Murder and Salutations (Book 3 in the Cardmaking Mysteries) (27 page)

Lillian snorted. “What do they expect to
find that we won’t? Amateurs.”

“
That’s what we are,” I said
as I took a sip of tea.

“
Jennifer, we’ve helped the
police from time to time in the past. I think that gives us
standing, don’t you?”

I didn’t know how to answer that, and looked
over at Gail, who was grinning as she hung on every word. “What are
you smiling about?”

“
You two are more
entertaining than daytime television.”

I was saved from replying by our food order
arriving. Savannah slid plates in front of Lillian and Gail, but
left before giving me anything. “Hey, where’s mine?” Savannah
turned around. “Did you say something?”

“
I was just wondering where
my food was,” I said. She got close enough for me to smell her
perfume.

“
Did you kiss my man?” Was
she serious? I’d just been thanking a guy I’d known my entire life.
“Yes, ma’am, I admit it. He did me a favor, and I thanked him
politely.”

“
Where did you kiss him?”
she asked, to “By the side of the restaurant,” I
answered.

It was touch and go for a second, then
Savannah whooped with laughter. “Lillian, she’s more like you than
you’re willing to admit.”

“
You take that back,” I
said, smiling.

“
I won’t do it,” Savannah
said as she retrieved my plate from Pete’s window.

I stuck my tongue out at him. “Tattletale.”
He ducked back, as if he was worried I’d hurl one of the tiny hush
puppies at him. They were light, crisp and golden, and I wouldn’t
have willingly given one up for the president.

As we ate, Lillian asked, “So what do you
make of our crime-busting competition? Did they say who they
suspect?”

I mumbled, hoping she would let it slide,
but should have known better. “Jennifer, I can’t understand you
with a mouthful of food.”

“
Really?” I said as I put
another forkful of barbecued pork in my mouth.

Gail said, “She doesn’t want to say in
here.”

“
Really? I had no clue that
was what she was doing.” Lillian leaned toward me and added, “They
suspect Sara Lynn, don’t they?”

I nodded. “You really can’t blame them.”

“
Of course I can,” Lillian
said, ignoring her salad completely. “Jennifer, it’s time we put an
end to this.

“
I’m trying,” I said. “If
you have any more ideas, I’m willing to hear them out.”

Gail looked at us both, then asked, “Do you
two really think you can solve a case that Bradford can’t? I hate
to say it, but that’s kind of arrogant of you, isn’t it?”

“
You have
no idea,” I admitted. “The thing is, he’s
got rules he has to follow, and we just keep
poking our noses into other people’s lives until we find out what
we’re looking for.”

“
Isn’t that
dangerous?”

“
It can be,” I said, “but
that’s just a part of it. What matters is that the truth comes out,
one way or another.”

Gail shook her head. “I don’t know how you
do it.”

“
The same way we do
everything else,” Lillian said “With panache and great flair. Now,
if you two are finished, we all have work to do.”

Back at the card shop, Gail said, “Thanks
for everything.”

“
We didn’t do anything,” I
said.

“
You did more than you could
know. I just hope I didn’t make your life harder than it has to be,
breaking up with Reggie like that.”

“
Believe me, I’ll be
fine.”

After she was gone, Lillian said, “Now what
do we do to stir things up? I’m ready for some action.”

“
I’ve been poking and
prodding like mad, but I don’t seem to get anywhere.”

“
Then it’s time we stepped
things up,” Lillian said.

“
Do you have any idea how we
can do that, short of an outright accusation?”

“
Give me a minute,” she
said.

“
You can have all
afternoon,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“
Don’t be so sure about
that,” Lillian said. “I think I’ve got an idea how to flush the
killer out.”

“
It sounds like it’s going
to be dangerous,” I said.

“
Are you afraid?”

“
A little,” I
admitted.

“
Good. If you weren’t, I’d
be worried about you. We’ll make this as safe as we can. Now here’s
what we’re going to do. You’ve been pussyfooting around with hinted
accusations, but I want to come right out and accuse
everyone.”

