MY FAIR LATTE

by Vickie Fee

  “Yeah. How come the reference librarian ran to the detective, who grilled Kendra—but he didn’t tell the cops about you?”

  “I had no idea Kendra had been questioned. But I can assure you it wasn’t Alan who told the police about Kendra’s research. He’d never do that.”

  “Who else would’ve known?”

  “My guess would be the assistant librarian, Elaine Stedman.”

  “Stedman, as in Detective Stedman?” I asked.

  “Yes, his wife. She likes to talk and tell all she knows. Especially to her husband.”

  “Hold on, I thought Elaine was the school librarian,” Trudy said.

  “She was. But when school started back they had hired a new school librarian and Elaine was quickly brought on with the public library. No one seems to know why, or at least no one’s talking,” Edgar said.

  After we left Tudor House, Trudy said she’d better get back to the gallery and check on George.

  I started ambling back to the theater under a cloudy sky, taking a circuitous route, lost in my thoughts. I couldn’t stop wondering who framed Joe, and the bigger but related question of who killed Vince. George and Trudy seemed convinced of Linda’s innocence, which was understandable since she was a long-time friend of theirs, and I admit, she seemed pretty innocuous on the surface. But she had been blackmailed by Vince more than once. She had told Trudy and me that when she refused to sell the shop he tried to make some other blackmail arrangements. We only had her word for it that she had refused, and blackmailers were generally insistent. Plus, she was the only one of our favorite suspects that we knew for sure was at the theater on opening night. And she could be taking heart medicine—or she could’ve stolen the drug from a friend’s medicine cabinet for all we know. One thing I knew, I wasn’t ready to write her off as a suspect just yet.

  I decided it was time I went shopping for some windchimes—and maybe a bit of a fishing expedition while I was at it.

  I strolled into Bell, Bath and Candle. Windchimes tinkled as I entered, and Linda walked toward me in her signature flowing fabrics that fluttered when she moved as though she were walking into a light breeze.

  “Greetings, gentle spirit,” she said.

  “Hi, Linda, nice to see you again. I’m shopping for a birthday gift for my grandmother. I’m thinking windchimes.”

  “Lovely. Appearance matters, of course. But I tend to choose windchimes for myself based on their sound,” she said, reaching out and lightly brushing her hand across one of the myriad windchimes hanging throughout the store. It jingled melodically. “Feel free to check out the tune, if you will, on as many chimes as you like.”

  “Thanks. Are any of them made locally? I thought it would be nice to send her something from Utopia Springs, since it’s my new home.”

  “Yes, many of them are made by local craftspeople. The chimes in this whole section,” she pointed out a grouping, “are made by Maddy Macon, a local artist and real mountain woman.”

  “Perfect.” I checked out the “tune” on a couple of the chimes, which were beautiful.

  I was the only customer in the store, so I took advantage of the privacy.

  “Paula Turpin said Vince had rented the cottage from her for almost a year, but hadn’t renewed his lease, even though she mentioned it to him. Did Vince ever mention to you that he had any plans to move? It seems that he hadn’t really put down roots here,” I said.

  “Actually, he had expressed an interest in moving into the carriage house behind my house. I gathered he was tired of Paula’s accommodations.”

  That’s an odd way to phrase it, I thought.

  “Did he try to blackmail you for free rent?”

  “We never talked about a rent amount. The carriage house had been vacant since my mother passed away. I’d never gotten around to sprucing it up for a tenant. We really just talked about it in generalities.”

  Hmm, she seemed to have quite a bit of idle chitchat with her blackmailer.

  “I heard recently that Vince had been a private investigator in Little Rock, although he wasn’t practicing his trade here—at least not officially. Did you know he was a P.I.?”

  “Yes, I did. And he gave me the impression he planned to set up shop here at some point.” She suddenly changed the subject. “How about these chimes for your grandmother. They’re lovely and have a lovely tune, as well,” she said as she lightly strummed her fingers across them.

  “I do like those,” I said, stepping over to get a closer look at them—and the price tag. “I’ll take them.”

  “Excellent choice. I think I have a box just the right size for them,” she said, breezing off and retrieving a box from a shelf beneath the cash register.

  My bag jangled as I walked home thinking about the conversation I’d just had with Linda. She appeared to have a more nuanced relationship with her blackmailer than one would expect. But what did it mean?

  As I neared the theater I noticed the newspaper stand and bought a copy to see if Clifford’s murder update had finally made it into print. It had. The clever headline below the fold read, “Murder Investigation Update.”

  Back at the apartment I placed my noisy purchase on the dining table, heated water and made myself a cup of chamomile tea. Leaning back in the recliner, I scanned through Clifford’s article. Not much was in it I didn’t already know from his notes and my visit to Linda. Vince’s private eye license had been reinstated, he planned to set up shop in Utopia Springs. And the cops here knew he was a former private investigator, which along with his relatively young age, had made them immediately suspect his death might be foul play. I sipped tea as I replayed the weird conversation with Linda in my head. I had some time before I had to get the theater ready for tonight’s show and it was almost closing time for Mayfield’s Gallery, so I decided to walk down and have a quick chat with Trudy and George.

