Éclair Case of Murder: A Culinary Cozy Mystery (A Rosie Kale Culinary Cozy Mystery Book 2) (14 page)
Authors: Leigh Selfman
I dialed Diane’s number but I could barely talk.
“Diane. Oh my gosh, please come.” I was sobbing into the phone.
“Why? What happened?” her voice suddenly sounded panicked.
“I... I shot Violet,” I said in a shaky whisper. “I think she’s dead.”
“Oh my goodness,” Diane whispered. After a few seconds of silence she said, “Look…just hang tight. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
Diane appeared less than ten minutes later. Her usually calm, elegant demeanor appeared frayed around the edges.
“Rosie, how did this happen?” She was looking around, her fingers raking through her hair in agitation.
“I don’t know,” I shrugged tearfully. “Violet came in. And…she had a gun and…and we struggled and it went off.” I wiped the tears from my eyes as I looked over towards the couch behind which lay Violet’s unmoving body.
“Should I call the police?” I asked her. “I guess I should just call the police and tell them what happened, right?”
“I don’t know,” Diane said, shaking her head regretfully. “It just looks so bad for you. Your being here, in this house. What with everything that’s happened.”
I nodded, swallowing hard. I knew just what she was saying. “But what choice do I have?”
She sighed and looked around. “Did you at least find the evidence you were looking for? The tape of Violet making phone call to the hotline would really help you right now. It would prove that she killed Helen. And that she was coming after you next.”
I shook my head, miserably. “No. It wasn’t there. At least I didn’t see it.”
Diane frowned, thoughtfully. “Maybe we should look again. At least if you had proof that Violet killed Helen, it would bolster your story.”
I shrugged. “I’m not even sure she did kill Helen,” I said softly.
“What?” Diane’s eyes grew wide as she stared at me in disbelief. “Why on earth not?”
“I’m not sure…it’s just…when I confronted Violet she said something weird. She said she wasn’t even here at 1:00 that day, like I thought. She told me I was looking at everything backwards.” I shook my head. “I mean, it’s too horrible to think about, but I think that maybe she was telling the truth the whole time.”
Diane turned to me horrified. “You mean…Helen really killed herself? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No. I think someone else may have killed her. Someone else who was here that day.”
Diane came slowly towards me. “What makes you say that? Do you have some kind of proof?”
“I might,” I said with a shrug. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and showed her the selfie that Violet took of herself in the Wright house that day.
She looked at it, frowning. “But the clock says it’s almost 1:00 o’clock. And that’s around when the call was made, right?”
“No,” I sighed. “That’s what I thought. But the clock is numberless. And I didn’t realize it before, but the photo was printed in reverse. Which means that Violet wasn’t looking out the right window, she was looking out the left one.
“So?”
“So that means the clock didn’t read 1:00pm. It read 11:00am.
“I still don’t get what that proves.” Diane was staring at me, clearly frustrated.
“Well I was sure that Violet was here at 1:00 when the phone call was made. But now I realize she was here hours earlier. I think that someone else was here at 1:00 making the phone call. And it wasn’t Helen. She was still at the spa. It was someone else altogether.”
Diane nodded and stared at the photo, intrigued.
“It’s strange,” I said, vaguely as I studied the selfie photo. “I didn’t realize that the vase in her photo was the same one Helen donated to your charity. It’s that same one I saw today, right?”
Diane looked at the vase in the photo. She nodded.
I stared at it for a moment too. Then I looked at Diane. “When did Helen give it you?” I asked. “I mean…the day after this photo was taken, she was dead.”
She glanced at the photo again, then she looked at me, an odd expression on her face. Then, her eyes moved to the gun on the coffee table.
I followed her gaze and before I knew it, she’d run over and grabbed it off the coffee table. And was now pointing it at me.
“Diane. What are you doing?” My voice was barely above a whisper.
She sounded exasperated. “Please, Rosie. Don’t play dumb. You know exactly what I’m doing. And exactly when I picked up that vase. It was the day of the anniversary party.” She sighed and looked at me, irritated. “Yes I could lie and say I got the vase from Chuck after Helen died…but I know you. You won’t drop it. You’ll never drop it until you get the truth.”
