“Canton Walters wasn’t working for the Naughty and Spice Toy Company. Never had and never could since they only have female party givers.”
“Interesting. So what was our victim doing the whole time he said he was working for them and how was he making money?”
I heard the excitement in Alex’s voice that I felt too. Now this case was about to get really interesting.
“And I found out something else. The two party givers in the Sunset Ridge area are Delilah Roberts and Elizabeth Freely. Delilah is known around town as the happily married wife of Dr. Alan Roberts, the town chiropractor. He’s a bit older than she is, but there’s never been any sense or gossip that they’re anything but a happy couple. And you know Elizabeth Freely already, our favorite desk clerk who sees dead men at the continental breakfast.”
“You’ve been busy this morning, Poppy.”
“Unlike someone else who seems to be slacking off, unless you have some big news to tell me.”
He hesitated for a moment, but then said, “No, nothing to tell. I think we need to go speak to Elizabeth at the Hotel Piermont again. It’s daytime, so she should be behind the desk. Can you be ready in ten minutes?”
Still in my tank top and shorts I’d thrown on after my shower and without a stitch of makeup on my face, I said yes anyway and hurried upstairs to get ready. Interrogating our first official suspect was more important than looking my best, and anyway, I’d washed up so it wasn’t like I was a complete mess.
Alex said little on the short drive to the Hotel Piermont, but something seemed off about him. I didn’t get the sense that he was ever the type to talk about what was on his mind when it came to personal things, so I let it go, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that he didn’t seem the same as usual.
We got to the hotel but found someone different manning the desk. An older woman who reminded me of the housekeeper nobody liked stood in an oversized yellow t-shirt leaning over the desk, her large chest resting on the countertop. She wore a little too much makeup, which made her look cheap.
As we walked toward where she stood, she practically grunted, “Can I help you?”
Alex introduced us and said in an authoritative voice I’d rarely heard come out of his mouth, “We’re looking for Elizabeth Freely. Isn’t she working today?
The new, far less pleasant desk clerk stood up straight and folded her arms across her enormous chest. “She was supposed to, but they called me in to fill in for her.”
He looked at me, and I saw he shared my distaste for this woman. “Where does she live? I need her address.”
The woman looked up Elizabeth’s address and gave it to him. Without saying another word to her, Alex gave me a tiny smile and then turned on his heels and walked out the front door. I followed him to the car and got in before giving any comment on the new Hotel Piermont clerk.
“She’s a real beauty, isn’t she?”
He winked at me. “I’m sure she does wonders for business, but then again, I get the feeling the people who check in there aren’t really interested in who’s giving them the key to their rooms.”
We drove the half mile or so to Elizabeth’s apartment on Carson Street in the far western section of town. As he parked the car, he noticed the difference in this part of Sunset Ridge from the rest of town.
“Not exactly like Victorian Row,” he commented, referring to the far statelier homes like those the wealthier people of Sunset Ridge owned.
I looked around at the far less opulent single and double block homes that made up Carson Street and this part of the town and agreed. There were no wrought iron fences or big yards here. We walked to the dingy white house at the address the desk clerk had given him and saw it had been divided into three apartments, each with its own entrance. Elizabeth’s was on the second floor in the back.
“This used to be a nicer section of town when I was young. It never had the homes the mayor and the Woodward family lived in, but it wasn’t like this. Then the Treemont Farm went out of business, and it slowly became like it is now. A lot of the people who lived here used to work on the farm, but when it closed down, they couldn’t afford their homes anymore and landlords took them over. So what used to be one house is now three or even four apartments like the house she lives in.”
Alex listened to my mini history lesson and nodded. “It happens everywhere. Baltimore has gone through the same thing, just on a much larger scale.”
I spied the stairs to Elizabeth’s apartment and pointed toward them. “Yeah, but the difference is there’s always a chance for new businesses to come to a bigger city. Here in Sunset Ridge, that’s probably not going to happen. The Treemont Farm has been out of business for over a decade, and nobody’s expecting it to reopen, so things will only get worse, not better.”
We walked around the back of the house and up the rickety wood stairs to apartment 2B. The door was open, and merely standing there I felt the stifling heat come from inside the apartment. Elizabeth wore a black tank top and jean short shorts and sat on an old brown couch watching television in front of a fan blowing directly on her. Alex rapped his knuckles on the screen door, instantly getting her attention.
Wiping the sweat from her hairline, she stood from the couch and walked toward us with a big smile. “Officer Montero, isn’t it? What brings you to me today?”
With every word, I couldn’t help but think that Elizabeth would be perfect for the customer service job at Naughty and Spice. She had the same sultry way of talking as Candy and Audrey had.
“We’d like to speak to you about the Canton Walters case. May we come in?”
Elizabeth stopped in front of the screen door and slowly slid her hand down the front of her neck until her fingertips reached the swell of her breasts bulging out of her tank top. She still hadn’t looked at me once, focusing exclusively on Alex in his police officer uniform, and asked, “Don’t you need a warrant or something if you want to come in to someone’s house?”
