by Jessica Beck
“I would never do that,” Trinket said, doing his best to give me a smile. It was clear that he’d been expecting me to feel badly about lying to him, so my direct reply had thrown him off his game. “I can assure you that no matter what name you wish to invest under, your account will be kept entirely separate from any experiences we may have had with your mother in the past.”
I smiled my best fake smile and stuck out my hand. “That’s good to know, and I’ll keep it in mind. Now, if you don’t mind, Gwen was about to tell us about a place in Hickory that serves the best pie in seven counties.”
He nodded. “Tim’s Pie Palace? Yes, it’s wonderful.”
“Thanks again for coming over. I’m glad that everything is all out in the open now,” I said, clearly dismissing him.
Trinket didn’t know what else to do but leave us. “Very good then. Have a lovely evening.”
“You, too,” I said.
Grace smiled at me for an instant, and then we turned back to Gwen. “We’ve already heard all about the fight, so there’s no use denying it.”
“I won’t apologize to anyone for my emotions. Greg and I had a passionate relationship,” she told us. “Our arguments might have seemed heated to an outsider, but we both spoke from positions of love.”
If that was love, I didn’t want to have any part of it. I studied her flat belly for a moment, clearly defined by her tight dress, and then I said softly, “Forgive my impertinence, but how far along are you?”
“What? Oh. No, I’m not pregnant.” Gwen said it with no shame or remorse, as though she’d said she wasn’t a fan of modern poetry or jazz.
“But you told Greg you were,” Grace pushed her.
“You have to understand the context,” Gwen explained.
“We’d love to get the chance. Why don’t you enlighten us?” I asked.
She frowned a moment before speaking, and when she did, there was still clear animosity in her voice. “He told me at dinner that he was enjoying our little fling. Well, I thought it was much more than that. When I asked him where he saw us in a year, he said glibly, ‘Dating other people.’ What can I say? I blew up. I thought we meant more to each other than that, so I decided to see if he really felt that way. I figured claiming to be pregnant would be a perfect barometer to see where things really stood between us.”
“You didn’t get the answer you were hoping for, did you?” I asked her softly. As insane as her ploy had been, it must have shattered her to realize that he wasn’t all that interested in having any kind of long-term relationship with her.
“Don’t kid yourself. He loved me. Greg spoke out of haste, and he regretted it the second he said it. I know what Sophia overheard, but she didn’t follow us through town. Greg apologized, admitted that he’d overreacted, and that he’d been wrong to say what he’d said in the heat of the moment. I confessed that I really wasn’t pregnant, and he understood why I’d said it, and he forgave me on the spot. No matter what you might think, the two of us had a future together, and someone robbed us of it.”
“Did anyone else overhear that part of your conversation?” Grace asked her.
“No, I can’t prove any of it, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said huffily. “You’ll just have to take my word for it.”
“Gwen, where were you last night?” I asked gently.
“Are you asking me for an alibi?” she replied, her voice rising dramatically. I had clearly triggered something inside her.
“It might help if you had one,” Grace added.
“It’s none of your business! I wouldn’t tell you if I was in bed with the mayor,” she snapped as she stormed off in the direction of her car.
“The mayor would never put himself in that position,” I said, defending George, even if she had been using hyperbole.
“You know what? I thought you were on my side, but you can both go bark at the moon as far as I’m concerned,” she shouted before getting into her car and screeching out of the parking lot. We could at least testify to the existence of the woman’s mercurial temper.
“That went well, didn’t it?” Grace asked as soon as Gwen was gone. “Suzanne, we really should open a charm school together. We could offer classes on how to get along with anybody.”
“Her outrage seemed a little too overly dramatic even for her, don’t you think?” I asked, staring after her.
“What do you mean?”
“Think about it. Gwen was fine until we asked her for her alibi. Then, all of a sudden, she explodes and storms off. I don’t know. It all seems a little too convenient to me, if you know what I mean.”
“There are wheels within wheels within wheels,” Grace said. “It’s enough to make your head spin.” As we walked back to Jake’s truck, she asked, “Where does that leave us now?”
“Well, if it’s all the same to you, I think we should head back to April Springs. We’ve given all of our suspects something to think about tonight, so why don’t we let them brood about it, and we can tackle them again tomorrow? The more time they have to dwell on our conversations, the better, as far as I’m concerned.”
“I know you’re probably right, but I hate doing nothing. Isn’t there anything we can do now?” she asked me.
“Let’s use the drive home to talk about what we know, what we think, and what we believe might be possible.”
“Is the trip going to be long enough for that?” she asked me with a smile.
“I don’t know. Let’s try it and see,” I said as we got into the truck and headed back home.
“Grace, there’s something I’ve been dying to ask you. Why did you come clean with Benny Young about why we were really there the moment we saw him?”
