Traci Tyne Hilton - Mitzi Neuhaus 03 - Buyer's Remorse

by Traci Tyne Hilton

  “Surprise!” A group of about thirty men and women all turned, smiling at Mitzy and Alonzo.

  “Congratulations on your wedding!” a woman said coming forward. She stepped to the side and revealed a three level wedding cake, a bowl of punch, a tray of tiny sandwiches and a big platter of fried chicken. “What’s a wedding without a reception?”

  Then Heather stepped forward, smiling, “I’d like to share a few thoughts on marriage with you as you begin your journey together.”

  Mitzy panicked. She looked around the room at the smiling faces of middle-aged missionaries and couldn’t see a way to get out. She was holding Alonzo’s hand and squeezed it so tight her knuckles cried out. Alonzo dropped her hand. He stepped aside just a few feet and brought her a chair.

  She dropped into it and mouthed thank you.

  The next morning fifteen hung over women dragged themselves into the breakfast room at the inn. Carmella hadn’t put away the continental breakfast, even though it was almost 11. She pitied the girls. They were sick and starving. The bride looked horrid. She was green faced, with puffy red eyes. Deep lines etched her face; they didn’t look like smile lines this morning. And her roots were showing. Carmella had her job cut out for her today.

  When the girls had asked to keep the attic rooms for the rest of the week, there was no way Carmella could say no. But the bridal party and friends were showing wear. Carmella needed to brighten them up before today’s pictures. She was determined the first big wedding booking was going to succeed, despite the bedraggled group in front of her.

  Carmella carried a tray with tomato juice and bagels to the girls.

  The bride looked at Carmella with eyes crying for help.

  Carmella sat down next to her. “It’s okay. We’ll pull you together,” she said. “But tonight you’ve got to promise to sleep. Do you understand? No more drinking either. You are getting married tomorrow.”

  The bride nodded. Then she dropped her head into her hands.

  “It’s okay. Stick with me and you will be fine.” Carmella patted the bride’s back. She set the tray of tomato juice on the side table and headed back downstairs. She had another tray ready with water bottles, vitamins, and fresh fruit.

  Alonzo and Mitzy had driven all night so that they would be able to get into a police station in Portland as soon as they could.

  “I’ve got to get back to the job site,” Alonzo said.

  Mitzy’s mouth dropped open.

  “I know, but if I can get there right now, give some instructions and tell them that I won’t be back for a week, then…well…then I won’t have to go back for a week. I get there right away, put out any fires that popped up while I was gone and make sure they haven’t screwed the place up.”

  Mitzy nodded. She never wanted Alonzo to leave her again. She knew that wasn’t reasonable, but these weren’t reasonable times.

  “I’ll go to the worksite and then you take my truck. Get to the nearest police station and tell them everything you know. Then come right back here and get me. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir.” Mitzy had watched the weather change as they drove back over the mountains. The rain began as a dribble, but by the time they reached Portland it was pouring in sheets.

  “Unless you have a better idea?”

  “No. I get it. I wish we could go to the police together and then to your worksite though.”

  “That would take twice as long. Just do it my way.”

  Mitzy’s stomach was in knots and she was dizzy. They had napped all afternoon at the church and then hit the road. They hadn’t eaten anything. Alonzo hadn’t shared the job of driving, but despite that she had stayed awake and had been anxious almost the whole way home. Alonzo pulled into his worksite.

  “Let’s make it work, Neuhaus. We can get the job done.”

  “Go team,” Mitzy said in a dull voice as she switched over to the driver’s seat. One stop at the police station. That’s all it would take. Then she and Alonzo could sneak away together and leave all this ugliness behind them.

  Mitzy drove away with trepidation. She didn’t intend on following bad advice for the rest of her life. This once, yes, but not again.

  Alonzo unlocked the door to his trailer. He had to take care of the last of the work requisitions before he could leave for any length of time. Be that as it may, there was just one thing he wanted to do right now, and that was get Mitzy far away from Portland. He pushed the door to his office open.

