Yeast of Eden

by Sarah Fox

  “I really don’t want you to feel you have to. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “It’s fine,” I assured her. “I want to.”

  This time her smile was stronger, though it still trembled. “Thanks.”

  “Do you want to meet at the Beach and Bean?”

  “How about at the waffle house? I don’t much like being out in public these days. Too many people stare at me and whisper behind my back.”

  I winced. I might not have been guilty of staring at her, but I had put her on my mental list of murder suspects. “Then I’ll stop by the coffee shop on my way and get us both something.”

  She agreed to that arrangement and as I left she finally settled on a block of cheddar cheese to add to her grocery cart.

  I had misgivings about being alone with the woman since I couldn’t be certain that she wasn’t involved in the murders, but I felt so bad for her that I couldn’t have turned her down. Hopefully we’d stay close to the restaurant’s front windows so we’d be in plain view of passersby. Deciding to make sure that happened, I headed for the checkout counter and paid for the items in my basket. The two bags of groceries I ended up with weren’t exactly light, but Brett’s parents lived less than a ten minute walk away, so that didn’t worry me. What did worry me was the sight of Jill standing by a display of paperback novels and puzzle books.

  Wildwood Cove was a small town, so it wasn’t all that strange to see the same person twice in one day, but I had the unsettling feeling that it was no coincidence we were both in the store at the same time, mostly because of the fact that she was once again staring at me with hard eyes. When I met her gaze, she didn’t flinch, clearly not bothered by the fact that I knew she was watching me.

  I thought I did a good job of appearing unconcerned, but when I reached the end of the street, I couldn’t keep myself from checking over my shoulder to see if she was following me. She wasn’t, as far as I could tell, and that brought me some relief. Even so, I picked up my pace and didn’t slow down again until I’d reached Brett’s parents’ house.

  * * * *

  I didn’t stay at the Collins’ house for long. I spent a few minutes visiting with Frank, but as happy as he was to receive a visitor, he tired quickly. When I set off for the center of town again, I found myself glancing over my shoulder every couple of minutes, expecting to find Jill trailing me or glaring at me from across the road. I didn’t want to let her get to me, but she was an intimidating woman, with her unfriendly eyes and muscular frame. If she wanted to hurt me, I had no doubt that she could. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that, but I remained on alert, not about to let her sneak up on me if she did decide to do more than glare at me.

  When I reached the Beach and Bean, I ordered the mocha Vicky had requested and bought a hazelnut steamed milk for myself. With the takeout cups in hand, I headed along the street to the waffle house. As I approached the front of the restaurant, I spotted Sienna by the front door. She held a small paper bag in one hand and shaded her eyes with the other so she could peer through the glass door of The Waffle Kingdom.

  “Sienna? Are you looking for Vicky?”

  “Oh, hey, Marley.” She stepped back from the door. “My mom sent me over with some cookies for Vicky, and I’m working up the nerve to knock on the door.” She lowered her voice. “I told my mom it was crazy to send me to see a murder suspect, but she said that was nonsense because the whole town knows Vicky has an airtight alibi.”

  “For Wally’s murder, anyway,” I said.

  “That’s what I told her! I mean, Vicky could still be guilty of killing Chester, but my mom doesn’t believe it.”

  Movement inside the waffle house caught my eye. Vicky had emerged from the back of the restaurant so I waved to her.

  “She seems genuinely cut up about Chester’s death, though,” I said to Sienna as Vicky headed toward the door. “But we’re having coffee together, so you don’t have to be alone with her.”

  “Thanks. And you shouldn’t be alone with her either,” she said as Vicky unlocked and opened the door.

  “Have you met Sienna Murray?” I asked Vicky.

  “My mom, Patricia, talked to you the other day,” Sienna put in.

  “Oh, right,” Vicky said. “I remember.”

  “She sent you these cookies.” Sienna held out the bag to her. “Freshly baked.”

