by Sam Cheever
“I can be ready in twenty minutes.”
Cecily Addams lived in a tidy clapboard home in the woods, not too far from Benson Dexter, the man who’d tried to take Mayor Robb’s job away from him and failed in a spectacular way. He was also Cecily’s boyfriend, a fact that put her in an extremely tenuous situation. If her boss found out who she was seeing in her spare time, she’d be out of a job pretty quickly.
I couldn’t help but wonder if any of that had something to do with Cecily threatening Calliente.
The craftsman-style home was small but charming, with scalloped siding, a central peak, and a porch with wide pillars that ran the length of the house. The porch held several large clay pots filled with flowers and two comfy-looking rockers.
I looked out over the property as Hal rang the bell, marveling at the tidiness of the flower beds and yard. Cecily Addams either spent a lot of money hiring out the upkeep for her yard, or she spent most of her free time doing it herself.
The door opened after the second ring. Cecily stood on the other side of a screen door, a dishtowel in her hands and her blonde hair in a messy twist that allowed almost more hair to escape than she had trapped.
Drying her hands on the towel, she smiled at us. “What a nice surprise. Did you learn something about the murder at Mayor Robb’s party?”
She certainly didn’t act like she had anything to hide. But if Karinne had been telling the truth, Cecily had to know that threatening someone mere minutes before he’s found dead is bound to earn her a few extra questions from the police, at the very least.
“Your home is beautiful,” I said, in lieu of answering her question.
“Thank you. Come in out of the heat. It’s going to be close to ninety today.” She grimaced, clearly not a fan of the heat.
We followed her into a living room that was a fun mix of shabby chic and country modern.
“Sit. Would you like something cold to drink?” She shoved hair off her moist face. “I’m going to have something. I just came in from working in the yard. I try to get my work done early, before the heat sets in. But I didn’t quite make it today.”
Well, that answered that.
“I have lemonade.”
“That sounds wonderful,” I told her.
The kitchen was separated from the living room by a wide archway. She spoke to us as she assembled three glasses of lemonade. “I’ve been thinking about Calliente’s death. I remember Mayor Robb went into the house for a few minutes. I wonder if he could have seen something?”
Or killed the man himself, I thought.
Hal walked along a wall of built-ins, reading the titles on Cecily’s collection of hardcover books. “He insists he never went further than the laundry room,” my PI said.
I took the frosty glass Cecily handed me. “Thank you. This looks delicious.” She’d included a twist of mint and a slice of lemon on the rim, which was covered in sugar.
I tasted it and nearly swooned with pleasure. The sweet iciness was perfect for cooling down on a hot day. “That’s amazing.”
Cecily smiled. “I’m glad you like it. I’m kind of serious about my lemonade.” Leaving the room again, she returned with two more tall glasses, handing one to Hal. She took a seat in an old-fashioned wooden rocker with tie-on cushions. Like everything else in the home, it was pretty and comfortable. It was clear Cecily Addams liked nice things. But she seemed to put an equal amount of stock into comfort.
She looked up at Hal, who hadn’t taken a seat yet. “Please,” she said, giving him a smile. “Sit. I’ll get a crick in my neck talking to you.”
“Sorry.” He sat. “I was just admiring your book collection. You have a lot of the classics.”
Her face lit up. “I do. I love them. Today’s works are just so rushed compared to the classics. People knew how to take their time with a story years ago.”
“In all fairness,” I said. “In those days, readers wanted to take their time with a story too. With today’s hurry up so you can rush faster mentality, I’m not sure Jane Austin would be nearly as popular.”
Cecily laughed. “You make a good point.” She eyed Hal. “Obviously, you came to talk to me about something. Why don’t you just tell me what it is.”
Straightforward and seemingly without guilt. I was having trouble picturing Cecily as our murderer. But then, if she were the murderer, that would be exactly the impression she’d want to give.
6
“We have a witness who heard you threatening the victim before he was killed. We wanted to get your side of the story.”
Cecily paled, clearly surprised. “Witness?”
It was interesting that was the part she’d glommed onto from Hal’s statement.
“Who was it?”
Hal shook his head. “I can’t give you information about an ongoing investigation.” He smiled to soften his words. “Can you speak to the charge?”
Cecily stared at him a long moment, the sweat from her glass dripping onto the plush, cream and rose rug beneath our feet. Finally, she bowed her head. “Your witness is right. I did threaten Jonathan.”
“About what?” Hal asked.
“He was skimming money, overcharging the mayor’s office for the catering services. I told him either he needed to give me a corrected bill, or I’d make sure he never worked another catering job in this area again.”
“How’d you know he was skimming?” I asked.
She glanced quickly my way. “I have a source on his staff. Someone very reliable.”
Hal and I both stared at her, and she sighed. “I used to date him. We parted amicably and have remained friends.”
I had a suspicion who the friendly ex might be. “Prince?”
She twitched in surprise. “How’d you know?”
“We met him and Karinne last night. At Sonny’s Diner,” Hal said.
Cecily frowned. “Karinne?”
“The screamer from the crime scene,” I told her, raising my brows.
