Jenna ended up going with a blanket denial. “So, I didn’t like Sid. That doesn’t mean I killed him.”
Kaitlin stepped in. “It sure doesn’t make you look innocent. You have an undeniable motive.”
Jenna’s outrage turned into desperation. “I didn’t do this.”
While Jenna’s emotions were jumping into extremes, Kaitlin remained calm and steady. “You already lied to us once. Why should we believe you now?”
I couldn’t help but notice the panicked look in Jenna’s eyes as she responded. “Because I’m telling the truth.”
Another lingering issue began nagging at my brain. I turned to Jenna for answers. “When we pulled up a few minutes ago, you seemed like you were in a serious hurry to get out of here. Where were you headed?”
Jenna stammered as she gave an unconvincing answer. “I was just going out to get some groceries.”
To me, that was an obvious lie. I called her on it. “In such a rush? Come on, no one is in that much of a hurry to go to the supermarket. It’s more likely that your mother called you to tell you that we might be stopping by, and you wanted to make sure you weren’t here when we arrived.”
Jenna took particular offense to my accusation. “Hey, that’s a real stretch.”
I kept an even keel as I pressed her again. “Is it?”
Jenna started backtracking, heading towards her front door. “Look, I told you everything I know. There’s nothing more to say. I’m going back inside.”
I furrowed my brow. “I thought you had groceries to get.”
“I, uh, changed my mind,” Jenna said.
“So you’re saying you don’t need groceries anymore? That’s curious, considering how much of a hurry you were in to get them before.”
Jenna reached her door and gave me one last exasperated reply. “I have nothing else to say to you.”
Kaitlin was determined to get the last word in. “I have one more thing to say to you. We’ll be keeping our eyes on you, so don’t even think of leaving town.”
Chapter Twelve
If you’re keeping track at home, that left us with two Widmarks down and one to go. Peter Widmark was next on our list of people to question. After our two previous encounters with suspects, part of me expected to show up at his house just as he was trying to make a break for it. There seemed to be a lot of that going around.
I was relieved when that did not happen. Not that Kaitlin and I encountered smooth sailing upon arriving at Peter’s run-down green bungalow. Far from it. The only greeting we received was from the birds chirping from the oak tree in the yard.
When we saw no car in his driveway and received no answer after knocking on Peter’s door, Kaitlin and I began to worry that he might have already tried to make a break for it. Kaitlin immediately got on her police radio and called in an all-points bulletin. We couldn’t be sure he’d truly skipped town or if he was just out running errands, but in this case, it was better to be safe than sorry. If I’d learned anything throughout this case, it was that the Widmark family seemed like a serious flight risk.
Besides, if he’d decided to run, he wouldn’t have a chance to get too far. In a short time, everyone with a badge would be looking for him. That was all done as a precaution. If he was still within the city limits, there would be one natural place to look for him—his workplace.
Kaitlin and I headed off to The Greasy Spoon, a local run-down diner at the edge of town. Much to our relief, Peter Widmark was behind the counter, manning the short-order grill. He was a rotund, sweaty man in his late fifties with a round face, a big gut, and a premature set of wrinkles that came from burning the candle too hard at both ends. I could see a pack of cigarettes protruding from his pocket that was no doubt a lifeline for him in a line of work like this.
The job of a short-order cook was the domain of the youthful, or at least the young at heart. It required an immense amount of energy to keep up with the demanding volume of orders and the fast-paced nature of the position. In addition, it required hour upon hour of standing. Even with orthopedically favorable shoes, it took a toll on the joints and bones to be upright for so long each day.
There was a high burnout rate, even for the young, so it was no surprise that it wasn’t the typical domain of the middle-aged. To be fair, flipping burgers wasn’t Peter’s choice in jobs. Like his body and his looks, Peter’s career trajectory had soured over the years as well.
Oh, how the successful had fallen. During his married days, he used to be the sous chef at Chez Chic, the premier, and really, only high-end French restaurant in town. After Olivia had divorced him, he hit the bottle hard. He began showing up late or not at all. Even when he did manage to arrive just as scheduled, he’d often bring a hangover with him, leading to poor work performance.
Eventually, he not only got fired from that job, but also a string of others. Years went by with him jumping on and off the wagon. By the time he finally managed to sober up, he’d sullied his once-pristine reputation beyond repair in the restaurant industry. With his bills piling up, he turned to the diner in a fit of desperation. Fittingly, after rifling through a nearly constant revolving door of short-order cooks, the diner was happy to hire someone who was so desperate for a paycheck.
As expected, Peter was not thrilled to see us. Kaitlin flashed her badge at him and gave him the opportunity to either be questioned in plain view of his boss and the assorted customers in the diner or to take a ten-minute break and head out back, where privacy awaited. With little hesitation, he opted to head into the alleyway behind the diner for a smoke break.
***
While private, the alleyway beside the diner was far from my preferred place to question Peter. It was a grimy place that sent a shiver down the spine of the inner neatnik in me. That wasn’t even the worst part. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get over the smell. The foul odors of a nearby dumpster kept wafting our way, assaulting my nasal passages, with no sign of letting up.
