Looming Murder (16 page)

I nodded. “Yes, they are.”

“So what do you say?” she asked, searching my face for an answer.

I thought quickly, adding up the advantages. “I could rent you the space on a monthly basis. That way, if it didn’t work out you wouldn’t have invested too much money. And you could get your baked goods from Marnie. Matthew brought home some muffins from the coffee shop down the street and they weren’t anywhere near as good as hers.”

Her eyes widened. “Does that mean it’s a yes?”

I was getting excited about the idea too. “I don’t even have an accepted offer yet, but if I do, I suppose—”

She squealed and jumped off her stool to do a subdued version of a happy dance. Heads along the bar turned to stare. “Oh, uh, sorry, guys. Della just promised to teach me a new weave pattern.” She hopped back on her stool, stifling a giggle.

This explanation was followed by bemused looks and much rolling of the eyes. The men soon returned to their meals, clearly convinced that the two women at the end of the bar were certifiable.

Jenny whispered, “This is going to be so much fun! I can’t wait.”

“Hold on. I don’t even know if I’ll get the place.”

She nodded knowingly. “Oh, yes, you will. I have a feeling about this, and I’m never wrong about my feelings.”

I laughed. “Do you get feelings about lottery tickets too?”

“You’re making fun of me,” she said. “Go ahead. Laugh all you want, but I know what I’m talking about.” She glanced at her watch. “I have to go. And you do too if you want to open your shop at one o’clock.”

I
had no sooner walked in and flipped the sign to
OPEN
than Matthew came storming out of the kitchen, Winston at his heels.

“How did I know you would be gone when I returned? What kind of trouble did you get yourself in this time?”

“Hey, not fair. All I did was have lunch with Jenny.”

Matthew’s eyes went from angry to guilty to suspicious. “Lunch, eh? Where’d you go?”

“To Bottoms Up, not that it’s any of your business.”

“Aha!” He pointed a finger at me. “I knew it. You went there to do some snooping, didn’t you?”

I was not going to defend myself. “Not snooping—investigating. And wait till you hear what I found out.”

He suddenly became curious. “What did you find out?” He followed me to the kitchen. “Tell me.”

“I found out that David lied. He lied to the police and even to us.”

He was silent for a second. “And how do you feel about that?”

My mouth dropped open. “You knew!” I was shocked. “You knew, and you didn’t tell me?”

“Listen, kiddo, I know how you feel about—”

“Will you please stop saying that? I do not
feel
anything for David. He’s a friend, that’s all. And maybe less of a friend than I thought.”

I must have sounded sincere because Matthew’s eyes widened. “You’re not in love with him?”

“I don’t know where you got that idea. I am not in love with him. I am not even attracted to the man.”

“Oh.” He was silent for a second, studying me. “Jenny told me you were in love with someone. I guess I assumed—”

Where did Jenny get that idea? Oh, right, my aura.
“When did she tell you that?”

He waved my question away. “Not important.”

“She told me
you
were in love with someone.” A long silence followed, during which he looked uncomfortable. “I guess that proves she’s not always right,” I said.

“So what did you find out?” He seemed in a hurry to change the subject.

“Never mind what I found out. You tell me what you know.”

He pulled up a chair, gesturing for me to sit, and took a seat across from me.

“Well,” he began, “Mike seems to be getting over his anger with me. He told me a bit about the case. But everything I tell you stays here—right?”

I nodded.

“David lied about spending the entire evening at the bar. He left there much earlier than eleven—around nine thirty or so. I also know that he called his wife from the pay phone before leaving. Mike got the LUD from the phone company.” I must have looked confused because he explained, “LUD is an acronym for ‘local usage details.’”

I flopped against the back of the chair. “Oh, my God! He killed Jeremy, didn’t he?” I was shocked that I could have been friends with a killer. “He really had me fooled.”

He shook his head. “We don’t know that for sure.”

“But it’s certainly beginning to look that way, isn’t it?”

He hesitated. “Well, he did have motive and opportunity. But all the evidence is just circumstantial. There’s nothing irrefutable yet.”

“Yet,” I repeated. “Isn’t there some way we can find out for sure?”

“Yes. We let the
police
handle it.”

At that moment the doorbell rang and I rose, hoping it was a client, but before I could get to the front, who should walk in but the devil himself.

“Well, well.” I stifled my sarcasm. “Look who’s here.”

“Were you two just talking about me?” asked David. Behind him, Matthew was shaking his head furiously.