  “Hi, Trudy. Hi, George,” I called out toward the studio as I walked to the counter. I gathered business was slow since Trudy was painting her fingernails.

  “I like that color,” I said, referring to the deep raspberry polish.

  “Thanks, hon. Me, too,” she said, holding her hand out to admire her manicure. “It’s been a slow day.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Oh, not to worry, hon. Some days are busy, some are slow. It all evens out somehow,” Trudy said.

  George walked into the store, ringing the bell as he entered, and we exchanged hellos.

  “Halley, I’m glad you’re here. I’m afraid I have some disappointing news about Trey Tilby. He finally rented the excavating equipment.”

  “Wait, what? That makes it even more likely that he was in cahoots with Vince on some treasure hunting scheme. That’s wonderful,” I gushed.

  “I’m afraid it’s not so wonderful. The excavating equipment is at his house, not the saloon. His home basement has a low ceiling and he wants to dig it out to increase the overhead clearance. Sorry.”

  “That is disappointing,” Trudy said.

  “Yeah, I really liked the idea of Trey getting locked up.”

  I struggled with whether I should say anything about Linda to George and Trudy since she was a friend. But after my somewhat puzzling conversation with her, I decided to just throw it out there and see what they thought.

  “I went to Bell, Bath and Candle this afternoon to shop for some windchimes for my grandmother. Her birthday’s coming up. Anyway, I took another shot at talking to Linda about Vince and she said something kind of odd.”

  “What did she have to say?” Trudy asked.

  “She knew Vince had worked as a private investigator and said he’d led her to believe he planned to set up shop here in Utopia Springs. She also said they had talked about Vince moving into the carriage house behind her house. It just struck me that she seemed to chitchat with her blackmailer more than one w
ould normally expect. And she seemed almost, I don’t know, pleased at the prospect of Vince moving out of Paula’s place and into her guest house. Doesn’t that seem a little odd?”

  “Hmm,” Trudy said, looking pensive. “You’re right. It would’ve been a good move for Vince. The carriage house behind Linda’s old Victorian is two-story, at least twice as big as the cottage he rented from Paula. And nice, too. I visited there a couple of times before Linda’s mom died. I’d kind of wondered why Linda never rented it out after her mother passed.”

  “She said she needed to paint and spruce it up a bit,” I said.

  “What do you think, hon?” she said, looking over to her husband.

  George tilted his head to one side and then the next, seeming to weigh his thoughts.

  “Remember when she first talked to us about the blackmail? How she said the blackmailer tried to make alternate arrangements after she refused to sell the shop?”

  “Yeah, she did,” Trudy said, haltingly.

  “Maybe Vince looked around her basement enough to decide there was nothing of interest there. Maybe he decided free rent in a bigger, nicer place would be a fair exchange for his silence.”

  “That makes sense. I mean, it had been sitting empty for at least a year. Linda wasn’t collecting rent on it anyway,” Trudy said.

  “And remember, about three or four years ago, she had that break-in at her house. They stole some silver and electronics, I believe. Anyway, Linda is just looney tunes enough to think having a man—even a blackmailer—living in the carriage house might deter burglars,” George said.

  They both looked to me.

  “If that’s true then it makes it even more unlikely that Linda is Vince’s killer,” I said, exhaling a long sigh.

  It was annoying me that every time I’d settled on a favorite suspect, we came up with information that cast doubt on their guilt.

  CHAPTER 25

  When the customers had all gone Friday night, I did a careful walk-through, including checking the office and basement doors and the men’s room. After last night’s break-in I wanted to ensure I was alone. I’d just started cleaning the ladies’ room when my phone buzzed. Kendra was at the front door.

  “I just locked up and was dying to hear how your talk went with Edgar,” Kendra said as I let her in the lobby.

  “We’ll go downstairs and I’ll show you what Edgar was looking for. But first, I wanted to let you know you should be careful what you say in front of that assistant librarian, Elaine. Turns out she’s Detective Stedman’s wife, and apparently thinks she’s on a stakeout for the police.”

  “Wow, that’s good to know. I think she only works part-time, so I’ll try to do research when she’s not on the clock.”

  “Or on the case,” I said.

  “And here I was thinking Alan must have snitched on me, even though that doesn’t seem like him at all. By the way, Alan raved about the theater renovations and how wonderful everything looks. He called the theater a local treasure. And that’s high praise coming from Alan, he’s very serious about the preservation and conservation of historic sites.”

  “Did he come to see Charade?”

  “Not yet, but he plans to. Actually he attended the showing of My Fair Lady on opening night. I was kind of surprised to hear that because I didn’t remember seeing him and I was really trying to work the room, encouraging people to have more refreshments,” Kendra said with a laugh.

  “All sales appreciated.”

  “Anyway, he said he bought a ticket and then had to run home. He remembered he hadn’t fed his cat, Luna. He has a picture of that cat on his desk. By the time he got back to the theater the movie was about to start. I told him when he comes to the theater again to be sure to introduce himself to you. He’s a little shy.”

  “I’d love to meet him. Let me grab my keys and we’ll go down to the basement,” I said, slipping behind the bar to collect my key ring and a flashlight from under the counter.

