Cardinal Sin

by J. R. Ripley

  I didn’t let his bluster bother me. Not now, not ever. “No.” And I’d given it a lot of thought, too, tossing and turning in bed throughout the night. “I tried calling Yvonne’s mobile phone again this morning.”

  “And?”

  “It went straight to voice mail.”

  “Are you sure it was Yvonne Rice that you talked to last night?”

  “Of course. I recognized her immediately.”

  “It couldn’t have been a man pretending to be her?”

  “You mean like Alan Spenner?”

  Jerry shrugged his reply.

  “It was a woman’s voice.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely. What about the 911 call?”

  “That was a woman’s voice, too. Anita swears to it.”

  I knew Anita, the dispatcher, well. She was a friend of my mom’s. The woman was beyond reproach. “Excuse me a minute.” One of my regulars, Francoise Early, had come into the store.

  “Hello, Francoise.” She is a silvery-haired widow who owns a small nursery on the outskirts of Ruby Lake.

  “Hello, dear. I only stopped in for a bag of seeds and to tell you that you can expect some wonderful blooms this year.”

  “That’s good news.” I purchase a supply of bird- and bee-friendly flowering plants from her, which we display and sell in the store’s front garden from spring through fall.

  “I’m experimenting with milkweed this year, also,” she said rather proudly.

  “The monarch butterflies will love you for that. Be sure to bring me some plantings.

  She promised she would on her next trip into town.

  “Would you like some coffee, Francoise? I have chocolates and cookies, too.”

  I noticed Jerry’s face brighten at the announcement. I wished I’d kept my mouth shut until after he had departed.

  “No, thank you. I must get back. The bus will be by again in ten minutes.” Francoise studied the shelves a moment, looking down her nose through the thick lenses of her reading glasses. She selected a prepackaged three-pound bag of my Bird Lover’s Blend. I rang her up at the sales counter.

  Taking great pains, Francoise wrote out a bank check and signed it. She turned to Chief Kennedy as I slipped the check into the cash drawer. “I heard about this man running around town murdering women, Sheriff.”

  Francoise pulled the sides of her navy coat together. “What are you doing about it? Something, I hope.” She tugged again and carefully placed her checkbook back in the side pocket of her voluminous purse. I’d seen her carry her Brussels Griffon in that very same purse.

  “We are doing everything we can,” Jerry said, mustering all his authority and tipping his hat to her. “And that’s ‘Chief,’ ma’am.”

  She frowned at him. “I do not care what you call yourself, young man. Make yourself a general, if you so choose.” She waved her ballpoint pen at him. “See that you catch him, that’s all.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jerry’s cheeks were rosy red, and he suddenly found his shoes very interesting as Francoise worked her way out the door. I waved goodbye to her and watched as she moved slowly to the empty bench at the bus stop.

  I loved that woman.

  7

  When I turned around, Jerry had disappeared. As expected—and feared—I found him in the kitchenette munching on my cookies.

  “These ain’t half bad.” Jerry held a golden cookie up to the light and examined it before snapping it in two with his front teeth like some cartoon chipmunk. He deposited both halves in his big mouth.

  “If you like them so much, you can buy them at Otelia’s.” I counted three newly missing cookies. “That’s what I do.”

  Jerry shrugged. It was his answer to just about everything.

  “How about buying something from me for a change?” The man had been in my store on more occasions than I could count but never left with a receipt for a single item in his hand.

  “Like what?” He truly looked baffled. “All you’ve got is stuff for birds.”

  “How about a feeder or a nesting box?”

  Jerry looked at me like I’d just tried to sell him a seat on the next lightship to Arcturus.

  “Never mind,” I said. Time to shift gears. “Was anything taken from Yvonne’s cabin, Jerry?”

  “That’s Chief Kennedy.”

  “Okay, Sheriff,” I sniped, taking the tray of cookies from him. “Was anything stolen?”

  “Not so’s we could tell.”

