by J. R. Ripley
‘I understand,’ I said with as reassuring a smile as I could muster. I dearly hoped this wasn’t one of those famous confessions by the killer just moments before he kills his last victim and makes his getaway. ‘We’re all young once, right?’
‘I was young. I know I did wrong, Ms Miller. People can change.’ He jutted his chin.
‘Of course.’
‘It’s not what you think. I didn’t murder Nancy.’ Tears formed at the corners of Jakob’s eyes. ‘I loved her.’
‘Did she love you?’
He shrugged a shoulder. ‘Not really, I guess.’
‘Did that make you mad?’
Jakob scowled. ‘Not enough to kill her, if that’s what you are suggesting?’
I raised my hands. ‘No, not at all.’
‘Nancy didn’t really like a whole lot of people, let alone love them. She was pretty much a loner as far as I could see.’ Jakob took a sip from his bottle. ‘She made it clear to me that she wanted to keep things casual. I don’t mind admitting I wanted more.’
Jakob rested the bottle on the bookcase near my shoulder. ‘You’re probably wondering if Nancy knew about my past.’
‘Did she?’
‘Yep.’ Jakob sounded pleased. ‘I told her early on. She said we all have a past and that it is only our future that matters.’
‘Wise words,’ I commented.
‘Look.’ His hand shot out to the bookcase and he retrieved a book. He thrust it into my fingers.
‘Nancy’s book?’
‘Yeah. It’s one of her earlier books.’
It was titled Solar Sham. I flipped the pages. ‘This is the book you told me about.’
‘Yeah.’ He turned the page to the foreword. ‘I haven’t had a chance to read it yet. She inscribed it to me. See?’
I saw. The inscription on the title page read: To Jakob, May your future be bright. Nancy
‘That’s sweet.’ I closed the book.
‘Being an artist is hard, you know?’
‘I’ll bet. Being a small business owner isn’t exactly easy, either,’ I replied, in an effort to gain some camaraderie with him.
‘Look, the police already know, so you may as well know too.’ He leaned back on his heels. ‘I don’t want you to think badly of me but I’d rather you think badly of me than think I’m a murderer. I like to consider us friends, Ms Miller.’
‘Me too, Jakob.’ Assuming you aren’t a murderer.
‘After I left your place the night Nancy was killed, I drove into Sedona.’
‘You weren’t here, at home?’
Jakob shook his head. ‘I was in Sedona. Picking up some weed.’ He lowered his chin. ‘The police know all about it. They talked to my … friend.
‘I told that reporter guy that I was home that night because I didn’t want him printing anything about that or, well, any of my past. I’m trying to make a go of things here.’
‘I understand completely.’ I hesitated before asking my next question. ‘I have to ask you one other thing, Jakob.’
‘What’s that?’
‘That painting of yours that sold recently at the café.’
‘What about it?’
‘I remember you telling me that you had gone up in a hot-air balloon so that you could capture the view from above.’
‘Yeah, so?’
‘Do you know how to fly a hot-air balloon?’
‘Fly one?’ Jakob pinched his brows together. ‘No. I paid some guy to take me up and run the thing while I sketched. You want his number?’
I clutched the book in my fingers. ‘That won’t be necessary.’
‘You believe me, don’t you, Ms Miller?’
‘You know what, Jakob? I do.’ I patted him on the arm. ‘Do you mind if I borrow this?’
Jakob glanced at the book. ‘I guess not.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of it and bring it back as soon as I’m finished with it.’ I laid my hand on the doorknob. ‘I’d better be going.’
‘Sure thing. You know, I’m glad you stopped by.’ Jakob rubbed the back of his neck. ‘I feel better getting everything out in the open like this.’
I pulled open the door. ‘Good night, Jakob.’
Jakob followed me on to the porch. ‘Say, what happened to your friend?’
‘That’s what I’d like to know.’ I stepped off the porch and raised the book overhead. ‘Thanks again for the book!’
TWENTY-THREE
Brad came by the café the next day carrying a dozen roses wrapped in green paper. ‘These are for you, Maggie.’ He extended his right hand over the front counter.
