Red, White, and Blueberry Muffin Murder

by Addison Moore

  “Where did they go?” Leo mewls. “They must have wandered deeper into the forest. Let’s go find them.”

  “No way am I going in there,” I say. “It’s a maze I’ve gotten lost in a time or two. Can’t you patrol from the sky and figure out their location before I meet up with a bear and become his dinner?”

  “Fine,” he says, rising into the sky. “They were shouting. This should be easy.”

  Leo turns into a supernatural speck in the sky in less than three seconds when I spot Betsy and Bridger having a terse conversation. I take a few steps in their direction, pretending to be suddenly interested in the tools laid out on one of the tables marked half off, but no sooner do I get within listening range than Bridger stalks off—and he’s headed in this direction.

  “Hey, Lottie,” he pants and I can’t help but notice he looks distressed. “Looking for something for one of the men in your life?”

  “No, actually, it was for me.” I shoot him a wry smile. Women need tools, too. But I know he wasn’t trying to come across that way. “I’ve been needing a good drill,” I say, picking up a round flying saucer looking contraption the size of a hardback.

  “That’s an orbital sander.” He chuckles. “If you’re looking to refinish your floors, it’ll become your best friend.”

  “I’d do it, but my landlord might become my enemy.”

  “Is Noah here?” He glances behind me as if he was expecting him.

  “Yeah, he’s actually somewhere on the grounds. There was a small crisis he had to deal with.”

  Bridger closes his eyes a moment. “I can relate. I’d better close up shop for the night.” He gets busy doing just that and I spot Betsy holding herself as she walks this way.

  “Hey, Betsy, nice to see you here,” I say, trying to capture her gaze.

  She shoots a quick look my way. “I’m sorry, Lottie. I’m in a terrible mood. I think I’ll skip out on the fireworks and just go home.”

  “You can’t do that. They’re about to go off in less than a half hour. Is everything okay?”

  She looks back at Bridger. “You know, all I wanted was some answer as to why I was treated so horribly. And do you know what he told me? That it’s not all about me. He even threw in the word sweetheart.” She shakes her head. “I can’t stand it when men placate me that way.”

  “Don’t let him win. You go buy yourself a hot dog, have as many of my desserts you want, on the house, and watch the fireworks show. Bridger might be right. Sometimes it’s not all about us—it’s about not letting the hotheads firing us without explanation get to us.”

  A tiny laugh emits from her. “Thanks, Lottie. You made me feel better.”

  She disappears into the murky darkness as Leo floats down my way with all the elegance of a feather in the wind.

  “Follow me, Lottie. They’re still going at it.” Leo leads the charge, and soon we’re about ten feet into the woods and I can hear angry voices.

  “All you care about is controlling other people,” Quincy growls. “That’s why you got rid of me, and that’s exactly why you got rid of Clark.” He stomps off and right into me before I can move out of his way.

  “Lottie?” He looks thoroughly confused all of a sudden. His fingers tap over his face, and I can see three crimson lines, a fresh scratch. I have a feeling I know who delivered it, too.

  “I was taking my cat out for a stroll,” I say, pulling Leo in toward me. “Gah!” I cry out as I toss the celestial kitty because for one—he can’t see him!

  “What’s that?” He leans in. “Sorry, the night is getting to me. I need to get a drink. I’d step out of the woods before you get lost.” He brushes by me and I see Sammy standing at the edge of the woods, looking out at the lake as the anticipation of the fireworks show only grows among the unruly crowd.

  Leo lands on my shoulders and whips his glowing tail over my face. “Did you hear what he said to her? She got rid of my Clark. She pulled the trigger that night, Lottie. I don’t know why it’s taking so long for someone to arrest her.”

  “I don’t know either,” I whisper as my feet take me in that direction.

  “Sammy?” I call out and she turns my way with the moonlight shining over her dark tresses, giving them an electric blue tint.

  “Lottie?” She looks past me. “Is everything all right?”

  Leo snorts. “I bet she’s looking for your pistol-packing boyfriend. She knows her days are numbered.”

