Death by Chocolate Lab (Lucky Paws Petsitting Mystery)

by Bethany Blake

  Sighing, I lingered for a moment, watching Virginia disappear down the gloomy path with her trio of Shakespearean pups.

  When they were out of sight, and I realized I was alone, the back of my neck started to prickle, and I had the eerie sense that someone was behind me.

  It was probably my imagination working overtime, fueled by the knowledge that someone had been murdered not far from where I stood. I was convinced that Steve had been killed by somebody who hated him, and I doubted anyone was really after me. Still, I started to beat a hasty retreat back to the house.

  As I reached the open fields that surrounded the farmhouse and barn, I felt a sense of relief and wondered how Virginia could be so brave, heading farther into the woods at night, even if she was accompanied by three large dogs.

  All at once, I stopped dead in my tracks.

  Was there a chance Virginia wasn’t worried about running into a killer because she had murdered Steve?

  I resumed walking, more slowly, and slipped into the house. Checking the antique clock that hung on the wall, I realized I had a few hours to spare before my meeting with Giulia.

  In fact, I had just enough time to visit someplace that had a tenuous, but perhaps important, connection to Steve’s life—and possibly his death, too.

  Plus, there would be pie there.

  Chapter 47

  “What, exactly, are we doing here?” Moxie asked. She dug her fork through a six-inch tower of flaky crust and sweet cinnamon-apple filling, then scooped up some rich, creamy vanilla ice cream, too. She shoveled all of that into her mouth, which didn’t prevent her from continuing to talk. “I mean, besides eating the best pie in the world?”

  We were seated in a red vinyl booth at the Silver Moon Diner, just outside of Sylvan Creek. I hadn’t been to the diner in years, but nothing had changed, although some of the shine had worn off the iconic 1950s trailer. Inside, though, the black-and-white checkered floor still gleamed and customers swiveled on tall stools at the long Formica counter, their plates piled high with triple-decker cheeseburgers and heaps of french fries.

  “I’m not sure why I wanted to come here,” I admitted, maneuvering my own silverware through a tall slice of lemon meringue. “I just keep thinking about this place, and how my dad used to take me and Piper here. There was a waitress named Angela—”

  “I remember her!” Moxie said. Dressed in one of her many vintage outfits—a starched pink blouse with poofy short sleeves and a full black skirt—she looked like she could’ve been sitting in the booth, trapped in time, since the day the diner opened in 1952. Well, Moxie’s spiked flame-red hair and the small tattoo on her wrist—a big-eyed kitten—would’ve been out of place back then. Otherwise, she could’ve tumbled sixty years back through history, landed on one of the swiveling stools, and ordered a shake without anyone looking twice. “She used to give me extra ice cream with my pie,” Moxie added. “She was really nice.”

  “Hey, I thought she only did that for me and Piper,” I said, feeling deflated. “I thought we were special.”

  “I’m sure you were.” Moxie reached over to pat my hand. “I’m sure you were.”

  I did not need to be patronized; however, I did need napkins, because I’d dropped a big blob of meringue onto my lap. Leaning over, I pulled a few from a silver dispenser, which was next to a tabletop jukebox that featured songs by Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, and a band I’d never heard of called The Four Lads. If I’d had a quarter in my pocket, I would’ve played their song, because I doubted anyone had thought of them in decades. It would’ve been nice to release their music to the world one more time.

  Unfortunately, I had no change. Just a few wadded-up dollar bills.

  I wiped at the stain on my jeans. “Did you know that Angela the waitress was Tom Flinchbaugh’s sister?” I asked Moxie. “And that she died in a car accident?”

  Moxie dragged her fork across her plate, trying to scrape up the very last ice cream–soaked crumbs of crust. “I kind of remember the accident. But I didn’t know she was related to Tom.” She looked at me and frowned. “Poor Tom. That’s really sad, to lose a sibling.”

  “Yeah, and Tessie told me that he’s still really broken up about it.”

