A Deadly Inside Scoop

by Abby Collette

  The sun was shining on us and it did seem it might be a little warmer out than it had been the past few days. It was ice cream weather.

  “Where’s your sun visor?” I asked, pulling mine down. We were headed east, and the newly risen sun was beaming through the windows into our eyes.

  “It kept falling down.”

  “So?”

  “It was nerve-racking,” she said. “I just tore it out.”

  “Is that what those little wires are?” I pointed.

  “Yeah.” She glanced up at them. “They were for the lighted mirror.”

  “Did you think maybe, since it kept falling, you could get it fixed?”

  “It was broken, Win.” She said it like her actions made perfect sense. “I couldn’t use it.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “So why are we stopping at your parents’?” Maisie asked. “We don’t want to miss Danny.”

  “I don’t know that we’ll even see Danny”—Maisie started to balk—“even though I know that’s our plan,” I said. “But I want to check in with them and PopPop.”

  “Good idea,” Maisie said. “Keep them unsuspecting.”

  “I don’t think they would suspect me of going around playing amateur sleuth,” I said. “Especially with something this serious.”

  “That’s why we’re doing it,” she said. “Because it’s very serious.”

  “I know,” I said. “But I’d rather they not know.”

  “Don’t they think you could do it?”

  “You know my parents, Maisie. In academics, I’m an independent shining star. And even though they supported me one hundred percent in renovating and reopening the shop under my management, they still worry.”

  “My grandmother, not that I’m telling her,” Maisie said, “wouldn’t mind me playing sleuth at all.”

  “That’s because your grandmother likes to have her nose in everything,” I said.

  “I’m telling Savta you said that.”

  “Don’t tell her,” I said. “I’m truly sorry I said that out loud.”

  “Oh, but it’s what you were thinking?”

  “I plead the fifth.”

  “Oh!” Maisie’s eyes got big. “What about Lew?”

  “What about Lew?”

  “He might tell.” She gave me one of her all-knowing nods.

  “He won’t tell. I made him promise not to.” I glanced over at her. “Plus, I could tell that he thought I should do it. Even told me what to do and what not to do.”

  “That’s true,” she said. “And you can use that against him if he decided to spill the beans.”

  We pulled up in front of my parents’ house.

  “Okay,” Maisie said. “Don’t be long. We have to see what we can find out and be done by the time you need to open the shop.”

  “I got it,” I said, and hopped out of the car.

  I strolled up the walkway to my parents’ house, I’m sure at a much slower pace than Maisie would’ve liked. But I was nervous. Lately when I’d seen my father, I’d started to cry. There had been too many people at our family dinner to get misty eyes, but I didn’t want to cry again. I was sure that was nothing Miss Marple or Maisie’s Agatha Raisin would do.

  And I didn’t want to give away what I was doing either. I didn’t want them to worry. Lew had said it right. I was the baby. And a girl. After three rambunctious boys, my parents had been so proud and happy to have me. And cautious. They still were.

  “Morning!” I called out as I opened the door.

  “We’re back here,” my mother answered.

  I walked down the center hallway, not bothering to take my coat off. I wasn’t sure Maisie was giving me that much time.

  “What are you guys doing?” I asked when I got to the back.

  My parents and PopPop were sitting in the breakfast nook.

  “No,” my father said.

  “Nothing to worry about,” my mother said.

  “We’re talking about getting your father a lawyer,” PopPop said.

  “Dad,” my father said, clearly perturbed with his father.

  “She needs to know,” PopPop said. “Everyone’s going to know sooner or later.”

  Those non-sleuth-like tears started welling up in my eyes again.

  “Did something else happen?” I asked. “Is Detective Beverly wanting to arrest you just because you work with succinylcholine?”

  All three of them turned and looked at me.

  “Looks like she might already know,” PopPop said.

  “I overheard him questioning you the other day,” I said. “I came over. Through the back.” I motioned my head toward the mudroom. “I heard you three talking.”

  “Well, it’s nothing for you to worry about,” my mother said.

  “I don’t see why you think you can’t tell me things. I’m almost thirty years old. I lived in New York. Not the safest place in the world. You were fine with that.”

  “We worried about you every minute,” my mother said. “I went through more hair dye than I ever have.”

  “We can’t help but worry about you, Pumpkin,” my father said. “But I don’t want you to worry about this. Or me. Everything is going to be fine.”

  “Well, I can’t help but to worry, Daddy.” I held out my hands. “I love you. And you should tell me what happens with you. You tell the boys.”

  “That’s different,” my mother said.

  “No, it’s not,” I said, shaking my head vigorously. “And I can help.”

  “You can’t help,” my father said. “Plus, there’s nothing to worry about right now.”

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  This time the three of them looked at each other.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “Detective Beverly just wants to question me again,” my father said.

  “At the station,” my mother added.

  “Right,” my father said. “And we were just thinking if I should get a lawyer to go down there with me.”

