A Plain Malice: An Appleseed Creek Mystery (Appleseed Creek Mystery Series Book 4) (24 page)

“Why did Pearl refuse to see you?”

“I don’t think she knew anything about the money. Ruby promised me she wouldn’t tell anyone. The fewer people knew about my troubles the better. Pearl must have thought I was there for some other reason.”

What troubles? How much longer could I keep up this front that I knew what he was talking about?

Earl took a step back. “You’re not a cop. I don’t have talk to you.” He stomped away and his pipe swung back and forth in his right hand.

I pulled my cell phone out of
my pocket and called Chief Rose. I told her about Hudson going to the Mount Vernon hotel to retrieve the money he’d given Ruby from Pearl.

“
That could fit,” the police chief mused.

“Fit? Fit what?”
I asked.

“We found a
nice wad of cash in Ruby’s luggage,” the police chief said.

“How much are you talking?”

“Five hundred. But that’s not even close to the money I found in Dudley’s things.”

“
How much did he have?”

“Enough for a down payment on an Amish farm and then some.”

I closed my eyes for a moment. “Why are you just telling me now? I could have been following this lead since yesterday.”

“It was on a need to know basis.”

I gritted my teeth.

“Don’t growl at me, Humphrey.”

“I wasn’t growling.”

“Sure you weren’t.” She laughed. “
Nottingham and I are on the way with the thumbscrews.”

Great.

Chapter Twenty-Six

The chief
’s patrol car turned into the Dutch Inn’s circular driveway two minutes later. As Officer Nottingham and Chief Rose slammed their car doors, Timothy walked around the side of the building. “What’s going on?”

“I just had a conversation with Earl. It didn’t go well,
so I called the chief.”

He frowned. “Why didn’t you call me? I’m right here.”

Why hadn’t I thought to call Timothy
? I cleared my throat. “She was already on her way here.”

“Humphrey,” the chief said. “Where’s Earl?”

“Not sure.” I folded my arms. “He didn’t enjoy our conversation and wandered off.”

“
Did he leave the property?” Officer Nottingham asked.

I shook my head. “
He went around the north side of the building two minutes ago.”

The chief straightened her department ball cap on her curls
. “Nottingham, find him and bring him out here. Humphrey and I will be at that prissy little table over there.”

I turned to see the chief pointed at a white iron table and chair.

“Right boss,” Officer Nottingham said and jogged around the side of the building.

“Come on.” The chief waved at me to follow her to the table. She perched on one of the chairs. “These here
are more uncomfortable than the chairs in my waiting room.”

Timothy fold
ed his tall frame to sit in one the delicate chairs. “Not quite,” he said.

The chief laugh
ed. “Okay, before surfer cop gets back, I have to tell you what’s going on. It looks like Dudley was involved in some type of gambling. Perhaps he was even a bookie.”

Timothy looked at me. “Do you know what she’s talking about?”

The chief sighed as if we let her down in some way. “Dudley was more than a tour guide. He took bets on sporting events, mostly NCAA, which is illegal.”

“How do you know this?” I asked.

“There’s the wad of money, and then there was his computer. He had a website and everything. The bookie business has gone high tech. You should be able to appreciate that, Humphrey. It took us a while to figure out what was going on because Dudley’s side business was located in encrypted files on the laptop. Finally, one of the sheriff’s geeks cracked it.”

“You should have brought it to me. I could have cracked it.”

“I thought about it more than one time, believe me, but by that point it was already at the sheriff’s office. It makes the sheriff cranky if I ask him for help and then change my mind. Plus, I needed you on the bus.”

“You think he was killed
because of this?” I took a quick glance at the corner of the stone-face inn Officer Nottingham had disappeared behind. “Do you think Earl was the one that did it?”

“If only it were that easy. If he had been shot or knifed, I would say yes it was a done deal, but he was poisoned. That’s not how the average bookie is supposed to go. It’s a girl
y way to die.”

Timothy held onto both of his knees.
“A girly way to die?”

“Women are far more likely to use poison as a murder weapon than men. It’s clean and controlled and appeals to a woman
’s sense of propriety.”

“Okay,” I said. “If Dudley was a bookie, what does that have to do with
Earl?”

Officer Nottingham and Earl appeared around the corner. Earl
drug his feet on the driveway.

Quickly, I said,
“He thinks I heard about the money and betting from Hudson.”

“Did you?”

“No.” I lowered my voice. “I figured Earl’s was one of the voices I heard around the side of the building yesterday. I didn’t know it for sure. It was just a hunch. When he mentioned Hudson, I pretended I knew what he was talking about.”

“Nice acting work, Humphrey. I’ll suggest you
r name the next the county puts on a production of
The Sound of Music
. You would make a believable Leisl. Can you sing?”

“No.”

“Too bad.” She stood. “Mr. Kepler, how nice of you to join us.”

He blew his mustache out of his mouth. “Did I have a choice?”

“Not really.” She gestured to the empty chair. “Have a seat.”

There were only four chairs around the tiny table. Timothy stood. “You can have my spot, Nottingham.”

The young officer thanked him. Timothy leaned against an oak tree a few feet away. He wouldn’t miss a thing.

Officer Nottingham removed a tiny notebook from the breast pocket off his un
iform.

The chief sat back down in her seat.
“What can you tell us about Dudley’s gambling racket?”

Earl
chewed on his mustache. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Really?
Because the five hundred dollars you gave Ruby Masters tells me otherwise. Why’d you give her that money?”

“You have it.”

“Yes, I have it. It was with her things.”

