Wendy Delaney - Working Stiffs 02 - Sex, Lies, and Snickerdoodles

by Wendy Delaney

  “No, I didn’t.”

  With a solemn nod, she gestured to the table. “Please. Sit.”

  I returned to my seat and Joyce joined me at the table with the serving tray.

  Placing a cup and saucer in front of me with a shaky hand, she smiled apologetically. “You’ll have to excuse me. I’ve been a little rattled ever since … well, I’m sure you understand since you haven’t exactly seen me at my best.”

  I knew she was referring to yesterday’s conversation across the street from the police station, but less than an hour ago she had looked as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

  “I know it’s been a difficult time,” I said as she filled my cup.

  “The worst of my life.” She set down the tea pot and offered me a small white plate with four perfect little thumbprints. “Cookie? I baked them this morning.”

  I didn’t want to tell her that I had stowed one in my tote bag as possible evidence in case her husband started foaming at the mouth.

  “No, thanks. Dieting.” The diet I was supposed to be on provided me an easy excuse to avoid eating anything that didn’t have great appeal, like arsenic. “They look delicious though.”

  That earned me another prideful smile which seemed at odds with the flood of raw emotion I’d witnessed in yesterday’s broken version of Joyce Lackey. Same with the scene with her husband. Either she used the comfort of everyday rituals to compartmentalize her emotions or Joyce was an Oscar-worthy actress.

  Fortunately, I was pretty darned good at telling when people were acting.

  I took a sip of tea. “I appreciate you speaking with me yesterday. That was very helpful to our investigation.”

  She reached for her tea cup. “Whatever I can do to help. You said you had more questions?”

  “The Coroner is trying to put together a timeline for Friday. Since you were one of the last people to see Russell I thought you could help me assign times to the events of that night.”

  A frown creased her brow as she stared across the table at me. “I hate even thinking about it.”

  “I know, but I think we owe this to Russell, don’t you?”

  She blinked back tears. “Of course we do.”

  Okay, that fit the emotional response I had expected to see.

  Pushing my tea cup aside, I flipped to a clean page in my notebook. “You told me yesterday that Russell returned later in the evening. What time would you say that was?”

  “Probably around nine. Maybe a little earlier.”

  Which matched her husband’s statement.

  “Then your husband said a few things to Russell.”

  Nodding, she gazed into her tea cup and swiped at the tear trickling down her cheek.

  “What time did Russell leave?” If what Pete had told me about her sleeping next to him was true, she shouldn’t know.

  “Leave?”

  “Yes, did you see him return to his boat several hours later?”

  “No,” she said, dabbing a napkin at her eyes.

  “What about the sound of his boat as Russell started the engines? On a quiet night I imagine that could make a lot of noise.”

  She met my gaze with a determined set to her jaw. “I didn’t see or hear anything.”

  Since I’d heard pitches from used car salesmen that sounded more convincing, I didn’t have to look at her to be certain she was lying.

  I jotted a note to let her think I was taking her statement seriously. “Where were you around one Saturday morning?”

  “In bed. My husband gets up at six every morning so we don’t keep night owl hours.”

  “You and Pete were both in bed at that time.”

  “Yes.”

  “Together.”

  Her eyes narrowed for a fraction of a second. “Of course.”

  If my husband had spewed obscenities at my would-be lover and embarrassed me in front of my neighbors, sleep would be an impossibility—almost as impossible as lying next to a fuming husband.

  “Does your bedroom face the bay or the street?” I asked.

  “The bay.”

  I glanced behind her at the gingham curtains fluttering from the breeze coming through the open kitchen window. “It would have been a warm evening that night. You probably get a nice breeze through your bedroom window.”

  She sharpened her gaze. “It’s rare that we don’t get a breeze.”

  If she had been awake—and I couldn’t believe that she wasn’t—she would have heard Russell start his twin diesels through that open window.

