Beignets, Brides and Bodies

by J. R. Ripley

  ‘Sure,’ said Johnny. ‘Only we have to open it and take the screen out first.’ Johnny gave me a blistering look. ‘All without making a sound and I don’t think that’s poss—’

  ‘Shh!’ I hissed, dropping to my knees. ‘Someone’s coming,’ I whispered close to Johnny’s ear. I settled in beside him. From this angle we could see down the hall a bit. There was plenty of light coming from the front room now. Laura was silhouetted against the wall.

  ‘I’ll only be a moment,’ she called over her shoulder.

  I pushed away from Johnny and raced to the bedroom door. ‘Pssst!’

  ‘Oh!’ Laura gasped.

  ‘Everything OK?’ I heard Houston ask loudly.

  ‘Fine, just fine,’ Laura called back, though she sounded rattled.

  I pumped my arms at her, hoping she’d understand that I wanted her to keep her voice down. ‘It’s me, Maggie. Maggie Miller,’ I said as quietly as possible. Laura hung in the shadows near the powder room for a moment then came toward me.

  I backed away from the bedroom door, pulled her inside and shut the door behind her.

  ‘Maggie, what are you doing here?’ Laura’s hand went to her chest. ‘You about scared me to death.’

  ‘Me and Johnny were looking for clues as to Lisa Willoughby’s killer.’

  ‘Johnny?’ Laura appeared confused.

  Johnny popped up from behind the bed and I clapped my hand over Laura’s hand to smother her scream. Laura stared at Johnny, then at my hand covering her mouth.

  ‘Bufyoucamfbe,’ she began. I lowered my hand. ‘But you can’t be here,’ Laura said. ‘Houston’s staying here. He’s in the other room right now.’

  ‘We know,’ replied Johnny. ‘We’re trapped.’ He was looking at me when he said it.

  ‘You’ve got to help us,’ I said, grabbing Laura’s hand.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  I thought for a moment. ‘Distract him. Get him out on the patio. Better yet, take him up to your place.’

  ‘My place?’ Laura didn’t appear to like the sound of that.

  ‘That would be perfect,’ Johnny piped in, his head bobbing.

  ‘Fine,’ Laura relented after a moment. She shook her head as she said, ‘But I don’t like this one bit.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I gave her a squeeze.

  Laura headed for the door, resting her hand on the knob. ‘Give me five minutes.’

  We nodded agreement. I shot Johnny a thumbs up. He shot me something back. It wasn’t a thumb. We waited in silence for five minutes to pass and it felt like five hours.

  ‘Finally.’ I pressed my ear to the door. ‘Sounds like they’re leaving.’

  Johnny pirouetted to the door with all the grace of a doe. I had to admit, the guy had some moves. ‘The coast is clear. Let’s get out of here before Houston gets back.’ I followed Johnny to the door. He stopped dead in his tracks. ‘Leave it,’ he insisted. He was pointing to the laptop.

  ‘But it could be full of clues.’ I clutched the laptop tighter to my chest. ‘This computer could lead us straight to Lisa’s killer.’

  ‘And if we’re caught with the thing it could lead both of us straight to jail.’ Johnny blocked the front door. ‘Leave it, Miller.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said, letting out a surrendering breath. ‘I’m putting it back.’

  A minute later, we were on the road. I looked around, half-expecting to see Brad Smith spying on us, but there was no sign of him or his car.

  Ten minutes later I stopped at the gated entrance to Four Seasons.

  ‘What are we doing here?’ Johnny asked.

  The guard asked my name and my business. I jerked a thumb toward Johnny in the passenger seat.

  The guard nodded and let us in.

  I eased up into Johnny’s driveway. Outdoor lighting lit the palms, cacti and the front of the house, showcasing its magnificence. ‘Goodnight, Johnny. I think it’s time for you to sleep in your own bed, in your own house.’

  One house guest at a time was enough – more than enough – for me.

  ‘Fine.’ Johnny kicked open the door. ‘Your couch is terrible anyway.’ One of his legs tangled in a purse strap. He snarled, unhooked his foot and thrust the purses at me. ‘Why the devil do you carry two purses anyway?’ He tossed them on the empty passenger seat. ‘Goodnight, Miller.’

  I wiggled my fingers. ‘Give my love to Clive!’

  He started up the driveway alongside his beloved BMW. I put the Bug in reverse. Johnny spun around. ‘Wait a minute!’

