Frustration came over her face. “What are you talking about?”
“Ms. Thompson, most people read alone. That is especially the case when it comes to romance novels. I don’t suppose there is anyone who can verify that you were really at home, reading, at the time at the time of the murder, is there?” David asked.
“For the last time, I was reading,” Lyndy said.
“That’s a no, then.”
A look of panic came to her face. “If you want to find Terri’s killer, go talk to Brendan. He’s the one who was dumped.”
“We are going to speak with Brendan—” David started saying.
“Good,” Lyndy replied.
“When we’re done with you,” David said.
Lyndy put her hands on her hips. “We are done. I didn’t do anything.”
David stared her down. “Can you prove it?”
She threw her hands up. “Your logic doesn’t even make any sense. If I was going to kill anyone, don’t you think it would have been Brendan?”
I shook my head. “Not necessarily. Maybe you figured with Terri out of the picture, Brendan would get over her and give his heart to you again.”
Lyndy waggled her pointer finger at me. “No. You’re just throwing around accusations now.”
David cleared his throat. “Ms. Thompson, you never answered my question.”
“Wrong. I’ve answered all your questions,” Lyndy replied.
“Not about whether you can prove your innocence,” David said.
“I’m not saying another word to either of you,” Lyndy replied.
Chapter Fifteen
Lyndy had been truthful about at least one thing. Even though David and I threw a few more questions her way, she didn’t answer any of them. That was especially frustrating since David didn’t have nearly enough evidence to charge her with murder. All David and I truly had were a bunch of suspicions.
Since we weren’t getting anywhere with Lyndy and there were still more suspects left to question, we decided to move on.
Even though the interview with Lyndy had not produced the results that we wanted, it hadn’t been completely useless. She had given us a lead that practically begged to be followed up on. After a ten-minute drive to the north side of town, David’s car turned left onto Coolidge Avenue, where a row of Victorian houses awaited.
Brendan Ridley’s Victorian-era house was dark green and featured an enviable wraparound porch. There was a large, leafy maple tree in the yard, which provided a generous amount of shade to the entire front of the property.
Surprisingly, it only took one set of knocks to get Brendan to come to the door. Although he looked confused to see David and me again so soon after our last discussion.
“Detective. I wasn’t expecting you,” Brendan said.
“There has been a development in the case,” David replied.
“Have you found Terri’s killer?” Brendan asked.
David shook his head. “No, but we’re working on it.”
Brendan knitted his eyebrows. “I’m not sure why you’re here, then.”
“We just had a very interesting conversation with your ex-girlfriend,” David said.
Brendan’s eyes widened. “I’ll bet. Tell me she isn’t capable of murder.”
“That is yet to be determined,” David replied. “What I can say is that she told us some pretty eye-opening things.”
Brendan tensed up. “What kind of things?”
“For example, that Terri had broken up with you shortly before the murder.”
Brendan voice went up an octave. “You can’t listen to her.”
“Why?” David asked. “Because you say so? Your opinion isn’t exactly unbiased.”
Brendan’s voice cracked as he replied, “I’m telling you, Lyndy is bad news.”
“Mr. Ridley, right now we’re concerned with you,” David replied.
Brendan threw his arms up. “Oh, come on. You’re really going to listen to someone who has an ax to grind with me?”
“You’re not denying what she said. Because it’s true, isn’t it?” David said.
Brendan shot David a glare. “I resent being treated like a suspect.”
I stared Brendan down. “We just want to know the truth. Now, Lyndy told us that Terri had a vision one evening—a nightmare about your future together that made her break up with you. Is that true?”
“Look, I didn’t kill Terri—”
“That wasn’t my question,” I said.
“No, but it’s the only answer that matters,” Brendan replied.
“Brendan, you keep wanting us to believe that you had nothing to do with her death, but you had plenty of motive and no verifiable alibi,” I said.
Brendan folded his arms. “Don’t be ridiculous. I loved Terri. I would never kill her.”
I stared deep into his eyes. “I believe that you loved her.”
Brendan sighed. “Finally we’re on the same page.”
I shook my head. “Not quite.”
He groaned. “What now?”
“Maybe that was the problem.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Or maybe I just hit a nerve. Sure, you loved her, but she didn’t feel the same way about you. After all, she broke up with you. And you know what they say about jilted lovers.”
“I’m done trying to explain myself to you,” Brendan said.
“Mr. Ridley, we’re not through here,” David replied.
“Yes, we are,” Brendan said.
“That’s not your call,” David replied.
Brendan shot him a glare. “I know my rights, Detective. And I know you don’t have enough to charge me with anything. So as far as I’m concerned, this discussion is over.”
Chapter Sixteen
Talk about a terrible end to an interview. The only way that could have gone worse was if Brendan had turned violent. Although if that had occurred, David would have had grounds to detain him. Instead, all David and I had were our suspicions, and they could only take us so far. With Brendan going quiet on us, we headed out.
