Black Beans & Vice

by J. B. Stanley

  James nodded, recalling how uncannily quiet the campus of William and Mary could be during finals week. “How did Murphy ever get inside information from an employee in the rehab center?”

  A wry smile spread across Lucy’s face. “She never did tell me the whole story there. All she would say was there was a young orderly working there who’s real dream was to be a writer. Apparently, he’s now a Star employee.”

  “You see!” Gillian’s voice was triumphant. “She made a personal sacrifice to come to our aid. Without her help, Quincy’s Gap might never have been rid of Kenneth Cooper.”

  Bennett grudgingly agreed. “I suppose she’s made amends.”

  Satisfied that her faith in Murphy’s goodness had been proved true, Gillian put a hand over Jane’s. “Are you completely restored after your ordeal last week? I will never be able to look at my herbal teas in the same light!”

  Jane laughed. “Don’t give up on chamomile and peppermint because of me. Your teas aren’t mixed with pure thunder god vine root. I’m fine, really. James saved me. He’s my Superman.”

  “Speaking of the bad guys, are you getting closer to catching them?” Scott asked as he trotted over to the table and gulped down half his drink in one swallow. “Yum! I love going green!”

  All eyes fixed on Lucy. “Roslyn and Lennon have not been apprehended.” James could tell that the admission caused her a great deal of displeasure. “We’ve chased down dozens and dozens of false leads. Now that Tia’s parents have offered a fifty thousand dollar reward, the phone calls and emails have been flooding in at a ridiculous rate. Even with other law enforcement agencies helping, it’s taking all our manpower to sift through them. Despite the monetary incentive, we haven’t received a single useful clue.”

  Lucy went on to give examples of the most preposterous tips the Sheriff’s Department had received, including a caller who swore mother and son had been abducted by aliens and another who claimed to have seen the pair, disguised as Elvis impersonators, dining on Grand Slams at Denny’s.

  When the laughter died down, Lucy glanced down at the table and began to toy with the ivy wrapped around her napkin. “Sheriff Huckabee’s been breathing down my neck like a dragon. Sullie and I don’t do anything but work. This is my first real break in a week.” She glanced apologetically at James and Jane. “I’ve read the case files until I start seeing double, but when I lie down to sleep at night, I still feel like I’ve let everyone down. Even my dreams are focused on this case.”

  Gillian reached over and put an arm around Lucy’s shoulders. “You’re only human. Have faith in yourself. Someone will experience an unexpected moment of clarity and an answer will be revealed.”

  “I can’t stop until I’ve set things right. You see, I made a mistake,” Lucy looked at Gillian’s kind face. “When I looked in the pasts of those working at the Wellness Village, I wasn’t thorough enough. If I had been, I would have discovered that Lennon had changed his name at age eighteen. After making sure he didn’t have a juvenile record I concentrated on his adult years, calling former employers and stuff like that. He didn’t go to college and has worked a series of maintenance jobs. No one had a bad word to say about him. I found no financial red flags. In my mind, he was low on the suspect list! Yet he was the killer!”

  “You were researching backgrounds on dozens of people,” James said. “What you did was logical.”

  The assembly agreed, soothing Lucy with their words and sympathetic looks.

  “You’re gonna get them, Lucy even if they’re out there, preparin’ a new scheme and sniffin’ around for fresh victims to blackmail.” Bennett’s dark eyes flashed with righteous anger. “You’re gonna make it right.”

  That being said, Gillian and Bennett excused themselves to prepare the food. The partygoers agreed not to talk about the case anymore and, after another round of Zen cocktails, they became quite jolly. Most of the company enjoyed Gillian’s dinner of black bean burgers, fruit salad, and edamame. Bennett, Lucy, and the Fitzgerald brothers opted for traditional burgers and for once, Gillian didn’t chastise them for being unwilling to explore new tastes. Later, Willow and Fern served dessert: chilled white chocolate mousse embellished with a white chocolate dove. It was rich, creamy, and utterly decadent.

  “We girls wanted to contribute in some way,” Willow said, smiling shyly.

