No Scone Unturned (14 page)

“
L
exy
! Talk to me!” Nans' voice sounded like it was a mile away. Lexy’s head was fuzzy, and her arm stung like the time she’d been attacked by hornets that were nesting in her old metal swing set. Her cheeks felt like someone was rubbing warm, wet sandpaper on them.

Slowly she opened her eyes. She was on the ground, looking up at the lattice corners of the half-built gazebo wall at the trees above.

The gazebo!

She sat up quickly then fell back against someone who had been cradling her in her lap. “What happened?”

“Lexy! You’re alive!” Ruth, Ida and Helen rushed over, clucking about like mother hens. Four furry dogs wiggled around her, licking her face and hands and jumping into her lap.

Then Lexy remembered she’d been shot! Her head jerked to the side to inspect her arm. Nans was pressing a napkin against it—apparently one she’d used to wrap up the last scone, since the scone was now lying on the ground. Her arm didn’t look too bad. At least it was still attached.

“You were just grazed.” Nans answered her unspoken question. “You’ll be fine.”

But she must not have been fine, because she was seeing double. She wasn’t seeing just four gray-haired old ladies in black polyester pantsuits in the gazebo. She was seeing eight of them.

Was she seeing double? No, not
exactly
double, because Nans, Ruth, Ida, and Helen were crouched down next to her and the other polyester suits were tying Olive up with thick rope.

Lexy pushed to a sitting position, feeling much better now. “What’s going on?”

One of the other suits turned to look at her, and Lexy recognized her as the woman from the fan club who had come into her bakery.

“We got here just in the nick of time,” the woman said.

“Oh, Lexy, this is June, Sally, Belinda, and Florence. The women who run Olive’s fan club.”

“Olive’s former fan club now.” Sally scowled down at Olive’s unconscious body.

“After Olive shot you, these lovely women rushed in, and Florence grabbed the nail gun and shot Olive right in the knees,” Nans said.

“It must be really painful, because she passed out, and she’s been out ever since,” Ida added.

“If it wasn’t for these ladies, we might be in our concrete graves right now.” Ruth glanced over at the cement foundation.

“It’s very much appreciated,” Lexy said truthfully. She alternated patting first one dog then the next as they vied for her attention, seemingly unconcerned about their unconscious owners lying just feet away. “But what were you guys doing out here in the middle of the night?”

“Well, as you know, as part of our duties as fan club founders, we need to keep up on the comings and goings of Olive,” Sally said.

“There is a big conference going on right now, and there is some question as to whether Olive herself is there or if she sent her assistant Connie to impersonate her,” June added.

“So we were just doing a little midnight reconnaissance to see if we could spot her,” Belinda said.

Florence leaned toward them and whispered, “You know she can be very reclusive.”

“Anyway,” Sally continued, “we were parked down the street when we saw you pull up. We wanted to see what you were up to, thinking maybe you were part of a rival fan club gang. We debated coming onto the property, but then we saw Olive come out of the house, and as we crept closer, we heard the conversation.”

“So you heard her confessing to everything then?” Lexy asked.

“Yes, we did. And when she shot you, I don’t know what came over me. I ran in, grabbed the nail gun, and shot her back.”

“It was all very exciting,” Belinda said. “Almost like being in our own mystery book.”

“But that still doesn’t explain what exactly
you
people are doing here,” Sally said.

“We’re private investigators,” Nans said proudly. “We witnessed the murder with this drone here, and we’ve been investigating it ever since.”

“Oh, well, we barely noticed you in those black outfits,” Florence said.

“I noticed yours are very similar.” Ruth went to stand beside Florence as they compared their outfits. “I got mine at Marshall’s. Where did you get yours?”

“I got mine there too. They were on sale last month.”

“I got mine at the same sale!”

The sound of sirens split the air, and they all looked at each other. “We should probably call the police.”

“You haven’t called them?” Lexy asked.

“No, we were more concerned with finding out if you were okay and securing Olive and then…well…we got to talking, and…” Nans shrugged.