  The Frog was sitting in his desk chair.

  “Pierre?” Alonzo said, scratching his head.

  “I’ve been sent with a message for you.” Pierre wasn’t dressed for work. He had on white pants and a funny plaid hat.

  “Okay.” Alonzo turned on his computer and flipped through his mail.

  “I think you should pay attention,” Pierre said.

  Alonzo turned to him. “How did you get in here?”

  “You need to back off of the Capet case. Do you understand?”

  “How did you get in here?”

  “If you don’t back off you will regret it.”

  “That’s fine. I don’t let regret bother me. How did you get in here?”

  Pierre stood up. “I’m done. I’ve delivered my message.”

  “That was a pretty pointless message and makes you look like you are more involved in this mess than you wanted me to believe.” Alonzo stepped back in front of the door. “Now tell me, how did you get in here?”

  Pierre pulled a key out of his pocket and set it on the desk, “Tell Mitzy to keep a better eye on that fancy purse of hers.” He crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Who sent you with a message?”

  “The boss.” Pierre’s eye began to twitch. He turned his head to the window.

  “It’s too small buddy. You’d never get out of there. Now what boss sent you with the message? Your crew boss? I doubt it. The union boss? Not likely. The murderer? That’s who I suspect. And who would that be? Who is the boss? That lady from the shop?”

  Pierre’s face blanched. He stepped to the right, toward the doorknob.

  “Fiona, right? That’s the boss? You are the hired thug and she’s the boss?”

  Alonzo set the mail down on top of the key to his trailer. “Did Fiona want you to give me that key back?”

  Pierre lunged for the stack of mail. Alonzo slammed his hand on it. “Not so fast. I’ve got a message for you to give The Boss.” Alonzo clenched his hand and drew back his arm. He pitched his fist into Pierre’s face.

  Pierre teetered on his feet. Before he could gain his balance Alonzo punched him in the face again.

  Pierre reeled back and landed against the wall. He held his hand against his nose. A thin line of red blood trickled down his face.

  Someone tapped on Alonzo’s door. Alonzo shook his fist out and opened it.

  It was Hector.

  “Your secretary said I could find you here,” Hector said.

  “What do you need?” Alonzo asked.

  “I tried to find Mitzy, but no one answered at her office.” Hector stood with his hands in his pockets, his head hung to his chest. He looked contrite.

  “Yes?” Alonzo turned his head and looked at Pierre. Pierre held a tissue to his nose.

  “I know Mitzy doesn’t approve of Trish and me. But that’s life. I’m still glad she’s looking out for Lara.”

  “What can I do for you, Hector?”

  Hector cleared his throat and stood a little taller. “I was going through Lara’s stuff at my place. Trish wants me to get rid of it all. I found this.” He held out a small book with an elastic band around it. “It looks pretty interesting, if you know what I mean.” Hector glanced at Pierre.

  Alonzo put the book in the back pocket of his jeans and nodded. “Can I call you if I have any questions?”

  “Do that. I think I can explain it.” Hector looked at Pierre again, “Do I know you?” Pierre turned his head away. “Lara was in some pretty deep stuff. It’s amazing she did
n’t bite it earlier.” He shrugged. “I’ve got to go.”

  “We’ll call you, man,” Alonzo said.

  Hector nodded and left.

  Alonzo turned back to Pierre. “Now about you. I’m calling the police and you are just sitting there, get it?”

  Pierre stood up and tried to weave his way to the door.

  Alonzo grabbed him by his shoulders and forced him into a chair. “You don’t get it.” He grabbed his walkie from the desk. “Hey Bruce, come to the trailer.” Then he switched to his cell and dialed 911.

  Mitzy sat in the waiting room at the police station and turned on her phone. She thought they would rush her in for new evidence, but the murder of Lara Capet had been interesting enough for the public at large to create a waiting line to talk to the officers on the case.

  Alice had sent a number of texts…Mitzy opened the picture first. She squinted at it to see if she could make out what it was. She could see a lipstick, a wallet and…a piece of something…her platter? Then she read the messages. Her platter was bouncing around inside of Fiona’s purse.

