Skating Under the Wire: A Mystery (Rebecca Robbins Mysteries) (27 page)

Amy Jo waved at me from the front, where a large picture of Ginny stood on an easel next to a small silver urn. Ginny’s wishes had included cremation and one final visit to Florida to have her ashes spread on a beach.

“I’m so glad you felt well enough to come.” Amy Jo took my hand and held it tight. “We’ve been worried. Deputy Holmes assured me that your involvement in Aunt Ginny’s murder investigation had nothing to do with the accident, but I’m not sure I believe him.”

Obviously, I wasn’t the only one who needed to work on my fibbing technique. Once I assured Amy Jo I was fine, I asked, “Did you find the money in the teapot?”

Amy Jo smiled. “Yes. We can’t thank you enough for telling us about that. Otherwise we would have had to dip into our savings to pay for the service.”

“Why? I would have thought the bank would have let you use Ginny’s account to pay for this.” That’s how it worked for my mother’s funeral. I just had to fill out a couple of forms and the bank cut a check.

Amy Jo sighed. “The bank told us Aunt Ginny closed her savings account two years ago, and the money in the checking account is barely enough for us to pay her association dues and monthly bills. I still don’t know where she came up with her portion of the money for the rental or the cash in the teapot, but if Aunt Ginny had the will, she’d find a way.”

The more I heard about Aunt Ginny, the more I liked her.

Pachelbel’s Canon in D rang out from my pocket. Danielle really needed to work on her timing, and I needed to remember to turn my phone to vibrate.

“I’m so sorry,” I said to Amy Jo as I pulled the phone out and read Danielle’s message. Mother Lucas was offering to help select new table favors. Unless I wanted to solve another murder, we needed to come up with them pronto.

“You look worried. Was that information about Aunt Ginny’s murder?”

“Danielle was texting about wedding stuff. She’s concerned about her table favors.” I was the queen of understatement.

Amy Jo smiled. “I remember my favors. I thought the bottle opener with our names on it was wonderful, which is good because at least two dozen people left theirs behind. Danielle’s lucky to be having her wedding so close to Christmas. It means she can pick favors like holiday candy or decorations.”

Huh. I’d been trying so hard to ignore the pre-Thanksgiving decorating that I hadn’t considered using the impending season for inspiration. Now that I had, I knew how Danielle could avoid spending her honeymoon in lockup.

Smiling, I started to grab my phone to text Danielle. Then I remembered one last question I needed to ask. “Has Jimmy Bakersfield been by yet?”

Amy Jo nodded. “He brought flowers. He’s very kind.”

Kind or guilty? I guessed it was up to me to figure out which.

I paid my respects to the rest of Ginny’s family, waved to my grandfather, who had joined the line, and hurried out the door in search of my suspect. Eureka! I found him in the kitchen, balancing a plate of cookies. Skirting around a couple of kids and three of Pop’s most ardent admirers, I tapped Jimmy on his flannel-clad shoulder and said, “Hey, Jimmy, can I ask you a few questions?”

Jimmy smiled, handed me his plate of cookies, and bolted.

Wow, for all that girth in the middle, the man could move. He was out of the room and halfway down the hall before I could ditch the plate and give chase. Drat. I dodged a lady with a walker and almost tripped over a toddler crawling out from behind a chair as Jimmy disappeared out the front door.

Ignoring the shouts and gasps behind me, I raced through the lobby, out the door, and smack into a fluffy fur coat. The coat, me, and the person draped in fur hit the ground in a heap. I didn’t have to look up to know that the sound of squealing tires signaled the escape of my quarry. Crap. Crap. Crap.

I apologized profusely to the woman I’d flattened, scrambled to my feet, and helped haul her upright. I was about to give her my contact information in case her coat needed dry cleaning when Lionel appeared at her side. “I see the two of you have met.”

“Not exactly,” I said. Since she might want to sue me for personal injury, it seemed like a good idea. Holding out my hand, I said, “Rebecca Robbins. I’m Lionel’s girlfriend.”

“Sandy Franklin,” the stylish, brown-haired woman said with a smile. “I’m Lionel’s mother.”

Twenty

This was bad. My main suspect
in Ginny’s murder had fled the scene, I was outside in the cold without a coat, and I’d knocked my potential mother-in-law on her ass. Things couldn’t get much worse.

“Does anyone need help here?”

Or maybe they could.

