by Cat Chandler
“What? Why are you asking me?”
“Because you knew that Eddie kept a lot of his personal information on his phone, didn’t you?”
“So what?” Roberta’s lips drew back into a sneer. “So did everyone who worked here. Eddie was always saying his whole life was on that phone, so ask them your stupid questions.”
She threw the towel she’d been holding onto the counter and shoved her way past Jake. Matt casually stepped over and blocked her path. She glared up at him and did an about-face, only to see Mason Edwards standing at the other end of the counter.
Roberta whirled back to face Nicki, her eyes throwing daggers at the petite honey-blond. “I don’t have to talk to you, and you can’t keep me here.”
“You knew he kept the combination to the safe on his phone,” Nicki continued. “The phone that he accidentally left at home that day. The same day you left work early.”
“Because I had a date. I wanted to look nice for my date.” Roberta looked at the chief. “I don’t have to stay here. I’m going home. Tell them to get out of my way.”
Chief Turnlow kept his hands in his jacket pockets and shrugged. “I think we’ve had this discussion before. We either talk here, or down at the station.” He smiled at her. “And I hope you didn’t hang onto that phone, because I have a warrant to search your place and your car.” He studied her for a moment longer. “And your mother’s place. It seems she owns a white pickup truck. We’ll be checking that for any damage too.”
There was a gasp all around the room. Roberta went stiff and Nicki would have sworn the waitress had stopped breathing.
“Why, Roberta? Why would you hurt Eddie?” Maxie had a shaking hand on Alex’s arm and held onto one of Jenna’s hands with her other. Tears glistened in her eyes. “He was a nice man. And he never hurt you.”
“Never hurt me?” Roberta choked out a laugh. “Easy for you to say. You get everything. Me? I put ten years into that burger flipper and what does he tell me? That we’re through. He’s moving to Santa Rosa, opening another place, and it’s time for us to move on from each other.” She stuck her chin out and cast a glare all around the room. “Ten years. And I got nothin’.” She sniffed at the chief. “Maybe I trashed his place and took his cell phone. So sue me. But I sure didn’t kill him.”
There was a gasp and sharp squeak from Gordon who gave her a bug-eyed stare. “It was your idea. The whole thing was your idea. You even told me to mess-up Eddie’s office, so it would look like a robbery that went wrong.” He turned wide eyes on the chief. “She told me about Eddie buying that franchise, and that he was going to pay for it with a cashier’s check. She said the franchise said he had to use their accounting service, and Eddie was going to take his business away from me. Just like he’d dumped her.” He pointed a slim finger at the waitress. “She had a plan all worked out. But I wasn’t going to go along with it. Eddie wouldn’t do that to me. We’d been friends since grade school. But then Eddie started acting different, and I knew. Roberta was right.” He seemed to collapse within himself. “I didn’t mean to kill him. He wasn’t supposed to die.”
The chief walked over and put a heavy hand on Gordon’s shoulders. They were shaking so hard the chief’s hand trembled along with them. “Let’s go to the station and sort this out.” He nodded at Danny who crossed the room and took the trapped Roberta firmly by the arm.
“Shut up, Gordon,” Roberta yelled at the now sobbing bookkeeper. “Remember who did kill Eddie and shut your mouth.”
She was still screaming at all of them when Danny finally got her out the door.
After several minutes, Jake broke the silence. “I can’t believe they killed Eddie.” His eyes and mouth drooped together. “He was a nice guy. He gave them jobs.”
Matt walked over and gave Jake a firm pat on the back. “And he had good friends, like you Jake. And Jenna, Sam and Ben. Just not those two.”
Jake smiled but kept shaking his head as he made his way back to the kitchen.
Nicki blew out a breath of relief. The chief hadn’t told her about Roberta’s mom having a white pickup truck, but it hadn’t surprised her. When someone touched her arm, she looked up into Matt’s concerned eyes.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded but gave in to a sudden weakness in her knees to lean her head against his shoulder. He put his arms around her.
“You did good, Sherlock.”
