by Kylie Logan
“I think they just want to make sure they have all the facts straight,” I told Minnie. “Because, you know . . . sometimes the cute ones . . . they’re not all that smart.”
Tony’s sour smile might have been justified if my little joke didn’t work. But it did. Pleased with herself for bringing it up and with me for going along with talking about how cute Tony was, Minnie sat up straight and pulled back her scrawny shoulders.
“Well, if that’s what they need to know,” she said, “then that’s what I’ll tell them. I’ll tell them what I told all those wine drinkers back at the Frenchy farm. I killed her. I killed that Rocky.”
“By Rocky, you mean Raquel Arnaud.”
It wasn’t a question, but when Tony said it, Minnie rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. If that’s what you’re waiting for me to say, all right, I’ll say it. I killed Rack-el Air-nooooo.” She exaggerated the accent and grinned, proud of herself.
“All right then.” Tony made a note. “Want to tell me why you did that, Minnie?”
Minnie scratched her nose. “Ask Otis,” she said.
“Otis. You mean Mr. Greenway.”
I knew Tony was just trying to get the facts straight for the sake of the video, but Minnie couldn’t have cared less. She squealed with delight. “Mr. Greenway! The way you say it makes him sound important. He’s not.” She spat out the last two words. “He’s a cheatin’, low-down two-timer.”
“Otis?” I couldn’t help myself. Her assessment was not in keeping with the sweating, concerned man I’d seen at Pacifique, the man who needed to lean on Declan when we walked into the station and sat right down when we got inside because it looked as if he might collapse on the spot.
“You know about them, don’t you?” Minnie asked, looking my way.
I ran my tongue over my lips. “Them. You mean Otis and Rocky?”
Minnie’s top lip curled. “Got what she deserved.”
Let’s face it, in his time on the force, Tony had probably heard plenty of strange things from plenty of people, but even he needed a moment to process this information.
He cleared his throat. “So you’re telling me you killed Ms. Arnaud because she was having an affair with your husband.”
“No.” Minnie shook her head so violently, her haystack hair shimmied around her shoulders. “She wasn’t having an affair with him. Can’t you get anything straight? He was having an affair with her!”
Maybe Minnie wasn’t so crazy after all; in the great scheme of things I think she was technically right, since Otis was married and Rocky wasn’t.
Tony took a note, then sat back. “How did you get into the house?” he asked her.
Minnie puckered up like she’d just sucked a lemon. “How do you think you get into a house? Through a window?” This struck her as particularly funny and she laughed like a loon.
Tony was not as amused. “Did you get in through a window?” he asked.
She looked away from him.
He planted his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Had you gotten in through a window another time? Had you been in Ms. Arnaud’s house when she wasn’t there? Or when she was sleeping?”
Minnie flinched as if she’d been slapped. “Who told you?”
“We’re the police, Mrs. Greenway. We have ways of finding things out.”
She slumped in her chair. “About the phone calls?”
“Yes,” he said. “We know about the phone calls.”
“And the rabbits?”
Tony glanced my way, and I shrugged.
“Tell us about the rabbits,” he said.
Minnie’s laugh started out small, like the rustle of autumn leaves. She glanced at Tony through her fringe of bangs. “Got ’em from Butch Norris over near Oakfield. Three little bunny rabbits.” She looked at me and whispered. “Let them loose in Frenchy’s garden!”
This was not something Rocky had made note of in her date book, which led me to believe either the bunnies weren’t as hungry as Minnie counted on them being, or Minnie was simply making up the story.
Tony wrote it all down anyway.
“So the phone calls and the rabbits . . .” Tony pretended to consider this. “Was there anything else you did, Mrs. Greenway? Were you in Ms. Arnaud’s house?”
“Went there for tea.” Minnie cocked her head. “Like the friggin’ queen at Buckingham Palace!”
I didn’t believe this, either, but Tony made note of it.
“And this was when?” he asked.