  I nod as I agree with him in silence.

  “Sammy, I heard you and Quincy arguing.”

  “Oh that.” She lets out an exasperated sigh. “Let me give you a bit of free advice, honey. Don’t trust a man any more than you can throw him. A round or two in the bedroom is all you need to satisfy that itch. After that nightmare with Clark, I should have known better than getting involved with someone else. You’d think I’d learn my lesson.” She huffs out at the lake as if she were genuinely angry with herself.

  Clark and his dead body lying on the sand not too far from here flits through my mind, and a river of words begs to percolate from me.

  Leo twitches. “She’s done this, Lottie,” he purrs in my ear with anger. “Do something or I’ll be forced to do something myself.”

  I don’t need his threats to spur me on. I’m long past the point of wanting to put the Willoughby case to rest.

  “Sammy”—my voice shakes as I try to control my budding anger—“the night you came upon Clark’s body, you asked Everett and me if we had done that to him. You asked us specifically if Clark had owed us money.”

  She blinks my way. “My goodness, did he?” She looks delighted in the fact.

  “No, he didn’t owe us anything. But it got me thinking.” That story Betsy told me about Clark’s bruises is still circling through my mind—that coupled with that scratch I just saw Quincy wearing on his cheek. “You were physically abusive to Clark, weren’t you?”

  Her features harden as she glares my way. The tension is so thick you can build a ladder to the moon with it.

  “As he was to me.” She doesn’t bother to deny it.

  Leo growls her way, “I knew it. She’s been harmful to him for years. And the end result was death.”

  My breathing grows erratic. “The night of the break-in, Clark said he turned off the security cameras to your home.” I nod her way because I know I’m right. “There was no break-in, was there? You were going to kill him that night.”

  “I was going to divorce him. I deserved half of everything that man had. He was just too greedy to give it to me.”

  Leo lets out a yowl, “I think I have to agree with her on this one.”

  My mouth opens as I look to the long-deceased kitty among us.

  “Divorce?” I shift my gaze back to Sammy. “You set up a home invasion instead of retaining a lawyer?”

  “Oh, I knew the only way to get rid of him was through a casket. Clark Willoughby was stubborn and cold-hearted. He said since I was his second wife, I didn’t deserve any of his assets. Those were my assets, too. Any divorce lawyer would have sided with me. I lost my temper.” She closes her eyes. “But I didn’t set up the home invasion, Lottie. He did.”

  Both Leo and I gasp at once.

  “That’s right,” she says. “After I asked for the divorce, he turned off the cameras because we were about to make cage fighting look like a playground for toddlers. He came at me with a knife, and I armed myself as well. I carved him up pretty good that night and him me.” She shudders as she glances out at the lake. “Clark said he’d pin it all on me, that he had been storing up evidence to prove he was an abused husband for years. He said the only way to avoid jail time was for me to stay at the house and for the two of us to stay married. And we did. But we led separate lives.”

  “And you couldn’t take it anymore so you shot him.”

  She inches back, looking stunned. “I didn’t shoot Clark that night. That, my friend, was my lucky break.”

  Leo yowls once again, “She’
s lying, isn’t she?”

  “Then who killed him?” I ask without taking my eyes off hers.

  She scoffs as she looks to the sky. “Whoever he was skimming money off of. Let’s just say the antique shops have all had a spike in sales these last few months. Each one of those stores has what Clark used to call a ‘sucker born every minute piece.’ Usually a raunchy painting he marked up to some ridiculous price. Well, they all sold out, and then some. The night he died, I had asked him about those booby prizes he’d been pushing. I still have access to the accounting software at the stores. Bridger never changed the passwords when I stepped away from them.”

  Leo taps his paw over my shoulders. “It’s a wonder he didn’t. Everyone knows Sammy can’t be trusted.”

  I nod.

  It is a wonder.

  “Clark was inflating merchandise and they were selling like hotcakes?” I quirk a brow at Leo. Sounds like he was cleaning dirty money to me.

