One Dog Too Many (A Mae December Mystery) (21 page)

“A little longer, Mrs. Connolly.” Kim came back, cut Mae’s hair and smoothed some pomade through it.

“Are you all right with air drying? I want to get back to Laura. She’s telling us a funny story about her mother losing her driver’s license.”

“That’s fine.” Mae handed her thirty dollars. “Thanks for squeezing me in. Does this cover my bill and your tip?”

“Plenty.” Kim smiled at her. “See you next time.”

Mae waved goodbye to Ms. Grace. She walked around the corner and stuck her head in the door of
Local Love. Tammy, who was on the phone, held up a finger.

“Is this going to be a long call?” Mae asked in a whisper.

Tammy nodded yes. Mae mouthed, “Call me later” and went out to her car. She turned her phone back on and listened to a message from Ben telling her to call. Having repaired her hair, she decided she looked presentable enough to stop by his office and see if he was free.

Miss Dory was at her desk, looking
stylish as usual. The office was quiet when Mae walked in.

“Hey, Miss Dory. How are you today?”

“I’m fine, unlike some people. The sheriff is ill as a hornet. Did you want to see him?”

“I guess so. I have some news for him. Maybe it’ll perk him up.”

Dory buzzed Ben. When Mae started to walk past the desk, she glanced at Dory’s computer. There were little colored icons on certain days and Mae noticed Friday was marked with a small red heart.

“Have something special planned for Friday?”

“I sure do. Elmer’s back in town, playing a gig in Nashville. He called and asked me to come hear him play. It’s been ages, and I surprised myself by wanting to go.” When Dory smiled, she looked like a thirty-year-old.

“Would you ever want to get back together with him?” As soon as she asked, Mae was embarrassed about putting Dory on the spot. “It’s none of my business. Sorry, Dory.”

“Sometimes I think about it.” Dory’s voice was pensive. “We’ll probably always love each other. He wasn’t always the most faithful husband in the world. But most of the time I think that train has left the station. I’m going to get myself a new dress for the event, though. I want the man to know what he’s been missing.” She nodded her head decisively as the intercom buzzed.

“You can go on back,
Mae.”

The wall outside Ben’s office was mirrored and Mae stopped to look at her reflection. She checked her hair and took the lip-gloss out of her purse, carefully painting her mouth with the little brush and puckering her lips at her reflection. Tammy was right, as usual. A little color and shine made a big difference.

There was laughter and Ben opened his door, looking embarrassed. “Hi Mae.”

Detective Nichols came out of the office and gave her his typical cocky grin. “Nice lip gloss.”

Mae gave him a confused look.

“That’s not a mirror on the wall. It’s a one-way view window. The sheriff was, let’s just say, too distracted watching you apply your lipstick to finish his sentence.” He sauntered down the hall, laughing.

Mae’s face was hot.

“Come in.” Ben was flushed and awkward. “Sorry, Mae, I’m a little out-of-sorts right now.”

“About Ruby’s case?” She was relieved to change the subject. “I overheard something Robin Fanning said that might be helpful. Do I still need to have someone guarding my house, by the way?”

“Until we solve this, you do. There are way too many connections with people on your street.”

“I never got to tell you about my shovel, did I?”

“No. What about it?”

“It’s missing, and I think I know who took it.”

“Has it been missing long?” Ben raised his eyebrows. “Should I write up a Missing Shovel report?”

“Ben, be serious. I think the person who put the murder weapon in my barn must have taken mine so I wouldn’t notice anything out of place. I think I know who took my shovel and where they hid it.”

Ben gave Mae a long speculative look. “Have you been meddling, I mean investigating, again?”

“No, not at all. I was on the phone with my sister and heard barking on my front porch. I got off the phone and opened the door. Elvis was there.”

“Hang on. Should I be writing this down?”

She knew he was teasing. “I think you should. When I took Elvis back to the Fannings’ house, I overheard Robin talking to her sister, Laura. Robin told her not to worry, that she’d hidden ‘hers’ in her shed. I think she was talking about my shovel.”

