“Back to Steph.”
Chapter 25
We pulled up outside of Bouche and Zoey parked in front of a row of narrow evergreens that were about my height.
“We got a plan?” I asked.
“Get her to confess.”
“Good plan.” We smiled at each other.
Inside Bouche, a different waitress than last time seated us and brought us drinks. Steph joined us a few minutes later. I saw the gait of her steps hitch when she spotted who had come to see her. When she sat down across from us in the booth table, she didn’t introduce herself, shake hands, or smile.
“I’ve already told you everything I know,” she said. She rested her arms on the table and laced her fingers. “This is my place of business. If these visits continue, I will report the harassment to the police.”
This surprised me. The last time we’d been here, she hadn’t said anything about calling the police even though we’d pressed her pretty hard to talk to us when she hadn’t wanted to. Maybe she was bluffing.
“Has something changed?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You seem… more self-assured,” I said.
“Kinda like she thinks she’s gotten away with something,” Zoey said.
“And we know that you’ve gotten away with something.”
Steph’s cheeks reddened and she blinked several times. “I’ll thank you to go.” She started to get up.
“Sit,” Zoey ordered.
To my continued surprise, Steph sat back down. Her gaze traveled everywhere but didn’t meet our eyes.
“I asked this last time, and we’ve come back to give you another chance at answering it. Why were you afraid of Cam?”
She flicked a look in our direction and then away again. “I told you I wasn’t.”
“I know that’s what you told us, but now we need the truth. Why were you afraid of him?” She said nothing; I kept pushing. “His bad attitude and performance as a waiter could have cost you your job. That makes me think that you weren’t as afraid of losing your job as much as you were afraid of something else. Were you afraid of going to jail over what he knew?” No response but her eyes flicked in our direction.
To Zoey I asked, “What’s worse than losing your job?”
Zoey thought a moment. “Losing your home. Going to jail. Losing your children. Losing health insurance when you’re sick. Losing respect of friends and family. Losing a spouse… Can you think of more?”
I wasn’t sure that I would have to. Steph had looked our way with actual shock and fear in her eyes when Zoey mentioned losing health insurance.
“Steph, are you sick?”
The fear in Steph’s face fell away as her features grew hard.
“You can tell us or we can find out. We’re going to dig until we have our answers.”
Steph’s eyes grew red with unshed tears and she crossed her arms over her chest, but she still didn’t say anything.
“If you tell us what Cam was blackmailing you about, we can keep it to ourselves. We don’t need to tell the police.” It was a total lie. Of course we would tell the police. We were asking her what her motive was for murdering Cam. We’d run traffic lights to get the info to the police.
“We won’t tell anyone,” Zoey reassured with me.
“Talk to us, Steph, or we walk out of here and start digging into your life in every way possible. There’s no telling what we’ll find out.”
That threat did it. Steph finally cracked.
“I’m addicted to painkillers,” Steph blurted out. “The restaurant owners have a zero-tolerance policy. If you’re found using, you’re gone. No chance to explain, no excuses, you’re just gone.” A tear fell and trailed down her cheek. The rest of her was stone. “I can’t lose this job. I don’t have any savings. Every spare dime I made went into covering my mother’s care.” Another tear fell. “Now she’s gone, right along with the house, along with everything I own. I’m starting over and I have no one. She was my world.” Her finger pounded the table as her pain turned to anger. “I couldn’t afford to lose this job. I would’ve lost the house and she would’ve ended up in a state-run nursing home. I couldn’t do that to her. I couldn’t risk that, so I did what Cam told me to. I let him show up, put in his hours and be as surly as he wanted only to walk out with a paycheck triple that of any other waiter or waitress here. I had to cover the difference in his pay out of my own pocket just so the owners wouldn’t find out.”
She sat back in her booth seat, crossed her arms and glared at us. “Now I suppose it’ll be you I’ll be paying off instead of Cam.”
