Murder of a Stacked Librarian: A Scumble River Mystery

by Swanson, Denise

  “Well . . .” Wally stammered.

  Skye cut him off and added, “I especially want to hear about how you know her so well.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Due as I Say

  Skye decided to use the short time she had to drive out to talk to her sister-in-law. She wanted to check on how Loretta was feeling and see if she could still fit into her bridesmaid’s dress. Loretta’s baby was due in exactly two weeks and her middle seemed to be expanding at an alarmingly fast rate.

  Vince and Loretta had opted to build a house after being unable to find exactly what they wanted in the area. Skye hadn’t been surprised by their decision. She’d known that her friend wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than perfection. She’d also known that Vince would move heaven and earth to fulfill his new wife’s every wish. For a man who had dated nearly every pretty girl in three counties, he was an astonishingly devoted husband.

  Loretta and Skye were both alums of Alpha Sigma Alpha sorority, and since Loretta was a hotshot defense attorney in Chicago, Skye had originally reached out to her several years ago to defend Vince on a murder charge. Then, despite Loretta’s often-declared aversion to small towns and their citizens, she had fallen in love with Skye’s brother, married him, and agreed to live in Scumble River.

  It helped that Loretta was able to do so much of her job from home and had to go into the city only for meetings and trials, but it had still been a tremendous sacrifice on Loretta’s part to consent to live in her husband’s hometown rather than remain in Chicago. It was a sacrifice that Vince was well aware of and was determined to reward.

  Skye and Vince’s father, Jed, had deeded a good-size parcel of land to his son and new daughter-in-law from forty acres that Jed had purchased several years ago. It was located a couple of miles down the road from May and Jed’s place on the Stanley side of County Line Road. Skye was heading there now.

  Vince and Loretta had begun construction nine months ago—shortly before Loretta got pregnant—and they had moved in only a week ago. Although Skye had seen the place during various stages of development, this would be her first visit since it was finished.

  As she turned down the long lane leading to the house, she tried to visualize the oaks, pecans, and hickories interspersed with redbuds, hawthorns, pawpaws, yellowwoods, and crab apples that her sister-in-law intended to have planted in the spring. The tree allée would make an elegant entrance to the spectacular home that Loretta had designed, with only a tiny bit of input from an architect, Vince, and both their mothers.

  Skye parked along the circular driveway—praying her car didn’t leave an oil stain or any other kind of mark on the pristine concrete pavers. She strolled up the cobblestone walkway leading to the double mahogany doors, rang the bell, and smiled when she heard the percussion solo from Iron Butterfly’s “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida.” Vince must have won the argument for the programmable doorbell’s musical selection.

  Vince might have stopped performing with his band, the Plastic Santas, in order to be home on weekends, but he would always be a drummer at heart—even though he owned a beauty salon and cut hair for a living.

  Several seconds went by, and Skye was considering ringing the bell again when Loretta finally appeared. She put her hands on her hips and said, “Hey, girl. I didn’t think you’d have time to visit your preggo sister this week.”

  Skye hugged her, then said, “I only have forty-five minutes—but I wanted to see how you are.” She stepped back. “You’re radiant.”

  It was a trite phrase, but it described her friend to a tee. Loretta’s dark brown skin glowed with health, and from the back, with her six-foot-tall, lean-muscled body and impeccably coiffed coal black braids, she appeared ready to walk a fashion runway. Only when she turned and her stomach was visible did it look like she had swallowed twin baby elephants.

  “Yeah. I’m gorgeous, all right. The fact that I can’t sleep, can barely get up from a chair without help, and have to pee constantly is immaterial,” Loretta said with a sneer.

  “Uh.” Skye couldn’t argue with her friend’s statement. At thirty-six and a half weeks pregnant, Loretta had to be extremely uncomfortable.

  “Why did you have to choose red for your bridesmaids dresses?” Loretta took Skye’s hand and pulled her inside, then tugged her through the foyer and the family room and into the kitchen, complaining as they walked, “I’m going to look like an overripe tomato.”

