Chocolate Most Deadly (Sky High Pies Cozy Mysteries Book 2) (21 page)

CHAPTER
45

After leaving the coffee shop, Lois
ordered me down the sidewalk and around the corner. I spotted her brown Taurus parked
in the middle of the block. It was dented from stem to stern, with a spidery
crack in the windshield and a faded blue plastic flower attached to the antenna
with gray duct tape.

“Okay,” she said, opening the
passenger door. “Slide over and get behind the wheel.”

I followed her instructions,
waiting quietly until she joined me in the car and closed the door. The
interior smelled like patchouli and fried food, an unappealing aroma that made
me feel slightly queasy within seconds.

“Nice ride,” I said. “Suitably
bohemian for someone like—”

“Shut up!” she screeched. “I’ve got
to figure this out. I won’t be able to think if you’re talking.”

I folded my arms and waited. She
had her hand on the gun, but it was still in her pocket. The backpack was on
the floor between her feet.

“What are you trying to figure
out?” I asked.

Her head snapped to the left.
“Don’t talk!”

“But I want to help you, Lois.”

The fury burned in her eyes. “I
don’t
need
your help, okay? I just need time to think.”

I nodded and shifted on the seat.
The phone was still recording; no matter the outcome of our encounter,
everything would be documented. Maybe I could give it to the police once things
were resolved. Or maybe they’d find it after she squeezed the trigger and left
me to soak in my own juices.

“Do you mind if I open the window?”
I asked eventually.

She clenched her teeth. “Whatever.”

I smiled at the multipurpose word;
it was applied in so many different ways that I wasn’t sure if Lois was giving
her permission or challenging my desire for fresh air. I decided to throw fate
to the wind.

“I’ll need the keys to start the
engine,” I said.

She shook her head. “Not a chance.”

I nodded and waited, feeling like I
was going to pass out from the foul odor in the car. Finally, when the
sensation of impending wooziness became strong enough, I asked again.

“Okay, fine!” she hissed. “But
don’t try anything stupid.”

She had the keys in her hand. When
she held them out, I carefully put my phone in my lap, took the key ring and
started the car. After lowering both front windows a couple of inches, I
reversed the process and put the keys on the seat between us. Lois snatched
them up like a ravenous hawk swooping in for its dinner.

“Thank you,” I said, folding my
fingers around the phone again. “That’s much better.”

Lois groaned. “
Please
shut
up!”

I nodded, turned my head and stared
through the windshield. The pedestrians on the sidewalk had no idea what was
happening inside the battered Taurus. The discrepancy between their casual
laughter and my thorny predicament started to make the muscles in my neck and
shoulders tighten. I knew that she had a weapon. And I knew she was acting
irrationally. But I felt like my life wouldn’t be in jeopardy if I could
somehow get her to talk.

As she muttered to herself, I eased
my head gently in her direction so that I had a peripheral view of her face. It
took about ten minutes, but when the tension in her jaw relaxed a bit, I asked
if we could talk.

“Nothing you say will make a
difference,” she said in an icy tone. “I’ve got to figure out what to do, so
please
keep quiet.”

“Just one thing?” I asked.

She heaved a sigh. “What is it?”

“Have you done anything that can’t
be reversed, Lois?”

Her eyelashes fluttered in
confusion. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well, what I mean is…” I turned my
head a bit more, glimpsing a slight twitch in her face. “If this is the worst
thing you’ve done—kidnapping me at gunpoint—and nothing else happens, then
maybe the—”

“I
didn’t
kidnap you,” she
seethed. “And I’m
not
taking you anywhere.”

I wasn’t going to argue the point.
And I could tell that a direct approach wasn’t the smartest way to get her
talking. So I settled on Plan B.

“How’re you feeling?” I asked.

She glanced over. “You mean right
now?”

I nodded.

“I’m feeling…” She inhaled slowly
and the hand on the gun moved deeper into her pocket. “This isn’t how things
were supposed to go,” she said. “None of this should’ve happened.”

“What do you mean by that?”

