Wally took a swig of his soda, then said, “I found Justin sneaking out of the bowling alley this morning. He told me that Bunny had been letting him stay there while he got his head together.”
Ah, that explained the copy of PC Magazine on Bunny’s coffee table. Skye was happy that one mystery was solved. She’d been half afraid that Simon’s mom was starting an adult-only Web site. “But why did he need to get his head together?”
“That’s all I know so far. I had to leave when Quirk radioed me to say you were breaking into Cookie Caldwell’s.”
“I told you before, I did not break in. I have a key.” Skye wanted to make her innocence, at least on that point, perfectly clear.
Wally smirked at her and shook his head, then turned to the teen. “Now Justin’s going to tell us the rest of the story, from the beginning.”
Justin stared at the chief but didn’t speak.
Wally stared back. “If you don’t talk to us, I’ll be forced to arrest Mrs. Reid for harboring a runaway minor.”
Skye struggled to keep her expression neutral. She knew Wally was bluffing. Was harboring a runaway minor even a crime?
“That’s not fair.” Clearly Justin was torn between his anger at Skye and his sense of loyalty to Bunny, who had taken him in when he had nowhere else to go. He crushed a potato chip with his soda can, gazed at the ceiling, and heaved a put-upon sigh. “It all started last Saturday night.”
“The night Cookie was murdered?” Wally clarified.
“Yes. I’d been trying to come up with a story about the yard sale for the school newspaper, but I didn’t want to do the same old dumb kind of thing the local papers were doing. I was looking for an unusual angle.”
Wally and Skye both nodded their understanding of Justin’s quest for original journalism.
“Anyway, I decided to do a story about the effect of the sale on a local business owner, and since Ms. Caldwell’s store was right across the street from the Lemonade ShakeUp stand where I’d be spending a lot of time, I picked her.”
“Did you tell her she was your subject?” Skye asked.
Justin shot her a venomous look and stopped talking.
“Go on,” Wally prodded.
“Not too much happened during the day on Saturday, but I thought maybe I’d see something more interesting at night. So after supper I went back to the ShakeUp booth and watched Miss Caldwell’s place.”
“What did you see?” Wally asked.
“Ms. Caldwell worked between her booth and her store until about eight-thirty, then went upstairs for a half hour, then drove away. Lucky for me, she only went a few blocks down the street to the bowling alley, so I was able to follow her on my bike. I’ll be so happy when I get my driver’s license next week,” Justin added as an aside, then continued. “Anyway, she sat at the bar there for a couple of hours. I watched her from the inside door, since I’m not old enough to go in the bar area.
“Around eleven, she came back to the store with that singer she’d been talking to at the bowling alley. I thought they were going to, uh, you know, hook up, but he took a sword out of his car trunk and brought it into the shop. He left about twenty minutes later through the back door, and a few minutes after that a lady showed up. I’d seen her around before, but since we don’t have cable I didn’t know her.”
Wally let that last cryptic remark go and instead asked, “When did she leave?”
“I don’t know. Not before I had to go home. My curfew is midnight.” Justin frowned. “And then the next day I heard Ms. Caldwell had been murdered.”
“Why didn’t you come to me and tell me what you saw the night before?” Wally demanded.
“I did, but the dispatcher told me that the sheriff’s department was handling that case and had me talk to one of the deputies.”
“And?” Skye asked.
“And like all adults, he blew me off.” Justin’s voice cracked with anger. “Oh, he took down the description of the woman and all, but you could tell he thought I was just some crazy kid.” He glared at Skye. “Lots of adults seem to think that way.”
Puzzled, Skye looked back at him. What was he getting at?
Wally’s eyes were dark with compassion. “Is that why you decided to run away?”
“No. I wasn’t sure what I should do next, so I decided to talk to Frannie about it. She was out of town on Sunday, so I went to her house Monday morning. Instead of listening to what I had to say, she went all female on me because I had sat with some girl she didn’t like at the concert in the park.”
