Looming Murder (17 page)

T
h
e coffee shop was a small, pleasant room, furnished with the usual assortment of armchairs and tables. A few patrons sat around chatting, reading, or working on laptops. Behind a long counter at the far end, where baristas rushed about steaming milk and serving coffee, were shelves of goodies: cakes, muffins and pies.

I hobbled over to the counter, already salivating.

“What’ll it be?” asked the barista, a pretty young girl with Goth makeup, black hair in pigtails, a star tattoo on her right hand and a moon tattoo on her left. I wondered if she was a friend of Mercedes’s.

I swept my gaze along the row of goodies and settled on a cranberry-lemon muffin and a latte.

“If you’ll have a seat, I’ll bring it to you as soon as it’s ready,” the girl said, eyeing my crutches.

I chose a table by the window, waving at Susan as she walked in. “Can I get you something?” she mouthed. I shook my head.

A few minutes later the girl brought me my tray just as Susan joined me with her own.

“This place makes the best cranberry-lemon muffins in the world,” Susan said. She set her tray on the table. “I see you got one too. Good choice.”

I broke off a piece and took a bite.

“Didn’t I tell you they were good? I swear, I could come here every day.”

“Really good,” I said between bites. I’d now tried both the raisin bran and the cranberry-lemon, neither of which was nearly as good as Marnie’s. I’d have to remember to mention this to her. The woman had every right to be proud of her baking.

I took a sip of coffee and sat back, readying myself for the gossip session that was about to ignite. “So, what’s new?” I asked, hoping she had found out more about the murder.

Susan leaned forward conspiratorially. “I was just talking to Dr. Cook—he’s also the town coroner, you know—”

“Yes.” I nodded encouragingly.

Without pausing, she continued, “—and he says that Jeremy Fox had been dead for at least twelve hours when his body was found.”

I counted backward in my mind. I had found the body shortly after nine. Twelve hours earlier brought the murder to before ten o’clock the previous night. Just as I had feared, the time of death didn’t clear David. I took a quick gulp of coffee, covering my disappointment. “Dr. Cook told you that? How did you get him to talk?”

She smiled. “I made an appointment for this.” She showed me a bandage on her little finger with a twinkle in her eyes. “I had a wart that needed to be removed.”

I laughed. “A serious medical emergency if you ask me.”

“He is also a bit of a blabbermouth. He told me that Jeremy had been shot four times with a small-caliber gun.” She raised her eyebrows and leaned in to whisper, “Not that I’m any kind of expert, but I think if a woman uses a gun, she’s likely to choose a small caliber.” I held back a gasp as I remembered that Marnie had mentioned that her gun was small. I didn’t know much about guns, but didn’t small guns mean small caliber?

“I can’t believe Dr. Cook told you all that. You must be a really good conversationalist for him to have opened up that way.” Did I know how to butter a person up, or what?

Susan smiled with self-satisfaction. “You’re right. People are always telling me their secrets for some reason. You would be surprised at the secrets I know. I know who’s having an affair with whom. I know who’s pregnant and by whom. I know who’s getting chemo and keeping it a secret.” She made a gesture, pretending to lock her mouth and throw away the key, looking self-righteous. “I know I like to talk, but if somebody tells me something in confidence, I’d die before I repeated a word to anyone.”

Somehow I had my doubts about that. I suddenly had an image of Susan Wood miming, charades-style, “Three words. First word sounds like . . .” I stopped myself from laughing and put on my most earnest expression. “That’s a rare quality. People must really trust you.”

Susan beamed with pride. “They do. That’s how I know that David Swanson’s ex-wife wasn’t Jeremy Fox’s only girlfriend. I swear that man was a regular tomcat. He was always juggling two or three women at the same time.” She shook her head. “But I don’t feel sorry for Marsha Swanson. Those two are one of a kind. Her love life was just as active as his.”

“She was seeing somebody else too? Are you sure about that?

She nodded solemnly. “That woman will sleep with any man as long as he has money.” I must have looked shocked because she leaned forward and whispered, “Trust me. I know. She was having an affair with Greg Hanson shortly before he died, you know.”

My mouth dropped open. “Really?” If that was true, Susan had just provided Dolores with a clear motive. “What about Dolores Hanson? Could she have been involved with Jeremy too?”