“Steph, we don’t want your money. We only wanted the truth. Now that we have it, we’re satisfied. We don’t want anything else.” I didn’t mention that we’d be handing that truth over to the police if it meant proving Zoey’s innocence.
Steph didn’t look convinced. “No money? Free food? Drugs?”
“None of those things,” I reassured her.
Steph’s bottom lip began to tremble. “It’s been so hard. So stressful. I’ve lost so much.”
“And we’re sorry about that,” I said. “I heard about your mother’s death when your house burned down.” Maybe the stress of it all had made Steph snap. People sometimes did weird things when lost in their grief. Cam hadn’t been missed by anybody. Maybe she’d rationalized that she was doing the world a favor and making it a better place.
I eyed her physique. She was taller than either Zoey or me. Definitely strong. But she didn’t look as big as that shadow we’d seen in Cam’s death video. That didn’t mean she didn’t hire someone, though. I’d ordered my coffee online. Maybe she’d ordered a hitman. It was possible.
I gave Steph’s hand a squeeze and looked her right in the eyes. “Did you kill Cam?”
She didn’t flinch, look away or hesitate. “No,” she said. “I told you. I was at home. I didn’t kill him.” It was a convincing answer.
I turned to Zoey when we hit the parking lot. “You think she killed Cam?”
“Not one doubt.”
Chapter 26
We sat in Zoey’s car behind her apartment building, and I tried not to think about the unfinished pizza that was waiting for us. I wanted more of it.
“What I don’t get,” I said, “is why Steph—or whoever she hired—would dump Cam’s body in front of the café.”
“Maybe for the distraction of it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Rachel Summers’ body is practically still warm,” Zoey said, and I winced. That was an apt but disturbing description.
“But how’s that a distraction?”
“Her death is connected to you, sort of. Everybody thought it was you.” I eyeballed her and she amended. “Everybody but me, of course.”
“Of course.” I smiled. Zoey had stood by my side through the whole ordeal in a big way. It still amazed me because she barely knew me yet she’d really been there for me. Friends like that were hard to find.
“Leaving Cam’s body outside your café muddied the water. It connected his death with you.”
I stared out into the early evening sky. It would be dark soon. I wondered if it would snow. Did Kentucky even get snow? It wasn’t exactly south but it definitely wasn’t north either.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Everyone’s been fixated on the big fight you had with Cam. It’s like a big fish tale that keeps getting bigger every time someone retells it. I’m surprised no one has said you were dressed up like Batman throwing karate chops.” Some of the stories I’d heard had been every bit as ridiculous. “It’s had everyone thinking it was you instead of me.”
“If I was the intended target to throw guilt on, the location of dumping Cam’s body at the café indicates the killer had prior knowledge of what had happened earlier that day.” Zoey was silent a moment. “Who saw my fight with Cam? Do we know?”
“Hmm, there was me. Everyone in the café within sight of the grill-side window… so, about t
hree people. Then there anyone who was happening to drive by on Main Street and potentially anyone in any of the surrounding businesses.”
“Fifteen or more people could have seen it first hand,” Zoey said.
“That’s a lot of possible killers. And we can’t limit it to only those who were there to see you put Cam on the ground. It could have been anyone who learned about it from someone else.”
Zoey sighed. “So, the whole town then… I like our chances that Steph did it. She had reason. Cam was blackmailing her with no end in sight, and she was at risk for losing her job. If she did, she wouldn’t have been able to cover the cost of home care for her mother. So he was threatening not just her and her job, but also her ability to care for someone she loved. That’s a strong enough motive to kill for a lot of people.”
“Time to tell the police?”
“I think so. When will you see Brad again?”
“He usually shows up for breakfast. Want me to tell him? I’m not sure he’ll take it seriously. And, that won’t be until tomorrow. What if Steph runs tonight?”
Zoey shrugged. “Makes her look all the more guilty. I don’t care if they catch her or not. I just don’t want them looking into me anymore.”
