A Killer Cake (6 page)

“Don’t I at least have a second to say hello
to my husband?” I asked as I spotted Greg through the order
window.

I waved, and he returned the gesture as he
said, “Go on. He’s been driving us all crazy ever since you left.
You’ll be doing us all a favor if you go with him wherever the
man’s headed.”

“I’d resent that remark if it didn’t serve my
purposes,” Moose told Greg.

“That’s about what I figured, or I wouldn’t
have said it in the first place,” my good-natured husband answered
with a big grin. It took a lot to rile him up, and I’d only seen it
a few times since we’d been married, but it was something that I
was in no hurry to witness again. My husband, level-headed and
easygoing, could be pushed to the point where he struck back, but
it took a lot to do it. Once it did, though, I pitied the person
who mistook his calm demeanor for someone who was a pushover.

“Come on, then. Let’s go,” I said.

As we got outside and started walking toward
Moose’s truck, I asked, “Where exactly are we going, or is it a
secret?”

“No secrets between us,” Moose said. As he
opened the passenger side truck door for me, he grinned. “Did you
know that Roy Thompson was seeing someone on the sly?”

“You don’t mean romantically, do you?” I
asked, aghast by the claim.

Moose looked at me carefully. “Why does that
surprise you, because of his age?”

“Heavens, no. I’ve been at the diner too long
not to realize that men of any age can be fools for love. I just
can’t imagine anyone loving that old sourpuss back.”

Moose grinned. “I’ll give you that one. If
you think that’s something, wait until you hear who it was.”

He’d pulled out of the parking lot, and I
knew the general direction we were going on. I tried to think of
any women in town who might be able to stand Roy, but I drew a
total blank.

Then we pulled up in front of Chris’s
Barbershop.

“You’re kidding me,” I said as I looked
through the painted window inside to see three women, spaced from
their thirties to their sixties, all cutting hair. Most folks
seemed surprised to find an old fashioned barbershop just off Main
Street with three women working the clippers, but for me, it was
all that I’d ever known. In my opinion, it was odd to think of
barbershops being run by men.

“It’s not Chris, is it?” I asked. She ran the
place, and had Casey and Taylor cutting with her. Was it just a
coincidence that all three women had names that could have just as
easily been men? It had to be, but I didn’t want to try to figure
the odds.

“It is, indeed. Why do you ask?”

“Well, Casey’s too young for him, at least I
hope she is, and Taylor tends to like her men on the younger side,
if what I’ve seen in the diner is any indication. I don’t know. I
always figured that Chris was too smart to be hoodwinked by a man
like Roy Thompson.”

“Granddaughter, not everyone saw the same man
you did when they looked at Roy. I know what a pain he was at the
diner, but he could also be charming when it suited him.”

“I don’t like this,” I told Moose. “How are
we going to broach the subject with her? It’s not exactly common
knowledge that they’d been dating, or I would have heard about it.
I’m not so sure she’d appreciate us outing her like that.”

“My, don’t you have a high opinion of your
knowledge of our little town,” Moose said with a smile.

“Hey, you didn’t know, either,” I
protested.

“That’s a good point.”

“So, I’m curious,” I asked as we got out of
his truck. “Who was your source?”

“I may not work for the newspaper, but I
still can’t reveal it,” Moose said solemnly.

“Not even to your partner?” I asked.

“I was asked to keep it quiet, and I’m going
to keep my word.”

“That’s all I needed to hear,” I said.
Keeping your word was a big deal in my family, and we’ve been known
to lose opportunities to make some good money in the short term
when someone violated their bond. Some tried to make it up to us,
giving in and claiming that they meant what they’d said all along,
but they were always met with resounding silence. If you couldn’t
trust someone to keep their word on a handshake and a promise,
there was no contract ever written that could make any of us ever
enter into a deal again with anyone who had lied to us in the first
place.

“Should I tackle her by myself, or do you
want in on it, too?” I asked Moose.

“Just wait out here, Victoria,” he said.

“Not a chance,” I replied with a grin.
“You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

“I’m not trying to lock you out of this,”
Moose said impatiently. “I’m going to ask Chris to come outside and
talk to us, and I’m going to present it so that she thinks you’ve
got something to ask her in private, which is true.”