‘Thanks.’ I took them. I gave them a sniff. Delicious. ‘Are these for my grave?’
‘Huh?’
I glowered at him. ‘I could have been killed last night.’
‘Oh, that.’
‘Oh, that, is right.’ I grabbed an empty water pitcher and filled it from the tap. I removed the paper from the bouquet and arranged the roses inside the water pitcher. ‘What happened to you last night?’
‘A call came in from my editor. There was a wreck on the highway. A semi and a tour bus collided.’
I gasped. ‘Was anybody hurt?’
‘A few scrapes and bruises. The bus driver has a broken ankle.’
‘That’s a relief.’
‘I had to cover the story, Maggie. I had no choice.’ Brad looked contrite. ‘Forgive me?’
‘Fine,’ I said with a well-rehearsed pout.
‘Great.’ He was all smiles again. ‘Did you really go to Jakob’s house alone?’
‘I did.’ I poured Brad a coffee and handed it to him. Glancing at the jar we had set up for our giveaway, I was happy to see it was filling up nicely with business cards.
‘Was Jakob there? Did you talk to him?’ Brad took a sip of his coffee.
‘He was and I did.’ I was going to play hard to get. Lucky for him I wasn’t killed last night. Lucky for me, too.
‘Come on, Maggie.’ Brad drummed his fingers on the counter. ‘Fill me in.’
‘Fine,’ I said, trying to sound as put upon as I possibly could. ‘Let’s sit.’
Kelly and Aubrey were busy with customers – well, that and listening in on my conversation with Brad, so moving to a table seemed like the thing to do.
I untied my apron and went around the counter, joining Brad at a spot near the door.
I told Brad that I didn’t think Jakob was our killer. Brad told me that he was meeting Alan Klopton from ASK Financial Services after lunch on the pretense of doing a company profile.
‘Then I’m supposed to go to the station and sign my statement concerning yesterday.’ Brad cracked his knuckles. ‘Hopefully, I’ll get some new info on Herman’s murder.’
‘I’m supposed to go down later, too.’ I pushed back a hair that had been tickling my nose. ‘I can’t wait to hear what Mr Klopton says. I’m surprised he’s willing to even give you the time of day.’
‘Klopton didn’t seem too eager to talk to me but when I mentioned I was friends with the mayor, he came around.’
‘You said you were friends with the mayor?’ I raised my brow. ‘You lied?’
‘Journalistic license,’ replied Brad, avoiding eye contact.
‘Ask Mr Klopton about Arimexico Ventures.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A failed solar energy company. Nancy Alverson wrote a book about it. There was a lot of fraud, according to her, involving people in high places.’
‘You mean politicians?’
‘Politicians and business persons.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘It was in one of her books.’ I explained Jakob had shown me the book and let me borrow it. ‘I was up all night reading it. To be honest, she wasn’t a great writer and there’s a lot more innuendo than there are facts.’
There was more in Nancy’s book about VV, or rather, about her father, our dear mayor. I wasn’t going to mention that yet to Brad, though. I
’d need to talk to her about it first.
I rubbed my eyes, swollen and itchy from lack of sleep. ‘But if even half of what Nancy purports to be true is true, there was a whole lot of bad going on.’
Brad had news of his own. ‘I managed to get a look at that class schedule of Rob Gregory’s that you told me about. ‘Guess who was a walk-in the night of Nancy’s murder?’
‘Who?’
‘Stephanie Headley.’
I leaned back against my chair. Was ASK’s comptroller also a strangler?
Brad left but he called later to say that Alan Klopton had been a no-show. ‘Do you believe it?’ complained Brad. ‘I wasted an hour at High Steaks waiting for the guy and he never appeared.’ High Steaks was a popular steakhouse on Main Street at the square.
‘Did you try the hotel?’ I leaned against the counter, massaging my back. My muscles were slowly returning to their normal state. As long as I avoided yoga and any other form of exercise other than riding my bike, I figured I’d be OK.
‘I called his bungalow. There was no answer. His associates didn’t answer their room phones either.’
