After Hours

by Anina Collins

  “Thank you, Delilah. It’s always nice to know the subjects of your work appreciate what you wrote. The ladies who share things with me always tell me that your dinners are the living end.”

  She demurely dipped her head, as if to bow to me, and I had to admit I couldn’t imagine this woman plunging a knife into anyone’s back, least of all Canton Walters’ as he sat in a room at the less-than-reputable Hotel Piermont. She just didn’t fit the image of the killer I’d created in my mind.

  “Now Delilah, you say you’re sure you didn’t know him. Would you look at this picture and tell me if you’re still sure you didn’t?”

  Alex put his notepad and pen down on the table and held up a picture of Canton Walters his wife had given us to help with the investigation since showing people a picture of a dead man didn’t seem like it would work with the likes of Delilah Roberts. She leaned forward to take the picture from his hold and stared down at it for a long time before reaching back across the coffee table to give it to him again.

  “No, I’m sorry. I don’t know this man,” she said quietly.

  Alex placed the picture in his pocket and picked up his pad and pen again as he leaned back in his chair. Now I was sure he’d turn on that charm.

  “We’ve been told you were a party giver for Naughty and Spice Sex Toys. Is that true?”

  At first she simply nodded as she averted our glances, but then she answered, “Yes.”

  “We’ve also been told that man, Canton Walters, was also employed by the Naughty and Spice Company. Do you know anything about that?”

  Still unable to face us, she shook her head. “No. I don’t know anything about that.”

  “So you’ve never met Canton Walters and never seen him before I handed you that picture a few moments ago?” Alex asked with a sharpness to his voice that surprised me. Of all the women I’d seen him question, other than Canton’s wife, Delilah was by far the most beautiful and deserving of his charm act. Far lesser women had gotten far sweeter treatment from him.

  “No,” she answered in a tiny, shaky voice.

  Whatever Alex thought he was doing, it wasn’t working, so I jumped in. If we ever wanted to hear anything other than the word no for an answer, a new tactic was in order.

  “Delilah, you don’t have to be embarrassed about being a Naughty and Spice party giver. Alex doesn’t know anything about it, and I’m like any other woman. I like a good time as much as the rest. So please don’t think we’re judging you for hosting those parties. It’s just a chance for some ladies to drink some wine and have a few laughs, right?”

  For the first time since Alex began questioning her, Delilah turned to face us and a gentle smile crept onto her face. “We just like to have a good time sometimes. We don’t hurt anyone with the parties. It’s just married women like myself getting together like you said. For a few laughs.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Alex open his mouth to ask her more questions, so I gently put my hand on his knee to stop him and continued with my far less confrontational approach. This was one time a woman’s touch was definitely in order.

  “Exactly. It’s just harmless fun. We talked to Elizabeth Freely, the other woman who gives Naughty and Spice parties in this area, and she said the same thing. Do you know her?”

  Those green eyes of Delilah’s grew wide, and she shook her head. “No, I don’t. I have to admit I don’t really associate with anyone else who holds parties for them. I just have them every so often for my friends.”

  I believed her on that. She and Elizabeth were just as I’d suspected—separated by far too many social levels to be friends.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t more forthcoming. I’m just a little embarrassed about the parties. My husband has never liked them. He says it’s not proper for a doctor’s wife to sell things like that. He doesn’t understand how boring life is now that I don’t work anymore, and the parties are just silly fun to break up the monotony of life sometimes.”

  The loneliness in her voice was impossible to miss, and I saw Alex jot something down in his notepad as she spoke. Oddly enough, I understood what she meant. I may not have been married and a stay-at-home wife, but life in Sunset Ridge could get tedious for anyone. That she had everything her heart could desire when it came to possessions didn’t mean she didn’t feel that same boredom and crave some distraction from the proper life she was expected to lead.

  “We need to find someone who knew Canton. He didn’t deserve to be left for dead in that hotel room as he filled out expense forms. That’s not right, is it?” I asked softly.

  Tears welled in Delilah’s eyes. “No, it’s not. I hope you find the person who did this to that poor man who deserved so much better. I truly do.”

  “Delilah! Where are you?” a male voice boomed from the back of the house. In seconds, the man appeared in the doorway, and I recognized him as Dr. Alan Roberts.

  Ten years older than his beautiful wife, his grey hair and deep crow’s feet around his pale blue eyes made him look more like fifteen or twenty years older than her. Tall and wiry, he had a flinty look about him that made him look angrier than when I’d gone to see him just a few years ago.

  He walked directly into the room to stand behind his wife on the sofa and asked, “What’s going on here?”

  She looked back at him and forced a smile. “This is Officer Montero and Poppy McGuire. They needed some information about my parties because that man who was murdered was involved with the company too.”

  Alan Roberts squeezed his wife’s shoulder until she winced and then slowly released his hold on her. “I can’t imagine why. There’s nothing illegal about them.”

  Alex spoke up and directed his question at Delilah. “So you have never seen our victim before, not even on the street?”

  The doctor came around the sofa and sat beside his wife. Taking her hand in his, he answered for her. “My wife would no more know a murder victim than I would, as I’m sure she’s told you already.”