  “Are you scared, Daddy?” I asked.

  He chuckled. “No, Pumpkin. I’m not scared. No reason to be.” He looked at me. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “I know you didn’t,” I said. “And I’m going to make sure that Detective Beverly knows it.”

  “What is that supposed to mean, Bronwyn?” my mother said. That was her I-mean-business voice.

  Oops, I thought.

  “Nothing,” I said. “And I have to go. Maisie is waiting for me out front.”

  “Don’t try doing anything,” my father said. “We’re going to take care of this.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Then why did you say you were going to make sure that detective knew your father hadn’t done anything?” my mother said. She stood up from her chair.

  “I just meant,” I said, “that since I am the only eyewitness, I would let him know, again if necessary, that I didn’t see Daddy that night.”

  “Yeah, well, make sure that’s all you say to that man,” my mother said. “And why are you out so early? You don’t need to make any ice cream this morning. Riya and I made enough yesterday.”

  I hated lying to my parents.

  I drew in a breath. “I have a business to run. A family business.” Not a lie.

  “Okay,” Mother said. “I’ll be down later.”

  I turned to walk away, then turned back. “Daddy, when do you have to talk to Detective Beverly?”

  “Either this afternoon or tomorrow. I told him I’d have to let him know my schedule at the hospital. Why?” he asked. “I don’t want you coming down there.”

  “Not even to show my support?” I asked.

  “No, Pumpkin. I already know you support me.” He got up, came over and gave me a hug. “And that means mo
re to me than you’ll ever know.”

  I gave each of my parents a kiss on the cheek before I left, and told them I loved them.

  * * *

  - - - - -

  “Okay,” I said, hopping back in the car. “Let’s go.”

  “Everything okay in there?”

  “No,” I said. “And we need to find out who killed Stephen Bayard before it will be.”

  “What happened?”

  “My father is going to call a lawyer to go and talk with that Liam Beverly.”

  “For what? I thought he already talked to him,” she said.

  “This time he wants to talk to my father at the station.”

  “That can’t be good,” Maisie said, visibly shaken by the news. Even her little curls on her head were trembling.

  “It’s not good,” I said. I looked at her. “Well, are you going or not?” I gave her knee a push as if that would move the gas pedal. “Let’s go. We’ve got a killer to catch.”

  Maisie drove the few blocks over to Danny Clawson’s house like we were going to a fire. I had to hold on as she hit all the bumps and potholes that were typical in the streets of Cleveland with its shilly-shally weather.

  “We should’ve brought the Cheetos,” Maisie said. After driving past it a couple of times, we parked a few houses down and stared at the house. “Because what are we supposed to do while we wait?”

  “This does seem rather silly,” I said. “We watch the house. We watch him come out of the house.” I glanced at her. “That helps how?”

  “Murderers always do things to give themselves away,” Maisie said. “That’s what we’re watching for.”

  “Let’s hope that if he is the murderer, he hurries up and gives himself away,” I said. “I don’t know what that Detective Beverly is thinking and I don’t want him doing anything to my father.”

  “We’ll catch him doing something,” she said. “I’m sure of it.”

  “Good, because I’m thinking that’s him right there.”

  A man was coming out of the house we’d determined had belonged to Dan Clawson Sr. before he took up residence at a nursing home. We hadn’t been able to find a picture online for Danny. Not on Facebook, LinkedIn or the prison inmate locater we had used to find Stephen Bayard.

  This guy was tall, but he walked with his shoulders slumped and head down. He took measured, pointed steps, barely letting his heels touch the ground as he moved.

  He wore a plaid hunting cap, a brown corduroy winter jacket and canvas sneakers. I hoped he didn’t wear those when he was out shoveling snow.

  “That has to be him,” Maisie said.

  He walked down to the tree lawn and put the trash he was carrying in a plastic bag into the trash can that was parked there, then disappeared around the side of the house.

  Maisie put her hand on the door handle. “We should go talk to him,” she said.

  “What happened to watching him?” I asked, reaching over to grab her hand if necessary.

  “What do you mean? We decided to talk to him.”

  “We decided that we would try,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean we ambush him at his house to do it. Only if the opportunity presents itself.” I could read the look of frustration in her eyes. “Anyway, we can’t now.” I pointed. A car was pulling out of the driveway. “I’m thinking that’s him.”

  “Okay, we follow.” It was a half question, half statement. But I knew she was ready to go.

  “Yes, Maisie,” I said. “We follow.”

  And she took off. Red lights, babies, children and old people beware!

  * * *

  - - - - -

  “Why are we hiding?” Maisie asked. I still had a tight grasp on her arm. She had that same look of determination she’d had the whole drive over.

  We were at the Falls Park Senior Complex, standing behind a wall. It was where Danny Clawson—although we had yet to positively identify him—came after he’d made two stops. Neither stop, however, to the chagrin of Maisie, was to a Home Depot.