  “That’s very kind of her. Thank you.” Vicky accepted the bag and stepped back. “Come on in, both of you.”

  “Your mocha,” I said, handing over the drink once the door was shut.

  “Thanks.” Vicky gestured at the nearest table. “Please, sit down. Sienna, can I get you something to drink? There’s some soda in the back. Pretty much any kind you can think of. We were all stocked up for the opening.”

  Sienna still didn’t look too comfortable with the idea of hanging out at the waffle house, but she requested a cream soda and joined me at the table while Vicky disappeared into the back, leaving the cookies and her mocha behind. She returned seconds later with Sienna’s drink and a plate.

  “These look delicious,” she said as she slid the cookies from the bag onto the plate. “Please help yourselves.”

  I took one of the chocolate chip cookies and bit into it. Like everything Patricia baked, it was delicious.

  Sienna popped open her can of cream soda. “Are you still planning to open the Waffle Kingdom?”

  Vicky shook her head and nibbled at a cookie. “That was never my dream. Besides, the one Wally opened in Seattle last year was a flop and this one probably would have been too.” She smiled wistfully. “No, my dream is to one day open a chocolate shop.”

  “Really?” I said with surprise.

  “I worked in a small chocolate factory for years,” she said. “I was thinking of striking out on my own when Wally inherited his money and got it into his head that he wanted to open a chain of waffle houses.”

  “Wildwood Cove has a candy shop but not an actual chocolate shop,” Sienna said, her former discomfort replaced with enthusiasm. “I bet it would be really popular.”

  “Maybe,” Vicky said, her smile fading. “But I haven’t decided if I’ll stay in town.”

  “Where will you go if you don’t stay?” I asked. “Were you living in Seattle before?”

  “Yes, that’s where my son is.”

  “I didn’t realize you had a son,” I said.

  “He lives with his father most of the time.” She shrugged, the movement weary. “I don’t know what I want to do. It’s hard to make plans right now. I still haven’t completely grasped the fact that Wally and Chester are gone.” Tears glistened in her eyes and I expected her to start crying. Instead, she rubbed her forehead. “Chester. Right.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I found Chester’s phone in the office earlier. He must have left it here by mistake before he…” She swallowed hard. “Before he died. I don’t know if the sheriff will want it, but I figured I’d better tell him about it.”

  “That’s probably a good idea,” I agreed.

  “Does it have any clues on it?” Sienna asked.

  “Clues?” Vicky sounded confused. Before Sienna could clarify, she shook her head. “The battery was dead. It’s the same kind of phone as mine, though, so I plugged it into my charger a few minutes ago.”

  “Have you heard anything from the sheriff recently?” I asked. “Has he made any progress with the investigations?”

  Vicky took another small bite of her cookie before responding. “He hasn’t told me much at all.” Her eyes grew damp again and she fished a tissue out of her pocket. “I wish I could stop seeing Chester in my mind, the way he was when I found him.” Her breath hitched. “But every time I close my eyes I see him.”

  “You found his body?” Sienna looked horrified.

  Vicky wiped at a tear and nodded. “I
couldn’t reach him by phone or text, so I went by his apartment and found the door unlocked. He was lying on the floor, covered in blood.” She scrunched her eyes shut. “It was awful.”

  “I’m so sorry you went through that,” I said.

  “Why would anyone want to hurt Chester?” she asked.

  “Maybe he knew who killed Wally?”

  “He would have said something if he did.”

  I tried to phrase my next question as gently as possible. “Were things still good between you and Chester when he died?”

  “Of course. I loved him.”

  “Enough to lie for him?”

  Her gaze cut toward me as sharply as a knife. “What do you mean?”

  “Chester was in Wildwood Cove the night Wally died, wasn’t he?”

  I expected her to at least try to deny it, but instead she broke down into sobs, surprising me and startling Sienna.