“
What? You can’t be
serious,” I said. “We can’t do that without any justification.
They’ll all laugh in our faces, and we’ll deserve it.”

“
Do you have a better
idea?”

“
Doing nothing is better
than making fools of ourselves. We need to approach the situation
with less randomness, you know?” I went for the whiteboard. When
Lillian saw what I was doing, she said, “Jennifer, this is a time
for action, not deliberation.”

“
Lillian, I love you, you
know that, but this time, you’re wrong.” I propped the board up and
studio it. “There’s got to be a key here somewhere, if we’re just
smart enough to see it.”

She frowned at the board. “Do you honestly
think so?”

“
I do,” I said.

“
Then where is it?” We’d
filled the board with scribbled motives, since everyone on our list
had the means and the opportunity, including Reggie.

“
Why does anyone kill?” I
asked.

“
We’ve been over this a
dozen times, Jennifer. Let’s focus on the basics.”

I erased the board, despite my aunt’s
protests. “What are you doing?”

“
Are you trying to tell me
you haven’t memorized that board, too? I’m willing to wager either
one of us could recreate it if we had to.”

“
Fine, do it your way.” She
was testy, but I knew Lillian was frustrated with the murders and
not with me.

The fresh board mocked me. “Why aren’t you
writing?” Lillian asked me.

“
There’s something I’m
missing, something I heard over the past few days that I’m not
getting. It’s the key, I just know it.”

“
Well, think, Jennifer! What
is it?”

“
That’s not helping,” I
said.

“
Maybe if you take a walk,
it will come to you,” Lillian said. “I don’t mind watching the card
shop.”

It was true that there were two things that
always got my juices flowing: either a walk or a shower. Since I
didn’t have a shower handy, a walk made perfect sense. “You’re
right, I need to jar loose whatever is lodged in my head. I don’t
know how long I’ll be,” 1 said as I headed for the door.

“
You’re not on a schedule,”
she said. “You own this place, remember?”

I was nearly outside when Lillian added,
“One thing before you go. If it does come to you, don’t do anything
without me, Jennifer.” “I’m not crazy,” I said.

“
That’s a discussion for
another day,” Lillian said. “But you can’t deny you’re rash at
times.”

“
I like to think of it as
active,” I said. “Call it what you will. I just don’t want you
taking any chances.”

“
Fine, I’ll behave myself,”
I promised as I left the card shop. Since I had no destination in
mind, I decided to start up Oakmont toward Sara Lynn’s shop. At
Greg’s Pottery, I paused to look inside. He was having an earnest
conversation with Stephanie, and I could swear it looked like he
was proposing! Though he wasn’t down on one knee, there was
something the size of a ring box in his hand, and she kept looking
at it as he spoke. I knew Greg had a tendency to ask women to marry
him—after all, he’d asked me twice himself—but it was all I could
do not to bust through the door and tell him he wasn’t ready for
such a big step. My hand was on the doorknob before I jerked it
away. If Greg wanted to marry Stephanie, there was nothing I could
do about it, and more important, there was nothing I should do to
stop him. He had his life to live, and I had mine. If he believed
Stephanie was what it would take to make him happy, then more power
to him. Now if I could only convince myself of that.

I left the storefront and tried to put what
I’d just seen out of my thoughts. I had something more important to
deal with. As I walked, I thought about everyone involved with the
murders. Eliza had plenty of enemies, but poor Bailey hadn’t had
any, as far as I’d known. Addie and Luke had been off base with
their belief that Sara Lynn was the murderer. I knew my sister
didn’t do it, and no amount of proof would convince me otherwise.
So how about the two of them? Addie inherited a business and was
probably going after Eliza’s ex-husband. She was basically taking
over her partner’s life before she was even in the ground. That
smacked of motive. Then there was Luke. He’d professed his love for
his ex-wife often enough. Would her scorn be enough to drive him to
murder? Polly and Kaye had their own reasons to dislike Eliza, but
again, did they hate her enough to murder her?