“Does she know you heard them talking?” Ben sounded worried.

“No, the kitchen door was open a little and I put Elvis inside. Robin didn’t see me. I’m sure of it.”

“When do you think she might have put the other shovel—the murder weapon—in your barn?”

“The only time I can think of is after I found Ruby’s boot and came to your office on the eighteenth. Robin was out walking that morning. Maybe she saw me stopping at Ruby’s and hid the weapon while I was in town. I probably would have noticed the shovel earlier, but I didn’t need it for anything. I have a hard time believing that Robin killed Ruby, but how else would she have known to hide the shovel?”

“She may have helped David Allison commit the crime. I think that’s the only suspect she has a connection to. Is there anyone else?”

“Is James Connolly a suspect? She definitely has a connection to him.”

“I shouldn’t tell you this, but we questioned him earlier today. What’s the connection between Robin Fanning and James Connolly?”

“She’s his sister-in-law. Robin and Laura are sisters. They don’t favor each other very much because their coloring is so different.”

“Could you identify your shovel if you saw it? Is there anything unique about it?”

“It’s really old and cruddy, and it’s got a smear of bright blue paint on the handle.”

“I’m writing this up right now.” Ben was clearly excited. “I’m getting a warrant to search the Fannings’ shed. Mae, this could be the breakthrough we’ve been waiting for.”

Ben’s eyes crinkled in the corners and he grabbed Mae and hugged her.

I
t was after five when Ben finally got his search warrant. It had been a grueling day already with the interrogations and then dismissals of all the other suspects. He drove to the Fanning residence with Emma Peters. Robin answered the door. She seemed wary.

“Mrs. Fanning, I have a warrant to search your garden shed.”

“My shed?” Her eyebrows lifted.

“Yes, ma’am. Is that a problem?”

She crossed her arms. “Well, I guess not. I need to see the warrant. My husband’s going to ask me about this.”

The sheriff handed Robin the warrant.

She read it over carefully.

“Shall we go out to the shed?” Ben asked.

She didn’t reply but shrugged and grabbed a jacket. Followed by the ubiquitous Elvis, all three of them walked through the immaculately landscaped yard to the Fannings’ shed. The door opened easily. It was quite dark inside. Ben pulled out a flashlight and shone it all around the space. Finally, the light landed on a shovel.

“Is this your shovel?”

“One shovel looks pretty much like another, but since it’s in my shed, I guess so.”

“Just a minute. I see you have two shovels.”

“For all I know, we have a dozen shovels.” Robin shook her head. “Steven is the gardener, not me.”

“I see only two. I’m going to take both of them.”

“Okay.” Robin looked calm, but he thought fear lay beneath her confident facade.

Emma Peters quickly put on her gloves, took the shovels to the car and loaded them into the trunk.

“Thank you, Mrs. Fanning.” Ben got behind the wheel.

Emma turned to the sheriff once they were back in the car. “You told me we were going to get a shovel and I just put two and two together. We already processed one shovel—the murder weapon—so one of those two shovels in the trunk must be the shovel from Miss December’s barn. Maybe Mrs. Fanning took the shovel in order to prevent Miss December from noticing the murder weapon right away. Have I got that right?”

“You’re a very smart woman.” Ben smiled. She was cute, too. Of course, he’d never say that. His deputies all had crushes on her. Like the rest of the women in the office, Emma only had eyes for Wayne. Ben found the whole thing baffling. If Wayne was that good with women, why wasn’t he married or in a long-term relationship? It was a mystery, like so many things about his Chief Detective.

“Yes. We believe the perp took the murder weapon—let’s call it shovel number one—from Ruby’s house and put it in Mae’s barn. Then someone, maybe the murderer or an accomplice, took Mae’s shovel and put it in the Fannings’ shed.”

“Do you think Robin might be an accomplice, or even the killer?”

“I don’t think she’s the killer. She doesn’t seem to have any reason to want Ruby dead. I think it’s more likely that she’s covering for somebody.”

