Murder with a Cherry on Top

by Cynthia Baxter

  “Whatever. Anyway, even though she was obviously good at business, she wasn’t practicing good business sense. She was making decisions with her heart. Or maybe some other part of her body.”

  I could feel my cheeks growing pink.

  But while Ashley may not have been investing her money in the wisest way possible, it wasn’t that strange, or that unusual, for her to invest in someone she cared about.

  Billy didn’t seem the least bit sympathetic to that point of view, probably because he clearly wanted to get his hands on as much of that money as he could. “Anyway, the point here is that Ash and Tad had a business relationship, as well as a personal relationship. Which means there was a huge potential for one or both of those to sour. I bet he was squeezing her for more money and she wouldn’t give in.... Yeah, old Ash could be pretty tight when it came to sharing the wealth.”

  The more time I spent with Billy, the more I disliked him. In fact, I was trying to think of a way to extricate myself from his house as quickly as I could.

  “But there’s one thing I’ll say about Ash,” Billy went on thoughtfully. “For all her faults—and believe me, she had plenty—she was always good to Danny.”

  My ears pricked up the way Digger’s furry ones did anytime anyone within a square mile of our house even touched some food item that was wrapped in cellophane.

  “I’m sorry, who did you say Danny is?” I asked.

  “I probably didn’t.” Billy sighed. “To tell you the truth, I try to talk about him as little as possible. Heck, I try to think about him as little as possible.”

  “Danny is . . . a friend of yours?”

  Billy laughed coldly. “No-o-o-o. Danny is our son. Me and Ash, I mean. Danny is the fruit of our sacred union.”

  I blinked. “Ashley had a son?” I was amazed that I’d never heard a thing about him before.

  “Ashley had a son,” Billy repeated. “It’s funny. I always think of him as her son, not mine. Even though he is, of course. Biologically, at least.”

  I was completely confused. Billy and Ashley had had a baby together, yet Billy wanted nothing to do with his own son?

  “So he doesn’t live with you?” I asked, trying as gracefully as I could to find out as much as I could.

  “Hah. That kid doesn’t live with anybody.” Billy was practically sneering as he explained, “He lives in a home, as they call it. Or, to be more politically correct, a group residence. This place called Halliday House. See, he’s what we called disabled.” Twisting his mouth into a sneer, he added, “He’s got cerebral palsy. Do you believe it? A kid of mine?”

  I gulped. But somehow, I managed to utter the words, “Oh. I see.”

  And I was pretty sure that I did see. Billy’s son hadn’t turned out to be the child he’d planned on. And as a result, he’d found it difficult—impossible, even—to accept him, much less to love him.

  My heart was breaking for the boy, even though I’d never even met him. And not only because of his disability. I felt sorry for him for having a father like Billy.

  “How old is he—Danny?”

  “Let’s see, I guess he’d be about nine.”

  Billy wasn’t sure of his own son’s age. Which meant he probably didn’t even visit him, much less try to choose the perfect birthday present for him every year.

  Ashley had certainly had a lot more to deal with than I’d ever expected.

  As I drove away, relief washed over me that I was out of Billy’s lair. But I was also pleased that I’d learned even more than I’d hoped.

  As despicable as Billy was, I found it hard to believe he’d killed Ashley.

  After all, by killing his ex-wife, he’d lose his meal ticket. Killing the goose that laid the golden eggs, to use an apt metaphor. After all, without Ashley and her successful bakery business, there’d be no more alimony payments.

  Then again, people didn’t always do things for logical reasons.

  Billy Duffy wouldn’t be the first person to act in the heat of the moment, only to realize right afterward that he’d just become his own worst enemy.

  Chapter 13

  Hawaiian Punch was originally designed to be an ice cream topping. Originally called “Leo’s Hawaiian Punch,” it was created by Tom Yates, A. W. Leo, and Ralph Harrison in a garage in Fullerton, California, in 1934.