“We figured we had the perpetrators well tied up anyway, so we had plenty of time.” Ida cocked her ear toward the street. “And if my guess is right, the police are coming here right now anyway.”

Ida’s guess was right. The siren stopped outside the Pendletons’. The police came cautiously around back, saw them in the gazebo, and used their high-powered flashlights to light the place up like the nighttime field at the Super Bowl. Lexy squinted into the bright lights, her gut clenching when she heard Jack’s voice.

“What’s going on back here? We had a call about a disturbance…dogs barking and…Lexy, is that you?”

Jack rushed to her side, fussing over her wound, calling an ambulance against her wishes, then admonishing her for putting herself in danger.

“But we caught the killer.” Ida pointed to Olive and Rupert.

“I see, but why is Olive tied up?” Jack asked.

“Olive was the killer,” Florence cut in.

Jack whirled around, his eyes darting among Nans, Ruth, Ida, and Helen and the four ladies of the fan club. He zoomed in on the fan club ladies, his brows drawn together. “And exactly who are you?”

The woman stuck her hand out. “I’m Florence Dayton, president of the Olive Pendleton fan club.”

“Former Olive Pendleton fan club,” Sally reminded her.

“Yes, right. We don’t want to have a fan club for a murderer,” Florence said.

“So Rupert wasn’t the killer?” Jack asked.

“No, and here’s your proof.” Ida held out the USB card from the drone, keeping the drone itself securely under her arm. Lexy figured she didn’t want to let it get into police custody, as they would likely keep it in the evidence room for years, and she needed to get it back to her grandson. “On this card is the video that will prove who the killer is.”

“And the body is right in the freezer,” Nans said.

Jack nodded to one of the other police officers, who opened the freezer then turned back to Jack. “Yep, she’s not kidding about that.”

The ambulances pulled up just as Rupert was coming to. Jack made sure Lexy got loaded in the first ambulance before putting Olive and Rupert into their own separate ambulances. Then he climbed into the back of the ambulance with her.

“You don’t have to come with me,” Lexy said. “I’m fine. You have a job to do here.”

Nans, Ruth, Ida, and Helen as well as the fan club hovered around the back of the ambulance, too.

“I’ll go with her,” Nans said.

“Give me your keys, Lexy, and I’ll take the car and meet you guys at the hospital,” Ruth said.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Lexy looked nervously from Ruth to Jack.

“I’ll meet them at the hospital,” Jack said. Then, realizing the ladies probably didn’t have a ride, he added, “I’ll drive you all there.”

“Well, that’s settled, then.” Ruth started toward Lexy’s car but stopped when Caspian Kingsley appeared in a royal-blue bathrobe with gold fleur-de-lis on it.

“My word. What
is
going on over here? I only called because the dogs were making a ruckus. This seems like quite a to-do.”

“That’s right, Mr. Kingsley. In case you don’t know, there was a murder here. And our town’s most famous author is being charged with it,” Florence said.

Caspian looked her up and down. Then his gaze flitted from Florence to the other fan club ladies and then over to the sleuths. A flicker of recognition crossed his eyes when he looked at Nans, Ruth, Ida, and Helen.

“My Lord, there’s eight of them?” He looked at Jack then leaned in toward him as if providing him a confidence. “I don’t know what happened here, but I wouldn’t put any stock in what these ladies say. From what I’ve seen, they’re all crazy.”

L
exy sat
at one of the café tables in the front of her bakery the next day and watched the sun glinting off the waterfall across the street. Pedestrians strolled casually down the road, clutching shopping bags. Birds skittered around on the sidewalk, looking for crumbs. No one would guess a murder had occurred nearby and someone had been arrested for it just the night before.

She picked up the cinnamon scone in front of her, wincing at the pain in her right arm where the bullet had grazed her. She’d have to learn to use her left arm for a while. Cassie came out from the kitchen to load a fresh batch of blonde brownies into the pastry case.

“I can do that,” Lexy said.

