The Pumpkin Muffin Murder (27 page)

Besides, she wanted to find out what was happening. Now that she thought about it, she had a pretty good idea, but she wanted to be sure.

“What are we doing?” Carolyn asked as Phyllis pulled up behind the rear police car with its flashing lights. At other houses up and down the street, people stood on their lawns watching. If it hadn’t been the middle of the day on a workday, the curious crowd would have been even bigger.

“What we told Dana we’d do,” Phyllis said. “We’re going to get her some clean clothes and anything else she might need while she’s staying with us.”

“Assuming that the police will let us in.”

“They’ll let us in, or I’ll call Ms. Yorke. Dana is out on bail, and they shouldn’t interfere with her leading a normal life until the grand jury convenes.”

Phyllis had already noticed a uniformed officer standing on the front porch of the impressive brick home. As she and Carolyn got out of the car and started up the walk, the cop moved to meet them.

“I’m sorry, ladies,” he said. “I don’t know who you’re looking for, but there’s no one here.”

“You’re here,” Phyllis said in a challenging tone, “and I’d be willing to bet that Detective Isabel Largo is, too.”

The look of surprise in the officer’s eyes told Phyllis that her guess was a good one.

“I assume that Detective Largo has a search warrant,” Phyllis went on.

“You’d have to talk to her about that, ma’am. My job is just to keep civilians out of that house.”

“Can you tell her that Phyllis Newsom is here?”

The officer looked surprised again. “You’re her? The lady who catches killers?”

That wasn’t a reputation that Phyllis had ever wanted, and most of the time it made her decidedly uncomfortable. There were times, though, she supposed, when it came in handy.

“That’s right.”

The officer reached for the walkie-talkie on his belt. “I’ll call Detective Largo—”

“That won’t be necessary, Officer,” Isabel Largo said from the porch, where she had emerged from the house. She came down the walk, wearing a long coat against the coolness in the air, and gave Phyllis and Carolyn a curt nod. “Ladies. What are you doing here?”

“I imagine you heard that Dana Powell is staying at my house while she’s out on bail,” Phyllis said.

Largo nodded again. “I heard. Generous of you, opening your home to a killer.”

Phyllis didn’t rise to that bait. She said, “Mrs. Wilbarger and I came to get some clean clothes and personal items for Mrs. Powell.”

“That’s certainly reasonable, I suppose,” Largo said with a shrug. “Come on inside. You realize, though, that I can’t allow you to walk around unsupervised. The house is still being searched for evidence. I’ll have to make an inventory of everything that you take with you, too.”

“I’m surprised that you haven’t searched the house before now,” Phyllis commented as the three of them started inside.

“We have. We made a general search Saturday afternoon, after Mr. Powell’s body was discovered, as well as impounding both of their vehicles that were left at the park and searching them. But at that time we didn’t know the cause of death. It took until today to get another warrant signed for a more specific search.” Largo paused on the porch and frowned at Phyllis. “None of which is any of your business. How do you get people to talk to you without them even realizing what they’re doing? Is it because you look like everyone’s kindly aunt or grandmother?”

“I just ask questions,” Phyllis said. “I’m not big enough or strong enough to make anyone answer them unless they want to.”

Largo grunted and shook her head. “Come on. I don’t have a lot of time. Don’t touch anything except the specific items you’re after, and you’d better ask me about them first.”

Phyllis thought that Detective Largo was being a little heavy-handed, but she didn’t say anything. She followed the detective’s order not to touch anything as they went into Dana’s living room.

But Largo hadn’t said anything about not looking around.

Phyllis’s gaze roved quickly over the room. It was comfortably, even expensively, furnished, with thick carpet on the floor, heavy furniture, and some beautiful antiques to go along with an ultramodern plasma TV and media center. Phyllis’s eyes paused briefly on a crystal bowl that sat on a coffee table. The bowl had individually wrapped peppermints in it, but it was less than half full, as if someone had scooped some of its contents out. Phyllis suspected that was exactly what had happened. Detective Largo had probably taken some of the peppermints to have them tested.

Another bowl of the candies rested on an antique break-front, and as Phyllis looked through a door into the dining room, she spotted yet another bowl of peppermints on an antique china cabinet. Largo had probably taken samples from each of them.

Logan had believed in keeping the peppermints within easy reach at all times, Phyllis mused. Of course, with his blood sugar the way it was, he had no way of knowing when he might need several of them in a hurry, to keep from slipping into the sort of distress that had caused his heart to fail. When Detective Largo led them upstairs to Dana’s bedroom, Phyllis wasn’t surprised to see bowls of peppermints on the nightstands on both sides of the bed. More of the individually wrapped candies were scattered on the vanity in the bathroom, she noted as she began gathering up personal items Dana might need, while Carolyn took clothes from the closet and the drawers in a lovely antique dresser and chest.

Detective Largo stood in the open doorway between the master bedroom and bath, keeping an eye on Phyllis and Carolyn at the same time and jotting down in a notebook a list of everything they picked up. Phyllis gestured toward the peppermints on the vanity and asked, “Is it all right if I take some of these for Mrs. Powell? She must like them, too, the way they’re all over the house.”

Largo shook her head. “All the peppermints stay where they are, except the ones we’ve already collected as evidence. If they’re sugar free, they might be considered potential murder weapons.”

“You’re joking,” Phyllis said.

“I never joke about evidence.”

Or probably about much of anything else, Phyllis thought. Surely Detective Largo wasn’t dour and humorless
all
the time, but she took her job seriously; that was for sure.