  —www.TodayIFoundOut.com

  While I was learning plenty about the people in Ashley’s life, I was also anxious to learn more about the dessert diva’s lifestyle—and, more importantly, how she managed it on the profits from a small-town bakery.

  The most likely explanation, I figured, was that she was drowning in debt. Her concern with status dated way back to our days at school. I suspected that she’d grown up to be one of those people who felt that keeping up the appearance of being wildly successful was worth juggling credit cards and car payments and whatever else she was carrying, even though she really couldn’t afford any of it.

  One aspect of her extravagant lifestyle that was as obvious as it was troubling was her expensive sports car. I was curious to know how much it had cost, how much she’d borrowed, and how much she had to pay each month. Or maybe she’d even leased it and it hadn’t cost nearly as much as I’d assumed. I’d certainly seen plenty of TV commercials advertising low monthly payments on fancy cars.

  I wanted to find out exactly what Ashley’s car expense was. Which was why the first thing on my list for that day was visiting a local car dealership.

  Hudson Chevrolet was the closest dealership that sold Corvettes and the one I figured Ashley was most likely to have bought her car from. As I drove onto the lot in my pickup, I wished I’d taken the time to get it washed before venturing out. Being surrounded by all those sleek, immaculate cars made me feel like I’d just shown up at a formal wedding dressed in jeans.

  As I went inside the glass building, which was as sleek as the cars it contained, I noticed that the car salesman who came over to me as soon as I entered didn’t seem to mind my attire. For all he knew, I’d come in to buy a brand new pickup truck, which meant both my vehicle and I had the right look.

  I certainly wouldn’t be mistaken for someone in the market for a Corvette like Ashley’s. I could feel my eyes growing as big and round as Oreos as I noticed some of the sticker prices. $68,985 . . . $72,795 . . . $87,715 . . .

  I was having trouble wrapping my head around those numbers. I knew Ashley’s car had been expensive, but I hadn’t really understood up until this moment how expensive.

  I was anxious to find out how she had financed this little toy of hers.

  “Nice pickup,” the salesman observed, gesturing toward my chariot with his chin. He was a young man with jet black hair that was as impeccably styled as his suit. His bright red tie matched the Corvette we happened to be standing next to. The name tag on his lapel read Bao. “Looking to upgrade?”

  “Not exactly,” I replied. Although now that I was here, standing among all these shiny new vehicles, I was starting to think that maybe, one of these days, owning a sparkling new cherry red pickup truck might be fun. Maybe once Lickety Splits became as successful as Sweet Things seemed to have been . . .

  “Actually,” I went on, “I was hoping I could speak to whoever handles the financing. It’s kind of a personal matter.”

  I could see Bao’s interest in me drop like a scoop of ice cream falling out of a four-year-old’s waffle cone. I realized he now assumed I’d come into the dealership in person because I was having trouble making my monthly car payments.

  I hated having someone see me that way, even though it wasn’t true.

  “It’s really about a friend,” I said. Then realized immediately that sounded even worse.

  “Let me see if Deenie is available,” Bao said, still smiling but backing away a bit. “She’s our assistant manager.”

  Deenie was, indeed, in. She sat behind a big desk in an office that was glassed-in on all sides. I wondered if that was so she could keep an eye on the showroom
to make sure no one shoplifted any of her inventory. The middle-aged woman was the very image of efficiency: dark hair pulled back neatly and fastened with a barrette, a tailored blouse, adorned only with a simple string of pearls, a pair of glasses dangling from a chain around her neck.

  “How can I help you?” Deenie asked as I sat down in the chair facing her.

  “I’m here to make a car payment,” I said.

  “Okay . . . but you know that doesn’t have to be done in person,” Deenie said, looking a little confused. “You can make payments on our Web site. Or, better yet, you can have them automatically charged to your credit card every month. . . .”

  “It’s not for me,” I explained. “It’s for a friend. Someone who just passed away.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.” Deenie looked flustered. But she was already clicking keys on her computer. “What’s the name on the account?”