“That’s easy enough to explain,” Grace said. “I knew from the instant I saw him that he recognized me from an earlier encounter we had. No doubt that’s how Trinket knew you were Suzanne and not Helen out in the parking lot.”
“You two didn’t go out once, did you?” I asked her. It was difficult seeing my stylish and sweet friend with a man who seemed so oily.
“What can I say? It was a blind date. I was promised a prince, but I got a frog instead. The man truly believes he is God’s gift to women. How much must it have galled him to have Greg Whitmore steal his girl away from him? It had to be a crushing blow to his ego.”
“He said that it wasn’t that big a deal,” I reminded her.
“What did you expect him to say? You don’t know him like I do. It’s motive for murder, as far as I’m concerned.”
“But they were best friends,” I protested, having a hard time grasping the concept that Benny could kill Greg Whitmore in cold blood.
“Which probably made it even worse. No, strike that. The absolute lowest point was probably having to see them canoodling in the closet at work together right under his nose.”
“Canoodling?” I asked her, laughing. “Do people still canoodle?”
“Don’t you?” she replied, chuckling along with me. “I know it’s an old-fashioned word, but I think we should bring it back. It’s at least as good as saying ‘great day.’”
“Okay,” I said, not sure that either phrase would ever catch on in this modern age. “So, jealousy gives Benny a motive. What about Trinket?”
“Gwen said that he and Greg were fighting about loans and that it got nasty. Could that be motive enough for murder?”
“It’s possible,” I said. “I can think of a couple of circumstances where it might prove to be fatal.”
“I’d love to hear what they are,” Grace said.
“To start with, what if Greg made dangerous loans that couldn’t be paid back? He could have been pressured by bad people to do it, and he got caught.”
“Okay, that’s one possibility. What if Trinket discovered what he
was up to? Or maybe we’ve got this whole thing backwards. What if Trinket was up to something? If the branch manager were covering his own tracks, killing Greg might make sense. After all, it would be hard for a dead man to deny he’d done anything wrong.”
“I like the way your mind works,” I said. “I’m sure there are other scenarios, but we have to keep Calvin Trinket on our list, at least until we find a compelling reason to drop his name from our group of suspects.”
“Agreed. Do I even have to ask how you feel about Gwen’s capacity for murder?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. “I still find it hard to fathom the circumstances where she felt as though claiming to be pregnant when she wasn’t was the act of a rational woman.”
“She does seem to be at least a little crazy,” Grace admitted. “I’m not sure I believe the murder method works for her, though.”
“What, do you not think she could shoot someone? It’s not because she’s a woman, right?”
Grace shook her head. “We both know better than that. No, but if Gwen had done it, I’d take her more as a heat-of-the-moment kind of gal than a cold-blooded killer. If Greg had been shot in the heart, or even the face, half a dozen times, then I’d think Gwen might be more appropriate as a suspect.”
I thought about that as I drove us back home, and then I came up with another scenario. “She had to know that if something happened to her boyfriend, the entire world would learn about their volatile relationship pretty fast, right?”
“Absolutely,” Grace agreed. “So what?”
“What if she took that into account before she killed him? Shooting someone with one bullet in the back of the head seems cold and calculated. What if the murder wasn’t a reckless act, though? What if she wanted him dead for rejecting her, but she was too smart to let her emotions get control of her?”
“I don’t know. That’s a lot of ‘what ifs,’ isn’t it? We can’t forget about Lori, either. She clearly wasn’t at all happy about her ex-husband dating a much younger woman, she lied about knowing the affair had even happened, and to top it off, she lacks an alibi.”
“Wow, when you put it that way, she should probably be sitting in jail right now,” I said.
“I’m not saying that she actually did it,” Grace corrected me quickly. “All I’m saying is that she at least deserves a place on our list.”
“Who could have dreamed that Greg’s life was so complicated?” I asked as we neared the city limit sign of April Springs.
“It just goes to show you. We often don’t know much about the people on the edges of our lives, do we?”
“On that profound note, I think we should put a pin in this until tomorrow after work. What’s your schedule look like tomorrow?”
“I have more paperwork to do, but I can work around our investigation.”
Jake was still gone, and I didn’t relish spending the night alone. “Do you have any plans tonight?”
“I’m free as a bird,” she said, and then her cell phone announced that she had a text. “Hang on one second.” After a moment, she said, “Can you believe it? Stephen wants to come over. You can come in, too, if you’d like.”
“No thanks,” I said, smiling. “I need to touch base with Momma, anyway.” I really had no plans to do so, but I didn’t want to admit to Grace that I was just going to go home and be by myself until it was time for bed. It sounded pathetic even in my own mind.
“Are you sure? I feel guilty about leaving you out to dry with Jake out of town.”
“Hey, you babysat me last night,” I answered with a grin as I let her out at her house. “I’m good. No worries. Have a nice evening.”
