by B. J Daniels
He nodded. Of course she had. “You’re right. You know these people, this place. I’m out of my league.”
She smiled. “I really doubt that.”
He saw Laney consider him, the steel of her gaze and spine not quite as severe. “You don’t think Laci poisoned Geraldine.”
He shook his head.
She seemed to relax a little more, softening as she did. He felt a pull stronger than gravity toward her and fought it as a drowning man fought water.
“Have dinner with me.” The words were out before he could call them back.
“Thanks but I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“Why not?”
She studied him openly. “Wouldn’t it look bad if you were fraternizing with a suspect? I am a suspect, right?”
“I can’t see you poisoning anyone.”
“Really? Didn’t I hear somewhere that poison is a woman’s weapon?”
She was definitely a woman.
“If you were the killer, you wouldn’t leave anything to chance,” he said.
“True,” she agreed.
“This killer couldn’t be sure her intended victim got the cookie,” he pointed out.
“Unless she gave the victim the cookie and Geraldine was the intended victim.”
“Good point. Except neither of us believes Geraldine was the intended victim.”
She smiled again. “How do you know that?”
“Because the only person who benefited from Geraldine Shaw’s death was Maddie.”
“And the Whitehorse Sewing Circle.”
“I got the impression from talking to the lawyer that the women of the sewing circle had no idea Geraldine was leaving them anything,” he said.
She nodded. “I was there. Everyone was shocked.”
“So that leaves Maddie,” he said quietly. “It would appear she killed Geraldine to cover up the thief of the diamond bracelet.”
Laney shook her head. “The bracelet went missing the day of the party. Maddie didn’t have time to bake a poison macaroon.”
“Unless she’d been planning to rip off Geraldine all along,” he pointed out. “Maddie was the only one who knew about the jewelry, knew Geraldine would be sending it to Billings to that antique dealer soon, so she had to act fast. Her party was the perfect place.”
“Why not just conk Geraldine on the head and take the jewelry then? Wouldn’t that be much easier? She could say the woman fell. And no one knew about the jewelry except Geraldine and Maddie. No one would know what was missing.”
He smiled at Laney. He liked her mind. “Good points. Also, Arlene says Maddie can’t cook. Plus Maddie was outside with me. Bo came and got her. She didn’t have time to slip Geraldine a cookie.”
“So you were just playing devil’s advocate?” Laney demanded. Anger flashed in all that emerald-green.
“Just seeing if there were any holes in my logic.”
She glared at him. “You could have told me up front that you didn’t believe Laci or Maddie were guilty.”
“I didn’t say Maddie wasn’t guilty. I just don’t think she killed Geraldine Shaw.”
“You think she took that diamond bracelet?”
“Maybe. If not, she knows who did,” he said. “As for the murder, I think the killer decided to take advantage of the party.” And if that made Laci Cavanaugh look guilty in the process, so much the better.
“Any ideas who could have baked the counterfeit cookie?” he asked.
“Anyone who might have a Whitehorse Sewing Circle cookbook.”
“Do you recall how many copies were printed?”
“Two hundred.”
“That leaves it wide open.” He let out a low whistle. “Remind me to get one before I leave.”
“Are you planning to leave?” she asked, her gaze intent on him suddenly.
“Before I leave Old Town today,” he said, catching himself. “They are still for sale, aren’t they?”
She shook her head. “But I could probably get you a copy sometime.”
Was it just his imagination that she seemed to be eyeing him with suspicion? Probably.
But then again, the woman was sharp. He’d have to watch himself around her.
“So what now?” she asked.
He glanced at his watch. “Better decide where to go for dinner. Since you know the area...”
She shook her head, but she was smiling. “Have you been to the Tin Cup?”
* * *
AFTER NICK MADE LANEY PROMISE she wouldn’t do any more snooping around in the case without him, he watched her drive off in the direction of home before he returned to Whitehorse. His first stop was his office to fax the photograph of the missing diamond bracelet to pawn shops and cop departments in a two-hundred-mile area.
Next he dropped by the Milk River Examiner office.
Glen Whitaker looked up from his desk as Nick came in carrying the trash bag with the sweater inside.
“I have something I was hoping you might be able to help me with,” Nick said. “There’s a scent on this sweater and I wondered...” He opened the bag and held it for the reporter to take a whiff.
“That’s it!” Glen cried, then lowered his voice. There was no one else in the office, but Glen must have known from experience that walls sometimes had big ears. “That’s the smell that was on my clothing after I was attacked. What is it?”
“Lavender.”
Glen wrinkled his nose. “That smell makes me a little sick.”
Nick wondered just what had happened to Glen before he’d regained consciousness beside that road.
“Why would I smell lavender after my attack?” Glen asked.
“I’m working on that,” Nick said and, closing the bag with the sweater, headed for the sheriff’s department.
Harvey T. Brown had filed an assault report. The deputy who’d handled the complaint had written down that Brown remembered smelling something sweet, like maybe flowers or perfume, or “those things people put in their cars to cover up odors.” He’d also glimpsed a baseball bat just before he’d been hit.