Skye raised an eyebrow. The innocent act didn’t work. Justin knew very well the extent of the antipathy between Frannie and Bitsy, and he had done a lot more than just sit with the other girl. “Is that when you ran away?”
“No.” Justin’s tone was furious. “I went to talk to you, but you weren’t at your cottage.”
“I rented it out to the TV people for the duration of the yard sale. I’m staying with my parents. Didn’t the folks there tell you?”
“Yeah, eventually. But at first when some lady answered the door, I introduced myself and asked for you. It took me a second, but I realized the woman I was talking to was the one I had seen at Ms. Caldwell’s.”
Skye gasped. That’s what he had meant by not recognizing Cookie’s visitor because his family didn’t have cable TV. Although even if he could get the channel Faith’s program was on, Skye doubted Justin would have watched it. How many teenage boys tuned in to shows about garage sales and collectibles?
“From the expression on my face, she must have realized something was up, but at the time I didn’t know she knew, because she invited me inside and was real nice. Then when I asked if she was a friend of Ms. Caldwell’s, she got mean. She said why would a TV star like her be friends with a small-town shopkeeper? And that obviously I was too young to see how ludicrous that would be. And that’s when I did something stupid.” Justin squirmed in his seat, pulled at his T-shirt, and swallowed several times before saying, “I told her I had seen her going into Ms. Caldwell’s store Saturday night.”
Skye groaned, and Justin flashed her an outraged glower. “That’s when she said, ‘Justin Boward. Oh, now I remember why your name seems so familiar. You’re the one Skye told me about. She said both your parents were barmy and she was afraid you’d grow up to be crazy, too. Do you really think anyone will believe what the town wacko has to say?”’ Justin glared at Skye. “That’s when I decided to run away. I hid in the garage behind the bowling alley, but Miss Bunny found me the next day, and when I told her someone had betrayed me and I had to think about it, she let me stay with her.”
“I didn’t. Really.” Skye was appalled that Faith would lie to Justin like that, and that he would accept what she said as the truth. “Why would you believe her?”
“Because.” The teen sneered. “How else would she know stuff that I only told you?”
“I don’t know.” Skye put her head in her hands. “Let me think.” Breaking confidentiality was one of the worst sins a psychologist could commit. Skye had never told even her closest friends anything a client had said during counseling, and she sure hadn’t told Faith Easton, a person she wouldn’t trust to take a cake out of the oven. How had Faith known Justin’s secrets?
Wally scooted closer and gave her a sympathetic one-armed hug. “Any ideas?”
Before she could answer, Justin shot a disapproving look at Wally’s hand on Skye’s shoulder and said pointedly to Skye, “Aren’t you and Mr. Reid still going out?”
Skye’s cheeks flushed. “Of course.” Clearly Justin was seeing perfidy in the most innocent of gestures. Nevertheless, she moved away from Wally.
“Can’t prove it by what I’m seeing,” Justin said, his gaze rebuking her.
Skye ignored his comment and continued to try and figure out how Faith had gained confidential information. It finally came to her. “The file cabinet. She must have broken into my file cabinet.” Skye explained about the school refurbishing and
why she was keeping the records at home rather than at her office.
Justin pursed his lips, plainly not entirely convinced of Skye’s innocence.
Wally grabbed his notepad and started writing. When he stopped a few minutes later, he said, “It’s all coming together. Look at this.” He showed them a list he had made. “First, let’s assume that Faith and Cookie were friends, despite Faith’s denial to Justin, and that she’s the one who has been calling in the tips to the sheriff’s department about Skye.”
“That’s the fifth question,” Skye blurted out, then had to explain her “referral” list to Wally and Justin, concluding with, “That’s what’s been bothering me. The fifth question is, how did the killer obtain the information to try and frame me?”
Wally nodded and continued, “Faith and Cookie’s friendship would explain how she knew about Cookie hitting Skye when she fired her and how she knew Cookie had been crying in Skye’s presence the afternoon before she was murdered, especially if she was the person who made Cookie cry.”
Skye agreed. “It really is the only answer, because no one in town seems to have been a close friend of Cookie’s, at least not someone she would’ve confided in.”
