“Let’s just store them here for now,” I said as I lifted up a cushion on the bench of the dining nook. The builders had installed storage areas all over the cottage, and I loved the stowing capacity my little Craftsman-style bungalow had. “When this mess is all over, we can safely get rid of them all, but for the moment, I’d feel better having them nearby, in case we missed something the first few times we looked at them.”
Maddy yawned and then said, “I hate to be a party pooper, but I’m really beat. Do you mind if I go on to bed?”
I couldn’t remember the last time my sister called it a night before I did, but I wasn’t about to crow about it. We’d both had a tough time during the last day and change, but she had the added emotional stress of having her ex-husband murdered near where she lived and worked. It would have been nearly too much for anyone to take, and though Maddy often put on a brave face for the world, I knew that my sister was still feeling the impact of Grant’s murder.
“I’m beat myself. I’ll see you in the morning, Sis,” I said as I double-checked every door and window to be certain we were safely locked in.
“Eleanor, let’s just have cereal tomorrow, okay? Nothing fancy, if it’s okay with you.”
“What’s the matter? Don’t you like my pancakes anymore?” I asked her with a grin.
“They’re perfect, and you know it, but I’d like to get started early. There’s a lot of digging we can do before we have to open the Slice for business tomorrow.”
“You’re okay with us still staying open, aren’t you?”
“You bet,” she said. “It makes too much sense not to close, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to dig into this more, too.”
“Is there anything in particular you have in mind?” I asked as I paused at her bedroom door.
“No, but maybe if we both sleep on it, we’ll come up with something.”
“Good night, then,” I said.
I was afraid that I might have trouble sleeping after all we’d done, and with all the information swirling around in my head, but I dropped off before I even realized it.
Apparently, Maddy wasn’t the only one who was exhausted from all that had happened.
“Eleanor, there’s someone on your porch,” Maddy said the next morning, after I finished washing out our cereal bowls. “Are you expecting anybody to visit this early?”
“No,” I said as I shut off the water. “Can you see who it is?”
“Truthfully, I just saw a shadow pass by,” she admitted. “But I don’t like it.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” I said as I walked to the front door. Before I opened it, though, I reached into the hall closet and got out the baseball bat I kept there. I knew that it wouldn’t do any good against a gun, but it still made me feel better holding it.
I took a deep breath and then pulled the door open as quickly as I could manage.
Samantha Stout looked startled as I did so, and she was even more surprised by the baseball bat I was holding in my hands. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to disturb you, so when I saw that your sister was here with you, I was planning on just leaving you a note.”
“Well, you’re here now, and we’re finished eating, so why don’t you come on in? Would you like a cup of coffee?”
She glanced back at the bat. “That depends. Are you two going to play a game this morning?”
“No, it’s just for protection. A girl can’t be too careful these days.”
“Don’t I know it,” she said. “If you don’t mind, some coffee would be great.”
I led her in, stowing the bat back where it belonged along the way. That didn’t mean that I trusted the singer any farther than I could throw her, but I sincerely doubted that she was there to physically attack either one of us. If I was wrong, though, I was fairly certain that Maddy had the armaments in her purse to defend us both.
“Hello, Samantha,” Maddy said as she handed her a cup of coffee. “I heard you and Eleanor talking, so I got a cup ready for you.”
“Why don’t we go into the living room, where it’s a little more comfortable?” I suggested.
After we were all seated, Samantha said, “First off, I want to apologize for my behavior yesterday at the pizzeria. I reacted badly to your reasonable request, and I’m sorry.”
“I have to admit that it was kind of strange of you to refuse a simple request, especially given the fact that you came looking to us for help, I said.
“I know. I guess I was so distraught that anyone could think that I might have killed Grant that it set me off. My ex-husband’s reaction was even worse. I can’t believe that he just stormed off like that.”
“Did you ever catch up with Kenny after you two left the Slice?” I asked.
“Actually, the second I got outside, I decided that it would probably be better if I left him alone, so I took off on my own,” Samantha said. “Truth be told, I’ve been ducking him ever since he stormed out of the Slice like that. The man’s got a volatile temper, and honestly, I was more than a little afraid to be around him.”
“Has he ever hit you?” Maddy asked gently.
“No, but he’s come close more than once. His temper usually only flairs up when he’s jealous of another man. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but he put a guy in the hospital once who was just helping me write a song.” Samantha took a sip of coffee, and then she added, “I’m beginning to wonder if he might have had something to do with what happened to Grant after all.”
“But you two broke up,” I said. “Why would Kenny still be jealous of him?”
“After we split up, Grant was seeing a woman named Vivian Wright in Cow Spots, but he told me that he broke up with her not long after they got together so he could be with me again. I told him that he was insane, and that I’d never date a man who stole money from me, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. The night Grant died, Kenny overheard part of our conversation, and it was all I could do to keep them apart.”
“Have you told any of this to the police?” I asked.
She looked scared by the very idea of it. “There’s no way I’m incriminating Kenny like that. Who knows what he would do to me then.”
