Fries, Fritters and Fears: Book 7 in The Bandit Hills Series

by Merrin,Blair

  “I…” Crap. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Right. Cynthia’s not an idiot. And she just might be smart enough to pull it off and have someone else take the fall. We’re talking about a policy that’s over a million dollars. That kind of money makes people do nutty things.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.” I glance at my watch. “Look, I should get back to the shop anyway. Why don’t you finish up with Cynthia, and I’ll just walk back. It’s not far.”

  “Cass, you don’t have to go…”

  “No, it’s fine.” I give him a halfhearted peck on the cheek and start down the stairs. “Call me later, let me know how things went.”

  “Alright.” He nods and heads back into the apartment as I make the three-block trek up to Miss Miscellanea.

  Don’t get me wrong; I’m not upset with Dash over pointing out my rookie mistake. He and I just have different methods of investigating. I tend to go with intuition about people, while he researches possibilities until they become facts. I don’t want to believe that Cynthia Middleton could have done it, but he’s not wrong; she could have, and might even be smart enough to cover her own tracks and blame it on someone else.

  Only two blocks from the store I see a familiar site: the big blue truck with the white trailer, the one that Sam and Vinnie used to transport their wax exhibit (and which is no doubt empty now). I squint and see Vinnie in the driver seat, his unmistakable ponytail and many-pocketed vest. My first thought is to wave, but then I see that he has a cell phone to his ear.

  As I walk by the truck, his voice floats out to me, and it sounds angry.

  “What does that matter?” he practically shouts into the phone. “One! We’re missing one! Out of two dozen!”

  I flatten myself against the side of the truck, straining to listen. It doesn’t seem like Vinnie saw me approach.

  “Fine, I’ll figure it out and call you back.” The driver’s side door opens suddenly and Vinnie’s short legs swing out. I barely have enough time to scurry around to the rear of the trailer before he hops out. He tosses something into the nearby garbage can on the corner, and then he runs his fingers over his hair and paces a few steps, seemingly unsure of what to do next.

  Then he climbs back into the truck and starts it up. As he pulls himself up into the cab, a piece of paper flutters out and onto the ground. The huge semi pulls away, leaving me standing in the street feeling foolish.

  I retrieve the piece of paper, and then as an afterthought I reach into the garbage can and find what Vinnie tossed in there. Then I hurry back to the store and call Dash.

  CHAPTER 15

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” Dash insists.

  “But it could. Look what you said about Cynthia Middleton!”

  Once I was back at the shop, I called Dash right away. He was just finishing up with Cynthia. He told her that he would have to report his findings to Phil, and that unfortunately, as long as the case was still open, she would not only be a suspect, but the insurance settlement would not be rewarded.

  As soon as he got here, I showed him my findings. I had a few minutes to mull it over and put it together as best I could. It seemed to me that Vinnie was ready to leave town in his big blue truck, but got some bad news. The sheet of paper that blew out of his cab was a canary-yellow carbon copy page of an insurance claim on his traveling wax exhibit.

  I smoothed out the sheet for Dash to read. Unfortunately, the actual sum was badly smudged, but we could both tell that there were several zeroes in it.

  Which is when Dash said, “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Vinnie having a policy out on his exhibit doesn’t make him any more suspicious than Cynthia having such a large one on her home,” Dash tells me. “You said yourself that it was Sam’s life’s work, right? It makes sense that they’d have it insured.”

  I throw my hands up in protest. “Why does it make Cynthia suspicious, and Vinnie not?”

  “Cassie, his best friend died in that fire.”

  “I…” I sigh. “I know. I’m just trying to think more objectively.”

  He motions toward the counter. “What’s with the bottle?”

  “Oh, that. Vinnie tossed it in the trash when I saw him.” The object that I fished out of the garbage can is a tiny empty vodka bottle, one of those miniature ones they give you on airplanes. “I think he might have a problem if he’s downing these in the middle of the day.”

  Dash shrugs. “See aforementioned point about best friend dying.”