“Oh.” Cecily gave me a small smile. “That server woman. I didn’t know she was seeing Prince.”
Her question was probably meant to sound like a throwaway. A simple observation. But I heard the note of curiosity in it. “I don’t know if they’re seeing each other or not,” I said, shrugging.
When she realized I wasn’t going to expound on that, she nodded. “I didn’t take him at his word, of course. I’m not in the business of flinging careless accusations around. I contacted one of Calliente Catering’s references and encouraged her to be honest. The client I spoke to denied he’d overcharged her. But she did finally admit she’d heard rumblings from unsatisfied clients. Two of those clients were happy to speak to me about the company.”
“Do you think his bad business practices got him killed?” Hal asked Cecily.
“If you’re asking me whether the two clients I spoke to were mad enough to kill him, the answer is, probably not. They were understandably peeved about it. One of them reported him to the Better Business Bureau and the Attorney General’s office. But nothing came of either attempt to seek justice. They were mad and frustrated, but the amount of money he skimmed from them was only a few thousand in each case. Not enough to risk prison time over.”
“How about his employees?” I asked. “How does…did…he treat them?”
Cecily shifted in her chair, looking uncomfortable. “He treated them fine, as far as I can tell. Prince didn’t mention any mistreatment. Not from Jonathan.”
My brows rose at that little qualification. “But they were mistreated by someone else in the company?”
“What I’m going to tell you is a rumor, pure and simple. Please don’t treat it as anything more than that.”
Hal nodded.
“Jonathan has a fiancée. Pammie. I don’t know her last name. She runs the office and oversees the servers during events. Prince hates her, and apparently he isn’t alone.”
I didn’t remember seeing a woman running around managing the servers, and I told her as
much.
“That’s because she was gone by the time you arrived. I spoke briefly to her before the party. But at some point, she disappeared. I was looking for her right before the party started and nobody had seen her for several minutes. I never did see her after that.”
Hal and I shared a look. The fiancée’s disappearance was a giant red flag. Had she killed Calliente and then bolted?
“You say she ran the office. Is it possible she was the one overcharging clients?”
“I couldn’t say. It seems plausible.” Cecily smiled. “Bridezilla tendencies are their own special kind of madness.”
Hal checked in with Arno on our way to speak to the server known as Prince. “Arno, you have Joey and me. We just spoke to Cecily Addams.”
“The mayor’s assistant? Did you learn anything useful?”
Hal quickly filled him in on our conversation with Cecily. “We’re heading over to the Deer Hollow Motel to speak with Prince the dessert guy now.”
“Good. We’ve hit kind of a dead-end here. We only found one partial fingerprint on the knife block, and it’s not enough for an ID.”
“Nothing on the knife?” Hal asked.
“Wiped clean. The counter and block also appear to have been wiped. The partial we found was underneath the lip of the counter.”
“The killer wouldn’t have had much time to wipe the place down. Maybe he missed something else.”
“Yeah. I’m sending Deputy Sheppard out to have another look today. Maybe we’ll get lucky. Let’s touch base at the end of the day, and we can compare notes.”
Hal turned into the parking lot of the Deer Hollow Motel and parked in front of the office. “Talk to you then.” Disconnecting, he glanced at me. “I’ll talk to the manager. Do you want to wait here?”
I nodded, “I need to make a phone call.”
Watching Hal stride toward the end unit with a sign over the door announcing it as the office, I dialed Lis. She answered three rings later, sounding breathless. “Hey, girlfriend.”
“Hey. How’d your showing go?”
“Great. I just wrote up an offer. Cross your fingers for me that the seller takes it.”
“All my digits are crossed. It’s going to be hard to use my hands and feet, though.”
She chuckled. “You can uncross. It’s the spirit of the thing that counts.”
“Whew!” I said, grinning.
“You need help with something?”
“I do.” I hesitated, knowing that what I was about to ask her for would probably be a breach of her realtor’s code. “We might need to talk to Karinne’s husband.”
After dropping that bomb, I just let it sit there between us like a bad odor. I could almost visualize Lis wrinkling her nose. Finally, she said. “Can you ask Karinne to give you his number?”
“I can. And, I will. But if she won’t share…”
“Then I need the request to come from the police.”
“Will Hal do? He’s working with the sheriff’s office.”
She sighed. “I can make that work. But try not to have to ask me, okay?”
“I promise. Here comes Hal. I’ll talk to you later?”
“You’d better. I want to know how our investigation is coming along.”
I grinned. “Our investigation?”
“Bye, Joe.”
I joined my PI on the sidewalk.
“He’s in unit eight.”
Hal knocked on the door to number eight and I glanced around, noting the lack of cars and the unkempt feeling of the place. “They’re not exactly flush with business here.”
Hal knocked again. “I think your future stepdad’s new hotel is hurting them.” He grinned. “People inexplicably opt for clean rooms and stunning views over unidentifiable stains and cockroaches.”
“Imagine that,” I said, grimacing.
Nobody answered the door, but I heard a muffled thump from inside the room.
Hal frowned. “Did you hear that?”
I nodded.
Hal peered through the large window beside the door. The drapes were closed, but they gaped in the middle. He suddenly moved away from the window and positioned himself in front of the door. “Stand back!”