He removed his pipe from his pocket but didn’t light it.
“Can I have it back?”

The chief shook her head.
“Sorry, no.”

“But it’s mine.
” He flipped the pipe over in hand. “I gave it to Ruby for safe keeping to protect me.”

“
Protect you. What about Ruby? She’s the one who is dead.”

He paled. “You don’t think I had something to do with that. I didn’t. I owed Ruby. I would never want to hurt her. She stopped me from making a mistake.
”

“What kind of mistake?” I asked.

“I have a gambling problem.” He shifted in the hard seat. “I told you I’m a widower. That’s not true. The truth is my wife left me after I lost our life savings.” He squeezed the pipe in his hand. “Including all the money we had saved for our son’s college education on gambling debts. At the time, I was angry, but I don’t blame my ex now.”

“After that
, you got treatment?” I leaned forward.

He shook his head. “Not right away. No. It wasn’t for another twenty years. Finally,
I built up the courage to do it.” He examined his pipe. “By that time, it was too late to save my relationship with my wife or with my son.”

I thought of my severed relationship with my father. That had been destroyed by my mother’s death. We were
finally piecing it back together. “It’s never too late.”

“Are we done?
I’m going to miss dinner for this,” Earl muttered.

“I’m sure Jane or her daughter will make you up a plate later,” I said.

“Unless you’re in jail,” Officer Nottingham said out of the side of his mouth.

Earl’s eyes seemed to roll back into his head for a moment.

Chief Rose grunted. “Okay. So you are addicted to gambling. Sorry to hear that. Where does Dudley come into this story?”

“
I’m in recovery, but it’s a struggle every day. I joined Gamblers Anonymous. My mentor convinced me this trip to Amish Country would do me good because I wouldn’t be tempted to gamble. He was wrong. He didn’t know Dudley would be on the bus.” His mustache drooped. “The moment I arrived it was as if Dudley knew about my condition. At our first dinner in Lancaster County, Dudley asked me how much I was putting on the College World Series. I broke out into a cold sweat right there. All the next day, he talked about the bets he’d make
if
he were a betting man. By the second night, he told me he could place bets for me and he only needed a couple hundred bucks. He guaranteed he could turn that into five figures or better.”

Officer Nottingham twirled his pencil between two fingers. “
You placed a bet.”

His mustache fluffed out in walrus mode again. “
No, but I almost did. The night before we left Lancaster County, I sat on the hotel patio. That’s where Ruby found me. She found me at a weak moment, and I ended up telling her my whole story. There was no one else around, and I had to tell someone.”

“You gave her the money,” Chief Rose said as if she wanted to hurry the story along.

“Yes, but I didn’t ask her. She offered. She said, ‘Let me take your burden. It’s what I do best.’ So I gave her the money, and she promised to give it back to me when we arrived back home in Tupelo. That five hundred was all the cash I brought with me on the trip as spending money. I don’t trust credit cards.” He looked the chief square in the eye. “But I’m telling you I had nothing to do with Ruby’s death.”

“Dudley’s a different story though, isn’t he
? You haven’t shed any tears over his death, have you? Maybe you bumped him off because he was about to drive you back into the gambling abyss, and Ruby was an unfortunate accident.”

“No, that’s not what happened.” He pointed at Timothy. “It was his father who killed them. He was a crazed Amish man.”

Timothy balled his fists at his side, but he didn’t come any closer.

Earl cowered. He
wasn’t in any danger from Timothy, but Earl didn’t know that.

Officer Nottingham tapped his pencil o
n the notepad. “Do you have any houseplants, Mr. Kepler?”

“Houseplants
?”

“Just answer the question
,” Chief Rose said.

“I have a spider plant my sister gave me to make my apartment homier, but it died.”

Officer Nottingham drew a circle on his notepad. “Do you garden?”

“I just said
I live in an apartment. Of course, I don’t garden. Crazy Yankee cop,” he muttered under his breath.

Officer Nottingham simply shook his head at the chief, a
nd she nodded.

“You’re free to go to dinner, Mr. Kepler
,” the chief said.

“That’s it?
” He looked back and forth between the two officers. “You have nothing else to ask me?”

“If you want to hang out at the station with me, we can talk all day.” She slipped her aviator sunglasses out of the breast pocket of her uniform and unfolded the arms.

He bit his mustache. “No—no, that’s fine. What about my money?”

“Your money is evidence.
When I am able, I will mail it back to you. You won’t get it before you leave Ohio though.”

He nodded. “Maybe it
’s for the best. I may have used it wrongly in the end.” Slowly he stood, and there was a cracking sound.

I glanced at Officer Nottingham half-expecting to see he snapped his pencil in two.

“Are you all right?” Timothy asked. Sympathy replaced anger on his face.

“It’s just my
bum knee. You will understand when you’re older.” He limped in the direction of the inn.

I jumped up from my white chair. “Earl, wait! You said before
Hudson knew about Dudley’s side business.”

“I expected he did. He was there many times when Earl tried to talk me into placing a bet
, and he wanted to know everything I knew about it after Dudley died. That’s what we argued about behind the inn.”

“Did he work with Dudley?” I asked.

“I don’t think so, but Dudley must have given him something to keep him quiet. A man like that doesn’t do anything for free.”

After Earl hobbled halfway to the inn, the chie
f braced her hands on her knees and stood. “He didn’t do it. He wanted the money back, but it was still with Ruby’s things. That would have been the motive for her murder. Even though he has a tentative motive for Dudley’s offing. He doesn’t know a lick about plants.” She shook his head. “He’s not the guy.”