Peter didn’t seem to mind. Perhaps after spending his breaks out here day after day, he’d become immune to the smell in the same way that people who lived near an airport didn’t even notice the loud roar of jet engines flying above them after a while. His main concern seemed to be to get a cigarette into his mouth as quickly as possible.
He instinctively lit up a smoke and sucked on that cigarette like it was his best friend. For all I knew, it might have been. His life was in even bigger shambles than I thought. He looked like a broken man, a down-and-out figure that luck had passed by and who was still trying to pick up the pieces after all these years.
While I’d seen a lot of wistful looks in my time, I’d seen very few people so devoid of hope. There was a dead look in his eyes, as if his body were just an empty vessel carrying him from day to day with no real purpose.
“So, what’s this about?” he said.
Kaitlin took the lead in questioning him. “The murder of Sid Harper.”
He took another puff of his cigarette without even raising an eyebrow. “What are you wasting your time talking to me for?”
Kaitlin narrowed her eyes. “Are you really going to pretend like you don’t know that you’re a suspect?”
Peter scoffed and waved his hand forward in complete dismissal of her statement. “That’s ridiculous. Why would I want to kill Sid?”
I had to admit, I found his behavior to be not just surprising, but completely unpredictable. Most suspects got up in arms at the mention that they were under suspicion of murder. Outrage was a natural and expected reaction to that situation.
Yet, he reacted to the situation with absolute apathy. He didn’t raise his voice and was nonchalant to the point where he looked partially sedated. Part of me wanted to check him to see if he even had a pulse. Murder was often a crime of passion, but those who operated on the opposite end of the emotional spectrum could be just as dangerous if they operated in a cold, calculated, and callous manner.
Kaitlin grew impatient with him. “Fine, you want to play dumb?
I’ll spell it out for you. If it wasn’t for Sid, there’s a chance that your wife might not have ever found out that you were cheating on her. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have divorced you and started this downward spiral that’s left you as a shell of your former self.”
Peter acted like my daughter’s accusations were all no big deal. “All that stuff happened a long time ago. I live my life from one cigarette to another right now.”
I felt compelled to add my two cents. “We’re not done. We know you were at the reunion last night. What if seeing your ex-wife made you get nostalgic for those joyful days of yore? You got caught up in how things used to be. Then, you spotted your ex-wife with Sid, the very man who tore your life apart. When you put all that together, you can’t pretend like you’re not drenched in motive.”
I was sure that would get some kind of a rise out of him. Stunningly, I was dead wrong. His heart rate didn’t even appear to speed up in the slightest.
Peter was as cool as could be. “I admit that it looks like I have a motive, but that doesn’t mean I killed him.”
Kaitlin had one more piece of motive-building information to throw at him. “Then there’s the issue of the Gables. At the reunion, you were confronted by both your former mistress and your illegitimate daughter, reminding you of your past indiscretions, all of which were brought to light by Sid’s investigative work.”
By now, most suspects were livid and chewing us out. While Peter was still nowhere close to being explosive with anger, he did finally look highly annoyed. Instead of losing his temper and lashing out at us, he took a long drag of his cigarette then exhaled, looking like that was enough to release his tension.
“I know what you’re trying to do,” he said.
“We’re trying to find out the truth,” Kaitlin replied.
He shook his head in disagreement. “You’re trying to set me off. To get me to lose my temper. Well, it’s not going to work.”
Peter clearly thought that his even keel would dissuade us from suspecting him and eventually get us to go away.
I was eager to point out the flaw in his logic. “You can stand here looking as calm and collected as you want. That’s not going to change the fact that we’re here to find out the truth, and we’re not going to stop until we do that.”
Kaitlin picked up where I left off. “Speaking of, where were you last night between midnight and twelve thirty?”
“I was asleep,” he said.
Kaitlin followed up. “Really?”
He nodded. “Why do you seem so surprised?”
“After all that happened last night, you don’t seem like the kind of person who would just head home and call it a night,” Kaitlin said.
“Those wild days are behind me. I’m clean and sober three hundred and ninety-five days. Besides, I needed my sleep. I had the early shift at the diner this morning,” he replied.
“Were you alone, or do you happen to have anyone who can corroborate your alibi?” Kaitlin said.
Once again, he seemed to be conserving words with his short answers. “I was alone.”
Kaitlin tried to press him again. “That’s a shame for you.”
He didn’t even blink. After all the questions we had thrown his way, he hadn’t even broken a sweat. I wasn’t a card player, but I knew a man like this would be the worst kind of person to play poker with.
“I can’t disagree with you there,” he said.
I tried a different approach. “You realize that Sid’s house is on the way back from the reunion.”
Peter knew exactly where I was going with my statement and replied completely unfazed. “I went straight home.”
“It would be a lot easier to believe that if you had someone to verify your story,” I replied.
He stared me down. “It’s more than a story. It’s the truth.”
Sonny Angelo, the portly, balding, seventy-one-year-old who owned the diner, then poked his head out the door to the kitchen.
“Widmark, your break’s over,” Sonny said.