  “I’d like to hear it from her, Dr. Roberts,” Alex said sharply.

  “You’ll hear it from me since I’m her husband. I don’t appreciate you coming into my home and accusing her of something.”

  “No one’s accusing anyone of anything, Dr. Roberts. I just asked her if she knew Canton Walters.”

  The animosity in the room bristled around us, and I saw the fear in Delilah’s eyes. The question was, though, what was she afraid of? Her husband or something we might find to connect her to the murder?

  “Were you home all Tuesday night?” Alex asked, clearly directing his question to Delilah once again.

  “Of course she was home all night!” Alan Roberts bellowed. “What are you saying?”

  “I have to ask these questions, sir.”

  I sensed the dire need for something to diffuse the situation, so I put on my sweetest smile and asked Dr. Roberts, “Do you remember me? You helped me with my back problems a few years ago, and you were just a godsend. I don’t know if I ever thanked you for that, but I just wanted to say the exercises you gave me to do still help to this day.”

  Alan Roberts snapped his head to look at me, and for a moment, he looked like he wanted to leap over the coffee table and drag both Alex and me out of his house. After a few seconds ticked by, though, his expression softened a little.

  “It’s always nice for a doctor to hear he was successful in helping a patient. Thank you.”

  It wasn’t exactly détente, but at least I’d been able to get him to calm down for a few minutes. I looked over at Alex and saw in his eyes he was expecting more fireworks from the doctor.

  “Delilah, I’m going to need a list of all the guests who’ve attended your Naughty and Spice parties.”

  No sooner had the words come out of Alex’s mouth, Dr. Roberts leaped to his feet, and pointing his finger at him, barked, “She isn’t responsible for doing your work for you! Find out who those people were on your own!”

  Gently, Delilah tugged at her husband�
�s hand and stared up at him with a plaintive look like she was begging him to stop yelling. “It’s okay, honey. I don’t mind. I really don’t.”

  He looked back at her and shook his head. “I don’t like it. It’s not right.”

  “Dr. Roberts, I’m afraid that if your wife doesn’t give me a list of those names, I’ll have to go public with the whole connection between our murder victim and your wife’s Naughty and Spice parties.”

  Alex’s implicit threat to announce to everyone in town about Delilah Roberts’ sex toy parties wasn’t lost on the doctor. Although his face was still full of rage, he nodded his agreement to his wife giving Alex what he’d asked for and sat down next to her.

  “Fine. She’ll give you what you want. Is it possible that this won’t have to go public if she does?”

  In a rare moment of kindness toward the doctor, Alex agreed to do whatever he could to keep the list and Delilah’s parties a private matter. She thanked him, and then she and her husband walked into the next room and closed the door behind them.

  Leaning over to whisper to Alex, I said, “I don’t think the good doctor approves of his wife’s sex toy parties.”

  Alex grinned and shook his head. “I don’t think he does. Not surprising, I guess. Look at this house. He’s created a certain kind of life for himself, and her dabbling in sex toys embarrasses him. You can see it every time he refers to them.”

  I looked around the room where we sat and knew Alex was right. Fine artwork hung on the walls, and expensive furniture filled the room. An expensive Persian area rug covered real cherry wood floors that had obviously been completely refinished recently. Everything in the room screamed wealth and status, and a wife who held sex toy parties didn’t fit there.

  “He has a beautiful young woman for a wife, and all he can worry about is how it looks that she likes sexy stuff? You think he’d be thankful since that’s the only way anyone would ever think of him as anything but a tight ass.”

  Alex’s eyebrows shot up. “You seem to like Delilah Roberts.”

  “I understand her. She just wants to have a little fun and she’s married to a stick-in-the-mud and lives in a town full of judgmental people who look down their noses at anything involving sex.”

  The look he gave me made me feel exposed, so I hurriedly joked, “Or maybe I just don’t have many friends and I’m hoping to find a new one.”

  Dr. Roberts and Delilah returned, and she handed Alex a list of people who she remembered had attended any of her parties since she began giving them. The two of us read down the list, and I noticed a few familiar names, but absent were Elizabeth Freely and Canton Walters. I looked up to see if Alex planned to ask any more questions and saw him smiling.

  He stood and thanked both of them before we left. Delilah walked us to the front door, and just as I was about to follow Alex out onto the porch, she caught my hand in hers and squeezed it. “I truly hope you find the person who did this.”

  “We will. Take care, okay? And don’t stop having fun for anyone.”

  Tears filled her eyes again, but she forced a smile. “Thank you.”

  I joined Alex on the sidewalk as Delilah closed the front door behind me. Nudging my shoulder, he said, “It looks like you may have made that friend.”

  Looking back toward the house, I said, “I think she’s even lonelier than I thought.”

  As we walked back to the car, he handed me the list Delilah wrote out for him. “But is she a killer is what I want to know.”

  Seated in the car, I looked over the list of names and still couldn’t imagine her as a murderer. “I don’t think so.”

  Alex started the engine and tapped on the piece of paper in my hand. “Notice anything about the handwriting?”