I got out of his way and he slammed a foot into the door, right next to the knob. The flimsy door splintered and slammed inward, crashing loudly against something behind it.
Hal was inside the room and running before I could even step through.
I found him hanging out an open window on the back wall. “Prince is running?” I asked, not believing it.
Hal pulled back inside, shaking his head. “No.” He nodded toward something on the floor between two full-sized beds. It took my brain a minute to register that it was Prince. “Whoever did that is running.”
I stepped toward Prince, but Hal eased past me. “Don’t touch anything. Can you call an ambulance?”
I nodded and stepped out of the room, calling 9-1-1. As I dialed, a small, white car came around the end of the building and hit the gas, squealing past me and barely slowing as it left the lot and barreled into traffic. The irate blaring of horns followed the car’s wild dash down the street.
“Idiot,” I said, shaking my head.
Hal came out a minute later. “He’s alive, though he’s got a pretty good graze on his head. The bullet is embedded in the wall over the nightstand.”
“What is going on?” I asked my PI.
He rubbed his forehead, looking perplexed. “I don’t know. But I think it’s safe to say the murder at Robb’s house wasn’t a simple crime of passion.”
7
Arno was standing in front of the big window behind his desk, staring out at the traffic speeding down the highway. He turned when we came inside. He’d been expecting us. Motioning to the two black leather chairs on the other side of his desk, he dropped into his own seat. “The plot thickens, huh?” He smiled, but the curve of his lips seemed pasted onto his weary face. It didn’t reach his eyes.
“How is he?” Hal asked. “I called the hospital, but they wouldn’t tell me anything.”
“He’ll have a heck of a headache and he’s expected to be unconscious for a while, but the docs expect him to live.” Arno leaned back in his chair. “You two probably saved his life. The assailant missed the first time, but he probably would have finished the job if you hadn’t shown up.” He frowned. “You’re sure you didn’t see anything?”
Hal shook his head. “Whoever it was slipped out the window in the back. There were no footprints I could follow and there are woods behind the motel. He must have ducked into the trees.”
“We ran plates on the cars in the lot, and they’re all accounted for. Whoever the shooter was, he or she didn’t park a car there.”
“That would have been too easy,” I grumbled. I thought of the small car speeding from the lot and gave myself a mental kick. “Actually, he might have. I didn’t make the connection at the time, but when I was calling 9-1-1, a car sped around the building and shot into the street. I just thought it was some punk being obnoxious. But now that I think about it, he wasn’t exactly driving a muscle car. There was no reason to act like a street racer.”
Arno perked up, leaning forward and grabbing a pad and pen. “What did it look like?”
I described the white car as best I could remember, even coming up with an additional detail. “There was a sticker on the back bumper. It was half torn off, but there was a silver swirl, and I could just make out the word Success. That’s all I remember.”
Frowning slightly, Arno asked, “Did you get a look at the driver? License plate?”
“The car was going so fast, my brain didn’t have time to register too many details. I’m sorry.”
“This will help,” Arno said. “At the very least, if we get a suspect, we can see if he drives a similar vehicle.
“What do we know about this Prince guy?” Hal asked the cop.
“Not much. He has no record. Not even a speeding ticket in the system.
He appears to be squeaky clean.”
“Is Prince his legal name?”
“Part of it,” Arno said. “Anthony Prince is thirty-six, lives in Bloomington, and has only worked for Calliente Catering for three months. He appears to be a hard worker. He’s worked his way up from serving non-alcoholic drinks to desserts in the short time he’s been there. Some of the other servers consider him a bit of a brown nose. He has apparently spent a lot of time sucking up to the owner.”
“That doesn’t sound like a guy somebody would want to take a shot at.”
“No,” Arno agreed on a frown. “It doesn’t. We didn’t find any sign of drugs or even alcohol in the room where he was staying.”
I thought about what I’d seen in the room the short time I’d been there. “He’s actually staying at the motel? I didn’t see any suitcases. And Bloomington is only half an hour away. Why wouldn’t he just go home?”
“There were clothes in the bathroom,” Hal said. “And toiletries. He was set to stay for a night or two at least.”
“You saw him at Sonny’s Diner with one of the other servers, right?” Arno asked.
“Karinne. I can’t remember what she told me her last name was. She was the witness you spoke to at the scene.”
“Karinne Magness. Did the two of them look like they were dating?”
I wasn’t sure. “If they were, the relationship was new enough that they were still awkward around each other.”
“Any idea what they were doing together?”
“Maybe they just wanted company for dinner. If they’re both here from out of town, that would make sense,” Hal offered.
Arno nodded. “I’ll look into both of their backgrounds again. I have a feeling they’re connected somehow. But on the surface, I’m not seeing it.” He glanced at Hal. “Would you mind talking to Calliente’s fiancée? I’m still mopping up the party people.”
“Absolutely.”
Jonathan Calliente’s fiancée, Pammie, was staying at the Fawn Hotel outside of town. As would be expected by the name, it was built alongside the Fawn River and boasted the fact that every room had a large window and balcony overlooking the churning waters of the Fawn.