“You ask her.” Minnie’s lips folded in on themselves. “You ask that Frenchy. She’ll tell you. She knows all about it.”
Tony cleared his throat. I wondered if he was trying to get Minnie’s attention or just giving himself a second to sort through her verbal meanderings. “Minnie, we can’t ask Ms. Arnaud. You told us you killed her.”
Minnie lifted her chin. “Killed her. Oh yeah. I killed her, all right.”
“When did you do this, Mrs. Greenway?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Nighttime.”
“Which night was it?”
Minnie looked to me. “She was there. Ask her. Go on. You ask her.”
I gave Tony a shrug so he’d know I wasn’t making any more sense of all of this than he was. “I saw Minnie at Pacifique on Sunday,” I said. “And again when I stopped in on Monday. But of course, I was also there on—”
Tony knew what I was going to say and he cut me off by clearing his throat. I realized almost too late that I’d nearly said too much. He didn’t want me to influence anything Minnie told him; he didn’t want her to know I was there on Saturday, the night Rocky died. I clamped my lips shut.
“I need to ask you these questions,” he told Minnie. “We have to make sure we know the whole story. So you need to tell me, Minnie, when were you at Ms. Arnaud’s farm?”
She sat back in her chair. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I’ll say this, Tony Russo must be the most patient man on planet Earth. I was just about to scream. Tony, though, he took it all in stride.
“Let’s talk about something else,” he said, and as if to signal the change of subject, he flipped the sheet on the legal pad and ran his hand over the blank page in front of him. “Tell me how you did it, Minnie. How exactly did you kill Ms. Arnaud?”
The grin that touched Minnie’s lips was as cold as ice cubes. “Shot her in the head. Stabbed her with a knife. That’s what she gets. That’s what she gets for trying to steal my Otis.”
Tony and I exchanged looks and we didn’t need to say a thing.
Shot her in the head.
Stabbed her with a knife.
When Rocky had been poisoned?
I think both Tony and I would have groaned if at that moment, there wasn’t a sharp knock on the door.
Another of the cops stuck his head into the room. “Hey, Tony, can you step out here for a minute? I need to talk to you.”
The thought of being left alone with Minnie was too much for me. Before she could remind me about that pinkie swear and because Tony didn’t say I had to stay, I hurried out of the room right behind him.
Otis Greenway stood next to the cop outside the door.
“Go ahead,” the cop said. “Tell Officer Russo here what you just told me.”
Before Otis could say a word, Tony stopped him.
“Maybe we should start at the beginning,” Tony said. “Your wife . . .” He glanced at the window on the wall where we could see Minnie sitting and staring into space. I knew she couldn’t see us from the other side. “She claims you and Ms. Arnaud were having an affair.”
Otis swallowed hard. “I was afraid that’s what she’d say. I was afraid that’s what she thought.” He shook his head sadly and a tear streaked down his doughy cheek. “Minnie . . .” He sobbed. “My poor Minnie. I never meant to
hurt her.”
Maybe I was supposed to keep my mouth shut, but I couldn’t help myself. “So you and Rocky were having an affair?”
Again, Otis shook his head, more vigorously this time. “I used to walk over and see Rocky . . . er . . . Miss Arnaud once in a while. It started back a couple of years ago. I was reading this magazine article about herbs, about how some herbs, they might be able to help people. People like Minnie.”
“You were drugging her?” Tony asked.
What little color there was in Otis’s face washed clean away. “No! No! Nothing like that. Minnie sees a doctor regularly. And she takes all the medication she’s supposed to take. But nothing works.” Again, he looked at his wife through the glass, his eyes empty and his voice drained of hope. “Nothing works. Then I read that article and it talked about making tea from herbs. So I went and talked to Rocky and she gave me some of the herbs that were mentioned in the article.”
“Did it help?” I asked, though, honestly, from what I’d seen of Minnie, I couldn’t imagine it had.