“Yep.” Wally concurred. “It also explains the earring found under Mrs. Griggs.” He turned to Skye. “I bet you left those earrings at your cottage, right?”
“Yes, I did. And I just now remembered what I did with them. I knew I wouldn’t be wearing any good jewelry for the duration of the yard sale, so I put my whole jewelry box in with the confidential files, since that cabinet was the only thing in my cottage that locked.” Skye looked at Justin. “That proves Faith broke into it, because otherwise how could that earring have gotten underneath Mrs. Griggs’s body?”
Justin stared at Skye, his expression showing both his desire to believe and his fear of further treachery. Finally, he nodded slowly. “That makes sense. And if she planted the earring, she’s probably the one who killed Mrs. Griggs and Cookie. But why?”
“I think Mrs. Griggs must have known something about Cookie’s murder, which is why Faith killed her. But why did she kill Cookie?” Skye tapped her fingers on the table.
Wally put his hand over hers to stop the drumming. “Okay, what do we know about Cookie and Faith?”
“They both were/are obsessive collectors, shrewd businesswomen, and not overly worried about ethical behavior,” Skye offered.
“So, how would two people like that maintain their friendship? Wouldn’t they be competing with each other?” Justin asked, staring at Wally’s hand until the chief removed it from Skye’s.
“The only way it would work would be if they didn’t go after the same collectibles,” Skye suggested. “And since Cookie was in the business, she probably steered Faith toward the items her friend was looking for, maybe even bought them for her and helped her set up the ‘finds’ for Faith’s TV program. If there was something that Mrs. Griggs had that Faith was particularly keen on—say, old jewelry—that would explain not only Cookie’s fixation with Mrs. Griggs but also Faith’s.”
Wally made a note, then said, “In that case, Cookie would have a lot of control over Faith. Both personally as a collector and professionally as the star of her TV show. Faith wouldn’t want the world to know she didn’t find all those treasures on her own.”
“Hey, that reminds me.” Skye chewed her lip. “Cookie had a box she kept on a shelf near the counter that she would put things in all week, and then on Monday it would be empty. She told me that the items in that carton were not for sale.”
“And who would you see over the weekend but a friend?” Justin finished her thought.
“You know, Cookie grabbed the sword she whacked me with from that box, and it was the sword used to kill Mrs. Griggs. So if Cookie was selling the stuff in mat carton to Faith, that puts the weapon into her hands.”
“Excellent,” Wally said. “If she was such an astute businesswoman, surely Cookie kept records of her sales, even sales to her friends.”
“But I told the sheriff that the sword had been at Cookie’s store. Wouldn’t he have checked her records?” Skye asked.
“You probably noticed that Buck isn’t the sharpest Cheddar in the deli case.”
“Yeah, I kind of picked up on that when he tried to arrest me.
“I’ll have one of the deputies check it out for me.” Wally got up and went to the wall phone.
Skye leaned over to Justin and lowered her voice. “Are we okay now? Do you believe that I’d never tell anyone what you told me in confidence?”
“Yeah. Sure. No big deal.” Justin stared at his hands. “Uh, do you think Frannie is still mad at me?”
Skye debated whether to say anything or not, then decided it was time. “Yes, she’s probably still upset, but only because she cares for you.”
“You mean she, uh, likes me?” He peeked up at Skye through his hair. “Like a boyfriend?”
“I think so, but maybe you should ask her yourself. That is, if you like her as a girlfriend.”
Justin lined up his pop can, chip bag, and magazine. “I do, but she never gives me any signals she likes me like that. You know, touches me, flirts with me like Bitsy does. Are you sure she likes me?”
“I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I’m pretty sure. You need to talk to her.”
“But what if she says no?”
“Then you try to stay friends, and maybe she’ll change her mind.”
Before Justin could respond, Wally returned. “You were right. Cookie sold Faith a sword the night before she was killed. I wonder why she didn’t sell it to her a couple of months ago, right after she used it to hit you?”
Skye thought about his question. “Maybe Cookie and Faith had a fight and didn’t see each other until the yard sale started.”