She nodded. “Maybe. I know Dolores was calling Jeremy regularly, at least until I quit working for him in May.” She shrugged. “After that, I have no idea.”

“What do you know?” I said reflectively. “Dolores and Jeremy, and Marsha and Greg. If Dolores suspected that her husband was involved with Marsha, it would be a motive for her wanting her husband dead, wouldn’t it?”

She gave me a crooked smile. “Yes, but it also gives David a motive for killing Greg.”

I fell against the back of my seat.
Crap
. I hadn’t thought of that. “But,” I said, thinking quickly, “if Dolores was jealous enough to kill her husband over his cheating, then she could have killed Jeremy over his cheating with Marsha.”

Susan was studying me with an amused smile. “You really don’t want it to be David, do you? I wonder why.”

“It’s just that he was with me when I found the body. It would be too awful if I thought he used me to fabricate some kind of alibi. Besides, I don’t know very many people in town. I’d hate to think one of the few I consider friends was a murderer.”

“Just between you and me, I’m convinced that Dolores and Jeremy were involved. You’d be hard-pressed to find any single or divorced woman in this town that wasn’t involved with Jeremy at some point. A couple of married ones too,” she added, her eyebrows doing the Groucho Marx wiggle.

“What a jerk! No wonder he ended up dead.”

“Oh, and before I forget—guess whose house was broken into the night of the murder?” I looked at her blankly. “Jeremy Fox’s.”

“What?”

She nodded. “The police asked Marsha to help them figure out if anything had been taken. It turns out the only thing missing was his laptop.”

Suddenly something David had said made sense. The police had asked him about a laptop, and I wondered why they hadn’t asked me. Unless they already knew the laptop had been stolen from Jeremy’s house and had only mentioned it to watch David’s reaction.

“What could have been on that laptop?”

Susan shrugged. “I have no idea. He was very protective of it—never let me use it, even when it meant he had to e-mail me documents rather than let me work directly on his computer.” She waved the subject away, continuing, importantly, “Just between you and me, I’m almost sure I know who killed him.”

My eyes widened. “Who?”

She paused, and for a second I thought she was about to tell me. And then she shook her head. “As much as I’d like to, this is something I can’t repeat unless I’m one hundred percent certain. I wouldn’t want to get sued for defamation of character.” She leaned forward again. “I’ll tell you day after tomorrow. By then, I’ll know for sure.”

Of all the times to develop a conscience, she chose now. “Uh-oh. What are you going to do?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I have an idea.”

“You’re not going to do anything dangerous, are you?”

“Don’t worry about me. I know how to take care of myself.”

An idea occurred to me. “It isn’t David Swanson, is it?” I was convinced she would say no.

“All I can say is that if I’m right, it would be just about the last person in the world anybody would suspect.”

“So that means you don’t think it’s him?” Suddenly I thought of Marnie. She was probably the last person in the world anybody would suspect. I was tempted to ask, but then I would’ve had to explain about the gun.

“I think most people would be pretty shocked if it turned out to be David,” she said, which still didn’t tell me anything one way or another.

It was time to steer the conversation in another direction. “By any chance would you happen to have a list of the people who invested in Jeremy’s condo project?”

She gave me a who-do-you-think-you’re-talking-to look. “Are you kidding? I was the one who did all of his company’s bookkeeping. I know who invested and how much.” She paused and gave me a piercing look. “You’re sure asking a lot of questions. You’re not working for the police, are you?” Before I could answer, she burst into laughter. “I’m just pulling your leg.”

I chuckled. “What about Greg and Jeremy? Did they have anything in common—anything that linked them together?”

“Actually, yes. When Jeremy first launched his condo project, he tried to convince people that this was the best thing this town had ever seen, but not everyone believed him. Jeremy’s biggest opponent was Greg Hanson, who made a huge stink about the project. He wrote an article for the local-news blog. And when that didn’t work, I told you, he got a petition going. He went door-to-door himself, collecting signatures. About a week later he was dead.”

Jenny
had
told me. How could it have slipped my mind? “That’s the link,” I said excitedly. “It does have to do with the condo project.” Something stirred in my mind when I said this, but whatever it was escaped me at the moment.

“I thought about that, but it doesn’t make any sense. Jeremy was in favor of the project. Greg was against. It would only have significance if they were both for, or both against the project.”

I groaned. I hated to admit it, but she was probably right.