“It didn’t hurt,” Otis admitted. “Chamomile in the evening. She likes it with honey. It helps her sleep. And mint tea in the afternoon . . . Well, I can’t say for sure, maybe it’s just wishful thinking. But I think it calmed her down a little.”
“And that’s how you and Ms. Arnaud got to know each other?”
Otis glanced at Tony. “We weren’t having an affair,” he said. “I’d go over to her farm to get herbs and a couple of times, I walked over in the evening after Minnie was in bed. You know, just to have someone to talk to. Just so . . .” He glanced away. “Just so I wasn’t so lonely all the time. But that’s all it ever was,” he added, looking back at Tony, his shoulders a little steadier and the ring of truth in his voice. “There was never anything between me and Rocky, never anything except friendship. I guess Minnie thought otherwise and for that, I’ll be forever sorry. But no matter what she thought of Rocky, you’ve got to know, Officer, my Minnie, she didn’t kill Rocky.”
“She told us she did,” Tony said. “She told us she shot her, then stabbed her.”
By now, Otis was crying all out. “Maybe it was wishful thinking,” he sobbed. “Maybe that’s what she would have liked to do to Rocky because she thought she had reason to be jealous. Or maybe Minnie just dreamed it all and thought it was real. Some of the drugs she takes, they can have that sort of side effect. Maybe my poor Minnie was so angry at Rocky because she thought . . .” He couldn’t say another word, and we waited for him to pull himself together.
Otis did but not until after he took a deep breath that made his entire body shudder. “Here’s what I told the other officer,” he said. “What he wanted you to hear before you went any further questioning Minnie. She couldn’t have done it. Not any of it. Oh, I heard what she said about the phone calls and the rabbits, and I ain’t denying any of that. That sounds like something Minnie would do, and in the long run it didn’t hurt no one or nothing, did it? But she couldn’t have killed Rocky. No way. See, all day Saturday—the day Rocky died—me and Minnie were at a church harvest festival over at Mosquito Lake. I got pictures.”
Otis pulled his phone out of his pocket and messed with it for a few seconds, then turned it so Tony and I could see. The pictures were date and time stamped—the day Rocky was killed. They showed Otis and Minnie carving a pumpkin, Otis and Minnie eating lunch, Minnie chomping on a donut, her top lip covered with powdered sugar.
“You see, Officer, no matter what she says, Minnie couldn’t have done it. She was with me all of that day and into the evening. I never took my eyes off her. Not once.”
Chapter 12
Yes, it looked like we were right back where we started from, and when Declan and I drove back to Pacifique, I vacillated between moping and complaining, complaining and moping. About halfway to the farm, though, I stopped obsessing about how a perfect opportunity to solve the case had slipped right through our fingers. A thought hit and I sat up like a shot.
“We’ve still got the bank statements,” I said, more to myself than to Declan. “And they might lead us to the safe deposit box. And who knows what we might find there!”
“And we’ve got the letters from Marie,” he said, because apparently he’d been thinking we were at the end of our rope, too. Or maybe he was just tired of me moping and complaining. “The whole Minnie thing,” he admitted. “We should have known from the start that it was too good to be true. Getting a confession like that—it was too easy.”
He was right, but oh, how I wanted Minnie to be our killer! Not because I had anything against her, but because if she were, we could put the question of Rocky’s murder to rest once and for all.
Instead, when we arrived back at Pacifique and found our guests finished with lunch and just beginning to head out to their cars, Declan went out back to help the boys handle the traffic and I walked up to the microphone and told everyone the news.
“No matter what she said, it isn’t true. The police have confirmed that Minnie Greenway did not kill Rocky.” They had the right to know the truth, and besides, I hated the thought of them running home and spreading the story that they’d been on hand when the killer was caught and hauled away. It was a disservice to Rocky’s memory and it sure wouldn’t do much for Minnie’s reputation, either. As long as I was at it, I added, “If any of you knows anything about Rocky or the farm or who might have been here last Saturday, no matter how small it seems or how insignificant, please share the information with the Cortland police.”