  “He knew he might be a suspect if the cops found out he was in town,” Vicky said once her sobs had subsided. “So he asked me to say he was with me.”

  “And that didn’t make you at all uncomfortable?” I asked.

  Vicky sniffled. “I didn’t see the harm in it because I knew he couldn’t have killed Wally. There’s no way he would have. I’m sure of it.”

  Since Chester was dead now, maybe she was right about that.

  “Um, would it be all right for me to use your washroom?” Sienna asked, shifting in her seat as if anxious to get away from the table.

  “Of course. It’s just past the office.” She gestured vaguely over her shoulder toward the back of the restaurant.

  “Thanks.” Sienna left us and headed in that direction.

  Before she disappeared from sight, she sent a conspiratorial grin over her shoulder and gave me a thumbs up. Vicky had her back to her and didn’t notice. I wanted to jump up and stop Sienna from doing whatever she was about to do, but I couldn’t without alerting Vicky. So instead I gulped down some steamed milk and hoped Sienna wouldn’t get up to too much mischief.

  Chapter 25

  I tried to keep Vicky engaged in conversation, but her heart clearly wasn’t in it. Not wanting to give up, I asked if she had any remaining family aside from her son. She replied that she had a couple of distant cousins in New England and another somewhere in Central America.

  “I hardly know them,” she said. “So I’ve really only got my son now.”

  “What happened with the missing cash? Did you ever find it?”

  “No, there’s still no sign of it. It’s not like I need it, since Wally left me everything he owned, but it’s strange how it disappeared.”

  “Have you seen Adam Silvester around lately?” I asked, wanting to see how she reacted to his name.

  To my surprise, a hint of happiness lit up her face. “Of course. Why do you ask?”

  “He was in need of money until recently. I wondered if there was a chance he could have taken the cash.”

  “No way. Not Adam. He’s a good guy. Besides, he has the money he needs now because I wrote him a check the other day.”

  I hadn’t expected that. “To pay for his daughter’s surgery?”

  Vicky nodded. “He wanted it to be a loan, but I couldn’t do that. In the end I convinced him to accept it as a gift for Tabitha.”

  “That was very generous of you.”

  “Not really. I have the money and Adam was always nice to me when we were growing up.” Her eyes filled with tears. “He’s the only friend I’ve got left.”

  Her half-finished cookie resting forgotten on the table, Vicky’s gaze drifted to the window behind me. She’d taken a few sips of her mocha but seemed to have forgotten about it as well. When Sienna slipped back into her seat, she fiddled with her soda can, her legs jiggling beneath the table. She shot a pointed look my way and I detected a light of excitement in her eyes. She clearly had something she wanted to tell me, something she didn’t want Vicky to hear.

  “Is there anything I can do for you, Vicky?” I asked, deciding to wrap up our visit.

  “No, but thank you. I really appreciate you coming by. You too, Sienna. Please thank your mom for the cookies.”

  Sienna pushed back her chair. “I will.”

  “Go ahead and take your drink if you’re not finished,” Vicky said with a nod at the can of cream soda.

  Sienna and I said some parting words to Vicky and left the waffle house together.

  “I feel so bad for her,” I said, casting a last glance through the window once we were on the sidewalk.

  “Me too,” Sienna said. “I mean, if she’s not a murderer.” She gave a little hop as we walked along the street. “Guess what.”

  “You were snooping.”

  “And I found something juicy.” She wrinkled her nose. “That’s a bad pun.”

  “Pun?”

  “You’ll see what I mean in a minute.”

  We waited for a car to drive past on Wildwood Road and then we dashed across to the other side, setting off along the grassy verge toward our neighborhood.

  “You know how Vicky said Chester had left his phone in the office?” Sienna said after she’d taken a swig of her cream soda.

  “Yes,” I said slowly. I could guess where this was going.

  “I decided to take a quick look and found it on the desk.”

  “This is where I should tell you to keep your nose out of the whole murder thing, but I guess that would make me a hypocrite.”

