by Imogen Plimp
“Thanks Evelyn,” she managed to fit in between sniffles. “I’m just … a mess!”
“Of course you are! Your best friend just died!” Evelyn patted her on the back and cooed, handling her like a colicky infant.
“And not under the best of circumstances, either…” I chimed in. But my comment didn’t help things any.
Whitney began wailing. “But … it’s not just that! She … there was something going on, and … and I couldn’t get it … out of her! I could … could have …” She was beginning to hyperventilate.
Evelyn continued her patting in vain. “It’s alright, let it all out…”
“I could have saved her!” Whitney howled.
In spite of myself, my “mom” kicked in. “No, sweetheart—she wasn’t your responsibility…”
“Yeah,” agreed Evelyn, nodding sympathetically. “If she was into something dangerous, then there was nothing you could do.”
“And if you figured out what it was she had gotten herself into,” I added, “and you tried to help her out of it—then you could have ended up dead, too.” I reached into my purse for a fresh packet of Kleenex and handed it to Whitney.
She snuffled and blew her nose daintily, rivers of mascara pouring down her rosy cheeks. “I guess you’re right.”
I guided Whitney over toward her plush magenta couch, which was loaded with colorful throw pillows, and all three of us sat down—with Whitney sandwiched in the middle.
“What makes you so sure she was involved in something dangerous?” I asked, removing a giant green pillow sporting a drawing of a Chihuahua-as-Mexican-wrestler from under my backside.
“I’m not even sure I remember anymore.” Whitney shakily removed a fresh tissue from my packet and blew her nose again. “It’s becoming such a blur now, with her gone, even though it all started only a few days ago…”
Evelyn raised an eyebrow, her gaze fixed on me. “What started a few days ago?”
“It was after Jimmy Matthews died.” Whitney pushed mousy wisps of her disheveled bob out of her eyes and sniffled some more. “All of a sudden, Leslie started acting … I don’t know … weird.”
My skin began to prickle.
Whitney continued. “It was the morning after Jimmy died. She and I were supposed to go to a yoga class together, and she cancelled at the last minute, said she had other plans. But she never misses yoga. Even when she’s sick or … hungover…” She snuffled through her monologue.
Evelyn and I nodded, each patting our respective sides of Whitney’s back.
“So anyway, I went to class, and then I called her to see what’s up. And she didn’t answer. So I decided to stop by her house and see if she needed anything. And when I got there, Sheriff Sellers was just leaving. And I thought something horrible had happened…” She wiped her eyes with a fresh tissue. “So I knocked on her door, and … and she told me to go away! She was just real … twitchy or something, acting weird. I thought … well—you won’t tell anyone I suppose—I thought maybe she was on a bad trip. And she got in trouble with the sheriff for possession or something.”
“Yeah, drugs’ll make you act twitchy sometimes,” Evelyn assured her. I took her word for it.
Whitney pressed on, picking up steam now. “So I let her alone, thinking the last thing I should do is poke the bear … and then I heard about Jimmy, so I decided to stop at the bar on my way in to work. That’s when I saw you guys.
“But she wouldn’t tell me anything! Just that she ‘knew something,’ and at first she wasn’t sure it was accurate, but then at the bar she said she was sure … and that she’d never been so pissed in her life!”
“Pissed?” I asked, confused.
“Oh yeah.” Whitney answered.
“So when we saw her crying…”
“She wasn’t upset. I mean, she was sad and surprised Jimmy died, that was sad for everybody, but she was angry on Monday. Real angry. She was more angry than I’ve ever seen her! That was rage crying you saw.”
“Oh, women…” Evelyn piped up.
Whitney and I looked at her questioningly.
She shrugged. “I’m just saying, when us women are angry, and I mean really angry, we cry. Men yell. That’s the difference between the sexes. But I digress. Anyway, go on.”
Whitney sighed—an end-of-sobbing-fit sigh. “She just kept saying she couldn’t tell me anything, she didn’t want to get me involved, and I should stop being a snoop and mind my own business.”