She started saying something as her gaze wandered to somewhere over my shoulder, and suddenly she blanched and looked at her watch. “Oh, no, I’m late,” she cried. She jumped out of her seat, wrapped the rest of her muffin in her napkin and shoved it into her bag. “We’ll have to do this again real soon,” she said, smiling tightly.

“I’d like that.” She turned to leave. “Hey, Susan, could you get me that list of investors?”

“You bet.” And then, glancing sideways nervously, she whispered, “I’ll drop it off as soon as I have a minute.” A second later she was gone, the door closing behind her.

What had prompted her strange behavior, I wondered? The way she’d jumped out of her seat and run out was . . . well . . . odd. I turned around to scan the tables behind me, and I spotted them—Dolores, all dressed up in white linen, and Mercedes, wearing her usual black jeans and T-shirt. They were at the counter giving their order. Could Dolores be the reason Susan had left so abruptly? If so, it supported my theory that Dolores was the killer. I was still reflecting on this when, as I turned back around, I noticed Mike Davis sitting at a table near the door. He was watching Dolores with a measuring glare. And then he turned his eyes on me and smiled sardonically.

Shoot!
If he’d overheard any of our conversation, Matthew would know by tomorrow that I was still playing detective. Rattled, I gathered my bag to leave. But when I swooped the crutches under my arms, Mike was already gone. From the bar, Dolores was staring at me coldly, leaving me with a bad feeling.

I was definitely spending way too much time with Jenny.

•   •   •

I hoofed it back to a dead silent house, no pun intended. I’d been gone no more than half an hour, but I still felt guilty about closing the shop in the middle of the afternoon. Still, the conversation with Susan had been interesting.

I was sitting at the kitchen table, attaching the satin edging to my yellow and green baby blanket—which looked spectacular, if you ask me—when the phone rang. I leaned over and picked it up.

“I just remembered,” a voice I recognized as Marnie’s cried excitedly. “You know who else had a key to my house? Mercedes Hanson! I gave her a key because she walked my Brutus every day until he died last summer.”

Mercedes? My mind was grasping to make sense of this.

“Della? Did you just hear what I said?”

“Yes. Yes. But Mercedes is a just child. What would she want with a gun?”

“I don’t know,” came Marnie’s frustrated response. “I called Jimmy, as you suggested, and he swears up and down that he never touched my gun. A.22-caliber is way too sissy for a man, he says. So I started thinking again—trying to recall everyone who had occasion to come into my house. That’s when I remembered that I had a key made for Mercedes.” She paused for a second. “And she never brought it back after my Brutus died.” As if I were a slow child, she went on, pronouncing each word excruciatingly slowly. “That means Dolores had access to my house.”

“Have you told anyone?”

“No,” she replied plaintively. “I don’t know if I should. I don’t want to cause any trouble. Mind you, I don’t much like that Botox-injected woman. Just between you and me, I think she had her lips pumped up with something too. It’s Mercedes I don’t want to get into trouble. She’s had a difficult enough time of it already.”

“You mean, with her father dying?”

“Yes, that too,” said Marnie. But before I could ask her what she meant, I heard the front door open and close.

“Oops, sorry, Marnie, I have to go. There’s someone at the door.” We rang off and Matthew walked in, looking exhausted.

“How did it go? Did the police search David’s house?”

“They’re conducting the search as we speak.” He went to the refrigerator and pulled out a Heineken. “Join me in a beer?” I nodded, and he got a second one. He popped the top and handed it to me.

“Eh, would you mind? You may like swigging your beer straight from the bottle, but I prefer a glass.”

He gave me a crooked smile and handed me a goblet.

“You know everyone around here, Matthew. If David didn’t kill Jeremy, do you have any idea who else could have hated Jeremy Fox enough to kill him?”

He grew pensive for a moment, and then shook his head, looking baffled. “One thing that criminology teaches us is that sociopaths are masters of deceit. They can fool people for years. You’ve probably seen interviews with friends and neighbors of serial killers. They invariably say how that person was always so nice—a paragon of the community. Meanwhile that person had a dozen kids buried under his house.” He scowled, opening the fridge again and pulling out a jar of olives. He rattled around the cutlery drawer until he located a seafood fork. “You, of all people, should know that.” He was referring—of course—to the boss I had trusted who had turned out to be an embezzler. Why didn’t everyone just, please, let me forget about that?