“But you’re telling us,” Maddy said.
“I’m worried that if Kenny thinks you’ve turned on him, something could happen to the two of you, and I can’t have that on my conscience. I came here to warn you both to be very careful around him.”
“You have to know that we’re going to tell the police everything you just told us, Samantha,” I said. “Chief Hurley has a right to know.”
“Do what you feel that you must, but I’m trusting you to leave my name out of it. Kenny has to be stopped, but I can’t have him realizing that I’m the one who pointed the finger at him. I don’t know what he’d do if he found out.”
“We’ll do what we can to keep your name out of it,” Maddy said. It wasn’t exactly a promise to keep her identity secret, just a pledge that we would try. I could live with that, but Chief Hurley needed to know about Kenny’s wild jealousy.
“You get why we can’t make any promises, don’t you?” I asked.
“I understand. Anyway, if there’s anything I can do, just ask me.”
“Where were you when Grant was murdered?” I asked.
“You’re still asking me for an alibi, even after what I just told you about my ex-husband?”
“The sooner we can cross you off our list of suspects, the better,” I said as reassuringly as I could.
She nodded. “I’m afraid I left the stage after we played a few encores, and then I drove back home, alone. I didn’t see anybody along the way or talk to anyone on my cell phone. Honestly, I don’t have an alibi, which is one of the reasons I reacted the way I did when you asked me for one.”
“I understand,” I said. “It’s a tough question to have to answer.” I didn’t think that Samantha’s reply meant that she was guilty of anything, but it didn’t do anything to clear her name, either.
She put the coffee mug down and then stood up. “Anyway, that’s the only reason I came by. Kenny Stout is a liar and a thief, and I’m afraid that he’s capable of things much worse than what we’ve seen so far. Don’t believe a word he tells you, and above all else, never turn your back on him.”
After Samantha was gone, Maddy turned to me and asked, “What was that visit really all about?”
“Don’t you believe her story?” I asked.
“I don’t know. We both saw a flare-up of Kenny’s temper, but that doesn’t make anything else Samantha just said true. She did look scared when she talked about him, though.”
“I agree. If nothing else, it gives us some food for thought. I wonder if it’s really true that Grant was dating his ex-wife.” I couldn’t imagine the two of them together, but I’d also seen odder matchups in my life.
“It should be easy enough to prove one way or the other,” Maddy said. “I can’t imagine Vivian getting out of jail that fast, can you?”
“How are we going to find out if she is, though? The chief was already suspicious of our connection with her last night. He’s not going to let us interview her while she’s locked up. You can bet on that.”
I grabbed my phone as Maddy asked, “What are you doing?”
“There’s only one thing we can do. We need to use the direct approach.”
“You’re calling the police chief?” Maddy asked as I dialed his cell number.
“There’s no better way to find out the truth,” I said.
“Hurley,” he answered after he picked up.
“Chief, this is Eleanor Swift. Was anyone hurt in the wreck last night?”
“It wasn’t as bad as it looked at first. I’m not saying that both cars weren’t totaled, but miraculously, everybody got out of it alive. Is that really the reason you’re calling me?”
“No. I wanted to go ahead and finish the conversation we were having about Cow Spots last night.”
“I’d like to do that myself,” he said.
“Do you have any interest in coming by the pizzeria before we open today? We can chat then.”
“I have a better idea,” he said as a car horn honked outside.
“What’s that?” I asked, and then I heard the car horn honking again.
“Step out onto your porch and you’ll see,” he said, and then he hung up on me.
“This is getting to be a habit for you,” I said to him when I opened the door and found him standing on the front porch. “You’re not stalking me, are you?”
“No, this one’s a pure coincidence. I was two streets over when you called, so it was easy enough to swing by here.”
“Did you happen to see Samantha Stout as you were driving up?”
“No. What was she doing here?” he asked, clearly surprised by her presence in my neighborhood. “Was it about the murder?”
“So, you know about her connection to the case, then,” Maddy said.
“It’s immaterial what I know. What have you two been able to find out?”
“She was dating Grant a few months back, but she broke up with him when she lost money in an investment he recommended to her that went bad,” I said.
The chief whistled softly as he shook his head. “It doesn’t take you two long to get right down to the bone, does it?”
“This murder is tied to us in too many ways,” I said. “You knew we’d be digging into it.”
“Unofficially, of course I did, but the longer I could ignore your meddling, the better it was for both of us. There’s no way around that now, though. Why exactly did Samantha Stout come by here this morning?”
“She wanted to warn us that her ex-husband had a jealous streak even after they separated, and when Grant came by the stage the night he was murdered, evidently things got a little heated between the three of them.”
“But he was dating his ex-wife, Vivian Wright, up until the day he died,” the chief said stubbornly. “Two sources I checked with confirmed it.”
“If you don’t believe us, just ask her yourself. She’s under your guard still, right?”
He looked angry at the suggestion. “Not anymore. Somebody bailed her out of jail an hour ago.”
