by Diana DuMont
“Do you think we should show this to Mitch?” Molly asked. “I know he’s not our favorite person at the moment, but he might be able to get a warrant to search the city’s email servers and find out who sent these emails.”
I considered for a moment. I wasn’t keen on involving Mitch yet. I could just imagine him frowning at me for continuing to play detective after he’d told me not to, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to explain to him where I’d gotten these emails from in the first place. I’d have to tell him the whole truth about running into Todd and then not immediately telling the Sunshine Springs Police Department about it. That was sure to make Mitch angry. But Molly was right. If we were going to find out who sent these emails, then we probably needed someone with access to the city’s email servers. And none of us had that access, or knew how to get it.
“Yeah, you’re right,” I said reluctantly. “We should probably go ahead and tell Mitch about this. I suppose that means we’ll have to tell him about the accounting records we found as well. I just wish we’d found something from the winery, too.”
I was having a hard time getting used to the idea that Theo might not be guilty of anything. The guy seemed like such a jerk, and I’d been so convinced that he was the one in the wrong here. But so far, annoyingly, no evidence had come up to point directly toward him. In fact, since his winery records—at least the ones we had—looked pristine, it might be time to knock him off the suspect list. If he had nothing to hide, then he’d had no reason to poison Caitlin.
“Speaking of the Sheriff’s Department,” I said to Scott. “Have you heard any news about the bottle of pills we took from Josie?”
I’d meant to ask him about that earlier, and had been on the verge of doing so when I’d been interrupted with a question from Molly about whether either of us thought there was a way to track Todd down by contacting his coworkers at the San Francisco magazine where he’d worked.
I sighed. There were too many moving pieces in this murder investigation right now, and I was having trouble staying on top of everything.
“I haven’t heard anything back about the pills,” Scott said with a shrug. “I’ll let you know as soon as I do. But for now, we still don’t know whether she was carrying poison or just pain meds in her purse.”
I nodded. “Okay. Well in that case, we should go ahead and call it a night. I’ll go talk to Mitch in the morning about these emails. I was hoping I might have something to tell him about Josie as well, but I guess that will have to wait. I have a feeling now that Josie isn’t the one we’re looking for, anyway. I can’t imagine that a City Councilmember would have been brazen enough to email Josie and tell her to take out her own sister. It must be someone else.”
“You’re right,” Scott said. “I don’t think Josie was the killer. Actually, I was thinking…”
But before Scott could finish telling us what he was thinking, we were all startled by the crashing of glass at the front door of the pie shop.
My heart jumped into my throat as I turned to see that the café’s glass front door had been completely shattered.
Stepping over that shattered glass, crunching it beneath her feet with each step, Josie Dixon walked into my pie shop. She held a gun in her hand, and she raised it to point it right at my face.
“Nobody move unless you want me to blow you to pieces,” she said as she took another crunching step toward us.
Chapter Fifteen
I’d heard people say that your entire life flashes before your eyes in life or death moments, but I’d always thought they were being a little bit dramatic. As I stood there staring down the barrel of Josie’s gun, however, I realized that there was some truth to the statement. Flashes of memories raced across my mind, all the way from my childhood up to the present day. How was it possible that everything was going to end like this, on a rainy night in what was supposed to be a quiet, peaceful small town?
Scott was the first one to speak. “Josie, don’t do something you’ll regret. Lower the gun, and let’s talk about this.”
But his calm voice didn’t seem to even register with her. She kept her gun trained on me, an angry snarl on her face.
Beside me, Sprinkles lowered his head and let out a long, low warning growl. That registered with Josie. She swung the gun downward to point it at my Dalmatian’s head.
“No!” I shouted. In retrospect, shouting suddenly probably wasn’t the best way to handle the situation. Josie jumped in surprise, and the gun went off. I screamed, expecting to see my beloved dog lying in a lifeless heap on the café floor. But Josie had jerked her arm when startled, and the bullet had lodged into the front counter of the café instead. Sprinkles was alive and well, and even angrier than he’d been a moment ago.
He growled, and started creeping toward Josie with his teeth bared.
“Sprinkles, no,” I said. “Stay, please. For once in your life just listen to me, and stay where you are.”
Amazingly, Sprinkles listened. He stopped creeping forward, but he did continue to growl.
My heart thumped in my chest, and I felt a cold sweat breaking out on my forehead. What was Josie going to do? Was she going to kill all of us right then and there? It seemed likely. If she was awful enough to kill her sister, then what would she care about three people who were practically strangers? I had a feeling we were done for, but I still had to try to save myself and my friends.
“Josie, I know you’re upset. But there must be some way to resolve the situation other than killing the three of us. Let’s talk about this.”
Josie swung her gun back toward me, a wild look in her eyes. I got the feeling that she had never actually shot a gun before, because she seemed so distraught after accidentally firing it. She’d stared at the spot where the bullet lodged for quite some time, until my words seemed to bring her back to the present moment. Now I was worried that the next bullet she set off accidentally—or not so accidentally—was going to be in my direction.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” she said in a steely voice. “I only want back the papers you stole from Todd.”