  “By the way, turns out George has known all along that Edgar’s accent is phony. But, get this, he asked me not to tell Trudy because he doesn’t want her to be disappointed.”

  “Aw, they’re too cute. And as secrets go, Edgar’s phony accent is pretty harmless. We all seek to reinvent ourselves at times. For some people it’s a new hair color. For others it’s a new accent,” she said with a smile.

  We went downstairs to the basement and a moved couple of boxes out of the way to make a clear path to the wall on the street side. I pulled up the photo on my phone of Edgar’s pencil rubbing of the wall markings and handed it to Kendra.

  “Here’s what we’re looking for—and what Edgar was looking for when he broke into the basement last night.”

  “He admitted it?”

  “Trudy had to apply a little pressure, but he caved pretty quickly,” I said.

  “What are we looking at? No, wait, I think I spot an interlocked ‘J.’ Does Edgar actually believe these marks were made by the James Gang?”

  “No. He speculates that some treasure hunters in the 1930s made the markings, believing that this wall adjoined a tunnel, which possibly connects to the original springs cavern.”

  I looked closely as I ran my hand along the wall.

  “I definitely feel some carved marks along here,” I said, running my fingers over the grooves.

  Kendra ran her hand over the spot.

  “As evidence goes, this is pretty sketchy,” she said.

  “Edgar admitted as much. It’s just one more thing to add to his stack of so-called evidence to present to his documentary pal.”

  Scanning with my flashlight I spotted a loose brick on the adjoining wall. I poked at it with one of the larger keys on my key ring and the brick fell out. Something shiny tumbled to the floor after it. It glinted as I shone the flashlight on the floor beside the brick. I looked to Kendra, barely able to contain my excitement as I knelt down to retrieve the object.

  It was a gold coin. An old-looking one.

  I handed it to Kendra, who examined it as I directed the beam of my flashlight into the void where the brick had been. Behind the old bricks was a solid wall.

  “Does that coin mean there really could be treasure somewhere beyond this wall?”

  “This is an old coin, but I’m pretty sure it’s not that old. My guess is early twentieth century, but I can’t make out the date,” she said, eyeing it closely. “I could ask someone to look at it. In fact, Alan at the library is a pretty knowledgeable coin collector.”

  “How did it get here?” I asked.

  “At one time it was common practice for people to place coins in walls and under floors for good luck. I think that’s probably what we’ve got here.”

  “This is just fool’s gold,” I said, feeling like a kid whose shiny red balloon had just been popped.

  Kendra smiled and laid a hand on my shoulder.

  “Not at all. I think this is an omen of good things to come. I agree with Edgar that a TV show being filmed here could boost tourism. That’s treasure. And this theater is real treasure; it’s your future. If you don’t mind me hanging onto the coin for a few days, I’ll see what Alan thinks.”

  “Sounds good. Just make sure Elaine Stedman isn’t lurking when you do.”

  Saturday morning I woke up thinking about my exploration of the basement with Kendra the night before.

  It would be nice if that gold coin we found was worth a mint.

  I was also thinking it would be nice to have one of Zeke’s mammoth cinnamon rolls for breakfast, so I dressed and headed out the door to The Muffin Man. I’d only taken a few steps when a familiar figure fell in step beside me.

  “Mornin’, Ms. Greer,” Detective Stedman said.

  “Good morning, Detective,” I said without looking over or breaking my stride. “I assume you’d like a word, so why don’t you join
me for breakfast at The Muffin Man. I’m starved and I’m really not much for talking before I’ve had my morning coffee.”

  He didn’t reply but kept pace with me. When we arrived at the muffin shop he opened the door for me.”

  “The usual, Halley?” Zeke said as I stepped up to the counter.

  The usual? I should probably cut back on my cinnamon roll intake.

  The detective asked for black coffee. We collected our orders and sat at the corner table farthest from the door.

  “I’m surprised a coffee aficionado like you would condescend to drink regular coffee in a place like this.”

  “This happens to be a nice place. When it comes to coffee I prefer a French press or the forced hot water method of an espresso machine, but I’m not a snob about it.”

  Truth is I’m a caffeine addict and I’ll take it any way I can get it in a pinch, but I didn’t say so.

  I savored a bite of the cinnamon roll and a sip of coffee before meeting the gaze of the lawman sitting opposite me. I waited for him to speak.

  “I understand you had some excitement at your place Thursday night.”

  “I assume you’re referring to the break-in. I wouldn’t describe it as excitement. It was unsettling to say the least.”

  “According to the report it was more of a break-out than a break-in, wasn’t it? Supposedly, someone hid in the theater after closing time and left through the alley door, setting off your alarm.”

  “Someone broke into my basement before leaving through the back door and setting off the alarm.”

  “Right. Did you ever ascertain if anything was missing?”

  “No. There’s a lot of junk in the basement. I don’t think anything was taken. Nothing of value, anyway.”

  “Seems odd, doesn’t it, that someone would go to the trouble to hide in the theater and break into your basement and not take anything?”

  “You’re right, Detective, it seems odd, creepy even. But that’s exactly what happened.”