  His first stop had been to the bakery on South Franklin Street and then he’d gone to the CVS on Plaza Drive. Both times he’d come out of the store with a single plastic bag. He climbed back into his old brown Jeep, never lifting his head, and each time I’d had to restrain Maisie from swooping down to browbeat him with the myriad of questions she had come up with while we were tailing him. His last stop was where we were now.

  Falls Park was a combination of assisted living, senior rehab and nursing home. I believed it to be the one where Dan Clawson resided, although, as it were, we were now too busy hiding to ascertain the truth of the matter.

  “We’re standing here because I don’t want her to see me,” I said. “She’ll think I’m spying on her.”

  “Who is ‘she’?” Maisie asked.

  “Glynis Vale.”

  “And who is that?” Maisie said a little louder than I cared for her to, while at the same time popping her head out to get a peek at her.

  “A suspect.”

  “She’s not a suspect,” Maisie said. “We only have two suspects. Ari Terrain and Danny Clawson.”

  “I forgot to tell you about this one.”

  “How could you forget?” she asked.

  “Because we decided that the killer had to be a man.”

  “Is that something else you’ve changed without telling me?” Maisie asked.

  “No,” I said. “But look where she just went.” Maisie popped her head back out to see, and I had to jerk her back. “I didn’t mean that literally.”

  Glynis Vale, dressed in cobalt-blue scrub pants and a white scrub shirt that had pictures of stethoscopes, thermometers and Band-Aids on it, had appeared not long after Danny came in. She pushed a little medical-like cart down the hallway and stopped right at the doorway that Danny had disappeared into. She’d sauntered in and had been in there ever since.

  “Amateur sleuths aren’t afraid of being caught snooping,” Maisie said. “They just make up a story and wiggle their way out of it.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that was your attitude when Althea caught us in Ari’s office.”

  She gave me a look that said that was the way it was supposed to be.

  “We’re not on television,” I said. “There’s no guarantee that we’d come back for next week’s show.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “This is real life, is what I mean. Danny and that woman”—I pointed around the corner to where they were—“might just be murderers who might just kill us, too, if they find out we’re onto them.” I gave her arm a yank and pulled her behind me, going the opposite way. “We have to be careful.”

  “Where are we going?” Maisie cried as I dragged her out the door.

  “To regroup.”

  I marched her out to the car and made her get in it.

  “We need to think,” I said as we sat inside of it.

  “We need to ask questions,” Maisie said. “And we can’t do that from here.”

  “Things have changed and we need to figure out what we want to ask.”

  “What has changed?” Her eyebrows went up and her hands went out. “And who exactly is Glynis Vale and how is she a suspect?”

  I explained to her who Glynis Vale was. When I let her know how she was a liar and that her son had appeared by the falls at the same time the dead man did, she calmed down by at least fifty degrees.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about her?” she asked.

  “I told Detective Beverly and he dismissed it. And then, like I said, we decided the killer was probably a man.”

  “Did we change our mind about that?”

  “No. Not necessarily. But if Glynis Vale knows Danny Clawson and she works at a nursing facility, maybe she was the supplier of the succinylcholine.”

  “Oh yeah,” Mai
sie said. “They were in it together.”

  “Right.” I shifted in my seat to face her. “Didn’t you say that if we followed Danny he might lead us to his source?”

  She nodded slowly.

  “And that the murderer always does something to give himself away?”

  She nodded slower.

  “Well, maybe he just did that.”

  “And now we need to decide what to do next.”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “Why would Glynis want to kill Stephen Bayard?” Maisie asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “We have a motive for the other two suspects.” I studied my fingernails as I clicked them together. “Maybe”—I wanted to try this theory on for size—“Glynis didn’t have a grudge against Con Man Bayard at all. Maybe she did it for Danny.”

  “Because she loves him and will do anything to help him, including exacting revenge on the man who ruined his life.” This time Maisie was nodding at her own conclusions.

  “Oh brother,” I said, and rolled my eyes. “You do watch too much TV.”

  chapter

  THIRTY

  Maisie and I determined we’d have to find out more about Glynis Vale. We decided we’d watch her—going with Maisie’s theory that guilty people always do something to tell on themselves.

  Although, somewhere down deep, I hoped that wasn’t true, because then my family would know that I’d lied to them.

  I had a hard time convincing Maisie that we needed to first just watch what she did. She thought that would take too long to get to the bottom of everything.

  “Well, if you’re not going to talk to her, how will we find out if she did it?” Maisie had asked.

  “What are we supposed to ask her?” I asked. “We found out a lot just watching Danny.”

  “We need to ask her something,” Maisie said. “Maybe we could get her to confess.”

  “Or maybe we would just make her mad and she wouldn’t say anything,” I said.

  “Okay. So we’ll follow her and watch her.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, after that,” she said, “we’ll figure out what we’re going to ask her.”

  Maisie wasn’t giving up.