Loose Lips (13 page)

My gut twisted, but I kept moving, out the
door, through the building and out into the parking lot. It wasn’t
until I was standing under the late afternoon sun that I let myself
breathe.

And then it wasn’t with relief.

Klein had been asking about drugs like this
all along. Is that how the Cutie was killed? Had Phyllis killed
her? Worse, had she framed me by putting the bottle in her laundry,
knowing I would have it in my Jeep? And worse yet, had she somehow
poisoned my dog?

o0o

The next morning I woke up feeling more than
a little alone. Peter had stopped by the night before, but not
stayed long. I hadn’t been much in the mood to talk... or anything
else.

That wasn’t totally accurate. I wanted to
talk, a lot, but I couldn’t talk to Peter, not without putting him
in an awkward position of learning where Phyllis was and being
forced to out her to Klein.

Plus, Gregor had told me not to talk to him
about anything, and he emphasized that meant
anything
.
He’d been quite stern about it.

So Peter and I had sat on the couch for an
hour, not talking and not doing other things, and then Jeremy, his
son, had called and Peter had said he had to leave.

It had been a relief, for both of us, I
guessed.

But today I was sad.

Phyllis had... I still couldn’t decide what
she had done, but I knew whatever it was, it wasn’t good, and right
now her “wasn’t good” was putting me in an even “wasn’t gooder”
position.

There was no hope for it. I was going to
have to confront her.

I loaded Kiska into the Jeep for moral
support, and we headed into town.

o0o

Not wanting to show up with nothing but
doubts and accusations, I stopped by the grocery store, picked up
some of the items on Phyllis’s list and drove to the B&B.

Then, with the full plastic bag resolutely
looped over my arm, I strode inside.

Phyllis answered on the first knock.

“Thank heavens. I was beginning to think
you’d forgotten about me.”

Her chiding look made me cringe in shame,
but only for a moment. Then I remembered Klein and the pill bottle
and why I was here.

She grabbed the bag and wandered to the bed
where she dumped out the contents and sorted through them.

“Mango tea? What am I supposed to do with
that? And this isn’t Pretty in Pearl...” She let out a dramatic
sigh and glanced at me from over her shoulder. “I don’t suppose the
TV is in your Jeep? Do you need to run down and get it? And my
laundry? Did you hand wash my pink blouse?”

I sucked in a breath and prepared to hit her
with my accusations.

Simultaneously, someone knocked on the door
and yelled, “Police! Are you in there Ms. Cox? Ms. Mathews, open
the door.”

Phyllis’s eyes rounded, and I knew
immediately what she was thinking.

“I didn’t...” I stuttered.

She turned her face away and stared at the
wall. Angry. Cold. Unrelenting.

“Really. I don’t know how—”

“
Now
, Ms. Mathews.”

I glanced at Phyllis, but she didn’t look
back. Seeing no option except to comply with the voice, I walked to
the door, unlocked it and stepped back.

Klein and two uniformed officers moved in
like a dark fog, filling the room with an ominous mood that made me
want to shrink back against the wall and disappear.

Klein did the talking. “Ms. Cox, we’ve been
looking for you, but I suspect you know that.”

Phyllis turned to look at them, her brows
raised. “You would suspect wrong.”

Hands in his pockets, Klein nodded his head.
“I see. Well then, let me catch you up to speed.”

He introduced himself, leaving out the bit
about him being from Chicago. Maybe he didn’t think it was
important.

“I’d like to ask you a few questions about
Missy Gill.”

“Oh?” Phyllis rounded her eyes, this time in
a very good imitation of polite interest.

I’d have bought it if I didn’t know most of
her tricks.

Then she cleared off a space on the bed and
sat down. She motioned to the mattress and said, “I’d invite you to
sit too, but I don’t think that would be appropriate.”

Her chiding didn’t work as well on Klein as
it did on me. The Chicagoan didn’t even blink. “Actually, I was
thinking we should have this conversation at the station.”

“The station?” Phyllis could not have looked
more horrified if he’d invited her to a Monster Truck Rally.

“The station.”

