Lydia had been avoiding announcing what had happened in this regard. “Daniel’s date did go for just under a thousand dollars.”
“So, you won?” Kelsey asked, happily.
Lydia tried not to show her disappointment on her face as she said, “No. I had given away some of my cash before he came onstage because he told me that he didn’t expect bidding to go so high.”
“I wish that I had been quicker about taking my money out of my purse so I could have given it to you,” Annette said. “My date was such a dud. I would have much rather have given it to you so that Amber wouldn’t have won.”
“Wait a second,” Kelsey said, holding up her hands. “Amber won?! Evil ice cream shop Amber?”
“She’s not really evil. Just not nice,” said Lydia. “And it’s fine. It’s just a picnic. And they’re both just going to support the community center. It’s not a real date.”
“Are you sure Amber sees it that way?” asked Kelsey.
Lydia was saved having to answer by some excitement at the door. Trina ran inside, still wearing the smock she usually wore at the hair salon. She was joined by the bachelor that she had won at the auction, though Trent looked sheepish being dragged in through the door.
“Liddy, I only have a short break before my next appointment at the salon, but I had to tell you something!”
“Are you in love already?” asked Kelsey.
Trina grinned. “It’s too early to know that yet. But it is off to a great start. Trent remembered what Daniel told him about me working at a salon, and he was able to track me down so we could make plans for our date. Which will be on his boat tonight. And I am really looking forward to it.”
“Me too,” Trent said.
“But that’s not why we had to run over here,” said Trina quickly. “Trent, tell them what you told me. After I told you about why I left the auction because of the fire and the murder.”
Trent still looked a little self-conscious, addressing the female strangers. “Well, I told Trina that I knew Phil Burns. He is – was a neighbor. And he was a very nice guy. Very friendly when you saw him on the street. He waved at me yesterday when I got my mail, and he watered his lawn. And he was a good firefighter too. My house caught on fire a few months ago, and he put it out. There wasn’t too much damage because of how quickly he worked.”
“Yeah. This is good character witness stuff,” said Trina. “But I want you to tell her the other thing.”
“It might be nothing,” Trent said. “But I am Phil’s neighbor, so I did see some of his interactions. And I know that he and his brother, Pete, do not get along. I saw them fighting a few times. I’m not sure what it was about though.”
“Isn’t that interesting?” Trina asked. “Pete Burns could be a great suspect. If he and his brother were fighting, it might have escalated to murder.”
Lydia nodded thoughtfully. She could never be capable of killing her own brother, but it might be different for other siblings. There was definitely a lot of emotional baggage that family members could carry.
“Are you sure it was murder though?” Trent asked. “Fighting fires is a dangerous job. Maybe it was just an accident. I would hate to think that somebody killed my neighbor. Even if he and his brother were fighting a lot, Phil seemed like such a nice guy. He’s not someone that should be murdered.”
“Well, the other firefighter thought there was chance of foul play,” Trina said before checking the time. “I’ve got to go! I can’t make Mrs. Miresome wait.”
“I’ll walk you back,” Trent offered.
Trina smiled. The couple waved goodbye and headed out the door.
“At least someone got a good date out of the auction,” Annette said.
“A good date and some good information,” said Lydia. “I wonder if Leo knows about this.”
8
Detective Talk
After dealing with some morning customers, Lydia left the taffy shop and headed to the police station. Even if her motive was somewhat colored by a desire to distract herself from Daniel’s date and distance herself from the boardwalk in case Amber dropped by to try and taunt her, Lydia was interested in the murder and arson case. Phil Burns had been willing to be part of the bachelor auction to help the community center, and it seemed that he had been an admirable firefighter who saved homes and cats in Ocean Point. She wanted to make sure that his killer was caught. The first thing she had to do was to make certain that Leo was considering this a murder investigation and not an accident.
She walked up to Leo’s desk with a box of her almond salt water taffy. He looked happy to see the taffy but less overjoyed to see her.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Tell me you’re not trying to get involved in my case.”
“Is that what you think every time you see me?” she asked as she handed over her taffy gift and he took a bite. “What if I just wanted to see you? What if I wanted brotherly advice?”
“About Daniel going out with another woman?” Leo asked, testing the waters.
Lydia’s back straightened involuntarily. She hadn’t been expecting that to be brought up here, but of course, her brother would know that this bothered her.
“Well, if that was why I was here, what would you say?” Lydia asked.