  “I’m sure you’ll be beautiful.” Skye would never admit that she shared her friend’s fear, which was why she wanted to get a peek at Loretta in the gown. “Besides, you agreed on the color.” Skye gazed around the mammoth space, counting three sinks and two dishwashers before she said, “I’m still amazed at the size of this kitchen. You could feed an entire baseball lineup, or at least a basketball team.”

  “Yeah.” Loretta eased onto a stool. “It did get a little out of hand,” she admitted. “Still, I’m shocked at how much of the space we do use.”

  “Hey.” Skye took a seat next to her. “You only build your dream house once. You might as well have what you want.”

  “True.” Loretta rested her hands on her belly. “Anyway, besides the obvious reason that you’re getting married in four days, why are you on such a tight schedule?”

  “Did you hear that the car crash on Christmas Eve, the one that kept Wally from the family party, wasn’t an accident?”

  “No. I’ve been so busy with the house and finishing up my last case before I went on maternity leave. I haven’t been listening to the news or reading the paper.” Loretta selected a cookie from the tray on the counter in front of her and slid the treats over to Skye. “What’s the scoop?”

  “Wally was skeptical from the beginning,” Skye said, then explained what the crime lab had discovered, finishing with, “So we’re interviewing the people Yvonne had a disagreement with, hoping to come up with someone with a motive and the opportunity to commit the crime.”

  “I can’t believe you’re working an investigation this close to your big day.” Loretta popped the last bite of cookie into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “Don’t you have a million last-minute things to do?”

  “Sort of.” Skye shrugged. “But I think I have it all under control for now, at least as much as it can be.” She pushed the cookie tray back toward Loretta. She was already afraid that with all the holiday treats she’d been eating, her bridal gown wouldn’t fit.

  “Is May driving you crazy?” Loretta selected another cookie. “She nearly drove me insane when we were building the house. Then, when she found out about the baby, I thought I would have to get an unlisted number and a guard dog to have any privacy.” Loretta crunched off Frosty’s head. “And she was laid-back compared to my mother.”

  “Mom’s been fairly reasonable,” Skye confessed. “Our last big disagreement was about the wedding presents. She wanted them all sent to her place so she could display them properly.” Skye made air quotation marks with her fingers. “I wasn’t thrilled about her conducting guided tours of our gifts, but in the end, I didn’t care enough to fight about it. If you want to see the kind of loot you missed getting by eloping, drop by Mom and Dad’s and take a peek in Vince’s old bedroom.” Skye winked. “Just keep behind the velvet ropes and don’t try to touch the crystal or she’ll call the security guard to take you away.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll take a pass.” Loretta snickered. “We’ll rake in the gifts for presenting both sets of parents with their first grandchild, so I’m not too worried about missing the wedding booty.”

  “Not to mention the swag you’ll get at the housewarming,” Skye reminded her. “You’re still planning to have it after the baby’s born, right?”

  Loretta nodded, then said, “Speaking of the house, want the grand tour?”

  “Definitely.” Skye helped her sister-in-law to her feet and said, “Lead on.”

  Loretta started in the family room. “This is where we’ll spend most of our time.” She swept her a
rm around the enormous room featuring a wet bar at one end and a fireplace at the other.

  “Nice.”

  “You saw the dining and living rooms when we walked from the front door to the kitchen, so let me show you the master suite.”

  They made their way to the opposite end of the house, where the master suite took up the whole west side. In addition to a gorgeous bedroom with French doors leading to a patio and an in-ground pool, there was a huge bathroom and a double walk-in closet that shared a dressing area. When the place was under construction, Skye hadn’t been aware of the magnificence of the suite, but now she was stunned by the lavishness.

  Granted, Loretta was a partner in a prestigious law firm, but Skye wondered just how much money attorneys made. For sure, her brother couldn’t afford anything half as luxurious as this. Even with free land and tapping into all the family connections for cheap labor, it had to have cost them close to a million. They probably had an enormous mortgage, but Vince would have never been able to qualify for such a big loan, even if his income was double what Skye figured it was from the hair salon.

