Peanut Butter and Jelly Murder

by Susan Gillard

  Amy had to stifle a gasp. Inside the room were hundreds of collectible dolls. They filled every space inch of the room. Amy and Heather joined Mae Hoolihan at a table and felt hundreds of eyes upon them. Heather was impressed by the sheer volume of dolls in the collection, while Amy was freaked out by how they seemed to stare at her.

  “Now what is this about?” Mae asked. “Somebody was murdered?”

  “Yes,” Heather said. “Amelia Seward.”

  “I don’t know anybody by that name,” Mae said.

  “Aunt Amelia from the antiques store,” Amy said.

  “Oh,” Mae said. “Then I do know her.”

  They waited to see if Mae Hoolihan would say anymore but she remained quiet. Amy started to look at all the doll’s eyes and felt uncomfortable. She took the tablet out of her bag and opened the app to begin taking notes. If Mae ever began speaking, she could write down what she said.

  “How well did you know her?” Heather finally asked, sensing she would have to prod to get answers.

  “Not well,” Mae said. “I only went into her store once, but it did make quite an impression on me.”

  She looked to a doll with yellow hair as if they were sharing an inside joke. Amy’s skin crawled, and she focused on the tablet. Heather tried to stick to business.

  “What sort of impression?”

  “If you must know, a negative one,” Mae Hoolihan said. “I tried to sell her a doll so that she could display it proudly in her shop. My house is getting a little crowded, and I thought perhaps I should spread these little darlings around Hillside to let others get the same joy I do from them.”

  “And Aunt Amelia offered you a bad price?” Heather asked.

  “She refused to buy it,” Mae said. “She said it wasn’t an original. That it was just a knock-off imitation. Can you believe that? As if I would allow that within my collection.”

  “And that made you angry?” Heather asked.

  “Furious,” said Mae. “Not only was it business gone wrong. But she had insulted me, my collection, and my dolls with her comment.”

  She picked up a doll and patted it affectionately. She shook her head at the memory of her visit to the store.

  “I vowed never to go in there again,” Mae said. “My dolls are all collectible. She clearly didn’t know what she was talking about. I don’t know how she stayed in business.”

  “Did she say why she believed they were knock-offs?” Heather asked.

  “She said the tags were wrong,” said Mae. “How would she know? I paid a lot of money for my doll. That means I bought an original. Regardless of what a special tag says.”

  Mae gently put her doll back down and looked at the other women for confirmation. Heather decided to test an idea.

  “But don’t tags usually show whether an item is an original or not?” Heather asked. “What if you were taken advantage of by the other seller?”

  “How dare you?” Mae said. She was on her feet in an instant. Full of rage, she lifted the table up an inch and slammed it down. “You’re just like her.”

  Amy backed up and felt herself against a wall of dolls. She moved away from it, feeling fully creeped out. Heather rose from her seat and raised her hands in apology.

  “I’m sorry,” Heather said.

  “I can’t believe you’d insult me and my collection in my own home,” Mae said. “I think you should leave.”

  “We will in just a moment,” Heather said. “I have one more question.”

  “What is it?”

  “Where were you on Sunday night?” Heather asked.

  “Sunday I went to a doll convention in Dallas,” Mae Hoolihan said. “It was an all-day event, and then I traveled home late that night.”

  “Thank you for your time,” Heather said.

  Then she and Amy scooted out of the room before Mae could show off any more fits of rage.

  ***

  “Wow,” Amy said. “I don’t know what concerned me more: that I’m now suddenly afraid of dolls, or that Mae Hoolihan was about to flip a table on us.”

  “I normally don’t like to make suspects angry,” Heather said. “But I wanted to see how strong she was.”

  “To see if she could have strangled Amelia and then carried her up to the loft?”

  “Exactly.”

  “It certainly seems that when she’s angry, she is capable of going berserk and being destructively strong,” Amy said.

  “I think she is strong enough to have done it too,” Heather said. “But we’ll have to check on her alibi and see if she was out of town all day and night like she said.”

  “Dependent on her alibi, she’s a suspect,” Amy said. “Who else do we have?”

  “There’s Bobby Hall,” Heather said, going through a mental checklist. “He’s strong enough to have done it. And it’s possible that his story of the man who approached him to commit a robbery is a fabrication.”

  “And our renovator,” Amy said.

  “True,” Heather said. “Taryn is also strong. And in some ways is a force of nature.”

  “They all seem like good suspects,” Amy said. “But no one jumps out to me as the prime.”

  “I think I agree,” Heather said. “Luckily, we have one more unhappy customer to talk to.”

  Chapter 12

  Charles Galloway looked less than pleased to see them at his doorstep. He was a tall man with big arms and pale features. He kept avoiding eye contact with them.

