The Candy Cane Cupcake Killer (4 page)

“You don't want to talk to the two of us together?” Sam asked.

“No, it's standard procedure to interview witnesses separately.”

Phyllis knew that and wasn't surprised. She stood up, gave Sam a smile, and followed the chief along a corridor to an
open door. They went into an interrogation room, which looked like the ones on TV and in the movies, Phyllis thought, only a little nicer. The walls were painted a neutral cream color rather than the common institutional green. The table in the center of the room wasn't scarred, and showed signs of having been polished at some point. The two straight-backed chairs weren't exactly comfortable, but the one Phyllis sat in didn't make her squirm in discomfort, either.

Whitmire sat down on the other side of the table, placed a small digital recorder between them, and began, “Interview with Mrs. Phyllis Newsom—”

He didn't get any further than that before the door burst open. A chunky, dark-haired man carrying a briefcase hurried into the room and exclaimed, “Don't say another word, Phyllis!”

“
D
'Angelo!” Chief Whitmire said as he stood up. “What the devil are you doing here?”

“Saving my client from illegally incriminating herself,” the newcomer replied.

“Mrs. Newsom waived the right to counsel.”

D'Angelo looked at Phyllis as if he were badly disappointed in her. He said, “You did? Never waive any of your rights. Never. They're what this country was built on.”

“She's not being accused of anything,” Whitmire said, visibly holding in the irritation he felt. “I'm just taking a witness statement from her.”

D'Angelo waved that off and said, “Doesn't matter. She still needs legal representation.”

“No, I don't, Mr. D'Angelo,” Phyllis said. “I didn't do anything wrong.”

“Everyone who deals with the police should have an attorney with them, looking out for their interests.”

A realization came to Phyllis. She said, “Carolyn called you, didn't she?”

D'Angelo hesitated, cocking his squarish head to the side, before replying, “I'm not at liberty to say.”

Phyllis sighed and shook her head. D'Angelo didn't have to admit it. It was just like Carolyn to let her distrust of the authorities get the better of her common sense.

Actually, though, she wasn't upset to see Jimmy D'Angelo. She and Sam had known the bombastic defense attorney for a while, ever since he had represented the primary suspect in another case they had been mixed up in. In fact, D'Angelo had hired them to act as investigators in that case, giving them some legal standing for a change, and had said that he might call on their services again.

According to Sam, that made them private eyes. Phyllis didn't think it was quite that simple, but she didn't see any point in arguing the matter.

D'Angelo set his briefcase on the table and went on. “I was told there was some question about a suspicious death and some cupcakes you baked.”

“The cupcakes had nothing to do with it,” Phyllis said. “Poor Mr. McCrory was shot, not poisoned.”

Whitmire leaned forward and said, “Speaking of those cupcakes, where are they, Mrs. Newsom?”

D'Angelo pounced on that.

“If you don't suspect Mrs. Newsom, why do you want her to turn over the cupcakes as evidence?”

“I don't! I want to eat one of them, blast it! I haven't had any supper.”

Clearly, that wasn't the answer D'Angelo had been
expecting. He blinked, frowned, and said, “Oh.” Then, more businesslike, he asked Phyllis, “Did you agree to this?”

“I did,” she told him. “Somebody should get to enjoy them.”

“What kind are they?”

“Candy cane cupcakes,” Phyllis said.

D'Angelo licked his lips and nodded.

“That does sound good,” he admitted. “Where are they?”

“I forgot and left them in Sam's pickup. It's parked right outside, though. You could go back out to the lobby and tell him to get them.”

D'Angelo looked at Whitmire and said, “Chief?”

Whitmire waved a hand.

“Go. And when you come back, bring Mr. Fletcher with you. To heck with procedure.”

That was something Phyllis had never expected to hear Ralph Whitmire say. But, obviously, this had been an unusual evening all the way around.

D'Angelo left his briefcase on the table. He told Phyllis, “Don't answer any questions while I'm gone,” and hurried out of the interrogation room.

Once D'Angelo was gone, Phyllis said to Whitmire, “I'm sorry about that, Chief. I don't know what Carolyn was thinking.”

Whitmire grunted and said, “I do. She was thinking you can't trust the cops. A lot of people feel like that these days. A few of them—very few—have some justification for that. But that's not the case here. You're not in any trouble.” He paused. “Although from what I saw, that was some pretty reckless driving you were doing. Not that you had a choice about it.
Somebody else would've gotten hurt for sure if you and Sam hadn't stopped that carriage.”

“I thought Sam had lost his mind, but he knew what he was doing.”

“Good thing, too,” Whitmire said. He leaned back in his chair and frowned. “You know, it occurs to me, we've been assuming that just because McCrory was shot, there can't be anything wrong with those cupcakes.”

“There can't be,” Phyllis said. “I baked them this afternoon. I made three dozen of them. The batter and the frosting were the same for all of them. Each of us ate one of them when they were done. Sam ate
two
, as a matter of fact. None of us have shown any ill effects from them.”

“They were never where anybody else could have gotten at them?” Whitmire held up a hand before she could say anything. “Wait a minute, you don't have to answer that. I don't want D'Angelo thinking that I'm trying to trick you or anything like that.”

“Of course not. And I don't mind telling you, the cupcakes I took to the parade tonight never left my kitchen until I put them in that container. No one else was around and had access to them, just the four of us. And none of us had any reason to want to hurt Mr. McCrory. None of us even knew who he was except—”

Phyllis stopped short. Sam knew Barney McCrory. But from what Phyllis had seen, she knew he considered the old rancher a friend. And anyway, Sam would never hurt anyone, of course.