She leaned forward, closing her
eyes. “None of
this
,” she said again. “The cupcakes were supposed to be
my way in, okay? Tim was supposed to eat them. And then I’d save him by being
there when he started feeling sick from the poison. I’d already planned
everything, how I would take him to the hospital and explain that some
fingernail remover accidentally ended up in the frosting. I ran through it all
so many times in front of the bathroom mirror that I ended up believing it
could be true.” She paused for a breath. “I’m a good actress when I need to be,
you know? I mean, everybody’s acting all the time anyway, acting and telling
little lies and creating totally fake personas that they hide behind.”

The conviction in her voice was
clear; she actually believed what she was saying.

“And the guy in Delilah’s
apartment…” Her eyes blinked open. “It’s all just completely spun off the
rails, okay?”

“Sure,” I said. “I can see that.”

“And if you would’ve just kept your
nose out of things…” There was a new edge to her voice, a jagged tinge of fury
that I’d heard before when people felt backed into a corner and were about to
snap.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I
didn’t mean to make things more complicated for you. I was just trying to help
my neighbor find her—”

“Why can’t you keep your mouth
shut
?”
she screamed. “I don’t want you to talk. I don’t want you to even
think
about it.”

She lifted her head, turning
slightly to study at a woman coming toward the car. Then she slowly removed the
snub-nosed revolver from her coat.

“This wasn’t supposed to be in my
hand.” She stared briefly at the gun trembling between her slender fingers.
“And you weren’t supposed to be in the coffee shop. And Hannah wasn’t supposed
to find out that I had a crush on Tim. And Tim wasn’t supposed to give the
cupcakes to the guy across the hall.”

I nodded. “But things happened?”

“My plan would’ve worked if Tim
hadn’t given the cupcakes away,” Lois muttered. “When I heard that Delmar was
in the ICU with cyanide poisoning—I realized that the whole idea had gone
wrong.” She shook her head, steadying the revolver with both hands. “And since
he saw me leave the cupcakes outside Tim’s apartment, I had to do something
about him so he wouldn’t tell the police.”

“Is that why you went to the
hospital?”

She stared at me blankly. “What?”

“When you heard about Delmar
Singer?” I said slowly. “You followed Tim to the hospital, waited until he left
and then went in while the nurses were away from the room.”

“Yes, like they do in the movies,”
she said. “I just pressed the pillow against his face until he stopped
breathing. I couldn’t believe it worked. And I couldn’t believe that I did it.”
She whimpered slightly and a few tears trickled down her cheeks. “But that’s
what I had to do. I couldn’t let him live. He’d tell the police that he saw me
bringing the cupcakes.”

“And so he had to die?”

She answered with a quick nod.

“What about Toby Wurlitzer?” I
asked. “In Delilah’s apartment?”

“Toby?” Her voice sounded fragile
and distant, as if she didn’t understand the question.

“Is that the gun you used to shoot
him?”

Her eyes drifted down to her hands.
“I didn’t shoot anybody,” she said. “That was Jake. I got this gun from
somebody at a bar.”

“And you’re saying that Jake Breen
shot Toby?”

“Of course, Jake Breen. He and Toby
were in Delilah’s apartment arguing about money when I snuck in to return the
stupid hat and coat. Jake got so mad. I’ve never seen him like that before.”
She paused, taking one hand from the gun long enough to brush the tears from
her eyes. “But when he told me to leave the apartment, I wasn’t going to argue.
I was on the stairs when I heard the gunshot.”

“And you learned later that Toby
had been found so you—”

“Yes!” She swallowed hard and
pressed back against the seat. “Yes, I knew that Jake killed him. And I hoped
that the police would think Jake was also responsible for the poisoned
cupcakes.” She paused as more tears spilled from her eyes. “But then you came
along…”

Her voice thinned to a whisper
before she abandoned the thought. We sat together for a few minutes, the
revolver in her hands, the string of muffled sobs filling the car. I kept my
eyes on the street, trying to work out a solution to my predicament that didn’t
involve gunfire. When Lois eventually turned to me and spoke, her voice was so
soft that I had to ask her to repeat the question.

“How did you know it was me?” she
said, sounding faint and crestfallen.

“Intuition and evidence,” I said.
“I worked as a private investigator in Chicago for many years. You learn what
to watch for and how to connect the dots that seem to be genuine clues. Then
you use those to solve the puzzle.”