  Fern handed Jane a square package wrapped in brown paper. “And here’s the rest of our joint gift.”

  Jane opened the package, revealing the photograph of the purple rhododendron flower James had planned to buy for his wife. “It’s beautiful!” Jane exclaimed.

  Gillian and Bennett gave them a gift certificate for a couples massage, Lindy made them a stunning pottery fruit bowl, and Lucy presented them with a generous gift certificate to Dolly’s Diner. The Fitzgeralds waited until all the other gifts and greeting cards had been opened before handing James a shoebox wrapped in the funny pages.

  “Did you give them each a single shoe?” Bennett teased.

  The box was stuffed with tissue paper and did not contain footwear. Nestled at the bottom of the box was a glossy brochure featuring a cruise ship. Inside the folded brochure were two tickets for a five-day cruise from Norfolk to Bermuda on a massive ship called Grandeur of the Seas.

  James was flabbergasted. “You got us a cruise? To Bermuda?”

  The twins bobbed their heads enthusiastically.

  “This is too much!” Jane protested and James quickly agreed. “Scott, Francis. We are really touched, but—”

  “Non-refundable, Professor!” Scott announced with delight.

  Francis gestured at Jackson and Milla. “We’ve lined up the dates with your babysitting service here and worked it out on the library staff vacation calendar too.”

  “We also called your department head to see when your summer semester would start, Mrs. Henry.” Francis wore a mischievous grin. “He says to tell you, ‘Bon Voyage.’”

  “I don’t know what to say …” James broke off, too moved to continue. He and Jane bent their heads over the brochure, excitedly pointing at photographs of pink beaches. They then embraced the Fitzgerald several times until the younger men finally pulled away.

  “Seriously, we’re not going to be late on our rent because of this. See, we finally got our check from the gaming company,” Francis explained. “It was big. Scott and I bought a pair of awesome mountain bikes for some off-road adventuring, a killer flat-screen, and two new computers with more gigs than the Pentagon’s entire database.” He and Scott exchanged high-fives. They waited for their boss to respond, but his eyes had turned distant. “Professor?”

  Something Francis had said triggered James’ memory. Suddenly, he gripped Scott by the sleeve. “Do you have a map of area mountain bike trails?”

  “There’s one online,” the startled twin answered. “Why?”

  James turned to Gillian. “Can we use your computer?”

  The Fitzgerald brothers followed their boss inside and spent several seconds arguing over which site was best, but Francis finally won out and began typing. A map of Virginia covered by green bicycle symbols appeared onscreen.

  “Can you zoom in on our area?” James asked and Francis quickly complied.

  James read the names of the trails until he saw the one he recognized. “That’s it!” he shouted. “Brandywine Lake!” Leaving the befuddled Fitzgerald twins staring at the computer screen, James raced outside. He found Lucy at the beanbag toss, engaged in an intense match with Fern.

  “Brandywine Lake!” He shouted again, grabbing her elbow.

  Lucy scowled. “Hey, you’re throwing off my aim!”

  “Lennon loved to mountain bike. Skye told me he went every weekend without fail. It’s what he lives for. I had a short conversation with him in which he invited me along one day. He said it’s what he does to relieve stress and his favorite trail is Brandywine Lake.”

  Lucy squeezed the beanbag in her hand, her eyes glinting with excitement. “We
need to circulate his photo around every trail in the region. We have a new composite showing him with and without the dreadlocks, so even if he’s changed his looks another rider might still recognize him.” Her face shone. “Good work, James. This might be that obscure clue that ends up with me slapping handcuffs on those two fiends!”

  Pausing briefly to thank Gillian for a lovely evening, Lucy jogged around the side of the house and disappeared from view. James returned to the table and explained what had transpired to the rest of the ensemble.

  “There’s something I don’t understand,” Jane said to him as everyone broke into animated chatter. “Why was Roslyn so anxious during the food festival if she was the one blackmailing Ned?”

  James mulled over her question. “I don’t know. Maybe Ned refused to pay her any more, forcing Lennon to get involved.” He could see Roslyn’s panicked face in his mind. “Could she have actually cared about Ned? Perhaps murder had never been part of her original plan.”

