Plan Bee (17 page)

A few minutes later, he and I were in a different room, smaller and much quieter without big-mouth Aggie making all that threatening noise.

“I don’t know what I can tell you that I haven’t already told you,” I said. “It’s all in the written report and we’ve been over this before.”

“New facts came to light and I’d like to shine a bigger beam on them. And on you.” He chuckled like he’d made a funny joke. Now, he kicked back and swung his feet up on the table, which I thought was rude. The bottoms of his shoes were facing me. He had a wad of something disgusting squashed on the right one. After staring at me for a few minutes, he said, “What was your relationship to the deceased?”

“Ford? Nothing at all,” I said. “We didn’t have any kind of relationship. I only met the guy once for a few minutes. I went over to the house thinking Clay was back in town
and he answered the door.” Since Johnny Jay would try extra hard to trip me up, I thought I better revise my statement. “I take that back, I saw him twice after that. Both of those times he was dead.”

“You didn’t happen to see him go from alive to dead, did you?”

“Very funny.”

“I have a witness who says you had sexual relations with him.”

“You were listening in when horrible Aggie came up with that outrageous lie?” I couldn’t believe we were wired for sound in the interrogation room, but it stood to reason, knowing Johnny.

The chief shot me a look. “I’ll follow up with her when I’m through with you. But I have another reliable witness who made that exact same claim.”

I knew exactly who that was.

“Lori Spandle isn’t a reliable witness,” I said. “She’s been out to get me since high school.” I could have mentioned that Johnny Jay has been out to get me since then, too, but I didn’t want it to sound like sour grapes. “Where is Lori anyway? I really need to talk to her.”

“I never mentioned my witness’s name, so back off. I should get your sister in here. She’s the one who spilled the beans about you and the victim,” he said.

“Yes, bring her in right now so we can clear this up.”

“She’d stick up for you, wouldn’t she? She’d lie right to my face.” He sneered. “Here’s one possibility: You and the deceased start getting all hot and heavy and he does something you don’t like, maybe something especially kinky and he won’t stop, so you end up killing him. Or maybe you like what he’s doing, but get carried away, if you follow my drift. Pretty soon, you realize he’s dead. The whole thing could have been an accident. Either way, he’s not around anymore and you don’t know what to do with the body. So you stuff it into the fireplace.”

I had to interrupt at this point because the whole thing was so unbelievable. “That is the stupidest…”

“Pipe down. Killers do strange things in a panic. Anyway, once he’s dead, you calm down and come up with a better plan. Send Lori Spandle over there, let her discover him. You know her pretty well, know how she reacts to a crisis; not too good with them, is she? She does exactly what you think she’ll do. She runs away. But what you didn’t plan on was that she decided to keep her mouth shut. Partly to save the last few hours of her husband’s festival. Partly because she feels responsible because she rented to the deceased, and she doesn’t know how to handle it.”

Talk about a twisted story. Lori Spandle hasn’t taken responsibility for a single thing her entire life. What a crock.

“I need my cell phone back,” I said. “I get to make a phone call.” If the chief
and
the town chairman,
and
his loosey-goosey wife were all working together to put me behind bars, I was in really big trouble.

“What do you think of my theory?”

“I’m not saying one more word to you, Johnny Jay.” Then I thought of something. “Actually, I do have one question: Exactly how did Ford Stocke die?”

“You don’t get to ask questions.” He swung his feet down to the floor and stood up. “Now, I’m going to let you loose for now, but don’t leave town. I’ll be watching you.”

And with that, he let me go. Officer Sally Maylor drove me back to The Wild Clover. After a few minutes of silence in the squad car I asked, “How did Ford Stocke die?”

Sally pantomimed turning an imaginary key on the side of her lips and tossing it away.

I sighed. Johnny had an iron grip on his officers.

When I reentered The Wild Clover, the store was full of customers. They collectively turned to me with questioning expressions on their faces.

“Everything’s cool,” I said to them. “Aggie and Eugene
are still in jail. But me? No big deal. A misunderstanding between the chief and me. But what else is new on that front, right?”

Holly came forward and gave me a big sisterly hug.

Since I had an attentive audience, and the rumor about me and Ford was bound to get out, if it wasn’t already, I decided to head it off by announcing it right up front. Total transparency was my new motto, one I’d been thinking about since accusations started flying at the police station.

“There’s a nasty rumor going around—” I began, only to have my cousin cut me off.

“We haven’t heard any new rumors yet,” Carrie Ann said. “And I’d know because I’ve been checking customers out,
managing
things.” I didn’t miss my cousin’s extra emphasis on managing. I ignored her, however, and continued “—that claims I was romantically involved… er… um… more like sexually involved with the dead man,” I said. “Please, please don’t believe a word of it, because none of it is true.”

Holly glanced up sharply and asked me, “Who started
that
vicious rumor?”

I narrowed my eyes and did a short stare-down into my sister’s eyes, sending a message as privately as possible. “Oh,” she said, catching on that it had all started with her. “Uh… oh no.”

And just when I thought my whole life sucked, that it was heading for the storm sewer to mix with who knows what kind of disgusting sludge and waste, my friends and loyal customers came to my rescue.

“What a lie!” Carrie Ann shouted with passion.

“Whoever is spreading that one around is going to regret it,” someone else said. “Just let them open their mouth to me just one time! I’ll set them straight.”

Heads nodded in unison.

“We’re behind you, Story,” Milly said. “All the way. Aren’t we, gang?”

Murmurs of agreement swept through the store, from front to back and even sideways in one giant wave.

