Death of a Double Dipper

by Angela Pepper

  She clapped her hands girlishly. “That sounds wonderful.”

  I started boxing up the items in cardboard shipping boxes, since our bags would only hold a few items.

  I decided I would follow her to her house, and then I'd conduct a search of her purse, her medicine cabinet, and her bedside table. She was, without a doubt, suffering a mental breakdown. Whether it was just a bad mix of medicines or something else was yet to be determined, and the diagnosis was not up to me.

  Thanks for my investigative work experience, I had a few contacts in the social services field who could take my tip and deal with it discreetly.

  It was with a heavy heart that I popped my head into the office and whispered my plan to Brianna.

  “Someone's gotta do it,” she whispered back. “You have to make sure those little kids of hers are safe.”

  “I really don't want to do this,” I said.

  “But you're so good at it,” she said. “You'll do great. Call me with an update? I swear I'm not trying to be a drama llama. I feel kinda responsible, because I phoned you.”

  “I understand,” I said. I really did appreciate her having called me at home to let me know about Samantha's strange behavior.

  “Good luck.”

  “I'll check in with you,” I said. “Brianna, you did the right thing by calling me.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “How come the right thing feels so wrong?”

  I felt myself channeling my father, speaking his words. “I'm sorry, sweetie. That's just how life is sometimes.”

  Chapter 28

  I loaded the remaining boxes of Samantha's merchandise into my car and followed Samantha to her house. She parked in her driveway and went straight into the house, carrying in only one bag from her vehicle.

  I parked on the street in front and stepped out. I was surprised by what I saw, at the transformation that had taken place over the last ten days. A pile of mail appeared to be bursting from the mailbox. The front step was strewn with wilting bouquets of sympathy flowers in a variety of containers. Some well-meaning neighbor had brought over a casserole, but it hadn't even been brought inside. If I hadn't already known, I would have been tipped off immediately that there'd been a tragedy at the Sweet residence. Two oily-black crows had easily removed the plastic wrap from the casserole and were now digging into the abandoned treasure. Human tragedy made for a tasty crow picnic.

  The two glossy birds flapped their wings as I approached.

  “Lunch is all yours,” I told the crows. “That actually looks good. Is it lasagna?”

  The crows continued pulling the casserole apart.

  “I talk to animals now,” I explained to the birds. “You see, I have a cat.”

  The crows paused and cocked their heads in an almost human gesture, as if to say they totally understood.

  I entered the house.

  “Where's Sophie?” I asked as I surveyed the mess in the entryway.

  “At school,” Samantha answered nonchalantly.

  “And Michael Junior?”

  “Um...” Samantha picked up a rumpled blanket from the sofa. “At the daycare?” Her voice inflected up at the end, as though she was the one asking me.

  We finished picking up blankets and dirty laundry from the living room. I was relieved to not find the baby there unattended, but I was troubled by Samantha's lack of concern about where he actually was.

  “We should tidy up before we bring more stuff in,” I said.

  “You don't have to help. Unless you want to?”

  I gave her a warm smile. “I insist. Let's get things tidied up. It's always easier to think in a clean room.”

  She agreed. While Samantha went to the kitchen and started on the dishes, which I could smell as soon as we'd walked in the front door, I got to work on the rest of the house.

  An hour later, I went into Sophie's room, where I found Higgins looking unhappy in a dirty cage. Or at least I assumed he was unhappy. If I were trapped in a cage that smelled as bad as his, I'd be grumpy.

  “Hey, Higgins. I'm here to help. How would you like some new bedding in there?”

  He stared at me with his big dark eyes. I'd never spent much time around guinea pigs, but he was a cute little guy, mostly brown with a white sash down the center of his face. The white sash had a zig-zag to it, like a lightning bolt. Harry Potter, I thought. Tony Milano's kids had a guinea pig they called Harry Potter because he or she had a lightning bolt. I wondered if their Harry and Higgins could be related. We only had so many pet stores and breeders in town, so it was possible.