  “I don’t know what you want from me,” Charles said. “I’m not big into antiques. I don’t know much about the lady. I was only in the shop once.”

  Heather glanced inside his sparsely decorated home and could agree with his sentiment about not being into antiques. However, he had caused enough of a scene at Aunt Amelia’s Antiques to be put on Bobby Hall’s “suspicious customers” list.

  “It was an unhappy experience in the shop?” Heather asked.

  “I guess you could say so,” Charles said. “It was a while ago. I almost forgot about all this.”

  “What do you remember?”

  “I don’t know. It was really nothing. The whole issue was nothing,” he said.

  “A woman was murdered,” Heather reminded him. “We were told you had an argument with her.”

  “A month or two ago,” he protested.

  “And we need to follow all leads,” Heather said. “We’d like to hear about it.”

  “But it was---“

  “Nothing. Yeah, we know,” Amy said. “Humor us.”

  “I thought she was overcharging something. I tried to haggle with her. She wouldn’t have it. I got heated.”

  “You said she’d be sorry?” Heather asked.

  “I might have,” Charles admitted. “I was just trying to save face and seem tough. I didn’t mean it. I had nothing to do with her death. Are you sure it was a murder?”

  “Of course, we are,” Heather said.

  “Okay,” Charles said, retracting his question. “She just seemed like a lady who could take care of herself.”

  “Were you angry about your dispute with her?” Heather asked.

  “I was at the time,” Charles said. “But time has passed. I didn’t think about it anymore. I’m surprised anyone remembered this. It felt like a long time ago.”

  “What item were you trying to get?” Amy asked.

  “I barely remember,” Charles said.

  “You don’t remember something that you were fighting with a woman over?” Amy asked with a touch of attitude.

  “Fight is a strong word,” Charles said. “And the item wasn’t for me. It was for a friend. I was trying to get him an autograph. I don’t remember the person’s name now. It’s not someone I was a fan of. Maybe the price she said was fair, but it seemed very high to me.”

  “Does this friend have a name?” Heather asked.

  “I don’t want to get him in trouble,” Charles said.

  “We won’t put him in any trouble,” Heather assured him. “We
’d just like to confirm some things with him.”

  “He didn’t know I was getting the autograph,” Charles said. “It was going to be a surprise. It’s just a friend from work. His name is John. I don’t know his last name.”

  “Where do you work?” Heather asked.

  “At Energetic Enterprises,” Charles Galloway said.

  Heather paused and looked at Amy. That was one of the companies that Lyle Clarke ran. Amy also realized the significance. Lyle Clarke was the biggest threat to Hillside and was their personal enemy. They knew that he had orchestrated several murders for his financial and personal gain. However, so far, they had been unable to prove it. A scapegoat had always taken the blame for Clarke’s crimes and protected their boss. Heather and Amy had caught some of the criminals who committed the murders, but they had been unable to prove that Lyle Clarke had ordered it happen. Was Clarke involved in Aunt Amelia’s death?

  “But when did this murder happen?” Charles asked. “I might have an alibi for it.”

  “Sunday night,” Heather said.

  “See?” Charles said. “I told you I didn’t have anything to do with this death. I do have an alibi for that night. I was at work.”

  “You were working late on a Sunday night?” Heather repeated.

  “There was a big project coming up that I had to finish,” Charles said. “But my boss was there working with me. His name is Lyle Clarke.”

  Heather got the sense that his name dropping was supposed to tell her to back off, and to accept the alibi that she was given. Instead, it only made her more determined to pursue this line of investigation. If Lyle Clarke was involved in Amelia Seward’s death, she wanted to prove it.

  Chapter 13

  “I can agree that it is a big coincidence,” Ryan said. “But it’s not conclusive.”

  “He works for Lyle Clarke,” Heather said.

  “I know,” said Ryan. “But a lot of people do. He’s powerful and owns a lot of businesses. It might not mean that Charles Galloway is doing anything illegal for him.”

  They were in their kitchen that night, sharing what they had discovered about the case. Heather reviewed the questioning she had done, while Ryan explained how they were still overwhelmed with fingerprints from the shop. The couple was enjoying a late night sugary snack while the rest of the household slept.

  It felt strange not having Eva and Leila in their living room anymore. She had loved having the two ladies stay with her, though she knew that everyone involved had more space now that they had returned to their home. She felt bad that their homecoming had been marred by a murder. Taryn Turner felt that the room wouldn’t be complete until their new vase was released from evidence, and Heather hated that the renovator might turn out to be a murderer. She also hated that Eva and Leila might not feel truly at home because every time they looked at the blank space on the wall, they had to be reminded that Aunt Amelia had been killed.