Ben called Wayne on his cell. They commiserated for a few minutes about having dismissed all their suspects. Ben smiled
inwardly. “Actually, we have a new lead, maybe even a new suspect, and it’s a woman. Mae overheard a conversation between Laura Connolly and her sister, Robin Fanning. That led us to search the Fannings’ shed. Tech Peters and I are on our way back to the lab right now with shovels number two and three we found there. Mae thinks one of these might be her shovel. She’s on her way to the lab to see if she can identify it.”

“Too bad it’s not a dog,” Wayne said laconically.

“What do you mean?”

“If the shovel was a dog, you wouldn’t be
wondering, you’d know she could identify it.” He laughed. “I’ll meet you there. If one of the two shovels belongs to Mae, are we going to interview Mrs. Fanning?”

“You betcha.” Ben
felt more upbeat than he had been in days.

Ben and Emma were waiting inside the lab when Mae walked in with Wayne Nichols right behind her. The space had metal lab benches on all four sides. Windows above the benches let in the last of the afternoon sunlight. She went directly over to Ben and put her hand on his arm. Ben smiled down at her. Wayne and Emma exchanged a sidelong look, which Ben caught but decided to ignore, and they all looked at the shovels.

“Yes!” Mae’s voice was excited. “It’s my shovel. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to identify it, but that’s the blue paint I told you about. It’s from the day I painted the upstairs bathroom. I didn’t even have time to clean up from the paint job. I ran down to the kennel to take care of some ‘poo’ in the dog run before a client arrived.” She grinned. “Just the hazards of my job, I guess.”

“Do you have any idea why your shovel was in the Fannings’ shed?” Wayne asked.

“If Robin took the murder weapon from Ruby’s house and put it in my barn, then she must have taken my shovel to her house. What I don’t understand is why she would take the murder weapon from Ruby’s in the first place.”

“I don’t know, either,” Ben spoke up, “but I think Robin Fanning is in this case right up to her beautiful white shoulders.”

Mae jerked her head back. “Her beautiful white shoulders? When have you seen Robin’s shoulders? I personally don’t think they’re that beautiful and I’ve seen them several times.”

Ben opened his mouth and closed it again while she glared at him. Wayne and Emma burst out laughing.

The sheriff called Robin Fanning and asked her to come down to the station. It was getting dark when she arrived; she was dressed in jeans and a black sweater with a blue scarf tied at her neck. She was very accommodating about coming late in the day and didn’t object to having her fingerprints taken. She was doing a great job of acting like someone with nothing to hide, he thought.

After she was fingerprinted, Ben led her to the sink where she could clean her hands. She dried them on a paper towel, seemingly relaxed. He cleared his throat and Robin focused on him with wide, light blue eyes.

“Sheriff, I’m not denying my fingerprints could be on a shovel you found in my shed.” Her voice was whispery and sensual. He fought the impulse to lean in closer.

“Can you tell me how that shovel ended up in your shed, Mrs. Fanning?”

“Is the possession of a shovel a crime in Rose County these days?”

Oh spare me
. “Only if you hurt someone with it. Come with me, please.”

Without another word, she followed him down the hall and into the interview room.

Ben stuck his head into Wayne’s office to tell him they were ready to interrogate Robin Fanning. “Do you have Laura Connolly set up to come in yet? I’d really like her to be here tonight.”

“I tracked her down, but tonight isn’t going to work. Once a month Laura is part of a research study on mood disorders and sleep. She has to sleep at their lab tonight. I called and she’s already wired. Plus, they give them something to knock them out. She couldn’t talk to us if we did get her out. She’d be practically comatose. It would be ‘AMA, against medical advice.’ I even talked to the supervising physician. It’s a no go. At least we know she’s not going anywhere and nobody can talk to her or text her. No cellphones allowed.”

“Damn. Let’s go talk to Robin Fanning.”

They walked into the conference room together.

“Mrs. Fanning, I know you met Detective Wayne Nichols earlier in the investigation and this is Deputy Fuller.” Ben gestured toward his deputy who was already sitting at the table. “Do you prefer to be called Robin or Mrs. Fanning?”