  I gave Higgins fresh food and water, and changed the stinky bedding in the bottom of his cage. I used the paper-based bedding material that was in a bag next to his cage. The writing on the packaging claimed it to be phenol-free and healthier than wood shavings.

  “There you go,” I said when I was done.

  Higgins thanked me for my efforts by biting my finger.

  You know what they say. No good deed goes unpunished.

  Truthfully, it wasn't his fault. I'd spooked him with some sudden hand movements. At least he hadn't broken my skin.

  “Sorry I scared you,” I said.

  He blinked up at me with big, frightened eyes. Or maybe I was projecting again. I was the one who was frightened. What was I doing there? What was I supposed to do about Samantha, who'd apparently gone a bit crazy?

  I pulled a book about the care of guinea pigs off Sophie's shelf and sat down to learn more about the little critters. One thing at a time, I told myself.

  Higgins gradually warmed up to my presence and hopped out of his cage to come check me out.

  He meandered over to where I sat cross-legged on the carpet. After a few minutes, he eventually hopped up onto my leg and nuzzled my hand.

  “Does this mean we're friends?”

  He gazed up at me with big, black eyes. Was that affection?

  “Sorry, I can't take you home with me,” I said. “My cat is still very sore with me for bringing home two huskies last night.”

  He nuzzled my hand again and began vibrating.

  Vibrating?

  I checked the handbook.

  Yes, guinea pigs purr. Who knew? Higgins definitely wanted to spend more time with me.

  “Higgins, you don't know what you're asking for,” I said softly. “Jeffrey Blue would try to eat you. I know you're bigger than his mouth, but he'd still try.”

  I handed him a leaf of lettuce I'd gotten from the kitchen, and he nibbled away happily on my lap.

  “You're welcome,” I said. “You sure are easy to please. Other than the time you bit me.” I checked my fingertip. It was red but not bleeding. “No harm, no foul,” I said.

  The floor outside the room creaked, and a man appeared in the doorway. “Who are you talking to?”

  “Tony Baloney!”

  Captain Tony Milano grimaced at being called by his old nickname.

  “That's weird. I was just thinking about you,” I said.

  “Of course you were.” He looked around the little girl's bedroom. “This feels familiar,” he said. “Me, you, the unicorn posters?”

  I chortled. “I was a bit older than Sophie when we first met.”

  “Sweet sixteen,” he said with a twist of a grin.

  “That phrase always makes the person saying it look like a dirty old man.”

  He frowned. “It's hard to believe you were ever that young. You were just a kid.”

  “I was.”

  He'd been twenty-three when my father had taken him under his wing. As a young rookie cop, Tony had spent a lot of time at our house, including family dinners. Back then, he'd been so cute with his bronzed skin, cropped black hair, and big brown eyes. He was always flexing the muscles he’d built up at the academy. In his tight black T-shirts, Tony had been a bigger star than every famous actor and singer rolled into one. I lived for those nights he came over to see my father because he’d always spend a few minutes chatting with me. I loved how he treated me
like an adult, like an equal.

  And now, whenever I saw him, he made me feel the opposite. Like a kid. Not equal at all. And so I tried to poke at him, calling him Tony Baloney among other things, just to get a reaction. The truth was, I just wanted to see him smile. I'd loved him once, and a part of me still did. I wanted to see him happy, sometimes. Despite the other part of me that wanted to see him miserable. We'd dated in secret, when I was twenty-three, right before I left town. It was only supposed to be a fling, an experiment, yet I resented him for closing the door to me when his girlfriend got pregnant. He married her, and they had three kids.

  And now here we were, years later, still feeling the past.

  The only difference was a bit of gray hair, and bigger problems.

  He leaned against the doorway and looked down at me on the floor. “What are you doing here?”

  “Checking on Samantha. What about you? Did someone call in a ten-fifty-nine?” That was the Misty Falls Police Department's code for incidents involving yours truly. I was somewhat flattered to have earned my own code.

  He didn't even twitch. “Who told you about the ten-fifty-nine?”

