Wedding Cake Killer (13 page)

“Yes, of course,” Phyllis said. “Just like you told Eve she had a right to know.”

Tess shifted uncomfortably in her chair and shook her head. She said, “Look, I’ve been thinking about what happened, and I admit I was a little too zealous. I could have waited for a better time to talk to Mrs. Porter, and I’m sorry about the way things turned out. Please tell her I apologize for the extra pain I caused her.”

“I can do that,” Phyllis said, nodding and thinking that she liked Tess Coburn a little better now that the woman had exhibited some contrition.

“It’s just that I’ve been on his trail for quite a while,” Tess went on, “and I’ve seen with my own eyes how much pain and trouble he caused for all those women . . . and I guess I was kind of satisfied myself to know that he wouldn’t be doing it any more. So I got carried away. Again, I’m sorry.”

“Well, it’s gracious of you to admit that you were wrong. What are you going to do about the police?”

“About the investigation into his death, you mean?” Tess looked uncomfortable again. “I’ll have to turn over the information I have to the sheriff’s department. The victim’s background is evidence in a murder case. If I didn’t give it to them and it came out later, I could be in trouble myself. At the very least I might lose my license.”

“I understand, but it’s liable to make the authorities even more convinced that Eve’s guilty.”

Tess nodded and said, “I know. They’ll think that she found out somehow what he was planning and killed him to stop it. But like I said before, that makes her actions more reasonable. Look, it would certainly be easy to argue that she confronted him with it, he attacked her, and she was only defending herself when she killed him. She’s looking at a possible manslaughter plea, and she might even get off with a claim of self-defense.”

Phyllis was about to respond to that when a clear voice rang out from the door into the hall. “The only thing wrong with that idea,” Eve said, “is that I didn’t kill my husband!”

Chapter 19

P
hyll
is was on her feet instantly, turning toward the door and saying, “Eve, you really shouldn’t be down here—”

“So I wouldn’t know that you brought this woman into our home?” Eve snapped. “To spread her lies about Roy and about me?”

Eve’s eyes were still red rimmed from crying, but no tears welled from them now. Instead, they sparked with anger.

Despite the terrible situation, for the first time in days Eve actually looked a little like herself again, Phyllis thought.

Tess had stood up, too, and now she extended a hand toward Eve. “Mrs. Porter, I’m sorry—”

“Save your breath,” Eve snapped. “I don’t accept your apology, and I don’t accept anything you have to say about Roy. You didn’t know him.”

“It’s true I never met him,” Tess said, “but I have proof of everything I’ve said. Solid proof that would stand up in court. If he were still alive, he’d be behind bars now, because I would have turned over everything to the cops and had him arrested. It was just a matter of locating him.” She shrugged. “I was a little late on that score.”

“Get out,” Eve said in a low, dangerous voice.

Tess looked at Phyllis. “Mrs. Newsom . . . ?”

“I think it would be best if you left,” Phyllis said. She believed what Tess had said about Roy. It was hard to argue with the proof she had assembled. But right now the important thing was to get her out of here and get Eve calmed down, Phyllis thought.

Tess shrugged and said, “Sure. I really am sorry if I’ve made things worse for you folks.”

Phyllis went to Eve’s side, took hold of her arm, and gently urged her toward the kitchen as Eve continued to glare at Tess. “Sam, if you could get Ms. Coburn’s coat . . .”

“Sure,” Sam said. Phyllis maneuvered Eve into the kitchen so she couldn’t see what was going on anymore, but she heard Sam open the hall closet. He and Tess spoke briefly in low voices; then the front door opened and closed. Sam came down the hall to the kitchen and said, “She’s gone.”

Eve sank into one of the chairs at the table. The momentary strength that anger had given her appeared to be fading fast. “Why did you let her come here, Phyllis?” she asked.

“I’m the one who asked her to come,” Phyllis replied. “It wasn’t her idea.”

Eve stared up at her. “Why would you do that?”

“Because I wanted to know as much as I could about Roy. You’re still in trouble with the law, Eve, and as much as we might hate to think about it, the only sure way to clear your name is to figure out who really did kill Roy.”

“But the things that woman said . . . they were all lies . . .”

Phyllis shook her head. “I don’t think so. She has a lot of evidence—”

“Did you see it? Did she show you anything?”

“Well . . . not really. Just that mug shot and the newspaper clipping she had at the cemetery. But I don’t think she’d lie about the other things if she couldn’t produce them.”

“You don’t know that!” Eve insisted. “It could have been faked, all of it.”

