Banana Muffins & Mayhem (11 page)

"Who knows. It's all more confusing than an Italian restaurant menu written in Japanese." Amy's gaze shifted to the window. "That can't be good either."

Carla turned. Alex's black Jeep was rolling up the driveway. The man was a workaholic, and it was the middle of a Monday afternoon. She had to agree with Amy. Whatever had brought him home probably wasn't a good thing. Yet maybe she could ease her friend's worried mind a bit. "Maybe he wanted to surprise you with a quickie, and I'm ruining his romantic plans. I can leave."

"Nice idea." Amy sighed. "But judging from the look on his face—you're wrong. He came home early a few days ago too—to tell me that a man wearing a Quantum shirt was spotted with Phoebe the night she was murdered."

The scowl on Alex's face as he walked up the path to the porch definitely was not an indicator for afternoon delight. He opened the door and set his briefcase on the floor next to the coatrack. "Hello, Carla. I haven't seen you here in a while." He moved to the end of the table and looked around the kitchen. "Where's Macy?"

"With grandma for the afternoon."

"Wonderful." He looked at Amy while sporting a decidedly serious, instead of sexy, expression. "Detective Foster had a theory that the fire may have been an attempt to light the building on fire, possibly to get rid of some kind of evidence. So she had a team come in and do a search." Alex ran his hand over his short dark-red hair. "They found a pair of women's panties hidden under some fiberboard in the third floor production room."

"Okay, that's kind of weird." Amy's nose wrinkled. "We've had sex away from home, and I've never left behind my underwear. You kind of realize things like that are missing when you get dressed."

Carla gave her friend a sideways glance. Amy seemed sweet and innocent, but underneath the Goldilocks persona was a bit of a wild woman. At the moment though, her sex life wasn't the most interesting thing. "So was anything else found?" Carla asked.

"No." Alex shoved his hands in his pants pockets. "Detective Foster seemed pretty excited to find the panties. I was standing at the bottom of the stairwell, blatantly eavesdropping, so I could hear what she was saying to the people who found them. Something about needing to test them, but they appeared to match the bra."

"How much do you want to bet the dead woman wasn't wearing panties?" Carla asked. She was rewarded with a full-on grimace from Amy.

Alex shrugged. "That was my guess."

"But how did they get there?" Amy asked.

Carla raised an eyebrow. "Do we really need to explain that to you? I thought you had the concept down a minute ago."

"No! I didn't phrase the question correctly." Amy rolled her eyes as she poked Carla's shin with her bare foot. "I mean, you have security cameras all over inside the building. Shouldn't the couple have been caught on tape if they came in after hours to do the hokey pokey?"

"Yes," Alex said. "Nobody was up there on the night of the murder. I know that because I looked through the video footage myself. Only you and I came in on Sunday, and even if someone did decide to use the workroom to hook up with Phoebe, they would've had to use their security code to get in. So obviously something isn't right."

Carla leaned sideways so that she could tuck her leg underneath herself, to get comfortable and keep it out of revenge kicking range. Solving the murder puzzle was much more mentally stimulating than chatting with Macy who had yet to develop coherent conversational skills. "Did any of your security cameras catch what happened outside when the Dumpster blew up?"

"Something that appeared to be a Molotov cocktail was thrown from behind the Dumpster. I'd say from a passing car, but that half of the parking lot is just out of range of the surveillance camera over our employee entrance. There's no way to tell where the firebomb originated, especially since a big panel van was parked next to the Dumpster. It completely blocked the view of anything farther away."

"There are security cameras all over downtown. Maybe they picked something up," Carla offered. "So was your building searched inside before today?"

Alex shook his head.

Carla looked at Amy, whose face lit up in excitement. She could be thinking the same thing—or she could have pole-vaulted to a completely different idea. Amy slapped the table and asked, "What if the panties haven't been there for over a week?"

"That's what I was thinking," Carla said. "If there is no evidence of them getting there in the expected manner, then how and why did they end up in the room?"