  “I heard Dimples use it with dispatch a few weeks back, when we were in pursuit of suspects.”

  “You mean that time when you wrecked a perfectly good police cruiser?”

  “Me? I wasn't the one driving.”

  “Maybe you should have been.” He crossed his arms. “When are you going to give up on this private eye business and come work for the good guys?”

  I felt my eyebrows rise in surprise. This was a new one. Usually, Tony tried to get me to stay far away from police business. Now he was recruiting me? I looked down at Higgins, who looked equally surprised. He'd paused in chewing his lettuce leaf to stare at Tony.

  Tony was grinning, apparently pleased to have made me speechless for a moment.

  “Captain Milano, you just want me working for the department so you can boss me around.”

  “Please,” he said with a snort. “I may be slow sometimes, but I'm not an idiot. Nobody can boss you around, Stormy.”

  Just my cat, I answered in my head. And my bossy redheaded roommate.

  “Are you going to tell me why you're here?” I asked. “You're not in uniform, so am I to assume this is a personal call?”

  “Not that it's any of your business, Miss Day, but I'm here to keep Ms. Sweet up to date on the homicide case.”

  “Did you get a confession from Colt Canuso?”

  “Do I look like I'm in a celebratory mood?”

  “I can't tell, Tony Baloney. I haven't seen you happy in a long time.”

  “Ouch.”

  I shook my head and looked down at the guinea pig, who was casually distancing himself from a trio of suspicious-looking brown pellets on my jeans.

  “I'm being pooped on,” I said.

  “Don't be so dramatic,” Tony said with a sigh. “Fine. Since you were good enough to cooperate with the investigation, I can let you know there's been no confession yet.”

  “No?” I smiled as I gently scooped up Higgins and set him back into his cage. Tony had misinterpreted what I'd said about being literally pooped on. Who knew a little dramatic hyperbole would work so well at getting him to loosen up?

  “Canuso is sticking to his story that he was walking his dogs outside of town at the time of the murder. We are, however, very interested in Tanner and the other Canuso, the security guards.”

  I closed the guinea pig cage and passed in a carrot stick between the bars.

  “That would be great if it was one of those two,” I said. “Or both of them.”

  “Anyone but your pal, right?” He uncrossed his arms and stepped into the room, where he looked large and masculine—out of place in front of the frosting-pink walls. “Is there something going on between you and Colt?”

  “Yes, Tony. I'm sleeping with half the town.”

  He snorted. “No need to overreact.”

  “I'm with Logan,” I said. “Not with Colt Canuso, or Kyle Dempsey, or any of the other men in this town between the ages of nineteen and ninety whom you always assume I'm sleeping with if you happen to see me having so much as a two-minute conversation with them.”

  He gave a nonchalant shrug. “I'm just looking out for you. You're like a sister to me.”

  “Ew.” Suddenly, I wanted out of the small room. I got to my feet, and I couldn't resist giving him a bump with my shoulder as I moved past him, out of Sophie's bedroom.

  He followed me to the bathroom and watched me wash my hands. The family's main bathroom was a mess, with towels on the floor, an overflowing laundry hamper, and what appeared to be a loose stack of used diapers forming a pyramid on the back of the toilet tank.

  I whispered to Tony, “That's not a good sign,” and nodded at the diapers.

  “No,” he said gravely. “I'm afraid I'll have to report this. We'll have a social worker pick up Sophie at the school. Any idea where the baby is?”

  “At the daycare. I already called to check.” I pulled out my phone and gave him the name of the place and the address. “What about Samantha?”

  We both listened for a minute. She was now rearranging the furniture in the living room, talking to herself a mile a minute. By the sound of it, she was having a better day than us. In her own mind, anyway.

  I explained to Tony what Samantha had said to me at my store, about how the body in the tub hadn't been Michael's and he would return to reunite with her, and life would be wonderful because they'd be rich from the insurance money.

  “If only it worked that way,” Tony said with sadness. “I'd fake my own death if I could.”

