Black and Blueberry Die (A Fresh-Baked Mystery Book 11) (7 page)

Danny recognized Phyllis as well, and he couldn’t help but smile despite the pain that must have caused for his battered face. Phyllis wondered if his body was covered with bruises as well.

Before either of them could say anything, D’Angelo shot to his feet and exclaimed, “What the hell! Danny, who did this? This is unacceptable!”

“Take it easy, Mr. D’Angelo,” Danny said. “Just a little scuffle at breakfast this morning. It’s nothing to worry about.”

“Little scuffle?” D’Angelo repeated. “Little scuffle! You’ve been beaten!”

“Oh, trust me, I did a little damage of my own.” Danny sat down in the metal chair opposite the one where Phyllis sat. He looked both happy and relieved. “Mrs. Newsom, I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you. It’s been a long time.”

“I just wish it were under better circumstances,” Phyllis said. She wanted to reach across the table and clasp his hands with both of hers, but she figured that wouldn’t be allowed and didn’t want to do anything that might prompt the guards to cut this interview short.

Still visibly seething, D’Angelo sat down and said, “We can’t have you brawling in here, Danny. Not when...”

“Not when I’ve been convicted of beating my wife to death, was that what you were going to say?” Danny’s mouth twisted wryly. “Yeah, I guess it would look kind of bad for my appeal if I went around whalin’ the tar outta the other prisoners, wouldn’t it? I promise you, though, they didn’t give me much choice. I had to defend myself.”

“Of course you did. I’m going to file a motion to have you moved out of the general population. You shouldn’t even be here.”

“I know. I’m supposed to be at Huntsville by now, which is even worse, right?”

D’Angelo sighed. “The trouble this morning, was it a spur of the moment thing, or do you have enemies in here who are plotting against you?”

“I just rubbed a couple of the guys wrong from the start, I guess,” Danny said with a shrug. “It’s not a racial problem or anything like that. Just...a lot of the guys in here aren’t real friendly characters to start with, you know? It’s easy to get on their bad side, and they’ve always got friends. I don’t know how much time they’re gonna give us, so let’s talk about something else.” He smiled at Phyllis again. “It sure was great to see Mike the other day, Mrs. Newsom.”

“I know he wishes things were different, too,” Phyllis said. “Maybe before too much longer, they will be.”

Danny clasped his cuffed hands together in front of him and leaned forward, eagerness on his face as he said, “You’ve solved the case already, haven’t you?”

“I wish I had,” Phyllis replied with a slight shake of her head. “Really, though, I’ve just started looking into it, and so far I haven’t found anything we can use to help you.”

“I didn’t do it, you know.”

“I’m sure you—”

“I feel like I need to say that right to your face,” Danny went on. “I didn’t kill Roxanne. I never would have hurt her. I loved her.”

D’Angelo said, “I think we all accept your story, Danny, otherwise we wouldn’t be here.”

Danny shook his head.

“You don’t understand, Mr. D’Angelo. It’s really important to me that Mrs. Newsom believe me. You see, she was always kind of like...well, kind of like a second mom to me. I spent almost as much time at her house as I did my own. If I thought she believed I was a killer...well, I couldn’t hardly stand it, that’s all.”

Evidence or no evidence, Phyllis heard the sincerity and the pain in the young man’s voice, and she knew he was telling the truth. She was putting a lot of faith in her own judgment, she was aware of that, but sometimes in life, decisions came down to that. You had to just go with your gut and have faith.

She had faith that Danny Jackson was innocent.

“Don’t waste a second worrying about that, Danny,” she told him. “I know you didn’t do it. Now, let’s figure out who did.”

A big grin split Danny’s face, making him wince as the expression pulled at bruised and scraped flesh.

“What can I do to help you?” he asked.

“Let’s start by talking about the salon where Roxanne worked.”

“Paul’s? What about it?”

“How did Roxanne get along with everyone else there?”

Phyllis could have been mistaken, but she thought a faint, guarded look came into Danny’s eyes as he said, “All right, I guess. It was a place to work and she liked it okay as far as I know. She didn’t really complain about it much.”

“But she
did
complain about it some?”