  Her turn came to sit with an officer and she pulled out her phone first thing.

  “This is my platter in Fiona’s purse,” she began. “Someone broke into my office, busted my platter and has been leaving bits of it all over town. And there are more of them in her purse.”

  The office looked at the picture and passed it back to Mitzy.

  She opened pictures of the greenhouses full of marijuana. “Neveah’s is a store that prides itself on selling local product, so why was she getting regular deliveries from Idaho? We went to the address and this is what we found.” She turned the phone to him.

  He raised his eyebrow. “That’s a lot of marijuana.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “How did you find that?”

  “Alice McNinch sells a line of her clothes at Neveah’s. She dug around in the recycling and found a bunch of boxes all tied together. One of them had a return address. She brought it to me. We were wondering how the employees at Neveah’s had so much money. Wouldn’t selling marijuana answer that question?”

  “How did you get from the return address to selling pot?” the officer asked.

  “First I googled it. The address is in the Magic Forest region of Idaho. That area has a problem right now with people growing these crops on government land. Then I drove there. Here’s the picture of the actual address.” She pulled up the picture of the house and showed it to him.

  He nodded and made a note.

  “If Fiona is selling drugs from her store, she might have a motive for murder.” Mitzy said.

  “She might. It would be worth looking into, but I have to say, it is kind of a stretch.”

  “I get it. But add this to the picture, according to David who works for Fiona at the shop, Fiona pays generous holiday bonuses. But Lara wasn’t satisfied with that. David implied Lara was pressing Fiona for more money. I think she may have been demanding extra money for silence.”

  “I admit I like your theory. But going from broken plates to drug money with no physical evidence won’t work.”

  “Then I’ll bring you physical evidence.” Mitzy put her phone back in her purse. “When I was in Idaho someone tried to kill me by running me off the road and then someone else held my friend up at knife point. Fiona is behind this, and I’ll get the physical evidence to prove it.”

  “I bet you will,” The officer said with a smile. “There’s a reason Backman told us to trust you.”

  Before Mitzy could go back and get Alonzo for the start of their honeymoon she had to get her physical evidence to the police. She was keeping her stash of broken platter pieces in her room at the inn. She climbed back into Alonzo’s pickup and drove straight there.

  Mitzy flew through the front doors of the inn and ran up the steps past the crowd of women in tulle. She opened her closet and dug through her suitcase. Somewhere in there were the bits of ceramic she had collected. She’d take them all in to the police station along with the Idaho address label and beg to get them fingerprinted. She was sure they’d find a match.

  She got to the bottom of the bag without finding anything. But maybe, she thought, maybe she had put them under the bed. She turned to the bed and got on her knees. She slid her long arm across the wooden floor, feeling for the small stash of evidence. She felt something soft and pulled her hand back. What was under her bed? She lifted the bed skirt and looked again, but only saw her slippers. She pulled back out and sat up on her knees. Where had she put them?

  She decided to try the closet again. She could hear the clatter of high heels on the wooden floor of the hallway. Then she heard her door creaking as it opened.

  “Looking for something?”

  Mitzy turned. Fiona.

  Fiona smiled. She held the doorknob with one hand. “Let me give us some privacy.” She shut the door. “I don’t think you will find what you want in the closet.”

  Mitzy brushed the legs of her pants with her hands as she stood up. She felt Alonzo’s keychain as she passed over it. She stuck her hands in her jeans pockets and gripped the keychain tightly. A girl’s best friend, when it came to self-defense.

  Fiona was here. Mitzy was pleased that she hadn’t been wrong, but what to do with her now? Mitzy could still hear the clicking heels and the tittering laughter of bridesmaids in the hall. She was alone with Fiona, but not entirely alone. That was a good thing.

  “I don’t think those girls are interested in what’s going on in here.” Fiona said. “Why don’t you sit down and we can have a chat. You’ve been learning all sorts of things about my business.”