“She didn’t tell you what she was mad about at all?” I asked as I handed Whitney another fresh Kleenex pack. “No clues to anything?”
Whitney shook her head. “She said she got beat.”
I gasped. “Someone beat her up?”
“No, she got beat as in … someone beat her at something. Some kind of emotional game. They won, and she lost.”
“Did she say if it was a him or a her who beat her?” Evelyn asked.
“No. I don’t think so.” Whitney shook her head, wiping her eyes again. “I honestly don’t remember. But I don’t think so.”
“And you have no idea what she could have gotten beat at?” I asked.
“None!” she yowled. “It’s driving me nuts!” Whitney dissolved once again into a fit of sobs.
“Whitney,” I rubbed her back reassuringly as she doubled over, “it sounds like you did everything you possibly could to help her.”
“I know, but,” more sniffling, “it doesn’t change the fact that she’s dead, anyway.” She sat up and hung her head low, tears falling into her lap.
“I know.” I said. There was nothing else I could say.
Evelyn brightened up all of a sudden, like a light bulb had turned on in her head. “Did you see her last night, before … before it happened?”
“I was at the Barking Tarantula all night,” Whitney responded. “She stopped by early—she did a shot … then she walked right out. She didn’t even come over to say hello.”
“Do you know about what time that was?” Evelyn asked.
“The band had just started playing, so, 8:30 at the latest.”
“And you were there all night?” I asked—trying hard not to sound accusatory.
“Yes.” Whitney exhaled sharply. “Until rumors started spreading she’d fallen down the stairs. I raced over to her house—the ambulance was still there. They let me ride with her to the hospital.” She gazed numbly to the other side of the room, not focusing on anything in particular, as if she were trying not to remember too many horrid details.
“Did she ever wake up?” Evelyn asked.
“No. Never.”
“Whitney,” I started, not sure I liked where this was headed… “do you know who called in her fall?”
“It was Ben.”
“And when you saw Leslie do a shot, was she with anybody?”
Whitney nodded. “I think so. I don’t know for sure, it was really dark—and he was sitting down at the bar. But I think it was Ben.”
I looked across the top of her head at Evelyn, whose look of concern matched mine. “Did she leave with him?”
“I don’t know.”
Chapter Eleven
I bounded out of bed at the crack of dawn on Monday morning, eager to flip all of my rooms—and to bake a bourbon pecan pie from scratch. Evelyn had assured me it was Sheriff Sellers’ favorite, and I wanted to bring it over to his office. Not as a bribe, mind you—but just as an “in” to check on his progress with the case—as a concerned, law-abiding, tax-paying citizen.
I checked in at the station a few times. Actually, to be perfectly honest, I checked in regularly all day. But the sheriff was always out on a call.
By the time I finally caught him, it was the end of the day, and he was posted up at his desk with a mile-high stack of paperwork, chugging coffee like it was water from one of those trucker-sized thermoses. He seemed vaguely pleased to see me—or maybe he was pleased to see the pie I was hauling underarm, I’m not sure which—but he wasn’t especially
surprised. He motioned politely for me to take the seat right across the desk from his.
“Miss Evelyn told me about the snooping around the two of you have been doing,” he began in a gently scolding tone, pouring a serving of steaming black coffee from his thermos into a World’s Best Dad mug. I was touched by his gentlemanly gesture of drinking coffee from a mug instead of a thermos in the presence of a lady. “And while I commend your effort, I don’t like the idea of the both of you out there, putting yourselves in danger.”
“There’s no danger in asking questions,” I retorted, sounding a little too much like a mischievous schoolgirl sent to the principal’s office.
He guffawed. “Oh yes there is, Mrs. Andersen! Asking questions is what quite possibly got Miss Leslie Stevens killed!”
So Leslie was trying to poke her nose into something! I thought.
He watched me put two and two together—and seemed to immediately regret having said too much.
I took a deep breath. “So you think Ben killed James, Leslie started to get suspicious, and then he killed Leslie too?”