She glanced across the café tables for a moment, taking in the piles of photographs, account records, and emails that Scott, Molly and I had spent the evening reviewing.
My eyes widened. How had she known that Todd was missing the papers unless he’d told her? Were they working together? I’d been ready to admit Todd’s innocence, thinking that there was no way someone guilty would have gone to such efforts to go through all of this information.
But perhaps he’d been hoarding the information to keep it from the cops.
Perhaps he and Josie had worked together to kill Caitlin in some kind of sick, twisted conspiracy.
Or perhaps Todd knew that Josie was guilty, and had been trying to protect her.
So many possibilities whirled through my mind, all in a split-second. In the end, all that mattered in that moment was getting out of this current situation alive. And no matter how useful all of these documents might be in proving my innocence, they were meaningless if my friends and I ended up shot and killed.
I raised my hands slowly above my head. “Okay, Josie. No worries. The documents are all yours. Take what you want, and then leave calmly.”
Unsurprisingly, Molly and Scott seemed to agree that the best thing to do here was to give Josie what she wanted. They also raised their hands above their heads slowly, then backed away from the tables that were covered with papers.
Keeping a wary eye on us, Josie ran forward and began stuffing the papers into one of the large folders sitting nearby. She kept looking up at us nervously, as though at any moment we might change our minds, pounce on her, and try to take away the papers we’d just agreed to let her have. Every now and then, Josie waved the gun as if to remind us that she had the upper hand here.
Once all of the papers were more or less stuffed into the folder, Josie took the folder under her left arm and started backing away from us. With her right hand, she continued
to point the gun at us, shaking it menacingly in our direction. I would have felt better if she would have just put the thing away, but she didn’t seem inclined to do so. I guess I couldn’t blame her. She probably thought that the moment she put it away, one of us would rush her and steal the papers back.
Perhaps she wasn’t wrong about that. I could see the veins in Scott’s forehead bulging, and I knew that it was all he could do right now to hold in his anger and frustration over the fact that we’d just lost all of this evidence. As for me, I was just relieved that it looked like I was going to get out of here alive. With each step backward that Josie took, I found myself breathing a little bit easier.
But just as I began to feel like the thousand ton weight of worry on my chest was lifting, Josie steadied the gun in my direction and laughed. Her laugh sounded crazy, almost like the laugh you’d expect from an overly-caricatured bad guy in some B movie.
“Did you really think I would just let all of you go? If it were up to you, I’d be going away to prison for life. It’s bad enough my sister is gone, don’t you think? I shouldn’t have to have my life ruined as well.”
“Josie!” I pleaded, and I’m ashamed to admit that my voice sounded downright hysterical.
But I was beginning to think that Josie really was crazy, and that she was going to kill us after all. None of what she was saying made any sense to me. I desperately wanted her to listen to reason, but her mind seemed like it was in a place far beyond logic right now. Still, I had to try.
“Killing us isn’t going to bring your sister back, and it’s definitely not going to keep you out of prison. Just put the gun down, and I’ll help you in any way I can.”
“You? Help me? Yeah, I don’t buy into that for second. Nice try. Prepare to meet your maker.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping against hope that she was bluffing. My whole body tensed up, and I thought that it really was the end. But then, instead of the sound of a gunshot, the sound of shouting and broken glass crunching reached my ears. My eyes flew open just in time to see Mitch and Theo rushing through the broken front door of the pie shop to tackle Josie.
I winced, expecting Josie’s gun to wildly go off again, but another gunshot never came. Somehow, Mitch or Theo had managed to get it out of her hand before she could react and send off another shot. I stared, openmouthed. Theo and Mitch rolled in the broken glass, trying to subdue Josie completely. She put up quite a fight—yelling and screaming, and insisting that she was not the one at fault here. I couldn’t believe she was still trying to proclaim her innocence, but I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. After listening to everything that had come out of her mouth in the last few minutes, I thought that perhaps she was a good candidate for the insanity defense. She wasn’t making any sense.
Beside me, Sprinkles was barking and growling. Every few moments he turned in an excited circle, as though he didn’t know what to do with all of the anxious energy building up inside of him.
His noise and movements snapped me out of my shock.
“Sprinkles, calm down. It’s okay. The police have her now.”
Well, the police and Theo had her. I felt my cheeks redden with shame as I thought of how brashly I had accused Theo of being the murderer. Clearly, I’d been wrong about that. Tonight, he’d saved my life and helped subdue the true murderer. I owed him a bit of an apology.
The next several minutes went by in a blur. Mitch called for backup, and it didn’t take long for the street in front of my pie shop to be filled with the flashing lights of police cruisers. As Mitch handed off Josie to one of his officers to take down to the station for questioning, I swallowed my pride and went to talk to Theo.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” I said. “I’d be dead right now if it wasn’t for you. How did you know that we needed help?”
Theo grinned and shrugged. “I didn’t. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Mitch and I were out for a stroll down Main Street, trying to snuff out some raccoons that have been causing trouble in the garbage bins. We thought that since it was late and rainy, and no one was out, that those rascals might be showing their faces. We were trying to catch them off guard. But it looks like we caught us much more than a raccoon tonight. Looks like we caught us a murderer.”
