by Cathy Tully
Larraine resettled her glasses on her nose and pursed her lips.
“Okay.” Tina exhaled slowly and sat back, her chair creaking. “What were you doing in the dumpster?”
“Looking for clues, and I found one. I saw a dried-up foxglove plant, but I couldn’t reach it. So I took a picture.”
Susannah brought up the photo on her phone. She enlarged it and passed it to Larraine, who squinted through her bifocals. “All I see is trash, darlin’,” Larraine said.
Tina looked over her shoulder and shook her head, then handed the phone to Bitsy.
“I don’t see no poisonous flowers,” Bitsy said.
Susannah snatched the phone away from her and enlarged the photo. “There, in the corner of the dumpster. See?”
The three women brought their heads closer to the screen.
“Uh,” Tina murmured. “No, ma’am. I don’t see flowers.”
Susannah scowled and enlarged the picture again, but they were right, all that was visible was a black smudge where the leaves would have been. Susannah sulked.
“Well, I have some news,” Larraine said.
“Ms. Larraine.” Bitsy leaned back, slurping at her tea. “What kinda spying are you doing?”
“Not spying.” Larraine blushed. “Just asking a few questions here and there. First off, a few of the young’uns from the church are servers at the Cantina, and none of them noticed any illegal activities happening in the kitchen.”
“Except for staff choppin’ up the chef with a cleaver,” Bitsy teased.
“Second,” she continued, ignoring Bitsy’s remark, “remember when I said my son-in-law’s daddy is a partner in a law firm? Well, we happened to have them over for dinner last night.” Her blush grew deeper, and Susannah knew Larraine had invited them over as a way of questioning Winston Norris. “I had a chat with Mr. Norris, and it turns out that Anita was a client with his law firm. This is completely off the record, of course. He’ll deny he ever said anything, but Anita had a will and left everything to her daughter.”
The women went silent, letting that bit of information sink in.
“So what does that mean, Ms. Larraine?” Tina finally asked.
“Well, financial gain wouldn’t have been a motive,” Susannah answered. “So Tomás wouldn’t have murdered Anita to gain control of the restaurant. That is, if he knew that Dolores inherits the restaurant.”
The women nodded. Rusty jumped onto the table and sniffed at the plates, his whiskers twitching. “No, sir.” Larraine scooped him up and, holding him against her side, opened the door and dumped him next to his supper dish.
Tina put her cup down and shifted in her chair. “I wasn’t going to say anything,” she said, glancing around uneasily, “but I overheard something the other day when I was at the Peach Grove PD waiting on Keith. He doesn’t know about it, so it can’t get him in trouble.”
Larraine leaned stiffly against the door, Bitsy put down her second brownie, and Susannah held her breath. What now?
“I only want to help,” Tina continued, her hand to her chest.
“Out with it, buttercup,” Larraine cajoled.
“I heard the detective talking about having Dr. Shine’s fingerprints on a cup that they found on Ms. Alvarez’s desk. That must be why she thinks you’re involved.”
All eyes were now on Susannah.
“My fingerprints?”
Tina nodded.
Susannah sat back, her mouth hanging open, and replayed the last time she’d seen Anita, as she had many times since her death. The cheery banter, the hot latte, how she slipped on the spilled coffee. “The té tamarindo.”
“Té tamarindo?” Bitsy faltered. “You hate té tamarindo.”
“Anita was drinking it, not me.”
Three heads nodded.
“Then, she slipped on some spilled coffee and almost fell. I held the drink for her so she could wipe up the floor. That’s all.”
The women sat silently.
“What should we do next?” Bitsy asked.
Susannah stood, stretching. There was plenty of daylight left, but she wanted to go home and soak in a hot tub. She turned from Larraine to Tina. “Tomás suspects Colin Rogers. Fiona mentioned him too. Bitsy and I have already talked to him, and I don’t believe it’s likely that he could have poisoned Anita. However, he was in the Cantina regularly, so it’s possible. Larraine, maybe you could make some calls to your church friends and see what you can turn up about Colin.”