Our next stop was Lutz’s Mattress Emporium. As I knew from Rick Lutz’s schlocky television commercials, the man could sure talk a good game. But it was one thing to sell a mattress—it was another to be able to convince David and me that he didn’t kill his wife. I had no idea what to expect from this interview, so I told myself not to be surprised by anything that may come out of his mouth.
The emporium was just like every other mattress showroom I had ever been to. Over twenty different beds were on display, starting from the dirt-cheap mattresses that were as uncomfortable as sleeping on a concrete slab floor, all the way up to the four-thousand-dollar mattresses that made me feel like I was sleeping on a cloud. I tried not to even sit on the four-thousand-dollar mattresses. To start, they were way out of my price range. Even more, they made the three-hundred-dollar mattress that I had at home feel woefully inadequate.
There was no use tempting myself with things I couldn’t have. Not that I had time to test mattresses right then. There was serious business to attend to.
When I looked at Rick Lutz’s outfit, I could tell it was going to be a surreal interview. David and I were about to ask him questions about the death of his wife, and the mattress salesman was wearing a bright-red suit. It took all the restraint I had not to break into laughter the minute I saw his outfit.
Even though he and Terri had been in the middle of a contentious divorce, they still had one thing in common. They had some of the worst taste in clothing that I had ever seen.
Rick’s red business suit was so distracting to look at that I barely paid any attention to the fifty-five-year-old’s beer gut, short brown hair, or thick mustache.
Rick held his arms out. “Good afternoon. Can I interest you in a king-sized deal?”
His smile immediately went away as David pulled out his police badge.
“We need to ask you some questions,” David said.
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Rick shrugged. “What’s this about?”
“What do you say we do this in the back?”
Rick glanced around the showroom. “Right. My office is right back here.”
***
Rick took a seat behind a wooden desk in the middle of his office. David and I sat down across from him. I immediately noticed how cluttered the place was.
“What’s this about again?” Rick asked.
“Terri Baxter,” David replied.
Rick hung his head low. “I’m really sorry about what happened to her.”
David stared him down. “Are you?”
Rick shot him a glare. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s just that you were in the middle of a contentious divorce.”
Rick’s eyes narrowed. “Wait. Do you think I had something to do with her death?”
“You tell us,” David said.
Rick gritted his teeth. “You have a lot of nerve.”
“It’s my job to explore all possibilities. Besides, there is no older motive than love gone wrong.”
“Just because we were getting a divorce didn’t mean that I wanted her dead.”
“I think you’d have a hard time convincing a jury of that. Especially the jurors who have ever been through a divorce,” David deadpanned.
“I just told you, I did not wish ill will on my wife,” Rick said.
A look of disbelief was on David’s face. “Uh-huh.”
“So what, you just came over here to accuse me of murder?” Rick asked.
“No. We came here to ask you some questions,” David said.
Rick shrugged. “Why? I don’t know anything.”
“We’ll see about that,” David said.
A fierce determination was in David’s eyes. When Rick saw how insatiable David’s appetite for the truth was, the mattress emporium owner groaned.
“Where were you last night between ten and eleven o’clock?” David asked.
“I was here,” Rick replied.
David’s eyebrows arched. “At that hour?”
Rick nodded.
I wrinkled my nose. “That doesn’t make sense. The sign on the front door of your shop says that you close at nine.”
“We do, but I was working late,” Rick replied.
I stared him down. “Really late, apparently.”
“I work a lot of late nights. You’d know that if you ran a business,” Rick said.
“I do run a business,” I replied. “And I can’t remember the last time I was at my shop two hours after closing.”
A sardonic look came to Rick’s face. “Lucky you. Maybe I should go into your line of business.”
“Mr. Lutz, there is an easy way to make all of our questions go away,” David said.
“I’m all ears,” Rick replied.
“Was there anyone else here at that time who can confirm your story?”
Rick looked deflated. “No.”
I glanced around the store. “You don’t happen to have any security cameras here, do you?”
“No,” Rick replied.
“That’s a shame,” I said.
“I just don’t have any need for them. I don’t know anyone who would want to steal a mattress,” Rick said.
“There are other uses for security cameras. In this case, having one around could have verified your alibi,” I replied.
“It’s not an alibi, it’s the truth. And I don’t need anyone to verify it, because I was here,” Rick snapped.
“Mr. Lutz, I don’t make a habit of taking the word of a murder suspect,” David said.
Rick shrugged. “I don’t know why you’re referring to me as a murder suspect. I didn’t kill Terri.”
“That’s debatable,” I said.
“Mr. Lutz, you have to admit that things don’t look very good for you. Not only do you have no verifiable alibi, but you had plenty of motive,” David added.
Rick shook his head. “No. I already told you, just because we were getting a divorce didn’t mean that I wanted her dead.”
David narrowed his eyes. “Even if you take the divorce out of the equation, you still had a million reasons to want her dead.”
