Alibis and Amethysts (14 page)

Chapter 18

“I don’t think we agree on the definition of ‘lucky,’” Jaye said as she and Sierra
trailed behind the Newirths. “And by the way—you nearly gave me heart failure with
that Betsy Dugan setup.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Sierra said, sounding properly contrite. “It occurred to
me when she came into the bakery yesterday. You know, to cover our butts if we got
caught.”

“You told her what we were doing?” Jaye asked, forgetting to keep her voice low. Up
ahead, Kelly turned to look over her shoulder at them. For a moment Jaye thought she
might have heard the remark, but she just smiled and called, “Come on, slowpokes.”
Jaye smiled back and gave herself a mental flogging for the lapse.

“Give me some credit,” Sierra murmured. “I told her it was part of a prank.”

“From now on I expect to be kept in the loop.”

“I swear I don’t know how I forgot to mention it. I guess I was a lot more anxious
about all this than I thought.”

“You still owe me big-time.”

“Put it on my tab.”

The Newirths had opened their door and were waiting at the threshold. Pasting good-neighbor
smiles on their faces, Jaye and Sierra followed the slate path to their door and stepped
inside. The house was similar in layout to Peggy’s, but the walls between the kitchen,
dining room and living room had been removed to create an airy, open space. The decor
was contemporary and understated. Instead of ceramic tile, there were hardwood floors
that gleamed in the sunlight coming through the oversized windows. The earth tone
palette of the walls and furnishings was easy on the eyes—soothing after the hodgepodge
of Peggy’s house. There was a large, comfy-looking dog bed in one corner in a cocoa
brown that blended nicely with the rest of the room and a plastic bin filled with
dog toys tucked under a cherrywood and chrome desk. Juicy punches of orange and purple
in the throw pillows and other accessories kept the space from drowning in a sea of
neutrals.

Kelly invited them to sit on the leather sectional, and she took one of the armchairs
facing them. From where they were seated they could see Jeremy bustling around the
kitchen.

“My husband’s in charge of making the coffee,” she explained. “Jer, make sure you
use the new measuring scoop.”

“Got it,” he called back.

“He really doesn’t have to fuss,” Jaye told her. “We had coffee earlier.”

Kelly waved off her concern. “Oh, he doesn’t mind. He’s off today anyway. . . . Jer,
be careful about how much water you use, or it’ll be too weak.”

“Your home is beautiful,” Jaye said to start the conversation ball rolling. “Did you
do it all yourselves?”

“A contractor took down the walls and redid the kitchen, but we designed and decorated
it all. Well, to be more accurate, I did. Of course, Jeremy was a big help.”

Jaye could see that the flattery had hit its mark. Kelly actually seemed to be sitting
a bit taller. If she’d been a bird, she would have thrust out her chest and started
preening. Instead, she told them that she’d always wanted to become an interior decorator,
but her mother had convinced her teaching made more sense. “You know, all the perks—summers
off, the possibility of working part-time as a substitute once I had a family. My
mother has a really strong personality. It was her way or the highway, as the saying
goes.” Kelly shook her head. “I guess she just wore me down. You have no idea how
hard it was to live with someone like that.”

Jeremy might have a pretty good sense of it, Jaye thought, amazed that Kelly couldn’t
see how much like her mother she’d turned out to be.

“I see you have a dog,” Sierra said, hoping to hijack the conversation and head it
in a more productive direction. “And by the size of that bed, I’m betting it’s not
a Chihuahua.”

Kelly flinched as if she’d been blindsided. “We
had
a dog.” In an instant her tone had gone from chatty to an intense mixture of anger
and grief. “A chocolate Lab named Hershey,” she said, her voice cracking on his name.

“I’m so sorry,” Jaye said, as if this were the first time she’d heard about it. “Do
you mind if I ask what happened to him?”

“Peggy happened to him. She was always complaining about Hershey jumping the wall
into her yard and leaving a mess for her to clean up. We told her more than once that
all she had to do was call us to come over and clean it up, but she had to go make
a federal case out of it.”