Larraine’s hands fluttered to her throat. “Who would I call?”
Susannah smiled. “I’m sure you’ll come up with some church lady who will be happy to, uh, reminisce.”
Larraine nodded.
“And Tina, do you think you could subtly pick Keith’s brain about whether Colin or Tomás have ever been in trouble with the police?”
She grinned. “I can try.”
“Let’s call it a day, ladies. Tomorrow morning, I’m going to the stable early to talk to Fiona.” She filled them in about Fiona’s comment that Anita had enemies. “We can meet back here for a late breakfast. I’ll bring some blueberry muffins. Say, around nine? Patients aren’t due until after lunch. Maybe by then, I’ll know more.”
Tina and Larraine said their good-byes and left. Bitsy stood and excused herself and headed for the restroom. When she returned, she eyed Susannah expectantly. “Am I getting super-secret orders? Like Mission Impossible-style?”
Susannah laughed. “Well, remember when we talked about Anita not wanting to be seen?”
“Sure, like she was meeting someone on the down low, like she was doing the nasty with a married man?”
“Something like that. We need to figure out who.”
“Well, she wouldn’t be the only one. You know my cousin Denise? The one who owns the beauty shop? She’s all the time telling me about who’s doing what with who. For some people, getting their hair done makes them run at the mouth.”
“And there we have it. Maybe you could check with a few of your cousins and find out if they heard anything about Anita.”
“Like someone who confessed to murdering her? That kind of thing?”
Susannah chuckled. Bitsy’s crazy sense of humor contained barbs of truth. “We have to be discreet about this.”
“Sneaky, like.”
“Exactly.”
“I’m on it, Dr. Shine. I’ll make some calls.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Susannah woke early, grabbed a travel mug filled with hot coffee and drove slowly through the cool morning. A vague breeze stirred the trees as she pulled up to the Long Branch Stable. The Long Branch Stable was only a couple of miles from the office, in a part of the county that had avoided development. Fiona’s property edged into the hilly countryside that bordered the Long Branch Creek. It was the perfect place to go riding, and taking a mounted horseback tour was a popular activity.
She had taken Fiona’s cue and booked a riding lesson but hoped she would convert it into a walking tour of the paddock and stables. Maybe even leave out the paddock, she thought. She was not at ease around horses. They were powerful animals and deserved respect, but she had no desire to ride one, and the chance of a vertigo attack made it even less likely that her rump would ever sit in a saddle. She knew many people who had been injured by horses, and she was not keen to join their ranks. Susannah knew that animals could smell fear on a human, and she willed herself to smell confident.
A teenage girl, who wore her blond hair in a long braid, led a reddish-brown pony out of the stable. Susannah gathered her courage. If a teenager can handle a horse, I can too.
She approached the building, greeted by the smell of damp earth and wood, and found Fiona grooming a chestnut horse with a white star on its nose. Fiona smiled, motioning for Susannah to enter. The horse shifted its obsidian eyes to her, daring her to take a step. Susannah froze.
“Dr. Shine. Come on in. I’m finishing up with Beau.”
Beau snorted, flaring his huge nos
trils in her direction. Susannah felt the blood leave her face.
“You’re here for a lesson,” Fiona said, glancing at her as she scooped feed into Beau’s feeder. “Are you okay, then?”
“I’m fine, fine,” Susannah assured her.
“Don’t let Beau put you off.” She stroked the side of his face affectionately and then plucked a carrot from a bag and placed it in her mouth. Beau reached out and grabbed it with his large front teeth, and Susannah shivered. “He’s a big teddy bear.”
“To be honest, Larraine made me book the lesson. I came to talk.”
“I see curiosity got you and the cat.” Fiona laughed, pointing at a scrawny black-and-white cat that had stopped in midstride to assess the situation.
Susannah smiled. “After our last conversation, I think I have reason to be curious.”
“Of course you do. I told you Anita had enemies. I used that word because it was what she used. She would say it in Spanish: somos enemigos. ‘We are enemies.’ I think she kept a list in her head of her enemigos.” Her smile faded into a sneer. The expression did not become her.