“Eve’s got a point,” Sam said. “With all the things folks can do with computers these days, it probably wouldn’t be too hard to come up with a mug shot and a newspaper clippin’ that looked real.”

Phyllis hadn’t considered that, but as she thought about the possibility, she knew Eve and Sam were right. Tess Coburn
could
have fabricated the evidence she claimed to possess. But to what purpose? Phyllis didn’t have an answer for that.

“If she’s lying, the truth will come out eventually,” she said. “But if she’s not, we need to know the facts.”

“The only facts that matter to me are that I loved Roy and he’s gone.” Eve started to cry again. “Gone.”

Carolyn came along the hallway from the stairs. “What’s going on here?” she demanded. “Eve, I thought you were taking a nap.”

“I . . . I woke up,” Eve said. “I came downstairs to see where everyone was . . . and I found that woman in the living room! The one spreading all those lies about Roy!”

Carolyn glared at Phyllis. “I thought we were going to try to protect Eve from all that.”

“You knew about it?” Eve asked.

“It was Phyllis’s idea.”

What was it they said on those horrible reality TV shows about people being thrown under buses? Phyllis knew what that felt like now. But she still thought she had done the right thing by trying to find out what Tess knew about Roy.

Despite that, she said, “I’m sorry, Eve. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“Well, of course, dear.” Eve had taken a handkerchief from her pocket. She dabbed her eyes. “I know you were just doing what you thought was best.”

That’s right,
Phyllis thought. She was going to find Roy’s killer and clear Eve’s name, no matter what anybody thought about her.

And as always, coming to that decision was a great weight off her mind. From here on out, she could take action, knowing that she was doing the right thing.

* * *

Eve refused to eat any lunch, but that evening Carolyn took a plate of food up to her room and persuaded her to eat a little. As time passed, her appetite would come back and her strength would return, Phyllis thought.

She hoped that was true, anyway.

In the meantime, Phyllis got on the computer and did some searching of her own. Her “Google-fu,” whatever that was, was no match for Tess Coburn’s, but she was able to confirm several things. The company that Roy had claimed he worked for in Houston did exist, but in all the newspaper business section stories Phyllis could find about it, there was no mention of him.

She found an obituary notice for a Houston Realtor named Julie Porter who was survived by her husband, Roy. But that Roy Porter had survived his wife by less than a year. Phyllis found an obituary notice for him, too. Roy—Eve’s Roy—must have figured that while someone might check up on his claims about his late “wife,” no one would think to see if there was an obituary for
him
, too. Why would they, when they would all be convinced the real Roy Porter was still hale and hearty and standing right in front of them?

Phyllis looked up the other cases Tess had mentioned and found more information about both of them, including photos that were unmistakably of the man they had known as Roy. She wanted to stop calling him by that name, since it obviously didn’t belong to him, but she didn’t know how else to think of him.

She was at the computer in the living room when she heard a car door outside. Eve, Carolyn, and Sam were all upstairs. She stood up, moved the curtain aside at the front window, and looked out to see a sheriff’s cruiser parked at the curb. Mike was walking toward the house.

Phyllis met him at the door. “Come in out of the cold,” she told him. She smiled. “You’re wearing your hat this time.”

He took it off as she closed the door behind him. “I can’t stay but a minute,” he said. “And I really shouldn’t be here at all. But I wanted to tell you . . . a woman named Coburn came to see Burton and Conley.”

Those were the investigators in charge of the case, Phyllis recalled.

“You don’t look surprised,” Mike commented with a slight frown.

“I’m not. I know who she is, Mike. She confronted Eve at the cemetery after the graveside service. You and Sarah had already left.”

“She came there?” Mike shook his head. “Man, that takes a lot of . . . brass. What did she want?”

“To tell Eve the same thing she told Burton and Conley, I imagine. The truth about the man we all knew as Roy Porter.”

“Then you already know.” Mike looked relieved and troubled at the same time. “I worried about coming here and talking to you about it. If the sheriff found out . . .”

“I don’t want you getting in trouble,” Phyllis said. “I certainly don’t want you risking your job.” She hesitated. “But what did the investigators think about the evidence Ms. Coburn turned over to them?”

“They’ll check it all out, of course, and confirm it. But from what I heard, it all looked pretty convincing. I think Burton and Conley are convinced.”

Phyllis nodded. “I was afraid they would be.”

“And it doesn’t exactly help Eve’s case, either.”

“I know. It just gives her a motive, where she didn’t really have one before.”

“Yeah. Mom, are you going to—” Mike stopped short, held up his free hand, and shook his head. “No, forget what I was about to ask you. Forget I said anything.”