  I had been keeping everything Tessie Flinchbaugh had told me locked away for quite a while, and I really wanted to confide in someone. I knew that Moxie, who might’ve spread her clients’ gossip all over town, would keep my secrets. She was the only person in the world who knew that in fourth grade I’d stolen a pack of Juicy Fruit gum from the Stop ’n Save mini market—an episode that still gave me pangs of guilt and compelled me to leave at least two pennies in the “give a penny, take a penny” bowl near the market’s cash register every time I bought something there. I knew I’d paid for that gum ten times over, but I couldn’t stop trying to erase my moral debt. Moxie always advised me to let it go—and she’d never told a soul what I’d done.

  Still, I leaned forward and asked her, in a whisper, “If I tell you something, will you promise to never tell another human being? Ever?”

  Eyes gleaming with interest, Moxie dropped her fork and crossed her heart with her index finger. “I promise. Now spill!”

  I glanced from side to side to make sure nobody would overhear me, even though someone else had put a quarter in one of the jukeboxes, so the diner was filled with the sounds of Frankie Valli singing “Big Girls Don’t Cry.” Then I said, “You probably don’t remember this, but Steve Beamus caused the accident that killed Angela. He was young and was driving too fast. . . .”

  Moxie’s eyes were huge, but she let me keep talking.

  “Anyhow, Tessie said Tom never forgave Steve.” I leaned even closer and spoke a bit louder, because Frankie was really belting it out in his signature falsetto. “She also can’t account for Tom’s whereabouts the night Steve was killed,” I confided. “Tessie honestly thinks Tom might’ve committed the murder!”

  I uttered that last sentence just as the song ended, and although I hadn’t been talking too loudly, it sounded like I was shouting in the sudden quiet. My words echoed in the diner—and my heart sank down to my boots.

  Moxie clapped two hands over her mouth, like she could somehow swallow my words.

  Then, just when things seemed bad enough—a few people had swung around on their seats at the counter to give me funny looks—someone walked up to our booth. The diner was very bright and cheerful, but the person cast a shadow over the table, so my bright yellow lemon meringue pie suddenly looked a little less sunny.

  All the color drained from Moxie’s face, too, and I reluctantly turned to see who had joined us, although I had a feeling I already knew.

  A very, very bad feeling.

  Chapter 48

  “Umm . . . what brings you here, Detective Black?” Moxie asked nervously.

  Jonathan’s arms were folded over his chest, and his eyes were trained on me, even as he answered Moxie with a single word. “Hunger.”

  “Oh . . . that makes sense,” Moxie said, offering him a shaky smile, although Jonathan still wasn’t looking at her. She scooched over in the booth, like she was making room for someone. Then she patted the seat next to her and inexplicably inquired, “Would you like to join us?”

  What was she thinking?

  I needed time to figure out how to explain why I’d just blurted out that Tom Flinchbaugh’s own wife thought he’d committed murder. I’d obviously made a huge mistake by betraying Tessie’s confidence once, and I really didn’t want to share her secrets again—especially with Jonathan.

  “There’s plenty of room,” Moxie added, pulling her big skirt closer to herself and patting the seat again. “Come on.”

  I kicked my best friend under the table with the pointy toe of my boot, and she shot me an injured look. “Ouch!”

  Ignoring her, I smiled at Jonathan, too. “Please don’t feel like you have to sit with us. I’m sure you . . .”

  Before I could say, “would prefer to eat in peace,” he slid
into the booth next to Moxie, saying, “As a matter of fact, I am very interested to join this conversation.”

  Chapter 49

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t explain what I just said,” I told Jonathan for at least the tenth time. He’d had a chance to peruse the menu, place his order, and receive his food—a turkey club—and we were still going around and around in a conversational circle. “I wish I could tell you everything—I really do—but I can’t. I made a promise.”

  “You obviously broke that promise with Moxie,” Jonathan reminded me.

  “She’s my best friend,” I explained. “I have to tell her all my secrets. It’s part of the girl code. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “There’s another ‘code,’ too,” Jonathan said. “One that I do understand. It’s called the legal code, and I’m pretty sure it trumps the ‘girl code.’”

  “I don’t know about that,” Moxie observed. She’d ordered a chocolate milk shake and was stirring it with her straw. “Back when Daphne and I were kids, we went to this little market where they sold gum and stuff. . . .”