  Once Loretta had shown Skye the three upstairs bedrooms and the massive garage, they ended up back near the master bedroom, admiring the nursery. Skye spent an appropriate amount of time oohing and aahing over the delicate mushroom-and-ecru color scheme, the soft fawn carpet, the draperies tied back with heavy tassels to give the curtains a scalloped look, and the elegant iron scroll-worked crib.

  Then, after complimenting the cherub chandelier and chatting about the baby’s arrival, Skye asked Loretta, “Would you mind trying on your bridesmaids dress for me?”

  “Seriously?” Loretta screwed up her face. “You want me to take off my clothes, shimmy into that gown, and model it for you?”

  “Yep.” Skye nodded. “That about covers it.” Tilting her head, she said, “Pretty please with chocolate syrup and peanut butter on top?” Vince had confided that Hershey’s and Peter Pan were Loretta’s latest cravings. “I made Frannie do the same thing the minute she got home from college last week, and poor Trixie has had hers on at least a half dozen times in the past month.”

  Frannie Ryan had been the coeditor of the student newspaper that Skye and Trixie sponsored at Scumble River High. Her mother had passed away many years ago, and she and Skye had become extremely close during the girl’s school years. They’d continued to grow their relationship while Frannie attended the local junior college as a freshman and sophomore before transferring to the University of Illinois last fall.

  “If I must,” Loretta grumbled, then shuffled into the master bedroom. “I live to make you happy.” She slipped into the walk-in closet, adding, “But just remember, Frannie and Trixie aren’t eight and a half months pregnant.”

  “Which is why I appreciate you trying on the dress for me so much.” Skye waited in the bedroom, wanting to see it in a grand reveal once Loretta had the gown on rather than as she got into it.

  Skye heard rustling and a few choice words; then Loretta shouted, “Did Wally ever bring up the subject of a prenup?”

  “No.” Skye had asked Loretta to look over an agreement if Wally asked her to sign one. She’d assumed that because of his family’s wealth, he would want her to consent to a prenuptial before they were married. “And when I mentioned it, he said we didn’t need one. We weren’t getting divorced, and if anything happened to him, he wanted me to have everything he owned.”

  “That’s a surprise.” Loretta’s voice was awed. “Nowadays, a prenup is the norm for people who get married in their thirties or forties and have any significant assets.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Skye agreed. “Which was why I was sure he’d want one.” If Loretta only knew that Wally’s father was a Texas oil millionaire, she’d really be shocked. “It certainly can’t be because he thinks I have any money. He knows I just paid off my credit cards last year and that I have a home-improvement loan.”

  “C’est la vie.” Loretta’s tone indicated that she had lost interest in the conversation. “I’ll be out in a second.”

  Several agonizing minutes later, Loretta emerged from the closet and Skye held her breath. Her attendants were of wildly varying sizes—Trixie was five-foot-two and wore a size 4; Frannie was six inches taller and six sizes larger; and then there was Loretta, who towered over both women and now had a stomach roughly the dimension of an extralarge exercise ball.

  Exhaling, Skye slumped in relief. The poinsettia red silky taffeta gown looked gorgeous on her friend. The maternity version had an empire waist, but the rest was identical to the other bridesmaids’ dresses. The straps were sewn at an asymmetrical vee, and there was a diamanté snowflake-shaped embellishment where they merged at the sweetheart neckline.

  “You look incredible,” Skye said, thrilled she could tell the truth.

  “Yes, I do.” Loretta spun around and peered at herself in the full-length mirror. “What do you think of my shoes?” She lifted the hem.

  Skye glanced down at Loretta’s feet and saw fabulous black satin peep-toe pumps with a sparkling brooch and an hourglass heel. “Stunning.” She loved them. She had told her attendants they could wear any shoes they wanted as long as they were black, but now she wished she’d asked them all to buy the ones Loretta had on.

  “The dress fits perfectly.” Loretta looked over her shoulder and down at her derriere. “Does it make my ass look big?”