And there was Reggie. He was the dark horse
in all of this. I didn’t even have any proof that he’d been having
an affair with Eliza. And even if he had been, why would he kill
her? The most he had to lose was his relationship with Gail, and it
was pretty obvious it f hadn’t been that important to him—not by
the way he blew her off earlier. That left me with a ragtag
collection of suspects, with conflicting motives to want Eliza
dead.

I was at the park bench at the square, and I
decided to stop walking to see if I could sort this mess out. I
knew motive was the key, but what if I had the wrong one for one of
my suspects? Eliza also ran an accounting business on the
side—nothing too big, but she did taxes for several of the shop
owners in town. Could her murder have been committed to cover up
something else—a crime that had nothing to do with jealousy or
anger?

Then I remembered what had been nagging at
me all along, and it all fell into place. I started toward the
business where I knew the murderer was working, forgetting all
about my promise to Lillian to come get her when I figured it
out.

Chapter 15

Wouldn’t you know it? The business was
deserted when I walked in. Why couldn’t this have happened in the
full swing of tourist season, when there was no place in town that
wasn’t crawling with visitors? I took a deep breath at the door,
then moved toward the counter.

She looked up at me as I approached.
“Jennifer. Don’t you ever stay at your shop anymore? I don’t know
how you do it.”

“
My aunt’s watching the
place.” I looked around. “Where is everyone?”

“
Thad’s on break,” Kaye
said. “He won’t be back for a while. Was there something I could
help you with?”

I took a deep breath, then said, “You could
save us all a lot of trouble and confess,” I said, the words
sounding insane even as I spoke them.

“
Confess to what?” She held
steady, but 1 could see her face blanch slightly at my
prompt.

“
You killed Eliza, and then
you got rid of Bailey and tried to do the same thing to me when you
thought we both knew what you’d done. You want to know the funny
thing? I didn’t put it all together until just a minute
ago.”

“
I don’t know what you’re
talking about,” she said. “You’re not well.”

“
You’re the one who’s sick,”
I said. “You’re a murderer, Kaye.”

“
Why on earth would I kill
Eliza?” she demanded. “We weren’t friends, but I had no reason to
hate her.”

“
I’m guessing that you did,”
I said. “Between her two businesses, Eliza had more money at her
disposal than you could dream of. You never could stand the fact
that Thad relied on his dad’s income to keep you two solvent, could
you? Everybody in town knows that you married him for money he
didn’t have. That’s not the only reason you killed Eliza, though
I’m certain it was a contributing factor in the end.”

She looked more angry than flustered, but I
knew I was right. “So what? Even if she did flaunt her money in my
face, that didn’t mean I wanted her dead.”

There was just one thing for me to do. I had
to press her harder until I got her to confess. “Like I said, it
wasn’t the only reason you killed her, but I’ve got a strong idea
what your original motive was. Eliza found out you were stealing
from the business when she started doing the books, didn’t
she?”

That hit home. She jerked her head back as
if I’d smacked her. “You’re just guessing, Jennifer.”

“
Kaye, the last time I was
here, you didn’t ring up a big sale as you made it. You told the
customer the register was broken, but it was working fine, wasn’t
it? I watched you do it, and it never occurred to me what you were
up to until later.”

She shook her head back and forth
vigorously. “I remember that. The register really was broken that
day,” she said, but the conviction in her voice was gone.

“
It’s a good way to steal,
isn’t it? But you had to know that you’d get caught as soon as your
husband or father-in-law took an inventory. You decided to worry
about that later, though, didn’t you? I’m guessing you were trying
to make up for the money you stole outright from the business
before anybody else found out what you were up to. How did you get
Eliza to keep quiet? I’m just curious, though it’s really not that
important. My brother will be able to figure it all out once he
gets the state police and their team of forensic auditors in
here.”