Death of a Double Dipper

by Angela Pepper

  “He's on his way home right now,” she said. “The cops didn't hold him, because they know he didn't do nothin'.”

  “Good,” I said, though I knew that releasing Colt didn't mean the police thought he was innocent. It just meant they didn't have the evidence yet to feel confident in arresting him. Even with a rush, it would take time for the crime lab to test the blood on Colt's clothes against Michael Sweet's DNA.

  “Those cops need to go after the wife,” Trigger said. “She's the one who's going to be getting all that money. Plus she's crazy. Cuckoo. Totally nuts.”

  “Samantha?”

  “Haven't you heard? She lost her mind.” Trigger let out a cruel laugh.

  I hadn't heard about Samantha losing her mind, but I wasn't surprised to hear she was behaving erratically. She'd been dazed and sluggish the last time I'd seen her, as though heavily medicated.

  “Some people behave strangely when they're grieving,” I said. “It's different for every person, every situation. For some, confronting death makes them over-steer toward embracing life, seizing the day.”

  Trigger crossed her arms and told the dogs to sit. They didn't sit but continued to nuzzle her arms and lick her exposed skin, including her chin. Trigger was so short, the dogs barely had to jump to lick her face.

  Ignoring the huskies as best she could, Trigger said, “That realtor lady is crazy. She doesn't even think her husband is dead.”

  “What are you talking about? She saw his body.” She had his blood all over her hands. “Are you saying she's blocked the memory?”

  “Yeah. Because she's crazy.”

  I rubbed my chin. It was possible for Samantha to disbelieve her husband was dead. “She could be in a disassociative state,” I said. “I'm no psychiatrist, but I've been reading up on some of these things.”

  “Not that,” Trigger said with a cold laugh. “She thinks the guy who got stabbed is actually someone who looks like her husband. A look-alike. A body double.”

  “That's crazy.”

  “I know! She's going to take the money from the insurance, and then, after it's all spent, she thinks Michael's going to come back.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “You're not the only one in this town who knows how to get information.”

  “Come on, Trigger. We're on the same side. I don't want Colt to get caught up in this if he didn't do it.”

  She raised her voice. “He didn't do it! I told you, stupid!” And then she cursed me out some more.

  I held my hands up. “Listen, I'll ask around, okay? I'll try to figure out what's going on with Samantha and this so-called body double.”

  “Don't you be comin' around the casino,” she said.

  “Don't worry. I promise I won't try to see Colt unless he wants to see me.”

  “No,” she said coldly. “Never. Not ever.”

  “Are you banning me from the premises?”

  She tugged the dogs toward her truck. The engine was still idling, and she'd left the driver's side door open. The dome light inside the cab of the truck gave it a warm, golden glow.

  It was only now that I realized twilight was gone and night had truly fallen. All was dark around me. Darkness.

  “You're dead,” Trigger said as she backed away. “If I ever see you on my land, in my casino, you're dead.” She switched the leashes to her left hand, pointed her right hand at me like a gun, and made a click sound as she mimed pulling a trigger.

  Chapter 27

  WEDNESDAY

  Just when it seems like the sun will never come up again, it does.

  Tuesday hadn't been so great. I'd turned an old friend in to the police, and then, because no good deed goes unpunished, I'd been reamed out by his sister. She'd tried to make me feel like dirt, and she'd been successful.

  But Wednesday was a new day. Or so I told myself.

  I woke up late, which wasn't the best start. I thought of that great Irish expression: Lose an hour in the morning, and you’ll be looking for it all day.

  I had a dozen pressing matters to deal with, yet I couldn't focus on my work. There was a heaviness in my chest that I couldn't chase away with coffee. Not even coffee plus Jessica's icing-covered cinnamon buns could lift my mood. I couldn't focus on anything except how lousy I felt.

  My body ached, and the hard chair at the kitchen table where I usually worked felt harder than ever.

  I moved over to the sofa, and the aches in my body moved to different regions.