Phyllis smiled and said, “Consider it forgotten.” He didn’t want to know if she was going to investigate the case and try to find Roy’s killer. And since she had already talked to Tess Coburn and learned about Roy’s criminal background, he hadn’t revealed that information to her, either. He was still in the clear as far as doing anything that could cause the sheriff or the district attorney to be angry with him.

“You’d better go,” she told him. “There’s nothing wrong with stopping by to say hello to your mother, but that’s all you did. Right?”

“Right,” Mike said. “Although Sullivan might not believe that.”

“He can’t prove otherwise. And for that matter, I don’t care what Mr. Sullivan believes, because he’s obviously wrong about a great many things.”

“Yeah,” Mike said with a grin. He leaned over to kiss her on the cheek, then put his hat back on. “Good night, Mom.”

As she closed the door, Sam asked from the bottom of the stairs, “Was that Mike?”

She turned to him and nodded. “That’s right. He told me that Tess Coburn went to see the investigators in charge of the case.”

“Well, we expected that,” Sam said with a shrug. “She told us she was goin’ to.”

“I know. But it just makes things look worse for Eve.” Phyllis nodded toward the computer in the corner of the living room. “I’ve been trying to look things up. She was right about Roy, Sam. Everything she told us checks out.”

“Yeah, we figured it would. But that didn’t stop me from doin’ some searchin’ of my own. I reckon I probably found the same things you did.”

“The question is, what do we do now?”

Sam smiled. “If Roy went around stealin’ from folks for twenty years, you know what that tells me?”

“No, what?”

“That you got twenty years’ worth of suspects to sift through, so you better get a good night’s sleep. You’re liable to need the energy to find this killer.”

C
hapter 20

B
efore Phyllis could figure out where to begin the next morning, the telephone rang and took care of that decision for her.

“This is Jan Delaney, Mrs. Newsom,” the voice on the other end said. “We have everything Eve and Roy left here packed, anytime you’d like to pick it up.”

“Already?” Phyllis asked. “I thought it might take a few days.”

“Well, there really wasn’t that much,” Jan said. “Clothes, mostly.”

“In that case, thank you. I’ll come out this morning, if that’s all right.”

Even though there had been a chance of snow in the forecast overnight, none had fallen. The sky was still overcast, but the temperature was above freezing, so even if there were a few flurries, they wouldn’t stick.

“This morning is fine,” Jan said. “I’ll see you later.”

Phyllis went out to the garage. Sam had headed for the workbench as soon as he finished breakfast. He was sanding some boards to make more bookshelves. He had built a couple of sets for his room already and planned to add a couple more at least. It wouldn’t take him long to fill them up with the paperback Westerns, thrillers, and science fiction novels he read voraciously.

“Jan Delaney just called and said that she had Eve’s things packed up,” she told him. “I could tell that she wanted us to go ahead and come get them, so I said that I’d come on out there this morning.”

“And you want me to come along and give you a hand?” Sam asked.

“Do you mind?”

“Nope, not at all.” He smiled. “That’s one good thing about bein’ retired. Whatever I do now, it’s on my own schedule.”

Phyllis understood that. She didn’t miss having to live her life according to which bell had just rung. That structured environment had never really bothered her, but she was just fine without it, too.

They took Phyllis’s car. She knew they would be able to carry everything in the backseat and the roomy trunk. Eve and Roy hadn’t had all that much with them, after all, since they’d come back from their honeymoon and moved right into the country bed-and-breakfast.

There were several cars in the graveled parking area when Phyllis and Sam arrived. It appeared that Jan and Pete still had customers. Maybe what had happened to Roy wouldn’t cost them too much business.

Jan must have been watching for them. She came out onto the front porch and smiled and waved. Phyllis wondered whether Pete was here. He was the one who had stepped in at the cemetery to remind Jan that they weren’t supposed to discuss the case, by order of the sheriff’s department investigators.

Maybe if Pete wasn’t around, Jan might be more willing to talk.

Phyllis felt a little bad about thinking that, but not too much. Now that she had made up her mind that she was going to find out who killed Roy, she was willing to do whatever it took. Eve’s freedom was at stake, after all, not to mention her reputation. It wouldn’t be enough just to create reasonable doubt, as Juliette Yorke had talked about. That might keep Eve from being convicted, but it wouldn’t stop some people from being convinced that she was guilty anyway. The only way to make sure everyone knew she was innocent was to positively identify the actual murderer.

“Hello, you two,” Jan said as Phyllis and Sam approached the porch. “My, it’s still gloomy, isn’t it?”