I turned and plastered my best nothing-to-see-here smile on my face as Sean Holmes strolled up the walk. “We’re fine,” I lied, praying he’d take the hint and go away.

No such luck.

Sean stopped walking. “I thought I saw you both fall. Are you sure everyone’s okay? I can call the paramedics or see if Doc Truman is inside.”

Once we had assured him no one was in need of medical attention, Sean left to pay his respects, leaving me to apologize once again.

“I’ll say one thing for you.” Lionel’s mother laughed. “You know how to make an impression. Not that I wasn’t already impressed. My husband and I have heard a great deal about you from our son.”

I cringed. She laughed again. The sound was warm and bright and reminded me of my mother’s laugh.

“Don’t worry,” Mrs. Franklin said, patting my arm. “Everything we’ve heard has been good. We appreciate being invited to spend Thanksgiving with you. Please let me know if my husband or I can help in any way. Lionel said you’re cooking for quite a crowd. We’d be happy to pitch in if it gets to be too much for you.”

A sane person who had never cooked a turkey solo in her life would have accepted the help. However, after this initial meeting, I felt like I had something to prove. “Thanks, but you shouldn’t be spending your time here cooking. I have everything under control.”

If only that were true.

Lionel ushered us both inside. When he and his mother walked into the viewing room, I went on the hunt for Sean. Less than two months ago, Sean would have sneered at my investigative deductions, and I would have gone off half-cocked to confront the suspect on my own. Today, I planned to pass along my suspicions and trust Sean to take care of the rest. Funny how time and potential death changed a girl’s perspective.

Surprise, surprise. I found Sean snarfing cookies in the kitchen. Snagging a snickerdoodle, I waved for Sean to follow, grabbed my coat, and headed to the only place I could think of where we wouldn’t be overheard. Outside.

Between bites of cookie, I gave Sean an update on Jimmy’s diabetes, his being in the center during the time of Ginny’s murder, and how he turned track star the minute I appeared. With a promise to keep me informed, Sean escorted me back into the safety of the funeral home. He then stalked off into the darkening night to serve truth, justice, and the Indian Falls—if not American—way, leaving me wishing I could go, too. Not that I needed to be in on the arrest. The whole confronting-bad-guys thing was highly overrated. But I wanted to be there because, while I understood the means and opportunity for killing Ginny, I still didn’t know why Jimmy had taken her life. Not knowing was driving me crazy.

“Is Sean off to arrest Jimmy?”

I turned at the sound of my grandfather’s voice. My grandfather gave me a wide, albeit slightly askew, smile. Pop must have skimped on the denture adhesive today.

“Everybody inside is talking about you,” Pop said.

Big surprise.

“They’re saying you fingered Jimmy as the thief, and he ran when he realized the jig was up.” Pop shrugged. “I told them there was no way Jimmy was sneaky enough to break into all those houses without getting caught and that you were just running for the bathroom. Pain meds wreak havoc on the bowels.”

Time to change the subject. “You were right. I don’t think Jimmy is the Thanksgiving Day thief.” I thought he was something much worse. “Was Jimmy good friends with Ginny?”

Pop cocked his head to the side. “Jimmy asked Ginny on a couple of dates, but she never said yes. She told him he’d have to get a better car and new tube socks first. Of course, that was before his VW Bug was stolen and he had to get new wheels. Since then, Ginny steered clear just in case he called her on that promise. She didn’t know she had nothing to worry about. Jimmy hasn’t sprung for new socks since Nixon was in office.”

I made a mental note to fumigate the rental roller skates Jimmy used and asked, “So they didn’t have a fight or a falling-out?”

“Not that I know, and I’d probably know.” Pop pulled a pair of gloves out of his pocket and shoved his hands into them. “Ginny played things close to the vest, but Jimmy’s an open book. The man can’t keep a secret for nothing. How you fell for that ‘doctor won’t let him go in the dunk tank’ routine two months ago is beyond me. The red face and sweaty palms should have been a dead giveaway.”

The sweaty palms and crimson face were exactly the reason I’d agreed to take over Jimmy’s dunk-tank duty. He’d looked like a man ready to have a heart attack. Now I understood why.

Pop cocked his head to the side. “You don’t think Jimmy knows something about Ginny’s death, do you?”

Yes. “No, but don’t you think it’s strange that Jimmy went racing out of here when I asked if he’d be willing to answer a few questions?”