She knew how a detective might think, though. Sam knew McCrory, so it wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that Sam
could have known that McCrory would be driving Santa Claus's sleigh in the parade, too. And Sam could have guessed, based on his familiarity with McCrory's personality, that the man would beg one of the cupcakes from Phyllis . . .

“What are you thinking, Mrs. Newsom?” Whitmire asked.

“I'm thinking maybe you're more suspicious than you're letting on, Chief,” she said. “Not of me, but of Sam.”

“Why would I be suspicious of Mr. Fletcher?” Whitmire asked blandly.

Instead of answering that question directly, Phyllis said, “It doesn't work.
I
took the cupcake out of the container and handed it to Mr. McCrory. Even if Sam wanted to hurt him—and it's absolutely insane to even think that—he couldn't have known which cupcake I'd give him. He'd have had to tamper with all of them, which means that innocent people would have been hurt, maybe even killed. That's just not possible, Chief. It's not.”

Whitmire surprised her by laughing.

“I agree with you a hundred percent,” he said. “I've been telling you the truth all along, Mrs. Newsom. I don't suspect you or Mr. Fletcher of anything. I'm grateful to you for what you did. I just want to know what you saw before the incident took place.”

“Oh.”

“I have to admit, though,” Whitmire went on, “that's pretty impressive—the way you put together that chain of evidence and reasoning on the fly. I can see why you've been able to figure out some of those other crimes.” He chuckled again. “You've got a diabolical mind.”

“I . . . I . . .” Phyllis didn't know what to say to that. And
before she could figure out an appropriate reply, the door of the interrogation room opened and Jimmy D'Angelo came in again, followed this time by Sam, who carried the plastic container filled with cupcakes.

“You didn't try anything underhanded with my client while I was out of the room, did you?” D'Angelo asked.

“Not at all,” Whitmire said. Phyllis didn't contradict him. The chief stood up. “Mr. Fletcher, sit down here. Mr. D'Angelo and I can stand.”

“I'm fine,” Sam said. “I'll just perch a hip here on the table, if it's all right with you, Chief.”

“Sure. Are those the famous cupcakes?”

Sam grinned and set the container on the table in front of Phyllis.

“You can do the honors,” he told her.

She took the lid off, revealing twenty-three cupcakes. Two dozen—minus the one Barney McCrory had eaten. They were quite pretty, with the bits of red and white crushed candy cane sprinkled on the white icing. She was pleased with the way they had turned out.

She slid the open container onto the center of the table and said, “Help yourselves, gentlemen.”

The three men reached into the container and took out cupcakes. They peeled away the paper baking cups and threw them in a wastebasket at the end of the table.

After taking a bite, Whitmire made a pleased sound and said, “Those are really are good.”

“Yes, they are,” D'Angelo added.

“This is my third one today,” Sam put in. “You know I like 'em.”

Phyllis didn't really have much of an appetite at the moment, so she didn't take one of the cupcakes. Instead she said, “You wanted to ask us about what happened before the parade started, Chief?”

Whitmire had to swallow before he could say, “That's right. Start from where you saw McCrory on that sleigh . . . carriage . . . whatever you want to call it.”

“I was the one who spotted him first,” Sam said. “Phyllis had never met him before, so she wouldn't have known him.”

Whitmire looked at Phyllis and asked, “Is that right?”

“Yes,” she said. “Tonight was the first time I ever met Mr. McCrory.”

Sam resumed the story, and for the next few minutes he and Phyllis took turns talking, telling the chief as much as they could recall about everything that was said and done in the few minutes before the parade began.

At one point Whitmire interrupted their recounting to ask, “What did McCrory say about his daughter and son-in-law?”

“Well, he said they were fine, I think,” Sam replied with a slight frown. “He mentioned that they hadn't made him a grandpa yet. Nothin' unusual about that.”

Hoping that she wasn't doing the wrong thing, Phyllis said, “When Sam first mentioned them, I thought that Mr. McCrory looked upset for a second. But it was just a momentary reaction.”

“Uh-huh,” Whitmire said, not seeming to think any more about it. “Go on with your statements, please.”

Phyllis wasn't sure the chief's reaction was as casual as he tried to make it seem. She recalled what Allyson
Hollingsworth had said about having a fight with her father before the parade began, how she didn't want the last words she ever spoke to him to be angry ones.

Unfortunately, in most cases, people didn't get to determine what their last words to a loved one would be.

Death wasn't that considerate.

When Sam reached the point in the story where the parade had begun and he and Phyllis had started up the street toward the square, Whitmire turned to Phyllis and said, “You weren't watching the carriage just then, is that right?”

“I wasn't paying attention to it, no,” she said. “In that crowd, I was watching where I was going.”

“How about you?” Whitmire said to Sam.

“I was lookin' all around, I guess,” Sam replied with a shrug. “I remember thinkin' how pretty the lights were on the courthouse and around the square. I saw one of 'em pop—burned out, I guess—and then I saw Barney start to stand up, and I knew something was wrong. A second later, he dropped the reins and collapsed, and those horses took off. I did the only thing I could think of to stop 'em.”

“And risked your life doing it,” Phyllis said. Something Sam had just said stuck in her mind. She was about to ask him when Chief Whitmire beat her to it.

“You said you saw one of the Christmas lights pop, Mr. Fletcher?” the chief asked.

“Yeah, I guess that's what it was. It was a little flash, anyway.”

“Where was that?”

“Somewhere up on the square. Hard to say for sure. There were a
lot
of lights. Why's that important?”

“Because it might not have been a lightbulb exploding that you saw,” Whitmire said heavily. “It might have been the muzzle flash from a gun. You may have seen Barney McCrory's murderer fire the fatal shot.”