She checked all the things Phyllis and Carolyn gathered for Dana, then nodded her head in approval as they were packed away in a couple of suitcases Carolyn found in a closet. “You shouldn’t need to come back over here,” Largo said, “but if you do, be sure to check with me first.”

“Mrs. Powell was released on bail,” Phyllis reminded the detective again. “She could have come back here to stay. Would you have tried to keep her out of her own house?”

“That would be different. Since she’s
not
here, I’d like to preserve the scene in its current condition as much as possible.”

“It’s not a ‘scene,’ ” Carolyn said. “It’s someone’s home.”

“It was home to two people,” Largo shot back, “until one of them was murdered.”

She left unsaid the part about the other one being the killer, but Phyllis could hear it in Largo’s voice anyway.

The detective escorted them back downstairs and through the living room. As they went out, Phyllis looked once more at the mantel over the fireplace. Several large, framed photographs of Dana and Logan sat there, all of the two of them together, including a wedding picture. It made a pang go through Phyllis’s chest. Their marriage, like so many others, had started out full of hope and love, and over the years it had turned into something else. Phyllis thanked God every day that she and Kenny hadn’t ended up like that. They had loved each other just as much at the end as they had at the beginning, which in this world made them very, very lucky.

“Good-bye, ladies,” Detective Largo said as Phyllis and Carolyn started down the walk. She didn’t sound sad to see them go.

They put the suitcases in the trunk of Phyllis’s car and drove away. “That woman is positively infuriating,” Carolyn said, and Phyllis had no doubt that she was referring to Isabel Largo.

“She probably feels the same way about us. The way she sees it, she’s just doing her job.”

“You’re so fair-minded, I figured you’d defend her,” Carolyn said. “I can’t, though. I think she and all the rest of the authorities are trying to railroad Dana. They don’t care if she’s guilty or not. All that matters to them is whether they think they can get a conviction.”

“I’d hate to think that was true,” Phyllis said, but as a matter of fact, the same thought had crossed her mind earlier as they were driving over here.

“You think that just because Mike is honest and devoted to his job, all of the authorities are. But it’s not true, Phyllis. I hate to think about how many innocent people have been convicted because of the sheer, blind stubbornness of the police and prosecutors.”

Phyllis had heard people argue the exact opposite, that no one would be arrested in the first place if there wasn’t a good reason to think they were guilty. As in most things, the truth probably lay somewhere in between, she thought.

In this case, though, she believed that Carolyn was right. Dana was innocent, but the police weren’t going to try to prove that. With that thought in her mind, Phyllis turned left when they reached the interstate. As she accelerated out onto the highway, Carolyn asked, “Where are we going?”

“Remember I said I needed to make another stop on the way home?”

“Oh, yes, of course. Where?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know exactly where I’m going.”

Carolyn frowned. “What does that mean?” They were speeding past the area where shopping centers had sprouted on both sides of the highway in recent years. “There’s not much else out in this direction.”

“I know. But that doesn’t mean there couldn’t be.”

That statement appeared to puzzle Carolyn even more. But she just sat back and muttered, “All right, I suppose you’ll explain when you’re good and ready.”

They passed what Phyllis still thought of as the new high school, even though it had been there for a number of years. As they continued west, open fields began to line the highway on both sides.

She asked Carolyn, “Can you watch on your side for official signs posted out in the fields?”

“Official signs?” Carolyn repeated. “What’s going on here, Phyllis?”

“One of Logan’s real estate deals had to do with the building of a big mall somewhere out here,” Phyllis explained. “I’d like to find the spot.”

“Why?”

“I just want to have a look at it, that’s all.” Phyllis couldn’t explain why she felt that way, but she thought some instinct was telling her that it might be important.

She spotted what she thought looked like official signs on a long stretch of undeveloped property on the south side of the highway. Taking the next exit, she turned left under the highway and started back up the frontage road the other way.

“This could be it,” she said.

There was no traffic on the frontage road at the moment, so she was able to stop when she drew even with the first of the signs. In big letters, it announced ZONING CHANGE APPLIED FOR. Under that in smaller print was a phone number that could be called for more information.

Phyllis drove slowly and saw several more of the signs. The property stretched for at least a mile. That was too big even for a mall, but Phyllis recalled Ben Loomis saying that some of the property around the actual mall site was going to be developed, too. In fact, they came to a sign that read PAD SITES AVAILABLE. WILL BUILD TO SUIT. LOOMIS REALTY. There was a phone number on that sign, too.

Carolyn stared at it for a moment, then said, “You think Logan was killed because of this mall development business.”

“I think there’s a lot of money tied up in this,” Phyllis said. “People sometimes do things they might not otherwise do when there are fortunes to be made or lost.”

“I suppose you’re right about that. What are you going to do?”

Phyllis took a little notebook out of her purse and wrote down the number of Loomis Realty, as well as the phone number that was on the signs announcing the potential zoning change and several other numbers that might be important.

“I’ll do the only thing I can,” she said. “Keep asking questions.”

T
he questions would have to wait, though, until after they got back to the house with the things they had picked up for Dana. When they reached the house and carried the bags in, Eve reported that Dana hadn’t come down from her shower and nap.

“The poor dear must have been exhausted,” she said.

Phyllis nodded. She was glad that Dana was getting some rest, but at the same time, a worry nagged at her. The strain of everything that had happened had taken a terrible toll on Dana. She had been depressed, stressed out, driven to distraction, and stricken by grief over Logan’s death, despite her suspicions of him. She probably felt some guilt, as well, because her last conversation with him had been an angry one, the argument on the bridge at the park. People under that much pressure had been known to take desperate measures and end their own lives, just to make the pain stop. Phyllis didn’t want that happening.