I thought about it. I didn’t like Cam, but I did care about whether or not the person who killed him got caught. From everything I’d learned about Cam, he was a despicable guy. He hadn’t cared who he hurt, and he’d been willing to do anything to give himself an advantage over others. But despite all of that, I was sure that there was someone somewhere in the world who had cared about him. And, if a person could justify in their heart killing Cam, who else could they find justification to kill?
We got out of the car and headed around to the front of her apartment building.
“Coming up?” Zoey asked.
It was still early enough. I had time before I had to get back to the café, and the pizza was calling. “Sure.”
We headed up to Zoey’s. Max was in the hallway. No flowers. No takeout. Just him.
“Where were you?” he asked, getting up from where he’d been sitting on the floor outside her door. It was an abrupt question, and I guessed that the honeymoon period of his make-up attempts was coming to an end.
“It’s none of your business, Max,” Zoey said.
I was tempted to stomp on Max’s foot to get him to get out of the way. He was standing right in front of Zoey’s apartment door. He didn’t look like he was in a forgiving mood, though. If I stomped on his foot, he might stomp on my head. Thankfully, Zoey got him to move with a sharp elbow jab to his ribs. We were in her apartment a minute later, and Max was locked outside.
I made a beeline for the pizza. I sat down heavily on the floor and grabbed a piece. I chewed while I thought. Steph had already lost so much. Her house was embers and her mother looked like a burnt matchstick, lying in the morgue. On top of that she was trying to manage an addiction to painkillers and keep her job. She had a lot going on. A lot of stress. If she was innocent of killing Cam and we threw the suspicion of murder onto her, could she handle that added stress on top of everything else? She could crack, spiral into her addiction, and never find her way out. If we accused her, ruined her life, and then found out we’d been wrong, I wasn’t sure that I’d ever be able to forgive myself.
“You mind making me a copy of the video of Cam getting killed?” I was pretty sure I’d need to be inundated with wine to work up the nerve to watch it again, but that didn’t change that I did need to watch it. “And the part where Cam got dumped off in front of the café, too.”
“Sure. You looking for anything specific? Got a telltale clue you’re hoping to find?”
“No… well I guess yes. It’s more like I’m looking for a clue that Steph didn’t do it.” I looked at Zoey. “Having the cops—having everybody—think that I killed Rachel when I didn’t really sucked. It was awful. Now you. People are thinking you killed Cam. If Steph didn’t kill Cam, I don’t want to do that to her.”
Zoey’s mouth pulled crooked into a grimace. “I know what you mean. I’ll make a copy.”
I had the memory stick of that night’s events stuck in my pocket when I headed out the door. With my head turned around to say goodbye to Zoey, I walked right into Max’s chest.
“You have got to be kidding me.” I was losing my patience, and Max wasn’t even there to see me.
Max threw up his hands and took a step back. “Hey, just saying goodnight before I take off.” He leaned his head a little to the side to look past me into Zoey’s apartment even though he was plenty taller than me to be able to see over my head. “Zoey, I wanted you to know that I’m going out of town on business tomorrow. I’ll be gone for three days, a week at the most. Then I’m coming back here. I’ll call you every night… if that’s okay. Would it be okay?”
There was an absence of sound as Zoey took her time answering. Then finally, she said, “I’d like that.”
I felt both happy and sad. Zoey was taking her first steps back toward love, but she was taking them with Max. I hoped that he would be good to her, and I hoped that he proved himself worthy of this second chance.
It was time for me to give them some privacy.
“Text me later,” Zoey called as I started to step away. “Let me know if you spot anything on the vid.”
“Will do,” I called back.
“Anything I’d want to see?” Max asked.