I yanked my ear from the receiver as Brad cursed because I noticed smoke coming from the waffle maker on the counter.
‘Hey, Kelly!’ I cupped my hand over the receiver while Brad continued his tirade against corporate America, and whispered, ‘The waffle maker!’
I waved at the machine. Smoke billowed from between the plates. The cord was sizzling, making funny noises and wriggling like a headless rattlesnake. The insulation wrapped around the cord appeared to be melting before my very eyes.
‘Yikes!’ Kelly threw the contents of a glass of lemonade at it. She then ran to the back and suddenly all the power went out.
I heard the sound of running footsteps. Kelly poked her head over the swinging doors. ‘OK, now?’
‘What happened to the power?’ I said. Brad was still talking. ‘I’ll call you back.’ I hung up the receiver.
‘I turned off the circuit breaker.’
‘Good call.’ I planted my hands on my hips. I had a dining room full of customers looking at me for an explanation. ‘It’s OK, folks.’ I raised my arms. ‘No problem. Just a drill.’ I pulled the molten plug of the waffle maker from the wall. ‘Turn the breaker back on now,’ I whispered to Kelly.
In a flash, the café sprang back to life and my customers went about their business.
Aubrey, who had been working in the storeroom, appeared with Kelly. She walked over to the damaged waffle maker.
‘Careful,’ I warned her as she picked up the end of the waffle maker cord in her fingers.
‘Well.’ Aubrey sighed. ‘The good news is that the soda machine got fixed this morning while you were at the bank, Maggie.’
Aubrey picked up the waffle maker. ‘The bad news is that your waffle maker is dead.’ She carried it to the trash can and let it go.
It plopped loudly to the bottom of the can.
Aubrey turned meaningfully to the espresso maker. ‘Do we have to watch the whole café fall apart before you do something about that?’
I bent over and picked the waffle maker out of the trash. ‘This can be repaired,’ I said, setting it under the counter. ‘It probably only needs a new cord.’
‘To say the least,’ quipped Kelly.
‘You know, Maggie,’ Aubrey draped her arm over my shoulder, ‘I had Lee come look at the espresso maker.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He thinks you need a spiritual cleansing. Well, not you, that.’ Aubrey pointed at the espresso maker slash steampunk spaceship slash demon’s spawn.
‘You mean like an exorcism?’
‘Exactly. Lee offered to do it but he said it probably wouldn’t work unless Rob or Trish did it themselves. The machine had belonged to them, after all.’
I freed myself from her grasp. ‘I’ll keep that in mind. In the meantime, the cups for that machine arrived late yesterday. How about unpacking them and we give it a trial run?’
Aubrey and Kelly shared dubious looks.
‘Come on, ladies. It’s an espresso machine, not the devil incarnate! Fine,’ I said, noting their hesitation. ‘I’ll do it myself and show you just how wrong you’ve been and how silly the two of you are being about this whole thing.’ I wagged my finger at the two of them.
I stormed to the backroom for the case of porcelain espresso cups. Carrying the box with both hands, I pushed through the swinging doors. ‘Here, let’s open these and … whoops!’
My feet landed in a puddle of lemonade.
The box flew from my hands, bounced off the edge of the counter, and then struck the ground. Hard.
My butt hit the ground hard, too. Right in the puddle of lemonade. On the plus side, my pants soaked up most of the spill so I wouldn’t need to worry about mopping.
On the minus side … the box of cups had burst open and, at first glance, looking at the carnage scattered around the floor, it appeared that twenty or so of the two-dozen pairs of cups and saucers had broken.
Kelly looked on in wide-eyed horror. ‘Are you OK, Maggie?’
Aubrey reached out her hand and hoisted me off the floor.
‘I think so.’ Nothing was broken. Except maybe my spirit. Besides the dishware, of course. I could feel the cold, wet lemonade seeping into my underwear and wriggled.
‘I think I had better go home and get changed,’ I whimpered.
‘Good idea, Maggie.’ Kelly grabbed a broom and dustpan from the backroom and began sweeping.
Aubrey was scooping up big shards of porcelain with a damp cloth.