Nick drove the bagged sweater out to Brown’s place north of town. Harvey T. Brown was a large man with a beer belly and a bald spot.
“That could be the smell,” Brown said from his recliner. He recoiled at the scent much as Glen Whitaker had, lying back in his chair. “Was there some of that kind of flower that smelled like that growing outside the bar?”
Nick had to shake his head. “I think there’s a good possibility the person wielding the baseball bat was a woman.”
“No way,” Brown said shooting to his feet. He marched into the kitchen, opened the fridge and took out a can of beer. “You tell anyone in this town that I was beat up by a woman and so help me I will—”
“Take it easy,” Nick told him. “It’s just a theory.”
“It better not be one I ever hear again,” Brown said, sitting back down in his recliner and popping the top on his beer. He chugged most of the can, belched and glared at Nick. “I was beat up by some big burly guy. I didn’t smell nothing. Got it?”
“Got it.”
* * *
“I LIKE THIS PLACE,” NICK SAID later when he and Laney were sitting in the dining room at the country club overlooking the golf course. Mostly he liked the company he was with.
“Surprised Whitehorse has a golf course?” she asked smiling across the table at him. “There’s two in the area. Another one out at Sleeping Buffalo.” She was wearing a pale green dress that brought out the tropical-green of her eyes. The dress seemed to float over her curves as gently as a caress. She smelled good, too. Something fruity that went with the summer evening.
Nick knew he would never forget that scent. Or this night. No
matter what happened in the future.
During dinner they talked about their childhoods, Laney’s growing up in Old Town Whitehorse, Nick’s edited story of growing up in a large Italian family. They had the place pretty much to themselves since it was a weekday.
The food was wonderful, the view breathtaking as the sun set in a glow of colors and night shadows drifted over the place like a warm breeze.
“I’m serious about you being careful,” he said as the evening drew to an end. She’d insisted on driving in from Old Town, saying she had to visit her grandmother in the hospital anyway and it would save him the trip out and back.
As the restaurant emptied out completely, he reached across the table and put his hand over hers, something he’d wanted to do all evening.
“I’m always careful.” Her gaze met his. “Well, almost always.” She was flirting with him, he was pretty sure of it.
He was treading on thin ice. But what worried him was that she didn’t seem in the least bit afraid. Not of flirting with him. Or looking for a killer. Both were much more dangerous than she imagined.
He drew his hand back. “There’s a killer out there and until we find out why Geraldine is dead—”
She shook her head. “Don’t you think what we have to find out is who the killer really wanted dead since neither of us believes the intended victim was Geraldine Shaw?”
He smiled. “But neither of us has any evidence to substantiate that.”
“I was there, remember? I didn’t see her take a bite of the macaroon or collapse, but when I got through the crowd to her, I remember hearing someone crying, ‘no, oh no.’”
He could argue that “no, oh no” wasn’t conclusive evidence of anything but shock or surprise when Geraldine had collapsed.
“The other odd thing was that I couldn’t see one of Geraldine’s arms with everyone crowded around her,” Laney said. “But I could see that she was struggling as if someone had hold of her wrist. When you moved everyone back, I saw that her fingers holding the cookie were white they were gripped so tightly and there were several red marks on her palm where it appeared someone had tried to pry her fingers open.”
“The killer was probably trying to get the evidence to destroy it,” he said.
“Maybe,” she agreed. “Or maybe the killer was upset and trying to get the cookie back because she’d just killed the wrong person.”
“She?”
Laney nodded. “The voice I heard was definitely a woman’s. And wouldn’t a man have been able to pry Geraldine’s fingers open?”
He chuckled and took a sip of his drink. Brains and beauty, a deadly combination. He hoped the fact that the killer had used cyanide was just a terrible coincidence, because otherwise this Nancy Drew sitting across the table from him might just stumble on the truth not only about the killer, but him as well. That should have frightened him more than it did. Hell, the truth was, he wanted to tell her everything. He hated lying to her.
He took a sip of his drink, dropping his gaze, as he tried to talk some sense into himself. Telling anyone was like signing his own death warrant. What the hell was he thinking?
“You like women to think you’re shy, don’t you?” she said studying him.
He looked up at her, meeting her gaze, and grinned. “Oh, that’s real. At least with you.”
She cocked a brow at him.
“You’re a scary woman.”
“You do look frightened.”
He laughed. She didn’t know how close to the truth she’d come.
Chapter Eight
Nick couldn’t help thinking about Laney. For a lot of reasons. Her grandfather Titus dropped off a copy of the Whitehorse Sewing Circle cookbook first thing the next morning.
Nick found her grandmother’s recipe and read through it, then called Laney. “Would you have to be a pretty good cook to make your grandmother’s macaroons?” he asked. “They don’t look that easy.”
“They aren’t.”
“Then our killer is a better than average cook, whose victim likes coconut, right?” He heard her smile even over the phone. “Any suggestions who to talk to?”