“Looks like those gray clouds have settled in for a while,” Sam said.

“Well, it is winter, after all.” Jan waved them onto the porch. “Come on in. Would you like some coffee? I have plenty of doughnuts, too.”

Sam grinned. “I have a long-standin’ rule about not turnin’ down doughnuts.”

“Good! Maybe we can visit for a few minutes before you load up Eve’s things.” As they went in the house, Jan motioned for them to follow her. “Let’s go back to the kitchen.”

She led them into a large, rustic, farmhouse-style kitchen. The maple cabinets gave the kitchen an inherent glow and warmth. The cabinets matched the kitchen table, which had four chairs with cushions. There was also a counter area with stools that had cushions matching the ones in the chairs. It was a room that encouraged people to visit with the cook. There were plenty of homey decorating touches as well, with lacy curtains, plants on the windowsill, and vintage knickknacks, including a glass bowl full of fruit. She took the cover off a plate of doughnuts sitting on the counter. “Help yourself,” she told Sam with a smile as she rested a hand on his arm for a couple of seconds.

“Thanks,” he said. “Don’t mind if I do.”

Jan poured coffee for all of them, herself included. They sat on the stools around the big counter, and Jan asked, “How’s Eve doing?”

“As well as can be expected,” Phyllis said. She didn’t mention Tess Coburn’s arrival in Weatherford or the startling revelations about Roy that the private investigator had brought with her. “She was able to eat a little last night, and Carolyn took a tray up to her this morning and said her appetite seemed even better.”

“Oh, I’m so glad to hear that! Eve’s just the sweetest thing in the world.” Jan took a sip of her coffee, then added, “Of course, I thought Roy was, too.”

Phyllis wondered what she meant by that, but she decided to pass it over for the time being. Instead she said, “I believe I’ll have one of those doughnuts, too.”

“Sure, help yourself. I like those chocolate ones with the little sprinkles. How about you, Sam?”

“Ummm,” Sam said. That was all he could manage since his mouth was full at the moment.

Phyllis picked out a doughnut with a caramel glaze on it, since she knew the sprinkles on the chocolate ones were full of artificial food coloring and sometimes that bothered her. As she sat down again, she asked, “Is Pete here this morning?”

“No, he’s gone into town to run errands. He had to go to the bank. I’ve told him we can do nearly everything online now, but Pete’s an old-fashioned guy in a lot of ways.” Jan flashed another smile. “Not that I mind. That just makes him more romantic.”

Phyllis heard people moving around on the second floor of the old farmhouse and glanced toward the ceiling. “You have people staying here,” she commented.

“Yes, only a couple of guests canceled their reservations when they heard about what happened. I didn’t blame them, of course. But I’m glad the others decided not to cut their visits short. We have two couples and a single lady staying with us right now.”

Sam said, “Kind of unusual for somebody to stay at a bed-and-breakfast by themselves, isn’t it?”

“Well, it’s certainly not as common as couples, but it’s not unheard of,” Jan replied. “Alice is widowed and likes to travel around antiquing. When she’s checked out all the stores in Weatherford, she plans to move on to Ranger, Eastland, and Cisco. That’s Alice Jessup, by the way. She’s from Louisiana.”

“How long has she been staying here?” Phyllis asked.

“Oh, goodness, about a week now, I guess. She’s leaving tomorrow.”

“Then she was here when . . .” Phyllis let her voice trail off.

Jan grew solemn and nodded. “Yes, she was here while Eve and Roy were. They were friendly but not particularly close. Alice was gone a lot, hitting the antique stores.”

“What about the others?” Phyllis asked in apparently idle curiosity. She knew that Jan liked to talk, and the woman was also the sort who was everybody’s friend as soon as she met them, calling them by their first name and touching their arm or shoulder. Phyllis had wished sometimes that she was that outgoing, but it just wasn’t her personality.

“We have Frank and Ingrid Pitt and Henry and Rhonda Mitchum, all of them newlyweds.” Jan smiled. “Although Frank and Ingrid are like Eve and Roy were. This isn’t the first marriage for either of them. They’re in their sixties, I’d say. For that matter, Henry and Rhonda are a little older than a lot of newlywed couples, too, although they’re just in their thirties. A lot of people wait longer to get married these days, don’t they? They like to be settled in their careers first, I guess. I can’t say that I blame them for that.”

Phyllis ate the last bite of her doughnut, washed it down with a sip of coffee, and then asked, “How long have they been here?”

“Henry and Rhonda just got here last night. Frank and Ingrid came in several days ago.”