  ‘What now?’ I sighed. ‘I’m tired. I have to be up early in the morning.’ Like every morning. It was one of the downsides to owning a beignet café.

  Johnny thrust his head through the open passenger window, staring at the purses. One red, one black. ‘Why do you have two purses, Miller? How do you have two purses?’ His jaw tightened. ‘You only had one when we left your house.’

  Sure, suddenly he’s Mr Observant. I pushed my tongue across my upper lip. ‘Uh, the red one was in the car already. It’s my mom’s.’

  He frowned. ‘You left your apartment with the red one.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. I meant the black one.’

  Johnny slitted his eyes at me. ‘You stole it, didn’t you?’

  My hands clutched the steering wheel and my foot held the brake pedal down. I stared straight ahead.

  ‘You took a dead woman’s purse.’ He shook his head, admonishing me. I could see his look of disgust from the corner of my eye.

  ‘Fine,’ I admitted. ‘You said to leave the laptop.’ I turned and faced him down. ‘You didn’t say anything about purses. Or anything else, for that matter.’

  ‘Miller,’ Johnny drew the surname out so far I thought it would break. The fingers of his right hand played against the hard plastic dash.

  ‘Fine.’ He threw the door open, lifted the purses off the seat and sat back down. He set the purses between us.

  ‘Listen, Johnny.’ I put my foot down. ‘I am not going back there. It’s late and besides, Houston might be home by now and—’

  ‘And nothing, Miller,’ snapped Johnny. ‘Stop talking and open Lisa’s purse. Let’s see what you’ve found.’

  TWENTY

  ‘You already owe me,’ Laura said with an accompanying wave of her hand. ‘What I went through last night.’ She sounded tired. Looked tired. There were bags under her eyes and faint red lines crisscrossed her eyes like Martian canals. H.G. Wells could’ve written a book about them.

  ‘I know,’ I replied contritely.

  Laura ran her fingers through her bob. ‘I mean, that guy Houston is all arms. I’d have been safer with an octopus!’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said for the hundredth time. ‘So are you going to do it or what?’

  Laura pouted and stared at me for several moments before answering. She smoothed the skirt of her pale yellow sundress. ‘Oh, brother,’ she said, shaking her head and slapping her hands atop her knees, ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I cracked a grin. ‘Besides, what’s the big deal? You’re only inviting Houston for breakfast. It’s not like I’m asking you to sleep with him or anything.’ I narrowed my gaze. ‘You haven’t slept with him, have you?’

  ‘Of course not!’ Laura blurted. ‘It was our first date.’ She sat with her left leg crossed over her right and her left foot kicking up a storm. ‘And I thought it was going to be our last date.’

  ‘Is he really that bad?’ Laura had never met my dead ex-husband, Brian, but he surely couldn’t be any worse than him.

  ‘No.’ Laura sighed. ‘Just not my type. And he moves too fast. I like to take things slow.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said with a grin, ‘nothing wrong with moving a little faster in the right situation.’

  Laura arched her brow. ‘Says the woman who’s been divorced for nearly a year, has no boyfriend and tools around Table Rock at the stately pace of five miles per hour on a pink Schwinn.’

  I scowled. I’d been b
ested. And the best thing to do in that situation is to change directions. ‘So, it’s settled,’ I said, lowering my voice conspiratorially. ‘You call Houston. Invite him for breakfast at Odel’s Diner.’ I glanced up at the clock behind the counter. ‘Let’s say nine-thirty.’

  ‘I suppose …’

  ‘Great,’ I replied. ‘Get a booth if you can. At least a table for four, so I can join you. I’ll just happen to come in. You see me, wave and invite me to sit with you. You hook him,’ I jerked my hand upward, ‘and I’ll grill him.’ I had a question or two for the late Lisa Willoughby’s brother.

  ‘What if Houston can’t make it? What if he wants to sit at the bar?’

  ‘Please,’ I waved a hand at her. ‘He’s a male, you’re a female.’ I wiggled my eyebrow. ‘Use your wiles.’

  Laura looked skeptical. ‘My wiles?’

  ‘Yeah, your wiles. You’ve got wiles, haven’t you?’

  Laura rose. ‘What I’ve got,’ she said, looking down at me, ‘are reservations.’

  I stood, picked up our mugs with one hand and laid my other on her shoulder. ‘Just make sure you get reservations for Odel’s at nine-thirty.’