“Pretty near every woman in Old Town Whitehorse,” she said with a laugh. “Haven’t you heard? They’re the best cooks in the county. At least according to Arlene Evans and she has the blue ribbons to prove it.”
“Yes, she mentioned that. And she was closest to the poisoned macaroon when Geraldine ate it.” He fiddled for a moment with a pen on his desk. “I had a good time last night at dinner.”
“Me, too.” Her voice was soft and low. He imagined her still in her pj’s. Silk, the color of her eyes. The image of emerald-green silk draped over that body—
“Would you mind telling me what you’re wearing right now?”
“What?” She laughed. “You aren’t serious.”
He needed a good dose of reality. “Yes, I am.”
Silence, then a small embarrassed laugh. “Well, I have on a pair of old jeans and one of my grandfather’s flannel shirts and a ratty pair of tennis shoes I found at the back of the closet. All of the above are covered in paint.”
“What color paint?”
She laughed again. “White. I’m painting the picket fence out front.” She lowered her voice. “So what does my attire do for you?”
He sat up, tossing down the pen. “It makes me realize that I have to see you again.”
Another smile in her voice as she said, “Good.”
“Great. Oh, and, no investigating without me, right?”
“Right. Just painting.”
“Good girl.” He hung up still smiling. He caught his reflection in the window. “Wipe that stupid smile off your face,” he told himself. “You look like a fool. Worse, you’re acting like one.”
He forced himself to turn his thoughts to the murder of Geraldine Shaw. The plan had been amateurish at best. A plan born of passion—not precision. Passion meant anger and anger was a detriment to the killer—and an advantage for the lawman. So who was angry with Geraldine Shaw?
Apparently no one.
What did that leave him? An angry killer who had failed at poisoning his intended victim? Her intended victim, he corrected, remembering what Laney had said. Going with Laney’s theory, the killer would also need at least a passing knowledge of poison—and cooking. And a motive.
The call came as he was leaving his office.
“Deputy Rogers? This is Clyde Banner. I own the Pawn and Go in Great Falls. I think I have the diamond bracelet you’re looking for. I just took a digital photo of it and e-mailed it to your office.”
Nick sat down and called up the Internet. There was an e-mail from Pawn and Go. He clicked on it. A photo came up. Geraldine Shaw’s bracelet.
“That’s it,” he told Clyde. “Can you tell me who pawned it?”
“Well, that’s what’s kind of curious about the pawn slip. The guy who came in said his name was Nick Rogers.”
Cute. Someone playing games with him.
“You weren’t suspicious?” Nick asked.
“I’m always suspicious, but unless it comes up on a hot sheet...”
“What did this Nick Rogers look like?” he asked.
“Young. Nineteen, twenty. Brown hair, brown eyes. Good-looking kid. Clean cut. He looked legit enough. Hell, he was driving a nice car.”
“How nice?” Nick asked and listened as Clyde Banner described Bo Evans’s car to a T. “I might need you to ID the kid.”
“No problem. I’ll put the bracelet in the safe. I assume you’ll have someone pick it up?”
“Thanks.” Nick hung up and sat for a moment before he dialed Laney’s number. “I need to talk to your cousin. Want to ride along?”
“I’ll be ready when you get here,” she said
, obviously hearing something in his voice that warned her it wasn’t good news.
Maddie was surprised to see them. Her car was in the yard. Her mother’s was gone. From the look on her face, she wished she hadn’t answered the door. She stood in the doorway, looking from one to the other, looking scared.
“Mind if we come in?” Nick asked.
“I was just going to town to—”
“This won’t take long,” he said.
Maddie looked to her cousin. Laney nodded and they stepped into the cool clean house.
The place smelled of lemon cleaner. There was no dust on the end table next to the couch, no magazines or newspapers cluttering up the coffee table. Nick was surprised there wasn’t any plastic on the furniture.
He took a seat on the couch. Laney hugged her cousin and sat on one of the chairs. Maddie stood as if lost. She ran her hands along the sides of her jeans, clearly nervous.
“Can I get you something to drink?” she asked, flashing them a nervous smile. “You both look so serious.”
“Sit down, Maddie,” Nick said.
She dropped into a chair, her blue eyes wide with fear. “Has something happened?”
“The photographs you took of Geraldine Shaw’s jewelry? Who did you show them to?” Nick asked.
Maddie swallowed, her eyes swimming in tears. “Nobody.”
“You didn’t show them to your fiancé?”
One tear broke loose and cascaded down her freckled cheek. “I...”
“Maddie, I found Geraldine’s diamond bracelet. It was pawned at a shop in Great Falls. The clerk described Bo Evans as the person who pawned it.”
She began to cry, shaking her head from side to side.
“Did you give him the bracelet?”
Her eyes widened in alarm. “No,” she cried. “I swear. I told him about the bracelet, but I never dreamed he’d...” Her words were lost in tears.
Laney handed her cousin a tissue.
“You and Bo had a fight after his mother told him that Geraldine Shaw thought you’d taken the diamond bracelet,” Nick said.
Maddie looked up at him, tears cascading down her face, but no sound coming out of her now.