Still no blinking.

Phyllis looked at me.

To say she looked annoyed would have been
akin to saying Helena got a tad chilly in January.

I swallowed and stepped away from the wall.
“Detective Klein found something of yours in my Jeep.”

“He did?”

She looked interested, but not alarmed.

“Yes, he wanted to know if I had put it
there. I told him I hadn’t.”

She sat up a little straighter, brushed the
material of her slacks smooth and addressed Klein. “Any other day,
I would assure you that while her judgment is sometimes lacking,
Lucy is the most honest of young women and would never have taken
something of mine without my express permission.
However
,
today she has surprised me and not for the good.”

A cold breeze of disapproval blasted over
me.

I couldn’t take anymore. “I didn’t tell him
you were here.”

She smiled, that smile of hers that made me
check her hands to make sure she wasn’t holding a sharp object. “Of
course you didn’t. That would have been a violation of my
privacy.”

Klein looked from her to me. He looked...
amused.

I wasn’t. I fell back against the wall.

After that, he took over, managing to get
Phyllis up off the bed without touching her or ordering her to do
so. He played her game instead, talking about appearances and how
if she came down now, she could still pass the visit off as
voluntary and part of being a responsible citizen.

Being a good citizen, or at least having
others think she was, was Phyllis’s hot button. She grabbed her
purse and marched out the door.

Proving once again that I wasn’t completely
sane, I followed them.

o0o

Phyllis was escorted into the same gray room
that I’d visited a day earlier. I had called Gregor for her on the
way over, but he’d informed me representing both of us might be a
conflict of interest. Instead, he’d send over a junior partner.

Junior looked every inch his title. With
strawberry blond hair, a toothy grin and ears that stuck out of the
side of his head like handles, he reminded me of a classic
ventriloquist dummy.

Ventriloquists had always given me the
willies, but the dummies... they could be collectible.

With this thought warming me to him, I
introduced myself and pointed him in Phyllis’s direction.

I tried to follow him into the room, but
George had apparently been put on guard dog duty. He stopped me
with the wag of a chunky finger.

Cowed, I dragged myself to a bench and
pulled out my phone. Two hours later, my battery was near dead and
Phyllis was still nowhere in sight.

I shuffled to George’s desk.

He held up a hand. “I don’t know
anything.”

I sighed and tromped back to my seat. An
hour after that, Phyllis and her found–by–me attorney appeared.

She sailed past me, nose in the air, leaving
nothing but a hint of floral perfume in her wake.

Junior nodded and strode out too, obviously
forgetting that I was the reason he’d landed this gig.

By the time I got to the parking lot, both
of them were gone, floral perfume and all.

The next morning, Kiska and I were lounging
in Rhonda’s backyard. Well, I was lounging, on my back in the
grass, while Kiska rooted around looking for some forgotten nugget
of something (
anything
) from last barbecue season.

Not that Rhonda barbecued. That whole “no
eating anything with a face” thing kind of took the fun out of that
summer ritual.

“She didn’t say anything to you?” Rhonda
asked, obviously as dumbfounded as I was at Phyllis’s ungrateful
behavior.

“Not a word, and she didn’t answer her phone
last night either,” I complained.

“Maybe she didn’t go home.”

“She did. I drove by and saw her car.”

“Maybe her lawyer told her not to talk to
anyone.”

That was likely, but seriously no excuse. I
ignored smart professional advice all the time.

“You don’t really think she thinks that I
ratted her out to Klein, do you?”

Rhonda shrugged. “I doubt it, but you know
Phyllis, she has to make a stand of some sort, to keep you humble
if nothing else.”

Like I had any problem staying humble.

“What’s Betty say?” she asked.

“You don’t want to know,” I muttered,
rolling over onto my stomach and immediately regretting it. I was
face to face with a dead mouse.

“Nostradamus!” Rhonda chided.

Her over–sized black Persian, who was
perched on the railing of Rhonda’s porch, swished his tail side to
side and stared down on us completely unrepentant.

Kiska, however, was intrigued. He charged
toward me, forcing me to fall flat over the disgusting prize. I lay
there protecting my find, while Rhonda ran inside for a plastic
bag.