“How many enemies did she have?”
Fiona shrugged. “Who knows?” She could not hide the scorn she obviously felt. “Sometimes she acted as though the world was against her. She would take offense with someone and vent about them nonstop.”
“Like who?”
“Anyone.” Fiona frowned, thinking. “Her hairdresser, her insurance agent, the man who painted her house. You name it. She complained that the vendor who sold cooking oil scammed her by selling her rancid oil. That made no sense to me. If I sell you rancid oil, will you ever buy anything from me again? It’s no strategy to build a business on.”
Susannah remembered her foray around the dumpster and the large cans of cooking oil; she suppressed a shudder. “Do you think she made someone angry enough to kill her?”
“I don’t know. If she got what she wanted, then she felt vindicated and forgot about it. But I don’t know if they forgot about her.” She raised her eyebrows; wisps of strawberry blond hair rose along with them. “I heard her on the phone arguing. She didn’t back down, and she could get ugly. Let me show you something.”
Fiona led Susannah to the tack room and pointed to a saddle hanging on the wall. It boasted hand-worked leather and smelled as if it had been recently oiled. The stitching on it was precise and intricate. “It must have cost a fortune,” Susannah commented.
Fiona huffed. An action that would have been a nasal snort on anyone else came off as delicate on her. “You don’t have to tell me. Anita ordered it and then refused to pay for it.”
“Why wouldn’t she pay?”
Fiona gave a slight shake of her head and narrowed her sapphire eyes, the slightest hint of sadness playing across them. “Who knows? Maybe I was the enemy by then.” She pulled the saddle from its hook and threw it over her forearm effortlessly. Susannah made a mental note that Fiona was stronger than she looked. “Anita insisted on some custom work.” She nodded at the roses tooled into the leather. They covered the horn and edged the saddle in a motif of trailing blooms, which must have taken days to complete. The work was intricate, but it had been covered with a vibrant red paint. Too vibrant. It would have been beautiful, but the color glared ostentatiously from the leather.
“It’s not so bad.”
Fiona’s lip curled. She walked across the room and threw it over a saddle stand. “Would you like to buy it?”
“Umm,” Susannah hedged. She searched for a polite way to decline. “It’s not my style.”
“I’ve heard that before.” Fiona threw a disgusted look at it and turned away. “It’s unsellable.” She paused. “You can add saddlemaker to the list of her enemies. She treated him like dirt.”
“How so?”
“He told her not to paint it because it would hide the hand tooling.” She ran her hand over her hair, smoothing a flyaway strand. “She blew up at him, called him all kinds of names. Obviously, he gave in.”
“Why did you order it for her?”
“She was paying her bills back then, wasn’t she? She told me she wanted to buy a mare and board it here.” She kicked at some hay on the floor. “I thought she would be giving me business for years. I trusted her.”
“Then she reneged?”
“She never even came to look at it. Made up excuse after excuse. Finally, I called and asked her to give me payment over the phone. She told me she would call me back with a card number.” Fiona shrugged and rehung the saddle on the wall. “I never heard from her again.”
They stepped out of the tack room. Two women were standing in front of a stall, coaxing a tall black horse into its bridle. Fiona motioned with her head and led Susannah out of the stable and toward a split-rail fence.
“You know, I’ve lived here for twenty-five years. I came here when I was only a girl and never thought I’d own a business like this. The land alone is enough to make me happy for the rest of my life.” She sighed. “But for a long time, I felt like an outsider. Then one day, that changed. Suddenly, I had been here longer than some of my clients. Now I give lessons to their children.”
Her fair face became serious.
“Gossip travels fast. Anita hadn’t been dead a day, and I overheard certain folks accuse you. I pick up gossip.” She chuckled. “You see, to some people I’m like a redheaded ghost. I fade into the background and disappear when they’re on their mounts. I’ve heard a lot of nonsense over the years, but none as useless as blaming someone for a murder because of where the victim was found.”
“I don’t know what to say. I appreciate your faith in me.”