“Could be.” Wally consulted his notes. “One more thing. The blood on the towel and T-shirt in the bag the lion found was Cookie’s.”
“That reminds me.” Skye’s eyes widened. “Faith loves purple. When she moved in, they took down all my towels and replaced them with purple ones. And both the towel and the T-shirt in the bag the lion found were shades of purple.”
“Faith is looking more and more like our killer.” Wally sat back down. “Too bad so far all we have is circumstantial evidence.”
“Are you going to tell Sheriff Peterson everything we’ve figured out?” Skye asked.
“I’ll give him a copy of my report, but I doubt he’ll do anything with it.”
“Are you going to do something?” Skye asked. “Surely she left her fingerprints at one of the crime scenes or at Cookie’s shop or apartment.”
“Maybe, but all she has to say is she visited those places as an invited guest. There’s no way to prove otherwise. There were no prints on the sword or the pin.” Wally shrugged. “I’ll keep trying to find evidence against her, but it doesn’t look good.”
“Then I guess she’ll have to confess.” Skye lifted her chin, a stubborn look on her face. “No way is she getting away scot-free.”
CHAPTER 24
Murder, She Wrote
“What did you have in mind?” Wally leaned against the wall and crossed his arms.
“It’s pretty obvious she’s trying to frame me. I don’t know if it’s personal or I’m just handy, but we need to figure out a way for her to think that she can really set me up. And we need to do it quickly, because she’s leaving Scumble River tomorrow.”
“How are we going to do that?” Justin asked.
Wally answered, “You’re not. I’m taking you home to your parents, and you’re staying there until Faith is either in custody or out of town.”
Justin started to whine, but Skye cut him off. “We know she’s dangerous, and she already knows you saw her with Cookie, so we have to let her continue to believe you’re AWOL. You cannot be seen around town. Besides, you’ve worried your parents enough by disappearing like you did.”
“Can I call and have Frannie come over?”
“Why don’t you wait until Monday?” Wally held open the door to the garage and motioned for the teen to go through. “The fewer people who know you’ve returned, the better.”
Justin nodded unhappily and walked out. “Bye, Ms. D.”
“Bye, Justin.”
“This should only take a few minutes. Don’t go anywhere,” Wally told Skye.
She nodded and waved until the door closed behind Wally, then immediately unzipped her fanny pack and pulled out the letters she had taken from Cookie’s secret stash. She hadn’t wanted to explain how she got them in front of Justin. He had a highly developed sense of right and wrong that didn’t leave room for many flaws in the adults he respected, but she was dying to see if they were important.
Skye spread the letters out over the table. There were a baker’s dozen, all the same pale lilac stationery, smelling faintly of lavender.
None had a return address, but Skye knew before opening them that they were from Faith. Now that she had remembered the TV star’s fondness for purple, the scent and color of the paper were enough of a hint.
Skye put them in order by cancellation date. The first one was from just after Cookie had moved to Scumble River. The last one was sent a few days before the yard sale started. In it Faith apologized and asked to talk to Cookie during the sale. Skye’s guess had been correct as to why the sword took so long to get into Faith’s hands. Cookie and Faith had had a fight and didn’t see each from the middle of June until the yard sale.
By the time she finished reading the small stack of letters Skye felt like slapping herself. She had been wrong, wrong, wrong. How could she have been so clueless? Faith and Cookie weren’t friends—they were lovers!
Cookie had been miserable living in Scumble River, and Faith had played on Cookie’s desire to please her, to keep Cookie tucked away in the small town and out of the way. It was clear from what she wrote that Faith was afraid that after the very public death of Cookie’s husband, word of her relationship with Cookie would get out and her TV career would be ruined.
Skye wondered if that would have happened. After all, Ellen DeGeneres’s and Rosie O’Donnell’s sexual preferences hadn’t hurt their careers. Still, they were Hollywood personalities, and maybe that was the difference. Faith’s audience was more Midwest middle class, people not generally known for their liberal points of view.
Murder of a Smart Cookie: A Scumble River Mystery Page 23