“Yes, you are,” Miss May turned her attention back to me.
I sighed. “Can we draw straws?”
Miss May took a big sip of her drink, as if that were the only answer required of her.
Ugh.
----
When I entered the bathroom, I was hit with the sound of Rita sobbing from the far stall.
A brief flicker of judgment crossed my mind when I noticed she’d taken the handicapped stall, then I steadied myself and tapped on the door.
“Rita? Are you OK?”
“Who’s there?” She sniffled.
I cringed. I couldn’t believe this was happening. “It’s Chelsea. From high school. Well, more recently from the orchard? I poured cider all over you.”
“Oh.”
There was another sniffle. Then came the longest silence in the history of time. The kind of silence that existed before mankind and will be the only thing remaining in a post-apocalyptic world. A silence that’s at once heavy and completely weightless. It felt so long that it could not be quantified in seconds, minutes, or hours, and would instead require the invention of an entirely new unit of time in order for it to be properly measured.
Finally, the door to the stall swung open, and there was Rita in all her mascara-streaked glory. One of the meanest girls from my high school, sitting on a closed toilet, wiping her eyes with a seat cover.
Rita looked so sad and defenseless. When I saw her, my heart swelled, and I immediately forgave her for any wrong she had ever inflicted upon me. More than that, I almost forgot that I was there to find out if she had killed someone on my family farm.
“What’s wrong!?”
I rushed into the stall and closed the door, so we would have privacy. Then I squatted beside Rita, pulled out a three-foot-long piece of toilet paper and handed it to her. “Use this. Softer than the seat covers.”
Rita nodded, tossed the seat cover aside, and grabbed the wad of TP.
I continued gently. “What's going on? You can tell me.”
Rita’s sniffles broke into downright blubbers. She wiped her face with the toilet paper, but it was too thin, so it left clumps of white paper stuck to her face. I decided not to bring it up.
“Vinny,” she said. “I miss Vin!”
I swallowed my gasp and tried to play it cool, but as I remembered that Rita may have killed Vinny, the stall felt suddenly tiny. Still, I pushed on.
“Oh, right. You two—you were friends, right?”
“Yeah, right,” Rita said. “Friends.”
It was odd. The way Rita emphasized ‘friends’ it almost sounded like she might laugh, and I could detect the hint of a smirk behind the word.
“Were you more than friends?” I asked.
Rita tried to nod, but once again, she was overtaken by an earthquake of a sob. It was at least a nine on the Richter scale. Did that make sense? I didn’t actually know the Richter scale. Whatever the number, this was the sound of genuine mourning. Almost the exact way I had sounded after my parents died. The way I still felt sometimes, thinking about them.
”I never knew how much I loved him,” Rita said. “Now I know. But it’s too late. He’s gone.”
I nodded and tried to maintain my composure, but I felt tears bubbling up from the depths of the big old well of sympathy near my heart, and I was helpless to control them.
Seconds later, Rita and I were crying together. Even more great detective work. If Rita had in fact killed Vinny, I was seconds away from helping her cover it up.
“I forgot,” I said. “You and Vinny were together in high school. For like two years, right? This must be so hard.”
”You don’t get it.” Rita pulled away from me and wiped her eyes. “We never stopped being together.”
My face froze in shock. Was Rita saying what I thought she was saying?
“Do you mean--?”
“Yeah, Sherlock. We were having an affair. Me and Vinny were in love. He was gonna leave your stupid cousin. That night. He promised me. But then he died! On your stupid apple orchard.”
“Whoa,” I said.
“Yeah,” Rita said. “Whoa is right.”
Rita dabbed at her eyes with the toilet paper. More TP clung to her cheeks. Once again, I said nothing. At that point, my fear that Rita might be the murderer had overtaken my desire to comfort her. Plus, I thought, a little riled up, there was no need to call Maggie stupid.
Rita read my mind.
“I didn’t kill him,” she said. “So stop thinking that way.”
I stammered. Rita hadn’t gotten good grades back in school, but she was perceptive.
