Hobbit and I followed him into the building that housed Gus’s tiny office. There really wasn’t room for all of us in Gus’s small space, but we crowded in anyway. It was just a small room with a low shelf on one wall and a big table in the middle. A computer and a microscope sat on the big table, and the shelf was full of thick hardbound books that looked like textbooks, but I didn’t inspect them closely.
“Ms. Robins,” Gus said in greeting as he nodded. He wasn’t wearing the baseball cap, and I could see his hair was short and reddish brown, and his eyes a darker brown. He looked younger than he did in the cap. He might have been in his thirties, but the cap had made him seem about twenty years older. I didn’t point that out.
“Gus,” I said, nodding. “Please call me Becca.”
He took the bag from Sam and carefully pulled out the collar. Hobbit peered over the tabletop and suddenly seemed perplexed as to why this man had something of hers. She nudged me gently.
“It’s okay,” I said. “He’ll give it back, or we’ll get you a new one.”
She was still curious.
Gus placed the collar on the counter in front of him and pulled out a big brush and some fine black powder. He touched the brush to the powder and then swirled it over the collar’s surfaces.
“Well, I’ve got lots of prints,” he said after a minute, “but I’ll have to email them to Charleston to see if they match anything we gathered. They might just all be your prints, Becca.”
“Maybe,” Sam said, “but we need to know. How long will it take?”
Gus shrugged. “Depends on many things, but I’ll get on it right away.” He looked at Sam, who nodded.
“Thanks, Gus. Call me as soon as you know anything. Becca, bring Hobbit and let’s go back to the station.”
“Tell me about the message,” he said after we exited the office building.
“It’s from Betsy.” I played it for him.
He didn’t miss a step, but his mouth pinched as he listened to Betsy’s odd words.
“Do you have any idea where she was?” he asked me.
“No. I hoped you did.”
“None at all. I let her go because we didn’t have anything to keep her. I was going to go talk to Nobel this evening—going to leave for Bistro when I heard from you. Now I think I’ll wait to see if Gus finds anything.”
“Okay,” I said.
Suddenly, we were on the top step of the county municipal building. Sam handed me my phone. “Your sister’s in there. She grabbed some dinner for your parents and came back.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go in.” I reached for the door handle.
Sam put his hand on my arm. “She knows.”
“About what?” I said.
“The other day.” He glanced toward the street. “The . . . our . . . kiss.”
“She knows!?” I said, horrified as completely as I could be. “You told her?”
“No, of course not. I said I wouldn’t. I don’t know how she knows. She told me you didn’t tell her, so I thought it might be some twin communication thing or that someone else saw us and told her. We were right in the open after all.”
My heart rate sped up again. How did Allison know?
“What did you say?”
“I said it was a ‘moment’ and I’d do my best to see that it didn’t happen again.”
“You didn’t deny that it happened?”
“I’m not going to lie to your sister. I save that skill for criminals.”
Of course he wouldn’t lie to Allison. I wouldn’t either, but I detour around the truth when necessary.
Allison wouldn’t tell Ian about my indiscretion, but she’d most definitely have a few things to say to me about it. She’d be right, too.
“I’m sorry, Becca,” Sam said.
“If I remember correctly, you were an innocent bystander and I accosted you like a teenager who’s read too many vampire romances.”
Sam laughed. “Well, I could have pushed you away.”
“Yes, you could have.” I laughed, too. The humor made it all suddenly seem less serious. I thought I knew where Sam stood on the matter—I thought maybe he’d be okay with the kiss turning into more, but he was fine if it didn’t, too. I didn’t know where I stood yet, and that was the worst part of it all. How could I be questioning my relationship with Ian, a relationship I thought was so perfect? I appreciated that Sam kept to his word and didn’t push further.
“Let’s go inside,” he said. “I just wanted you to have a heads-up, but there is a murder investigation to solve, and I think that’s more important right now than either of our . . . than the kiss.”