  Mitzy crossed the room and stood in front of the mirror.

  Fiona followed her with her eyes. “I hope you don’t think you can sneak away from me, Mitzy. I am not dumb enough to let you get out.”

  Mitzy remained silent. Her laptop was behind her. It was opened and turned on. Ben hated it when she left her laptop turned on. She put one hand out, as though leaning for support, but she didn’t set it on the dresser. She set it on the keyboard of her Mac Book. The small computer woke up.

  She stretched her long fingers across the small keyboard and clicked the button to turn on the camera.

  “Get your hand off that computer.” Fiona flicked her hand at Mitzy. “Do you think you can email the police, you little fool? Not with me standing right here.”

  Mitzy moved her hand ever so slightly and clicked the film button. Then she held both hands out in front of her. She stayed right next to the computer, hoping Fiona would keep talking and looking toward the camera.

  “Lara was greedy, wasn’t she?” Mitzy said.

  “Ah ha. You’ve been talking to David.”

  “And Hector and Trish and all sorts of people who knew her. The consensus is that she was difficult to satisfy.”

  “She was a lot like you,” Fiona said.

  “Fiona, what are you doing here?” Mitzy spoke as clear as she could. She wanted to be understood on the video.

  “I’m here to take care of a problem. You know, problems come up in business sometimes. But without risk there is no success. I’m sure you believe it.” Fiona took a step closer. She spoke with fluttering hand motions. “Paying Lara more money was not an option in the end, and keeping her around was not a risk I could absorb. She had to go. Poor girl. There just wasn’t an alternative.”

  “Why did you use a rock? I can’t think you are strong enough to break her skull.”

  “Oh heavens, of course I’m not strong enough. But I don’t need to get myself messy, do I?”

  Mitzy was thrown by that. She had slated Fiona as someone who took care of her own dirty work. “But how could you know it would get taken care of if you didn’t do it yourself?”

  “A man takes the life, but the gun does the shooting. The gun can’t do the job if the man isn’t there.”

  “You were there when Lara was killed?”

  “Tsk tsk,” Fiona said. “You
, my dear, are a more complicated problem. What can be done with you? I suppose you assumed you could just force your way past me, if you wanted to. I am a small, older woman after all and you are, well you are rather large.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Mitzy said.

  “That saves me that effort. I appreciate it. I don’t suppose you are old enough to understand what ‘drink the Kool-Aide’ means, are you?”

  “I think I get it. Drink the poisoned Kool-Aide because your leader told you to. Self-sacrifice.”

  “Yes, that’s right. Well I’m glad. So when I say, you’ve already drunk the coffee, the pun won’t be lost on you.” Fiona waved to the coffee mug on Mitzy’s side table. “In fact, you drank it this morning.” She smiled, letting her yellow teeth show. “How are you feeling?”

  Mitzy’s stomach turned over. She hadn’t had any coffee this morning. She hadn’t been here at all.

  “I—” Mitzy covered her stomach with her hand.

  “I know. It’s hard to believe that it could end like this. You drink your regular morning coffee and then—poof, your life is gone. But everyone’s turn ends sometime. It’s just too bad about Alonzo. He seemed so excited to marry you.”

  Fiona didn’t know about the wedding, so she didn’t know about the trip to Idaho either. “You know a lot about me, Fiona.”

  “Yes, I’ve had my eye on you, ever since Lara made the offer on your house. It seemed to me that you could be trouble.”

  “You sound like my gradeschool teachers,” Mitzy stared at the coffee mug. “But how did you get poison in my cup?”

  “You are a creature of habit my dear. You take a cup of coffee every morning. You wander all over the inn with it, but before bed you always rinse it out in the sink, and leave it on the sideboard behind the dish soap. It was so easy to poison that I mistrusted my fortune, but when I watched you do it myself I knew it would be easy as pie.”

  “But…”

  “I know. It seems too easy, and it was. I took care of your cup last night while you slept. I see your empty cup sitting there by the bed. It worked like a dream.”