by Sandi Scott
At two o’clock, Ryan appeared like magic with his golf cart and two strong volunteers to help her and Patty pack up in exchange for some cake.
“Where’s Coyote?” Ashley asked while the two college students, male and female, magically wiped everything down, lifted all the heavy things onto the cart, and disassembled the tent and tables. It was like watching a miracle. “The two of you seemed to be almost a pair this weekend.”
Ryan looked up at the clouds for a second, an almost proud smile on his face. “Yeah, he’s a nice guy—I’m glad he’s moving to town. At my age, making new friends isn’t always easy.”
“Your age,” Ashley laughed. “You’re my age! You’re making me feel old.”
“Well, you know what I mean. I’m always so busy running my own business, or spending time with you—don’t get me wrong, both of which I love—but, uh, sometimes it’s nice to have s guy to do… well… do guy stuff with.”
He had grabbed Ashley’s hand when he said “spending time with you,” and he was still holding on to it. Ashley felt her heart speed up a bit.
“Anyway, he left early. He’s been trying to buy that house near you. He keeps running into trouble after trouble. Poor guy can’t catch a break. After all the extra work that he put in this weekend, nobody could blame him for leaving a bit early.”
“Sure,” she said. “Nobody would blame you for taking a couple of days off, either.”
“And you, my late-night bake-a-thoner?”
“I know, I know,” she said. “I can’t even imagine doing anything more mentally taxing than binge-watching an old Masterpiece Theatre series or two tomorrow. And maybe making some cookies to bring over to your house. Or I could bring the cookie dough over to your house and I could bake them there.”
“Mmm,” he said. “Tempting. But I have another idea.”
“Oh?”
“Tonight, six o’clock. Before you crash. I’ll drive up to your house and we’ll go out to supper at the place you like in Bay City. Big Marcel’s. To celebrate the festival finally being over.”
“Oooh, Big Marcel’s,” Patty said. She had been eavesdropping.
“I like Big Marcel’s,” Ashley said.
“I do, too,” said Patty. “It’s such a guilty pleasure… I always get the Monte Cristo and a big plate of fried pickle slices.”
“Which you eat with a knife and fork, right?” Ryan teased.
“Of course I do. I don’t want powdered sugar all over my clothes.”
Smoke Daddy Lee had appeared next to her, wiping his face with a handkerchief. “And that’s all she wrote, darlin’. How are the two of you doing?”
Patty wrapped an arm around his waist and leaned against his arm, too tired to be as private with her affection for Smoke Daddy as she usually was. “Even with the low head count today, it seems we have made a handsome profit, as well as passed out all kinds of fliers and business cards that will bring us nothing but future fame and fortune. You?”
“Same here, except I don’t carry business cards. Everybody knows me already.” Smoke Daddy Lee laughed at his own joke.
“That’s true, that’s true,” Patty said.
“What do you say we throw everything in the refrigerators at Fresh Start and go to my place?” he asked. “I bought some special brandy, just for you.”
Ashley smiled, remembering how she’d promised herself she would buy some red wine for Patty to drink when she was over. The things we do for the people who are like family.
“Or we could go to my place,” Patty said. “I bought some good whiskey for you.”
Smoke Daddy Lee’s grizzled face brightened. “For me?”
“Of course, you enormous bear of a man. But not the terrible stuff that you drink. The good kind.”
“Is it French?”
“It might be.”
“I didn’t know the French made whiskey.”
By then, the little trailer was loaded up, strapped down, and being driven across the grass toward the parking lot. The four of them and Dizzy walked across the swiftly emptying festival grounds with the Sunday afternoon sun burning down on them. Another hour’s worth of cleanup and Ashley would be done with this weekend.
Ryan elbowed her in the side. “Well?”
“Yes,” she said. “I would love to be spoiled rotten. But can it be tomorrow? I can feel my eyes drooping closed already.”
“Deal,” he said.
