Murder with a Twist

by Allyson K. Abbott

  Duncan gaped at me like I’d just said the most inane thing he’d ever heard. For a moment, I thought I’d made a fool of myself somehow, but then he grabbed me by the shoulders and said, “Mack, you’re a bloody genius!”

  We heard voices then, and Duncan went over to the door to meet with Jimmy, who had arrived with Theo, Will, and Cindy. I stayed inside the apartment while they talked outside in the hallway and, after a few minutes, Duncan came back inside with the threesome in tow.

  “Where is Shelly?” I asked Duncan.

  “She said she couldn’t do it. She didn’t want to come back here. She’s gone to stay at her mother’s place in Wauwatosa.”

  Theo looked scared; his eyes darted back and forth nervously. Will and Cindy, on the other hand, appeared cool, calm, and indifferent.

  Duncan turned to Cindy first. “When was the last time you were here?”

  Cindy scrunched her face in thought for a few seconds and then said, “I don’t know . . . a week or two, maybe.” She turned and looked at Will. “When did Dan invite us over for that pizza thing?”

  “Two weeks ago Friday,” Will said.

  Cindy turned to Duncan with a smug smile and said, “There you go, detective.”

  I couldn’t tell if she was lying. Her flame flared for a few seconds before settling back down. The only thing I was sure of was that she was a smooth operator who didn’t rattle easily.

  Duncan turned to Will. “How about you, Will, when were you last here?”

  Will thought a moment and said, “Monday, I think. Yeah, Monday. I gave Dan a ride home because his car was in the shop. He invited me in for a beer. I didn’t stay long . . . maybe an hour or so.”

  I had a strong sense that Will was telling the truth. The taste of his voice stayed consistently sweet, no more bitterness.

  “How about you, Theo?” Duncan asked. “When were you here last?”

  His facial muscles started to twitch and he hesitated for a second or two. “Um . . . I think . . . it was last week some time.” The sweet cream taste of his voice, and consequently his credibility, became spoiled.

  “Have you ever used this bathroom?” Duncan asked, pointing toward the room.

  Theo’s eyes shifted even faster and I could tell he was trying to analyze his answer before he gave it. Was that because he was afraid? Guilty? Both? I’d been feeling a bubbly, watery sensation on my arms and legs, as if they were immersed in carbonated water. At first it was very faint, but it had gotten progressively stronger as the amount of sweat dripping off Theo’s face increased. At the moment it felt like a spa tub jet.

  “Yeah, I’ve used it,” Theo said, trying unsuccessfully to not look rattled by the question. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “We just want to know where we might expect to find your fingerprints,” Duncan explained in a calm, relaxed voice. The bubbly sensation eased as I saw Theo sigh with relief, but it was a short-lived reprieve. “Ever take a dump in there?” Duncan asked. He was still using his buddy tone and he smiled and tried to look abashed, I assumed to put Theo at ease. But it had the exact opposite effect.

  “That’s very personal,” Theo said.

  Will scoffed a laugh, but Cindy was staring at Theo with a laser-sharp focus and a very intense expression.

  “Sometimes we have to get personal,” Duncan said. “So, I’m sorry for the intrusion, but have you?”

  Sweat was running down the sides of Theo’s face now and he was shifting nervously from one foot to the other. “No, I haven’t,” he said, and I knew instantly he was lying because his taste grew rancid. “I don’t like to do that anywhere but my own place, you know?”

  Cindy let out a snort of derision that made Theo blush.

  “I do know,” Duncan said, smiling at Theo and ignoring Cindy. “In fact, I’m the same way. I’ll do anything to be on my own pot. There has been a time or two when I had an emergency and had to do it somewhere else and, let me tell you, I hate that! Did that ever happen to you?”

  Duncan’s voice was relaxed and jovial, and for a split second it worked; Theo looked relaxed and the glimmer of a smile started to form. He gave a half nod and started to say something, but stopped himself. The frightened look returned and the bubbles were coming fast and furious.