  I was two minutes into working on an insurance case when Jeffrey walked across my paperwork on the cushion next to me and then the keys of my laptop. I tossed his mouse toy across the room but he wasn't taking the bait. He walked across the keyboard again, making the screen do something I'd never seen it do before. I couldn't figure out what magical key combination he'd pushed with his paws. I had to reboot the computer to get the display back to normal.

  As soon as my display was fixed, he returned to do his magical trick again.

  “Jeffrey Blue, you're doing an amazing impression of a barnacle. Why are you so clingy? You've got both kinds of food, and I refilled your water dish on the tub while you were watching, so you know it's fresh. What's going on?”

  I pushed the laptop toward my knees. He walked onto the available section of my lap and flopped down dramatically. He rolled his head back and gazed at me with slow-blinking affectionate green eyes.

  “Is this about the doggies?”

  His ears twitched in the feline equivalent of a frown.

  “Those doggies aren't coming back here,” I said. “It was just a one-time deal, I swear.”

  He opened his mouth and gave me a silent meow—the most heart-tugging of cat sounds.

  “Let's say it is Michael's blood in those spatters on Colt's shirt. Let's say he does go to prison.” I grimaced at the words, which left a bad taste in my mouth. “Just because he asked me to take care of his dogs yesterday doesn't mean I have to. I didn't even agree to be their godmother. Technically, we don't have a verbal contract, let alone a formal written one, like the type Logan would draw up.”

  Jeffrey rolled onto his back, exposing his tummy. I knew better than to take the bait and stick my hand in the fluffiest of feline traps.

  “You're right,” I said. “Logan hasn't been much help lately. He's always working at the office whenever I could use his help.”

  Jeffrey started purring.

  “It certainly is a good thing I have you, and Auntie Jessica. Plus your grampa's been supportive through all of this, in his own way. He sent me a text message this morning with three stars and a frog. I don't know what it means, but at least he's checking in on me.”

  Jeffrey closed his eyes to focus on his rumbling purr. I carefully closed the laptop and set it beside me on the couch. I rearranged the cat so he was completely on my lap rather than draped over it, falling onto his head in slow motion.

  “You're absolutely right,” I said. “Why worry about all the things you need to do when you can take a nap and do nothing?”

  I leaned my head back on the sofa.

  The warm blanket of sleep came instantly, unlike the night before, when I'd tossed and turned for three hours.

  The ringing of my phone woke me up. Jeffrey grumbled as I shoved him aside so I could grab my phone from the kitchen counter.

  “This is Stormy Day,” I said groggily, gripping the counter with one sweaty hand.

  “Boss?” My employee, Brianna, was whispering. “She's here, and she's buying up half the store.”

  “The Countess?”

  “No. Samantha Sweet. She keeps asking if you're here. She's asked me three times now. I swear she thinks I'm lying or something.”

  “Hang tight,” I said. “I'm jumping in the car and I'll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Please hurry,” Brianna whispered. “She's freaking me out.”

  I barely recognized Samantha Sweet. Gone was the bright, tidy wardrobe of citrus-colored dresses paired with crisp whit
e blazers. She looked less like a working professional woman and more like a college coed on a reading break, with her tattered jeans and stained sweatshirt. Her blond hair was straight on one side and matted on the other, as though she hadn't brushed her hair or even showered since I'd last seen her ten days earlier.

  As I watched her look over the store displays, I thought of what I'd said to Trigger Canuso the night before. “Some people behave strangely when they're grieving. It's different for every person, every situation. For some, confronting death makes them over-steer toward embracing life, seizing the day.”

  Samantha's behavior did seem strange, but how was a person supposed to act after having their husband murdered?

  I'd entered the store through the back way, so Samantha hadn't seen me yet. Before alerting her to my presence, I caught Brianna's attention and met my store manager in the back hallway.

  I whispered to Brianna, “Has she said anything to you?”