With an all-too-sexy grin, Alex said, “I just want to talk to you and ask you some questions, Elizabeth. I don’t need a warrant for that.”
And the voice full of syrupy charm was back.
It had the exact desired effect on her, and with no more thought, she opened the door for us to come in. I guess I should have been pleased, but it almost felt like it was too easy for him. She offered us a place on her couch next to her, but the mere idea of sitting that close to anyone in the heat that had taken over that apartment made me refuse. I expected Alex to take her up on her offer, if only to have a chance to watch her closely as he questioned her, but he surprised me by taking a position just inside the door.
“What can I do for you today?” Elizabeth asked looking up at him as she reclined against the back of the couch.
Alex took out his notepad and pen and flipped through it until he found a blank page. The entire motion seemed to take much longer than it usually did, and I had the sense he was intentionally dragging it out to throw her off balance.
Then he looked directly at her and said, “We’ve found out that Canton Walters was a sales rep for Naughty and Spice Sex Toy Company. We’ve also found out you too host parties for the company. This seems like a strange coincidence, so I’m wondering if you had ever seen him at one of those parties.”
She shook her head and flashed him a toothy grin. “Nope. I didn’t even know he worked for Naughty and Spice. That’s wild. I thought all their party givers were female. I think I remember hearing it was a company policy.”
“So it’s merely happenstance that a man who was murdered at the place you work at was also associated with another place you work at? That seems like an incredible coincidence, don’t you think, Elizabeth?”
Coming out of my mouth, those questions would have resulted in her throwing me out of her house, but the way he said it didn’t seem to bother her in the least. Her smile never faded and she shook her head.
“I’m not sure what to say to that, Officer Montero, but I did
n’t know the guy. You can ask my manager, Giselle Martin, if she knows anything about him. She’s the person who gets me all of my stock. I can give you her number, if you’d like. She can tell you all about how good I am at the sex toy business.”
For the first time since we’d arrived, Elizabeth looked over at me standing next to Alex. “Have you ever been to a party, Poppy?”
“No, I don’t think I have.”
“It’s a lot of fun! Women these days are liberated, and they want to have fun in the bedroom. Would you like to see some of the most popular products? You two could have a very good time with them.”
Even without seeing my face, I knew my cheeks turned bright red at her offer. I merely shook my head and corrected her faulty assumption that Alex and I were a couple. “We aren’t together. Thanks, though.”
Her eyes grew wide in surprise. “Really? I would have bet money you two were.”
I didn’t bother to ask why she was acting like a dog in heat every time Alex was around if she thought we were together, and Alex quickly changed the subject back to questioning her about Canton Walters.
“Where were you the night Mr. Walters was murdered, Elizabeth?”
She sat straight up and thought about the question for a minute. “I was right here in my apartment all night.”
“Were you alone?” he asked, all the charm gone from his voice now.
“Unfortunately, for one of the few times recently, yes. I decided to stay home that night and take it easy. I’ve been going out a lot with my friends to a club a few towns over, but I didn’t feel like drinking, so I sat in front of my handy dandy fan here and just let the air blow all over my body.”
“So you were home all night alone and didn’t leave here until the next day when you went to work at the Hotel Piermont where we saw you that morning?”
Nodding, she said, “Sounds about right.”
Alex flipped the pages of his notepad until he reached the notes from our first discussion with her. “Do you still think you saw Mr. Walters at breakfast that morning?”
For the first time since he began questioning her, Elizabeth Freely didn’t seem as confident as she had before. She looked away, avoiding our gazes, and shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought I did. I really did. Now I’m not sure since I guess he was dead before I even got to work that morning.”
“Okay, thank you, Elizabeth. If we have any more questions, I’ll let you know. Have a good day.”
His implied threat that he didn’t believe the answers she’d given him clearly frightened her, and she quickly said, “Okay. I didn’t tell you anything that wasn’t one hundred percent true, though. I’ll be here or at the hotel if you need to talk to me again, though.”
Although he didn’t respond to her and simply walked out, I hung back and tried to make her feel less like he’d just put her on warning that he thought she was guilty. “Thank you, Elizabeth. Try to stay cool.”
She relaxed and sat back against the couch to enjoy the full effect of the fan again. “I really did think you two were a couple, you know? I’ve got a pretty good sixth sense about things like this. You sure I’m wrong?”
“Yep. Stay cool.”
I caught up with Alex who had gotten down to the bottom level apartment below Elizabeth’s and was already speaking to her downstairs neighbor through the screen in her front door. The woman told him she didn’t know if Elizabeth had left at any time that night of Canton Walters’ murder because she had been away at the beach until that very morning.
As we walked around the house to knock on the other main floor apartment’s door, he asked, “Did I do something wrong?”
Confused, I shook my head. “No. Why?”
He stopped at the second apartment and before he knocked on the door, he smiled. “I figured since you stayed back to talk to her you must have been apologizing for something you thought I did wrong.”
I didn’t know if he was toying with me or not, so I took a step forward and stood toe-to-toe with him. He towered over me by more than half a foot, but it didn’t matter. I craned my neck and said, “Did you do something wrong? I’m the student here, so if you did, it would help me to learn.”