  I smiled to diffuse some of the tension between us and then flipped back two pages in my notebook. “I’m sorry, Joyce, but I’m having a hard time understanding something. Yesterday you said, ‘He killed Russell. I know he did.’ If you believe that, how could you two just go to bed that night like nothing happened?”

  Her eyes widened. “I … I was upset and had taken a sedative. I probably said a lot of things I shouldn’t have.”

  Most of which I believed a heck of a lot more than anything I’d heard in the last ten minutes.

  The banana yellow telephone mounted on the kitchen wall rang and she sprang up from her seat faster than Marietta expecting a call from her agent.

  Joyce had her back to me while she answered, but by her yes and no answers, the subject under discussion wasn’t tough to figure out.

  “I’ll be right there.” She hung up the phone and turned to me. “You’ll have to excuse me. Pete has to go out on a call and needs me to come to the shop.”

  More like he needed her to stop talking to me.

  I dropped my notebook and pen into my tote and pushed back from the table. “No problem. I appreciate your time. Just one last thing so that I get it right in my report. Do you still believe that your husband killed Russell Falco?”

  She looked like a life-sized bobblehead doll as she shook her head for several seconds. “He was just angry and was being protective of me. Really, he’s a very good man. He just has a bit of a temper.”

  I didn’t hear a no and everything about her body language made it appear that she wasn’t entirely sure what her husband was capable of.

  She teared up again. “I truly regret what I said yesterday. If there’s any way you could just forget that ….”

  Forget that she thought her husband killed Russell? I may have been an investigator in training, but no one needed to instruct me to include that part of her statement in my report.

  After I thanked her for her time, Joyce ushered me out the front door and marched straight for her car.

  Since I knew she’d lied about being needed at the shop, I took my time walking to the Jag and waved goodbye to her as she backed out of her driveway. Then, once she rounded the bend on Morton, I pulled out and followed her back to town.

  I had to head that way anyway to go back to the office, but I was happy to make a side trip if it would reveal more information about the Lackeys’ involvement in Russell Falco’s death.

  Five minutes later, Joyce hung a left on 5th Street, toward Pete’s Plumbing. I took the next left on 4th, then left again on B Street and parked behind a green dumpster.

  Okay, I’d freely admit I didn’t know what I’d expected to see. Some sign of panic that a flunky from the coroner’s office was asking questions? Not likely to be a sign visible to my eyes, especially while they were behind a closed door and I was crouched in my car across the street.

  Just when I heard Steve’s voice in my head telling me that all this cloak and dagger stuff was a stupid, amateur move on my part, a tearful Joyce slammed the door behind her and climbed back into her sedan.

  I watched her peel out of the parking lot and decided that I might as well stick around to get a sense of Pete’s next move since he seemed to be the one calling the shots for this couple.

  After forty minutes of waiting for a next move that was looking less and less likely to happen, I rummaged through my tote to see if I had anything in there to eat aside from Joyce’s plastic-wrapped cookie
.

  Nothing. Not even a breath mint. Dang. If I was going to do more stakeouts on this job I needed to pack some snacks.

  Just as I was about to pop an antacid to see if it would appease my growling tummy, I noticed Pete’s blue and white truck backing out of the parking lot.

  I waited until he turned right on Main and then eased the Jag out to follow him behind a full-sized pickup. I didn’t know if Pete Lackey knew what kind of car I drove, but if he looked in his rearview mirror, I figured that the pickup afforded me almost as good a shield as a dumpster.

  After two blocks, Pete parked in front of the Red Apple.

  So much for my shield.

  I parked on the side street, where I could see his truck, and waited.

  Fifteen minutes later, he came out carrying two plastic bags. His wife gave him a shopping list to pick up a few things that she needed to complete her pantry? Given that door slam, it seemed unlikely.

  I started my car and waited for his truck to merge back onto Main before I pulled out.

  Hanging back ten car lengths, I slowed, figuring he’d turn left on Morton, but when Pete didn’t make the turn to head home and drove another mile before turning right on 42nd Street, I thought he must be making a late afternoon service call at one of the many houses perched on the bluff overlooking Merritt Bay.