  ‘Very funny.’ Laura nodded and headed for the door. ‘Wait.’ She stood in the open doorway. The bells tingled. ‘You never did tell me what you found in Lisa Willoughby’s purse.’

  ‘The usual girlie stuff. Makeup, checkbook, coin purse, tissues …’

  ‘That’s boring.’

  ‘Follow me.’ I led Laura to the storeroom and removed Lisa Willoughby’s purse from the drawer where I’d hidden it from prying eyes. The small clutch that had been found with Lisa’s body at the bottom of the stairwell had probably contained the essentials, like her driver’s license, car and house keys and lipstick. The larger purse I’d found held something more.

  ‘What’s that?’

  I smiled. ‘A little red address book chockfull of names.’

  ‘Not so boring.’ Laura fingered the cover. ‘So whose names are in it?’

  I thumbed through the pages – not that I hadn’t done so a couple of times already – and read aloud. Some entries were only a name or initials and a phone number; others included addresses, including one for Willow Willoughby, the recently deceased aunt in New Mexico. There were more men’s names than women’s, but I wasn’t sure if that meant anything. Clive and Johnny were in her book, separately and as The Hitching Post. So was Markie Gravelle of Markie’s Masterpieces along with the rest of the employees.

  Some names I didn’t recognize; others, like Cody Ryan, Samantha and Sabrina Higgins and the Robinsons (whose cake Lisa had been on her way to deliver when she’d been killed), I knew had been clients. The address book offered plenty of leads but I had no idea how I’d track all these people down, let alone get them to talk to me.

  ‘Don’t you think you should turn all this over to the police?’

  ‘If they wanted it, why hadn’t they taken it already?’

  ‘I don’t know …’

  ‘Wait,’ I said, not wanting to give her a chance to come up with a good answer. I needed some plausible deniability, after all. ‘I was saving this for last.’ I reached carefully into the reticule and withdrew my hand. ‘A Smith and Wesson thirty-eight-caliber handgun.’

  Laura gasped. ‘That’s scary.’ She pushed my hand down. ‘I wonder why she carried a handgun.’

  I shrugged and put the little gun back in the purse. ‘Who knows? This is Arizona. Lots of folks carry guns. It could mean nothing.’

  ‘Or it could mean she was scared,’ Laura said. ‘Scared of somebody.’

  I nodded. That’s what I thought, too.

  ‘So what do you intend to do with it?’

  ‘I haven’t decided.’

  ‘You should turn it over to the police.’

  I shrugged. ‘It was in her apartment. Like I said, I’m guessing they’d have taken it if they wanted it.’ I told Laura that I’d thought about maybe giving the address book to Brad and letting him dig around and see if he could make any interesting connections between the names and Lisa Willoughby’s murderer. I turned the book over in my hand. ‘Who knows? Her killer could be right here.’

  ‘Yeah, but what about the gun?’ Laura arched an eyebrow. ‘That thing’s dangerous.’

  I stuffed the Smith & Wesson back in the purse. ‘I’ll hide everything in my apartment for now. Stick it under the sofa or something until I can figure out what to do with it all.’ What harm could there be? Mom would never know it was there and the cat lacked an opposable thumb.

  Laura left and promised to meet me at Odel’s Diner at the appointed time. That left me just enough time to drop my four-hundred-dollar check off with Cosmic down at the Table Rock Visitor Center. What it didn’t leave me was enough time to transfer some funds to my checking account to cover that check.

  Oh well. I’d deal with that another time.

  Cosmic smiled when he saw me. Sure I’d be smiling too if somebody was about to hand me a four-hundred-dollar check.

  I waved the check in front of his face. ‘Who do I make this out to?’

  ‘Labor of Love Foundation.’ He pulled out a ledger and laboriously wrote out my name and the amount as I scribbled in the name of the foundation. ‘And don’t you worry, Ms Miller.’ He tapped his head with a long-nailed finger. ‘I remembered what you told me.’ He was smiling.

  I like smiles. We should all smile more. ‘What I told you?’

  ‘Yep, about Maggie’s Beignet Café.’

  ‘OK.’ I was glad he’d remembered. Now if he’d only remember to come and spend back some of that four hundred dollars there.

  ‘Yep. About Karma Koffee and Salon de Belezza.’

  ‘Right.’ Two of my worst enemies. OK.