“Oh it’s…” Was there a reason not to tell him? It felt weird to share with someone who was until a half second ago very much on the outs with Zoey. I chose a middle ground and decided to share partial truths, and I decided to take the opportunity to get in a mild jab about his interference of telling Brad about our investigation. “I’ve got some video to look over from the night that Cam was killed.” That was true. “Brad’s great.” Again, also true. Max could make any connections he wanted to from that. “I’m going to take a look, see if I can spot anything. Fresh eye and all that.”
Max’s brows went halfway to his hairline. “I didn’t know you two had that kind of a relationship.”
I gave a noncommittal shrug and called out to Zoey as I walked down the hall, “Goodnight! Call you tomorrow.”
“Goodnight!” she called back.
Chapter 27
The café was dead when I walked in. Melanie was bent over her books at one of the tables. She looked up from her studies.
“I’ve got this if you want to call it a night,” she said.
“You sure?” I asked.
“Yeah, it’s quieter here than at home with my roommate anyway.”
I knew that that shouldn’t have been a good thing, but I was happy that Melanie didn’t mind working at a place with so few customers. It had to be wreaking havoc on her and Sam’s income from tips.
I found Sage, and with the kitten perched on my shoulder, I headed upstairs.
I had a bottle of wine open and a large glass poured when I opened my Walmart-special laptop and stuck the memory stick in its side. I had the video loaded and playing a moment later.
I couldn’t bear to watch it the first time I played it. I turned my back to the computer and drank my wine instead. But that didn’t keep me from seeing my memory of the video playing out in my head.
There was a car. An old sedan.
The car pulled into the alley. The alley was dark.
There was a large shadow. Was the shadow distorted in size? Could it have been Steph?
Cam walked by the opening of the alley.
The shadow moved. It reached out, and it pulled Cam backward.
Cam kicked, then Cam quit kicking.
That was everything I remembered.
I took a deep breath. Took a big swig of wine. Then turned back around to hit play on the video again. This time I watched it. It wasn’t as hard as the first time I’d watched it, but I had my large glass of wine drained by the time it reached the end when all I could see were Cam’s legs sticking out into the dim light. They mad
e me think of the Wicked Witch’s legs sticking out from underneath Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of Oz. But that had been an accident. This had been premeditated murder.
On to the next video. The image was of Sarah’s Eatery late at night. A sedan came into view. I watched what happened. I watched the sedan stop. I saw indistinct movement on the far side of the car, and then the car was gone. I played it again. And again. I was seeing something that I couldn’t put a finger on. Something about the video was reminding me of something that I’d seen.
I played it again. And again. And again. I drank another swig of wine. I closed my eyes and replayed it in my head. There was the road. It was at night and it was empty. The car came into view. The car pulled into the wrong lane and then up onto the sidewalk. The car stopped. Movement beyond the car. The car left.
The car, the car, the car.
The car!
My eyes popped open. I’d seen that car!
I got up and paced the inside of my horseshoe shaped kitchen. When that didn’t help, I moved to my empty living room with the huge windows overlooking Main Street and I paced in there. I paced the hallway, then it was back to the bright lights of the kitchen.
I stopped pacing. I knew the car. I knew where I’d seen it.
I grabbed the whole bottle and drank deep, as deeply as I could before my lungs burned with the need for air. I’d seen that car at the barn we’d followed Max to. It had been parked at an angle to a white Prius, the same car that we’d seen Max driving before we had discovered him driving the SUV. Max had been playing musical cars, but not with two cars. He’d been doing it with three cars, and the third was the one being driven to and from Cam’s murder!
Max murdered Cam!
I flew to the windows that overlooked Main Street. There was some evening traffic, nothing very heavy, and I could see Zoey’s apartment building across the street at an angle to my building. But there was no seeing her apartment. The upstairs of the building that housed the apartments didn’t have any windows that overlooked Main Street. I had no way of telling what was going on over at Zoey’s apartment just by looking.
A Berry Murderous Kitten_A Laugh-Out-Loud Kylie Berry Mystery Page 13