“Thanks.” I looked into his eyes briefly, but it was long enough to send a flare of something through my system. What was that? I wondered. The best move was to ignore it for the time being.
Allison was in the hall outside the station offices on her cell phone. She held a bag of Jake’s sandwiches and glanced at me with a small amount of venom in her brown eyes. I was in trouble, but she’d wait until later to drop the guillotine blade.
She hung up the phone and greeted us without any sort of reprimand. She’d talked to Sam; she’d talk to me separately and in private.
The bag of sandwiches smelled amazing, and I realized I hadn’t eaten all day.
“You by chance get enough for all of us?” I asked as I huffed a laugh. I was trying too hard to be light and funny.
“Actually, I did.” Allison smiled knowingly. She knew what she knew, and she knew that Sam had told me what she knew.
I took a deep breath. This too shall pass, I thought to myself.
Sam led the way back to my parents. They were both relaxed and in better moods than a couple hours before.
“Ah, food,” Dad said as he righted the chair he was leaning back in.
“Jake’s. Best sandwiches in town.” Allison passed around wrapped hoagies and bags of chips. She even brought one for Sam and extras for other officers on duty.
It was in the middle of dinner, in the middle of the patter of “greeting” conversation, that my mother said the words that took the case from being closer to being solved to being really close to being solved. These moments are usually marked by some big declaration like “By Jove!” or “Well, I’ll be!” but my mother put the first real substantial lead into the case by saying these simple words:
“This is the smell.”
At first, no one thought she was saying anything important. I wasn’t sure I heard her correctly and didn’t think she was talking to me anyway. She was looking down at the sandwich that was on her lap, unwrapped and colorful with a variety of Jake’s fresh veggies. Without registering what she was doing, I saw her lift the sandwich and smell it.
“Hey, this is the smell,” she said. Her voice was louder this time.
“What do you mean, Mom?” Allison said.
“This was the smell I smelled at Becca’s. See, it’s oregano.”
Sam didn’t hesitate; he unlocked the cell and had my mom bring the sandwich out with her. We all sniffed it, and yes, it was oregano, but there was more to the scent than just the herb.
“It’s a mixture Jake uses,” Allison said, “oil, vinegar, and oregano. It’s like vinaigrette but with oregano. It makes a great sandwich dressing. He gets it all over his shirts—he’s joked about it with me. Lots of sandwich shops are using it.”
I sat still and thought: I’d noticed the herb and vinegar smell on him a number of times, but I’d never distinguished the scent of oregano, too. Jake? Jake’s a killer? I thought some more: he’d been talking to Brenton about dog biscuits at the market. I didn’t see him talking to Herb and Don, but I might have missed it. He brought Bo the onion table after Bo’s had been destroyed. At the time I’d thought he was being polite, but the table he brought was well put together. Had he been working on it longer than just a couple hours? Had he destroyed Bo’s tables? Why? He and Viola had lied to me, I was certain, but I didn’t think that was because he was a k
iller. He didn’t act like a killer—but a killer’s actions were becoming less and less understandable to me.
“But you’ve had Jake’s sandwiches before today,” I said.
“Yes, the last time we were in town, but not this time. Maybe that’s why the smell was familiar.”
“I brought you lunch from Jake’s on Sunday—no, wait, I didn’t. You didn’t need lunch, so I didn’t bring it,” I said.
“You and I were going to bring sandwiches after we left Manny’s,” Sam said, “but we brought tacos instead.”
“Anyway, I’m certain that’s the smell,” Mom said.
“Sam, what did Betsy say about going to Jake’s after she dropped Joan off at my farm? She said that Viola could vouch for her, but why not Jake? He must not have been there. And Jake is always in red,” I said, remembering the fabric on the tree. “His shirts are red, but so are the employees’ at Manny’s.”
“What does red have to do with anything?” Allison asked.