  “That’s right.” Sammy nods. “And do you know what that sounds like to me? Like he was cleaning dirty money. That’s what we argued over just before someone tracked him down and put a bullet in his chest. If you’re looking for the killer, I’d look in the direction of whoever bought those pricey objects.”

  “Do you have access to the records of who could have bought them?”

  “No, but Bridger does.” A hot breeze whistles by and she wipes the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. “Excuse me, Lottie. I need to see about getting something cold and fruity to drink.”

  She takes off and I look out at the lake just as Bridger steps into my line of vision as he closes up shop for the night.

  “Leo,” I pant as I take a blind step forward. “I think we’ve been looking in all the wrong places. I have a feeling the answer has been right in front of us all this time.”

  Leo lets out a sharp meow, and it echoes off the evergreens and comes back as the roar of a ferocious lion.

  I’m feeling a bit ferocious myself at the moment.

  “Let’s go talk to him,” my voice shakes with anger as I whisper.

  If I’m right, I’ll not only blow Clark’s homicide investigation right out of the water, but I just might put a stop to those ATM thefts as well.

  Lottie

  The lake shimmers and sparkles as if the stars had fallen onto the water.

  The crowd is jovial, and a few catcalls go off across the way, along with the sharp drill of a buzzer.

  “And now”—a booming voice calls over the crowd—“let me introduce you to the newly official hot dog queen herself, Carlotta Sawyer!” He draws out her name as a smattering of cheers breaks out, but I can’t break my gaze from the man in front of me.

  Leo purrs as he strikes me over the head with his tail. “Did you hear that? Carlotta won the contest. I believe the rules state she gets a free hot dog every day of the year. I’d be nice to her now that she’s struck it rich. She might even share one of those wieners with you.”

  “I don’t want any of Carlotta’s wieners,” I grunt as I step out of the woods.

  “It’s probably for the best.” Leo sighs. “She almost clawed my eyes out when I tried to take a bite out of one of her spicy pickles.”

  “Spicy pickles?” My ears hike a notch with sudden interest in Carlotta’s dietary habits. For most of my pregnancy with Lyla Nell, I enjoyed more than my fair share of fried pickles. I’ll admit, a spicy fried pickle sounds good right about now.

  “Lottie?” Bridger calls out from the murky darkness before me. “Is that you? Did you say something?”

  “Let’s go,” Leo says, floating on ahead like a luminary in the night and he doesn’t have to tell me twice.

  A sea of tables lies barren as Bridger works to pack up the leftover inventory into storage bins.

  “Yes, it’s me,” I say as I come within ten feet of him and pause. “Everett took off looking for Evie, our older daughter, and I thought maybe they were out this way, but it looks as if I was wrong.”

  Bridger’s dark curly hair has a halo of moonlight over it as he offers a quick smile my way.

  “Well, I wouldn’t go too deep into those woods without a flashlight. I’d hate to see you twist an ankle.”

  “I won’t go back.” I make my way carefully through the maze of tables until he’s just a few feet in front of me. “It looks as if you’ve buttoned everything up.”

  “The big Garage Sale at the Lake event is officially no more.” He sheds a quick grin and his teeth illuminate as if he had a mouthful of fireflies. “It’s our last night and we managed to do better than I thought. But you know, a lot of people came by after Clark’s death. Not only was this his baby, but he died just a few feet from here. People came out and brought flowers. It was sort of a memorial. It’s been a tough month.”

  “Not that tough,” Leo grunts as he holds up his claws to the moonlight. “But I suspect it’ll get tough for good old Bridger here in just a few moments. I plan on taking him back to paradise with me.”

  I shake my head over at Leo because that’s not how this works—although sometimes I wish it would. It might unclog our legal system a bit, and come to think of it, cost my husband his job.

  “It’s been a tough month, indeed,” I say. “Bridger, what kind of a relationship did you have with Clark?”