“How do you mean?” Sierra asked

“She filed a complaint with the police. And then she threatened us. She actually came
over here and
threatened
us.” Kelly sounded as if she still couldn’t grasp Peggy’s audacity. “She said if we
couldn’t keep our dog off her property, she’d take care of the problem herself.”

Sierra shook her head in sympathy. “Are you saying she actually did that?”

“One day when Hershey was outside,
someone
snuck over here and opened the gate to our yard. Who else would have done that? We
haven’t seen him since. For all we know, he was hit by a car or picked up by someone
who intends to sell him.”

“Does he have an ID tag?” Jaye asked.

“A tag and a chip. But that only helps if someone
wants
to find his owner.” Tears had gathered on Kelly’s lower lids and were beginning to
wobble down her cheeks.

“That’s awful,” Jaye murmured, “just awful.” Although they needed to find Peggy’s
killer, she felt more than a twinge of guilt for having reopened such an obviously
painful wound. “Did you report it to the police?”

Kelly scrubbed away her tears. “Yes, we filed a report, but the police said they couldn’t
do much about it since we didn’t actually see her open the gate and there was no evidence
she was ever there.”

Jaye had suspected as much. “Is there anyone else who might have left it open accidentally?”
she asked as delicately as possible. “Like a gardener or—”

“We don’t have a gardener,” Kelly snapped, “and there’s no reason for anyone to go
into our backyard without our knowledge.”

At that moment Jeremy came out of the kitchen carrying a tray with four steaming coffee
mugs and the fixings. His appearance broke the tension in the room as effectively
as the bell ending a round of boxing. He set the tray on the low glass table between
the couch and armchairs and invited Jaye and Sierra to help themselves.

“You forgot the napkins,” Kelly said. She was still sniffling, but her anger seemed
to have been swept beneath a carpet of civility.

Without a word, Jeremy went back to the kitchen. Sierra drank her coffee black, but
Jaye took her time adding cream and sugar to hers in the interest of giving Kelly
enough time to regain her composure and hopefully realize she had no cause to be irritated
with them.

Jeremy returned with the napkins and handed one to each of them. “It’s just so hard
for us to understand how someone could put an animal’s life in jeopardy,” Jeremy said,
bewilderment pinching his eyebrows together. “My Kelly can’t even kill a moth.”

Jaye wanted to ask if “his Kelly” felt the same way about people, particularly people
who’d done wrong by an animal. But since such a question was likely to bring their
visit to an abrupt and unpleasant conclusion, she kept herself busy sipping coffee.

Before the silence could grow awkward, Sierra tried a different tack. “I don’t know
about you guys, but we’ve been interviewed by the police a few times already, and
it’s definitely not an experience I want to keep repeating.”

“I know. We’ve had enough of them too,” Kelly said, sounding less annoyed and more
like a comrade in arms.

“I guess finding a murder victim makes you a suspect the same way living next door
to one does,” Jeremy observed as he added another splash of cream to his coffee.

Jaye sighed. “I just wish they’d catch the killer, so I can finally get a good night’s
rest.”

“Do either of you have any thoughts about who did it?” Sierra asked.

Kelly shook her head. “Believe me, if I did, I’d go straight to the police. This whole
investigation can’t be over soon enough for me.”

Jaye glanced at Jeremy to see if he had anything to add, but he was staring into his
coffee mug as if it could help him divine the answer. “Not a clue,” he said finally
without looking up.

An hour passed before they were able to extricate themselves from the company of their
neighbors-who-would-never-be. Once the conversation moved past the topic of Peggy
and Hershey, it limped along with all the excitement of watching cement set.

“I wonder if they have any friends,” Sierra said when they got back into the car.
“It was like they didn’t want to let us out of their clutches.”

“Do you think they killed Peggy?” Jaye asked as she pulled away from the curb and
headed back to the bakery.

“Let me put it this way: if Kelly did it, I’m sure Jeremy helped. And if Jeremy did
it, it was because he was following orders.”