“I’d say that it seems like Daniel is crazy about you and that he’s doing this for charity, so I wouldn’t be jealous.” Lydia felt momentarily relived until he continued. “But the woman I loved refused my proposal in front of a full restaurant, so maybe I don’t know everything there is to know about relationships.”
“Great.”
“But I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” Leo said, trying to reassure her again. “It’s not like you told him you were going to bid a thousand dollars on him and then didn’t. Amber just had more money. It happens.”
“What if I had said that I would bid a thousand dollars, but then gave some of it away because I was told that bids wouldn’t go much above five hundred dollars?”
Leo considered it, but then hit her shoulder affectionately. “Well, Daniel should know that your brother is a part of the police force and he better not break your heart. Otherwise, every wrong step he takes will be ticketed.”
Lydia knew he was trying to cheer her up and thanked him.
“But since I am a member of the police force,” Leo said as Detective Grey joined them. “I am very busy. We’re expecting someone to come in for questioning any moment.”
“Because of the Phil Burns murder?” asked Lydia.
He glared at her. “You really did come here to try and get involved.”
“I just wanted to make sure that the crime was being considered murder and not just arson. The firefighter Brenda had some concerns about the manner of death, and I did too.”
Detective Grey cleared his throat. “She should be here any moment.”
“Lydia was just leaving,” Leo said, gesturing for her head towards the door.
She might have given in and left if she didn’t see Brie Rankin approaching at that very moment.
“She’s the person you’re going to question?” Lydia asked.
The detectives both looked confused by her presence.
“No,” said Leo. “We want to talk to the owner of the building. But it doesn’t matter. You should still be going.”
Lydia stayed where she was as Brie approached them. If the local reporter was going to get information on the case, Lydia didn’t want to find out about it in the paper the next day. She wanted the information right away too.
“I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Brie said.
“Actually, we were just about to interview someone,” Detective Grey said.
Brie looked at Lydia and raised an eyebrow. “Lydia didn’t stumble upon another dead body, did she?”
“Lydia was about to leave,” Leo said, starting to sound like a broken record. “She’s not who we were planning on speaking to.”
“I’ll be quick, so
I can get out of your hair before you need to get to business,” Brie said. “Detective Grey, I won a date with you at the auction.”
“I am aware,” he said. “And quite a bit of money was raised for the community center because of it.”
“I didn’t bid on you for that reason,” Brie said. “I thought that it might be interesting to go on a date. I wanted to see what you were like off duty.”
“I can’t tell the press anything about my cases.”
“I’m slightly offended that you think that’s my reason,” Brie said, crossing her arms.
Leo and Lydia exchanged a look. They knew that getting a source at the police station had been the exact reason that Brie had been overly flirting with Leo not that long ago. However, Leo had not been swayed by her sweet nothings in the least because he had still been head over heels for Suzanne.
“I just wanted to be clear from the beginning,” said Detective Grey.
“Understood,” Brie said, uncrossing and smiling. “And I do understand that your important work takes precedence to your social life. That’s why you had to run off after the auction and why you are busy now. But I want to make sure that you will be able to contact me when you are free again, so we can plan a proper date. I really just came by to give you my phone number.”
She handed him a piece of paper, and Detective Grey stared on it. Lydia realized it must have been quite a while since a woman gave him her phone number.
“Call me,” Brie instructed.
Detective Grey looked flustered for a moment but then nodded. “I will.”
Brie grinned and then departed. Lydia stared after her. She hadn’t asked for any information about the case at all. Was it possible that she really had come only to give Detective Grey her number? Had she bid on him because she wanted to date him and not probe him for information? Or was this a setup? What was she up to?
“Well,” Detective Grey said. “I suppose she did pay a good deal of money for her dinner with me. I should have reached out to her before. But I will take care of this matter when I am off duty.”
“Have fun when you have this date,” Leo said. “But be careful with her.”
“I’m a very careful person,” Detective Grey responded.
They didn’t discuss the upcoming date any further because it was then that the woman that Leo and Detective Grey had been waiting for arrived. It was the owner of the massage parlor who had also served as a presenter during the auction. She looked terrified.
“Thank you for coming in to see us,” Leo said.
“I felt like I needed to,” she replied. “It did take place on the upper level of my building. And I feel so awful about it. But I don’t really think it was my fault. Was it? I just wanted to get my business’s name out there. I thought being a part of this event for the community would be good. Now I’ll just be associated with a fire. Who wants to think about that when getting a massage? And someone died. Oh dear. I’m not going to get sued because of this, am I?”
“As long as you didn’t set the fire, you should be fine,” Leo said. “We don’t believe what happened was the result of negligence.”