“Wow, that was fast. How much was her bail set at?” Maddy asked.
“Two hundred thousand dollars, and her boss put it all up in cash,” he said.
“No doubt it was from the money he made running a book out of the dry cleaner,” Maddy said.
“It goes quite a bit deeper than that. Gambling was just the first bit we’ve found so far. Who knows how deep it goes?”
I thought about Art Young and the fact that he was in some kind of trouble. He might accept that as a cost of doing business, but it would be hard to lose my friend over a dark rivalry that I knew nothing about.
The police chief asked, “Did Samantha happen to give you an alibi for the time that Grant was murdered?”
“She claimed that she left the stage, got into her car, and drove straight home. Nobody saw her, and she didn’t take any cell phone calls, either,” I said.
“So then that means that she’s not afraid to throw her ex-husband under the bus,” Chief Hurley said.
“Maddy and I couldn’t tell if she was acting or not, but if she was, she was doing a bang-up job of it. I had the feeling that she was honestly frightened of him when she was here talking about him,” I said.
“There could be a great many things that she’s afraid of right now,” he said. “I need to speak with her, and her ex, as well. Any idea where he might be hiding?”
“I’m sorry to say that I don’t have a clue,” I admitted, glad that I could answer him truthfully.
“Well, if you see him before I do, tell him that I’m looking for him.” Chief Hurley started down the steps but turned to face us before he left. “I’d ask you both to stop digging into this murder, but I hate wasting my breath. If you get in over your head, call me. I don’t care what time of day or night it is. Do we understand each other?”
“We do,” I said.
As he neared his squad car, I called out, “It’s nice to know that you care about us, Chief.”
“Well,” he said with a slight grin, “Josh loves working at the Slice, and I don’t want him to have to go through hunting for another job anytime soon.”
Once he was gone, I turned to Maddy. “He likes us. I don’t care how much he protests otherwise.”
“And who can blame him? We’re very likable, as far as I’m concerned,” she said.
I glanced at my watch. “We have an hour and a half before we need to go to the Slice. Any ideas about what we might do with our time?”
“I was hoping you’d ask,” Maddy said. “As a matter of fact, I do have something in mind at that.”
Chapter 12
“So, where exactly am I driving?” I asked my sister as we pulled out of my driveway. “Are we going back to Cow Spots to do some more digging?”
“It does seem as though everyone we’re interested in talking to lives there,” Maddy agreed. “But what I’d really like to do is get another look at Grant’s basement apartment at his mother’s house.”
“Don’t you think that might be kind of risky?” I asked. “We almost got caught the last time we snooped around there.”
“What are the odds that Rebecca is going to be there?”
“I’d say that it’s a coin toss, if I had to guess.”
She brightened at that. “Those are pretty good odds. We’ll have some time to snoop if we’re lucky.”
“And if we aren’t?” I asked.
“We can always try to track Vivian down, now that she’s out on bail,” she answered.
“I think the odds of her being back at Clean Break are close to nothing.”
“Then we’ll try somewhere else if that doesn’t pan out. I wonder how hard it would be to break into Bernie Maine’s place?”
I had to laugh at the question. “That’s just rhetorical, right?”
She just grinned at me, and I drove to Sharon Whitmore’s house to see what else we could find there.
Rebecca’s car was parked out front, so that was a dead end for us, at least for the moment. She had a rosebush in a wheelbarrow sitting in the yard, as well as some bagged mulch. “She’s planting roses,” I said as I drove on past her place. At least she wasn’t outside in the yard working when we drove by. I didn’t have the slightest idea how we would have explained our presence there, but knowing Maddy, I was sure that my sister would have come up with something just plausible enough to be accepted.
“Should we go to the dry cleaner now?” Maddy asked.
“You’re the brains of the operation. I’m just your chauffeur.”
“We both know that’s a big fat lie,” she answered.
I didn’t respond and instead just kept driving.
As I’d suspected, the dry cleaner was closed as well.
“That just leaves Bernie Maine’s place,” Maddy said as I pulled into the parking lot.
“You weren’t serious about breaking in, were you?” I asked.
“I’m fresh out of ideas, but if you have any good ones yourself, I’m open to suggestions.”
I thought about it, and then I realized that she was probably right. I wasn’t all that happy about breaking and entering again somewhere else, but what choice did we have? The longer it took to solve Grant’s murder, the worse it would look for every suspect, including Bob, and to a lesser extent, the rest of us.
“Should I park at the welcome center again?” I asked.
“No, let’s pull up behind his office. That way no one knows that we’re here.”
“I’d like to keep it that way if we could,” I said.
“You don’t have to worry about me, Eleanor. I have no desire to be arrested, either,” she said.
“Well, it’s good that we agree on something.”
The back door of the office was locked, and on the rare chance that he had hidden a key somewhere else, we checked flowerpots, rocks that looked fake, and even under the doormat.
The Missing Dough (A Pizza Lovers Mystery) Page 13