  Jane considered this theory. “Tia also looked scared when we saw her at the Apple Blossom Festival. If Lennon caused her to run away like that, then she would have been too frightened of him to let him in her house later on. So what happened? Tia found Roslyn standing on the doorstep and invited her in with Lennon nearby hiding in the bushes?”

  “Again, maybe Roslyn was trying to get money out of Tia without harming her. Tia would have viewed Roslyn as a potential friend—a vegetarian and animal rights’ sympathizer. She would have let the older woman into her home without having any idea that Roslyn was Lennon’s mom. Nobody knew. After all, they don’t look alike and they have different last names.”

  The couple fell silent, sipping the decaf coffee Gillian had brought to the table. They watched Lindy, Willow, and Fern play croquet while Eliot and the Fitzgerald twins chased after fireflies. Milla and Jackson said their goodnights and headed home. Jackson gave his son a brief hug and told him that he was still busy creating the couple’s wedding gift. Thrilled over the thought of receiving one of his father’s masterpieces, James teased, “You’d better get some rest then. I’ve got a blank wall in the living room that could do with a classy painting by Virginia’s premier country artist.”

  James and Jane carried dishes into Gillian’s kitchen but she immediately shooed them away. “We are not going to waste this heavenly evening washing dishes. Out! Out into the night with you!”

  So it was that they found themselves in a pair of wicker rockers on the back porch. Laughter floated up from the lawn; Eliot’s high notes mingled with the low timbre of Scott, and Francis’ voices. The three women smacked mallets against croquet balls, their comfortable prattle circling lazily upward where it caught in the tree branches.

  Reaching for Jane’s hand, James lifted his eyes to the indigo sky and sighed. His exhalation was filled with contentment. “Gillian was right. This is heaven.”

  It took two weeks for a rider on the Elizabeth Furnace Trail southeast of Strasburg to phone the tip line, saying that he believed he’d seen the man in the photograph he’d been given by a park ranger the week before. The man was unloading his bike from the rack of a dark green Jeep Compass.

  “If it’s your guy,” the cyclist said to the officer fielding calls from the tip line, “you can catch him when he comes back out. It’s a grueling, thirteen-mile trail. Even the most experienced riders have to stop for a water break, so you’ve got time. He might go for a dip in the reservoir too. It’s a great way to clean the sweat off before pumping the pedals again. Just be careful, because if other riders see a bunch of cops hanging in the parking lot, they might warn your guy. Not because they think murder suspects are cool,” the cyclist added defensively. “But because in general, they don’t care for authority figures.”

  Lucy heard about the tip and within minutes, she and Sullie were in his Camaro heading north. “It’s him. I can feel it in my gut,” Lucy said, twisting her hands in anticipation.

  “You’re so sexy when you’re on a manhunt,” Sullie answered and then focused on speeding around any vehicle, the magnetic siren on his roof screaming out a warning.

  Arriving at the trail entrance slightly breathless and pumped up with a surge of adrenaline, Lucy and Sullie had a quick conference with the local deputies and together, came up with a strategy to ensure that the wanted man wouldn’t slip from their grasp.

  Later, Lucy would tell the supper club members how Lennon had dismounted in the parking lot, his young face flushed and full of satisfaction. He’d clearly had an amazing ride. The lawmen almost felt sorry for him, for it would be the last time he’d experience the sweet, invigorating taste of freedom for many years to come.

  His head was completely shaved, leaving only a hint of light brown stubble bleached gold by the sun, and he wore a pair of mirrored sunglasses. A sheen of sweat glistened on his smooth skin and when Lucy and Sullie stepped up to meet him, he bolted. A dozen local deputies and police officers were waiting at the ready for the suspect to flee, and he was quickly flattened by a young deputy who’d been a track star in college. His glasses flew off in the scuffle and his eyes glimmered with rage.

  Lennon/Curt Snyder denied everything, but his capture forced Roslyn to surrender of her own volition. The Star was loaded with photographs of her being escorted inside the sheriff’s department building by Huckabee himself.