  “Don’t you think that’s odd? If it was Alan Spenner or even some other thief, wouldn’t they have taken something?”

  “Did you notice anything particular of value there?”

  I couldn’t say that I had and admitted so. “But still…” I thought some more. “What about cash?”

  “She had fifty-three dollars in her purse.”

  “That the killer didn’t take.”

  “That the killer didn’t take,” repeated Jerry. He filled a to-go cup with hot water and stirred in a packet of cocoa. “Where are the lids?” He held up his cup.

  I frowned and pulled out a sleeve of lids from one of the upper cabinets and handed him one. “So it was Yvonne Rice who called 911.” I creased my brow in thought.

  “You talked to Ms. Rice. A few minutes later she called 911—”

  “And a few minutes after that she was shot dead.”

  Jerry frowned. I noticed for the first time that he had a mouth shaped like a mail slot when he wasn’t frowning or grinning. “Are you sure you didn’t see or hear anything when you arrived? Or on the way?”

  “We’ve been over this, Jerry.” I motioned for him to follow me up to the front of the store, and thankfully, he did. “There was nothing, nobody.

  “I passed a car or two, a motorcycle, a truck, maybe. But no one near the house. And I did not see anybody speeding away from her house. Could the killer have come from the woods?”

  “It’s a possibility. We’re tracking with dogs. That’s a big property, surrounded by a lot of other properties and a conservation area. There’s state and national forests beyond that. That’s a lot of ground to cover.”

  “I don’t suppose any of the neighbors saw or heard anything?”

  Jerry shook his head no in frustration. “Too far away.” He reached into the pocket of his brown leather bomber jacket and unrolled a sheet of paper that he pushed on me.

  “What’s this? Oh, Alan Spenner.” I got a chill as I read the name in big block letters at the top of the page. I studied the picture. A shaved-head man with a chipped lower incisor and dull blue eyes faced the camera head-on. He was slack-jawed and glared defiantly at the camera.

  “Yeah, Mr. Spenner. Though I doubt he’s going around calling himself that now. I’m handing out copies around town. If you see him, you let me know. Before you try anything stupid,” he added on his way out the front door.

  I stood in the sunlight slanting in through the window, studying the printed photo. Spenner looked mean and brutish. Would Yvonne Rice really have willingly let this man into her house?

  I would not have.

  “What have you got?”

  I jumped and snapped my head around, cracking foreheads with Kim, who was peering over my shoulder.

  “Ouch!” we cried together.

  “Don’t do that,” I said. I had heard the sounds of a cash register in the background and out of the corner of my eye noticed our customers walking out with bags under their arms. I had assumed Kim was still at the register.

  “Do what?”

  “Sneak up on a person.” I was seeing stars. Nice at night—calm and romantic, even—but not a good thing in the middle of the day.

  Kim’s pupils moved back to the paper now wrinkled in my hand. “Is that who I think it is?”

  I nodded. “Our escaped convict,
Alan Spenner.”

  Kim snatched the sheet from me. “It says here that he almost beat a man to death with an aluminum baseball bat.”

  “Wow.”

  “Twice.” Kim held up two fingers.

  “Double wow.” I stood at the door and looked up and down the street. Francoise was long gone. Ruby Lake is a lovely little town with an unspoiled lake and friendly people, for the most part.

  Was there a killer wandering among us now?

  “Do me a favor and tape that photo in the window, would you?”

  “Sure,” Kim agreed. “And I’ll write on the side here that if people see Spenner, they should call the police first and you second.”

  “Not funny.” That comment of Liz’s, repeated to me by Kim and attributed to Amy-the-idiot (yes, I liked the new moniker very much, thank you), still stung.

  Kim went to fetch the tape dispenser. “Did Jerry say if there was anything new on Yvonne’s death?”

  “No. Too early, I guess. Have you met Dan’s friend yet?”

  “You mean Paul?”

  “Paul?” Somebody had their signals crossed.

  Kim knitted her brows. “I think Dan said Paul. Something like that.”