“Looks like it,” Molly said. It was the first thing she’d said since this whole ordeal had started, and her voice was even shakier than mine. I reached over and squeezed her hand.
“Don’t worry. We’re safe now, thanks to Theo.” I turned back to look at him. “So you saw a crazy lady with a gun, and ran straight toward her? Pretty brave of you.”
Theo laughed. “I do have my knight in shining armor moments. Gotta take them when you can.” Then his face sobered. “Seriously, though. I didn’t even think about it. I just reacted on instinct. Mitch and I both did. I can’t believe she was brazen enough to come in here with a gun and threaten to kill all three of you. What were you all doing here? I thought the pie shop was closed today?”
I blushed a little, remembering that Theo had known that I was heading down to San Francisco for a divorce proceeding today. That divorce proceeding, and this morning, felt like it had been a thousand years ago. I rubbed my forehead.
“Well, it’s kind of a long story. When I was in the city today, I ran into Todd.”
“Todd?” Theo exclaimed. “The same Todd who went missing in the middle of a murder investigation?”
“That’s the one,” I confirmed. “Molly was with me in San Francisco, and we happened to run into him. He took off running as soon as he saw us, but he dropped a big file full of papers. Turns out, those papers are a bunch of evidence that someone on the City Council is indeed pilfering money from the city. There are also some emails to suggest that whoever was stealing the money found out Caitlin was onto them, and asked the person they were stealing money for to take care of Caitlin.”
Theo’s eyes widened in shock. This time, I didn’t think that he was just putting on an act. I knew from the account records that it wasn’t likely that his winery was involved in the scandal at all. He was just as surprised by all of this as I had been. Maybe more so, because he probably knew everyone on the City Council. As he furrowed his brow, I imagined that he was running through a list of Councilmember names in his head, wondering which one could have possibly done this.
He shook his head slowly, looking sad. “It’s a shame how people will let money drive them to such awful lengths. I guess Mitch will have to run an investigation into the Council to see who’s responsible for all of this, and who was colluding with Josie.”
“Yeah,” I said, and then hung my head sheepishly. “Listen, I’m sorry I accused you of murder. I know we got off on the wrong foot, but perhaps now that the truth on this whole crime is starting to come out, you and I could start over and be friends?”
Theo smiled. “I’d like that very much. And I’m sorry that I gave you such a hard time about being a murderer. For the record, I never truly believed it. It’s not like you really had a motive. But you’re just so cute when you’re flustered and angry. I couldn’t stop myself from egging you on.”
I blushed, his words making me flustered, which made me realize he must think I was cute at that moment, which flustered me even more.
“It’s all right,” I stammered out. I couldn’t think of what else to say, and Molly’s teasing finger poking into my side didn’t help. I didn’t dare look into her eyes right now: I had a feeling she’d be raising an eyebrow at me or winking in a knowing way to tell me how amused she was that I too had fallen under the spell of Mr. Charming himself, Theo Russo. To avoid looking at Theo or Molly, I glanced over at Scott, thinking that looking at him right now would be a pretty safe bet.
To my surprise, Scott looked angry. He was frowning at Theo, and a moment later he moved protectively to put his arm around me. The warmth of that arm felt good, and I suddenly realized that I had two guys in Sunshine Springs trying to flirt with me at the same ti
me. I hadn’t thought the little bit of chemistry between Scott and me had been that serious, but if the way he was acting right now was any indication, it had been.
Before anything could escalate between Scott and Theo, however, Mitch appeared back in the pie shop. He had several bloody scratches on his face and hands from rolling in the glass on the floor when he attacked Josie. Theo had a few scratches too, but Mitch’s were worse. It looked like he had actually taken the brunt of everything. He didn’t seem bothered by his wounds though. In fact, he seemed quite energized at the moment. I couldn’t help but smile as he strode toward us, cracking his knuckles along the way.
Perhaps I’d judged Mitch too quickly as well. Yes, he acted like a macho jerk. But he had just helped to save my life. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad man, or such a bad cop. And he’d been right to defend Theo. There wasn’t any evidence against Theo after all, and Mitch had known Theo well enough all along to know that Theo was innocent. In any case, now that I was no longer the prime suspect in a murder, I found it a little easier to smile at the Sunshine Springs Sheriff.
“Are you all alright?” Mitch asked as he approached. He shook his head as he glanced over his shoulder. “I can’t believe what Josie just did. I have to be honest: I really thought she was the least likely of all the suspects to be the killer. But I guess my instincts are going soft. We don’t have any hard evidence to tie her to the poisoning yet, of course. But I think it stands to reason that if she was willing to shoot down the three of you, then she just might have been willing to poison her sister.”
“Yeah, about that,” Scott said with an awkward cough. “We might have a bit of evidence that Josie was the poisoner, after all.”
Mitch raised an eyebrow at Scott. “Oh?”
Scott nodded, looking a bit sheepish. “I suppose I should’ve told you sooner, but better late than never. There’s a guy down in forensics testing some pills that came from Josie’s purse. We think they might have been the poison.”