  “We were good friends. The best. Sammy and he had been on the outs for so long, some days I was the only person he talked to. He has grown children, but they’re not even on the same coast. I guess you might even say we were best friends.”

  Leo growls, “I detest liars as much as I do killers, Lottie. Let me at him.”

  I hold up a finger.

  Soon enough, Leo. Soon enough.

  “Bridger, that day at the lake when we met, the Fourth—you called Clark your partner in crime and then you winked at him. You were trying to get under his skin, weren’t you?”

  He hoists a plastic bin onto the table next to him and his brows pinch together as if he were trying to recall.

  “I suppose I could have.” He shrugs. “We jested like that. It wasn’t anything big. In fact, I bet had Clark survived the night, we would have gone out for drinks afterwards.” His lips curve into an eerie grin at the thought.

  Leo distends his claws and poises them in Bridger’s direction. “He’ll drink blood before midnight—his own.”

  I take a breath. “Last week, when we had dinner at Mangias, you looked stymied when Noah suggested that there were two homicides at the lake the night Clark died. You said you found that hard to believe. You thought Rooster died of natural causes. That’s because you knew exactly what happened to Clark, isn’t it?”

  “Excuse me?” He pauses from picking up another bin.

  “I had mentioned that maybe it was the work of a serial killer and you jumped all over that theory because you knew it could not only help cover your tracks—it could bury them. But you doubled down on covering your tracks that night. You told Noah he should investigate Betsy Monroe—you whet his appetite just enough, letting him know that Clark fired her after she begged him not to call the sheriff’s department.”

  “That was true. Did he ever speak to Betsy?” His eyes narrow over mine and he takes a moment to ride his gaze down my body.

  “He’s gauging you,” Leo mewls. “He thinks you’ll be easy to knock over, or knock over the head. Perhaps I should handle the rest of thissss,” he hisses out that last word like the threat it is.

  “Yeah, Noah and I both spoke to Betsy, and she had nothing but nice things to say about you. She called you a software genius. She said you were fluent in three different coding languages. You utilized your know-how, didn’t you? That’s how you made that blank ATM card—the skimmer?” I don’t know why I didn’t put this together earlier when Noah mentioned the blank card.

  The whites of Bridger’s eyes expand. He knows his time as a thief has come to a close, and I’m about to ensure his time as a killer on the run has come to a close as well.

 
“That was the card you inadvertently gave me the other day when you were buying my blueberry muffins. You knew how to code it to get those ATM machines to spit out however much money you needed. You are proficient, after all, in three different coding languages—at least according to what you told Betsy. And then you took the money you stole and washed it all around town, but primarily through Clark’s antique stores. That’s where you cooked books to make Clark’s accountant believe you were selling some of the merchandise at ridiculous markups. A painting here, a vase there—and then what? How did you land the money back into your own account? My guess is you not only stole from the banks, you stole from Clark, too. It was easy enough. You were the manager.” A thought comes to me. “Clark caught on, didn’t he? And you lied. You made up a story about a dirty judge, and you got Betsy fired for something you were doing. And when Clark caught you red-handed, well, you knew your jig was up because there was no one left to blame.”

  An amused look crosses his face. “What about Sammy? I’m pretty certain she’s a viable suspect when it comes to stealing from Clark.”

  “You should know, you set her up expertly. You didn’t change the password on the accounting software at the shops because you knew, that way, Sammy would still be able to poke around. And each time she did, it would create a cyber fingerprint as she logged in and out of the software. You timed your thievery of the shops to coordinate with her visits. And with that, there would be just one more person to blame should things go south for you. Is that why you killed Clark?”

  Bridger purses his lips, his eyes never leaving mine.

  “Yes,” he says as his breathing picks up. “You figured it all out. I guess you’re not just another pretty face.” A dark rumble of a laugh infiltrates his chest. “Everett was lucky to have you. But just like I couldn’t let Clark live to tell the tale, I’m afraid I can’t let you live to tell it either.”

  He picks something long and dark out of the bin in front of him and swings it at me with great force and I duck just in time to evade, taking a hit to the temple.