“I might be saving her life,” Maisie said.
“And Ari might kill you for doing it.”
“I’m not afraid of him.”
“You’re not? Even though you think he killed someone?”
“I’ve got Riya on my team. That makes me practically invincible.”
“Well Riya’s not here.” I tugged at her to get her back to the task at hand. “Oh. Did I tell you that I found the puppy?”
“What puppy?” she asked.
“The one Stephen Bayard had when I met him.”
“How did you find it?”
“It was in Glynis Vale’s car.”
“No,” she said, her eyes big—that got her attention diverted from Ari and Althea. “Get out of here.”
“Yes,” I said. “Now, how did that happen?”
“Glynis is the killer.”
“Doesn’t take much for you to jump ships.”
“How did you see the dog?”
“She was at the grocery store. We’d stopped there so Savta could pick up a few things before we went to question Dan Clawson.”
“Wait! What? I’m missing something here.”
I grimaced.
I’d been busy that day and the day before and hadn’t caught Maisie up on the time I’d spent sleuthing with my grandfather.
“If you promise to work while I talk, I’ll tell you.”
“I’m working,” she said, and picked up a stack of the small plates. “Start talking.”
I told her everything. I started with what I’d found out on the internet about the robbery, and ended with what Mr. Clawson said about his practically being a willing participant to Bayard’s illicit activities while we were at the Falls Park Senior Complex.
“Oh my.” She was standing there slack-jawed as I ended my telling of the events.
“I thought you were going to work while I talked.”
“I’m too stunned to move.” She leaned against the wall like she couldn’t stand on her own. “Win, when were you going to tell me all of this?”
“Tomorrow,” I said. “When we picked the investigation back up.”
“Oh my goodness,” she said, spreading her fingers. She shook her hands like she was trying to get something off them. “I have so many questions.”
“Well, you can’t ask them now.”
“I am going to ask them now because if I don’t I might burst,” she said. “You may not answer them, but you can’t ignore them.”
“Argh.” I looked at her. “Let’s slice cake while we talk.”
I knew there was no stopping her. I’d be serving cake with a hundred or so people in the room and she’d still be trying to ask me questions. I pulled out my ten-piece slicer and handed it to Maisie. “If you stop slicing, I stop talking.”
“Deal,” she said.
I rolled my eyes. I didn’t know why I made that deal with her. She hadn’t kept the one we’d made immediately before that one. “Okay, first question.”
“What did Stephen Bayard keep in the back at Mr. Clawson’s?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think Mr. Clawson knew.”
“Was it what was stolen the day of the murder from Mrs. Cro?”
“Oh.” I said the word in slow motion, and this time I was the one who stopped working. My mouth still in the shape of an “O,” I was at a loss for words. I had forgotten there’d been a robbery that day at the Flower Pot.
“Maybe it was the succinylcholine and all the other drugs,” Maisie said, her voice taking on a scary-story tone. “From the robbery. Maybe he went there to get it back.”
I hadn’t ever taken the time to put all the information I’d gathered together. Not that I would have thought the conversation with Mrs. Cro was part of our investigation. But it made sense that Stephen Bayard or someone who knew that he kept things in that safe broke in to get something left there. And it made sense, if Stephen Bayard was David Niven, the man who orchestrated the LaGrosse Warehouse robbery, that he might have stashed something from that heist there.
“He didn’t get it and then inject himself with it,” I said. “That’s not your conclusion, is it?”
“No. No.” She shook her head. “Someone else could have,” Maisie said. “Someone who knew it was there—”
“And brought it along with a needle that night.” I finished her thought.
“Ari said he worked on a job before with Stephen Bayard, didn’t he?” Maisie said.
“I can’t remember.” I was too nervous and my brain synapses were slow firing. “But I do remember him saying he wasn’t going to work on another one with him.”
“So you know what that means.”
“What?” But then I knew right away what she meant and filled in the blank. “Ari had been on the LaGrosse job,” I said.
“Right,” Maisie said.
“Stephen Bayard probably thought he could force him to do it. But Ari wasn’t having it.”
We both turned and looked at Ari. He had gone back to working and Althea was off to the side watching him.
“So, instead,” I said, “Ari killed him.”
“Finally!” she said, and palmed my forehead. “You get it. Ari is the killer.”
“What about the dog?” I asked.
“What about the dog?” she asked.
“How did Glynis get the dog?”
We stared at each other. Trying to think.
“Maybe . . .” Maisie started, but said nothing else.
“Maybe,” I said, “it was her dog in the first place. Maybe that was what the boy was chasing that night. The dog. He saw Stephen Bayard with the dog and he went to get it back.”
Maisie’s face frowned up. “Then the boy would have seen who killed Stephen Bayard, don’t you think? And Detective Beverly wouldn’t have asked you about the dog if he knew its rightful owner.”