“Well, no job is perfect, you know? Especially one where you have to deal with the public. No matter what you do, you’re never gonna please everybody, I can tell you that.”

Phyllis hadn’t considered that angle. She said, “Did Roxanne have trouble with any of the salon’s clients?”

“Now and then somebody wouldn’t like the way she cut their hair or something. But she didn’t talk about it much, just like I didn’t talk about the people who didn’t like the way Brian and I painted their cars or fixed ’em up. If all you do is complain about your job, that gets old pretty quick. So both of us tried to concentrate on other things when we were together.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Phyllis said, nodding. The problem was, that made it more difficult for her to figure out who else might have wanted Roxanne dead. She went on, “I guess she got along all right with Ms. Gibbs.”

“Pauline?” Phyllis could see Danny’s hesitation and reluctance as he went on, “Pauline’s a little like a drill sergeant. Tough as nails. The kind you hammer, not fingernails.”

Somehow, that didn’t surprise Phyllis, but she said, “I talked to her and she seemed quite nice.”

“Did she think you were a potential client?”

“That’s right.”

Danny nodded and said, “Yeah, she knows how to sweet-talk customers. She’s got that big smile and southern belle accent. My mom used to say about some people, ‘Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.’”

Phyllis nodded. “My mother used to say the same thing. I’ve probably said it myself.”

“Well, that’s the way Pauline is around the customers, but once they’re gone, she doesn’t mind laying into the employees for the least little thing she thinks they’ve done wrong. The pay is okay, though, so they put up with it. Pauline can afford to pay well, the prices she charges.”

Phyllis thought about the appointment she had at the salon. She hoped she wouldn’t have to take out a mortgage on the house to keep it.

“Roxanne didn’t have any particular trouble with her?”

“No more than any of the other girls, I guess. Not that she told me about, anyway.”

“Did she talk about them much? The other girls who work there?”

Danny shook his head, but once again Phyllis got the feeling he wasn’t being completely forthcoming. He said, “You went there, right?”

“Yes, but I didn’t tell them why I was really there. I pretended to want to have my hair done.”

“Did you talk to anybody besides Pauline?”

“A young woman named Aurora,” Phyllis said.

This time, a definite flash of alarm was visible in Danny’s eyes. He asked, “What did she say? She’s kind of a nutjob, you know.”

“Really? She seemed nice enough. A little, um, eccentric, maybe.”

“What color is her hair this week? The way she keeps changing it, it’s gonna all fall out one of these days.” Danny laughed, although it didn’t sound particularly genuine. “You learn things like that when you’re married to a beautician, I guess.”

“It was two-tone, actually. Blue and purple. And she had half of it straight while the other half was done up in corn rows.”

Danny nodded and said, “Yeah, that’s Aurora, all right. She likes to make fun of her grandparents for bein’ hippies, but she’s kind of a love child herself.”

“How did she and Roxanne get along?”

“Fine, I suppose. I don’t remember Roxanne ever saying much about her.”

“How well did you know her?”

“Aurora? Shoot, not at all. Just to say hello to whenever I stopped by there for some reason.”

“How often was that?” Phyllis asked.

“Not often. I might have gone by the salon once or twice a month, sometimes not that often. Sometimes Roxanne forgot and left something at home, and I’d run it by. My shop’s on 377, you know, about a mile south of the traffic circle. Not that far from the salon.” A wistful look came over Danny’s face. “Sometimes I’d go by there and pick her up if she had some time free in the middle of the day, and we’d go eat lunch at one of the Chinese buffets. There’s a ton of ’em around there.”

Phyllis could tell he was missing those simpler times, and she thought he was sincere about that. Tragedy had ended Roxanne’s life and turned his upside-down. He had to know that nothing would ever be the same. Now the best he could hope for was to not spend the next three decades behind bars, but either way, his wife would still be dead.

She wanted to hug him and pat his head, but he wasn’t a little boy anymore. She couldn’t fix this like putting a band-aid on a cut or mercurochome on a scraped knee. This would require a lot more effort, and it might be painful for everyone involved.

