by Jessica Beck
“Believe me, we will,” I said. “Is there anyone else?” I wanted to give Gabby one last chance to come clean with us before I dug it out another way.
“Not that I know of, but you should ask Leanne. She knew Maggie better than the rest of us.”
It was a perfect opening to ask another question I’d been dying to pose. “Gabby, what did Leanne think about Maggie’s pie-maker’s recipe cookbook?”
“You knew about that?” Gabby asked, sharing an incredulous look with both of us.
“The more important question is what did Leanne think about it?” Grace asked her.
“As far as I know, Leanne doesn’t know a thing about it, and I plan for it to stay that way.”
“Gabby, what makes you think she didn’t know? There’s a scathing review of it online, and it sounded as though Leanne might have written it herself, especially if she were unhappy about it being published in the first place.”
Gabby looked at me smugly before she replied. “It was very well written, don’t you think?”
“You wrote that review yourself, didn’t you?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she answered defiantly. “Maggie needed to unpublish it and give the credit to Leanne,” Gabby said. “When she wouldn’t listen to reason, I decided to make sure that no one bought it. Look at the sales rank. She’s probably only sold a copy or two since it’s been for sale.”
I thought that might have something more to do with how difficult it was for new writers of any kind to break in, based on what I’d read online, but if she wanted to think that she was a giant killer, far be it from me to set her straight.
I was still thinking about my next question when Grace surprised me by asking, “Gabby, you said that Chief Grant came by to speak with Leanne. What I’m curious about is why the chief of police didn’t want to interview you, too.” I found it odd to hear her refer to Stephen Grant as the chief of police, but then again, I knew how tense things were between them at the moment.
“Because he knows I would never kill my own cousin,” Gabby said. She looked equal parts angry and hurt that Grace had even asked the question. Gabby was clearly about to protest further when her cell phone rang. After quickly glancing at her caller ID, she said, “I have to take this. Will you two excuse me?”
“We need to be on our way, anyway,” I said. “Thanks for your help.”
Gabby held one finger in the air as she answered her call. “Don’t be in such a rush.” After a moment, she said, “Give me one second,” to whoever was calling her before she turned back to us. “Use me, ladies. I can be a great asset in your investigation.”
“We will do our best,” I said as we finally made our escape.
Once we were outside, Grace said, “I’ve really got to hand it to you, Suzanne. I thought you’d lost your mind when you asked her to help us investigate, but it turned out to be a stroke of sheer brilliance. How much of what she told us do you believe?”
“Enough to dig into everything she brought up. I have a feeling she was holding a name back from us, don’t you?”
“She did kind of hesitate when you asked her,” Grace said. “What do we do now?”
“Well, it’s time to cut that pot pie if you’re still interested.”
“Just try to stop me,” Grace said, and we both got into my Jeep and headed back to the cottage.
For now, the investigation was going to have to wait.
My stomach was grumbling for some good old-fashioned home cooking, and it was about to get it.
Chapter 5
“Wow, I’m quite the chef, aren’t I?” Grace asked after she took her first bite of our pot pie. “Who knew I had it in me?”
“I suspected as much all along,” I said with a smile. The truth was that the meal was delightful, and I didn’t think the store-bought pie crust took away from the dish at all. Sometimes it was nice taking a shortcut or two, not that making pie crust was all that arduous. Combine a little flour, salt, butter, and ice water, and in a few easy steps, you had crust, but there were times I didn’t want to go through the process, especially waiting for the mixture to chill enough so it could be rolled out. Besides, I made things from scratch all of the time at my donut shop, so a shortcut every now and then at home was perfectly fine with me.
“All I needed was the right teacher,” Grace said, returning my grin with one of her own.
As we ate, I asked, “Would it be okay with you if we talked about Maggie’s murder while we dine on this fine cuisine?”
“I’m perfectly fine with it,” she said. “From the way you’ve described her, I can’t believe we don’t have more suspects than we do.”
“We just started digging, though. Who knows how many more will turn up in the course of our investigation?”
“That’s a happy thought, isn’t it?” she said sarcastically.
“The woman had a way of making a truly horrid first impression, and if we’ve learned anything about her so far, she never did anything to change people’s expectations of her afterwards. Still, she didn’t deserve to die that way. I can’t imagine someone wanting to kill me enough to poison me.”
“You saw the body,” Grace said after taking another bite. “Did it appear to you that she’d been poisoned?”
“I don’t know. What does a person who’s been poisoned look like?” I asked her.
“I guess I expected you to be able to tell,” Grace said with a shrug.
“No, it appeared to me that she’d just slumped over after having a heart attack or something like that,” I answered after giving it a few moments’ thought.
“And what does that look like?”
“I have no idea,” I admitted. “I haven’t seen all that many natural deaths in my life.”
“But plenty of homicides,” Grace replied.
“Way too many,” I agreed. “So far, as much as I’d like to, we can’t rule out Leanne, no matter what impression I may have given Gabby that we were fighting for her niece’s exoneration.”