“Thanks, Watson.” She raised her head and smiled at him. “You’re a great sidekick.” She kept her smile in place as she stepped back and turned toward all her friends who were clustered together around Maxie. “Well. I believe I still owe everyone a pork chop dinner.”
“Which we’ll have another night,” Matt stated firmly. “We’re going back to your place for a glass of wine while I send out for pizza.”
Tyler let out a whoop at that. “We’ll stop and get some beer. I think the Raiders are playing tonight.”
Mason frowned. “The Raiders? You’re kidding.”
Jenna stared at them. “Football after all of this? You’ve both got to be kidding.”
“Football and beer to decompress from solving a murder. Sounds like a good plan to me.” Tyler grabbed Alex’s hand and pulled her out of her chair. “Come on, honey. We have to make a beer run.”
Nicki smiled up at Matt. “I guess that leaves us the pizza run.”
He shook his head. “They can deliver. Let’s go home.”
Chapter Seventy-Six
“Now that Mason has arrived, we can call this meeting to order, and get on with the official erasing of the murder board.” Jenna grinned at everyone crowded into Nicki’s office and raised her glass of orange juice. “Since the case is solved, thanks to our number one investigator, Nicki Connors.”
Nicki blushed at the cheer that went up around the room. “The police solved it, we only helped.”
“By ‘we’ I assume you mean ‘you’,” Jenna insisted along with a roomful of accompanying nods.
“But I’ll be sure to let the chief know that you were happy to share the credit with the department.” Mason smiled. “You did an incredible job of putting it together.”
Alex raised her glass of sparkling water and tilted it toward Nicki as well. “Yes, you did. Taking a step away from the stamps and looking at the whole thing from a different angle was brilliant.”
“I agree, dear. I’d love to know what made you do that.” Maxie smiled before turning toward her husband. “But first we have some very good news.” Maxie beamed at her husband. “It seems that Eddie’s nephew doesn’t care at all about owning the diner, and he’s agreed to sell it for a very reasonable price, part of which will go to pay any outstanding debts, including the loan Mason gave to Eddie.”
“That’s great!” Jenna grinned back at the smiling Maxie.
“Thank you, dear. But we aren’t going to get the money right away. Mason has agreed to lend it to Jake, so he can buy the diner. He was a little intimidated to take it on without Eddie, until Suzanne agreed to help him. The two of them are very happy about the whole arrangement.” Maxie winked at Nicki. “Suzanne thinks they can arrange the hours to hold your cooking demonstrations there too.”
Nicki did a double take at that news. Gourmet cooking classes at a burger diner?
“But of course we can discuss that later. Right now, we all want to hear what my Mason learned from Paul this morning.”
Mason had just returned from the Soldoff Police Department, and everyone wanted to know what Gordon Twill and Roberta Horton had had to say. Especially Nicki. There were still a few missing pieces to the puzzle, and she was hoping Mason would be able to put them into place. When the former police chief simply smiled at his attentive audience, his wife wagged a finger at him.
“Mason Edwards, if you don’t start spilling the beans now, I’m going to march right to that town square and start making a gigantic bouquet of all those flowers you spent hours and hours planting. Not to mention that Matt has a plane to
catch, so we need to get right to it.”
Nicki grinned. Now that was a threat that she was absolutely sure would have myMason talking as fast as he could. Matt was right next to her, leaning against the desk. They exchanged a smile as Mason held his hands up in mock horror.
“Anything but that, honey.” Crossing the room, he placed a kiss on Maxie’s cheek before draping an arm around her shoulders and nodding at the faces turned in his direction. “Roberta hasn’t said much other than constantly repeating that she didn’t kill anyone. But Gordon can’t keep quiet, according to Fran.”
“Did Fran know what he was saying?” Jenna clasped her hands in front of her and leaned slightly forward. “Did he really kill Eddie for the money?”
Mason nodded. “He did. It seems Eddie was his only regular client in town, and losing his business to the corporate accounting office for Green ‘N Go would have been a major blow to him. He thought the money that he and Roberta were going to split between them was a kind of severance pay.”