8
Monday morning and the first item on Ashley’s list was getting her debit card sorted out. This, of course, would go much smoother if she brought some cookies with her, so she threw together some chocolate chip cookie dough, portioned out the cookies with her ice cream scoop, and baked them right before it was time to leave. She packaged them carefully and put them in an insulated picnic carrier. With any luck, they would still be warm by the time she reached her credit union.
She didn’t think of it as bribery so much as a polite request for the teller’s full attention.
She arrived just as they were opening and was shown into a manager’s office right away. She introduced herself to James Inglesby, who had dark, tightly curled hair and perfect posture, and who wore what looked like a tailored blue linen suit with a blue-and-white spotted tie and a matching pocket square.
She caught herself wondering if she had flour on her pants or if her shirt was tucked in. She’d dressed up a little this morning but now was feeling self-conscious. She offered him her cookies, and he thanked her and accepted them on behalf of the rest of the staff. He called in someone from the outer office, a woman who looked barely out of high school. “Yee!” she exclaimed in delight and promised to bring the container back after the cookies had been passed around.
Mr. Inglesby reviewed her account with slow, steady attention, asking her questions about when she had purchased Dizzy’s collar, when she had noticed the charges, etc. The skin between his eyebrows became more and more deeply wrinkled. After she had finished telling her story, he had turned to his computer to look up more information there. The minutes crawled by.
Finally, he said, “We cannot be sure from whom the fraudulent charges have come.”
“Wasn’t it Sparrow Soulbrother’s shop that made the charge?” Ashley asked, thinking it was a no-brainer.
“We cannot be sure of that. It could have been.” He made a few clicks of the mouse. “Alas, cases of fraud are often not as straightforward as one might like. Probability is one thing, but proof is another.”
That was true of trying to solve mysteries as well—sometimes the obvious turned out to be completely not true. However, Ashley caught herself wanting the case solved now, with no delay or complications, she just wanted it to be over and get her money back, almost to the point of not really being sure she cared if the real criminal was caught. Her main priority was getting her money back.
She sighed. “I know how that goes. When will you be able to find out for sure?”
Mr. Inglesby, still with perfect posture, leaned an inch toward her. “Miss Adams, may I speak to you in confidence?”
“Of course,” she said.
“A number of our customers have experienced fraud of some type at festivals over the past few weekends. I would not like to name any names, as I’m sure you understand.”
“Yes, of course.”
“The rest of the customers all experienced the same pattern. Certain purchases were made, using a credit card. After the purchases were made, the customers began seeing a mysterious charge show up on their accounts, a very large one.”
Ashley frowned. “Not a lot of smaller ones?”
“No. One single, large charge. This is merely conjecture at this point, but it seems as though the charges on your account originated from abroad”
“Interesting,” Ashley said. Her mind was racing. It sounded like there had been more than one person up to no good at the festival. She’d have to think about it later; she needed to stay focused here and now. “What can I do?” she asked Mr. In
glesby.
“My apologies, but wiser heads than mine will have to take over inquiries,” he said. “We have a team of investigators who specialize in this type of thing, and I am handing your case over to them. In any case, get your receipts together and…”
Ashley groaned loud enough that Mr. Inglesby stopped midsentence. “Is everything all right?”
“Sorry,” Ashley said. “Yes, it’s just that I don’t have receipts for some of the purchases, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to get them.”
“That is not ideal, certainly. A paper trail would help, but we’ll have to do what we can with what we have.”
Despite Mr. Inglesby’s kind tone, his words weren’t very comforting. Ashley sighed. All she could think of to do next was to track down Moonbeam and see if she could get her to write a backdated receipt. But how often does a murderer on the run do favors for people? Maybe if Ashley brought Dizzy along… Or maybe if Ashley brought some information that she could use to negotiate with Moonbeam. A clue to the murder or something similar.