“It might be why Glynis Vale lied and had her adopted son lie in the first place,” I said. “Or maybe the police didn’t find out until after Ms. Devereaux let them into the B and B and they saw the dog collar with the phone number.”
“And they called it,” Maisie said in agreement.
“Right,” I said.
“That couldn’t be right,” she said, her face now turning to one of disagreement.
“Why?” I thought we’d figured out another piece of the puzzle.
“Because you’d just left Ms. Devereaux when you went straight to the grocery store, right?”
“After we picked up your grandmother.” I nodded my agreement.
“How would they have had the time to come over, secure the crime scene, bag the evidence and call Glynis Vale to let her know her missing dog had been with Stephen Bayard?”
“I don’t know,” I said, my words sounding a bit more fractious than I meant them to be.
“And where was the dog all this time?”
“I don’t know. The dog pound, I’d guess.”
“If he really took it there in the first place,” she said. “You said when he left he went in the other direction.”
“Still, the dog could have been there and no one knew who brought it in or who it belonged to. No collar, remember?” At the side of my neck, I tugged on an imaginary leash.
“It wasn’t enough time.” Maisie shook her head in opposition.
“You know,” I said, “I don’t know about your timeline, because I don’t know about all that bagging evidence stuff, so I couldn’t say how long it would take.”
“But you have to admit that she had that dog pretty quickly after you left the bed-and-breakfast. I mean, Ms. Devereaux even went back to the store.”
“So?”
“So she would have had to call the police and go back and let them in, right?”
“Yeah . . .�
� I looked at Maisie. “That is true. And that’s not—”
“Enough time,” Maisie finished my sentence.
“So what do you think?” I asked. “Glynis got the dog from him when she killed him?”
“Let’s call.”
“What?”
“The phone number that was on the collar. You took a picture of it. Let’s call it.”
“No.” I shook my head vigorously.
“Why?”
I swallowed hard. “Okay,” I said hesitantly. “But what if the police have that phone tapped?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Maisie said, and took my phone from me and put in my code. I could hear the camera on her phone going off. “Why would the police do that?”
“Because now they’re thinking like we’re thinking.”
“Who? Detective Idiot?” Maisie asked.
“He’s really not,” I said. “I just agreed with you calling him that because he was being mean to my father.” I swiped my hand across my forehead. I was standing next to a cart that was set at below freezing temperature and I was sweating.
“What’s a phone call?” She held up my phone. “It’s no big deal.”
“Stop.” I took my phone from her. “Let’s think. There is another way to find out if he knew Glynis.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he . . .”
“He what?”
“She! Maybe she was his wife.” A light bulb went off in my head. “You know what?”
“What?” she said as if she was listening to a scary story.
“That dog’s name was Blake.”
She gave me a look as if to say, “So what?”
“Blake. Like Blake Edwards. The guy who wrote and directed the Pink Panther movies.”
“Oh, wow.” Maisie’s eyes got big. “So that puts Glynis in on this whole Pink Panther charade thingy.”
“Yep,” I said, nodding. “Mrs. Nivens. From the newspaper. And according to O,” I said, “we should be able to prove that with a quick check of marriage records.” I shook my phone.
“Only if they got married in Ohio,” she said.
“You should be able to look it up anywhere they got married,” I said.
“Are we going to go through every state’s records?” Maisie said. “That could take years.”
“No, it wouldn’t.” I searched the web on how to get marriage records. “Okay, you go to the probate court records,” I said, announcing my search result out loud.
“Oh my goodness,” Maisie said. She starting pushing up and down on her toes, anticipation bouncing in her body, looking as if it were ricocheting around.
“Hold on,” I said. “I just have to put the names in here. Wait. Okay. Last name. B-A-Y-A-R-D. Now the first name. S-T-E-P-H-E-N.”
“Too late,” she said.
“Too late for what?” I said, and pressed submit before I looked up at her.
“I called.”
“You called?” I screeched. “How?”
“I took a picture of your picture,” she said. “I got the number.” She turned the phone so I could see. “Don’t worry, I dialed *67. Now shush, it’s ringing.” She looked at me. “You know Glynis’s voice, right?”
“This is crazy, Maisie.”
“Hey, somebody else’s phone is ringing,” Maisie said. I looked at her and she nodded over toward Ari’s area, where his people were working. Walking right past them was O.
“This couldn’t get worse,” I said. “Hang up before O gets over here and finds out what we’re doing.”
“That’s where the phone is ringing,” Maisie said. “Right where he is.”
Then someone picked up the phone.
“Hello?” I could hear the voice on the other end.
Maisie took my arm and started shaking it. “Oh my God! Oh my God!” she mouthed. “Look who picked up!”
“Hang up! Hang up!” I said in a strained whisper.
“Did you see that?” she said, pressing the end button.
“I saw that,” I said, then glanced down at my phone. The marriage license record had come up. It showed that on August 1, in Cuyahoga County some twenty years ago, Stephen Bayard had married the same person who had just picked up Maisie’s call.