“My thoughts exactly. I wouldn’t be surprised if she makes him put the toothpaste
on her brush.”

Sierra didn’t comment. She was biting her lower lip, clearly lost in thought. “We
have to talk to Jeremy alone,” she said finally.

“I know; I didn’t like the way he avoided eye contact when he answered your question.”

“Didn’t he say he teaches science at the high school?”

“Yes,” Jaye said, “but I think she teaches there too. And even if you knew when and
where to find him alone, you can’t just walk into a school these days. Columbine changed
that forever.” Jaye felt a familiar flash of misgiving shimmy up her spine. “Please
tell me you understand that we can’t help our case by sneaking into a school,” she
begged. “We should have learned a lesson from today’s near disaster.”

“There has to be some way to go about it,” Sierra said. “We’ve just got to think it
through. I mean, really—how hard could it be?”

Chapter 19

As it worked out, Sierra actually came up with a modified plan that seemed doable.
Although success was far from guaranteed, at least the risk to them would be minimal.
They would wait at the curb outside the high school parking lot at dismissal time,
like any parent waiting to pick up a child. But in their case, they would be waiting
for a day when Jeremy left without his wife. Maybe she would be staying late to give
extra help, taking her turn at detention duty or staying for a department meeting.
The reason didn’t matter as long as Jeremy left alone.

Jaye and Sierra wore oversized sunglasses and baseball caps so the Newirths wouldn’t
recognize them when they left the parking lot and drove by. This time there was no
Betsy Dugan fallback plan if the couple spotted them and stopped to chat. Although
they’d tried to imagine a legitimate reason to explain their presence, so far they’d
come up empty. If anyone noticed them sitting there day after day, then driving off
without an additional passenger, they might be suspected of scoping out the school
for some nefarious purpose. Then they’d have to answer to the police. That was the
Achilles’ heel of Sierra’s plan. So after the first couple of days, Jaye suggested
alternating cars and buying floppy sun hats in an effort to mitigate that possibility.
They’d even discussed renting different cars every few days, but the issue of cost
quickly shot down that idea, along with one about having their cars repainted.

By day four of the stakeout they were growing antsy. Sierra brought along some of
her peanut butter chocolate chip cookies to munch on, which helped until the cookies
ran out. Between them, they polished off eight cookies before the dismissal bell rang.

“Once we’ve wrapped up this case and the real killer is behind bars, you should start
peddling your cookies here car to car,” Jaye mused aloud. “Or maybe you could have
a little pushcart. In fact, maybe we should start doing that right away—then we’d
have an excuse for being here.”

“It’s not a terrible idea,” Sierra replied, licking a smudge of chocolate off her
finger. The bell rang then, and both women turned to focus on the parking lot. Within
seconds, kids started pouring out of the building, some headed to the waiting cars,
the rest to the buses lined up to take them home.

“There’s Jeremy,” they said in unison as they spotted him crossing the lot to a silver
SUV. Every day since they’d set their plan in motion, he’d made it out of the building
before Kelly. He climbed in and started the engine. Now it was just a matter of waiting
to see if she joined him as she had the other days.

“Today’s the day; today’s the day,” Sierra murmured like a mantra. “Today’s the day.”

“What’s going on here?” The speaker was male, loud and virtually breathing down Jaye’s
neck. Adrenalin pumping through her, she whipped her head around expecting to see
one of Sedona’s finest and wound up inches away from Daniel’s grinning face.

“You almost gave me a heart attack,” she gasped.

“Make that defibrillators for two,” Sierra said with no amusement in her tone.

“Whoa—sounds like you both forgot to take your happy pills today. What exactly are
you up to?”

“We want to talk to Jeremy Newirth without his wife around,” Jaye replied.

“And we need to spot her before she gets into their SUV,” Sierra said. “The tint on
those windows is so dark it’s almost impossible to see inside. It ought to be illegal.”

A frown creased Daniel’s forehead. “I’m pretty sure stalking someone is already illegal.”

“It’s called investigating,” Jaye said.