  “Roslyn tried to take the fall for both of them,” Lucy told her friends. “She and Ned Woodman had a brief affair and when he tried to break it off, Roslyn threatened to tell his wife and talk about his indiscretions to the press unless he bought her silence.”

  “So that’s how the blackmail began,” Lindy stated.

  “Yes, but Ned wanted to come clean. He was going to tell Donna everything and then present himself to the authorities with a confession regarding his embezzlement of town funds. It was at the Food Festival that he told Roslyn he was no longer in her power. That’s why she looked so frantic.”

  Bennett snorted. “She was losin’ her free ride—that’s why she was sweatin’ like a fry cook durin’ a breakfast rush.”

  “Except she didn’t keep a single dime of the money,” Lucy explained. “Every cent went to Lennon. With her line of work, she’d struggled financially as a single mom and she was tired of the struggle. Go on, someone ask me why she was single.”

  “Because she’s a duplicitous blackmailer?” James guessed.

  Lucy paused, letting the dramatic tension build. “Because her ex-husband is spending thirty years to life in prison! He killed someone in a bar fight. It started as an argument about sports and then punches were thrown, but Lennon’s daddy took it to the next level by smashing his opponent’s head into the jukebox.”

  “Ow!” several of them said at once.

  Gillian clucked her tongue. “I cannot understand why that angry young man chose Lennon as his false name. John Lennon was an advocate of peace. How it pains me that his memory is disgraced by having his name associated with such a twisted soul.”

  “That’s not how people will think of him,” Lindy stated, hoping to comfort her friend. “Murphy referred to him as Curt Snyder in her articles and so has the rest of the media. I don’t think anyone wants to use his fake name and the term ‘double murder’ in the same sentence.” She turned to Lucy. “Tell us about the defibrillator.”

  “Roslyn purchased it years ago through an online medical auction. I gather that when hospitals or medical offices upgrade to new equipment, they often put the old stuff up for sale.”

  Bennett put a hand on her arm. “You mean I could just go online and buy a blood pressure machine? See what happens to my numbers after Mrs. McDougal’s bloodhound chases after me like I’m wearin’ Milkbone aftershave.”

  “I think a stethoscope might be more handy in that scenario,” Gillian said with a saucy wink. “Really Bennett, you need to hire a dog whisperer. Perhaps I should look into that for you.”

  Before the couple could engage in an argument over befriending all the pooches
on Bennett’s mail route, Lucy continued her narrative. “Lennon was storing the device in the closet where Roslyn kept her refrigerated products. You were right to be suspicious of that locked door, James. Lennon lured Ned into Roslyn’s office, saying that he knew about the blackmail and could show Ned where Roslyn had hidden the cash.”

  “Of course Ned followed him!” Lindy cried. “He could return the money to the town’s account and not face jail time, divorce, or public humiliation. But why believe Lennon?”

  Lucy shrugged. “Because Lennon had access to all the buildings with his master key. Also, many of Roslyn and Ned’s trysts had taken place in her office, so Ned probably found it plausible that the young man knew all about their affair. Lennon led Ned into the bathroom by claiming that the cash was in the toilet tank. He then quietly locked the door and used the defibrillator on the unsuspecting councilman. Afterward, he put the device back in the closet and returned to the festival.”

  The friends fell silent as each of them pictured the surprised look Ned Woodman must have worn as he turned to find the person he’d hoped could rescue him wielding a pair of charged paddles.

  James wondered what it felt like to be blasted with an electric current powerful enough to change the rhythm of a beating heart. Did death occur so rapidly that Ned had no chance to process the betrayal or was there enough time for him to register shock and then, a second later, horror?

  Sensing the mood shift of her audience, Lucy grew more solemn as well. “Roslyn claims to have been distraught over Ned’s murder. She didn’t care that her lover had been killed, but that Lennon was exhibiting his father’s violent tendencies. She begged Lennon to leave Quincy’s Gap right after the festival, but Lennon had already started blackmailing Tia and he had genuine feelings for Skye.”

  “What hold did he have over Tia?” James asked. “We’ve never been able to guess.”