  “Did that ever happen to you here?” Duncan asked. Cindy’s expression morphed into something scary as she stared at Theo. “Because if that’s never happened to you here,” Duncan pressed on, “we wouldn’t find your fingerprints inside that roll of toilet paper in the bathroom, or on the spindle it’s sitting on, right?”

  It was intriguing to watch the emotions play over Theo’s face and experience the kaleidoscope of sensations it triggered in me. Cindy was glaring at Theo; Will kept shifting his gaze from one person to another, looking utterly confused.

  Theo, whose eyes were bugging, looked like he was about to drown in his own sweat. Suddenly he blurted out, “I didn’t take the money and I didn’t kill him, either! It was Cindy.”

  “Shut up, you lying little—” Cindy spat out, her voice a veritable conflagration of anger.

  “I’m going to stop you both right there,” Duncan said. He then recited the Miranda Warning and when he was done, he focused on Theo. “What do you want to tell me?”

  “Shut the hell up, Theo,” Cindy warned. Her fists were opening and closing, as if she wanted nothing more than to cold cock Theo. Despite the disparity in their sizes, I had a feeling she could do it with ease.

  “She made me help her,” Theo said, casting a nervous eye at Cindy, who was standing with both hands clenched, giving Theo a death stare. “But I didn’t steal the money and I didn’t kill him. Cindy did. I just helped her cover it up by faking the hanging thing.”

  “You lying bastard!” Cindy seethed. “I’m not going to stand here and listen to this.” She shifted her angry gaze at Duncan. “I don’t know what Theo is trying to do, but he’s obviously not right in the head.”

  “She told me that if I helped her, she’d be my girlfriend,” Theo said.

  Will, whose look of confusion had only grown, gaped at Cindy. “Cindy, is he telling the truth?”

  “Of course not!” Cindy insisted irritably. “He’s obviously deluded. He must have a crush on me or something and he thinks we stand a chance as a couple.” She shot a glance at Theo and sneered. “As if I’d sleep with someone like him.”

  “But she did,” Theo said. “She did sleep with me, and I can prove it.”

  “This is ridiculous. You are ridiculous,” Cindy said, and she turned as if to leave.

  “I videotaped the whole thing,” Theo said.

  Cindy stopped dead in her tracks.

  Duncan said, “You’re not going anywhere, Cindy. There is another detective and a uniformed officer outside that door who will see to it.”

  Cindy turned around and glared at him, her lips pursed, her face pinched.

  Will said, “Jesus, Cindy . . . you slept with him?” The look of horror and disgust on his face left no doubt as to his feelings on the matter.

  “Get over yourself,” Cindy snapped at Will. Then she shifted her glare back to Theo. “I should have known you couldn’t be trusted.”

  Duncan walked over, opened the apartment door, and ushered the uniformed cop and Jimmy inside. “Place all three of them under arrest,” he said.

  “I want a lawyer,” Cindy said. Now her flame guttered, like a lit candle caught in a crosswind.

  “Fine,” Duncan said. “Take them down to the station and book them. If they don’t want to talk, they can sit in jail and stew for a while.”

  Theo, who looked utterly petrified, said, “I’ll tell you anything you want. I didn’t kill Dan and I didn’t take the money. Cindy did it. She told me she went over to Dan’s late last night, doped up his drinks with some Xanax she had, and when he passed out, she sat on his chest and held that rope that was around his neck until he quit breathing. She’s the one who killed him. She’s the one who typed up that su
icide note. And she’s the one who’s been stealing the money. She called me around four this morning after it was all done to come over to Dan’s place and help her string him up because she wasn’t strong enough to do it herself. She said she’d share the money with me if I helped her.” Theo’s voice was sweet, cool cream again and I believed every word he said.

  “You’re still an accessory,” Duncan said. “However, if you’re willing to talk, maybe you can work out a deal.”