“How did they even know Eddie was going to have that cashier’s check in his safe?” Matt asked. “That couldn’t have been an incredible coincidence in timing.”
“It wasn’t.” Nicki glanced at the chief. “Gordon said that Roberta told him about the money. And I’m guessing she also told him about Eddie’s plans, including paying for his franchise license with a cashier’s check, so all he had to do was keep tabs on his client’s bank account balance. When it dropped, Gordon knew Eddie had taken the money out.”
The retired chief smiled at her. “You’re right again. Gordon saw that drop, and paid a visit to Eddie, who told him about a special meeting he was having that night. It didn’t take much for Gordon to put two and two together. So he went to Roberta to put their plan into motion. Except there was one glitch.”
“The cell phone.” Nicki pushed away from her desk and walked over to look at the murder board. “I’ll bet she only intended to get the combination to the safe off his cell phone, but then discovered he’d left it at his apartment, which Jake said he had a habit of doing.”
Matt came up behind her and adjusted his glasses as he also studied the board. “So she stole the apartment key, left work early, and went to Eddie’s place to get the phone. And while she was there, trashed the apartment for good measure.”
“There’s no wrath like a woman scorned.” Ty nodded. “She probably trashed the place to get back at him for dumping her.”
Alex slipped her hand into his. “Which was Eddie’s downfall. He must have told her about his move to Santa Rosa for his franchising plan, and the cashier’s check, as his reason for the break-up.”
Maxie frowned. “What I don’t understand is why that representative from Green ‘N Go didn’t show up for the meeting that night?” She turned a wide-eyed look on Nicki. “Or did he, and he left when he might have been able to help Eddie?”
“No. He never came to the meeting,” Nicki said. “When I spoke to Mr. Bridgeton, he told me he’d received a text message late that afternoon from Eddie, canceling the meeting.”
“Which was sent by Roberta.” Mason gave his wife’s shoulders a gentle squeeze. “The chief found the cell phone and Eddie’s apartment key, along with a white pickup with a dent in its front grille, at Barbara Horton’s house. Roberta’s mom has been out of town for the last two weeks, so she didn’t have any idea what her daughter was up to. But she did confirm that Roberta had a set of keys to the truck.”
There was a long moment of silence before Ty stretched a muscular arm over his head. “Well, that wraps it up, I guess. Let’s erase the board and get a proper breakfast.”
“Except for one thing.” Matt smiled at Nicki. “You never answered Maxie’s question. Why did you suddenly start looking at this from a different angle?”
“Watching you sort the groceries into their proper food groups.” Nicki laughed when Matt gave her a blank stare. She glanced over at the rest of the group. “He was unloading the grocery bags, and he separated all the items into groups.”
“Groups?” Jenna gave Matt a strange look.
“Yes. He put the canned goods together, the meat together, and so on.”
Ty snorted and rolled his eyes. “That’s just anal, man.”
“It’s efficient,” Matt shot back.
“Which,” Nicki interrupted in a loud voice, “made me start separating everything we knew into their groups until three things stood out.” She raised a finger and pointed at the board. “A neatly folded jacket and a methodically trashed office, lots of money besides the stamps that wasn’t accounted for, and a violently ransacked apartment.” She stared at the board. “Two separate events connected by money.”
“Which instantly brought to mind the tidy Gordon and angry Roberta.” Maxie pursed her lips and nodded. “Very clever, dear.”
“He said he didn’t mean to kill Eddie.” Jenna’s soft comment had everyone going quiet. She tore her gaze from the board and looked around the room before settling on Nicki. “That’s what Gordon said. That he didn’t mean to kill Eddie. Do you think he was telling the truth?”
Nicki held her friend’s gaze. “I do. Eddie was hit from behind, so he probably never got a look at his attacker. I think Gordon wanted to be sure he had enough time to join Roberta at the restaurant, and the freezer was the only place he could lock Eddie up, since he didn’t know where the key to the basement was. Gordon must have thought that Eddie would wake up and someone would let him out in the morning. Which is why he left Eddie his 49ers jacket, folded up on that shelf next to him. So he could keep warm while he waited to be rescued.”