I couldn’t tell if our guests were relieved to hear there wasn’t a murderer living nearby or disappointed that the dramatic scene that had been played out before them earlier in the afternoon had resulted in nothing more than a phony and fizzled confession.
An appropriately sad smile firmly in place, I watched them leave, saying my good-byes and thanking each person who happened to glance my way.
It wasn’t until every last one of them was gone that I caught sight of Sophie hanging around near the bar.
Her herringbone blazer was off.
So were her shoes.
I headed toward the back of the tent. “Sorry,” I said, and when she poured a glass of côtes du rhône rouge for herself and one for me, I didn’t argue. “That was the last thing we needed.”
Sophie took a sip of wine, her gaze trained on the leaves outside the tent that fell like raindrops from the surrounding trees on the heels of a breeze that had the cold nip of the end of October in it. “The quiche was good,” she said.
I laughed. “All that angst and you remember the quiche.”
“All that angst is why I remember the quiche.” She turned a watery smile on me. “Thanks for making today special for Rocky.”
I touched my wineglass to hers. “Thanks for having such a great friend.”
We didn’t plan it, but at the same time, we plopped into the two closest chairs.
Sophie stretched. “We’ve got to help with cleanup.”
“We will.” I pointed to her glass of wine. “After you’re finished.”
She didn’t protest. I didn’t expect her to. Instead, she gave the house a wistful look. “I guess I’ll have to distribute everything in whatever way the will says. It will feel funny never coming here again.”
“It’s a special place.” We were near the herb garden, and I caught the aroma of lavender in the air. “I’ll miss it, too.”
I pretended not to notice the look she shot my way. At least until I could feel her eyes just about drilling through me.
“What?” I asked.
She pursed her lips and looked up at the canopy of tent above us. “Oh, nothing. For a moment there, I thought you were going to say how much this place feels like home.”
I sipped my wine. “Unlikely, since I’m not exactly sure what home feels like.”
“Nina’s was home for you.”
She was right. For four years, her sister had given me a place where I’d felt safe and cared for. “Four years that I’ll never forget and that I’ll always appreciate. But four years, it’s a drop in the bucket,” I told her and reminded myself.
With one finger, she traced an invisible pattern over the white tablecloth. “So you’ll keep on looking. For a home, I mean. For a place where you can settle in and stay.”
I was in no mood for games. “I always told you I would.”
“And you haven’t changed your mind.”
I finished my wine and stood. “Let’s get these tables cleared,” I said. “And get everything back to the Terminal.”
Along with Sophie, Misti, Inez, and George, who pitched in since all the cooking was done, we loaded dishes into crates, gathered napkins, folded tablecloths. Before they left, Sophie had given most of the flower arrangements to people she knew were special friends of Rocky’s, but there were a few still around and I made sure to tell Inez and Misti to each take one home and offered one to George, who instead of saying thanks or no thanks just snorted at the very idea.
I left one for Sophie and took the two remaining vases and set them on the front step of the house.
“Nice.”
Declan came up behind me and slipped his arms around my waist. If I weren’t so drained by the day, I might have protested, but the way it was, the heat of his body felt good in the chilly autumn air and the strength of his arms reminded me that no matter what happened in the investigation and where I ended up looking for that home Sophie talked about, there were people who cared, people who wouldn’t let Rocky’s memory be forgotten and wouldn’t let her murder go unpunished.
I leaned my head back against his shoulder. “Rocky liked flowers. I only wish . . .”
I guess he knew what I was going to say. He gave me a quick squeeze. “You’re going to figure it out, Laurel.”
I wasn’t so sure, and my sigh gave me away. Declan propped his chin on the top of my head. “I’ve been thinking about those letters,” he said. “I know a woman named Amanda Blake who might be able to help. She’s a French teacher over at the high school.”