Althea Quigley.
chapter
FORTY
My phone rang and Maisie and I almost jumped out of our skins.
“Oh my God!” I said, and put my hand over my heart. It was pounding under my apron.
“Who is it?” Maisie asked in a strained whisper, like the person on the other end could hear her asking.
“PopPop,” I said, looking at the phone. “Geesh,” I said with a nervous chuckle, “that scared the stew out of me.” I tried to steady my hand as I pressed the button on my phone. “Hi, PopPop.” Still a tremor in my voice.
“You okay?” he said.
Couldn’t get anything past him.
“Yep.” I swallowed down the jitters, then stole a glance at Althea. “Thought I had turned my ringer off. The phone scared me.”
“I brought the business cards you ordered.” Knowing I was fine, he moved to the matter at hand. “They came after you left.”
“Oh. Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”
“Well, don’t you want them?”
“Oh! Y-yes.” I fumbled my words. “Of course I do, PopPop.” I chuckled. “Sorry, just a little rattled.”
“Okay, where are you?” he said. “I’ll bring them to you.”
“I’m at the University Center.”
“I know that,” he said. “What floor?”
“Oh, no, PopPop. I can run down and get them. No need of you trying to park and come up.” I remembered how all the spaces were marked “Reserved.”
“I’ll wait for you.” He didn’t even say “Bye.” Just hung up. It was what he always did.
“Being in the same room with a killer,” Maisie said, “is quite unnerving.”
“You’re telling me,” I said. “I have to go downstairs and get the business cards from PopPop.”
“What are we going to do about—” She jerked her head a few times toward Althea.
“Good question,” I said. “We should call Detective Beverly, but—”
“Would he believe us?” We said it at the same time.
“Hi.” It was O. He’d made it over to us after stopping to talk to Ari. He just seemed to know everybody. “What’chu two up to?”
“Nothing,” we said. We huddled together, our eyes trained across the room.
He swung around and looked that way. “It smells good over there.”
I gave him a polite smile.
“I thought I’d check in on you guys.” He nodded at the dessert cart. “Seems you’ve got everything under control.”
“Uh-huh,” Maisie said.
I smiled again.
“Okay,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“Why do you think something is going on?” I hit Maisie and pointed at the cart, telling her to do something. We could at least act as if we were working. “I was just on my way downstairs to get something from my grandfather.” I untied my apron and pulled it over my head, my eyes still watching Ari’s area.
O swung from the waist again and looked toward Ari and his waitstaff.
“Did Ari do something to you guys?” He squinted his eyes and tilted his head. “Did he say something off to you?”
“No,” we said.
“Then what?” His face dropped the confused look. “Wait. Don’t tell me you figured out who killed your Mr. Snowman? Is that why you’re acting so nervous?”
“He’s not my Mr. Snowman,” I said.
“We did,” Maisie said.
“And I’m not acting nervous.” My head shot around to Maisie. We w
ere talking at the same time, but I knew he’d heard what she said. “Maisie!” I said, and tugged on her arm.
“Well, we did.”
“Tell me,” he said. “Who did it? Ari?”
“No,” I said. “We can’t tell you.”
“It was Althea,” Maisie said at the same time.
“Shhh! Maisie!” I said, and glanced across the way. They seemed to be paying no attention to us, which was good since Maisie was trying to spill the beans.
“Have you called the police?” O asked.
“I don’t know if your police friend would appreciate us snooping around or if he’d even believe me.”
“You have to do something,” O said.
“Agreed,” I said, lowering my voice. “But in the middle of the dinner? And what if he won’t listen to me? I will have embarrassed everyone here.”
“You want me to call him?” O asked, not even knowing what we’d found out.
I glanced again at Althea, and thought about my father. Telling Detective Beverly would clear his name, which would make him happy. But my father wouldn’t care that I had figured it out, he’d want me to be safe. The only way to do that, I knew, was to get Detective Beverly there.
“Okay,” I said. “You can call him.” I looked down at my phone. “First, though, I have to go and meet PopPop downstairs,” I said. “Maisie, you fill O in on everything we found out.” I turned to O. “Then I’m going to need you to get your friend Detective Beverly down here. I don’t know how he’ll take to me snooping and figuring out who the murderer is, if we really figured it out.”
“We did,” Maisie said.
“And can you tell him no sirens, please?” I said. “I don’t want to disrupt the dinner.”
“Why do you care about that?” Maisie said.
“Because it’s my family’s business at stake,” I said. “And we could be wrong.”
“We’re not,” Maisie said.
“And look at her,” I said, talking about Althea, but then stopped Maisie from doing it. “Don’t look now!”
“What?”
“She’s all dressed up, chasing after Ari. She doesn’t know we know anything,” I said. “The detective won’t have to chase her and it can all be handled quietly.” My voice went down to a whisper. “Dinner won’t be interrupted.”
A Deadly Inside Scoop Page 29