“Well, let’s say I have faith in Jesus, but I believe you’re a better person than Anita.” She turned to face Susannah, a wistful look in her blue eyes. “My point is I was angry at Anita for a long time. I got over it. Maybe someone else couldn’t.”
“Can you prove she cheated anyone else?”
“No, but she ran a business. She had to pay vendors and suppliers. Not to mention overhead, repairs, and contractors. I’d bet my bottom dollar I wasn’t the only one she stiffed.”
“You told me she had a run-in with Colin. What did she tell you about that?”
“She didn’t. I heard it from Tomás. She just told me that he was her barfly. She could count on him to close down the bar a few nights a week.”
Susannah nodded. She had learned as much from Colin himself. “What about Tomás? Did she have problems with him? I thought I heard them arguing during the last PGBA meeting.”
“Tomás?” Fiona’s expression became sullen. “Anita and Tomás. There was never a dull moment with them.”
“What do you mean?”
Fiona coughed, avoiding Susannah’s eyes while removing her gloves. “Well, she didn't speak much about Tomás, but it was clear that they bickered all the time. From what I could tell, she didn’t hold a grudge against him like she did others. Come to think of it, I remember she had a falling out with her bookkeeper, Olivia Franklin. Maybe you could talk to her. She was in and out of the Cantina. She might have more details about Tomás.”
Susannah pulled a pen and a small spiral notebook from her pocket. Jotting down the names Fiona had mentioned, she thanked her and turned to leave. “Another thing. Did Anita ever mention a florist or gardener who she bought flowers from?”
“Flowers? No, she never mentioned buying flowers.”
Susannah gave her a smile and walked back to her Jeep, wondering if Larraine knew where to find Olivia Franklin.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Susannah’s hair felt heavy with humidity as she carried four Dunkin’ Donuts takeout coffees and her homemade muffins into the office. A slight drizzle had descended on Peach Grove, and Rusty sat under the porch with his tail wrapped around his paws. He watched as Susannah disengaged the alarm and returned to fill his dish, and then he set upon the kibble as if he hadn’t eaten in a week. She scratched the tabby’s chin with the toe of her boot,
and he flopped on his side and rolled over, paws bent in a feline invitation to a belly rub.
“Sorry, big boy,” Susannah said. “We have work to do this morning.”
On the drive back from the Long Branch Stable, she had considered the list of disgruntled tradespeople Anita had left in her wake. Fiona provided the names of seven unhappy Peach Grove residents, and Susannah marveled at the discrepancy between how the townsfolk behaved in public and how they acted in private. Anita was not the only one whose warts were showing. Colin had been revealed as a boozer with a persecution complex. Tomás could appear calm and genial in the dining room but displayed a more aggressive personality when the kitchen door swung closed. And Fiona, someone she had treated for years, acted pleasant and amicable in her office but in her stable demonstrated a contemptuous, disdainful side. Maybe her attitude was understandable, considering how Anita had treated her.
Gravel crunched as Larraine’s Mercury Grand Marquis pulled to a stop. She sat in the car patting her hair into place as Tina leaped out of the passenger seat and cooed hello to Rusty. Purring audibly, he quickly got to his feet and met her as she stood still to allow him to rub against her legs in a feline figure eight. The slam of Larraine’s door startled the cat, and he scurried across the parking lot and into the field with his tail lowered.
“Good morning, ladies.” Susannah greeted them with a wave. “I have hot coffee and homemade muffins.” She entered the building.
Larraine caught up to Tina and whispered, “Don’t mention that we were just at Waffle House.”
“Don’t you worry. My gluten consumption is my own private business.”
Larraine tittered, and they entered the office together. Susannah pretended she had not heard the comment, instead concentrating on setting the break room table. She set a Dunkin’ Donuts to-go cup at each place. Recycled napkins surrounded a plate, which held several wonky-looking muffins. Tina reached for a cup when a loud banging arose from the front of the building, and she froze, looking from Larraine to Susannah. Tina was the first to break the spell, striding down the main hall with Susannah and Larraine on her heels.