  I’d noticed immediately when he showed me the list the first time that Delilah’s handwriting wasn’t the same as the one on the notes we’d found in Canton’s hotel room. Some small part of me liked that she hadn’t been the woman to write them. I wanted to see her happy, and if she’d been involved with Canton, she certainly couldn’t be happy now that he was dead.

  “Of course I did. I was just waiting for you to say something about it. A good teacher lets the student learn at his own pace.”

  I looked over at him as he drove toward my house and saw a smile break out on his face. At a stop sign, he turned his head and asked, “Is that a critique of my teaching ability?”

  “Not at all. I’m just glad you’ve come around to my thinking on the handwriting. I have to know, though. Is that why you asked for the list since we could have gotten the names from the Naughty and Spice people just as easily. You might even have liked calling their customer service department.”

  He stopped the car in front of my house. “Yeah. It seemed like the easiest way to get her handwriting to see if she was the female who wrote those notes.”

  I thought about Delilah Roberts and the sad look in her eyes as she closed the door behind us. “Do you consider her a suspect, Alex? I just can’t see it.”

  For a moment, he sat silently before he said, “I’m not sure, but I’m not discounting the idea that either of the Roberts were involved in Canton Walters’ death. For now, they’ll stay in my mind as possibilities, even though I know you don’t want her to be our killer.”

  “I don’t. She just looks like she doesn’t need any more unhappiness.”

  “It’s not good to get personally involved like that when you’re on a case, Poppy. It makes it hard to be objective and see evidence for what it is.”

  He was right. I knew that, but it didn’t change the fact that I really didn’t want to see Delilah Roberts be our murderer.

  “I know, but I’m the Yin to your Yang, so think of it as a different perspective. I promise I won’t let it impede my job. By the way, I’m glad you didn’t use that technique you use on other women on Delilah. You didn’t need to, but I thought you might do it anyway.”

  “I haven’t thanked you for butting in when you did. See? Those instincts I’m always talking about told you I needed to take a different tactic with her, but I didn’t see it. Thankfully, you did. We make a good team.”

  “Absolutely. Yin and Yang.”

  I opened the car door and moved to get out, but Alex touched my arm and stopped me. Turning to face him, I saw his expression had changed to a serious look.

  “Is something wrong, Alex?”

  He didn’t say anything for a long moment and then just smiled. “No. Forget it. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

  I sensed he had something he wanted to tell me, but whatever it was, he wasn’t ready yet. I understood. I wasn’t ready either.

  Chapter Seven

  My editor at The Eagle sat beside my desk chatting about the million and a half freaky things he was sure were transpiring at that very moment around Sunset Ridge, but all I could think of was what Alex had tried to tell me when I got out of the car the day before. He obviously had something on his mind, and I wondered if he was wrestling with the same ideas I was about him.

  “Poppy, did you hear a thing I said?”

  I looked at Howard and realized I had missed whatever he thought was so important. Quickly, I came up with an excuse. “No, I’m sorry. I had a hard time sleeping last night. You know, since it’s so hot? I apologize.”

  Without missing a beat, he continued. “I was telling you about this one time when I was at Diamanti’s just minding my own business and the former mayor and his wife came in and I was sure they’d been up to no good. It was written all over their faces!”

  I didn’t doubt it, but there was no way I wanted to get into a conversation about all the things the former First Couple had done during the mayor’s time in office. Changing the subject, I asked, “So did you decide on a schedule for when you’d like my articles submitted each week?”

  “Yeah, yeah, but do you think I was right? Something tells me that Mayor Girard and his wife have been guilty of some kind of malfeasance in their time. I know if you found out
from working with the police you probably can’t tell me, but can you at least say if I’m on the right track?”

  My editor had a way of blinking his dark eyes really fast when he got excited, and at that moment as he stared at me waiting with bated breath for my answer, he looked like an owl on speed with how fast he was blinking at me. Afraid he might stroke out if I didn’t give him something, I smiled and shrugged before I said, “You’re right I can’t, but if you promise not to do anything with the information, I can tell you you’re not wrong.”

  In a flash, he went from looking like a spastic owl to acting like some kind of crazy donkey right there in my office. Jumping up, he stomped his feet and clapped as he guffawed so loudly I thought he might frighten the person in the next office.

  “Shhhh! You can’t tell anyone, remember?”

  The one thing I could count on was that my editor wouldn’t write a single word about even that practically meaningless tidbit. Once he moved into his job as overseer, as he saw his position, he had no interest whatsoever in writing another word for The Eagle. No, he’d likely just gossip among his friends, all of whom lived outside of town, about how ridiculous this place was and how much better they all were than the provincial rubes who lived here.

  “Okay, okay. I won’t. I’ll get you that schedule later today. Be checking your email because it will be there.”

  I turned back toward my laptop and hoped he got the hint. “Okay, Howard. I’ll keep an eye out for it.”

  He left my office mumbling about how he knew he was right about the Girards. He wasn’t that far off at all. Malfeasance did apply rather well to them.

  Hoping for a few moments to myself to think about Alex and if I should be the one to start the conversation about how we felt, assuming we felt anything, I was sorely disappointed less than five minutes after my editor left when Bethany poked her head in through my almost closed door.

  “Hey, do you have time to talk?”