I ignored him. “You lied to us, David.”

David’s mouth dropped open and blood drained from his face. “I . . . uh.”

I was beyond feeling sorry for him. “Where were you the night of the murder, David? And don’t tell us you spent the evening at the bar, because we know that’s not true.”

“Oh, shit.” He pulled out a chair, collapsed into it and buried his face in his hands. “I should have known people would find out sooner or later. I lied because the truth sounds so lame.”

Matthew sat. “Try us.”

Looking resigned, he sat up straight and glanced from me to Matthew. “I did have a few too many, but not at the bar. I was in my car.” He sighed, then said, “After the run-in with Marsha and Jeremy, all I wanted to do was talk to her. I still can’t believe that she left me for a jerk like him.” He ran a hand through his hair. “After I dropped you off, I went to the bar and had a few drinks, which didn’t help me feel any better. I tried to call her, but the call went into voice mail, so I figured she was probably at Jeremy’s.” He looked up at us again. “So I called there. I didn’t get an answer, so I drove over and sure enough, her car was in the driveway.”

“Why did you use the pay phone instead of your cell?”

“I was out of battery.”

Matthew frowned. “If what you’re telling us is true, that means you called Jeremy’s number at the precise moment he was on the phone with whoever he was meeting. That would be one hell of a coincidence.”

David nodded. “I know. I know. But I am telling you the truth. Anyhow, I left, determined to give her a piece of my mind. But first I picked up a quart of bourbon for some liquid courage. When I got to the house, I sat in the car and polished off the whole bottle, but in the end I didn’t have the guts.”

Matthew crossed his arms. “Did you see Jeremy leave the house?”

He nodded.

“Did you follow him?”

“I swear I didn’t.” He suddenly looked embarrassed. “I would have, but I had a flat tire.” Emphatically, he said, “You can check with the garage that installed the new tire the next day. Turns out my tire wasn’t just punctured. It was slashed. Somebody had to have done it while I was right there, sitting in the car, because it was fine when I left the liquor store.” He frowned. “But I don’t know how the hell they did that without me seeing them.”

Matthew and I were silent for a few minutes while we digested this.

“You’re right,” Matthew said at last. “That is a lame story.” He scowled. “Maybe I should have my head examined, but I believe it.”

“You do?” asked David.

“You do?” I repeated, shocked. I
so
didn’t believe a word of it.

Matthew nodded. “Yes, I do. Spending hours sitting in a car and drinking in front of a rival’s home is just the kind of stupid thing people do after a breakup.”

He had a point. I remembered once sitting in a car for hours, watching the front door of a boyfriend’s house because I was convinced he had been cheating on me. I hadn’t made a very good spy—I fell asleep behind the wheel and woke up with him tapping on my window. So embarrassing!

Matthew frowned. “Did you speak to Marsha at all that night?”

David shook his head. “No, by the time Jeremy left, I was more sloshed than I was pissed. I must have dozed off for a while, because when I looked at the time next it was about eleven. I left the car there and walked home.” He looked at us, his palms spread apologetically. “And you know the rest. The ambush part is completely true.”

Matthew was right. As lame as it was, David’s story rang true. And studying his face now, all I could see was sincerity. I frowned. “You know what that means, don’t you?” They both looked at me. “Somebody is framing you. Whoever slashed your tire is the person who ambushed you. They saw you watching the house and slashed your tire so you couldn’t follow Jeremy when he left. And then after killing him, they waited until you got back to your place and ambushed you.”

Matthew nodded in agreement. “That actually makes sense,” he said, sounding surprised that a theory of mine could be plausible. “Did you happen to see anybody on the street that night?”

David frowned. “I saw Mercedes walk by on her way home.”

I looked at David, surprised. “Dolores lives on the same street?”

David nodded. “Right across from Jeremy’s.”

I added this little tidbit to the rest of the puzzle. Marnie, Dolores and Jeremy all lived on the same street.
Wow
, Briar Hollow sure was small.

Another theory popped into my mind. Could Dolores have found a way into Marnie’s house and stolen the gun? I’d have to ask Marnie about that. But what could have been her motive for wanting Jeremy Fox dead?

I opened my mouth to tell them about the gun, but then stopped myself. This was something I couldn’t tell a soul, at least not until I figured out who had stolen it from Marnie’s house.

Suddenly David blanched. Almost as if he had read my mind, he said, “Shit! Do you think whoever is framing me might also have planted the murder weapon at my place?” He glanced from me to Matthew. “That’s what I’d do if I wanted to frame someone.”