  I kicked her again, and she rubbed her shin. But she was the one who apologized. “Oops. Sorry, Daph.”

  What had gotten into her lately?

  Jonathan leaned back in the booth. “So you’re really not going to tell me anything more?”

  “I think you heard enough,” I said. He wasn’t eating his potato chips, so I took a few from his plate. The chips were made in-house, cut superthin and fried in peanut oil. How could he resist them? “I’m sure you’ll follow up with Tessie and Tom,” I added. He didn’t owe me any favors—in fact, I still owed him money from our evening at the Lakeside—but I ventured to ask, “Could you please somehow avoid letting them know why you’re questioning them again? Is there a way you could please leave me out of it?”

  Jonathan considered my request while he chewed a bite of his sandwich. I hadn’t eaten meat for years, but I sometimes still missed bacon, a thick, crispy piece of which had fallen out from between the layers of turkey, lettuce, and bright red tomato. I had to admit, the sandwich looked pretty good.

  “I’ll do my best,” Jonathan finally agreed. I reached for his plate again to get more chips, and he pulled his dinner closer to himself. “Did you ever consider asking if I’d like to share?”

  “I guess it crossed my mind,” I said, reaching farther and grabbing another handful. “But you don’t seem to be eating these.”

  He looked to Moxie, as if for support, but she sipped her milk shake, then shrugged. “You snooze, you lose.”

  “Hey, whatever happened with Bryce Beamus?” I asked, changing the subject. “Why are you even worried about Tom Flinchbaugh, now that Bryce has confessed—at least to the poisoning? Doesn’t it make sense that he probably bludgeoned his father, too?”

  Jonathan set down his sandwich and rested back in the booth, brushing crumbs off his hands and shaking his head. “No, Bryce didn’t kill his father. He’s a very troubled kid, with a lot of anger and guilt, but he’s not a killer. He only put a small amount of Clean Kennel in the thermos, hoping to prove to his dad that it wasn’t safe for animals. He was trying to convince Beamus that dogs lick their paws and could get sick. It was a stupid stunt, but far from homicide.”

  I couldn’t believe Jonathan was so readily dismissing Bryce as a suspect. “But . . . but . . . Bryce was angry . . . and I saw his Jeep at Winding Hill. . . .”

  “Bryce left the farm long before his father was killed,” Jonathan said. He stretched out his long legs, and they bumped into mine under the table. We both pulled away. “He has an alibi for the time of death.”

  “What kind of alibi?” I demanded. Jonathan had never told me exactly when Steve had been killed, but since I’d seen Steve working late at the farm, then found his body in the morning, I felt confident in saying, “The murder must have happened in the middle of the night.”

  “Yeah,” Moxie agreed. “And not to get too personal about it, but even if Bryce was sleeping with somebody, how can you trust her—or him—to tell the truth?”

  “Actually, it was pretty easy to find verifiable evidence of Bryce’s activity for most of the night,” Jonathan informed us. “And he was a busy guy.”

  Furrowing my brow, I chomped down on a chip. “What do you mean?”

  “At one a.m., Bryce was in town, at a mini market.”

  He was probably referring to the only market open all night in Sylvan Creek, Stop ’n Save, and I shot Moxie a warning look, in case she had a sudden urge to talk about stolen gum.

  She pursed her lips and made a motion like she was locking them, then throwing away an imaginary key.

  Satisfied that she’d stay silent about my past misdeeds, I resumed listening to Jonathan.

  “The clerk on duty that night remembers, because Bryce went a little crazy, berating him for selling meat products. When the clerk asked him to leave, Bryce knocked over a display of beef jerky. It’s all captured on time-stamped security footage, too.”

  Moxie raised one hand to her mouth to stifle a snicker that wouldn’t quite be contained. “That should be on YouTube,” she said. “I would watch that.”

  I would, too, but I wasn’t about to admit that to Jonathan. He was giving Moxie a pretty funny look.

  “Maybe Bryce was agitated because he’d just killed his father,” I suggested. “Did you ever think of that?”

  “That’s not possible,” Jonathan said. “Beamus was still alive at that time.”

