“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the young woman said and brushed her hair back. “And as for that stupid backpack, that was stolen like a week ago.”
“Stolen,” Heather said.
“So why didn’t you report it?” Amy continued the confrontational line of questioning.
“Report it stolen? Are you, like, kidding? It’s a backpack, lady. I wasn’t about to waltz into the police station and waste their time with a backpack. There wasn’t anything interesting in it anyway.” Suzanne’s brow wrinkled and suspicion danced across her face. “Say, wait just a second here. What exactly are you accusing me of?”
The trophy chucker had reached the end of her tether.
“We aren’t accusing you of anything,” Heather said. “We’ve got to investigate every lead, understand?” That sounded a lot like the line Ryan had used on her a few times when she’d first started investigating. “Where did the backpack disappear from?”
“My bedroom,” Suzanne said, but she didn’t relax one bit. “After I got home from riding one day it was gone. I didn’t notice it until a couple days later. Like I said, there was nothing important in it.” She hefted the backpack and examined the straps. “You messed it up. It’s all ripped apart.”
“That’s evidence, Miss Nolan,” Heather said.
Suzanne held it out of reach. “No, it’s mine. You can’t have it.”
“Would you like to be arrested for the obstruction of justice, Miss Nolan?” Amy asked.
“You’re not a cop,” Suzanne said. “What are you going to do, make a citizen’s arrest?” She chuckled, backed up a few steps until she was past the threshold of her home, then slapped the door shut in their faces.
“So much for that idea.” Amy fluffed her hair. “That was pointless.”
Pointless? No, something else had erupted in Heather’s mind. A missing link which taunted her.
“What’s wrong? You’ve gone pale.”
“A stolen backpack. That must’ve been what the murderer used to change out of the uniform. But why? Why Suzanne’s backpack?”
“Maybe they thought it’d end up framing her,” Amy said. “Which would mean that it was an enemy of both Fred and Suzanne.”
Heather marched down the garden path, heels crunching the grit on the stepping stones.
“Heather? Where are you going?”
“I’ve got an idea. A thought. I’m not sure. There’s something there.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
Heather paused and shook her head. No, she hadn’t made any sense because none of this had made sense. It’d been difficult to concentrate on anything with Kate hanging around this week. “We’ve got to get to Hillside Manor,” she said. “I’ve got a hunch. A hunch.”
Amy didn’t argue. She followed Heather back to the Chevrolet in silence.
Chapter 16
Heather couldn’t sit still. She paced back and forth in front of Leila’s bed in Hillside Manor, massaging the backs of her knuckles with tired fingers. “You didn’t see them here? Nothing?”
“I would’ve noticed if a group of policemen rushed in, dear. Why do you ask?” Leila brushed off her cream skirt and speared Heather with those intelligent eyes. She’d know her since Heather had been a baby. If anyone could pick up on Heather’s thoughts and moods, it was Leila. “What’s gotten under your skin? Go on, spit it out.”
“I thought Ryan would be here. I was so sure. He said he had to check out a lead.” Heather twirled her finger beside her temple. “I haven’t figured it out yet but something is missing. Something is supposed to be here.”
Leila and Amy exchanged a glance.
They knew her all right, but perhaps they thought she’d lost her mind at last. The combined pressure of cases and Kate, the stress of out of state deliveries, it had all added up. Except that wasn’t the case.
She’d missed a fact and it was right there, within her reach. She just had to place her thumb on it. Two puzzle pieces had to click into place and the answer was here somewhere.
Heather marched to the window. She rested her forehead against the pane and gazed at the gardens of the Manor. A few of the residents walked under the trees or chatted on wooden benches.
An aide pushed a man in a wheelchair across the grounds, smiling, her hair tied back in a bun.
And that was it. There it was. Her heart didn’t skip a beat and no bolt of blue struck her. She didn’t jump or gasp.
Instead, that solid certainty which came at the end of each case clicked into place. It wasn’t physical evidence, but it was enough for her. Enough to warrant a confrontation. All she needed was a specimen.
“Heather?” Amy’s voice was timid.
Heather spun around and her bestie jumped back a step. “Leila, would you mind asking one of the aides to come in here? Please?”
“Of course, dear,” Leila said. She grasped the call button beside her bed and pressed it.
A buzzer rang in the reception area down the hall. A few minutes passed and none of the women said a word. They waited, quietly. The stillness brought Heather a range of doubts but she shoved them aside.
She reached into her bag and brought out her Lenovo tablet.
The door finally opened and a young aide stepped into the room, bearing a smile and a name tag. Kara.
“Hello, dear. My friend wanted to speak with you,” Leila said.
“Hi.” Heather lifted her tablet and clicked through to the camera application. “May I take your picture?”
“Okay?” Kara looked from Leila to Heather and back again. “What’s this about?”
“I’m investigating the murder of Fred Nolan,” Heather said and snapped two pics for good measure. “Turn around please.” It was so simple. They’d missed it completely and it was so simple.
Recognition dawned on Amy’s face and her jaw dropped.
The aide rotated on the spot and Heather snapped another two pictures. “Kara, was it?”
“That’s right,” she said.