Danny continued, “I tried not to show up at the salon too much, though. I don’t think Pauline liked it very much when I did. She didn’t want her rich clients seeing a scruffy guy like me coming in and out of the place.”

“I’m sure you looked perfectly fine,” Phyllis said. “You’re a handsome young man, and you weren’t wearing...”

“You mean I wasn’t wearing a jail jumpsuit then.” Danny chuckled. “No, but I usually had paint on my clothes. Hard to avoid it in my business.”

“I suppose so.”

One of the guards opened the door and said, “That’s it. Wrap it up.”

“I need more time with my client,” D’Angelo protested, but Phyllis sensed he was doing it just out of habit, accustomed as he was to wrangling with the authorities.

“You can come back another time, counselor,” the officer said.

Danny said, “I hope you come back, too, Mrs. Newsom. It sure was good to see you and talk to you. You’ll say hey to Mike for me, won’t you?”

“Of course.”

Both guards came in and flanked Danny as he got to his feet.

“And thank him for talking to you about my case,” he added. “I...I’m really counting on you.” He nodded to D’Angelo. “On both of you.”

The guards led him out. D’Angelo folded back the sheets on the legal pad he had filled with notes while Phyllis and Danny were talking. They didn’t say anything to each other as they followed the corridors back to the lobby where Sam was waiting.

As they stepped into the lobby, though, where there was a constant buzz of conversation and no one could eavesdrop on them easily, D’Angelo paused and said quietly, “A time or two there, I thought I saw a strange look on that boy’s face.”

“I know,” Phyllis said. “I saw the same thing. He’s lying about something. We’re going to have to figure out what.”

Sam stood up as they came toward him. He asked, “Find out anything?”, then before either of them could answer, he went on, “I reckon it’d probably be better to talk about it somewhere else, though, wouldn’t it?”

“That’s right,” D’Angelo said. He turned to Phyllis and added, “Let’s get together at my office this afternoon. Say, two o’clock?”

“We’ll be there,” Phyllis said. “That will give me time to talk things over with Sam.” He was the most important sounding board she had.

They left the jail, going different directions when they reached the sidewalk. Phyllis and Sam went back to the pickup. Sam drove down along the river as he headed toward the Interstate.

Phyllis wasn’t able to reproduce the interview verbatim, but she came pretty close. Sam listened in attentive silence until she was finished, then said, “I didn’t see that Aurora girl myself, but you say she was pretty good-lookin’?”

“Very attractive, as long as you don’t mind all the, well, odd things that young women do to themselves these days.”

“And Danny sorta looked uneasy when you brought her up?”

“He did. He also said he barely knew her. Do you think that means anything?”

Sam shrugged. “When a young fella claims he hasn’t been payin’ any attention to a girl, it’s usually a sign that he’s noticed her, all right. Maybe more than just noticed.”

“He’s eight or ten years older than her,” Phyllis pointed out. “Although I suppose that’s not really a huge age difference, is it?”

“Not enough to rule out something goin’ on between ’em.”

“But that’s just pure speculation, Sam, based on nothing more than a very brief reaction on Danny’s part.”

“Sure. But it might explain why Aurora sulled up a little when you mentioned Roxanne. If she had her sights set on Danny, that’d make Roxanne the competition.”

Phyllis frowned in thought as she looked out the window. They were on the freeway now, heading back through Arlington Heights toward the western part of Fort Worth, but Phyllis didn’t really see the heavily populated landscape passing by. She was thinking about the way Aurora had reacted when she asked about Roxanne, and Phyllis had to admit that Sam had a point. It could have been good old-fashioned jealousy because Aurora had feelings for Danny herself.

Had Danny returned those feelings, or was he just embarrassed because Aurora had a crush on him...if indeed she did?

“I want to see some of the other places,” Phyllis said.

“The other places involved in the case, you mean?”

“That’s right. Danny’s shop, and the house where they lived.”

“The murder didn’t take place at either of those.”

“I know,” Phyllis said. “I just want to get a little better feel for the people involved.”

Sam nodded and said, “Makes sense, I guess. You know where to find them?”

