” I stopped. “Hold on. What’s this?” I was looking at a small piece of paper that had been folded into the size of a card and slipped into the protective window meant for a driver’s license. The only reason a person might store away a paper that way was to hide it. Being the nosy person that I am, I unfolded it.
Curiosity got the better of Jenny too. She came closer, trying to read it over my shoulder. “What is it?”
“It’s a name and phone number.” I showed her.
She moved closer, squinting. “Emma Blanchard,” she read. “Why would Rhonda McDermott have Emma Blanchard’s phone number?” she said, puzzled.
“Why wouldn’t she?”
“For one thing, Rhonda can’t stand the girl.”
“How would you know that?”
“Whenever she shopped at Frannie’s, she would let anybody but Emma wait on her. There was one time Rhonda said something that sent Emma running to the storage room in tears. She wouldn’t come back out until she was sure Rhonda had left. When I asked her what happened, all she said was that Mrs. McDermott was a certifiable bitch.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “Hmm, Emma has been getting crank calls lately. I have a feeling I know who was making them.”
“You think it was Mrs. McDermott?”
“I wouldn’t be one bit surprised.” She pointed to my cup. “Want some cream?”
“Yes, please.” I copied Emma’s name and number onto the back of one of my business cards and stuffed it into my pocket. And then I refolded the paper and slipped it back inside the wallet just as I’d found it. As I sipped, I wondered what could have happened between Em
ma and Rhonda. People didn’t usually go around hating others unless something happened to make them feel that way. Hmm. How could I find out what had started this animosity?
“Jenny, how would you like to come shopping at Frannie’s with me? I think I need a new pair of pants.”
“What?” She looked at me as if I’d just sprouted a second head. “I don’t understand. You always said the styles she carries are not for you.” A light went on her eyes, and she wagged a finger at me. “You want to question Emma, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “But don’t ask me why, because I’m not even sure myself.”
• • •
Word must have gotten out about McDermott’s murder and that I had been at the coffee shop when his body was found, because suddenly my shop was crawling with customers.
“I heard there was a lot of blood,” one woman whispered over a display of tablecloths and runners. “Do you know if he was shot or stabbed?”
“I was so overcome with shock,” I answered, “that I didn’t even notice.”
Normally I would have been thrilled to see my shop so full of people, but I knew these were gossipmongers, not shoppers. But that didn’t have to mean I wouldn’t try my best to turn them into buyers.
“Poor Mrs. McDermott. I can’t imagine how she must have felt. Did she completely break down?”
I pretended not to hear. Pointing to the item in her hands, I said, “Isn’t that is a beautiful table runner? Do you read Home & Design magazine?”
“Sometimes,” she said, disappointed that I was changing the subject.
“Did you see last month’s issue? They featured a gorgeous dining room where the designer used table runners like this one instead of individual place mats. I thought it was such an original idea.” Seeing that I wasn’t divulging any juicy details, the other gossipers slowly drifted out.
A few minutes later, I was adding up the woman’s bill. As she walked out, I looked up to see Emma walking in. Well, what do you know? I wouldn’t have to go shopping at Frannie’s after all.
It’s one thing for a girl to look gorgeous all made-up and in dim lighting, but even in bright daylight and—except for a bit of black mascara—without a trace of makeup, this girl was magnificent. She wore tight jeans that showed off her long, perfect legs. Her hair was thick and golden, falling halfway down her back. I almost expected her to shake it out in slow motion, the way models do in a shampoo commercial. She was flawless.
Tapestry of Lies: A Weaving Mystery Page 6