Sugar Coated Sins (8 page)

Chapter
10

Grace joined me a second
later.
 
“Did you see anyone outside?” she
asked me.

“No.
 
Whoever did it is long gone.”

“Suzanne, this wasn’t just some
random coincidence,” Grace said as she looked back at the house.
 
Remnants of glass still stayed within the circular
frame, and it was clear that the builder had cut a few corners and had used
regular glass instead of the safety type required.
 
The results could have been calamitous, and
only dumb luck had saved the three of us from getting some nasty cuts at the very
least.

“It’s hard to imagine that it
could be just chance,” I agreed.
 
“How
did you manage to work yourself free from Karen’s grasp?”

“I thought you might be in
trouble, so I found a way.”

We walked back inside and found
Karen Harris stuffing a few things into her overnight bag, abandoning her more
detailed packing from before.
 
The moment
she saw us, she said, “That’s it.
 
I’m
leaving this instant, and if the killer wants anything that I’ve left behind,
he’s welcome to it all.”

“Do you have some reason to
believe that a man killed Benjamin Port?” Grace asked.

“No, but I can’t bring myself to
use a generic ‘they’ when ‘he’ is the proper way to speak.”
 
She might be in fear for her life, but old
habits died hard, and being precise in her language was clearly one of
them.
 
“I told you both, didn’t I?
 
You need to stay out of this.”

“No one wants to hurt us,” Grace
said reasonably.

“That might have been true before,
but I’m afraid that it’s not the case anymore,” Karen said worriedly as she
zipped her bag shut.

As we followed her outside toward
her car, she stopped long enough to lock the front door behind her.
 
“What are you talking about, Karen?”
 
I asked her.

“Ben’s killer obviously just
warned me to keep my mouth shut, but he must have seen your Jeep blocking me in
my own driveway while he was here.
 
It’s
a distinctive vehicle, Suzanne.
 
The
logical assumption would be that I told you everything. At least, that’s the
worst-case scenario the killer can probably imagine.
 
That means that he must assume that you know
what I know, so it makes you a target as well.”

I didn’t like the sound of that
one little bit, but it wasn’t as though it hadn’t happened before.
 
I’d been in the sights of murderers in the
past, and yet I’d managed to survive each attempt on my life.
 
I realized, though, that it would only take
one successful effort to end that streak.
 
I had a sudden thought.
 
“That
means that you
have
to tell me now.”

As she started for her car, a Mini
Cooper with a sticker that said I LOVE BOOKS, she said, “I don’t follow.”

“Karen, my life’s already in
danger.
 
Shouldn’t I at least have the
benefit of knowing what you know so I have a chance to fight back?”

The retired librarian looked as
though she wanted to cry, but finally, she nodded in agreement.
 
“I can’t argue with your logic.
 
Okay, here goes.
 
It might mean nothing, but two things
happened near the time of Benjamin Port’s demise.
 
The first is that I saw Hillary Mast heading
toward Ben’s place on foot the day he died.”

“How is that significant?” I asked.

“I might be wrong, but I could
swear that I saw a jar of canned chicken in her hands.
 
What was worse was that she saw me, too.”

“Did you tell anyone about what
you saw?” Grace asked her.

“What business was it of
mine?
 
The police called it an accident at
the time, remember?” Karen asked.
 
“I
asked Hillary about it the next day when she came into the library, and she
said that she’d gotten it at the farmer’s market.
 
She seemed truly bereft about what had
happened, so I tried my best to forget all about it.”

“I imagine the police followed up
on that,” I said.

“You said there were two things
you saw,” I reminded her.
 
“What was the
second one?”

“It was a fight I wasn’t supposed
to have witnessed,” she said.

“Between?”

“Benjamin and Hilda Fremont.
 
She was giving him an ultimatum.”

“What did she say?”

“Either he had to drop everyone
else in his life and focus on her, or he’d regret it,” she said
breathlessly.
 
“It sounded like a threat
to me at the time.”

“How did you happen to overhear
them?” I asked, curious about it.

“It was pure accident,
really.
 
My dog, Toby, got loose, and I
was searching for him.
 
I checked near
the Boxcar because he loves to play in the park, and I overheard them talking
in back of the diner.”

“Did they see you?”

She frowned before she spoke
again.
 
“I was trying to make a quiet
exit before they could, but Toby saw me and started barking as he ran to
me.
 
There was nothing I could do about
it.”

That was interesting information
as well.
 
There was just one more fact we
needed from Karen before we could let her go.
 
“By the way, who was the third woman?” I asked her.

“Well, I imagined that it had to
be Hillary Mast.
 
After all, she was
taking him food, and isn’t that one of the ways that women court men?”

“Some women probably do,” I
said.
 
I remembered an older cousin when
I’d been growing up who’d loved to proclaim that if you could bake a cake, you
could get a husband, and she’d proved it later by marrying a man well above her
who had a sweet tooth that drove him into matrimony.
 
“Is there anything else?”

“I’ve told you everything that I
know,” Karen said.
 
“Suzanne, I really
need you to move your Jeep right now.
 
I’m getting out of here.”

“Aren’t you going to at least hang
around and have your window fixed?” I asked.

“Right now, all I’m determined to
do is to keep breathing.
 
Everything else
can wait until I know for a fact that I’m truly safe.”

I had no choice but to accede to
her request, but before I moved my vehicle, I handed her one of my cards after
scrawling my cellphone number on the back of it.
 