Sierra turned back to the parking lot. “Oh, no, we missed it! Jeremy’s leaving the
lot.

“Daniel, move,” Jaye snapped, trying to push him out of the way.

“Okay, okay, I can take a hint.” He pulled his head back from the window and stepped
out of their line of sight.

“Here he comes,” Sierra said. A second later, the SUV passed alongside them and was
gone.

“I think I saw her in there,” Jaye said. “Or at least a silhouette of someone in the
passenger seat.”

Sierra sighed. “Not that it matters. If we don’t get to Jeremy before he leaves the
lot, we don’t stand a chance of flagging him down when he’s driving by us at thirty
or forty miles an hour.”

Daniel was back at the window, peering in at them. “Sorry if I ruined that for you,
but maybe next time you’ll remember to keep your partner here in the loop.”

Jaye went from annoyed to remorseful in a split second. Of course they should have
told him. Would two of the Musketeers have neglected to include the third? She couldn’t
even claim that it had just slipped her mind, because it wasn’t a run-of-the-mill
thing like forgetting to buy milk. Had she subconsciously been afraid he’d try to
scuttle their plan with a heavy dose of male logic? But even that shouldn’t have mattered.
“You’re right,” she said. “You’re absolutely right, and I promise not to leave you
out of our plans again.” With the emphasis on “our.” She knew a promise built on exceptions
wasn’t much of a promise, but it was the best she could do for now.

Sierra made a similar vow. If she added any silent stipulations, Jaye had no idea
what they were.

“I suspect that’s the best I can hope for,” Daniel said, regarding them with a canny
smile. “Now, if I can be of any help with these vigils, give me a ring.”

Jaye smiled up at him. “Since you’re offering, could we borrow your Jeep tomorrow?”

***

The next day Sierra brought along the two crumb buns that had survived the morning
rush. “I’m going to have to hire more help if business keeps up like this,” she said,
handing one of the buns to Jaye on a napkin. “Poor Ruth was about to collapse today.”

Jaye bit into the cake with a little groan of pleasure as powdered sugar eluded the
napkin and rained down on her lap. “If we have to continue this stakeout much longer,
I won’t be able to squeeze into any of my clothes.”

The dismissal bell rang while they were still eating, so they shoved the buns back
in the bag, but not before the console of Daniel’s car received a good dusting of
sugar. Ten minutes passed with no sign of Jeremy or Kelly. The buses had all left,
as had most of the cars waiting at the curb and half the vehicles in the parking lot.
The Newirths’ silver SUV was still there, parked in the same row as always. Sooner
or later one of them was bound to leave the school and claim it.

Another five minutes passed before Jeremy walked out of the building and over to his
car. He climbed in, started the engine and put it in gear. He wasn’t waiting for anyone.
“This is it,” Jaye said, jumping out of the car. The two women ran into the parking
lot, reaching the driveway seconds before Jeremy. If it had been earlier, they would
have been dodging other cars like crazy. Jeremy had done them a favor by being late.

When he saw them running straight at him, waving their arms, he braked sharply and
waited for them to come up alongside him. He lowered his window, wearing an expression
that was somewhere between curious and concerned. “Let me just pull to the side so
I’m not blocking the exit,” he said.

Jaye and Sierra waited while he parked haphazardly across several spots and jumped
down from the SUV. “Is something wrong?” he asked, covering the distance to them in
a few long strides. “Do you need help?”

Sierra shook her head. “Actually, we wanted to talk to you.”

“Why didn’t you just call?”

“To be honest, we wanted to talk to you alone,” Jaye said. She and Sierra had gone
over it a dozen times. There was no politically correct, candy-coated way to say they
didn’t want his wife around. This was the make-or-break moment. He would either tell
them off and leave in a huff or stay out of curiosity to hear what they had to say.

His brow had lowered over his eyes, which didn’t bode well. “You sound like those
detectives,” he said with an unpleasant curl to his lips. “They’re the law, so I had
to put up with their insinuations, but I don’t have to put up with it from the two
of you.” He started to turn away.