“Like what?” Lois said, pressing me
on the issue. “Give me an example.”

“Like the green hair dye that you
forgot to wash off your ear,” I said. “I noticed it the night that I met you at
York Street. At first, it just seemed odd; but then I met Heidi a few minutes
later and realized the little smudge on your ear was the same shade as her
hair. It was also pretty close to the green splotches found on the white bakery
box left outside Tim’s door. At that instant, I didn’t know if it meant
anything. But it stuck in my mind like a speck of curiosity. I figured later
that you colored your hair like Heidi and then used her hat and coat to make
people think she delivered the cupcakes and snuck into Delmar Singer’s hospital
room. You just happened to overlook the fact that you didn’t get it all off
your ear or that some of the dye had smeared on the white box.”

She scoffed. “That doesn’t mean I
killed anybody.”

“Not by itself, no,” I said. “But,
as I said, it was part of the reason that I suspected you.”

The muscles in her jaw tightened.
“Like, what else?” she demanded. “You seem so sure that I did it, but some
stupid hair dye on my ear is hardly convincing evidence.”

I nodded. “I agree. But there were
other clues. You used Heidi’s coat and hat to sneak into the hospital room, but
you forgot about your shoes.” She looked down at the Chuck Taylors with the
lightning bolts. “I saw them on the video footage from the hospital’s
surveillance camera.”

Her eyes tapered into an enraged
scowl. “Our whole drama club in high school had these shoes,” she rasped. “Not
just me.” The grimace on her face dissolved into a sly smile. “What’s the big
deal if I still wear mine and give them as gifts to a few people? That doesn’t
prove your little theory, does it?”

“Not exactly. But as I kept talking
to people and continued looking into the situation, I just got a hunch that you
were involved.”

“A
hunch
?”
she hissed angrily. “You had a
hunch
that I left the cupcakes?”

“Yes, that’s all—a simple hunch.
But then I remembered seeing the package of Rowntree’s in Delilah’s apartment
after Toby Wurlitzer was murdered. And a witness told me that you’re always
eating them, so it was another clue, another bit of potential evidence.”

She sighed loudly. “But I already
told you—Jake Breen shot Toby, not me.”

“Right,” I said softly. “And that’s
up to the police to decide. But I saw the empty candy wrapper in Delilah’s
apartment along with Toby’s body, so it suggested that there was a chance you’d
been in the room.”

“What else?” she asked, slipping
her finger onto the trigger.

I felt a lump twist in my throat as
she lifted the revolver slowly.

“The article you wrote in college
about Jean-Baptiste Dumas,” I answered. “That suggests that you were aware that
acetonitrile is metabolized as cyanide after it’s consumed.”

The barrel of the gun glinted in
the streetlight as Lois lifted it slowly.

“Why don’t you put that down?” I
said. “If you go to the police now, they’ll take into consideration that you—”

“No!” she screamed. “I’m not going
to the police!”

Her voice thundered against the
glass, echoing in the confined space as I sat and waited. I listened to her
breathing—a rapid and frantic wheeze that eventually calmed to a series of
short gasps. When it seemed like she’d regained her composure, I decided to
forge ahead.

“What’s your plan, Lois?”

She shook her head, but didn’t say
anything.

“I want to help you,” I continued.
“I know that may not make sense to you right now, but I really want to help you
find a way out of this corner you’ve backed into.”

She said something that I couldn’t
understand.

“What was that?”

“I wish that I was dead,” she
whispered. “I’ve made such a mess of everything.”

Her finger slowly slipped from the
trigger.

“All I wanted was for Tim to like
me more than—”

Someone tapped on the glass beside
Lois, but she was so engrossed in what she was telling me that she didn’t seem
to notice.

“—every other girl,” she said,
quietly finishing her thought. “I wanted the handsome, popular boy to pick me
for once.”

The tap repeated, sharp and hard
and insistent.

I kept my eyes on Lois as she
suddenly realized the sound was coming from the car window. As she spun around
in the seat, I leaned forward and saw Adam Caldwell on the sidewalk. He had his
service revolver in one hand, his badge in the other and his gaze locked on
Lois Jordan and the handgun in her lap.