Nostradamus, seeing Kiska shoving his nose
into my side, urging me to roll over, hopped down from his railing,
sauntered over and positioned himself delicately on the center of
my back where he went about the business of grooming his
nethers.

I was laying there bemoaning my fate when a
voice called from the alley.

“Lucy Mathews? Is that you?”

I lifted myself enough to peer up and spy
Bev, TV reporter extraordinaire. Groaning, I lay back down.

The gate creaked.

Crap.

“Do you live here?”

Amazed at her ability to act as if nothing
was odd about finding me face down in the dirt with a cat licking
his most private of parts on my back, I didn’t reply.

She, however, didn’t take the hint either. I
could hear her pulling one of Rhonda’s heavy wooden garden chairs
toward me.

“I heard the police found Phyllis Cox. Do
you know anything about that?”

Her tone was chatty, like we were two
girlfriends gossiping over coffee and croissants. I muttered
something not fit for little ears into the earth.

Nostradamus, apparently appalled by my
language, stood, kneaded his claws into my back a couple of times
and flounced off.

He of much lower standards, aka my dog,
plopped down in front of Bev and waited for her acknowledgment.

To her credit, she reached out and rubbed
him on the chest.

Grudgingly, I rolled onto my back and sat
up. As I did, the sound of someone clattering through the alley
drew our attention.

“Did you find her—” Kristi, dressed head to
toe in pink, including a pink visor with lace trim around the
edges, ground to a halt just outside Rhonda’s fence. “Oh, there you
are.”

Without waiting for an invitation, she
opened Rhonda’s back gate and stomped into the yard.

Suspicious now that this was not some random
coincidence, I glanced at the back door, hoping my friend would
come to my rescue.

No Rhonda appeared.

“So,” Kristi said, with a smile that looked
as fake as a Hummel marked “made in China.” “We heard that Phyllis
has been found, but she isn’t answering her phone or her door. You
don’t happen to know how we can get in touch with her, do you?”

Considering the last time I’d seen Phyllis,
she’d barely let the air around her brush by me, much less share
her plans for the upcoming week, I felt completely confident in my
answer. “No idea at all.” I stood up and brushed the damp off my
backside, or brushed at it at least.

“Uh, Lucy, you have something—” Kristi leapt
backward just as the dead mouse I’d been pressed against fell off
my chest and onto the ground.

I grimaced, or started to. Kiska lunging
toward the creature cut off my response. I grabbed my dog by the
collar and tugged him away.

At that opportune moment, Rhonda finally
appeared with what appeared to be the plastic wrapping that had
come around her last purchase of toilet paper.

This frugal choice explained her delay. My
friend never used store bags, and I guessed a trash bag would have
been too big for such a small job.

Seeing her new, uninvited, guests, she
hesitated, but my incoherent yells as I held onto Kiska shot her
back into motion.

After scooping up the mouse and tying a knot
in the wrapping, she tossed it into a galvanized metal trashcan and
brushed her hands against each other.

Relieved, I released my hound, but with the
mouse gone, his energy dissipated too. He slumped off to the corner
of the yard and lay down.

This left me free to chat with our visitors.
Unfortunately.

With a sigh, I turned and tried to look, if
not happy to see them, at least not overtly annoyed.

Kristi, who had taken a seat at Rhonda’s
weathered picnic table, patted the bench beside her. I chose one of
the Adirondack chairs instead.

I smiled politely as Bev and Kristi
introduced themselves to Rhonda. My friend, being gracious, didn’t
ask them why they’d felt comfortable barging into her yard. Maybe
she just assumed I’d invited them.

I gave her a look to dissuade her from that
impression, just in case.

She raised her brows in acknowledgment and
sat down in the other unoccupied Adirondack. “So,” she said.
“You’re here because?”

Rhonda was no push over, but then neither,
apparently, was Kristi. She laughed and gestured in the air. “Just
out for some steps.” She held up her arm, indicating a wristband
thing that more determined people than I used to keep track of
their daily exercise.