  Creeping up the hill so that he wouldn’t see me in his rearview mirror, I rounded the turn onto Bay Vista Road and scanned the tree-lined residential street. No blue and white truck.

  Great. My cloak and dagger skills obviously left a lot to be desired, but how hard could a one-ton truck with a leaky faucet be to find?

  As I discovered when I spotted the Pete’s Plumbing truck in the driveway of a large two-story home at the corner of Bay Vista and Abalone Place, not that hard.

  I pulled up behind a row of mailboxes in front of the house two doors down and felt like a chump. Nothing about this remotely resembled a next move. More likely he was simply responding to a call to clear a clogged drain.

  Since my bladder wanted me to drain the cup of tea I’d consumed an hour earlier, I headed back to the courthouse with no more proof of the Lackeys’ involvement in Russell Falco’s death than I’d had yesterday.

  All I had was an accusation that rang true as a bell.

  He killed Russell. I know he did.

  And despite all the mixed signals, everything that I’d witnessed today appeared to support Joyce’s original statement.

  * * *

  After spending the next two hours preparing a report that included today’s interviews and all my observations—minus any mention of following Pete and Joyce through the streets of Port Merritt—I studied the timeline I had drawn on a legal-sized sheet of paper. The Lackeys and Beverly Carver all agreed that Russell arrived in his boat around nine Friday night. After that, Pete and Joyce admitted to nothing that wouldn’t provide an alibi for one another, and Beverly was the only one to say that she heard Russell start his boat around one in the morning.

  I had no smoking gun—nothing but yesterday’s emotionally charged statement fingering Pete, made by the woman who kept hiding behind the Martha Stewart mask. Since Joyce was backpedaling twenty-four hours later and now seemed willing to cook up any palatable kind of fiction to protect her husband, I could only assume that she was either an unwitting accomplice or Pete had reminded his wife of everything she had to lose if she continued to point that accusatory finger at him.

  Either way I smelled a rat.

  Since Dr. Zuniga had pronounced Russell’s death as accidental, and there was nothing in my report other than a distraught wife recanting the accusation she had made against her less than truthful husband, this case would go nowhere if I didn’t come up with a rat trap.

  I headed home to make a strong pot of French roast because it looked like it was going to be a long night.

  Thirty minutes later, with a thermos filled with enough coffee to keep me fueled for the next few hours, I changed my clothes and grabbed my grandfather’s binoculars from the desk in the study.

  “Gram, I need to borrow your car.” Mine was low on gas and I didn’t want to take the chance on one of the Lackeys recognizing it.

  My grandmother looked up from the cheese slices she was layering in a casserole dish. “Where are you going?”

  “I have some work I need to do.”

  She eyed the black jeans and blue sweater tunic I was wearing. “You look like you’re dressed for some kind of stakeout.”

  “Nothing that exciting.” At least nothing that I was willing to admit to.

  “What’s going on?” my mother asked, coming in from the living room, a fashion magazine in one hand and her reading glasses in the other. “Did I hear stakeout?”

  Good grief. “I just need to see a witness about a case I’m working on.” Sort of true.

  Marietta aimed a wrinkle-resistant frown at me. “Seems a little late to be interviewing witnesses. Plus, that’s not exactly your usual deputy coroner attire.”

  She had me there. “I …” Dang, I couldn’t think of a believable lie, especially with the binoculars in my hand. “I’m just going to follow up on something a witness told me.”

  My grandmother’s eyes widened, magnified by her trifocals. “I don’t like the sound of that one bit. Look at you. You’re dressed like a Mata Hari.”

  I doubted that Mata Hari ever wore black denim. “There’s nothing to worry about,” I said, grabbing Gram’s car keys from a hook by the back door. “I’ll be just fine.”

  “Yes, you will because I’m coming with you.” Marietta tossed her magazine and glasses onto the kitchen table. “Just give me three minutes.”

  “No, Mom!” I called after her. “That’s really not necessary. Besides, don’t you have a date later tonight with Barry?”