Sam told everyone about the red patch of cloth we’d found at Manny’s the night he was killed, and then he pulled out his phone. “Riley, please bring Viola Gardner into the station. No, she’s not under arrest. Just tell her I’d like to see her and talk to her about. . . .”
“Tomatoes,” I said.
“Tomatoes.”
Just as he hung up, his cell phone buzzed again.
“Brion. Uh-huh. You sure? Thanks.” He closed his phone and stared at the floor as he rubbed under his nose.
“Sam. What?” I said impatiently.
“That was Gus. There were four distinct fingerprint matches on the collar.”
We all moved slightly closer to Sam, either by leaning or stepping.
“Yours, Ian’s, Jake’s, and . . . Betsy’s. I should have found a way to keep her in custody.”
“Do you think they were in on it together?” I said.
“Seems that way right at the moment, but her message also concerns me. I’d like to find her. I’ll talk to Viola, but the prints are enough for me to arrest Jake right now. I’ll get him.” He took a deep breath and looked at me and Allison. “You two need to stay in here or go home. I mean it. Let the police bring Jake and Betsy into custody. You need to keep as far away from it as you can. We can handle it. Okay?”
I nodded. Allison nodded.
“Allison, make sure Becca takes Hobbit home and stays away. Got it?”
“Of course.”
Sam left the room. We were suddenly alone with sandwiches that no one seemed to have the appetite for. He didn’t put my mom back into the cell. He didn’t even tell her not to leave. She might not go back into the cell, but I knew she wouldn’t leave the building until she was told she was free to go, and who knew how long that would take.
“Do you suppose it’s that easy?” I asked. “Do you think we’ve found the killer or killers?”
“That wasn’t all that easy, Becca. Just because you didn’t get shot at doesn’t mean it was easy,” Allison said.
But I should have known better. Catching a killer wasn’t easy; it wasn’t supposed to be. If it were easy, everyone would do it.
Twenty-eight
The night sky was full of stars and a moon that seemed lower and brighter than normal. I was tired and wired at the same time as I drove Hobbit and me down the state highway. It looked like a murder was going to be solved in a short time. And Ian would be home soon. My mother was still in custody, but having the knowledge that she was about to be cleared meant I’d be able to relax for the first time in five days. I’d be back to my normal self. I’d confess about the kiss and hope that Ian understood. Catching a killer always left me with a sense of wanting to put everything else right, too.
Hobbit was just as happy to be home as I was, but her mood changed as I turned off the truck’s motor. She whined.
“What is it, girl?”
She sniffed the air outside the open window. She seemed to be on the verge of panic. That was enough for me.
I started the truck again, put it into Reverse with the idea of backing out of the driveway and back onto the state highway, but was interrupted by what was probably one of the scariest things I’d ever seen.
Betsy came around the side of my house. With the moonlight at her back and whatever else was mixing with the darkness, it looked like she had a carved jack-o’-lantern for a face and a disfigured body.
I gasped. I wanted to scream, but I was suddenly so scared that I couldn’t.
Hobbit barked as if to tell me to get the hell out of there, but I couldn’t stop staring at the gory sight. What had happened to her? Was she hurt? Had she been zombie-fied? She looked . . . wrong.
She put her hand up and said, “Becca, please wait.”
Going against every instinct I had, I did exactly as she said. I waited as she approached the truck. Hobbit’s fur was standing on end, and she nudged at my leg with her nose.
“Hang on. Stop right there,” I said. “I’m going to call Sam.”
“Good idea,” she said as she stopped.
Her reaction probably should have caught my attention, but I was too focused on dialing Sam’s number.
He answered on the first ring.
“Betsy’s here. At my house,” I said.
“Get out of there.”
“Maybe. Can you get out here quickly?”
“Yes, but you should just leave if you can.” He spoke as if he’d suddenly broken into a fast run.
“Get here, Sam.” I ended the call.