  Cindy, who was being cuffed by the officer, shot a look of pure venom at Theo. “Shut your damned mouth, you cretin,” she hissed. “If you don’t, I swear I’ll make you pay.” She then looked at Duncan before fixing her glare on me. “I’ll make you all pay. Every one of you . . . you bastards!” Her flame was at a roar again, and fire-licked bits, like drops of lit gasoline, fell to the ground.

  The look on her face made me step back, away from her. I believed her threat of revenge and, knowing what I did about her now, it scared me. The fact that she was handcuffed and being hauled away to jail did little to lessen my fear.

  Jimmy and Duncan helped cuff the boys and then escorted them down to the cars. Theo and Will were placed together in Jimmy’s car and I could only imagine what their conversation would be on the way to the police station. I knew it would be interesting and almost wished I could ride along and listen in.

  Despite my lingering fears regarding Cindy’s threat, I felt good that the case had been solved so quickly, and that I’d had some small part in it. As I watched the cop cars drive away, I thought that, all in all, it had been a very satisfying day.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t last.

  Chapter 11

  The bar was still crowded when we got back—a good thing for my bottom line, though it again made me feel guilty that I hadn’t been there to help. As usual, my very capable staff had things well under control, and the crime group was in their regular spot with several tables pushed together.

  One of the things I had done with my inheritance was expand my staffing to handle the booming business so I’d have the option of not working all the time. At first, I’d thought it was a dumb move, one that didn’t make a lot of fiscal sense. But I discovered that using that time to schmooze with my customers and to oversee the operations to make sure things ran smoothly was much smarter than being a part of the everyday workforce. I still tended bar quite often; it was something I loved to do. And occasionally I’d take a turn in the kitchen and experiment with some new food items that I would then try out on some of my customers. So far, things had gone as well as could be expected.

  Duncan and I headed over to the Capone table where Carter, Sam, Alicia, Holly, Tad, and Cora were seated. Cora was showing Sam something on her laptop, but she quickly closed it as we approached. I suspected that whatever she was showing him wasn’t fit for public consumption, because Cora dallies in some rather questionable websites whose ratings look like a tic-tac-toe win.

  After greeting everyone and making sure they had plenty of food and drinks, I leaned over and whispered in Cora’s ear. “Join us in my office?”

  Duncan and I headed that way and Cora followed as directed, bringing her laptop along.

  “What’s up?” Cora asked once we were behind closed doors.

  “I did my first real crime scene today,” I told her, settling onto the couch I had along one wall.

  Cora took the chair behind my desk where I usually sit, and opened her laptop. “How did it go?” she asked. “Was it hard for you?”

  I nodded. “It was definitely unpleasant. But I got through it.”

  “She did well,” Duncan said. “She was able to pick up on some valuable clues.”

  “Clues you didn’t really need. You already knew it was a staged suicide,” I said.

  “That’s true,” Duncan said. “But you definitely added insight into the process, particularly with the toilet paper thing.”

  “Toilet paper?” Cora said, looking back and forth between the two of us. “Should I ask?”

  “It’s not as bad as it sounds,” I said. “I happened to sense that something was moved or different in the victim’s bathroom when we were there the first time, but when we went back I didn’t get the same feeling. And the toilet paper roll was obviously a new one. I mentally walked through what you do when you change a toilet paper roll and suggested there might be fingerprints inside the tube, or on the spindle the paper rolls on. Fortunately, one of the culprits involved was the one who had put that roll on. Revealing the fact that we knew that, or at least suspected it, and might be able to get prints from inside the roll was enough to elicit a confession.”

  “Impressive,” Cora said. Duncan’s cell phone rang and he put himself in the corner to talk. “And I’m guessing you have some new impressions for me to record as a result,” Cora said to me.

  “I do, if you don’t mind.”

  “You know I’m happy to do it.”