“No way. You are to rest. You’re lucky I’m even letting you in here today. Jack would have my hide if he knew I let you do any work.” Cassie’s gaze drifted out the window. “And besides, you’ve got company.”

Lexy turned to see Ruth’s enormous antique blue Oldsmobile careening down the road. The driver pulled to the side of the street, misjudging how far to go, and its whitewall tires jumped up onto the curb. Then she overcorrected into the opposite lane, which thankfully was void of traffic. Finally she managed to park without running anyone over, and the four ladies piled out and made a beeline for the bakery.

Nans was the first through the door. “Lexy! You’re looking chipper!”

The ladies had stayed with her for four hours in the emergency room. It had turned out the bullet hadn’t done any damage, simply grazing the skin. She’d barely needed a couple of stitches. But Jack and the ladies had stayed by her side the whole time.

Ruth, Ida, and Helen followed Nans over to Lexy’s side and inspected her arm. Once they were satisfied that she was okay, they did an about-face and marched to the bakery case, where they each picked out a pastry before filling up coffee mugs at the self-serve station.

“Now don’t fill up too much on these, Ida,” Nans said. “You know we’re having the fan club ladies over for tea later this afternoon.”

“You are?” Lexy asked. “You mean the ladies that helped us catch Olive?”

Nans nodded as she squirted some lemon into her tea. “Yes. They seemed very nice and it was the least we could do seeing as they got us out of quite a pickle.”

“I just hope they don’t think they can team up with us.” Ida made a face.

“That’s not going to happen,” Nans said. “There’s only room for four of us in the detective club… well and Lexy, of course.”

“Of course,” the ladies said in unison.

“Though we may be able to use them as informants somehow,” Nans said.

“They seemed quite eager to work with us, and Sally does have extensive computer skills,” Ruth added.

“And they are going to help with those adorable little Peekapoos,” Helen said.

“They are?” Lexy asked. “What about Rupert?”

“Oh, he’s keeping them. He said he wouldn’t part with them. But he’s going to need some help, and they agreed to help him.” Ida leaned forward. “I think they might be sweet on him.”

“So what’s going to happen to Rupert, anyway?” Helen asked. “He’s not being charged with anything, is he?”

“No. From what Jack said, he had no idea about the murder. It was all Olive’s doing. They were able to prove with the video from the drone that it was her hand that wielded the bat. And they also got some DNA from the bat itself. Should be an easy case.”

“Imagine killing your own sister,” Ruth said.

Helen shook her head. “But Jason got his drone back in good condition, right, Ida?”

Ida nodded. “He did. I pretended I had just dropped it under Mona’s sofa. He doesn’t need to know we flew halfway across town and got it involved in a murder. If he did, he might not let me play with his toys anymore.”

Lexy laughed. “Jack also said that Rupert is probably going to stay in the house. Olive is going to need to come up with a lot of money for bail.”

“What about her assistant?”

“Turns out she really was at that conference all along,” Lexy said.

“But will Olive still inherit Susan’s money?” Ruth asked. “That doesn’t seem right since she killed her.”

Nans shook her head. “She won’t be able to inherit. But Rupert will.”

“No he won’t,” Lexy said. “I mean, technically he will, but he said he planned to get in touch with Susan’s son, Brent. She had confided in Rupert that she wanted to reconcile with Brent. Rupert had no idea Olive was intercepting the letters between them, and since he put that mail in the box for Olive, he feels a little responsible.”

“So it sounds like Rupert really was a nice guy,” Helen said.

“It seems so. At least he’s doing the right thing. And he’s going to make sure Brent gets all of Susan’s money.”

“Well, it seems like we tied up another case that the police couldn’t solve.” Nans held up her coffee cup. “I think that calls for a toast.”

Lexy, Ruth, Ida, and Helen all raised their cups.

“To a job well done,” Nans said.

They clinked the lips of their cups, and each took a sip.

Ida raised her cup again for another toast. “And here’s hoping there’s many more.”

T
he End
.

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