“Do you know Pammy Nolan?” Heather asked. “She was Fred’s mother.”
“Sure, I knew her. She used to work here until what, two days ago?”
“Used to. Interesting. Did she resign?” Heather asked.
“Yeah. She wasn’t fired, that’s for sure. But I think that Fred’s death was too much for her to handle.” Kara shook her head, mouth turned down at the corners. “She was a lovely woman before all of this happened. So soft-spoken. You know?”
“Were you close with her?”
“Not close, no. I don’t think she was that close with anyone. She was from Scotland, originally. She kept to herself, mostly. She was civil and friendly, but yeah, otherwise she didn’t hang out with the rest of us,” Kara said.
Heather flicked through the photos on her screen, then attached them to an email and shot it off to Ryan. “Thank you, Kara.”
“No problem. Is there anything else, Leila? Do you need anything?”
“A glass of water would be heaven, dear,” Leila said and smiled at the aide.
“Coming right up.” Kara let herself out of the room and squeaked down the polished hall in her comfy, white shoes.
“No. Way,” Amy said. “No. Way.”
“Yes way,” Heather replied. “I thought I recognized that uniform somewhere and now I know why.” The nurses at the hospital wore the exact same color uniform as those at Hillside Manor. A tired green color.
“I’m not sure I want to know what’s going on.” Leila settled back against her pillows. “But I’m glad my presence here could be of service to you, dear.”
“You’re a lifesaver, Leila. As always.” Heather hurried forward to peck the woman on the forehead. “I owe you two dozen donuts.”
“I won’t say no to that.”
Heather’s phone rang and she fished it out of her pocket. Ryan’s name flashed on the screen. She answered the phone with a swipe of her thumb, then pressed it to her ear. “Shepherd,” she said.
“Do you think it’s the mother or the daughter?” Ryan asked. “We went by to question Pammy but she’s resigned. I was going to suggest we go down to the house together.”
“Why?” Heather asked. “Did you find something else?”
“We got a partial print on the switch of the ventilation machinery on a second sweep of the crime scene. We need to get fingerprints from the suspects to cross-reference. There’s an off chance we might be able to –”
“I’ll meet you at the Nolan house in ten minutes,” Heather said and hung up.
“Back? We’re going back?” Amy asked, and smoothed her fingers over her cheeks. “Are you kidding?”
“No.”
Leila chuckled from the bed. “Suddenly, I’m glad I’m not a young woman anymore.”
Chapter 17
Ryan charged up the stepping stone path and to the open front door of the Nolan home. Shrieks and bangs echoed from within and Amy trailed behind Heather, dragging her feet.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Heather said.
“Like something out of a horror movie.” Amy shuddered and rubbed her arms.
“You like horror movies.”
“For the fiftieth time, Shepherd, I like Halloween. Halloween,” she said. “I draw the line at real life terror.”
Ryan unclipped his holster and removed his weapon.
“See? That right there? That’s creepy,” Amy said.
“Then hang back. I’m going in.”
“You stay behind me,” Ryan said. “I’ll handle this. This is a domestic disturbance call, right now.”
Heather followed her husband’s lead. They hurried down the hall, past the windowless remains of the trophy cabinet and into the living room. They strolled into the apocalypse.
Pammy stood on the far end of the room, beside the newly repaired window her daughter had trashed the last time they’d been there. Her husband, Donald, paced back and forth in front of the mantelpiece, crunching over the remains of vases and picture frames.
They didn’t notice the newcomers.
“You’re going to pay for this he growled. You’re going to jail,” Donald said.
“I won’t go,” Pammy hissed, in that lilting accent. “I did what I had to do I did what was right for our son. You of all people should understand that. You were the one who suggested this in the first place.”
“I didn’t – that’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“You said you didn’t want him to suffer,” Pammy replied. “But you didn’t have the guts to do what I did. You didn’t have it in you so I took the choice out of your hands.” She sniffled and tears dripped down her cheeks. “You said he would’ve been impaired. A vegetable.”
Heather clenched her fists and released them, clenched and released. The tension in the room stiffened. A door creaked but neither of the inhabitants paid the noise any mind.
Pammy lurched away from the window and hurried to her husband. She grabbed hold of his arm. “I didn’t want him to suffer.”
“You didn’t want the responsibility,” he snapped. “You were afraid he’d wake up and you’d have another useless person to look after.”
“Well after years at an old age home, can you blame me? I refuse to watch one of our children waste away in front of our eyes. My eyes, I mean.”
“What?”
“Oh please,” she said and clicked her teeth. “You and I both know that you’re more interested in your lovers, in your business, than you are in anything that happens in this house.”
“How dare you!”
“Quiet,” she said. “Or you’re next.” Pammy jabbed her husband in the chest.
Ryan twitched his gun upward and opened his mouth to speak.
A yowling shape streaked across the living room, past the bookshelves, glinting golden by the late afternoon light which streamed through the window. A thump shuddered through the room and Pammy Nolan crumpled to the floor.
Suzanne stood over her, breathing hard, a trophy clasped in her fist. “She killed my brother,” she growled. “She killed him!”