  Cora and I spent the next few minutes recording some of my reactions until Duncan finished his call. “You were spot on, Mack,” he said. “The techs found prints on the inside of the toilet paper roll and on the spindle. And Theo is singing like the proverbial bird. Apparently the whole thing with stringing up Dan’s body made him so nervous, his bowels got in an uproar and he had to use the bathroom. He admits to putting a new roll of toilet paper on the spindle, so I’m pretty sure the prints will be his. And he said that Cindy was the mastermind behind the whole thing. She flirted with Theo and apparently slept with him, knowing he had a crush on her. She convinced him to help her by getting Dan’s passwords, which she then used to move some money around and place it in her own offshore accounts. She knew that if anyone discovered the missing money, it would look like Dan was the one who had taken it. Once she heard that the theft had been discovered, she decided to kill Dan and make it look like a suicide so that the blame would stay with him. She planned it well until the end, but she couldn’t stage the hanging by herself. Since she had to ensure Theo’s silence, she got him to help her with the suicide staging, thinking that his involvement would keep him quiet.”

  “Well done, Mack,” Cora said. “I knew you could do it.”

  I wasn’t as convinced as Cora was. Cindy’s final threat was still uppermost in my mind. It reminded me that my involvement was more than a simple game. The stakes were life and death, and that included my own.

  I turned to Duncan and said, “If you already knew that Thornton didn’t hang himself, why did you take me there? Was it some kind of test?”

  “In a way, yes. But simply knowing it wasn’t a suicide didn’t solve the crime. I truly wanted your help. I thought it might help us figure things out quicker, and I was right.”

  “Still, it was rather harsh. You could have picked something a little less graphic for my first real case,” I said, recalling Dan’s purple, bloated face. “Especially since I’m not convinced you needed my input at all. You would’ve solved it on your own eventually. I’m pretty sure Theo would’ve caved at some point, even without the toilet paper thing.”

  “He probably would have,” Duncan admitted. “But whether you admit it to yourself or not, you were a big help. I’m sorry if it was hard for you, but it wasn’t a wasted effort. You provided us with insights we might not have otherwise had.”

  “But I could just as easily have led you down the wrong path. You admitted you already knew Thornton didn’t hang himself, and that would have led you to suspect that the note wasn’t legitimate, and that other people had to have been in the apartment at the time of his death.”

  “But we might not have known there were two people in there close to when he died. Or that one of them was a woman.”

  “I didn’t say it was a woman, just that it was someone who was smaller, lighter.”

  “Hold up, guys,” Cora said, looking at the two of us with a confused expression. “You’re going too fast for me. What impression was this? I need to get it down.”

  “Sometimes it’s not about wha
t you know, but rather what the suspects think you know,” Duncan said, ignoring Cora’s protest. He narrowed his eyes at me. “And you knew there had been more than one person in that apartment close to the time of death.”

  He had me there. “I did,” I admitted. “There were two distinct fragrances in there. And while it’s true that smells can drift, they don’t do so inside of a closed environment as much as people think. Molecules of smell tend to settle on things and linger there.”

  “I need to know more about these smells,” Cora insisted.

  “See, there you go,” Duncan said with a smile. “If we hadn’t already solved this case, your knowledge that there were two people inside that apartment around the time of death would have given us a better focus in our investigation.”

  Cora sighed with frustration and leaned back in her chair, arms folded over her chest. “If you want me to accurately record this stuff, you guys are going to have to explain yourselves better,” she said.

  “Sorry, Cora,” I said, finally giving her the attention she wanted. “We knew that Dan’s girlfriend, Shelly, was there in the apartment pretty close to the time of death because she was the one who found him. She swore she didn’t go anywhere except the foyer, the kitchen, and the bathroom. And that was consistent with the smells I got from her when we talked to her and the smells I picked up elsewhere in the apartment. It made me hear something like a washing machine running . . . wet and mechanical.”

  “That doesn’t sound particularly appealing,” Cora said, making a face.

  “I guess not, but it is what it is. I heard that washing machine sound elsewhere in the apartment, but only by the door, the kitchen, and the guest bathroom. Later, when we explored the rest of the apartment, the sound disappeared until we got into the bedroom. Then it surged when we were near Thornton’s bed. I’m guessing her smell was stronger in the sheets for reasons we can all guess.”