Chris noticed us standing out front, and she
waved tentatively in our direction with her clippers. She was a
slim, older woman, with closely cropped hair that was halfway
through the transition from brown to silver.

“Why me?” I asked as I waved back, doing my
best not to smile at her. I didn’t want Chris to think we were
there for haircuts.

“If I go in and ask her alone, there’s a
better chance that she’ll come outside to talk to you,” Moose said,
and before I could refute it, he walked into the barbershop. I had
no choice but to back his play, knowing that I could trust him to
do what he’d said he would do.

Sure enough, Chris came out immediately,
despite the older man still sitting in her chair. She said
something to him as he started to get up, but he settled back into
the chair quickly enough.

Chris came out on Moose’s heels. “Victoria,
what’s so urgent, and why couldn’t we discuss this inside? Kyle
Norman’s not too happy with either one of us right now.”

“Kyle has nowhere else to be, and we all know
it,” Moose said.

Chris just waved off his comment, her gaze
never leaving me. “I’m waiting, Victoria.”

I took a deep gulp of air, and said, “Moose
and I didn’t want anyone else inside to know that you’ve been
dating Roy Thompson.”

As I said it, all the blood went out of her
face, and if Moose hadn’t been standing nearby to steady her, I
have no doubt that she would have hit the sidewalk in front of her
shop like a big bag of sand.

“Are you okay?” Moose asked Chris as he
helped her to the bench in front of the barbershop. In warmer
weather, it was a magnet for the old men in town to sit around and
gossip, but thankfully, it was a little too chilly for that
today.

“I’m fine. I don’t know why I reacted like
that. I wasn’t ashamed of going out with Roy, but I thought we’d
been pretty cagey about keeping it quiet. How’d you find out?”

Moose was about to answer when I said, “Our
source asked for our discretion, and we’re going to give it. Chris,
if word gets out, it won’t be from us. Moose and I are digging into
what happened to Roy, though, and we’d appreciate any help you
could give us.”

“I wish I could,” she said with a frown, “but
you see, Roy and I broke up last week. I suppose that there was a
chance that we might get back together later, but somebody sure
stole that from us, didn’t they?”

“Why did you break up, if you don’t mind us
asking?” I asked gently.

“There was no major rift, if that’s what
you’re trying to figure out. Roy and I just decided to go our
separate ways for the moment. I kissed him on the cheek good bye,
and that was that. Sorry I can’t give you a more explosive story,
but there was no hate there, or love either, truth be told. We
might have found it later if we’d had more time, but it wasn’t
there yet. Why are you two so interested in my love life all of a
sudden?”

I was about to answer when she held up one
hand. “Strike that. It makes sense. He was poisoned with your cake.
Why wouldn’t you try to solve his murder? I’m just sorry I can’t
help. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to Kyle’s
haircut. As it is, the old miser’s probably going to try to get a
reduced price because he had to wait.”

“Chris, were you at the celebration earlier?”
I asked her.

She turned, stared at me for a second, and
then she said, “My chair was never empty. I couldn’t afford to
close the place. I was here from eight this morning, and the first
time I’ve stepped out the door was to talk to you. You can ask my
girls, or any of the customers I cut. Now, is that all?”

“That’s it. I hope there are no hard
feelings,” I said.

“Not between us,” she said with a slight
grin. “Good luck with your hunt.”

“Thanks. We’ll need it.”

After Chris walked back in and picked her
scissors up, I asked Moose, “Do you believe her story?”

“About the breakup? It sounds about right.
The only thing is that she didn’t seem all that choked up that
someone killed Roy, did she?”

I shook my head. “If they’d broken up six
months ago, her reaction would have been perfect, but since it was
just last week, by her own words, she was a little too casual about
the whole thing.”

“She’s got an alibi, though,” Moose said.
“Nobody would make that bold a claim without being able to back it
up.”

“You’re not worried that her employees might
lie to protect her?” I asked.

“Not about murder. As far as I’m concerned,
she’s in the clear unless we learn something that contradicts what
she just told us. Are you ready for a little ride?”

“Sure, I’m up for it if you are. Where are we
going?”

“Our next lead is in Molly’s Corners,” he
said.