There wasn’t blood on the floor but a bump had already popped up on Pammy’s forehead.
“She murdered him!” Suzanne lifted the trophy again.
“Freeze!” Ryan yelled.
Suzanne let out a tiny shriek but didn’t bring the trophy down on her mother. She stared across the room, wide-eyed.
“Neither of you move a muscle,” Ryan said.
Heather tapped Amy on the arm and drew her back into the hall. “He’ll handle it from here,” she whispered. They knew what the motivation had been at least.
A mother’s love gone wrong. Maybe, the years of watching elderly folks shrink into nothingness had taken a toll on her mental health. It had to be difficult to watch people fade away.
But the fact remained, that choice hadn’t been Pammy’s alone. She hadn’t had the right to snatch Fred from the world before his time had come.
“Wow,” Amy said, and shook her head. “Wow, I didn’t see that coming. Did you?”
“I had a hunch after we turned up at the Manor. I don’t know, something about that uniform stuck in my mind,” she said. “And then I remembered that the hooded figure had a black backpack in front of my home, too. Remember the note?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s over now,” Heather said.
An indignant shriek rang out from the living room. “You can’t arrest me,” Suzanne yelled. “It was self-defense. I had to hit her, it was self-defense.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Amy said. “Or at least outside.”
Heather and Ames hurried back down the hall, past a skewed family photograph, and out into the garden, under the Hillside sun. At least, it was over, now.
Fred’s murderer had been found.
Heather couldn’t help but think what she would’ve done if Lilly had been in a coma. She shivered and turned her face to the setting sun. There wasn’t a chance in heaven and the place down below that she’d ever take her daughter’s choice or future away from her.
“Wanna go have dinner?” Amy asked.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
Chapter 18
Heather placed the plate of donuts in the center of the coffee table and smiled at the sound of chatter which filled her living room. Eva and Leila sat on the sofa by the window, lost in conversation about the old days, as Eva called it.
Amy and Lilly joked on the other side of the room, DVD cases littered the cushions around them – they couldn’t make up their mind as to which would be the best choice for tonight.
“Heather, dear,” Eva said. “I’ve got some news. Some wonderful news.” The elderly woman’s cheeks glowed pink. That had to be a good sign.
Heather dodged around Cupcake and stopped in front of the ladies. Their frantic whispers ceased immediately, and they looked up at her, eyes glimmering with whatever secret the two had shared.
“And now? What am I missing?” Heather asked. “What’s the big surprise?”
Leila licked her lips. “You know how much I love having visitors every Sunday, dear, and this is a fantastic treat.”
They’d driven out to the manor and signed Leila out for the weekend after what’d happened with Pammy. It wasn’t the first time someone had fallen victim to crime there. On the outside, the Manor was beautiful, it was serene, but a strange undercurrent had bubbled through Hillside and swept all that serenity along with it.
“It’s a total pleasure to have you here, Leila,” Heather said.
“It is.” Eva beamed. “And that’s what got me to thinking.”
“About?”
“Well, the originals need to stick together, dear. You know, the folks who were in Hillside from the start,” Eva said. “The true residents.”
Heather lowered herself to the sofa beside the two women and crossed her ankles. “All right.”
“And Leila’s been feeling that maybe Hillside Manor isn’t the safest place for he
r.”
“Not at all. And it’s so boring. So terribly boring.”
“So, I’ve invited Leila to move in with me,” Eva said.
The chatter on the other side of the room ceased. Both Ames and Lilly stared at the two old women, expressions unreadable.
“Leila, you’re in care for a reason,” Heather said, gently.
“Under normal circumstances, I would agree with you. The only reason I’m in that Manor is because my relations put me there. I didn’t bother arguing because I didn’t have a house of my own at the time. I had nowhere else to stay.”
That much was true. Leila’s granddaughter had taken off a few years back – she’d grown sick of the small town atmosphere, the gossip and so on, and simply picked up, sold her house and left. Leila had been forced to do what Helena wanted.
“I’ve already called my granddaughter. Honestly, I don’t think she cares where I am as long as it’s safe. The fact that she won’t have to pay for me anymore will help. And my pension plan will handle groceries.”
“We’ll save so much living together,” Eva said and squeezed Leila’s hand.
The two old widows living together. Heather could picture them in matching flowery hats in the garden, sowing seeds or drinking iced tea. Munching on donuts. Leila hadn’t had any visitors apart from Heather and her family in a very long time. She had to be lonely in Hillside Manor.
“It sounds to me like your mind is already made up,” Heather said. She had no control of the situation, after all, and they were two grown women. It was ultimately their choice.
“We do,” Eva said, but she didn’t grin like she had a minute before. “But we trust your judgment. Do you think it would be a good idea?”
Eva had certainly managed herself well. And Leila wasn’t in a wheelchair or ill. She didn’t need help getting around. Dave barked from the doorway and encouraged Heather to hurry it up with her answer, for heaven’s sake.
She broke into a smile. “Of course, I think it’s a good idea. You two will have a wonderful time living together. And if it means I get to see more of Leila in the store, even better.”
Book 42 - Cotton Candy Fluff Murder_KDP Page 6