Mr. Inglesby caught her intent expression and gave her hand a pat. “The fraud team is very good. They will find out what happened to the funds from your account. It may take some time, but they are quite thorough. They will succeed, in time.”
She thanked him and excused herself. The young woman who’d left with the cookies earlier brought her back the container. It was empty and had been washed and dried.
On her way out, Ashley noticed Coyote in a different manager’s office. The door was open just a crack. As she walked by the office, she heard Coyote talking loudly, clearly trying to contain what was an anger roiling inside him.
“It wasn’t me! My name is on those loans, but it wasn’t me who opened them,” he shouted. “Some deadbeat stole from me and now you’re telling me I might have to pay back all that debt or face bankruptcy? I’m about to lose my mind here because I’m the victim and you all keep treating me like I did something wrong. I’m trying to buy a house, start a new life for myself.”
Maybe now was not the best time to say hello.
Poor Coyote. Ryan had been right—he just could not catch a break. Ashley decided she would stop by the bungalow later when she took her evening walk with Dizzy to see if he was there. Perhaps by then he would have cooled down a bit.
In the meantime, Ashley needed to get her hands on a receipt from Moonbeam. Unless Moonbeam had been arrested for murder, she was likely to come back to the festival grounds at some point to get back into her van, which had been taped off as a crime scene.
She also decided to have a poke around to see what else she could dig up. A good sleuth never knew when she might find a clue to solve a murder.
Returning to the park with Dizzy, Ashley expected it to be in a terrible condition so soon after a three-day festival, but the volunteers had done an amazing job. The trash had been picked up and taken out, the beach was raked clean where the bonfire had been, and the sidewalks had been swept or sprayed down. Even the parking lot had been cleaned and pressure washed.
It was impressive yet disappointing. How was she supposed to find clues when everything was so clean?
Ashley wandered through the park, Dizzy pulling her this way and that. It was so bright and hot out that the park was deserted. In the afternoon after summer school got out, kids would come and play on the playground equipment, which was at the far edge of the park away from the water. In the evening, a couple of small ice cream carts would come out, bells jingling, and sell ice cream treats and fruit bars; they would even sprinkle chili powder on the fruit treats, if the customer wanted.
But now? Nothing. It was too hot for much activity.
She walked along the beach and then headed to the playground equipment. There was a shaded bench for parents to sit and a water fountain nearby. She let the water run until it was cold, then filled Dizzy’s portable water dish for her while they rested.
“Dizzy, I think today’s a bust.”
From the other side of the playground, Ashley heard a big sigh. She almost jumped; she’d thought they were alone. “Hello?”
A figure moved in the shadows underneath a slide, and Ashley saw a flash of teal. It was Moonbeam, still wearing her crocheted hat. She’d been leaning against one of the slide supports.
A familiar smell clung to her. At first, Ashley thought she smelled a skunk. But then she remembered the same smell from the bonfire on Friday night of the festival, closely followed by a visceral image of the dishwashers at L’Oiseau Bleu, the restaurant where she and Patty had first worked together, coming in from their smoke breaks, glassy eyed and smiley.
How naïve could she be? Moonbeam smelled like marijuana.
Ashley had always had better things to do with her life than smoke weed or cigarettes—for one thing, they destroyed your taste buds. Even in high school, her favorite method of relaxing had been to bake. But she knew what it smelled like.
“Hello,” Moonbeam said. “Oh. It’s you. I remember you.”
“I remember you, too,” Ashley said. “Are you okay?”
“Not really,” Moonbeam said. “With Sparrow gone, I just want to get back on the road, but I have to stay in town until the police are done with their investigation and my case is… never mind. I came out here to try to, you know. Find clues.”
“Did you find anything?” Ashley wondered if this was an act. If Moonbeam was really the murderer, what would she be looking for out here?
Moonbeam shook her head. “Everything is too clean.” Dizzy, recognizing someone who had given her treats before, tugged on the leash. Ashley got up and walked with her over to Moonbeam’s narrow strip of shade.