  “I guess.”

  Dash sighs. “Listen, I have to go down to the station anyway to chat with Phil about Cynthia’s insurance policy… you mind if I take this?” He waves Vinnie’s insurance form. “I’ll make sure this is entered in as well.”

  “Sure.”

  “And I’ll find out if they made any headway with Morgan Connor. Call you later?”

  “You’d better.”

  ***

  I send Mom home early and putter around the shop for a while, helping customers and sweeping the floor as I wait to hear back from Dash. I avoid the area around wax Vincent Price for as long as I can, but eventually I concede to sweeping around his base.

  My legs come in contact with something large and soft and I sprawl forward, just barely catching myself with my palms, or else I would’ve fallen face-first on the floor.

  “Xerxes!” I scold. The oversized Persian cat that I share my shop with flicks his tail once from atop a nearby curio cabinet. He tends to do that a lot; I’ll often trip on him when he’s not even there, and he’ll just casually glance at me as if to say, Stupid human. “Keep it up, buddy, and we’ll find out if Bonnie has a recipe for cat.”

  I grumble some more, retrieve the broom from where it dropped to the floor, and turn to resume sweeping when my breath catches in my throat.

  “Oh!” I squeak. The wax figure of Vincent Price has somehow turned around one hundred and eighty degrees, now facing me and the inside of the store. “Jeez, come on! You scared the crap out of me,” I scold the empty air. “I don’t know what you want. You have to be clearer. Or just stop moving around. Your choice.”

  Naturally, the figure doesn’t respond.

  I stare at it for a long moment, daring myself to keep eye contact and convincing myself that Vincent Price will blink, or twitch, or something. But nothing happens.

  “Fine, have it your way.” I resume my sweeping, muttering to myself as I do. “Ridiculous spirits, can’t even use their words. Gotta come up with a better system for communication. I don’t know, maybe a Speak & Spell or something…”

  Another noise joins the rhythmic brushing of the broom’s bristling, a low, dragging rumble. I freeze mid-sweep; the second noise continues. I very slowly look up, and the wax Vincent Price sculpture slides across the floor, its base dragging against the hardwood.

  I stand there and gape as the statue slowly makes its way across the entire shop floor, finally coming to a stop near a shelf across from the counter and register.

  “Okay,” I say, drawing the word out long. “Well, at least I’m not crazy. You definitely move.” I carefully approach the sculpture, half expecting it to turn suddenly, or become alive and step off its wax base, but it doesn’t move an inch.

  “What are you trying to tell me?” I ask him.

  The shelf he’s glided over to is laden with old games and toys and such. I scan the contents, looking for a clue. “I don’t know what you want—eep!”

  The sculpture shifts, just a few inches, and I jump a little. “Enough of the cheap scares!” I scold him. Once my heart stops racing, I examine the shelf again.

  Vincent Price’s hands, one of them is aloft near his face, and the other is down near his waist. The statue shifted in place so that it now faces the shelf. I stand behind it and look where the hands are pointed.

  The lower hand, the one near his waist, points to the card game Uno.

  The right hand
, the one up near his face, points to a jigsaw puzzle.

  “Okay. Uno means one. One what? One…” One! We’re missing one! Vinnie’s angry shouted words from earlier that day come racing through my mind. “You’re the one!” I say to Vincent Price. “You’re missing from the exhibit!” I snatch the jigsaw puzzle off the shelf and examine it closer. The puzzle’s image is an old painting of a bunch of field hands bent at the waist, holding wicker baskets against their hips. The title is Spud Harvest.

  I stare at it for far too long before the light bulb goes off. “Vincent Price, you’re a genius! I could kiss you. But I won’t, because you’re super creepy.”

  I grab my keys and my phone and I lock the door on my way out.

  CHAPTER 16

  I call Dash on my way to the motel, but he doesn’t answer. His voicemail beeps, and I quickly tell him, “Penny’s motel, room 303, asap!”

