“I sleep like the dead, Detective,” Stan said. “A bomb could go off and I wouldn’t hear it.”
“Which means you can’t really vouch for Ms. Opals being in bed all night.” He looked at Betty. When Winifred lifted her finger and opened her mouth, the detective gave her such a sharp look, she closed her mouth.
“Well, I guess not.”
“And Ms Opals, you saw Lana Kimble at your group meeting yesterday afternoon?” Betty nodded, her eyes going wide. “And you stormed out after throwing a fork at Mrs. Kimble when she accused you of having an affair with her husband?”
Betty glared at her friends, and the detective raised his voice. “Isn’t that right, Ms Opals?”
“No! It was over her vile critique. It was vicious and useless!”
“But you did throw the fork?”
“Well, I guess—”
“You guess? You don’t know?”
“Yes, I did, but it didn’t hit her and she lunged—”
“She lunged? Didn’t your friends have to hold you apart?”
At that moment Betty looked as if she could have committed three murders.
“Lana attacked me! I only attempted to defend myself, and they did pull her away into the other room. Then I left!”
A short silence followed
“I suggest you get dressed, Ms Opals. I’m going to need statements from both of you.” The detective nodded at Stan. “And I may need you to come downtown to do so.”
He turned to leave. At Betty’s scowl, the other three members of the critique group followed close behind him.
“So much for standing by Betty,” Joanne muttered when they reached the main walkway. The detective returned to the murder scene.
“Gosh, I never thought telling the detective what happened would have such dire consequences,” Winifred said.
“You’d think we’d know better, since we write this stuff.” Patti shrugged.
“Do you think this tells us something about why we’re not published?” Joanne said.
They stared at each other.
“But since we do write this stuff, is there anything we can do to help prove Betty didn’t do it?” Patti said. “We weren’t as close to her or Lana, but they were our critique buddies and, well, I just feel so sad . . .”
“We can investigate!” Joanne bounced on her toes. However, five minutes of suggestions revealed nothing that the police wouldn’t do themselves or let them get involved with. They eventually drifted home.
Later that evening, the phone calls started. According to the grapevine, Betty had been arrested. The police found something at Lana’s house that proved she did it. A row-captain meeting, which included Patti and Winifred, was set for the next morning at the moorage office. This was a perfect opportunity to find out what the neighborhood knew. Gossip ran rampant amongst the inhabitants of the moorage.
* * * *
It didn’t take long to get the row-captain business out of the way. “Okay, now we can talk about the murder!” said Cheri, the office manager.
“Let’s hope we learn something useful,” Patti whispered to Winifred.
Everyone had a tidbit. A neighbor said that Stan had been slowly moving stuff out of the house for over a week, so he hadn’t just marched out with a suitcase two days ago. And he had gassed up his boat the day he left, but hadn’t moved it over to Betty’s house. According to another neighbor, Lana had been screaming at someone the night before they found her. However, no one screamed back. A friend of Stan’s assumed she was on the phone, and it looked as if Stan wasn’t at the house that night.
Winifred told everyone about Stan being a heavy sleeper and what he said that made Betty look guilty. Unfortunately, the others believed Betty was guilty as opposed to thinking Stan a real heel.
“Talk about different points of view,” Patti said.
“Just remember, we don’t know exact time of death yet. Stan could have killed her earlier,” said Winifred.
“I don’t think so.” Cheri’s remark caught everyone’s attention. She sounded smug. “They found Betty’s finger prints on the murder weapon. Her head was bashed before she was dumped in the river.” Cheri’s cousin worked in the morgue.
“Do they have the murder weapon?” Patti asked.
“Yes! It was Lana’s laptop computer.”
Lana had frequently brought her old, large and heavy laptop to their meetings. On their slow walk home, the three women agreed it could do a lot of damage to a human head. Cheri’s cousin said that Lana had been hit several times.
* * * *
The next morning, Patti woke up to the doorbell ringing non-stop and sirens blaring in the parking lot. Joanne and Winifred stood on her doorstep.
“More murder!” Winifred wheezed.
“This time it’s Betty!” Joanne wailed, tears flowing.
“I thought she was in custody?” Patti said, shocked.
Joanne shook her head. “Let her go. They found her in the river this morning.”
“How?” Patti whispered.
“They think it’s suicide.”
“Do you think someone is out to murder the critique group?” Joanne said.
“Don’t be silly.” Patti invited them in. She made a fresh pot of coffee and cracked a package of cinnamon rolls. It seemed the perfect time for comfort food. She was frosting them when the doorbell rang again.
It was the detective. He helped Patti carry the coffee, cups and rolls out to the deck to join Winifred and Joanne.
After everyone had finished their first roll, the detective glanced at them. “Okay, which one of you killed your two friends?”
Joanne choked and Winifred looked appalled. “You mean we’re suspects?” Patti said.
“Absolutely!” The detective took another roll. But he was openly surprised when Joanne sniffed dramatically and began rattling off possible motives.
“Maybe Stan really loved Patti and Lana found out. And Lana wrote a novella that Winifred stole. She killed Lana because of the manuscript and Betty found out. And I hated both of them because they ripped my manuscripts to pieces so often I now have writer’s block and can’t write anymore.”