Rick scrunched his nose. “What are you talking about?”
“We know about Terri’s life insurance policy,” I said. “You are the only beneficiary listed. With her dead, a million-dollar check will soon be coming your way.”
Rick’s eyes widened. “I had forgotten about that.”
David folded his arms. “I doubt it.”
Rick tried pleading. “No, really. She took out that policy years ago. So long ago that I completely forgot about it.”
“Mr. Lutz, I’d really like to believe you.”
“I’m not stopping you.”
“No, but logic is. If you had completely forgotten about the policy, then why were the dues completely up to date?”
“I have my bills set to autopay,” Rick said.
“Even in the middle of divorce proceedings? Why would you keep paying her insurance dues when she was trying to take half of all your money?” David asked.
“Like I said, I forgot about the policy.”
“Or you wanted to cash in before she changed beneficiaries.”
Rick shook his head vehemently. “You’re just speculating. You can’t prove any of this.”
“By that token, you can’t disprove anything I’ve said,” David replied.
“This is insanity. You have nothing on me,” Rick said.
As I looked around the office, a number of things stuck out to me. They were all baseball related. There was a framed autographed jersey hanging on the wall behind Rick’s desk and a ball cap peeking out of his gym bag on the ground.
“I see that you are a baseball fan,” I said.
Rick shrugged. “So?”
“You play in a league locally?” I asked.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Rick replied.
“Just answer her question,” David said.
“Yes. I play a little. Although I still don’t see why that matters,” Rick said.
“Your wife was killed by a baseball bat,” I replied.
“I know.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“I saw a news report. There was video of a member of the forensics team loading the bat into a van,” Rick said.
“And what do you have to say for yourself?” David asked.
“For the last time, I didn’t do this,” Rick said.
“So you say,” I replied.
Rick’s voice was filled with outrage. “They sell baseball bats at every sporting goods store in the country. Anyone could have bought a bat and killed her with it.”
I stared deep into his eyes. “True, but you were the only one who had a million reasons to want her dead. And you are the one who is being very defensive all of a sudden.”
Rick waggled his pointer finger at me. “You have this all wrong.”
“Set us straight, then,” I said.
“If I killed her, do you really think I would have been stupid enough to leave the murder weapon there at the scene?” Rick asked.
“Crazy things happen in the heat of the moment—especially when a murder has just been committed,” David replied.
“Nice try, but I would never be that stupid. I’ll bet the real killer left it there to frame me,” Rick said.
“Oh really?” David asked.
Rick nodded. “It makes sense. Everyone knows I like baseball. So who better to frame than the man who is in the middle of divorcing the victim?”
“Or maybe you weren’t framed at all. Perhaps you were just careless,” David said.
Rick stared into David’s eyes then leaned back in his chair. “You didn’t find any fingerprints on the bat, did you?”
“What makes you say that?” David asked.
“Because if you did, you would have already arrested me. The fact that you’re asking me questions instead of
handcuffing me tells me that you have nothing. And since you clearly don’t have enough to charge me with a crime, I’m done talking to you,” Rick said.
“This isn’t over,” David replied.
Rick puffed his chest out. “Are you going to charge me with murder?”
David took a deep breath.
“That’s what I thought,” Rick said. “We’re done here.”
As I looked over at David, his blood was boiling. At the same time, there wasn’t much he could do. There wasn’t nearly enough evidence to detain Rick. So as much as it pained David to do so, he ended the interview.
While David and I walked back to his car in the parking lot, we suddenly had a shortage of suspects left to question. And with no hit on the all-points bulletin that David had put out, there wasn’t a whole lot we could do but wait for an update.
David decided to check in at the police station to see if the crime lab had gotten any results. I, meanwhile, headed over to Daley Buzz.
Chapter Seventeen
It was amazing what a difference a few months made. I used to get a sparkle in my eyes when I passed by Stewart’s chocolate shop. That was no longer the case. There was one simple reason for that. The storefront beside my family’s coffee shop was no longer home to Stewart’s chocolates, but rather Zabrinski’s. What a shame, too, because the truffles at Zabrinski’s just didn’t measure up to the standard that Stewart’s had set.
Ultimately, the point was moot. Stewart’s no longer existed. After Andrew Stewart’s murder earlier in the year, the rest of his family sold the company to local real estate developer Jake Williamson.
As Stewart’s already had a very successful business model, a number of the locals wondered if Jake would just assume ownership of the business and make no changes to the daily operation of the shop. Instead, Jake shut Stewart’s down completely and recruited a national chocolate shop chain to come out and lease the storefront from him.
Not that I had expected Jake to do any different. Each time I had spoken to him, he had been clear about his intentions—to buy up every mom-and-pop shop on Main Street and flood all of downtown Treasure Cove with chain stores. Bringing Zabrinski’s in was just the latest step in turning his vision into a reality.
Caramels With A Side Of Murder Page 6