Deputy Fuller unobtrusively started the tape record
ing equipment.

“Robin.” She smiled. “Mrs. Fanning is my mother-in-law.”

“Okay, Robin, then.” Wayne smiled right back at her. “Let me provide a little history here. After Ruby Mead-Allison’s death, we found her shovel in Mae December’s barn. As you know, we later found two shovels in your garden shed. One of those shovels turned out to belong to Miss December.” He looked relaxed and casual, as if discussing a high school football game, or plans to go fishing.

“Please tell me why Miss December’s shovel was in your barn and the other shovel was in hers?”

“I’m not sure, Detective. We do a fall and spring cleanup on our road and often people’s shovels get mixed up. That’s probably what happened.”

“Tell me about spring cleanup. Did it already happen this year?”

“No, we set the date, but it hasn’t been done yet.” She gave Wayne another pretty smile, showing her dimples. Robert Fuller was staring at her, so captivated that one would think he’d never seen a pretty woman before.

“You’re saying your shovel has probably been in Miss December’s barn since last year then?” His tone indicated he was immune to that smile. “That seems like a long time, doesn’t it? Miss December remembers having seen her shovel recently, in the last couple of weeks, in fact.”

“I simply have no explanation, Detective.” She down looked at her hands. Her nails were very short and it looked like she bit them. Wayne glanced at the sheriff, his signal for Ben to ask the next question.

“Robin, we already know you’re involved in this case. You can help yourself by telling us everything. You need to tell us how Mae’s shovel ended up in your shed.” The room was very quiet. The deputy’s stomach gurgled.

Robin continued to study her hands. Then she looked up. “The night of the eighteenth I got a text message.”

“A text message …” Ben prompted her to continue.

“Yes, it read, ‘Come to Ruby’s now.’ ”

“What time was this?” Wayne asked.

The sheriff leaned back in his seat. He had broken the dam and now Wayne would get the details. They were starting to be a team.

“Around midnight, I think.”

“Who sent the text?”

“My little sister, Laura. When she gets depressed, she calls me.”

“Your sister is Laura Connolly, right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Then what happened?”

“I got up, grabbed my jacket and boots and left right away. When I got there, Laura was standing by Ruby’s garage. She handed me a shovel.”

“I’m trying to envision the scene. It’s very late at night, your sister is standing by your neighbor Ruby’s garage and she hands you a shovel? I guess if my sister asked me to come to her neighbor’s house, especially in the middle of the night, and handed me a shovel, I’d think that was pretty bizarre behavior.”

Robin lifted her head and took a deep breath. “You just don’t understand.”

“So, help me understand. Where did you think Ruby was?”

“I assumed Ruby was asleep in the house.”

“What was going through your head at that point? Why did you think Laura had called you to come over there?”

“I thought Laura was having another bad episode.” Robin’s eyes were fixed on Wayne. The muscles of her jaw stood out against her pale skin.

“Do you have your cellphone with you, Robin?” Ben asked.

“No, I left it at home.”

A wave of discouragement went through Ben. They weren’t going to be able to confirm the time or content of the text from that evening. “Does your sister have mental issues?”

“She was diagnosed with emotional problems as a teenager. They call it an impulse-control disorder. It’s characterized by an inability to control urges that might be harmful to her or to others. But that’s just their term for it. It’s only a diagnosis, a label. Laura is much more than her diagnosis. She isn’t very badly affected. Really, she isn’t.” Robin’s voice was pleading. She rubbed
her hands together.

“So you took the shovel from Laura and left it in Mae December’s barn.”

“Yes, and then I took Mae’s shovel to my shed. Now you know all I know about this. At that point, I didn’t know Ruby was dead. Laura didn’t kill her. She has called me before to come and take things away that bother her. Once she was terrified by a carton of milk! I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this before. I should have.”

“I think I understand. You always protect your little sister, don’t you?” Wayne’s voice was soft.

“I try to.” Robin’s face crumpled and then the tears came down. “She tries so hard and it’s so awful for her.”