  The blue and white semi is in the parking lot, which means Vinnie is still here. I knock on the door to room 303, where Penny told me earlier Vinnie was staying, and sure enough, he answers. He looks terrible, his eyes blood shot and his hair a loose mess, and he smells like Dexter Maximoff.

  “Hey, Vinnie. You remember me, right? Cassie Cleary?” I put on my biggest, most charming smile.

  “Yeah. I remember. What do you need?”

  “I think I have one of your wax figures at my shop.”

  At this he brightens noticeably. “Really? You have Vincent Price?”

  “Yup.”

  “That’s great news! Please, come in!” He steps aside so I can enter his motel room. It looks like he’s already packed up, as I suspected; there’s a zipped-up suitcase on the floor and, aside from the unmade bed, no other indication of a guest—except for the large vodka bottle, half empty, on the nightstand. A quick peek tells me there’s two more miniatures in the bedside garbage can.

  Sheesh. Guy’s got a real problem.

  He closes the door, seemingly excited at the prospect of getting his figure back. “How did you get it? You know what, that’s not important. Can we go get him? Right now?”

  “We’ll go get him, sure. But first, why is he so important?”

  Vinnie’s smile dissolves. “What do you mean, why? Those sculptures were Sam’s life. He called them ‘his family.’ Vincent Price is the only one that survived; it’s all I have to remember him by.”

  “Hm, yeah,” I say casually. “That makes sense. Are you sure, though, that it doesn’t have anything to do with an insurance policy?”

  Vinnie tries to maintain his composure, but his nostrils flare and the shadow of a scowl twitches across his face. “What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I think you do. See, I think that the business was failing.” When I first met Sam and Vinnie, hiding behind the Elvis statue in Middleton Manor, the two men had been arguing about money; Vinnie had mentioned that the exhibit was in the red. “You took out an insurance policy on the exhibit as a whole; I’m guessing that insuring each statue by itself was too expensive, considering you didn’t have much money. How am I doing so far?”

  He shakes his head, his messy ponytail swinging. “No. You’re wrong. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I ignore him and continue. “So the entire exhibit had to be destroyed, or you wouldn’t get any money. You knew that Morgan was a pyro and that a fire would be easy to pin on her. Heck, you even tried to dissuade me from thinking it was her, while telling me where to find her at the same time. Makes you look like the good guy, right?”

  By this time Vinnie has turned an impressive shade of pale. “No, this is all wrong. You can’t prove anything.”

  “I couldn’t. But I bet Morgan could. See, when the firefighters pulled the bottle out of the debris, no one would have realized, except her, that it was the same brand of vodka that you drink.” I point to the half-empty bottle on the nightstand. “But she knew. And she followed you to the hospital that night to find out what happened. What did you tell her, Vinnie? Did you offer her some insurance money to keep quiet? Did you tell her that no one would believe her with her history?”

  “I didn’t… nothing like that…” Vinnie stammers. He sits on the edge of the bed, staring at the carpet.

  “The only thing I can’t figure out,” I say softly, “Is why did you have to kill Sam?”

  “I didn’t mean to!” Vinnie blurts out. Tears well in his eyes. “It was an accident! He wasn’t supposed to be working on a sculpture. He hadn’t worked on it in months. But then you came along, and he got all excited about his Roger Corman statue and thought it was a good idea to work on it.” Vinnie trembles and holds his face in his hands. “Oh, Sammy. That wasn’t supposed to happen! We were supposed to get the money and be done with it all!”

  “Why did Sam send me Vincent Price?” I ask.

  Vinnie sniffles and opens the nightstand drawer. Inside is a spiral-bound notebook, curled in a thick rubber band. “Sam’s journal.” He tossed it over to me. “Read the last page.”

  I unwrap the journal and open it up to a page about halfway through it, the last page with writing on it. Sam’s handwriting was tight and neat cursive. In his last entry, he wrote about finding the insurance policy, and fearing that Vinnie would destroy his life’s work, his “family.” When they arrived in Bandit Hills, Vinnie fell asleep, having drove all night, and Sam dropped off the wax Vincent Price to the alley behind Miss Miscellanea.