  “Not at all.” Skye kept her face expressionless, sure that her sister-in-law would not be amused if she mentioned that compared to her front, Loretta’s rear end was minuscule. “You look great.”

  “That reminds me, did I mention that a few hours before her car went off the bridge, I talked to that librarian who was killed?” Loretta kicked off her pumps and retreated to the walk-in closet.

  “What reminds you?” Skye followed Loretta and helped her out of the gown.

  “The subject of big butts.” Loretta wiggled into her maternity jeans.

  “Okay.” Skye hung up the bridesmaids dress. “I surrender. How do big butts jog your memory about your encounter with a dead librarian?”

  “You know how I’ve been trying to wind up my part of that case I’ve been working on? So I can turn it over to the attorney who’s covering for me while I’m on maternity leave?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I finally finished about three o’clock Christmas Eve, and just as I was about to e-mail everything to my paralegal, the power went out.” Loretta slid her T-shirt over her head and slipped on her loafers. “The trial starts today, and I needed to get the info to the firm ASAP in order for my replacement to have time to go over it before he walked into court.”

  “So you went to the library to use their Internet,” Skye guessed.

  “Exactly.” Loretta eased onto the vanity bench and smoothed her hair. “It was the only place I could think of that was open and had Wi-Fi.”

  “Okay, now I know why you were at the library.” Skye wrinkled her brow. “So tell me the connection between large rear ends and Yvonne.”

  “We were chatting about the negatives of being pregnant,” Loretta explained, “and she said that when she was expecting, both her boobs and her butt got so big that she felt like Dita Von Teese.”

  “Who?”

  “The Queen of Burlesque.” Loretta shrugged. “She has this really knockout hourglass figure.”

  “I get it. Yvonne had an amazing shape, too,” Skye commented, then added, “An attribute I’m not sure she was entirely comfortable with.”

  “She mentioned that men hit on her all the time, even when she was preggers,” Loretta confirmed. “She said she was sick and tired of guys seeing her only as a body and not being interested in her brain.”

  “I suppose if you look like a Cosmo model, you have to expect that.”

  “Yeah.” Loretta nodded. “But it wasn’t as if she dressed to show off her assets.”

  “True.”

  “She said she was going to a party with this
man she’d been seeing for the past couple of months who seemed different, and she had to leave straight from the library because she was meeting him in Laurel at five. She was wearing this really chic bronze Armani suit, but it wasn’t very sexy.” Loretta made a face. “I told her she should go home and change into something slinkier.”

  “Why?” Skye asked. “Yvonne clearly didn’t want that kind of image.”

  “I don’t think it was that she didn’t want to look sexy,” Loretta corrected. “I think she just didn’t want that to be all that people thought she was. So I told her that clearly, if she’d been dating this guy for a while, he’d already passed her test and deserved a treat.”

  “What did Yvonne say?”

  “She agreed.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Beyond the Tale

  “So tell me about Emmy Jones.” Skye made herself comfortable in the squad car’s passenger seat, prepared to interrogate Wally during the entire drive to Laurel if necessary.

  “There’s nothing to tell.” Wally slid a quick glance at Skye.

  “Come on. Really?” She raised a brow. “A hot dancer who is an expert markswoman, a woman you see frequently yet have never mentioned to me.” She shook her head. “I bet there’s lots to tell.”

  “I’m not sure what you want to hear.” Wally took another hasty peek at Skye, then returned his attention to the two-lane blacktop. “We shoot together. That’s all.”

  “How long have you known her?” Skye asked, realizing she would have to dig the information out of Wally—not unlike her counseling sessions with most adolescent boys.

  “Six months or so,” Wally answered, clearly reluctant to continue the conversation. “I think she started coming to the club in June, and it was at least four or five weeks after that when we first competed against each other.” He shrugged. “Since it wasn’t that important, I didn’t keep track.”

  “Hmm.” Skye remembered that July had been the height of her wedding planning frenzy. “Why didn’t you ever mention her to me?”