  “Ashley Winthrop,” I said. “She had a Corvette.”

  Her expression changed immediately, and her fingers froze above the keyboard. “Ashley,” she repeated, as if she knew exactly whom I was talking about.

  “You sound as if you know her,” I observed.

  “Only from her car purchase,” Deenie said. “But working with her was kind of hard to forget.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, my heart pounding.

  Deenie turned away from her computer and faced me, folding her hands on her desk. “Ashley didn’t owe anything on her car.”

  I guess I still looked puzzled because a second later, she added, “She paid cash for it.”

  I gasped.

  “That was my reaction, too,” Deenie said, shaking her head slowly. “We sell a lot of nice cars here. A lot of expensive cars. And I can count on one hand the number of times someone bought a car in that price range for cash. Well, two hands, maybe, but it’s still extremely rare. And the fact that it was literally cash . . .”

  “You mean she had a bank check?” I asked, wanting to make sure I understood this.

  Deenie glanced out at the showroom, as if wanting to make sure no one was listening. Or, since we were behind glass walls, lip-reading.

  “I shouldn’t be giving out this information,” she went on, “but since you two were obviously close friends, and since she passed away and all . . .”

  The urge to gossip is hard to resist. Probably even more than ice cream.

  “Ashley showed up here knowing exactly the model she wanted, including all these extra features that drove the price up even higher,” Deenie said in a soft voice. I couldn’t tell if she was trying not to be overheard or if she was simply so awed by what she was saying that she couldn’t help but speak in a near whisper. “And then, when it was time to pay up, she opened up her pocketbook and started pulling out wads of cash.”

  Almost as if she were speaking to herself, she added, “Fortunately, it was a large pocketbook. A tote bag, practically.”

  I knew there were hundreds of questions I should have been asking, but my head was spinning so fast that I couldn’t think of any of them.

  “Where did all that money come from?” I whispered. Now I was the one who was talking to myself.

  Deenie grimaced. “Frankly, I wondered the exact same thing,” she said. “But even though I didn’t say anything to her about how unusual it was for someone to buy a car for cash, Ashley seemed to feel she owed me an explanation.”

  “She probably said her bakery in town was doing really well,” I guessed.

  “It was more than that,” Deenie said. “She made some vague comment about her bakery becoming a franchise.” She shrugged. “Whatever was going on, she sure didn’t seem worried about money.”

  A franchise? This was the first time I’d heard anything about that.

  But I immediately found myself wondering if Ashley had simply been showing off. That, after all, was something she’d always been good at.

  Or what was more likely was that she was trying to come up with a viable explanation for how she came to be carrying around stacks of bills in her purse.

  But something was bothering me much more than Ashley’s grandiose claim about Sweet Things becoming the next Panera. And that was the point Billy had raised.

  Follow the money, he’d said. But he was talking about where it was going while I was trying to find out where she’d gotten it in the first place.

  And the more I learned, the more suspicious I became that she hadn’t come by all that money honestly. Which meant Ashley may have been involved with some people whose names weren’t on my list—people against whom even a dog like Demon wouldn’t offer enough protection.

  * * *

  As intriguing as the new information I’d gotten at the car dealership was, I still had another important destination on my list. So the minute I got back into my truck, I Googled “Halliday House,” the residential facility Billy Duffy had mentioned. The address came right up. Sure enough, it was in Catskill, less than a half hour’s drive away.

  Catskill, located across a bridge on the other side of the Hudson, was a charming town that rivaled Wolfert’s Roost in the cuteness department. Its main street was lined with buildings from the 1800s that housed funky shops and sophisticated restaurants.

  Halliday House, located on the outskirts of town, sat amid a huge piece of property overlooking the river. The freshly mown lawn, the color of a kid’s green Crayola, stretched from the road to the banks, with the two-story gray stone house plopped down right in the middle.

  The building was big, but not so big that it looked institutional. In fact, only a modest sign out front gave any clue that this wasn’t just some wealthy person’s weekend getaway.