  I smacked him on the shoulder playfully. “Don't even joke. You're the one person in this town who could get away with it. Plus you have access to all the bodies.”

  He smacked me back on my shoulder. “So does Harvey Blight, the undertaker.”

  “Blight? I thought he was the manager of Accio Bistro.”

  “That's his brother, Howard Blight. The undertaker is Harvey Blight. Kind of an unfortunate name for the funeral business.”

  “Kind of an unfortunate last name for any profession, really.”

  “You would know.” He grinned. “Stormy.”

  “Tony Baloney.”

  He breathed in deeply and glanced around. “Well, are we going to stand here all day trading insults, or are we going to make some phone calls and finish tearing apart a victimized family?”

  I stared at him.

  He broke eye contact, looking down at his feet. He'd taken off his shoes before entering the residence, and based on the number of children's Band-Aids that were now stuck to his foot, he was probably regretting his choice.

  “It's just dark humor,” he said. “We don't mean anything by it.”

  “I know,” I said gently. “You can make amends by taking Higgins with you. He can play with your guinea pig, Harry Potter.”

  He looked up quickly, wide-eyed. “You remembered the name of my kids' guinea pig?”

  I could have told him it had stuck with me, thanks to the anecdote he told me about it going missing, and how it was named after the boy wizard because it had a white lightning-shaped marking on its head.

  Instead, I said, rather ominously, “I know everything about you, Milano.”

  Chapter 29

  When I got home that Wednesday afternoon, I found a note on my front door. There were no words, just an arrow pointing to Logan's side of the duplex.

  I walked over with the note in my hand, laughing to myself. He could be as cryptic as my father at times.

  I let myself in and kicked off my shoes. “You summoned me?”

  He turned around from his position at the stove and gave me the smile that could win over the toughest of judges, in spite of the dark beard so many people teased him about.

  “You had a tough day,” he said.

  “You heard about that.”

  “My cousin called me, screaming that you were tryi
ng to take away her children. You wouldn't do such a thing, would you?”

  I shrugged and went straight for the wine bottle on the counter. There were three glasses set out, which I found strange, but didn't question it.

  “Those blond kids of hers are cute,” I said. “My devious mastermind plot was to kill Michael, drive Samantha insane, and then take her children for myself.”

  He gave me a serious look, eyebrows raised. “There are simpler ways to get a couple of children.”

  I nearly spilled the wine I was pouring. Logan and I hadn't discussed having children, let alone a couple of them. I took a sip of the wine and waited for my thoughts to coalesce. The scene at the Sweet residence had been intense. Even without the kids there, Samantha had been a handful, hurling dishes at Tony as soon as he told her a representative from Child Protective Services was coming by for a “quick interview.”

  I'd locked myself in the master bedroom with the guinea pig for the better part of an hour, afraid to stay but more afraid to leave.

  Samantha finally became more calm and agreed to be psychologically evaluated at the hospital. Some people came, helped her pack an overnight bag, and took her away. Tony and I did a quick check around the house before locking up. He agreed to take Higgins with him, informing me that I “owed him one” for taking temporary custody of the guinea pig.

  Logan, being Samantha's cousin, had already heard about the afternoon's excitement from the opposite side—the point of view from which I was the evil enemy.

  I must have been feeling guilty about something—perhaps how bad it looked for Samantha's car to be filled with merchandise from my store—that I gushed out the whole story in a stream of conscious rant, tripping over my tongue to make sure Logan had the full picture. The true picture. My picture.

  I was pouring a second glass and still talking—I'd gotten up to the part about the Sweet family's next-door neighbor giving me royal hell for drawing crows to the street with food left out on the porch—when I noticed a third person quietly standing in Logan's kitchen.

  She was younger than Logan, perhaps late twenties, with wavy auburn hair and big, doll-like hazel eyes. She was wearing flannel pajama bottoms and a sleeveless T-shirt with no bra. She looked really familiar, like an actress I'd seen on TV a million times.