  Whether it was coincidence or purposeful that he sent me a figure that shared the same name with the man attempting to double-cross him, and that would eventually be his murderer, he doesn’t say in his journal entry. Though in hindsight I feel kind of dumb, because if I would’ve considered that a clue it might have led me right to Vinnie.

  “You have to believe me,” Vinnie tells me, tears streaming down his cheek. “I didn’t want Sam to die. I even tried to save him. The firefighters had to drag me out. I just wanted the museum destroyed. I wanted all that to be over.”

  He stands, and something glints in his hand. A silver letter opener. He must have grabbed it while I was reading Sam’s journal entry. “I’m not a killer,” he tells me, the letter opener jutting from his white-knuckled grip.

  I take a few tiny steps toward the motel room door. “I believe you, Vinnie.” I put my hands up at about elbow level. “I don’t think you’re a killer either.”

  “I tried to save him.”

  “I know you did.”

  In the distance, we hear sirens screaming, drawing closer by the second. Vinnie gulps. “Are they coming for me?”

  “Yes. They’ll be here any moment.”

  He sighs and drops the letter opener onto the bed. “Alright. It’s what I deserve.” He looks up at me with true pain and sadness in his eyes. “What’s going to happen to Vincent?”

  “I’ll take care of him. I promise.”

  “Thank you.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Dash, Sheriff Phil, and Deputy Sharon all come to the motel, the lights of the two cruisers flashing against the setting sun, Dash’s midnight blue Caddy riding behind them. Vinnie goes quietly, emerging from the motel room with his hands up before they even reach the door. I come out behind him, and I watch as Phil cuffs him and reads him his rights.

  “Remind me later,” Dash tells me, “to scold you severely for once again tracking down and confronting a killer by yourself. But for now… How did you know it was him?”

  I shake my head and chuckle. “The Vincent Price sculpture wasn’t moving so that it could be in the window. It was pointing.”

  “Pointing to what?”

  “Think about it. He got into your breakfast fries from Bonnie’s place. He pointed out a jigsaw puzzle called Spud Harvest. And in the window…”

  Dash smacks himself in the forehead. “Across the street. The produce place. He was pointing to potatoes, because of the vodka.” He rolls his eyes. “Can’t they be a little less cryptic?”

/>   “Of course not. That would be too easy.” I watch as Sharon puts Vinnie in the back of her cruiser. “Real shame. He never meant to hurt anyone, least of all his best friend.”

  “Money makes people do nutty things,” Dash says.

  ***

  Morgan Connor was released the same day, under two unofficial conditions: number one, that she seek some help for her problems, and number two, that she never, ever return to Bandit Hills. Cynthia Middleton still could have pressed charges if she wanted, for the destruction of the lawn, but in light of everything else that has happened, she let them drop.

  Vinnie confessed to everything. The guilt over Sam was eating him alive, and probably will for a long time to come. He had started the fire in the basement, smashing a bottle of vodka against the floor and then running up to get Sam. He didn’t know Sam was working with the door locked and headphones on. Vinnie really did try to save his friend. He also made it very well known that he didn’t want or intend to blame Morgan for the fire; that was just a convenient happenstance when she showed up with her fireworks display. It also turns out that Morgan had no idea about Vinnie’s drinking, but he was so nervous over the possibility of her realizing it was him that he gave me the information about where we might find her.

  It looks like Cynthia Middleton’s insurance claim is going to pay out in full, and she’s already promised the town that she’s going to use as much of it as necessary to rebuild Middleton Manor to its former glory. The land it sits on is still a historical site, and small areas of the home might yet be salvageable. She also promised that she’s going to double her efforts to make the manor house well known again, starting with another masquerade ball (which I’m certainly looking forward to).

  And Vincent Price? He hasn’t moved an inch since Vinnie’s arrest.

  ***

  “So. What do we do with him?” Dash asks.