  I watched as Kim affixed the brute’s face to the corner of the window nearest the front door. Did she not know that Paul was Paula? Had Dan not told her? Maybe he had told her and she had gotten it wrong, misheard him.

  Paul was definitely Paula. Jerry makes a lot of mistakes, but he wouldn’t have made that one. “Maybe you should go check on Dan when you’re finished with that. See how he’s doing.”

  “This early?” Kim glanced at her watch. “I’ve barely started my shift.”

  “Things are a little slow.” Tuesdays generally were. “And I can always call Esther if I need to.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Kim wasted no time bustling out the door. She had forgotten her scarf, but it was warming up, and she wasn’t going to need it.

  Hopefully, Dan would have some inside scoop to offer up. Plus, it wouldn’t hurt for Paula to know that there was a Kim and vice versa.

  * * * *

  The next day, the town was abuzz with gossip about Yvonne Rice’s unexplained murder and the possible presence of Alan Spenner in our area.

  Kim hadn’t been back into Birds & Bees, but that didn’t surprise me any. Give her an hour off and she stretches it to three days.

  I checked in with my aunt and mother. They were safely ensconced in southern Louisiana, busy touring antebellum plantations, swamps, and cemeteries and drinking mint juleps.

  “Kim’s late for her shift.” Esther was with me in the store, running a feather duster over anything that wasn’t moving.

  “A little,” I admitted in my friend’s defense.

  “A little?” Esther eyed the clock on the wall above the door. The clock face featured birds rather than numerals. The big hand was on the owl and the little hand on the sparrow. That meant twelve thirty in people time. “You ever consider getting a time clock?”

  It wasn’t a bad idea, but I didn’t want to encourage Esther. She was impossible enough at the best of times. “Don’t you think that’s a little corporate?”

  Esther grumbled. “I hope she gets here soon. I have plans for dinner.”

  Esther is a small, narrow-shouldered, elflike septuagenarian with a hawkish nose, sagging eyelids, and silvery hair normally pulled tightly to the back of her head in a four-inch ponytail. Lately, she had taken to wearing rouge and some perfume from the bargain store out by the freeway that seemed to be putting me off as much as it was repelling the birds.

  I cracked a grin. “Would that dinner be with Floyd?” Esther would never admit to it, but I had a hunch the makeup and perfume were on account of Floyd.

  “Do I ask you who you eat with?” Esther thrust the long handle of her duster into the apron strings wrapped tightly around her waist.

  “Yes, you do. Frequently.”

  It was Esther’s turn to smile. “So when’s that lawyer of yours going to ask you to marry him?”

  I colored. “Marry him? We’ve only dated a little while, Esther.”

  “It has been a lot more than a little while. You aren’t getting any younger, you know.”

  “I’m not that old,” I said stiffly.

  Esther waggled her finger in my face. “You wait too long and nobody will want you.”

  “We haven’t even discussed the idea of marriage.”

  Esther knitted her brows together. “Why not?”

  I frowned. “I-I’m not sure. The subject has just never come up.”

  “Huh.” Esther scratched the top of her head.

  The whole conversation with Esther was making me uncomfortable—on more levels than I cared to count, so it was a relief when the store telephone rang and she bustled behind the counter to answer it. “Birds and Bees!” Esther shouted into the phone.

  “I’m going for a short walk,” I announced to Esther, who was still engaged in conversation on the phone. I moved quickly to the door. “I’m sure Kim will be along any minute.”

  But she wasn’t.

  I took a walk downtown, rewarding myself with an espresso and key-lime cupcake at C Is For Cupcakes, the quaint little bakery on Lake Shore Drive.

  I could see the offices of Harlan and Harlan from my seat at the window of the bakery. That meant I could also see Dream Gowns, Amy-the-ex’s boutique next door to the offices.

  I wasn’t spying, but I was keeping my eyes open.