“But Eddie didn’t wake up before he ran out of oxygen, thanks to the dry ice he kept in that freezer,” Alex put in.
Jenna let out a huge sigh before she straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin. “I need to call Suzanne and let her know that I’ll be taking care of the flowers for Eddie’s memorial.”
“And I’ll be bringing cookies and pies.” Nicki smiled. “Suzanne wrote that in on my list of things to do for the cooking classes. Which fits in perfectly with the goodie basket I want to put together for Mrs. Sorenson. It was so nice of her to stop and help when I was run off the road. And to climb into that ditch to check on me at her age, was a remarkable act of kindness.”
“Yes it was, dear. But I’m sure the flowers were enough if you’re too pressed for time. I ran into Mary in town the other day, and she was thrilled with them.”
Flowers? Nicki blinked in confusion. “I didn’t send her flowers.”
“Matt did, of course. And he should have.” Maxie beamed at the red-faced editor standing beside Nicki.
When Nicki looked over at him, Matt hunched his shoulders and stuck his hands into the front pockets of his jeans.
“I appreciated her climbing into that ditch too.”
“Ahh.” Jenna’s wink only made Matt’s face go redder. “As long as you’re making confessions, you might as well tell her the rest of it.”
“Rest of it?” Nicki gave the suddenly smiling faces around the room a wary look. “What rest of it?”
Mason checked his watch. “Might as well get it over with, son. You have a plane to catch. You have ten minutes to get your explanation done, so you’d better go on out and do it.”
“The rest of us will wait here.” Alex grabbed onto Ty’s arm and pulled him back onto the sofa.
The fireman grinned at Matt. “Too bad. I wouldn’t have minded watching.”
Nicki narrowed her eyes on Matt who was now glaring at Tyler. “Watching what? And go out where?”
He turned his annoyed stare on her and grabbed her hand. “Come on. I have something to show you.”
Since her curiosity was now running high, she allowed herself to be pulled along as Matt headed to the hallway and then out the front door. He kept right on going until they were standing on the sidewalk in front of her townhouse. Parked at the curb was a shiny new SUV, its pearl-white paint gleaming in the morning sun. Nicki took
a quick indrawn breath. It was beautiful. She turned a dazzled and questioning look at Matt who was watching her closely.
“It's yours.”
“What?” She glanced over at the car and then back at Matt. “Mine? Matt, I can’t afford this.”
His jaw hardened, and he took on that stubborn look she was getting to know pretty well. “You don’t have to. It's a gift.”
When she started to protest, he raised a hand and covered her mouth. “Two things. First, a guy has to be able to sleep at night. I can’t do that if I’m worried about you getting stranded in some weird place, and I’m sitting eighteen hundred miles away.”
Nicki pushed his hand away as her lips twitched upward. “Eighteen hundred miles?”
“Eighteen hundred and thirty-two, to be exact, and I don’t want to hear about it.”
“Okay. And what’s the second reason? You said there were two.”
“When we were arguing about how much you don’t eat, you won that argument, and we agreed I could win the next one.” He pointed to the car. “This is the next argument.”
Her eyes followed the direction of his finger. “It is? You’re comparing a car with another egg and an extra piece of toast?”
Matt dropped his hand as his expression turned serious. “Take the car, Nicki. Please. I need you to have something safe to drive around in.”
Nicki stepped closer and put her arms around his neck. “I’ll consider it a loan and pay you back whatever I can each month. Deal?”
Matt’s hands went to her waist, but he still frowned at her. “Well, I don’t know about…”
He was stopped in mid-sentence when Nicki rose on her toes and pressed a long thorough kiss onto his mouth. When she finally leaned back, she smiled. “Thank you.”
Behind them, someone loudly cleared a throat. “I guess she liked the gift, son, and we need to get going if you want to make that plane.”
Maxie slipped her hand through her husband’s arm. “Unfortunately, he’s right.” She winked when Matt glanced over at her. “But I’m sure you’ll be back soon.”