The town was a good half hour away from ours,
and I wondered who we’d be visiting. “Who are we going to be
talking to there?”

“It turns out that James Manchester wasn’t
the only business partner Roy crossed. He also had some pretty bad
blood recently with Hank Mullins.”

“Hang on a second. He’s the mayor there,
right?”

“He is,” Moose affirmed. “Apparently Roy only
partnered with folks rich enough to afford losing their investments
with him.”

“Didn’t anyone ever
make
any money
working with him?” I asked as Moose drove to the next town.

“I’m sure that they did, but earning money
isn’t much of an incentive to kill someone, is it? I figure the
only folks who had cause to want to see Roy dead lost something in
their bargains with him.”

“You realize that we could be in for a long
list of names before this is all over, don’t you?” I asked.

“That’s why it’s so important we get busy
now,” Moose said.

“I can’t argue with that.”

Chapter 5

“How exactly are we going to approach Hank
Mullins?” I asked as Moose and I drove to Molly’s Corners. “We
can’t exactly say, ‘Hi there, Mr. Mayor. You didn’t happen to kill
Roy Thompson, did you?’ It wouldn’t make us his most popular
visitors of the day, would it?”

“You’d be surprised. I’ve got a hunch that
being mayor has its own set of troubles, but no, we’re not going
into this cold. I’ve got a message from someone he’s bound to
listen to. He might not like talking to us, but he can’t afford to
say no when he knows who’s on our side.”

“Wow, we sound important all of a sudden,” I
said with a smile. “Who is this backer whose name we’re about to
drop?”

He mumbled something in response, but even
sitting as close to him as I was on the bench seat of his truck, I
still couldn’t hear the name. “Care to repeat that in a decibel
level above where termites talk?”

“It’s Holly Dixon,” Moose admitted
grudgingly.

“You called the judge for a favor, knowing
how your wife feels about the woman? You’ve got some nerve, that’s
all I can say.”

“Victoria,” he replied heatedly, “Martha has
no reason to be jealous of Holly. I’ve told her that until I’m blue
in the face, but she just won’t listen to me.”

“She might have a little reason,” I said,
remembering the last time I’d seen my grandfather and the judge in
the same room. They’d been like two teenagers with a secret that no
one else was in on. It made me suspicious of their past, and I
didn’t even have a dog in the fight. I wasn’t at all surprised that
Martha had never warmed up to the woman.

“That’s nonsense,” he said dismissively, but
I wasn’t about to let it go that easily.

“It’s not nonsense if your wife feels
otherwise,” I said. “Moose, we don’t have to solve this murder that
badly. I don’t want you getting in trouble with your wife over
it.”

“Holly and I are just friends. There’s no
reason I shouldn’t have called her, and there’s nothing I feel
guilty about. Now, I’ve just about said all I’m going to on the
subject. Do we understand each other?”

I knew that tone of voice; it was time to
drop it, at least for now. “Got it.” I looked out the window at the
barren trees as we passed through the mountains. “I miss the
leaves; I can’t wait until they show up again.”

“You do tend to jump around sometimes when
you talk, don’t you?” he asked with amusement thick in his
voice.

“Hey, I’m nothing if not an obedient
granddaughter,” I said.

We both held it as long as we could, and then
my grandfather and I both burst out laughing at nearly the same
time.

As we drove into Molly’s Corners, I found
myself enjoying the architecture of the town. It was different
enough from Jasper Fork, and yet similar enough to make me feel as
though I was in a place of odd familiarity. The town square was
different, though. While ours was an actual square, theirs was much
more of a long rectangle, and while we had a cannon in the center
of ours, they had a large L constructed of fine white stone, built
in honor of the original Molly, at least the one the town had been
named after. Molly had been one of the first settlers in the area,
and their group had been at war with a local tribe of Catawbas.
Molly’s husband died defending their land, and without hesitation,
history said that Molly held out until darkness came, and then she
slipped away into a nearby creek with her daughter. They managed to
make their way back to the nearest settlement, ten miles away on
foot, traveling only at night, and when she’d been asked how they’d
managed it, Molly had said she just peeked around every corner
until no one was there. I kind of liked the name of the town
myself.