I stared at her, my eyes wide. “Diane…what…what are you saying?”
“I’m saying that I made the phone call when I came that day to get the vase. Helen told me to just use the spare key to come in and get it. So I did. And once inside… I saw that no one was home. Not even Mrs. Pond. I saw my opportunity and I took it.”
“Your opportunity?” I was backing away from her, my hands up.
“My opportunity to set up Helen’s suicide,” she said, impatiently. “I made the call to your hotline, pretending to be Helen. Then I ground her pills into her smoothie.”
I looked at her horrified and took another step back.
“If only you’d dropped this whole thing,” she said. “But you were never going to. I sensed it that first time we met. Which I why I have to get rid of you.”
She pointed the gun at my head and clicked the safety off.
I took a step back. “Diane. Please. Please don’t…”
“Now hush. Let me think.” She looked around as though she were staging a play. “Now… you shot Violet over here….”
She walked over near the couch, all the while, making sure to keep the gun pointed at me
“Then, you felt so bad about it that you had to shoot yourself too.”
I looked at her in disbelief.
She didn’t acknowledge me as she went over and picked up my cell phone. “In fact, I think a phone call to suicide hotline would be perfect. Don’t you? Something to the effect of: ‘‘I knew Violet killed Helen so I went to confront her. But she got her gun and we struggled for it. And now…I can’t live with the guilt.”
I was staring at her dumbstruck.
“You’re nuts!” I finally said. “I’m not going to say any of that into the phone.”
“No? Oh well,” she shrugged. “Then maybe I’ll just do it. They don’t tape the calls after all.”
“But…Diane,” I said, taking another step back. “Why did you even do it? Were you in love with Chuck? Or…”
“Please,” she rolled her eyes. “It was for the money. What else? I’d insured Helen as my employee when she came to work for me so I got millions of dollars when she died. And believe me, I needed it. When I said times were tough, I wasn’t kidding. If not for that money I could have gone to jail for ‘borrowing’ some of my client’s funds.”
“So you’re a thief and a murderer,” I said, unable to stop my anger from surfacing. “You’re not going to get away with this. They’ll figure out you did it. That you killed Helen. No one will believe this whole…setup. My Nana. Casey. They’ll all know something’s not right.”
“Oh but they already do know it,” she smirked. “They know that something’s not right with you. You’ve been stalking Violet all over town. It’s been on the news endlessly.” She came towards me. “You’ve already told everyone who would listen that Violet did it. I’m sure you even told your Nana and Casey and the detective. So…enough talk. Time to say goodbye.”
I looked at the gun. Then I looked past her shoulder out the window. “Casey?” I whispered aloud.
She turned her head and looked but there was no one there. “Oh please. I’m not falling for that old ploy,” she smirked. “There’s no one outside.”
She pointed the gun at my head. Her finger was on the trigger.
It felt like slow motion as I watched her pulling it back.
“No!” Casey screamed as he burst into the room and ran towards her. She turned, aiming the gun at his heart.
Just as he tackled her, it went off.
“Casey!” I screamed as I ran to him.
He lay on the ground holding his chest and moaning. He’d been shot from a foot away, right in the heart.
“Casey! Are you okay?” I screamed, putting my arms around him.
As I hugged him, I looked up to see Diane running off, out towards the French doors behind the sofa.
“Stop her! She’s getting away,” Casey screamed as he struggled to get off the floor.
But before he could go after her, Diane was tripped. She fell to the ground with a loud thud and then moaned in agony as Violet crouched on top of her, pulling her arms behind her back.
“Ha! Gotcha!” Violet screamed as she gave Diane’s arm another painful jerk. Then she tied Diane’s wrists behind her back with a roll of duct tape. “We got her, Rosie,” Violet said to me with a smile.
“You’re alive?” Diane groaned, looking at Violet.
I walked over, smiling. “Yup. She’s alive. Thank goodness. Even though you sent her here to confront me. Even though you told her to use Chuck’s gun on me because I was a crazed stalker who would never stop unless she shot me. Luckily, when we struggled for the gun and it went off, it just nicked her arm.”