“I didn’t,” Rita said again. “Come on. The father of my child?”
I had thought, moments earlier, that my face was incapable of registering greater shock. But when Rita called Vinny the father of her child, my eyebrows raised so high and my mouth twisted so tight that I must have looked like a Picasso. “The father of your what?!”
Rita cursed. “Well, now you know,” she said. “I wasn’t going to tell anybody, but me and my big mouth just can’t keep a secret.”
“So you’re… pregnant? And it’s Vinny’s?”
Rita rolled her eyes, “Yeah, Chels. Try to keep up here. I wasn’t doing it with anybody else. Only Vin.” Rita’s chin quivered. “He would’ve been such a good daddy, don’t you think?”
Uhhhh… no? “I didn’t really know him,” I said. Rita shot me a look. “But yes. He would have been a tremendous dad.”
Rita put her hand on her belly. “But we’re gonna be OK, Junior,” she cooed. “Mommy’s gonna take care of you. I promise.”
A few tears streamed down my cheek. Sitting there on the toilet, talking to her belly, Rita was the farthest thing from a killer I could imagine. She was a scared single mother, hoping for the best.
Then I had a horrible thought. What if Maggie had learned the truth about Vinny and Rita? Could Maggie be the killer? Jealousy was a strong motive.
“Rita,” I said. “Did my cousin Maggie know about the baby?”
Rita nodded. “Vinny said he told her the night before the rehearsal dinner.”
I leaned against the stall door and hung my head.
“If that’s true—”
“Yeah,” Rita said. “Your cousin killed my Vinny.”
18
Tardy Tell All
Miss May stomped her heavy work boots as we walked back up Main Street toward where she parked the bus.
“You’re jumping to conclusions,” she said. “That’s exactly what Rita would say if she wanted to seem innocent.”
“You didn't see how she cried,” I said.
“Who wouldn’t cry after killing the father of her child in a crime of passion?” Miss May said.
“So you're sure she did it.”
“I'm not ruling it out,” Miss May said.
“Me neither,” said Teeny. “The girl sounds unstable. You said yourself she covered her face in toilet paper.”
“The TP got stuck there,” I said. “I blame Brian. He needs to get higher quality ply in those stalls.”
“Amen to that,” Teeny said. “It’s like using tree bark every time you have to pee in that place.”
I laughed, but my thoughts turned back to my conversation with Rita as I walked. Rita's broken heart was clear to see. And I refused to accept her as a suspect.
Miss May must have read my mind. “You really don't think Rita did it, do you?”
I shook my head. “She loved Vinny.”
“Fine. Let's run your 'Rita Is Innocent' theory for a second,” Miss May said. “If Rita didn't kill Vinny, Maggie is suspect number one. Do you think Maggie did it?”
“No. I don’t know. Who do you think murdered Vinny!?” My face reddened. I was in no mood for Miss May's “devil's advocate” games.
“Shh,” Miss May hissed and looked around to make sure no one could hear us.
I continued in a hushed whisper, “I’m sorry. But you’re not being straight with me
. Is Maggie a legitimate suspect or not?”
Miss May shook her head. “I don't believe she is. But anything’s possible. We put a man on the moon.”
“Or did we?” Teeny looked at us like she had dropped a mind-blowing truth, but Miss May and I groaned.
“Focus up, Teeny,” Miss May said. “We have an actual murder to solve.”
“I was trying to help. And you two keep going in circles about Maggie. Can't we all agree she's innocent and move on?”
“I can agree to that,” Miss May said.
“That brings us back to Rita,” I said. “Do you think she lied to me in the bathroom? Like... she's not pregnant?”
“She's definitely preggo,” Teeny poked her head between me and Miss May. “I saw a baby bump.”
“That might have been gas,” I said. “I get a food baby every time I eat pizza. Or beans. Or tofu.”
“TMI, Chels.” Teeny laughed, and so did I, until I remembered another important clue.
“Rita wasn’t drinking at the wedding!” I exclaimed. “Which is super weird, if you know Rita. She’s been drinking at least a wine cooler a day since she was 14! Why would she quit unless she had a good reason?”