“Yeah, that’s weird.” Pop frowned. “Could be he knows who did it and doesn’t want to rat them out. Jimmy’s a softy. He won’t step on a bug if it can be avoided.”

Clearly not because he was worried about the state of his socks.

“I’ve been busy with the band,” Pop said, “so I haven’t been around much this week to notice if Jimmy’s been acting off. Give me a little while to ask around. If Jimmy’s been worried about something, someone here will have noticed.”

By the time Pop, Jasmine, and I went back to my place, we’d learned that Marion Poste had bought her girdle a size too small, that construction on the park’s fountain was delayed yet again, and that no one noticed anything strange in Jimmy’s behavior—until Thursday.

“What happened Thursday?” I asked, sliding a bag of popcorn into the microwave.

Pop rummaged through my fridge and came out with three bottles of beer. “Got me. Three people saw Jimmy at the Scrabble tournament on Wednesday. He said he was winterizing his new car and picking up his suit from the dry cleaners to wear to Danielle’s wedding. The next day he freaked out when someone noticed
The Price Is Right
was giving away a car that looked like his. He left the center, and no one saw him again until he showed up at the funeral home today.”

When Sean called with an update, I learned that no one had seen him since. Jimmy wasn’t at home. His cell phone went right to voice mail, and his car was nowhere to be found. In essence, Jimmy had vanished.

Sean wasn’t concerned. “I’ve notified all law enforcement agencies to be on the lookout for his car. There’s a good chance someone will spot it and we’ll get to the bottom of Ginny’s murder.”

There would have been a better chance of spotting Jimmy’s old car. Too bad it had been blown to bits.

“Now what?” Pop asked after I passed along Sean’s message. “We’re not going to let Sean be the one to haul Jimmy’s ass to jail, are we?”

That was the general idea.

“Do you have a better option?”

Pop blinked. “No, but I’m not the hotshot private investigator. I’m sure you have a plan for tracking down Jimmy and sweating a confession out of him.”

I did. It involved eating the entire bag of popcorn while sitting on the couch. Sean would catch the crook and grab the glory. If Jimmy was the murderer, there was a good chance he’d also played hit-and-run with me in the rink parking lot. I wasn’t interested in a rematch.

“I think it’s better to let Sean handle the murder case while I focus on the Thanksgiving Day thefts,” I said, dumping the popcorn in a bowl.

Pop grabbed a handful of my snack and munched. “Not a bad idea. If the thief thinks you’re busy working on the other case, he might get sloppy. What did you find in the Kurtzes’ basement? Stan didn’t want to tell me.”

“That’s because I didn’t tell him. I’m not going to tell you either.” The last thing we needed was Pop and his fans sparking reefer refreshments after a gig.

“You don’t want me to help?” Pop’s shoulders slumped. “Why? Is it because you think I’m old?”

“You are old, Pop.” Admitting it out loud made my heart hurt. I didn’t know what I would do if I didn’t have Pop around.

“I helped with investigations in the past, including this one.” He walked into the living room and plopped down on the sofa with a frown. “Look how well that turned out.”

A vision of Nurse Eleanor clad in skintight black leather with a rose dangling from her mouth sprang to mind.

“Look.” I swallowed a handful of popcorn and sat down next to my grandfather. “I’m not saying I don’t need your help investigating.” Who else would supply me with all the Indian Falls gossip? “But if news of what Seth and Jan have in their basement gets out, people will wonder how someone learned about it. They’ll realize someone broke in and start looking for that person. How long do you think it’ll be before everyone in town figures out it was me? Sean won’t have any choice but to put me behind bars.”

This wasn’t my real reason, but that didn’t make it less true. “That doesn’t mean you can’t help,” I said, and Pop’s eyes brightened. “I’m working on setting a trap to catch the thief, and you’re just the man to help me do it.”

Jasmine, Pop, and I snacked as I explained about Reginald and Bryan’s travel plans. “They’ve already called the sheriff’s office to request additional patrols go by the house.”

Pop nodded. “You’re hoping someone at the sheriff’s department gossips about the list and the thief hears about it. Normally, that would work—Roxy likes people to think she’s in the know—but Roxy knows Sean really wants to close this case. Unless she’s given up on her relationship hopes, she’s going to guard that list like it’s Fort Knox.”

“This Roxy person has the hots for Sean?” Jasmine asked.