“Surprise!” Violet said, as she snapped Diane’s photo with her phone. “Yup. The bullet just scratched me. Which gave Rosie and me a chance to really talk. And guess what we found out when we compared notes?”
Diane looked from Violet to me, seething.
“We figured out that you set us both up,” I said to Diane. “First you got me to break in here by lying about the phony phone evidence. Then you told Violet that I was a crazy nut who was planting evidence to make it look like she killed Helen.”
I looked at Violet who winked at me and said, “Diane really made me think you were a psycho stalker who would escalate and escalate until you killed one of us. She basically told me that the only way to keep us all safe was to kill you.”
“Wow,” I whispered, still shocked by the level of Diane’s manipulations.
“I called the police and they’re on their way,” Casey said, coming over to us.
“Are you okay, Casey?” I whispered. “I know you were shot with blanks, but those can hurt too.”
“Blanks. Ah…,” Casey said, with a nod. “I suppose that explains the lack of blood. I thought perhaps I’d developed some sort of superhuman powers.”
“No.” I smiled at him. “After the real gun went off and nicked Violet, we replaced it with that fake one I still had in my purse. We kept the blanks in the gun though, so Diane would think it was loaded.”
He nodded, still rubbing his chest. “Well…those blanks really do hurt, actually.”
“Aw,” I nodded as I put my hand gently over his. “You’re my hero,” I said.
And he was. After all, he did throw himself in front of a bullet for me. Even if the bullet turned out to be a fake.
“But how did you even know I was here anyway? Did you follow me?” I asked him.
“No. I followed Diane, actually,” he said. “I grew suspicious because of something you said to me before the play— About Diane mentioning ‘dead peasants’ and ‘COLI’. I realized, as the play went on, those terms had nothing to do with what I was watching. Then I remembered dead peasants and COLI are both terms for a certain type of business insurance. A type that allows employers to profit when their employees or even their ex-employees die.”
“Wow,” I said. “I wish I’d just told you everything in the first place. We could have avoided all of this.”
“You absolutely should have,” he said looking at me reprovingly. “I tried to call and tell you but you weren’t answering your phone. So of course…knowing the kind of trouble you tend to get in, I knew I’d have to come save you again.”
“My hero,” I said again as I looked into his sparkling green eyes. “And you know…I’ll never doubt you again.”
“Right. At least not until next time,” Casey said. Then he leaned in for a kiss.
“Absolutely not until then,” I whispered. We kissed just as the police came to haul Diane away.
“So Diane threw that rock through the Wright’s window, huh?” Nana said as she served us all Coq au vin. Sitting around the table were me, Casey, Laila, Birdie, Nana and both their boyfriends. Even Stevie Logan was there—he might not have made a love match with Laila but was totally smitten by my Nana’s cooking.
“Yeah,” I said, as I spread my napkin on my lap. “Diane knew just how to make me look like a crazed stalker. She was pretty smart.”
“Diane is so smart!” Laila said, looking up from her phone for the first time. “I mean she really thinks I have star quality!”
We all looked at her, stunned. Did she not realize what had happened earlier in the night?
“What?” she shrugged. “I know she’s a killer. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have great instincts when it comes to the theater. Look another great review!” Laila held up her phone for all to see.
We all nodded, having to admit the truth of her statement.
“Even though I didn’t see the whole play,” I told Laila. “I could tell you were great. You really do have star quality.”
She gave me a sweet smile.
I smiled back at her with genuine affection—the fact that she was leaving in a day seemed to be giving me a whole new appreciation for my cousin Laila.
“In fact…” she said, looking around at each of us at the table individually. “I had so much fun doing the play that I’m thinking of not even going back east for a while. I might just stay here on the West Coast and explore my acting career a bit more. Isn’t that great, Rosie? We can stay as roomies!”
Boom.
I could feel everyone’s eyes on me. “Great. That’s great, Laila,” I said, attempting a smile. But unfortunately my acting chops were nowhere near as good as Cousin Laila’s.
THE END
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NOTHING BUNDT MURDER
I’ve also enclosed a sample of
MURDER SHE TYPED
written by my mother. I hope you like it.