Sheriff Sellers rolled his eyes. “Yes, ma’am, as I’m sure you have heard, we’ve pulled in Ben Duke for questioning. As to the rest of it, you can read all about it in the papers. And while I do appreciate your bringing me a pie—it is, in fact, my favorite kind—it doesn’t buy you information about this case!” He took a swig from his mug—and followed it up with a satisfied “ah!”.
I frowned, disappointed. But I wasn’t about to give up that easy… What would Evelyn do? I asked myself.
“I know that, Sheriff. But one of the victims did die in my house. I just want to make sure I’m doing everything I can to protect myself—and my customers.” And then I smiled—sweet as bourbon pecan pie.
The sheriff sighed loudly. “I don’t believe you have anything to worry about, Mrs. Andersen,” he said in a tone of obligatory assuredness. “Mr. Duke is our primary suspect. He’s in custody. He has priors—violent priors at that—he lived on Mr. Matthews’ property, he owed him money, and he lived with Leslie. And he’s got a bad record when it comes to lady friends of his…”
“Yes, but, he only gets violent when he’s protecting them! He’s never been violent toward any women!”
The sheriff shook his head, clearly annoyed. “That’s simply not how criminals work, Mrs. Andersen!”
I pivoted before I got shut out. “What about Nina Delacroix?”
“What about her?” Another roll of the eyes, and another sip of the mug.
“She was married to James, and there are rumors James was seeing Leslie, at least fairly recently…”
“Be that as it may, it’s not motive for murder! Their marriage ended over fifteen years ago, and it wasn’t particularly acrimonious, as they say. But even if it was—if Ms. Delacroix wanted to kill her ex-husband, then why didn’t she do it fifteen years ago?” His annoyance was quickly morphing into exasperation. “Plus, she has an air-tight alibi for the night of James’s murder.”
“Oh?” my eyes widened. “Where was she?”
The sheriff suddenly turned his attention to the pile of paperwork he had been working on—when not inhaling coffee—before I had interrupted. “That’s none of your business.” He picked up the file on the top of the stack and opened it, licked the tip of his index finger, and began shuffling papers at random.
W.W.E.D? “Sheriff, I’m going to find out sooner or later anyway, this is a small town…”
He shut the file abruptly, his already-ruddy face growing redder by the minute. “She has a plane ticket from DC to San Francisco—out to visit friends all weekend. We called the airline, and they confirmed she was, in fact, on those planes.” He moved the file to the side and picked up another from his stack.
“She could have killed Leslie, though!”
“No, she couldn’t have,” he said as he took another uninterested slurp. Apparently, coffee served to calm him down. “We have evidence a single killer was responsible for both murders.”
I sighed and looked out the window. The skies were beginning to darken. Surely there must be some unexamined options… “What about Henry Castle?”
“What about him, Mrs. Andersen?”
“Does he have an alibi for either murder?”
“Well, now that you mention it, he doesn’t…” The sheriff propped his elbow up on his desk and rested his chin in his hand, scratching his 5 o’clock shadow, pondering.
“Really?” I beamed, sitting upright.
“No!” he slammed his hand back down on his desk. I jumped. “I’m pulling your chain! We spoke to Mr. Castle. He’s clear. And just because someone doesn’t have an alibi doesn’t mean they’re the murderer! Do you have an alibi for last weekend?”
“Well, no…”
“How about this weekend?”
“No, but I…”
“And how about your friend Evelyn?”
My eyes widened. “Evelyn’s not a killer. I can tell.”
“Oh! Well as long as you can tell, I can be sure to take your word for it—is that the way it is?”
This wasn’t going as I had planned.
“Neither of you are suspects—For. The. Moment.—and yet the both of you were at the scene of the first murder. And you were poking around into the second victim’s affairs just days before she was murdered.” He folded his arms on top of his mid-sized belly, leaned back in his rolly office chair, and smiled—a self-satisfied gotcha!