  “Well, the whole beef-jerky incident couldn’t have taken more than a few minutes,” I pointed out. “How do you know Bryce didn’t return to Winding Hill and kill his dad later?”

  Jonathan finally ate some of his chips, and he raised a finger, indicating that he needed to chew and swallow—whereas Moxie and I usually just kept talking. When he was ready, he said, “Bryce went to Beamus’s house, where he made a phone call to a friend on the West Coast, using his father’s landline. We verified the time. Then he spent the rest of the night on a dating Web site. His profile—under the screen name animalluvr582—was active from about one thirty to three thirty a.m.”

  Moxie cringed and made a face. “Animal lover five-eighty-two? That is a very unfortunate choice for a dating site. That could be incorrectly interpreted in several ways. I can’t believe five-hundred eighty-one other people chose it, too!”

  Jonathan didn’t seem to know what to say, while I was considering the timeline he’d just laid out for us.

  “How do you know Steve was still alive at one a.m. and dead before, say, four?” I asked.

  I still wasn’t prepared to let Bryce off the hook. He could’ve driven back to Winding Hill after three thirty. He might’ve been even more agitated, too, if he’d been repeatedly shot down online for several hours. From what I’d seen of Bryce, I doubted he’d inherited his father’s talent for winning over the ladies.

  “The coroner was able to pinpoint the time of death pretty accurately,” Jonathan said. “And we know for sure that Steve was alive at one, because he sent a text message at one twelve.”

  “To who?” I asked. I couldn’t believe how nocturnal people were. Bryce had been hitting on women in the middle of the night, and Steve had been texting. Tessie didn’t know where Tom had been the night of Steve’s murder. Didn’t anybody in Sylvan Creek sleep? “Who’d Steve text so late?”

  All at once, Jonathan’s expression became guarded. I was reminded of how Virginia had acted when she thought she’d shared too much with me. Only Jonathan didn’t snap at me. He just grew quiet.

  I stared into his blue eyes, trying hard to read them, and thinking about how Steve had been at Winding Hill when he’d sent that late-night message after having an argument with Piper.

  Folding my arms on the table, I let my forehead sink down to rest on them, so my voice was muffled when I asked, with a groan, “He was texting Piper, wasn’t he? He was trying to meet for a post-argument”—I shuddered and barely got the words out—“booty
call, right?”

  Jonathan’s silence spoke volumes.

  I wasn’t sure if I was mainly upset by the fact that the text represented more evidence against Piper—if she’d agreed to meet Steve, she was probably the last person to see him alive—or if I was just sickened to think about Steve trying to lure her. . . .

  Ugh.

  “I should go now,” Jonathan said, pushing the plate with the last few chips toward me and checking his wristwatch. “It’s getting late.”

  I suddenly remembered something and grabbed his wrist and twisted his arm so I could see the time, too. It was after eleven o’clock.

  “Oh, no,” I said, releasing him. “I’ve also gotta run. I’m going to be late for a meeting.” I turned to Moxie. “Let’s go, okay?”

  Jonathan stood up to let Moxie out of the booth. “Why am I concerned about you having a meeting so late at night?” he asked, sounding unhappy. “Why do I feel that I will eventually be involved?”

  “It’s nothing that should—or will—concern you,” I told him, taking Moxie’s arm and leading her toward the door. “Don’t think twice about it.”

  He had a skeptical look on his face as Moxie and I left the diner.

  Only when we were about a mile away, headed back to Sylvan Creek, did I realize that we’d stuck Jonathan with the entire bill. Again.

  All at once, I slammed on the brakes—not because I intended to turn back and give Jonathan some money. I’d repay him someday, soon enough. I stopped the van because I’d seen something by the side of the road.

  “Moxie!” I cried. “Did you see that, too?”

  Chapter 50

  “My shoes are not made for hiking,” Moxie complained, picking her way through some gravel and weeds at the side of the road. She was much more adept at wearing heels than me, but the footing was terrible and she teetered on her red stilettos. “Why are we doing this?”

  “I just want to see the memorial up close,” I said over my shoulder. I was striding along in my very sensible, if oversize, cowgirl boots. “It might be important.”