Peter turned to his boss. “I’ll be right there.” He then looked back at us. “Anything else, or can I go back to work?”
Kaitlin stared him down, hoping to see any sign of him cracking. When she saw none, she let him go. “That’s all.”
Peter dropped what was left of his cigarette on the ground and crushed it under the weight of his shoe then walked back into the kitchen of the diner without saying another word to us.
Chapter Thirteen
Unlike the Widmarks, the Gables were much easier to track down. When Hannah Gable moved away decades before, she hadn’t just left town, she’d cut all her ties with the place. She lost both her house and a number of friends in her divorce. The friends she had left, she slowly drifted away from, and she had no family to speak of in the area.
So when she returned for the reunion, it was a safe assumption that she’d have no choice but to stay in one of the local motels. Happy Creek was small enough of a town that there were only three vacation lodgings within the city limits. It took only a few calls to discover that Hannah and her daughter were staying at the Happy Creek Motor Lodge.
Or, at least they were. There was no telling if they’d still be there when we arrived. Of all the suspects who could have made a break for it, the Gables were the most likely. I wouldn’t have put it past them to pack up their stuff and bolt home without bothering to pay their hotel bill.
As Kaitlin and I arrived at the motor lodge, I got a bad feeling in my gut. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why, but I was sure that would be revealed to me soon enough. One thing immediately struck me as we parked beside the lobby. Considering that it was the weekend, the lodge was quieter than expected. The pool area was empty. There were only three other cars in the parking lot. And, since the continental breakfast had ended hours before, save for the front desk clerk, the lodge itself had zero foot traffic.
As we entered the lobby, my head was on a swivel. I assure you, it wasn’t because of the décor. It wasn’t that I was expecting ornate decorations and trimmings. The lodge catered to the budget traveler. Even so, I’d rarely seen such a place with such a complete lack of character. The place was so sparse and indistinctive, I felt like I was walking into a government building, not a motel.
Interior decorating decisions aside, something else about the motor lodge caught my attention as Kaitlin got the Gables’ room number from the clerk. I was about to tell my daughter about it, but she looked determined to rush me off to the Gables’ room.
“Come on,” Kaitlin said.
I didn’t move. “Hold on.”
Kaitlin turned around and looked back at me, confused. “What’s going on?”
I approached the front-desk clerk, chomping at the bit. “Are those security cameras I see in the parking lot?”
“Yes,” he replied.
My daughter then caught on to my line of thought. She pulled out her police badge and held it up for the front-desk clerk. “We’d like to take a look at the tape from last night.”
***
After reviewing last night’s security tapes, Kaitlin and I headed over to the Gables’ room. Surprisingly, Hannah Gable answered the door shortly after we knocked.
“Yes?” Hannah said.
Hannah was a redhead in her late fifties with a slender body, an angular, world-weary face, and blue eyes. As I looked over Hannah’s shoulder, I could see her grown daughter, Sabrina, sitting on the bed watching television.
Kaitlin held up her police badge, which didn’t seem to faze Hannah in the least.
“Kaitlin Calahan, Happy Creek Police Department. We need to ask you some questions.”
I looked Hannah up and down and didn’t see the slightest bit of tension. It was jarring for me to see how relaxed she was. She acted almost like she’d been expecting us to arrive at her door as if it was a foregone conclusion that with Sid’s death, she’d surely be questioned by the police.
For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why
she didn’t put up any resistance to our arrival. I knew if I was in her place, I’d be losing my mind.
Hannah was clearly operating from a completely different playbook, as proven by her next response. “Do you want to come in?”
My eyes opened wide. Typically, a suspect wanted to have it out right then and there in the doorway, or outside even. Never once had one invited us in, until now.
Ironically, in this particular circumstance, it was not in our best interest to take her up on her offer. I could have continued to delve into why she was so calm and collected, but there were more pressing matters. First and foremost was the need to separate the mother and daughter before questioning them. One suspect was a handful, but dealing with two at once was just too much to juggle. Besides, with them separated, there was an opportunity to play one against each other.
Kaitlin was thinking exactly the same thing that I was. “Actually, we’re fine out here.”
Hannah looked surprised. “Oh, okay.” She tried to cut to the heart of the matter. “So, what do you want to ask us?”
“I want to start by asking you come out here,” Kaitlin said.
Hannah shrugged her shoulders. “All right.” She turned back to her daughter. “Sabrina, turn off the TV. The police want to talk to us.”
Kaitlin stopped her. “Actually, your daughter can stay here. We just want to talk to you right now.”
Hannah was confused. “Really?”
Kaitlin nodded. “We’ll get to Sabrina later.”
Hannah still looked unfazed. “It’s your call.”
“Now, let’s get down to the questioning,” Kaitlin said.
Chapter Fourteen
As I stared Hannah Gable down, I was amazed at the lack of concern on her face. Every suspect wanted to pretend that they weren’t sweating as we questioned them, but most of the time, it was just an act. With Hannah, it was a reality. She seemed impossible to get a rise out of. I was eager to see if that would continue, or would she begin to wilt when the hardball questions came out?
Meredith Potts Fourteen Book Cozy Mystery Set Page 81