I shut my mouth tightly. “But Sheriff, doesn’t it seem like the killer is a woman? An ex-lover of James’s, someone jealous of Leslie? Poison is a woman’s weapon, after all. And…” Now I was on a roll. “and pushing the other woman down the stairs? Look, women watch soap operas—pushing women down the stairs is a very effective soap opera plot devise—ergo, a scorned woman has to be the killer!”
Sheriff Seller’s mouth was sealed shut in a straight, nearly invisible line. It looked like smoke was about to blow out of both his ears. I waited silently for the tea kettle-like whistle to sound. Finally, he opened his mouth to respond—and he emphasized each and every word. “So. Who. Do. You. Suggest. Is. Responsible?”
“I told you! Nina Delacroix!” Now I was the one rolling my eyes. “She wanted James dead—she’s wanted James dead for years! When he started seeing Leslie, she finally got her excuse. So she killed his mistress, but before that she planned James’s murder! She booked a plane ticket outta dodge so she’d have an air-tight alibi, and then—”
“Mrs. Andersen…”
I ignored him, eager not to lose my train of thought. “…then she hired someone else to help her kill him! She planned it all along! It all adds up! My money’s on Henry Castle for her accomplice.”
“Mrs. Andersen! You can’t go around accusing people you don’t know all willy nilly! Mrs. Delacroix has no motive! Mr. Castle has no motive!—and neither do you, or Miss Evelyn. Benjamin Duke owes James Matthews money. He’s owed him money for years. And he was a troublesome tenant with ties to the second victim and a violent history. Case closed—until DNA testing proves otherwise! Now if you don’t mind, I have a pile of work to do…” He returned to his files.
“But Sheriff Sellers…”
“Goodnight, Mrs. Andersen!”
I stood up and looked down at him blankly. “I was just going to ask if you’d mind terribly bringing my Tupperware back to my house when you’ve finished the pie? It’s a part of a very nice set—I bought it at Williams Sonoma a long time ago, and…”
The sheriff looked up from his paperwork slowly, methodically, like I was his worst nightmare—which I suppose I was, at least for the moment. I watched his gears turning as I talked, working out that returning my Tupperware meant he’d have to have a conversation like this one again—this time on my turf.
He puckered up his lips into a tiny “o”, then nodded with an admirable amount of restraint. “Of course, ma’am.”
I smiled. “Thanks, sheriff,” I said. “I really appreciate it.
”
* * *
By the time I got home, it was nearly 5:30. I was looking forward to an evening of leisurely reading by the fire with a cup of hot cocoa and a bowl of carrot ginger soup, and cuddling with Rupert if he would allow it—which he sometimes does, reluctantly. But fate had other plans.
I scuttled down my alleyway, which had grown dark in the shadows of the neighboring buildings beneath the grey and crimson winter sunset, almost tripping on a frozen garden hose I had never noticed being there before. I also slipped and very nearly fell on a patch of black ice as I rounded the corner into my backyard.
Despite the treacherous journey, I arrived on my back porch in one piece. The floodlights illuminated my surroundings in a stark white.
Nightmare was nowhere to be found, which wasn’t especially unusual. I stuck my key in the backdoor and turned—only to open up to a terrible hissing sound. I dodged Rupert, who was ecstatic to see me (my arrival meant dinner was eminent), turned on the kitchen light, and rummaged around my old house in search of the source of the sound—which was now punctuated with something else … a kind of slow, rumbling gurgle.
Finally, I found it. A pipe—likely frozen over from the past weekend’s deep freeze—had burst inside my wall. And it was leaking.
I suppose that’s what I get for purposefully being a pain in the butt.
Chapter Twelve
I lucked into an appointment on Tuesday afternoon with a highly recommended repairman (via Evelyn), which was such a relief! I spent the morning huffily moving furniture away from my leaky wall and assessing the damage. I seemed to have lost a lovely beige and powder blue loveseat to the water, as it was sitting snug against the pipe-burst wall on the second floor between two guest rooms—but it was a lucky thrift store find with no sentimental value. So I suppose, while my snooping into official police business technically was noticed by the universe, it wasn’t summarily condemned.