To my battered and abused ears and downtrodden soul, their voices were like one big, beautiful, mountainous roar of confidence.

It was all I could do not to break down and start sobbing with joy.

But a few renegade tears slid down my cheek and I lost my voice for a little while.

Soon after, my cell phone rang and Grams’s sweet voice said, “I love this little dog.”

“She’s looking for a home. You know Norm isn’t coming back.”

“I would take her in a heartbeat,” my sweet grandmother said, “but…”

There was always a but when it came to Dinky.

“…she isn’t very well trained. She peed on my brand-new slippers.”

“That means she likes you.”

“I’m sure it does,” Grams said, always looking for the best in everything. “But I can’t have that going on. Your mother almost had a conniption fit when it happened.”

I thought about what Carrie Ann had said earlier about Dinky needing training. But what if she wasn’t trainable?

“If I can break her of that bad habit, will you adopt her?” I was excited at a prospective new home for my foster canine. I sensed a sale. Not that I would actually try to sell
Dinky. She was definitely a giveaway. But it would be great to have her close by, to be able to visit. She had plenty of flaws, but she had grown on me.

“You don’t know anything about training dogs,” Grams pointed out.

“No, but Hunter does and he’ll help me.”

“Tell you what, you fix Dinky’s peeing problem and you’ve got yourself a deal. But don’t mention it to your mother. I want to surprise her.”

Oh, that would really make her do cartwheels. Mom wasn’t exactly an animal-friendly person.

“Where is she, anyway?” I asked.

“At Stu’s Bar and Grill with that nice man Tom.”

“Oh Jeez.” I’d forgotten all about keeping tabs on those two.

“What’s wrong, sweetie?”

“Nothing. Gotta go. Can you keep Dinky until tomor-
row?”

“Sure thing,” Grams said, agreeing like I knew she would.

Trent had worked a split shift today, so he was back at the store and agreed to lock up later. And better yet for me, business was slow enough that he felt he could handle it alone until closing.

“Call me if you need me,” I offered. “I can be back here in five minutes.”

I quickly headed home, changed my clothes, and wrapped my new tiger-print scarf around my neck, which I knew would please my mother.

The full moon was already visible in the sky as I hurried toward Stu’s. We still had an hour or more of daylight and the moon was already out, waiting to prey on those of us with weak wills and unruly minds. And what if I qualified? Was that what had happened to end Ford’s life? Had Patti been right about the forces of the full moon driving someone over the edge?

Spooky!

As I reached the corner of Main Street, I caught sight of Lori’s car coming toward me from the north side of town. Her car slid into a parking space in front of the bar. I picked up speed when I saw her crawl out and stand up.

Lori saw me and tried to jump back in her car, but I pulled her out by the back of her too-tight sweater.

“We have a little unfinished business,” I said to her. “We need to talk.”

“I don’t have anything to say to you.” Lori twisted around to check her sweater. Then she turned to face me. “And look what you did to my sweater. You stretched it out of shape.”

“That’s nothing compared to what you did! For starters, you didn’t do a background check on Ford. You rented out the house right next to mine to a chronic jailbird. I’ll see your license to sell real estate revoked for negligence.”

I didn’t have a clue what it would take to get her license lifted, but I vowed to find out. Lori didn’t look too worried, though, which wasn’t a good sign.

“I’m warning you, Fischer,” she said. “Back off.”

I decided to finish plotting the destruction of her career later. Right now I had a bigger bone to pick with her for telling Johnny Jay I’d been sleazing with Ford Stocke. I stepped closer.

Lori was all red, like she gets when she’s mad. “Back off right now,” she warned me again.

“Not until you reassure me that you’re going to reverse the damage you did to my reputation.”

Lori smirked. “What reputation?”

I wanted to kill her so bad it took all my willpower not to reach out and choke her. I didn’t need a full moon to have an overwhelming desire to finish her off once and for all. Normally, I’m not a physically violent person. I’m really not. But I’d had a really bad day and a chunk of it was thanks to Lori. Later I would blame the overhead Transylvanian lunar moon for my next move.

I grabbed a bunch of her precious sweater, right between her big boobs, and yanked her closer, if that was even possible. “You want stretches,” I yelled. “You’ll get stretches.”

We were nose to nose, breath to breath, eyeball to eyeball.

Lori grabbed my brand-new scarf with both hands, getting a good grip on each side and jerking it tight around my throat. She tripped and we both went down. By now I was pretty sure we were in the middle of the street, but I was seeing red, partly because of lack of oxygen to my brain, partly because I was flaming mad.

I had her. She had me. First she was on top, then I was.

“Let go,” I managed to croak. We both still had firm grips; me on her sweater, her on my scarf and I wasn’t breathing so well.

“You first,” she said back.

We both gripped harder. I tried to get a leg over her torso, which I hoped would give me an advantage. She got an elbow free and tried to swing it into my nose. I blocked it. To anyone observing, we must have looked like a giant lunatic pretzel.

Pretty soon, firm hands grabbed both of us and pulled us apart. I had a chunk of Lori’s hair in my fist. Her sweater was stretched so far her bra was popping out. Some of the beads from my scarf bounced away, which really ticked me off.

Then I noticed a bunch of Stu’s customers out on the curb, watching the whole thing. My eyes landed on two people front and center: Mom and Tom. Mom had a hand clapped across her mouth like she was mortified. Tom pulled her close to him in a show of manly support and protection.

“Well, Lori deserved it,” I called out to Mom right before she turned and hurried away. “She ruined my new scarf.”