Betsy either sensed I was done with the call or she’d heard, and she began walking toward me again. And suddenly, she stepped out of the shadows and light that had disfigured her. She looked normal. She looked like Betsy.
“Stay there. At the end of my truck and tell me why you’re here,” I said.
Betsy stopped and nodded.
“I’m sorry if I scared you,” she said, “but I wanted to talk to you first. I wanted you to know that I know who the real killer is. It isn’t your mother.”
“I know that,” I said, sounding like a snotty teenager. I cleared my throat. I knew her fingerprints had been on Hobbit’s collar. But so had Jake’s.
“Jake killed Joan. I know that now. I confronted him. He as much as admitted it.”
Later, I would look back on that exact moment and wonder why I didn’t completely digest what she’d just said. She’d confronted him? Chances were that hadn’t gone well. That confrontation would dictate the tone of the rest of my current nightmare.
“Why did he kill her?”
“Joan gave some money from the association dues to some members of the association—the five marked with yes on the list; four owners she’d started the association with and Viola Gardner, Jake’s aunt. She’d been giving a little money to Viola for years, but Viola didn’t know it was wrong. Viola thought she was just getting a good price for her tomatoes. But, Joan had a soft spot for Viola and Joan wanted to take care of her. Viola didn’t know she was stealing—but they were all stealing, Becca. Apparently the four other restaurant owners recently found out Joan was giving money to Viola and big chunks of money to Nobel. They threatened to ruin Bistro if she didn’t stop immediately and pay them back everything she’d paid to Viola and Nobel.”
“That probably added up to a lot, but I still don’t know why Jake killed Joan,” I said. Joan had most likely been well-off, but coming up with a chunk that might have added up to hundreds of thousands of dollars wouldn’t be easy for anyone.
Betsy took a step closer and continued as if she wanted to make sure I heard every detail. “That’s not all. I didn’t know this until just recently,” she swallowed hard, “but years ago the other four owners threatened to ruin anyone who quit the association. And they could, they were that powerful. They poisoned an apple vendor when he was eating at Bistro, not with a deadly dose but enough to scare everyone from going to the authorities. Joan didn’t have anything to do with the poisoning, but I’m not sure about Nobel, I want you to
know that. In fact, I think Joan was being held hostage in some way by the other four owners and her son. Joan might have started the association, but it got out of control. The list, the no’s and maybe’s. Joan and Nobel were trying to guess who they could demand more dues money from. Recently, Joan told Viola that she wasn’t going to get money anymore. Viola told Jake. Jake figured the rest of it out. He figured everything out, Becca. They all seemed to figure it out and it was as if everything was discovered at once. And . . .” She stopped speaking.
“What, Betsy?”
“I, uh.”
Another figure darted from the side of the house. There wasn’t time to notice disfigurement or much of anything except the movement of something dark and solid. The figure stopped next to Betsy and held up something that glimmered in the moonlight.
“He brought me out here. He told me to say the things I just said, but they’re all true. He wanted you to know,” she said.
“Get out of the truck, Becca,” Jake said as he held a knife to Betsy’s throat.
“Jake, I thought we were friends,” I said.
Jake shook his head and said, “No time for friends. Get out of the truck or I’ll kill her.”
I got out of the truck.
Hobbit had gone still, statuelike. She was sitting upright and staring out the windshield, but she wasn’t making a sound. I didn’t know if she was scared or plotting something, but I ignored her with the hope that Jake would ignore her, too.
“What do you want, Jake?” I said.
“I want you both to go to your barn.”
“Why?” I said.
“He’s going to kill me and make it look like you did it. He wanted you to call the police so they’d find you and think you were the murderer. He knows I figured him out. He wants me out of the picture,” Betsy said. “He’s nuts.”
“Why, Jake?” I said. “None of this makes sense. None of this fits with what I know about you.”
“You don’t know me at all, Becca. You never did. Your sister didn’t keep me around long enough.”
“This can’t be about Allison breaking up with you in high school.”
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