  Heather thought about it and then said, “I just think that when a murder and Lyle Clarke are mentioned in the same context, nine out of ten times he’s behind it.”

  “And I think you’re right. But we have encountered that one time out of ten before. I don’t know why he would want Amelia Seward dead,” Ryan said.

  “It’s not always readily apparent if he has a larger scheme going on,” Heather pointed out.

  “I’ll do some digging tomorrow,” Ryan said. “But it looks like her estate passes mostly to family and charity. I don’t see what he could gain.”

  “I want to talk to him again,” Heather said.

  “I don’t know what good it would do,” Ryan said. “He knows how to evade all our questions. I feel like until we have solid proof of anything, confronting him doesn’t help.”

  “I know all I’ve gotten out of him in the past are some slimy smiles and some veiled threats, but I want to try it again.”

  “How will this time be different?” Ryan asked. He wasn’t being mean. He was genuinely asking. He wanted to know if this confrontation would bear any proverbial fruit.

  “I think in the past, I’ve gone after him more directly,” Heather said. “It’s a technique that usually works with suspects, but not with him. I think I’ll go in there asking just about Charles Galloway. Maybe this will throw him off guard.”

  “If you want to try it, go ahead,” Ryan said. “But will you make sure Amy goes with you? It’s always good to have a partner.”

  Heather agreed to bring Amy. She was planning on making sure she came anyway. She was spared having to decide about making a comment on Ryan’s partner, Hoskins, by Dave’s entrance into the room. He must have been woken up from his deep canine slumber by the smell of donuts.

  Heather relented and gave him a snack. She knew he would love the Peanut Butter and Jelly Donut.

  “He did help me break a suspect earlier,” Heather laughed as he enjoyed his treat.

  ***

  “Mrs. Shepherd and Miss Givens, how lovely to see you both again,” Lyle Clarke said with a toothy grin. “I hope we meet under more pleasant circumstances.”

  They sat down in Lyle Clarke’s office across from his desk. He seemed to enjoy inviting them in so that he could taunt them with how he had been able to avoid capture. He was a master of evading incriminating answers to questions and relished the opportunity to do so.

  “We’ve come to talk to you more as a character witness,” Heather said, trying her new technique.

  Lyle Clarke looked confused for a moment and then looked intrigued. “Go on.”

  “But first we do need to get one pesky thing out of the way,” Heather said, as Amy prepared to take notes. “Where were you on Sunday night?”

  “I was a dinner with several people who can vouch for me,” Lyle Clarke said. He was looking cocky again. Her opening statements had caught him off guard for a moment, but now he thought they were back to the same old routine where she tried to get him to confess. Now she reverted back to her new technique.

  “We wanted to ask you about an employee of yours,” she said.

  “I have many, many employees,” Clarke said. “I can’t be expected to keep track of them all.”

  “That’s what we thought,” Heather agreed. “We didn’t think you’d know anything about this one.”

  “Of course,” Clarke said. “I try to get to know everyone. I might know who you’re talking about.”

  “He’s one of your employees at Energetic Enterprises.”

  “That’s a fine business,” Clarke said. “The employees who work there have to be the best of the best. I’m sure whoever you are looking into is a fine man, regardless of whether I know him personally or not.”

  “We are interested in a Charles Galloway.”

  “The name does sound familiar,” Clarke said. “But I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

  “I thought as much,” Heather said. “I thought he was lying.”

  “Lying about what?” Clarke said, trying to conceal a note of anger in his voice. “I wouldn’t believe anyone who spoke out against me. It would be professional jealousy that dragged my name through the mud. If he mentions that I am involved in anything illegal, I have several lawyers willing to sue the man for slander.”

  Heather smiled. Her plan seemed to be working. Lyle Clarke had assumed that she was trying to force him to confess to something by revealing that they had an eyewitness to one of his illegal dealings. Instead, he had undermined the man’s alibi.

  “So, we shouldn’t believe anything the man says?” Heather asked.

  “I wouldn’t,” said Clarke with the hint of a threat in his throat.

  “I’m glad that was straightened out,” Heather said. “Because Charles Galloway said that he was working late the night of the murder and that you worked with him. I’m glad we learned that he was lying.”

  Clarke realized his mistake and strove to correct it.

  “What was that name again?”

  “Charles Galloway.”

  “I’m so em
barrassed,” Clarke said with a smile instead of a trace of embarrassment. “I thought we were talking about Charles Calloway. That’s the employee that we’ve had so much trouble with. I haven’t had any trouble with Charles Galloway. I’ll have someone from HR get you a copy of our employee roster so you can see how this unfortunate confusion occurred.”

  Heather frowned. She was sure Lyle Clarke could produce something to validate whatever lie he was telling her.