“You handled that rather deftly, I must admit.”
“If you’ll recall, I told her that we wanted the truth, not necessarily to save Leanne.”
“I know, but the subtext was awfully subtle,” Grace pointed out.
“True, but what good would it have done us if I’d told her that Leanne has to be one of our prime suspects? Her subjugation at the pie shop was bad enough, but if Maggie really did steal Leanne’s recipes and then sold them online as her own work, it crossed so many lines, I don’t even know where to begin. If Leanne knew about what she’d done, I have a hunch it would have made her pretty angry, even if she were perfectly fine with working for Maggie and not being a co-owner of Sky High Pie. So we know that Leanne had motive and loads of opportunity. As a matter of fact, her proximity to Maggie, and in theory her bottle of pills as well, is the single worst piece of evidence against her at the moment, at least as far as I’m concerned.”
“Until we know what kind of poison was used to kill her,” Grace said, “we won’t be able to determine if she had access to it or not, so the means of the crime are still up in the air.”
“I guess the next thing we need to do is find out what exactly it was that she died of,” I said.
“Well, I’m seeing Stephen soon,” Grace replied. “Maybe he’ll tell me.”
“Grace, remember, you aren’t delivering him food in order to interrogate him. You’re trying to convince him to stay with you.”
“Why can’t I do both?” she asked impishly.
“No offense, but I’m not even sure that you’re that good, and that’s saying something.”
“We’ll see. I won’t bring it up, but if he does, I’ll push him on it a little. Don’t worry, it will be fine.”
“I just don’t want you to do anything to ruin your chances of working things out with Stephen, even if it
means advancing our investigation.”
“I won’t,” Grace said firmly, and I knew from her tone of voice that I needed to drop the subject.
“Okay, let’s talk about who else might have done it if Leanne turns out to be innocent. First of all, Beatrice Branch has to be on the list.”
“She probably had more reason to kill Maggie than Leanne did,” Grace said. “Money and revenge make a pretty powerful pair of motives.”
“Yes, but we can’t forget about the mysterious Ashton Belle of Maple Hollow. Clearly there was some real animosity between them.”
“But was it enough to move him to murder?” Grace asked after taking her last bite.
“There’s only one way to find that out,” I said. “Tomorrow we’ll have to ask him.”
“Why not tonight?” Grace asked me. “We’re finished eating, and the night is still young.” Then she glanced at the clock. “Except for you, anyway. Your hours can be a real inconvenience to our investigations at times, can’t they?”
“Sorry for the inconvenience,” I said with a grin. When we’d been teenagers working as cashiers at the grocery store after school, whenever we’d have a customer rant at us about anything that was not in any way our fault, we’d say our catchphrase, “sorry for the inconvenience,” which in fact meant something else entirely, more along the lines of saying “go bark at the moon.” Delivered with a bright, albeit fake, smile, it usually mollified the customer while still allowing us to retain a bit of self-respect as well.
“Right back at you,” she said happily. “So, at the moment, we have three suspects.”
“Four, if you count Gabby,” I said.
“Are we counting Gabby?” Grace asked me.
“Grace, you weren’t there. I have to tell you, there was some real friction between them, and Maggie seemed to be able to push Gabby’s buttons pretty easily. I don’t like to admit it, but she could have lashed out at her.”
“Maybe with a tire iron, but with poison?” Grace asked. “That doesn’t seem like her style to me. Does it to you?”
“No, you’re right, not ordinarily, but we still can’t take Gabby’s name off our list of suspects entirely, even if we believe that she would never use poison. It’s much too subtle for her taste.”
“What about Paige Hill?” Grace asked me.
“What about her? Oh, are you talking about the little squabble she had with Maggie out in front of her shop?”
“Surely that’s not grounds for murder, though, is it?”
“No, probably not,” I said. “It was pretty heated when I got there, though.”
Grace frowned for a moment before she spoke. “Do you honestly think Paige could have killed her, especially with poison?”
“No,” I answered fairly quickly. “That’s the thing. Whoever did it must have known Maggie for a while, and fairly well.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Think about it. Who knew she was even taking medication for her heart? Besides, poison comes from a slow hate, not a quick burst of anger. To top that off, who was close enough to poison her without causing suspicion on her part? No matter how she ingested whatever it was that killed her, Maggie wouldn’t exactly accept something from a stranger, would she? It would have to be someone she knew fairly well.”
“So we still have just three main suspects, if we put Gabby and Paige in the second tier. To be fair, that’s better than the way we start with most of our investigations,” Grace said as she stood and grabbed our empty plates.
“Don’t worry about those. I’ll do them later,” I said.
“You weren’t under the impression that I was going to actually wash them, were you?” she asked with a hint of laughter in her voice. “I was just going to rinse them off and leave them in the sink for you to deal with yourself.”