Winifred chimed in. “Maybe I made sure Betty touched the laptop before I deleted the story from it, then clobbered Lana with it. Betty remembered and confronted me. So I drowned her.”
“And my love for Stan could not allow him to be tied to that woman,” Patti added. “I had to get rid of her. When I found out he’d slept with Betty, I went ballistic.”
The cop stared. “How did you know Lana was killed with her laptop?” he said.
So they explained about Cheri. He was on his feet in a flash and gone without so much as a “Just the facts, ma’am.”
Patti’s cell phone rang with news from a neighbor of Lana’s. Stan was loading up his boat with stuff from Lana’s house. Patti still had her phone to her ear as they ran down the walkway. The neighbor explained how she couldn’t help overhearing when Lana’s daughter showed up this morning and told Stan that Lana’s new will didn’t leave him a dime. When the daughter left, Stan started loading up his cabin cruiser, which was parked along side Lana’s back deck.
They ran along the side decking and caught Stan coming out of the sliding glass doors of the house carrying Lana’s jewelry box.
“Watcha doing, Stan?” Patti demanded.
“None of your business!” Stan practically growled.
“You have no right to take any of Lana’s belongings,” Patti said. They blocked his exit from the house. “You’re not in her will, and this is still a crime scene.” Stan pushed past them heading for his boat.
“You better stop, Stan,” Winifred shouted. “Or we’ll call the cops!”
His face red, he ignored them and climbed into his boat. He started up the ladder to the flying bridge, but they followed him, grabbed his legs and pulled. He fell backwards and all four landed in a heap. Still clutching the jewelry box, Stan scrambled into the cabin. The women follo
wed, jumped on him and flattened him to the floor. Patti and Winifred sat on him while Joanne hauled back to punch him.
“That’s enough! Get off him!”
Cheri, the moorage office manager, stood in the doorway holding a gun.
“Step in, honey, so no one will see you,” Stan gasped. He shoved Winifred and Patti aside, raised himself and kissed Cheri’s cheek.
“Cheri! You’re with this goofball?” said Patti, still on her knees.
“We love each other!” Cheri said, her tone low and deadly. “What are we going to do with them?”
“Let me load a few things, and then we’ll take off. We can dump them out where the slough meets the river. They won’t be able to stay afloat for more than a few seconds there.”
That area was the location of some of the roughest waters on the fast running Columbia River. Patti didn’t want to die.
“So, Cheri,” she said. “I guess you killed Lana while Stan alibied himself with Betty. You kill her too?”
“Stan put sleeping pills in her wine, and we both put her in the water.”
Cheri glanced sideways at her lover. The women rushed her with enough momentum to carry them out on to the boat’s deck where a free-for-all broke out as all four women fought for possession of the gun.
Suddenly Stan was in the fray too and with all the hysterical pushing and shoving the boat began rocking wildly. A final lunge carried all five combatants over the railing and into the river.
Patti surfaced quickly and scrabbled for a dock ladder. A police launch maneuvered to block Cheri and Stan’s escape. Police helped Joanne and Winifred climb out of the water. Finally, Cheri and Stan were hauled out of the water and handcuffed.
The detective looked at the three women. “That was a pretty stupid thing to do. The hint about knowing the murder weapon was enough.”
“What?”
“She doesn’t have a cousin at the morgue. Several people knew Stan and your office manager were together, even though they thought they were being discreet. Only the murderer would know what the murder weapon was, and that she’d been hit several times.”
“So, poor Betty was set up to be an alibi and a victim?” Joanne cried.
“’Fraid so!” The detective patted Joanne’s shoulder.
It was a hot afternoon, and they’d dripped dry long before being allowed to go home. They thanked the neighbor who had called the police when they confronted Stan.
“Do you think we can get a book out of this?” Winifred said.
Joanne looked stunned, but Patti considered. “Each of us?”
“No,” said Winifred. “We can collaborate and make up one name for all of us.”
Patti chuckled. “Like Patti Jo Winifred? Maybe we can get a short story out of it.”
“No, a book!” said Joanne. “With lots of really good motives for everyone in the critique group.”
However, several minutes of brainstorming did not produce any more motives than the silly ones they’d offered the detective.
The detective walked up to them.
“So tell us, Detective,” said Patti. “What motives for us did you come up with?”
__________
Patricia Gulley is the Docket editor for the Sisters’ newsletter, In SinC. Her novel, Downsized To Death, was published in April 2010 by Wings E Press. A retired travel agent, she still travels frequently. She lives on a floating home in the Columbia River. Visit her at www.patgulley.com.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
RAMONA DeFELICE LONG is an author, independent editor and writing instructor. She has co-edited a collection of stories by Delaware authors as well as FISH TALES, and her clients include published as well as new writers. As an author, her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in literary, regional and juvenile publications. She’s received grants and fellowships from the Delaware Division of the Arts, the Pennsylvania State Arts Council and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. A native of Louisiana now living in Delaware, Ramona was recognized by the DDOA in 2009 as an Established Artist in Fiction. She is active in the Delaware Valley arts scene, and her literary blog may be found at ramonadef.wordpress.com.
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