“You, too,” she said. Before she closed the truck door, she said, “Call me if you need me, any time, day or night.”
“Will do.”
After Grace got inside, I turned the truck around and headed over to Momma’s. Maybe I should call first. I’d popped in on them the day before without warning, and I didn’t want to risk doing it two days in a row. “Momma, would you and Phillip care for a little company this evening?”
“We’d be delighted. In fact, I just took a chocolate cake out of the oven. In half an hour it will be ready to ice and eat.”
“Count me in,” I said with a laugh. It wasn’t the pie I’d lied about earlier, and it wasn’t taking place in Hickory, but cake in April Springs would be just as good, especially if it was one my mother made. She was more than just a land baron and mover and shaker in our little town; Momma was also one of the best cooks and bakers within a sixty-mile radius of home. The only reason I narrowed the distance was because of Napoli’s. I would never dream of comparing the DeAngelis cooking with anyone else’s, but if I had to eat a meal and I wasn’t in Union Square, then Momma’s table was where I wanted to be.
“Should I bring anything?” I asked. “The store should have milk again by now, since the roads are all clear.”
“Thanks, but we’re all set. All you need to do is bring yourself.”
“That won’t be a problem, since I take me with me wherever I go,” I said, happy that I’d decided to pop in on her because of Jake’s absence and Grace’s date. “See you soon.”
Chapter 12
“Would it be rude of me to say that it looks as though Santa himself threw up in here?” I asked as Momma took my jacket at the door. There were even more decorations up than there had been just the day before. Sprigs of holly were everywhere, tinsel, garlands, stars, two trees now, and three manger scenes, one of them done completely in bears. “Those are new,” I said as I pointed to the wise bears: Joseph Bear; Mary Bear; and Baby Jesus Bear.
“They were Phillip’s choice,” Momma said with a grin.
“You know what? Knowing that makes me like the man just a little bit more than I did before,” I admitted. It often amazed me that the former chief of police and I had gone from outright adversaries to allies over the years, and no one had been more surprised by the development than I’d been myself. It was sometimes hard to remember the bad old days when he’d been April Spring’s chief of police and I’d been a neophyte sleuth. I’d gained quite a bit of experience over the years, but I didn’t kid myself. He’d been a real cop, and all I would ever be was an amateur.
“Do you like them?” Phillip asked me with a grin. He’d been heavy when he’d been the police chief, but while courting my mother, he’d dropped a great deal of the excessive weight, and to my surprise, he’d somehow managed to keep most of it off, despite Momma’s excellent cooking.
“I think they’re great,” I said. “They’d look perfect on our mantel at the cottage.”
“Consider it done,” he said with a laugh. “Now I know what I’m getting you for Christmas.”
“You haven’t gotten us anything yet?” I asked with a smile. “Nothing like putting things off until the last minute. There aren’t that many shopping days left until Christmas.”
“He likes the pressure,” Momma said.
“You, on the other hand, have been finished since the first of October, haven’t you?”
“There’s nothing wrong with being prepared,” she said.
“You didn’t deny it though, did you?” I asked as I hugged her.
“Suzanne, you vex me sometimes.”
“Momma, if I didn’t, that would mean that I wasn’t properly doing my job. Thanks for the invitation. Grace and I had lasagna at Napoli’s for dinner, so cake will be the perfect topper to the evening.”
“You ate at Napoli’s?” Phillip asked, the envy clear in his voice. “You didn’t happen to bring anything home in a doggy bag, did you?”
Momma swatted her husband affectionately. “You had more than your share of pot roast tonight, sir.”
“I know, but just thinking about Angelica’s lasagna makes my mouth water.�
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“Actually, the girls cooked today,” I countered.
“I’m willing to bet that it was still delightful,” Phillip answered.
“Oh, it was. I just wish there hadn’t been a bit of a cloud hanging over the meal.”
Momma looked concerned. “What’s wrong, Suzanne? Are you worried about your husband? Has anything happened in the mountains?”
“No, Jake is fine. In fact, I’m willing to bet that he’s excellent. He managed to get a message to me from a ham radio operator that he’s having a sweet old time. The truth is that he probably hasn’t even noticed that I’m not there with him.”
“Oh, he’s noticed. Trust me on that,” Momma’s husband said with a smile.
“Do you know something? That’s one of the sweetest things you’ve ever said to me in your life,” I said, and then I surprised Phillip by kissing his cheek.
“Well, I’d better get back to it,” he said, clearly uncomfortable with my unexpected display of affection. The former chief of police went back to the dining room table, while I followed Momma into the kitchen.
“Does he ever miss being a cop?” I asked her after we were alone.
She seemed surprised by my question. “No, he was long past due to retire. That job takes a toll on a person, man or woman. It was time for him to get out. Why, is Jake getting antsy?”
“I think so, but whenever I bring up the idea of him starting his own private detective firm, he shoots it down every time.”