  Brianna replied, “She just keeps asking where you are. That's why I called you.” She nervously rubbed the red spot on her chin where she'd had a pimple the week before. “Thanks for getting here so fast.”

  She glanced guiltily at something in the middle of the store.

  I followed her gaze over the counter, to the central display table. There was a conspicuous blank spot. “You changed the display? What's missing?”

  “The Laguiole steak knives are gone,” Brianna said. “When she was looking at the fairy figurines, I grabbed all of the knives and tucked them behind the counter.”

  I stared at Brianna's big, wide eyes. Should I give her heck for being paranoid, or congratulate her for protecting herself?

  “Smart thinking,” I said.

  She grimaced. “I feel terrible. The poor woman's been through so much, but my imagination is really overactive.”

  I patted her on the shoulder. “It's okay,” I whispered. “In the wake of a violent crime, we're all left with these broken pieces we have to shift around until life seems okay again.”

  Brianna looked down at her shoes. “Being an adult sucks. I want to make a blanket fort and hide.”

  “Make me one, too,” I said through gritted teeth.

  I gave her another shoulder pat along with a few words of encouragement, and ventured out onto the sales floor.

  I put on a professional smile and said to the sweatshirt-wearing, disheveled woman, “I see someone's keen on redecorating.”

  Samantha spun around and gave me a wild-eyed look. “Stormy, don't sneak up on people like that!” She had a stainless steel paté knife in her hand, and she'd raised her fist in a defensive stabbing position. The short, round blade was designed for spreading soft paté, so it was no more than two inches long, and as blunt as a shiny penny, but the effect was still alarming. It would have been disturbing even if her husband hadn't been stabbed to death a week and a half earlier.

  “I didn't mean to startle you, Samantha.” I took a step back toward the office.

  She lowered the gleaming paté knife and dropped it onto the cheese-serving accessories shelf, next to the marble cutting boards and the bamboo trays.

  We stared at each other. The music was playing over the shop's stereo system, and the song at that moment was “Cuts Like a Knife” by Bryan Adams. The lyrics jumped out.

  I turned my head subtly and gave Brianna a wide-eyed look. She lifted her hands and mouthed the word what?

  I made a knob-twisting motion with my hand.

  She lifted her eyebrows in acknowledgment and cranked the volume. Up.

  I shook my head.

  Brianna swore under her breath and shut the music system off completely.

  “My bad,” she said. To Samantha, she said, “I hate Bryan Adams. Canadians, right? Ugh. Canadians are the worst.”

  I smiled at Samantha and continued the lie. “Brianna hates Canadians. And their stupid geese.”

  “Yeah,” Brianna said with false enthusiasm.

  “The geese are awful,” Samantha agreed. “I have a lake-front listing that would be an easy sell if the lawn wasn't covered in green goose droppings. That's not the sort of green lawn buyers are looking for.”

  With a casual tone, I asked, “How are things going with your listings? Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Everything's fine.”

  “How's your daughter doing?”

  “Fine.”

  “Michael Junior?”

  “Fine.”

  “How about Higgins?”

  She blinked at me. “Who?”

  “The guinea pig.”

  “Right,” she said. “He's fine. He's a guinea pig.”

  “He's a little cutie pie. You must have your hands full. Do you have anyone staying with you?”

  She ignored my question and picked up a heavy pewter candlestick. “Is this brass?”

  “Pewter,” I said.

  “What is pewter? Whatever happened to brass, anyway? It's pretty, like gold. I like gold. I'm going to buy some gold earrings. Michael never bought me jewelry. Now I can buy whatever jewelry I want.”

  She continued to babble about jewelry and buying gifts for herself. The slightly obsessive part of my personality made me want to answer her question about pewter, because I knew it was a malleable metal alloy, mostly tin, mixed with copper, antimony, or bismuth. Older pewters exhibiting a darker silver-gray color might contain lead, so they shouldn't be used for food or come into contact with the human body.