  8

  Later that afternoon, I was surprised to see two familiar faces in Birds & Bees. Rather, I wasn’t surprised to see them, but I was surprised to see the two of them together. Together with friendly—albeit inquisitive—smiling faces rather than locked together in hand-to-hand combat as usual.

  “Hello, Lance. Hello, Violet.” I untied my apron and threw it onto the open shelf under the sales counter. “I was just closing up for the day.” Esther had left to get ready for her dinner date. “Whatever you want, we’ll have to make it quick.” I myself had dinner plans later with Derek and wanted to give myself plenty of time to get ready.

  And soak in the tub for an hour. A bubble bath and a glass of bubbly were part of that well-considered plan.

  “I didn’t realize the two of you were into birds.” I grinned from one to the other. “I didn’t realize you were a couple.” My finger moved from one to the other.

  Lance blanched.

  “Yuck!” Violet screeched a squeaky reply. It was an obnoxious sound for a human, but not bad if taken as an imitation of the brown-headed nuthatch.

  She was a bit of a nutjob herself. Pun intended.

  Lance Jennings was a fairly innocuous reporter for the Ruby Lake Weekender, our town’s local newspaper. He was about forty years old and forty pounds overweight for his under-six-foot frame. He had a thick nose and wavy black hair, although those waves were slowly but surely receding.

  His father, Montgomery, Monty to his friends, owned the newspaper. Monty had plenty of friends. Nobody wanted to get on the wrong side of the man who owned the only newspaper in town.

  Monty liked to keep the Weekender running with a ratio of about sixty-forty—advertisements to news, that is. Lance was eternally fighting for more news space. So far, Daddy was winning.

  Profits over information seemed to be his unwritten motto.

  Violet was a platinum blonde with a milky complexion. Whether that was by choice or due to the nature of the long hours she spent inside a windowless radio studio, I didn’t know. Her hourglass figure seemed to have rounded a bit since I’d last laid eyes on her.

  “We’re here to talk to you about Yvonne Rice.” Lance whipped out his ever-present spiral notebook and an ink pen bearing the name Ruby Lake Motor Inn on its barrel. He had swi
tched to an electronic tablet for a time, but when he lost the expensive instrument, Daddy handed him back his old-school notebook.

  To be fair to Lance, he hadn’t actually lost his tablet. He, and practically everybody else but Daddy, knew exactly where it was or at least approximately. Lance had had the misfortune of using his electronic tablet to take a photo from the bow of a moving boat. He’d been doing a story on a local tour boat operator.

  Oops.

  The twenty-two-foot skiff he had been standing in hit the wake of a larger craft. That tablet, property of the Ruby Lake Weekender, was now buried in the muck at the bottom of Ruby Lake.

  Violet pulled out her mobile phone and pressed the big red record button. She thrust the phone in my face. “Give us your firsthand impressions, Amy.”

  “Whoa, whoa.” I waved my hands in the air and took a step back. “I have nothing to say to you.” I looked at them both. “To either of you.”

  “Come on, Amy,” whined Lance. “You know I can’t go back to the office without a story. Dad will kill me.” He was wearing his blue suit. The one with the wide lapels that looked like it might have been popular in the seventies. He reminded me of a great blue heron, a rather plump one at that. His button-down dress shirt was the palest of pinks.

  Violet rolled her sharp blue eyes for my benefit. “Our listeners want to hear from you, Amy.” She sported a snug canary-yellow dress and a black sweater. Her heels were higher than a stork’s legs.

  “And readers,” Lance interjected, elbowing Violet to one side.

  Violet ignored him. She was used to getting her own way. “You were there minutes after the murder. Describe the scene at the cabin. Tell us what you saw.”

  I pushed her phone away from my lips. “I’m gonna chip a tooth on that thing if you aren’t careful.”

  “Did you get a glimpse of the killer?” Lance demanded.

  “No, I—”

  He didn’t wait for me to answer. “Did you have any premonition that something might be wrong? Is that why you went back? We heard you were having dinner with her earlier.”

  “No,” I said. “I went back because I forgot my purse and—”