“That’s a relief,” she said, and it did seem as if a weight was taken off her shoulders. “But wait. Does that mean that someone else did set the fire? Did someone try to burn down my building? Or to kill that man?”
Leo looked pointedly at Lydia and then turned to his partner. “Why don’t you show our witness to the other room? I’ll deal with Lydia.”
Detective Grey nodded and led the other woman away.
“You made that sound very serious,” Lydia said.
“I am serious when I say that you need to stop interfering with police investigations,” Leo said, fixing her with a stare.
“I just wanted to make sure that you were treating this like a murder case.”
“If that’s what you need to know in order to drop this, then yes. We are investigating a potential murder. In fact, we’re quite sure it was murder.”
“You are?” asked Lydia, hoping to get a little more information. “Phil Burns didn’t die trying to fight that fire?”
“Not this fire,” Leo said. “He was killed from a fire, but he was actually killed several days ago. And we’re pretty sure it wasn’t at the location we found him in.”
“That’s why you want to talk to the building owner.”
“Yes. Now, will you go home? Or make taffy? Or fix things with Daniel? Anything but keep poking around in this murder matter?”
“Wait,” Lydia said, not quite ready to promise anything. “You said he was killed several days ago?”
“Yes. Between three and four days ago.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” said Lydia.
“A lot of things about this case don’t make sense yet, but we detectives will figure it out,” Leo said, stressing the word that didn’t include her. “I need to go and be a part of the questioning. Can I trust you to leave this alone?”
“I guess I probably should talk to Daniel and let him know I’m feeling a little insecure about his date,” said Lydia.
“That’s the spirit,” Leo said, starting to walk away.
Lydia started the exit the station. Her thoughts were mixed. Part of her wondered how to express her nervousness about Amber’s actions without seeming like she didn’t trust Daniel. The other part was wondering how Phil Burns could have been killed three days ago if three people saw him since then.
9
Doggie Drama
Lydia did try to call Daniel, but she had been put straight through to voicemail. She tried not to dwell on the possible reasons that he could be ignoring her and decided to get some answers to her questions instead. She didn’t mean to disobey Leo’s direct order. However, she couldn’t stop wondering about the timeline of events.
She trusted the local medical examiner when it came to determining the causes of death. He was skilled at his job, and Lydia didn’t think he could make a mistake as major as confusing someone being dead a few hours with several days. However, this did make things confusing.
Brenda had said that Phil had walked right past her and ignored her the other day. Trent had said that he saw his neighbor watering his lawn and even the grumpy Walt had complained about seeing Phil Burns save a cat from a tree. This had apparently all happened after Phil had been killed. It might have been possible for one person to be mistaken about when they saw the man, but three? That seemed unlikely.
She found herself wandering toward the local fire station and hoping that there wouldn’t be any fire calls that would have pulled Brenda away. She found she was in luck as she approached the station.
Brenda was certainly there. She was outside, enjoying the summer day and lack of fire calls, with a cheerful Dalmatian. The dog was slow-moving but excited to play fetch with the firefighter.
“I didn’t know fire stations still had Dalmatians,” Lydia said as she approached.
“They don’t really,” Brenda said, petting the dog as she brought the toy back to her. “But Dotty is a part of the team, as a mascot. For now, at least. She comes with us when we visit schools to talk about fire safety. And she’s a part of all the parades we’re in.”
“What do you mean for now?” asked Lydia.
“She’s retiring,” Brenda said. “She’s not as young as she used to be. It’s time for her to become someone’s pet and for a new young pup to face the students.”
“This is the Dotty you mentioned,” Lydia said.
Brenda looked up from her canine friend to look closer at Lydia. Recognition dawned on her face.
“You’re that lady from the beach with the taffy,” Brenda said. “The detective’s sister.”
“Right. Lydia.”
“I’m sorry I was so upset last time we spoke. I don’t usually explode like that.”
“I can understand why you did. I’d be despondent if one of my coworkers died. And if I suspected murder, I would be angry too.”
“Bu
t it was unprofessional to go onto the beach like that. And it had consequences. I had sand in my hat for a good while,” Brenda said. “So, what brings you here? Not checking up on me again, right?”
Lydia thought quickly. “No. Well, not exactly. You said that Phil Burns would have loved my salt water taffy. For some reason that’s been bouncing around in my head. I wanted to do something helpful, and the one small action that I could think of was to donate taffy to the station for all the other firefighters in his memory.”
Almonds and Arson Page 4