  But Samantha wasn't in the mood for a discussion about alloys or the history of tableware. She was in Full Shopping Mania Mode. She wanted napkin rings. And decorative key organizers. And an old-fashioned wooden sorting board for mail, decorated with a hand-painted rooster going COCK A DOODLE DOO.

  If she'd had a shopping cart, she would have been filling it. But we didn't have big, rolling carts in the gift shop. Mostly people came in to buy only one or two items at a time. When people did go on sprees, they stacked things on the checkout counter, which was what Samantha Sweet was currently doing.

  I asked her, “Are you picking up a thank-you gift for a family member? Maybe someone who's staying with you?”

  She pointed to an octagonal mirror high up on the wall. “Is that for sale?”

  “Sure,” I said, even though the mirror wasn't for sale. It was there to cover an access panel. But I didn't want to say no to the woman. It would be like waking a sleepwalker.

  For the next hour, I tried a few more times to find out how things were going at her house, but she kept ignoring my questions. She just wanted to shop.

  Her behavior certainly matched with what Trigger Canuso had told me the night before, about how Samantha was going to be getting a big insurance settlement. But did she really believe Michael was still alive, and that the body was that of a doppelganger?

  She was behaving erratically, for sure.

  Brianna and I watched with equal parts horror and awe as Samantha Sweet stacked up for purchase a significant portion of our inventory.

  I looked over her piles at the counter and said, “You can return this if you change your mind.”

  “Stormy, I wouldn't do that to you,” Samantha said. “You've been such a help to me through this difficult time.”

  “I've helped?” I wondered if she'd heard about the police questioning Colt the day before.

  “Sophie is always talking about you,” Samantha gushed. “And your trip to Goodie Burger, and then how you watched princess movies with her, just like a true friend. You should come by and see her some time. She'd love to see you.”

  “I could do that,” I said. “Are you sure it's a good idea? Kids might seem resilient, but they need time to grieve.”

  “Grieve?” Samantha blinked at me, her expression blank.

  I didn't know how to respond, so I looked at the computer screen and read the total for her purchase.

  She handed me a credit card without hesitation.

  I swiped the card through the credit card machine. I hoped it
would be declined. I didn't want to take Samantha's money, not like this.

  To my surprise, the transaction was going through. I had just taken money from a woman who wasn't in her right frame of mind. It felt unethical, but I didn't know what else to do. If she was going to max out her credit cards, it was better for her to do it at my store, because I truly would accept back all the merchandise when she eventually came to her senses. I didn't know if the other local businesses would be so understanding.

  Samantha took her credit card from my hand and tucked it away. “Sophie always misses her dad when he's away on business, but it just makes for a happier reunion when he comes home.”

  “But Michael's not coming home,” I said. “Samantha, he's dead. We both saw him.”

  “That wasn't Michael,” she said, scoffing. “It must have been a body he bought off someone at the morgue. Or from a medical school. Didn't you smell it? The thing smelled like pickles!”

  “Pickles?” I was nearly speechless. “Do you mean embalming fluid?”

  She shrugged. “How should I know? When Michael comes back, he can tell me exactly how he pulled it off.” She looked at me and laughed. “He sure fooled you, Stormy! The look on your face that day!”

  I nodded and decided to play along. “Yup. I was really fooled. Michael certainly was quite thorough with his plans. He even warmed up the body to make it seem like it had only just happened.”

  “I'm sorry if you were scared,” she said. She glanced around to make sure we were alone. Brianna had gone into the office to take a much-needed break. The walls were thin, and she'd be able to easily overhear our conversation, but Samantha didn't know that.

  “Don't tell anyone,” Samantha said gravely. “Not until after we have that money from the insurance company and it's all hidden away where they can't touch it.”

  I mimed zipping my lips.

  She looked down at the pile of housewares and tchotchkes. “How am I going to get all of this back to my house?”

  “I'll help you,” I said. “Whatever doesn't fit in your vehicle, we can put in my car. I'll follow you to your house, and then we can make a whole day out of setting everything up.”