“Well, I’m glad you have enough guests to keep you busy,” Phyllis said.

“So am I,” Jan said. She shook her head. “If I was here by myself, I’m not sure I could stop myself from thinking about . . . about . . .”

Phyllis did some touching then, resting her hand on top of Jan’s where it lay on the table. “That must have been so awful, finding him like that.”

“Oh, you just can’t imagine!” A look of horror came into Jan’s eyes. “When I heard that big thump upstairs, I just thought somebody must have dropped something, so I didn’t go up right away. But then I got to worrying that one of the guests had fallen down and might be hurt, so I thought I should go check. Roy didn’t answer when I knocked on the door, and honestly, I try not to be nosy, but I couldn’t stand the thought that he might be in there unconscious or dying of a heart attack or something, and the door wasn’t locked . . .”

Jan had to stop to gather herself, and Phyllis’s nerves stretched taut as she worried that the woman might realize she was talking more than the sheriff’s department—and her husband—wanted her to.

But then Jan went on in a hushed voice, “When I saw all that blood, though, I knew it wasn’t a heart attack, and then I stepped into the room and saw Roy lying there on the rug beside the bed with that letter opener sticking in his throat . . . I’ll bet they heard me screaming all the way over in Dallas.”

“It must have been terrible,” Phyllis said.

“Think I’ll get another one of those doughnuts,” Sam said, a comment that seemed inappropriate at first, but Phyllis realized what he was doing. He was keeping Jan off balance, distracting her so she wouldn’t start thinking about how much information she was revealing.

Either that or he just really wanted another doughnut.

“Who was here at the time?” Phyllis asked.

“Pete was out back working on the well. Frank and Ingrid were in their room. They were the first ones to get to me. I didn’t know where Eve and Alice were.” Jan frowned a little. “Although come to think of it, I heard a car leaving just a minute or two after that big thump upstairs. You can hear it pretty easily when somebody pulls out on that gravel.”

That thump Jan had heard had been Roy falling to the floor to bleed to death, Phyllis thought. If she had gone upstairs as soon as she’d heard it, instead of waiting for a few minutes, would she have been able to save his life?

Probably not, Phyllis decided. From the way Jan had described the scene, the blood and the fact that Roy had been stabbed in the throat, it was likely the letter opener had severed an artery. It was unlikely that Jan would have been able to slow down the bleeding enough to keep him from dying.

“You didn’t see anyone coming or going?” Phyllis asked. “You just heard a car pull out?”

“That’s right. I was busy back here in the kitchen.”

“And Pete wouldn’t have seen anything if he was out back in the well house.”

“No, but he heard me carrying on and came running,” Jan said. “He wanted to know why I was screaming bloody mur—” She stopped and put a hand to her lips as her eyes widened.

“You really were screamin’ bloody murder,” Sam said. “No need to be ashamed of that. Anybody would have, if they’d walked in on what you did.”

“I suppose so. All I could think about was Eve.”

“You didn’t think about Roy?” Phyllis asked.

Jan’s lips tightened. “Of course I did, but I was more worried about Eve.”

This was the time to bring up that earlier matter, Phyllis thought. “You said that at first you thought Roy was sweet, too. What changed your mind?”

“Nothing, really. I’m not going to speak ill of the dead.” Jan waved a hand. “Anyway, it’s not that unusual for an older man to sometimes say or do things around a younger woman that aren’t really that appropriate—”

“Roy made a
pass
at you?” Sam burst out as he turned away from the plate of doughnuts with a jelly-filled one in his hand.

For a second Phyllis wished he hadn’t been quite so blunt about it, but then Jan said, “Oh, Sam, I didn’t mean any offense to you when I said that about older men! I’m sure you’re an absolute gentleman.”

“But Roy wasn’t?” Phyllis asked.

“He was a little free with his hands,” Jan admitted with a shrug. “And he said some things that were a little . . . questionable. Always whenever Eve wasn’t around, you know. I just ignored it as much as possible and didn’t really think anything about it.” She paused. “He was hardly the first guest to hit on me, you know. Goodness, plenty of the female guests flirt with Pete, too. Even some of the, uh, male guests have been known to do that. I just tell Pete not to let it bother him.”

“Maybe so, but I’m really surprised to hear that about Roy,” Phyllis said. “I thought he was so much in love with Eve.”

Phyllis wasn’t actually surprised. A man who would marry a woman just to swindle her out of her money wouldn’t draw the line at some racy talk or a little fanny patting with another woman. But Jan didn’t know anything about Roy’s background, so she didn’t have any idea what his real plans had been.