  “And boring. Come on, you want to know what I found, don’t you?”

  “I do,” I admitted, but not without a touch of guilt. “But after this, both of us should avoid snooping through other people’s property. If either of us were to get caught by the wrong person…”

  “Okay, no more snooping. Can I tell you what I found out?” She had a hop in her step again, and I suspected she was about to burst from keeping her discovery to herself.

  “What did you find?”

  “An email.” She practically shoved her phone into my hands. “I took a picture of it.”

  Sure enough, the photo displayed on her phone showed the text of a short email. I zoomed in on it and read it over.

  I got the tickets! It’s time to start our new life of sunshine and riches. Costa Rica, here we come!

  The author had signed off with xoxo, but no name. There was no name associated with the sender’s address either, although the address itself contained the name Juicy Mama, followed by a string of numbers.

  “Juicy Mama,” Sienna said, making a face. “Gross. What kind of nickname is that?”

  I handed her phone back to her, thinking over what I’d read.

  Sienna shook her soda can, the remains of her drink sloshing about inside. “So? Don’t you think the email is suspicious?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Possibly?” She gaped at me in disbelief.

  “Hold on. When was that email sent?”

  Sienna checked her phone. “Friday morning.”

  “The morning after Wally’s death.”

  “See?” Sienna said. “Suspicious, right?”

  “Okay,” I conceded. “You might have something there. Whoever wrote the email thought they were about to start a new life with lots of money. Quite possibly Wally’s money.”

  “Exactly. So this Juicy Mama person—ugh—thought she was going to get Wally’s money, and she sure doesn’t seem cut up about his death. It sounds like she and Chester were in cahoots.”

  “It does sound like that’s possible,” I agreed cautiously, not wanting to jump to any conclusions too quickly. “But that’s probably not the only explanation.”

  “But the most likely one. And don’t you think Vicky must have sent the email? She’s inheriting Wally’s money and she had a thing going on with Chester. So they wanted to take off somewher
e sunny with Wally’s millions and killed him so they could do that.”

  “And, like we thought before, Vicky went out of town to make sure she had an alibi. Meanwhile Chester killed her brother. Then Vicky lied, saying Chester was with her, so they’d both have an alibi.”

  “Yes! But Vicky didn’t really want to share her millions with him,” Sienna said. “So that was the end of Chester.”

  I frowned and slowed my steps as we reached my driveway. I still had the same problem with that theory. “But don’t you think she seems genuinely upset that Chester’s gone?”

  Sienna shrugged. “Like I said before, maybe she’s a good actress. Or, it could be that she regrets killing him. Either way, she’s guilty.”

  “We don’t know that for sure.” When I saw the light of excitement in her eyes dim, I quickly added, “But it’s definitely possible. And when Vicky gives Chester’s phone to Sheriff Georgeson, he’ll see the email.”

  “So the case could be solved any day now.” Her enthusiasm made a quick comeback.

  “Let’s hope so.”

  We parted ways, Sienna heading farther along the road and me following the driveway to my house. I hadn’t quite reached the front steps when I heard a vehicle turn off the road. Recognizing Brett’s pickup truck, I waited for him to park and get out of the vehicle.

  “Good timing,” I said with a smile.

  He kissed me and put an arm around my shoulders as we headed for the front door. “I stopped to visit my dad for a minute or two. Thanks for taking the groceries by. My mom really appreciates it and my dad was happy to see you.”

  “I was happy to see him too. And your mom.”

  Once inside, we greeted the animals. Then I got busy preparing dinner while Brett took Bentley out for a walk. He joined me in the kitchen once he was back, and I told him about my afternoon.

  “Sounds like Ray really needs to have a look at Chester’s phone,” Brett commented.

  “He should,” I agreed. “Vicky said she was going to give it to him. Although, if she’s guilty and she realizes there’s evidence on the phone, maybe she’ll change her mind.”