  “He has some sort of teacher’s meeting tonight,” she said as she dashed up the stairs. “Three minutes. Five tops.”

  “Swell.”

  “Yeah,” my grandmother grumbled. “I was making dinner.”

  “I’m sure we’ll be hungry when we get back. Just keep it warm for a couple of hours.”

  I glanced at the page she had her cookbook open to and recognized the tomato sauce stains. She’d made this lasagna recipe so many times over the years that she probably didn’t need to read the directions.

  But this didn’t look like her usual lasagna.

  “Where’s the mozzarella?” I didn’t see any ricotta either.

  Gram shrugged. “I didn’t have any, so I thought I’d try this fat-free American instead.”

  This was one of the many reasons my Italian ex-husband would insist on doing all the cooking over the rare occasions that he’d grace my family with his presence.

  I made a mental note to pick up a couple of deli sandwiches at the Red Apple.

  Heaving a dramatic sigh, my grandmother pulled another slice of cheese from the pack. “After it’s all dried up in the oven after you come home from gallivanting around, I’m sure you won’t even notice the difference.”

  I smiled at her. “Nice guilt trip.”

  She winked. “I tried my best.”

  “Okay, I’m ready,” Marietta said, strolling into the kitchen wearing the designer version of my black jeans and tunic sweater, only hers were three sizes smaller and ten times the price. “Bye, Mama. Don’t wait up.”

  Gram frowned at me. “You think you’re going to be out that late?”

  I shook my head. We’d better not be.

  “You just never know about surveillance.” Marietta slung her tote bag over her shoulder. “Take mah show for example—”

  Here we go.

  “—the girls and I would often be out until all hours. Really, most every episode we’d have to get ourselves out of some sort of pickle.”

  “Very comforting,” Gram muttered.

  It was too late for damage control, but I had to try. “We won’t be getting into any pickles.”

  “I packed my Taser jus
t in case,” my mother said, patting her tote.

  Gram rolled her eyes. “Heaven help us.”

  The last thing I wanted to see tonight was Marietta in a shooter’s stance, so amen to that.

  I kissed my grandmother on the cheek. “We’ll be fine.”

  “If you’re not home by ten I’m going to send Steve out to look for you.” She arched her eyebrows. “And where did you say you were going?”

  And have her telling Steve that we were going to be hanging out at the Lackeys’ house tonight? Not happening.

  “Out,” I said, opening the back door.

  Gram groaned as if I’d popped her bubble and she was slowly deflating. “Be careful!”

  “Ma’am, we’re always careful,” Marietta said with an exaggerated Southern drawl even for her.

  I glared at her. It was bad enough that she wanted to ride shotgun on my stakeout. Now she was treating this like a revival of her old show? “Seriously?”

  She gave my arm a playful slap. “Come on! That was my signature line. I said it every episode.”

  “I know.” I’d sat glued to the television every Wednesday at nine o’clock. Didn’t mean I wanted to enjoy any reruns of it tonight.

  I tossed the thermos and binoculars next to the plaid stadium blanket Gram kept in the back seat and climbed behind the wheel of her Honda Pilot SUV.

  Fastening her seatbelt, Marietta turned to me. “Are we going to stop for some sandwiches or something? Your grandmother is making lasagna with some funky-looking orange cheese.”

  I shifted into reverse. “I’m way ahead of you.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Are you going to eat this?” Marietta asked, interrupting my thoughts while I stared at the Lackeys’ driveway where one blue and white plumber’s truck was nowhere to be seen.

  I looked over to see her delicately holding the second of the two dill pickles that had been included with our deli sandwiches like it was one of Joyce’s tea cups, extended pinkie and all.

  I wanted nothing to do with any pickles tonight. “It’s all yours.”

  “Ah do love a good pickle. Very low carb and a good thing to have when you’re on a diet.”

  I listened to her crunching, which was a lot better than listening to her dish out some not-so-subtle diet advice, and wished I’d bought a big bag of chips to keep her mouth busy for the next hour.