  The yard was crisscrossed with walkways, some edged with benches, others with colorful flower beds. Four or five children, presumably residents, were in wheelchairs. The men and women pushing the wheelchairs all wore big smiles and appeared to be chatting away happily, exuding warmth toward their charges.

  I drove into the parking lot, hoping to get a better look without invading the residents’ privacy. But as soon as I pulled off the road, a woman who’d been heading toward her car stepped over.

  “Can I help you?” she asked. She was in her midforties, with a neat blond pageboy, a dark pantsuit, and an ID hanging around her neck that read, “Margaret Campbell, Human Resources.”

  I rolled down the window. “I’m a friend of Ashley Winthrop,” I said. “I understand her son Danny lives here.”

  Margaret eyed me uncertainly. “We’re not allowed to give out any information about our residents,” she said.

  “Of course not,” I replied. Glancing at the building, taking in the pleasant grounds and the cheerful-looking employees, I added, “I just wanted to see where Danny lives. And I’m glad to see it’s such a nice place.”

  “Halliday House is one of the best residential facilities for kids like Danny in the entire country,” Margaret said proudly.

  Partly out of sincerity and partly as a means of fishing, I added, “I’m not surprised Ashley wanted to make sure her son got the best care possible.”

  Margaret nodded. “I think it was the right decision. Ashley’s a single mom, and she just doesn’t have the time and energy to give Danny the care he needs. Deciding to have him live here is the best possible thing she could have done.”

  Okay, so Margaret had broken the rules by giving out that information. But I assumed she’d figured out by that point that I already knew that Ashley’s son lived here.

  “Does the state pay for this kind of residence?” I asked casually.

  Margaret looked surprised. “Are you kidding? I wish. The state pays for big, impersonal nursing homes, but not this kind of place.”

  “So Ashley paid for this herself,” I mused. I didn’t have the courage to ask what it cost for her to ensure that her son had the best care available. But I had a feeling it didn’t come cheap. “What will happen to Danny now?”

  Margaret’s expression grew grim. “That remains to be see
n. For one thing, it depends on what kind of arrangements his mother made in her will. If she consulted a good lawyer, hopefully Danny will be able to stay on. If not . . . well, like I said, it remains to be seen.”

  We were both silent for a few seconds, as if we were each pondering the possible outcomes for the rest of Danny’s life.

  And then, Margaret said, “Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but you really can’t stay here. This is private property, and, well, I’m sure you understand.”

  “I do,” I assured her. “Thanks for your time.”

  With that, I did a quick three-point turn and headed out of the parking lot.

  As I drove away, I felt a little sheepish that I’d spent so much time concentrating on Ashley’s negative side that it had never occurred to me that the woman might also possess a positive side.

  No matter what else was going on in her life, no matter what else she was spending her money on, she’d been a loving mother, one who’d made sure she could provide the best possible care for her son.

  But while I was touched that Ashley had done everything possible to take care of Danny, her ability to spend continued to raise the same question. And the more I learned, the more convinced I became that I wouldn’t find her killer until I found out what was behind her wealth.

  Chapter 14

  Howard Johnson’s 28 original flavors included Vanilla, Chocolate, Strawberry, Frozen Pudding, Orange Pineapple, Fruit Salad, Macaroon, Ginger, Peanut Brittle, and Apple.

  —FoodTimeLine.com, quoted from “28 Flavors Head West,” Life (magazine), September 6, 1948 (p. 74)

  My main motivation in joining the Wolfert’s Roost Chamber of Commerce had of course been that I saw it as a way of furthering my investigation. So I was surprised to find that I was actually looking forward to getting to know more local people—especially since they, like me, were mostly small business owners.

  I was also excited about having a chance to show off Lickety Splits. I was very proud of what I’d created, and hosting a C of C meeting was really the first opportunity I’d had to showcase it. Holding the meeting here was pretty much the same as throwing a party.