“Mr. D’Angelo won’t be back in his office yet, but I should be able to get the addresses from his secretary,” Phyllis said as she took out her phone. “Danny mentioned that his shop is on Highway 377, south of the traffic circle, so I guess you can head in that general direction while I’m doing that.”

“Will do,” Sam said.

He exited from the freeway just past Ridgmar Mall and took the looping ramp that put him onto U.S. Highway 183, headed southbound. A couple of miles ahead was the Weatherford Traffic Circle, a relic of the 1950s, where U.S. 377 split off and headed south-by-southwest toward Granbury. There were several red lights along the way to slow them down, and by the time they reached the circle, Phyllis had the addresses they needed.

As Sam watched the traffic and navigated the sometimes confusing circle, he said, “You know, in England they call these roundabouts. This one’s not too bad, but I always hated the one in Waco. Took the wrong turn off of it more times than I like to think about. Then I always had to wander around until I could find my way back and try again.”

“I thought you had a GPS in your head,” Phyllis said with a smile.

“Naw, not back then. GPS hadn’t been invented yet.”

That made her laugh out loud. Then she started watching the street numbers. A moment later she pointed and said, “There.”

The building that housed Lone Star Paint and Body had started out as white stucco, but time, weather, and exhaust fumes from the heavily traveled highway had turned it a dirty gray. It looked like a typical garage with two big doors opening into the bays where work was done, with a smaller door leading into an office to the left. The business sat on a good-sized lot, the rear portion of which was enclosed by a high chain link fence with a locked gate in it. That area was paved with gravel. Several cars were parked back there, probably vehicles that hadn’t been picked up yet by their owners. Maybe the paint jobs on them were still drying, Phyllis thought.

There were three parking spaces in front of the office, all of them empty at the moment. Sam pulled the pickup into one of them. He and Phyllis got out and walked toward the nearest bay. The rolling doors at the front of both bays were lifted. A white crossover was in the farthest one. In the closer one was a shiny black pickup with a raised suspension and oversized tires. The smell of paint was strong in the air, along with a few other chemicals. It was almost overpowering.

Someone was banging on something on the other side of the pickup. Phyllis and Sam walked around the back of it and found a man in white coveralls down on one knee by the front fender, his body twisted around so he could reach up inside the wheel well and hit something with a rubber mallet.

He saw them and stopped what he was doing, untwisting from the awkward position and standing up. As he set the mallet on the black pickup’s hood, he smiled and said, “Hi, folks. If you need to see about getting some work done, we’ll have to go in the office. Customers aren’t really supposed to be out here. Insurance regulations, you know.”

He was tall and broad-shouldered, with tousled blond hair and a handsome face. Phyllis couldn’t tell if his beard stubble was fashionable or if he just hadn’t bothered to shave for a few days. She thought he looked like a California surfer, or at least what the movies made California surfers look like.

“What if we
didn’t
stop in to see about hiring you?” Phyllis asked.

The man nodded toward an inside door that led into the office and said, “We still need to go inside. But what brings you here if you don’t have a car that needs worked on?”

“Your partner, Danny Jackson,” Phyllis said. “You
are
Brian Flynn, aren’t you?” She didn’t see anyone else working, and from what she had heard about the shop, it was a low-budget operation, run by just the two partners.

The man frowned. “Lady, you don’t look like a reporter, and you sure don’t look like a cop. Neither does your friend. So I don’t have anything to say to you.”

“We’re trying to help Danny.” Phyllis had decided to put their cards on the table. “We just came from talking to him at the jail. We’re working with the lawyer handling Danny’s appeal.”

“The two of you?” The man clearly had a hard time believing that. “What are you, private eyes?” The look on his face said that was a ridiculous idea.

“Sort of,” Sam said. His voice was harder and flatter than Phyllis had ever heard it. “We’re investigators, and like my partner just told you, we’re workin’ for Danny’s lawyer. I hear tell you’re his friend. If that’s true, you’ll want to talk to us...because we may be his only way out of a one-way ticket to Huntsville.”

The man looked surprised and a little embarrassed. He said, “Hey, I didn’t mean any offense. It’s just that—”

“We’re not exactly young,” Sam said. “We know that. Our brains work just as well as they ever did, though, and that’s what Danny’s dependin’ on.”