Jaye was nonplussed by his reaction. Jeremy had something of a backbone after all.
He didn’t need his puppeteer in order to make a decision or stand his ground. “Please
don’t get me wrong,” Jaye said, switching to crisis-control mode. “Kelly’s wonderful,
and she has a sparkling, vivacious personality.”

Jeremy stopped in his tracks as if reassessing the situation.

“Which is a great gift,” Sierra quickly added. “She outshines all of us. But every
personality type has its advantages, and it’s often the quietest people who are the
most observant or the deepest thinkers. We just wanted to hear
your
thoughts about the case.”

He turned back to them with a wary expression.

“The truth is we’re in the same boat as you and Kelly,” Jaye said. “We’re all suspects
in the murder. The cops want to isolate us, turn us against one another. Instead,
we should be banding together to help each other.” It sounded great, if you didn’t
think too hard about it. The plan was to keep up the chatter before he figured out
they were playing him.

“Jaye and I only have each other to support our alibis,” Sierra said. “Tourists make
up such a large percentage of our business, it would be close to impossible to track
down all the ones who visited our shops that particular day and expect them to remember
at exactly what time they saw us at work. I doubt any of them are even still in town.”
There were a lot of holes in what she said, but Jeremy had no way of knowing that.
“You and Kelly are in a much better position, right?” she asked as if she sincerely
wished that was the case.

Jeremy didn’t answer immediately. He was clearly trying to sort out his thoughts before
speaking.

Jaye had no intentions of giving him time for that. “You’re both in the school building
for, what—six, seven hours a day? That should definitely help with your alibi. I mean,
there are dozens of students who would notice if you weren’t there. Of course,” she
murmured as an afterthought, “you get out at two thirty most days. I guess that does
leave a big chunk of time you had to account for too.” She and Sierra fell silent,
hoping he’d feel obliged to speak.

“Uh, yeah,” he mumbled tentatively. “Same as you, we were home alone after school
that day.” Okay, the Newirths had opportunity as well as motive.

“It stinks when they try to pit you against the people you care about most in the
world,” Sierra said. “I mean, how do you betray someone you love?”

“Neither of us has had a decent night’s sleep since all this started,” Jaye continued.
“It’s obvious the cops are trying to scare us, isolate us from one another until someone
breaks.”

“We didn’t kill Peggy,” Sierra said evenly, “and I’m sure you guys didn’t kill her
either.” She let the words just hang there in the air.

“No way,” Jeremy said, studying the cuticle on his left index finger as if it required
his immediate attention.

“I feel so bad for Kelly,” Sierra said with a sympathetic sigh. “If someone ever hurt
or stole my Frosty, I think I’d be capable of murder.” Tears popped up in her eyes
on cue, a handy ability she’d discovered back in college drama class.

“I’m sure it was just as awful for Jeremy,” Jaye added, as if she were sticking up
for him. Of course, she was actually saying that he was just as likely as his wife
to kill whoever was behind Hershey’s disappearance. But on the surface it sounded
a whole lot more supportive than accusatory.

Jeremy looked up at them, his misery written plainly on his face. “I loved that big,
goofy dog.”

Sierra shook her head. “I understand. There are times you just can’t sit idly by and
watch people who are guilty get away scot-free. Especially when it couldn’t be clearer
who’s to blame.”

“But I’m sure deciding to take justice into your own hands is hard,” Jeremy said.

And we all know who helps you out with decisions, Jaye thought. She stole a sidelong
glance at her friend, who gave her the slightest of nods. They’d gotten more from
him then they’d expected. If they kept at it, they’d only succeed in scaring him off.

“We should let you get going,” Jaye said.

“Yeah, I need to get home,” Jeremy said without much enthusiasm.

“If you ever feel the need to talk . . .” Sierra gave his arm a little squeeze of
reassurance. “And let’s keep each other informed.”

As they walked out of the lot, Jaye glanced back over her shoulder. Jeremy was still
standing where they’d left him, as if he’d become rooted to the macadam.