“That’s the girl I know and love,” I said happily. Even in situations dire and without much hope, I loved being with Grace. There was just something about her that made the good times better and the bad ones not nearly as bleak as they might have been. I supposed that was what friendship really was, when all was said and done. “Let me put some pot pie in some Tupperware for you. How much would you like to take him? There’s quite a bit left here.”
“How about half?”
“What should we do with the rest of it?” I asked her as I did as she instructed.
“I thought I’d take it home with me and have it again tomorrow night, if you don’t mind,” she said sheepishly. “Besides, Stephen could never eat all of that in one sitting.”
“That sounds like a plan to me,” I said. After I had the portions divided up equally, I handed them both to Grace.
“Any chance you’d like to go with me when I deliver this?” she asked me a little sheepishly as she headed for the door.
“Do you really want an audience?” I asked her.
“No, I suppose not.”
I stopped her from leaving. “Grace, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
“Are you honestly that nervous about talking to Stephen?” I asked her. Could it be possible that my friend, normally so full of self-assurance and bravado, was actually anxious about talking to her boyfriend?
“Kind of,” she said in a meek voice I hadn’t heard in ages. “Suzanne, am I being ridiculous? Do I really want someone in my life who doesn’t want to be with me?”
“If you honestly believe that, then no, you don’t. But what if he’s just feeling the pressure of his job and taking it out on you? If you two belong together and you just roll over and take this breakup at face value, will you ever be able to get a relationship with him back again? I guess the real question is what you think his underlying motivation is for suggesting you two split up.”
“That’s it, right on the money.” She looked at me steadily for a moment before asking, “When did you suddenly get so wise?”
I had to laugh. “Grace, it’s easy to see things in other people’s relationships. It’s when we come to our own lives that we’re usually blind to the truth.”
“That’s certainly true enough for me,” she said. To my surprise, Grace put the two containers down on the table by the front door and hugged me fiercely before she left. “Suzanne, it’s good to have you in my life.”
“Right back at you,” I said. “After you speak with Stephen, I want you to come straight back here, no matter how late it might be. Do you understand?”
“What if you’re already asleep? I may have to wait awhile if he’s still talking to Leanne. We both know how long those sessions can last.”
“I don’t care what time it is, wake me up if you have to,” I said. “I’ll be on the couch, either watching television or snoring my head off, but either way, I want to know how it goes.”
“Yes, ma’am,” she said with a mock salute before she collected the containers of food again and left the cottage.
After Grace was gone, I thought about the vulnerability I’d just seen in my friend. She was usually so strong, so steadfast, that I didn’t always realize that deep down, she was just like the rest of us, fragile and delicate on levels that most folks never saw. I hoped things worked out for her. She deserved to have someone in her life to cherish and someone to cherish her in return.
I was dozing off in front of a television show I didn’t care about, mostly turned on for the company of the sound of other voices in my empty cottage, when someone rang my doorbell. I knew instantly that it wasn’t Grace. I’d left the door unlocked on purpose, and she would have tried that before hitting the doorbell, since she knew that I was expecting her.
“Paige, what are you doing here?” I asked the bookstore owner as I opened the door to find her standing there.
“I’m sorry. It’s late for you, isn’t it?” Paige asked, suddenly very apologetic. In her late twenties, she looked much yo
unger, almost elfin in appearance, but something was clearly troubling her.
“Nonsense. Come on in,” I said as I stepped aside to let her in.
She took a sniff of the air. “That smells wonderful.”
“I’d offer you some, but I’m afraid it’s all gone.”
“I wasn’t hinting around for a free meal,” she said with a weary smile. “Suzanne, I think I might be in trouble.”
“What’s going on?” I asked. The bookshop owner certainly had my attention. She hadn’t been in town very long, at least not compared to many of the locals, but we’d become friends, and I hated seeing her so upset.
“You know about most of it. That fight I had with Maggie Moore out in front of all of April Springs is coming back to haunt me already.”
After we sat in the living room, I asked, “Would you like some coffee or sweet tea?” I had the tea in the fridge, but I could make the coffee in two shakes if she wanted some. There were times when a beverage helped lubricate conversation, and it didn’t necessarily have to be alcohol. Just holding something in your hands, having something to stare at, was often enough of an icebreaker for most folks.
“No, thanks. I’m good.”
“Why do you think you’re in trouble? I had a fight with Maggie too, but I haven’t seen any repercussions from it.”
“That’s because you haven’t been open since everybody found out she was poisoned. I swear, my shop was so empty I had to close early just to keep folks from noticing. Is that the way things work in April Springs?”
“I’ve gone through more than my share of lulls myself,” I said, remembering the sting from the most recent one when I’d worried about losing my shop altogether. In fact, I was still dancing a thin edge, not quite breaking even yet but not going too much farther into the hole. “It will pass.”
“I hope so. Suzanne, I didn’t kill that woman. I barely even knew her.”
“I’m in the same boat you are. Just out of curiosity, why were you two squabbling this morning?”