I grabbed my bicycle and pushed it to the front door. I leaned on the handlebars. ‘What is the going rate for this spiritual cleansing?’ I inquired.
Aubrey popped her head over the counter. ‘Trish charges one hundred dollars, according to Lee.’
‘One hundred dollars?’ My hands flew from the handlebars as I turned my gaze toward Karma Koffee. The bike, of course, fell to the floor.
On my toes.
I bit my lip to keep from screaming.
Aubrey was practically smirking. ‘What time should I tell her to come?’
‘Make it after hours,’ I said through the pain. ‘Unless we need to wait until the moon is propitious and Uranus is in alignment with Jupiter and Mercury is in the House of Oldsmobile or some such mumbo-jumbo.’
‘After hours, it is.’ Aubrey disappeared behind the counter.
I could hear her and Kelly whispering and giggling as I limped out the door. Being a business owner wasn’t the dignified position I had imagined it to be.
As I had told Brad, Detective Highsmith had called me earlier at the store requesting that I come down to the police station to give my formal statement.
I pedaled over and was ushered to his cubicle, where we carefully went over the events and my movements of the day before.
‘Do you have any idea who killed Herman?’
‘No.’ Highsmith wasn’t giving anything away.
‘What about a time of death?’
‘The initial report places it as sometime between midnight and four a.m.’
‘What about the weapon?’
‘We found a knife matching the description you gave me of the one Herman owned. There was evidence of blood and tissue on the blade but no prints on the haft. We discovered it about twenty yards from the body.’
‘Did you question VV about ASK Financial?’
Highsmith slapped the folder against the table. ‘Yes. I asked her, Maggie. She said they were in talks with her father, the mayor.’
‘What sort of talks?’
‘That’s none of your business. It isn’t even any of my business.’ His tone was angry.
‘I don’t mean to tell you your business—’
‘You could have fooled me,’ Highsmith interrupted.
‘I just wanted to say that you might want to talk to those people from ASK Financial Services, that’s all.’
‘We’v
e already interviewed them. And since I know you are going to ask, they all have alibis. For Nancy and Herman Alverson’s murders.’
‘Are you sure, I mean—’ I jerked. ‘Wait. Did you say Herman Alverson?’
‘That’s right, Maggie. You may as well know. It’s going to come out anyway.’ Detective Highsmith pulled a cherry licorice stick from a ripped open bag and chomped off the end. He held the bag out to me but I declined. ‘Herman was Nancy’s brother.’
I sucked in a breath. ‘First her and then him? Why? What does it mean?’ Now that he mentioned it, I could see the resemblance. The shapes of their faces, the set of their eyes.
‘Believe me,’ Detective Highsmith said, rising from his chair and motioning for me to do the same. He yanked off another few inches of licorice with his teeth. ‘I intend to find out.’
Highsmith escorted me to the door up front and hit a buzzer releasing the lock. ‘Thanks for coming in.’
‘Wait. What about those marks near Herman’s campsite? Were they made by a hot-air balloon basket?’
‘Yes,’ Detective Highsmith reluctantly admitted. ‘It appears so.’
‘Did you know that a hot-air balloon was stolen from one of the tour operators a few days ago?’ I stopped beside a bench near the entrance.
‘I am very aware of that. I’ve read the police report,’ Detective Highsmith answered, his voice flat.
‘Do you think it’s connected to Herman Alverson’s murder?’ I couldn’t get over the fact that Herman and Nancy had been related. ‘They must be connected, right?’
‘No comment.’
‘What about Nancy’s Land Rover? Do you have any idea how it ended up at Herman’s campsite?’
‘That I can tell you.’ Highsmith swallowed the last bit of his licorice. ‘Apparently, he drove it there himself. His prints were all over it.’
‘But the keys.’
‘They were Nancy’s. Jakob Waltz recognized them. She must have let him borrow them. We’d been looking for the Land Rover. I intended to impound it for the duration. Herman must have driven off with it before we could send a tow truck out.’
‘But how did he get to and from town without it? You saw how far it was to his camp.’
‘My guess is that he hitched.’
‘Is that really likely?’