Miss May took this in. “OK. I don’t think Rita lied about being pregnant,” she said. “But she also said Vinny planned to leave Maggie, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So Rita's theory is that Maggie found out about Vinny's plan and killed him.”
I nodded.
“That makes sense, if you believe Rita and you've never met Maggie. But what if Vinny went back on his plan to leave Maggie? What if he told Rita she would have to raise that baby alone?”
I stopped walking and stammered. “Rita wouldn’t like that.”
“She'd be real ticked, if you ask me,” Teeny said. “Ticked enough to kill!”
“It kind of makes sense, doesn't it?” Miss May said. “If Vinny really planned to leave Maggie, why would he have waited until the night of the rehearsal dinner?”
“That’s a good point,” I said. “But how are we supposed to find out for sure?”
Miss May shrugged, and we walked in silence for a few seconds. Then Teeny piped up from behind me.
“I have an alternative theory. If anybody cares.”
Miss May turned back to Teeny. “What’s your theory, Teeny?”
Teeny rubbed her hands together like she was trying to start a fire. “What if Vinny had a secret twin brother?”
Miss May laughed. “Teeny!”
“I’m serious! Maybe the secret brother loved Maggie, so he killed Vinny.”
“That’s not a theory,” Miss May said. “It’s the plot from your favorite episode of North Port Diaries.”
“Doesn’t mean it can’t be true.” Teeny got a dreamy twinkle in her eyes. “‘Twin Troubles’ is a legendary episode of television. They nominated it for an Emmy, you know.”
“Daytime Emmy,” I muttered under my breath.
“OK, Teeny,” Miss May said. “Good theory.”
We arrived at the bus, and Miss May dug in her purse for her keys. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s hit the road.”
Miss May tried to unlock drivers’ side door, but it would not open.
“Seriously,” she said. “Stuck again?” She tugged hard, but the door wouldn’t budge. “Darn it!”
The doors on Miss May’s bus loved to jam at the most inopportune moments. Last time the doors got stuck, we were twenty minutes late for an event we had been hired to cater. We had to climb into the bus through the trunk so we could drive there. And when we arrived, we had to exit through the trunk, too. Miss May hated every second of it.
“I’m not going through that trunk again.” Miss May glared at the door like Clint Eastwood in every Clint Eastwood movie ever. “No way, no how.”
Teeny and I exchanged glanced at one another, like, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Then Miss May took a step back and gave the door a big, sideways kick.
The door didn’t open. She kicked again. Nothing.
I expected Miss May to yell or cuss, even, but instead she laughed.
It was a heavy, determined laugh I’d only witnessed a few times growing up. And if the door could have heard the sound, it would have popped open immediately.
I turned to Teeny. “We’d better back up.”
She nodded, and we stepped to the side.
Miss May took a few seconds to gather herself. Then she backed up twenty feet, charged toward the door and kicked.
Nothing.
Teeny and I cringed, flinched and winced as Miss May kept kicking.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Finally, after ten solid kicks, the door creaked open.
Miss May turned back to me and Teeny with a smile. But we were across the street at that point, huddled together like abandoned puppies in a hurricane.
“You two coming or not?”
I gulped and choked out a few words. “Coming where?”
“Where do you think?” Miss May said. “We need to go talk to Maggie.”
As we rattled away in the bus, I glimpsed Mayor Delgado on a street corner. She was standing with a man in a bright orange vest and construction helmet, pointing up at the sky above the intersection. The man took notes and nodded.
It looked like Pine Grove’s new mayor was moving ahead with her streetlight manifesto. Apparently, she hadn’t needed Vinny’s wheel-greasing after all.
Nothing stops progress, I thought.
Not even death.
----
We dropped Teeny off back at Grandma’s so she could close out for the day, then Miss May careened down the streets to go see Maggie.
I white-knuckled the door handle and scouted the bus for a convenient place to puke, but the more I groaned, the faster Miss May drove.