  ‘Yep.’ He unrolled a schematic.

  I leaned over the counter and followed his finger. It was a drawing representing Table Rock Town Square. I noticed names and numbers scattered around the perimeter like spaces on a Monopoly board.

  ‘Gotcha a nice spot right here.’ His finger landed on A11.

  ‘Nice.’ I nodded. There was plenty of afternoon shade on that side of the square.

  ‘Yep. Right between Salon de Belezza and Karma Koffee.’

  Blood drained from my face. My mouth went dry. Yep, there was the Maggie’s Beignet Café tent, right smack between Salon de Belezza A10 and Karma Koffee A12.

  And I’d just shelled out four hundred bucks for the privilege.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I scraped my jaw up off the floor and hoofed it over to Odel’s Diner on Smile Street just in time to see Laura walk in with Houston.

  ‘Thank you, Laura,’ I whispered from the sidewalk across the street as she glanced over. I gave them a few minutes to settle in so that my showing up wouldn’t look too conspicuous, too much like a setup. Trina Odel met me at the door. She greeted the customers on their way in and rang the register on their way out. ‘Table for one?’

  I peered over her shoulder – pretty good crowd for a Thursday morning. I spied Laura and Houston at a four-top at the far side of the diner. ‘I see my friends.’ I waved. ‘I think I’ll join them.’ Laura was facing the door and spotted me right away. Houston had his back to me.

  Trina grabbed a menu from the stack at her station and led me to Laura and Houston’s table. Trina is the Odels’ daughter. Her mom runs the counter and her father runs the kitchen. Trina was a good decade older than me, which meant her folks were getting up there but they managed to stay active in the restaurant seven days a week.

  I couldn’t imagine how they kept up the pace. So far I’d been having a hard time sticking it out in the bakery seven hours a day, seven days a week. They probably put in ten hours a day each at the very least. I’d been in the diner several times. I waved to Mrs Odel who was waiting on customers at the long counter while Mr Odel manned the flat top fryer behind the window.

  ‘Why, Houston,’ said Laura, fluttering her eyelids, ‘look who’s here.’ Laura was no act
ress. That line sounded as stiff as a starched pair of poplin shorts.

  Houston turned.

  I laid on a smile. ‘Hi, mind if I join you?’

  Houston half-rose but I waved him back down. I slid into the empty seat facing the street. I like to watch folks pass by. Houston squinted at me. He was dressed casually in jeans and a knit shirt. ‘The beignet lady, right?’

  I nodded and held out my hand. ‘Maggie Miller.’

  ‘Houston Willoughby.’

  ‘I remember.’

  A waitress came by to top off their coffee and asked if I wanted some too. I said yes and a full cup was quickly steaming under my nose.

  ‘Who’s minding the café?’ Houston asked.

  ‘Aubrey. She’s great.’ The way things were going I might have to give that girl a raise. As we waited for our orders I dove into the questioning. ‘Any word on your sister’s death?’ There was no point beating around the bush.

  ‘I heard they let that guy go that confessed.’ Houston brushed the front of his grey shirt.

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘Just a nut, I suppose,’ quipped Houston. ‘You get those. Nut jobs.’

  ‘Yeah, you do.’ Especially in Table Rock. And if he thought Clive was a nut what would he think of Johnny Wolfe if he met him? ‘Did your sister have anyone special in her life? A boyfriend?’ A boyfriend with anger issues?

  The waitress dropped a three-egg omelet with whole-wheat toast in front of Houston, followed by two fresh strawberry-filled crepes for Laura and sourdough French toast for me. I poured a liberal dose of maple-flavored syrup over my toast from a plastic jug. I like my French toast to practically float in syrup – like a hovercraft over water.

  Houston dumped ketchup over his eggs. ‘Lisa had lots of boyfriends.’ He smeared the ketchup around, shoveled the lot into his mouth then swallowed. ‘No one special, though.’ He shrugged. ‘At least, not that I know of.’

  I nodded slightly. That seemed to be the popular opinion of Lisa Willoughby. What about Houston? Like sister, like brother? I wished I could ask him about the gun in Lisa’s purse but I’d have to explain how I knew about it.

  ‘I’m sure going to miss her. First Aunt Willow dies, then Lisa.’ His hand reached across the table and squeezed Laura’s. ‘It’s a good thing I’ve got someone to help me through this.’