As Amy descended the open staircase inside Quantum, she looked at all of the people bustling around between the desks and cubicles on the main level. Her husband had built a nice, little business empire. Whoever was trying to ruin it wasn't going to get away with it if she had any say in what was happening. She had always prided herself in not being a clingy wife, but since the firebombing, she felt drawn to stopping by his office to check on him. Her morning shift at Riverbend Café was complete. And now so was her mental health booster of making sure her husband was okay and that everybody around him seemed to be okay too. No odd behaviors, that she could see, which could possibly betray a guilty conscience.

The thought that she and Alex could be in the same building as the killer or arsonist or killer/arsonist made her shiver. The jittery reaction threw off her coordination, and only her heel made contact with the next step. Her foot then promptly slid off, landing on the next step with a loud thud which echoed through the reception area. Several people turned to look up at her.
Never mind the klutz on the staircase.
The clear glass railing was a nice design touch but not so nice for people who were trying to appear graceful…but weren't.

Outside the building, the warm air added to the heat in her cheeks. She had parked in the employee and visitors lot, so that meant she had to trek past the charred, crime scene tape-festooned Dumpster. It was an ugly reminder of the ugly side of people. Amy took a deep, calming breath and forced herself to look at the object of her despair. A man was bent over next to it. When he stood back up, his limp, dark hair glinted in the sunshine. A pink teddy bear sat next to the blackened stump of a former corner post in the enclosure. Amy froze. A pebble crunched under the sole of her shoe. She seemed to have worn cursed footwear that day. The man turned and squinted at her. "Is this where Phoebe Plymouth was killed?" he asked.

Amy tried to swallow the lump in her throat, but it stayed there like a lump of stale fruitcake. "It's where her body was found."

He nodded once. "Why is it burnt?"

"Good question. I wish I had an answer for that."

His eyes narrowed further until they were just lines of eyelashes. "Phoebe was the most beautiful woman in the world. I am…was her number one fan. I can't believe someone killed her. Now she truly is an angel."

Was this one of the cyber stalkers Ginny was talking about? Somehow Amy had imagined the men would look as creepy as their comments, but other than needing to wash his hair or try some new styling products, this guy looked pretty normal. Looks could be deceiving though. No reason to provoke the potentially crazy obsessed man. Benign was the name of the conversational game. "Her death was a tragedy."

"It was devastating," he said before turning back to the Dumpster and kneeling in front of the stuffed animal.

Amy willed her legs to move at a casual walking pace instead of giving in to the desire to run away as fast as she could. The ten second hike to her car felt as though it took ten minutes. Finally, she made it to the Mini. Amy locked herself inside the sun-warmed vehicle, but instead of starting the engine, she pretended to check her makeup in the visor mirror. It reflected Number One Fan Man as he pressed his fingertips to his lips then touched the teddy bear's snout. He stood and began walking diagonally across the parking lot. Just in time too. She was beginning to feel as though she was sitting in a sauna. But she hoped that by not starting the engine, he wouldn't notice that she wasn't leaving. And the locked doors with rolled up windows made her feel a bit safer while hanging out in the vicinity of the strange man. Especially when her mind was spinning out of control, turning the comment about Phoebe being an angel into a twisted psychopath's reasoning for committing murder.

The man's burnt-orange T-shirt disappeared around the corner of the building that sat at the edge of the parking lot. Amy opened the Mini's door and took a deep breath of the cool air, which had seemed warm when she walked out of Quantum. She hadn't really planned on going for a walk, but the breeze would help cool her down. And more beneficially, she might be able to figure out more about the suspicious memorial-leaving guy.

There were a few people strolling along the sidewalks but since it wasn't Main Street, not enough for Amy to easily blend in with the crowd. So…fake window shopping it was. The man was walking at a quick pace, weaving around the business people and stroller-pushing moms who were out and about on the warm, sunny day. Amy stuck close to the right edge of the sidewalk, nearest to the window displays. When the man suddenly stopped to examine something in a window, Amy stopped too. In front of a restaurant—where the only things on the other side of the glass were people eating lunch. She locked perplexed stares with a bespectacled older gentleman eating an omelet before she took a few more steps. Even though she was uncomfortably close to the suspicious man, she wasn't unnerving any innocent diners. At least she could study the sparkling necklaces and rings in a jewelry shop display from that vantage point. When Amy glanced to the side a few seconds later, Mr. Orange Shirt was nowhere in sight. How had he disappeared so quickly? While an opal pendant necklace had caught her attention, she wasn't focusing that intently on it.