“Will you slow down!?” I said. “We're not going to get there any faster if we die in a blaze of fire!”
Screech! Miss May skidded around a corner and glared at me. “You want to get behind the wheel?”
“I still don’t have a license!”
“That’s what I thought.”
Screech! Miss May took another sharp turn. But this time she turned in the wrong direction.
“Where are you going!?” I braced myself against the dash. “Maggie lives the other direction.”
Miss May slammed on the brakes and made another quick turn.
“I’ll ask one more time,” Miss May said. “Do you want to drive?”
“I can’t!”
“So how on earth do you have such a strong opinion on my driving?”
“Because Maggie lives in the other direction!”
Miss May scoffed. “Maggie’s staying in Dee Dee’s apartment. Up in the Heights.”
Of course. Maggie would never want to be alone at a time like this. “Oh. Well. Carry on, then.”
Miss May kept right on speeding down the street toward my Aunt Dee Dee’s, pedal to the...carpet, I guess.
Dee Dee was Maggie’s mom and Miss May’s sister. Dee Dee had a lot of quirks, but she was a pitbull of a mother. And I doubted she would take kindly to me and Miss May showing up, unannounced, to interrogate her daughter.
“Can we talk about a plan or something?” I asked. “What are we going to say when we get in there?”
“Well,” Miss May said. “We need to figure out if Maggie was aware of the Rita/Vinny situation,” Miss May said. “If Vinny told Maggie about everything, she had a strong motive for murder.”
“But what exactly are we going to say?”
“We’ll feel it out,” Miss May said. The bus thumped over a pothole, and I yelped. Miss May glared at me.
“Sorry,” I said. “I appreciate your assertive driving tactics.”
”It’s not my driving,” Miss May said. “It’s this hill. I don’t know why my sister insists on living up this stupid hill.”
“We live on a hill,” I said.
“Because that’s where the farm is
!” Miss May tsked her disapproval, and I looked out the window as we rumbled up toward Dee Dee's place.
The Heights was the only real apartment complex in Pine Grove. Most people looked down on it, like it was a bad area. But as I gazed at the apartment buildings, returning for my first time since living in the city, I saw the neighborhood in a whole new light.
The apartments at the Heights were downright palaces by city standards. They had big bay windows with southern exposure for lots of light. All the cabinets were cockroach free. And the kitchens were so big you could fit an actual kitchen table in them.
I used to go up to the Heights all the time when I was a kid, and I smiled as I remembered riding bikes with Maggie in the parking lot and chasing butterflies in her small front yard.
But I jolted back to the present as we hit another bump, and another quiet yelp escaped my lips.
Miss May grunted. “Please keep your yaps to yourself. I’m stressed enough already.”
When I looked over at Miss May, all I noticed was her furrowed brow and down-turned mouth. And that’s when it hit me. I had been so caught up in my head I hadn’t even taken a moment to consider how Miss May might feel about this whole situation. There had been a death on her farm. And her own niece was a suspect. That had to be stressful, and I hadn't shown any sympathy at all.
“I don’t think Maggie did it,” I said.
Miss May looked over at me with slight surprise. “No?”
I shook my head. Miss May nodded. “Good,” she said. “Because we’re here.”
I spotted my Aunt Dee Dee practicing yoga on the porch to the apartment as Miss May pulled up and parked.
Aunt Dee Dee looked a lot like Miss May, tall and broad with thick, flowing hair. She was a woman one might describe as “sturdy” or “handsome.” But Miss May had a practical vibe, in blue jeans and flannel. And Aunt Dee Dee was a dreamer. She owned dozens of floral dresses, she had been divorced three times, and she often said yoga “made her whole.” It made sense that we found her doing sun salutations when we arrived. Yoga helped her cope with crisis.
Dee Dee waved as we climbed out of the car. Miss May waved back as I took a deep breath.
Hopefully Maggie was home. Hopefully she had useful information.
Hopefully she wasn’t the killer.
Apple Orchard Cozy Mystery series Box Set 1 Page 10