Matthew and I were quiet as we digested the logic of this.

David pulled his cell phone from his pocket. “I’m calling my lawyer.”

A few minutes later he hung up. “He says he’s calling the police right away. If they suspect me, it’s only a matter of time before they search my place. For all we know, they could be on their way with a search warrant right now.”

“So what are you going to do?”

David shrugged. “Cooperate. If they do find a gun, it’ll look better for me if I invited them in than if I tried to stop them. I’m going down to the police department right now.”

And without any further preamble, he got to his feet. “I better get going. See you later.”

Matthew stood. “I’ll go with you.”

They took off without so much as a good-bye. What was it with these guys? Didn’t I count for anything around here?

D
a
vid had convinced me of his innocence, for the most part. And I’d decided that I had to do something. The more I thought about it, the more it was clear to me that somebody was framing him—but who? The best way I could think of solving that was to make a list of all the suspects. I shuffled over to the desk and got a pencil, drawing a line down the center of a piece of paper. On the left, I wrote the names of everyone I thought might be the killer. On the right I would write possible motives.

The first name I wrote was David’s. Just because Matthew and I believed his story, I couldn’t ignore the facts. David did have motive and opportunity. Jeremy had seduced his sister and once she’d invested all her money with him, he’d dumped her and moved on to David’s wife—both good enough reasons to have wanted the guy dead. Add to that the fact that David had threatened to kill the man in front of witnesses. Another thought occurred to me. Could David have also invested in Jeremy’s project? That was something I had to find out.

I jotted all of this down.

Next on the list was Marnie. I knew in my heart that she hadn’t done it either, but by looking at all the possibilities and eliminating them one at a time, maybe I could get to the truth.

Jeremy had swindled her out of her life savings, and she had also uttered death threats. Add to that the possibility that the murder weapon belonged to her. She claimed the gun had been stolen, but for all I knew, she could have gotten rid of it herself after killing Jeremy. I closed my eyes, trying to picture Marnie pulling out her gun and shooting Jeremy. It would have been almost funny, if not for the fact that the man was very much dead. Still, I took note of it. I put the pencil down, and looked at Winston lying by the window.

“Who do you think did it, Winston? Was it the butler in the library with the candlestick? Or Marnie in the apartment with her gun?”

He didn’t even budge. No sense of humor whatsoever, that dog.

I returned to my list. Next was David’s sister. What was her name again? Leanne. She was supposed to be in New York, but she could have come back and killed him. There had to be some way I could confirm that.
Got it.

I put down my pencil and rummaged through my purse for my phone. A moment later, I had Jenny on the line.

“Do you know David’s sister, Leanne?” I asked.

“Yes, of course. This is Briar Hollow—”

“—and everybody knows everybody,” I interrupted. “How can we be sure she was in New York the night of the murder?”

“Still investigating, are we? Well, you called the right person. Leanne isn’t just an acquaintance. She’s a good friend. And I know she was in New York, because I called her after work that day.”

“You never told me that,” I said.

“I didn’t think it was important. I had a message from her on my answering machine when I got home. She’d heard that Jeremy had been killed and wanted details.” I heard Jenny’s shrug in her next words. “I guess she was too embarrassed to call her brother.”

“And you’re absolutely sure she was in New York when you called her.”

“It was a two-one-two area code.”

“It could have been a cell phone.”

“It was her landline, and her roommate answered when I called, so I had to wait until Leanne came to the phone.”

“Oh.” Well, that killed that theory. We said good-bye and hung up, and I returned to my list.

There were many people who could have killed Jeremy. But my favorite suspect was still Dolores, which was why I’d saved her for last. I didn’t have one single shred of evidence against the woman, but I wasn’t about to let that stop me. Maybe because she made it so obvious that she didn’t like weaving, I just didn’t like her. But again, I kept coming back to the same question: What motive could she have had for killing Jeremy?

I had just written all of this down when it occurred to me that if Greg Hanson had indeed been murdered, what would have been David’s or Marnie’s motive for killing him? Proving Hanson had been killed could go a long way toward eliminating David and Marnie as possible suspects. But how was I supposed to do that?

All this thinking was giving me a headache. I slapped my pencil down in frustration. At that the phone rang, giving me a welcome respite.

It was Susan Wood. “Hi, Della. If you feel like a break, why don’t you join me for coffee?” It would be my sixth cup of the day, but who was counting? I taped a note—
BACK AT FOUR
—on the door and left.