She hadn't cooked herself in Mimi the Mini just to let a few seconds of panic stop her from completing her mission. Whatever the mission was. She still wasn't quite sure what she hoped to accomplish by tailing the man, but it seemed like the right thing to do. So…most likely he had continued on in the same direction, possibly ducking into a store. If he had passed behind her, the bright T-shirt should've been reflected in the jewelry store window.

Amy quickened the pace of her faux shopping expedition, glancing from side to side as she strolled along the sidewalk. Absolutely no orange garments or oily, black hair in sight for the next two blocks. She was nearing the end of the downtown shopping district, where the storefronts were predominantly for specialty services like house painters and insurance agents. Not a lot of window displays to pretend to look at, if the need to do so arose again.
Where had he gone?
With a quarter of a block to go before reaching the purely residential neighborhood, Amy turned around. And came face-to-face with the object of her futile search.

"Are you following me?" He squinted at her even though the sun was being shielded by a cloud at the moment. Did he need glasses, or did he just like to scowl at people?

"Following you? No. Just getting a little exercise and shopping done at the same time. I
adore
multitasking. This street isn't as busy as Main for walking. So that's why I'm here." Amy maintained eye contact with him, hoping the gesture would exude confidence as she mentally inventoried her outfit—khaki capri pants, a coral-colored T-shirt, and memory foam soled flats that were marketed as walking shoes.
Yay!
Her impromptu excuse had turned out to be plausible, if her traitorous nervous ticks didn't give the lie away. She ground the toe of her shoe into the sidewalk to stop her foot from tapping.

He exhaled. A wave of foul-smelling breath washed over Amy. Talk about a test of mettle. Her calm, unintimidated facial expression developed a nostril flare glitch. The stare down continued for a few more excruciatingly long seconds.

"I thought maybe you were following me. The government sends people to spy on me all the time, and I hate it."

Really?
He was either paranoid or into doing things that had caught the government's attention. Or both. Both would be a really volatile combo, sort of like five-alarm spicy chili topped with deep fried jalapenos.

"Nope. I am definitely not from the government." She couldn't risk trying to say she wasn't following him. Some body part with an honesty complex would flinch and give the lie away. Amy pointed to a pet supply shop on the other side of the street. "I need to pick up a new chew toy for my dog. He goes through at least one a month…teeth like a saw blade. I think he takes his pent up aggression out on his toys."

Pogo was more face-licking dust bunny than guard dog, but he could bark ferociously and nip at ankles like a pro—possibly scaring off an unwanted visitor to the house. Especially if the intruder only heard him and thought the harmless mutt was a chew toy destroying machine with anger issues. Amy took a few steps backward, until she was standing on the curb next to the crosswalk. She partially turned so that she could see the signal but kept Zombie Breath in sight in her peripheral vision. He paused for a few seconds, to scowl at her some more, then turned and disappeared into a narrow alley. A sign hanging off the adjacent building pointed up the alleyway toward the Kellerton Hostel.

Amy speed-walked to the other side of the street when the crosswalk signal changed. She hadn't even realized Kellerton had a hostel. When she was lined up with the narrow passageway but safely on the other side of the street, she could see that it appeared to dead-end in a courtyard. Unless the guy could scale buildings like Spiderman, he had gone into the hostel.

She ducked into the pet store and bought a squeaky toy shaped like a squirrel for Pogo—a reward for being her scapegoat even though he was probably sound asleep at home on the corner of the couch, completely oblivious to her plight. When she left the store, she turned back toward the nearest corner and headed for the safety of the busier sidewalks on Main Street. She retrieved her phone from her purse and placed a call to the Kellerton Police Department.