“I’m sorry. Of course you’re right. Let’s go inside. I’m Brian Flynn, by the way. You were right about that, ma’am.”

“I’m Phyllis Newsom,” Phyllis introduced herself as they walked toward the door. “This is Sam Fletcher.”

“I’m pleased to meet you. I—” Brian Flynn stopped short and turned his head to look at them. “Wait a minute. I remember Danny talking about a woman who lives over in Weatherford, the mother of his best friend from school. He said he used to hang around at her house a lot when he was a kid, and that now she solves murders, of all things!”

“That’d be Phyllis,” Sam said, leaning his head toward her.

“Then it really is an honor to meet you. Maybe you really can help Danny.”

“We’re going to do our best,” Phyllis said.

A window unit hummed in one of the office’s two windows, pumping out cool air. Even better than the temperature was the fact that the paint smell wasn’t nearly as strong inside the office, although it didn’t go away completely. It was a lot more bearable, though.

There were two desks, both on the small side, each with a computer and monitor, along with a couple of filing cabinets, a free-standing set of metal shelves with various auto body parts on them, and a short sofa upholstered with fake leather that had seen better days. It was peeling and threadbare in several places. A short refrigerator was tucked into a corner. A calendar hanging on the wall above the refrigerator had a picture of some sort of racing car on it. Phyllis wasn’t sure, but she thought the car was the kind that people used to call a dragster. She had no idea what they were called these days.

Brian Flynn said, “Have a seat,” and since the only place to sit down other than plastic chairs behind the desks was the sofa, Phyllis and Sam settled down on it. “Can I get you something to drink? There are Cokes and Dr Peppers and bottled water in the fridge.”

Phyllis shook her head, and Sam said, “Nope, I reckon we’re good. Thanks, though.”

Brian went behind one of the desks and sat down. “You said you just talked to Danny?”

“That’s right,” Phyllis said.

Brian leaned forward and asked, “How’s he doing?” Then, quickly, before Phyllis or Sam could answer, he shook his head and went on, “No, that’s a stupid question. He’s in jail, and he’s going to prison for murdering his wife. He can’t be doing any good.”

“Actually, it’s worse than that,” Phyllis said. “He got in a fight with some of the other prisoners this morning, so he’s kind of beaten up right now.”

Brian’s hands clenched into fists on the desk in front of him. He looked like he wanted to curse, but he held it in. He sat back, shook his head, and muttered, “It’s not right. It’s just not right.”

“You don’t think he did it?”

Brian reached over to the other desk and picked up a framed photograph that was sitting where Phyllis and Sam couldn’t see it. He turned the picture around and set it on his desk facing them.

“Does that look like a guy who could ever hurt his wife?”

The couple in the photo were at a lake somewhere, standing together on the beach and smiling into the camera while sailboats with bright sails cut across the water behind them. Phyllis recognized Danny right away. He wore swimming trunks and a t-shirt. The woman beside him with light brown hair was in cut-off jeans and a bikini top. She was considerably shorter than him. She had her left arm around his waist, and his right arm was looped around her shoulders. They looked young, healthy, happy, and totally at ease with each other.

“Just look at ’em,” Brian went on. “You can tell they’re, like, completely in love with each other.”

That was the way it looked to Phyllis, and when she glanced over at Sam, he shrugged and nodded, indicating that he agreed with Brian, too.

“That was taken last summer, Fourth of July, up on Eagle Mountain Lake. Less than a year later the cops were saying he killed Roxanne. I didn’t believe it then, and I don’t believe it now.” Brian blew out an exasperated-sounding breath. “I just wish I’d been here that evening so I could’ve given Danny an alibi. He left here at eight forty-five, got to the salon and found Roxie and called 911 a couple of minutes before nine. He wouldn’t have had time to hurt her like that.”

“How do you know he left at eight forty-five?” Phyllis asked.

Brian frowned and said, “Well...that’s what he told me when I talked to him later. I don’t have any reason not to believe him. I just couldn’t testify to it in court and prove he was telling the truth.”

Sam asked, “Was it unusual for one of you to stay late workin’ like that?”