Alex stared down at me for a few seconds and shook his head. “You’re a funny one, Poppy. No, I don’t think I did anything wrong up there.”
“I’m getting used to that smarmy thing you do with certain women, if that’s what you’re referring to.”
“Good. Maybe now you’ve come around to the way I do things.”
His concern that I thought he’d done something wrong made me chuckle, and I stepped around him to knock on the apartment’s door. “Let’s not go that far.”
The second downstairs neighbor couldn’t say whether Elizabeth had been home all night either, so we asked around her neighborhood and found no one who could say one way or another if they saw her during the time Canton Walters was murdered.
We walked back to the car, and when he started it to leave, I pointed him in the direction of Sunset Ridge’s extremely popular chiropractor’s home back near the Victorian houses. “Onward to Delilah Roberts, or are we leaving that until tomorrow?”
“No time like the present. We’ve got our second suspect, so maybe we can get a third. What are the chances Elizabeth and Delilah are friends because of their connection with Naughty and Spice?”
I thought about the possibility for a moment and decided against it. “Slim, fat, and none. They may both like sex toys, but they’re worlds apart. My guess is they aren’t close at all.”
With a grin, he said, “Good. I prefer talking to suspects when they haven’t been given a warning I’m coming.”
Chapter Six
Dr. Alan Roberts and his wife Delilah lived at 933 Richmond Lane, deep in the heart of what Alex sarcastically called Victorian Row. As the most popular doctor in town, Roberts’ waiting room at his chiropractic office on Madison Street was always full. I’d gone to him a few times a couple years ago when my lower back had started giving me problems. His combination of cracking me in all the right places and giving me exercises to do each night worked like a charm, so I hadn’t been back since.
This is all I really knew about Roberts, but I assumed that wasn’t what Alex had meant when he asked about him, so I tried to remember any impression the good doctor had given me on those few office visits as we walked down the sidewalk to the couple’s slate blue and white painted Victorian house.
“He’s older than his wife. I remember that being the topic of conversation for the gossips in town when they married about five years ago. The busybodies were sure she was a gold-digger, and I distinctly remember hearing the First Lady claim that Delilah would leave him before they hit the wood anniversary. I think it bothered them that even though she and her husband had money, they kept to themselves and didn’t associate with the upper crust of Sunset Ridge.”
“The wood anniversary? What’s that?” Alex asked in a way that told me he knew nothing of the traditional anniversary gift list the old women in town knew by heart.
“Wood’s the fifth, I believe. Paper’s the first, cotton’s the second, and then the big ones are silver for the twenty-fifth and gold for the fiftieth anniversary.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “You seem to know a lot about anniversary gifts for a single woman.”
I didn’t appreciate the verbal swipe at my bachelorette status and pushed on his arm. “Hello? Society page writer. And for your information, any well-read person knows at least the silver and gold anniversaries. You’re just a Philistine.”
Alex climbed the front steps to the Roberts’ grand Victorian wrap-around porch that surrounded the front half of the home and turned to look down at me still standing on the sidewalk. I truly enjoyed how comfortable we’d gotten with each other in the past few months, and now as I looked him, I worried that would all go away if Bethany began dating him. It was stupid and petty of me, but I didn’t want to lose what he and I had between us.
; With a smile, he asked, “You coming, or is this merely a job for a Philistine?”
He rang the doorbell as I walked up the stairs, and by the time I joined him on the welcome mat, the massive blue painted wood door had opened and Delilah Roberts stood staring out at us with a look of worry etched into her classically beautiful features.
“Is there something wrong, officer?”
“I’m Officer Montero and this is Poppy McGuire. We’re investigating the murder of Canton Walters, and we’d like to speak to you about it. May we come in?”
“Yes, of course.” She stepped back to let us enter her foyer and continued, “I read about it in the newspaper. So awful.”
Delilah closed the door behind me and walked quickly to catch up to Alex, who had already made his way into her living room. As she passed me, I watched her. She truly was beautiful. Long blond hair framed her oval shaped face perfectly, giving her a youthful, fresh look, and her wide green eyes were dark and intense. Added to that was a body any twenty-year-old would kill to have, and the combination was near perfection.
But she looked different from other women who possessed beauty like hers. Something in the way her perfectly shaped mouth turned down at the corners unless she was smiling told me she had more unhappiness than those who hadn’t been blessed with all her physical gifts.
She was stunning, though, so naturally, I fully expected Alex to turn on that charm of his to get what he wanted to know out of her.
“Officer Montero, I’m not sure what I would know about that unfortunate man’s death,” she said softly as she offered the two of us a seat in the wingback chairs that faced the sofa. “I’m sure I didn’t know him.”
“Please feel free to call me Alex. May I call you Delilah?”
The formality that had seemed so thoroughly a part of her before that moment instantly melted away, and she smiled at him as she took her place on the sofa opposite us. “Yes, please do. Thank you, Alex.”
Turning to look at me, she said, “And I know you, Poppy. You’ve written very graciously about a number of my dinner parties I’ve held for my husband.”
After Hours Page 6