“If you think of anything else, no matter how
trivial it might seem to you, call me, okay?”

“Of course.
 
Now I really must go,” she said as she
continued to scan up and down her block.

I moved the Jeep, and Karen Harris
drove speedily out of town with nothing more than an overnight bag and a
determination to escape a killer’s attention.

When I considered it later, I
realized that it was probably the most rational thing that I’d ever seen, and I
envied her decisiveness.
 
Could I abandon
everything in the face of that kind of danger?
 
I knew from experience that I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
 
The old “fight or flight” scenario always
played out for me with opting for direct confrontation instead of fleeing.

It might be the end of me someday,
but it wasn’t as though I had any choice.

“Where should we go now?” Grace
asked me.

“Do we have any choice?
 
We can’t speak to Hilda until we get it
cleared through Jake, but he didn’t say anything about us talking to Hillary
Mast.”

“Could that be because he doesn’t
know about her ties to the case?” Grace asked me with a grin.

“No comment,” I said in reply, and
we headed over to the town hall to speak with someone new.

Hillary was in her office, though
there weren’t any elections scheduled for the next several months.
 
As the head of the board of elections, she
was the only person in her department who worked full time, so she had her own
little fiefdom during off-election times.

“What brings you two by, not that
I’m not pleased to have the company?” she asked as Grace and I came into her
office.
 
“I was just about to shut down
for the day, but I’d be happy to help in any way that I can.”
 
She looked at me a moment before she added,
“Suzanne, are you thinking about running for mayor?”

The question nearly shocked me
into silence.
 
After I took a minute to
catch my breath, I asked, “Me?
 
No.
 
Of course not.
 
I think George is doing a wonderful job.”

“I agree, but since your mother
once considered running for the office, I thought you might be interested
yourself.
 
It’s not as outlandish an idea
as you make it seem.
 
You are very well
liked in April Springs.”

“I’d vote for you,” Grace said
with a grin.

“Let me make one thing perfectly
clear.
 
I’m not running for anything,” I
said.
 
“Hillary, have you heard about
what happened today?”

“Yes, I got the good news not more
than an hour ago.”
 
She looked truly
pleased about learning that Benjamin Port had been murdered instead of dying by
accident.

“How is murder in any way good
news?” Grace asked her.

With her expression tempered, she
said, “I’m truly sorry that poor Benjamin is dead, but it happened fifteen
years ago, and until today, I thought that I’d been the one who’d killed him,
no matter how inadvertently.
 
Learning
that he was intentionally poisoned may not mean much to anyone else, but it’s
done wonders for me.”
 
She hesitated
before adding, “I understand that it might make me sound callous, but he’s been
gone so long.
 
You can’t imagine the
guilt I’ve felt over what I believed really happened to him.”

“Just out of curiosity, why did
you give him canned chicken in the first place?” I asked.
 
“Were you two dating?”

She looked a little sheepish as
she admitted, “We’d just started going out, and I planned to serve it for
dinner.
 
It was supposed to be a
surprise, but you can imagine my shock when I found him in his apartment with
Hilda.
 
Apparently Ben had been juggling
at least three of us at the same time.
 
Who knows how many other women he was seeing on the side.”

“What did you do when you found Hilda
there?” I asked softly.

“I wish I could say that I made a
scene, but I was so stunned that I left the chicken on the counter and crept
back out of his place before either one of them even knew that I was there.”

“How did you happen to get inside
in the first place?” Grace asked.

“Oh, everyone knew that Ben never
locked either front door of his apartment.
 
He found it to be a matter of pride that he could leave his place wide
open.
 
No doubt he did it so he wouldn’t
have to keep letting his lady friends in.
 
I was through with him from that moment on, but I still felt tremendous
guilt knowing that my gift had killed him.
 
I must say, discovering the truth has taken fifteen hard years of dread
off my shoulders.”

It appeared that Hillary had been
guilty of nothing more than bad judgment when it came to men, something that
could be said of nearly every woman I’d ever met at one time or another in her
life, and that included myself.
 
There
was just one more question I had to ask her.
 
“By the way, where were you twenty minutes ago?”

She looked puzzled by my
question.
 
“Why, I was right here at my
post, the same place I always am when I’m working.
 
I’ve been going over our voting records for
the county and culling the recently deceased from our lists to ensure that
there is no chance of fraud.
 
Why do you
ask?”

“So, you weren’t anywhere near
Karen Harris’s home?” Grace asked her.

“Karen?
 
No.
 
Why do you ask?”
 
She got a sudden
look of dread on her face.
 
“Has
something happened to her?”

“Just a broken window,” Grace
answered.

“Why would anyone break her
window?” Hillary asked.
 
“That woman has
been jumping at shadows for years.
 
I’ll
bet she imagined some kind of conspiracy directed toward her.
 
Ever since she was forced into retirement,
she’s been as jittery as a turkey on the day before Thanksgiving.”

That might explain the way Karen
had panicked and fled town on the premise that Hillary or Hilda might be after
her.
 
“It’s not important,” I said.
 
“Sorry to have bothered you.”

“It’s no bother at all,” Hillary said.
 
“I’ve enjoyed having the company. It happens
so little around here this time of year.”

Grace headed for the outside door
once we left Hillary’s office, but I put a hand on her shoulder to hold her
back.
 
“Since we’re already in the
building, why don’t we speak with Jan Kerber?”