Moonbeam reached out for the dog. “Oh hello, my pretty. Come give me kisses.”
Dizzy, who understood the word kisses, licked her face carefully and then lay beside the woman.
Moonbeam’s eye was still black—if anything, it looked darker purple than it had before. “The police came to talk to me. They accused me of murdering Sparrow, did you know that?”
“What?” Ashley feigned surprise, not actually answering the question. “They talked to me, too.”
“They don’t think you killed Sparrow, do they?”
Ashley shook her head no. “Someone got my debit card number and put through a few hundred dollars in fraudulent charges on my account. I think they’re talking to everyone who, uh, might have been a victim of theft over the weekend.”
“Oh, sure.” Moonbeam waved her hand at her face.
“I hate to be so blunt,” Ashley started. “Did you or Sparrow put through those charges on my account? I bought that dog collar from him on Friday, and the charges started appearing after I used my debit card to pay for it.”
Moonbeam looked up at her. “I didn’t steal from you, hon. You’re kind and sweet, and I could never steal from someone like you. But Sparrow? I honestly don’t know. My Sparrow was far from perfect, that’s all I can say for sure. He had his hands in a lot of plots.”
“You mean pots?” Ashley asked, correcting the figure of speech.
“Pot? Well… uh… yeah… I don’t know…” She gave an embarrassed smile. “Honestly, I didn’t ask him too many questions, you know? We were happy, and I didn’t want to mess that up. Rock the boat.” Ashley was taken aback to have Moonbeam almost admit that Sparrow was involved in illegal drugs. She hadn’t meant to imply that, but now she had another huge clue.
“Did you help him?” Ashley asked.
She shrugged. “I didn’t ask questions. I knew he, uh, didn’t always work alone.”
“He had partners?”
“Maybe not partners exactly. People in the same business that he worked with?”
“Who?”
“What are you, a cop?” Moonbeam was starting to get annoyed by the questions. “Anyway, I don’t know for sure. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble.”
Ashley decided against pushing Moonbeam any further, or else she would just start to lie.
“
I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Moonbeam said. “About the same time he was getting killed, which was two a.m. according to the coroner, I was with some friends at a party farther along the beach. The cops questioned them already. They took some pictures of me dancing at the time Sparrow was killed.”
“I didn’t think you were the—”
“It’s okay,” Moonbeam said. “I was pretty mad at him. We got in a fight. You know, the person closest to a murder victim is the murderer a lot of the time. The statistics prove it. We were fighting because he was always telling me that I’m terrible at singing. I said, ‘Don’t say that I’m terrible at singing even if I am terrible at singing.’ Who says stuff like that? I mean, if you’re a judge at a talent show, then you can say that. I told him, ‘You should say, “I believe in you, baby.”’ But he wouldn’t do it. I started shouting at him. And then…”
A cagey look appeared on her face.
“And then what?” Ashley said.
“And then he hit me,” Moonbeam announced.
Just then Ashley’s phone buzzed—she ignored it.
She said, “I’m sorry to hear that. Did you report it?”
“I told the police all about it when they talked to me about the murder and the thefts.”
“What did they think?”
Moonbeam frowned. “That guy, Detective Luna. He said that he didn’t think it would work, pressing charges against a dead man. He was making fun of me. I didn’t like it.”
Moonbeam gripped Ashley’s hand for a moment. The muscles underneath were strong, and the hand was calloused but not chapped. Ashley had a momentary flash of the tubes of hemp moisturizing cream in Sparrow Soulbrother’s booth. Moonbeam must moisturize with her own products.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Ashley said. “Some guys like Luna can be real jerks sometimes.”
“I’m starting to think most guys can be real jerks,” Moonbeam said, opening her eyes wider and still gripping Ashley’s hand fiercely. “The police told me something I didn’t know, too. Sparrow had a whole other family I didn’t even know about!”