No Scone Unturned

by Dobbs, Leighann

  “That’s what Jack said, too. We’re not sure, but we think maybe she’s in the pond.”

  “But what do you think his plan is? I mean, he can’t pretend she’s in Europe forever. Doesn’t she have a book signing next week?” Cassie straightened back up and tapped her finger on her lips. “And I think I read something about an author conference too.”

  “We think he might be planning to pretend that she disappears.” Lexy plopped the dough out onto a floured marble slab, grabbed her rolling pin, and started rolling it out. “You know, like what happened with Agatha Christie back in the forties.”

  “That’s right. Her car was found mysteriously abandoned. I bet that would generate a lot of interest for Olive’s books. Probably more interest than if she just died.” Cassie opened the oven, grabbed some oven mitts, and pulled out a tray of brownies, allowing the smell of chocolate to perfume the room. “But why pretend she’s in Europe? That doesn’t seem to make much sense.”

  Lexy rolled the dough to the perfect thickness. “Not much of what he’s doing is making sense. Maybe he wants to pretend she disappeared over in Europe because then the police here won’t get involved?” Lexy picked up a heart-shaped cookie cutter and started cutting out the cookies, pressing down into the dough and then prying up the shapes and transferring them to a silicone baking sheet.

  “Good point. Maybe he’s not so stupid after all,” Cassie said.

  The bells on the front door jangled, indicating a customer.

  “My turn.” Lexy peeled off her food-service gloves, tossed them in the trash, and headed out front, where four gray-haired ladies stood in front of the pastry case with their heads bent together.

  There was something familiar about the ladies, and Lexy figured it was that they reminded her of Nans, Ruth, Ida, and Helen, who often came into the bakery to relieve her of the brownie ends and broken cookies.

  “I think we should get cookies this time, Florence.” A lady in a navy-blue shirt tapped the glass case in front of Lexy’s display of frosted cookies. Since it was summertime, she’d done a variety of different flowers in all colors.

  “They look spectacular if you present them in a basket,” Lexy said.

  “I don’t know,” a woman in yellow said. “We had cookies last time. I think we should go for bars and brownies this time.”

  “You could do both,” Lexy suggested.

  “True.” Navy-Blue Shirt looked up at Lexy. “Do you have a discount for the ladies’ auxiliary?”

  “Ladies’ auxiliary?”

  “Yes, we put on functions every month.” Yellow Shirt narrowed her eyes. “You didn’t know?”

  “Oh, yes! Sorry. I’ve heard about your functions from my grandmother,” Lexy lied. Best to butter up the customers and make them feel important.

  “We’re trying to get Olive Pendleton to speak at our next one. She’s coming out with a new book, you know,” Navy-Blue Shirt said.

  A third woman, this one in a red shirt, huffed, “Except she hasn’t replied to us.”

  “I’m sure she’s very busy,” Yellow Shirt said.

  “I heard she was in France,” Lexy said.

  The ladies frowned at her in unison, their faces folding into dozens of wrinkles. “France? We doubt that.”

  “Why?” Lexy asked.

  “We are her official Brook Ridge Falls fan club. And we know all of her comings and goings. We weren’t alerted to any trip to France,” Red Shirt said.

  “And furthermore, I don’t think she’s left her house,” Navy Shirt added.

  “How would you know that?” Lexy asked.

  The ladies exchanged guilty looks. “Well…we sort of keep an eye on her.”

  Now Lexy remembered why they looked familiar. These were the people she’d seen driving by in the car in the Pendletons’ neighborhood. If they kept an eye on the house, they might have seen something. She needed to butter them up, loosen their tongues, and keep them talking.

  “We’re not stalkers,” Red Shirt added.

  “Of course not! This is your first time buying cookies in here, isn’t it?” Lexy asked.

  The ladies nodded in unison.

  “Well then, this order is on me. Pick out whatever you want, and I’ll fill up a box for you. In fact, why don’t you try some samples.” Lexy pulled out the tray of bite-sized samples she kept and handed it over the case. The ladies passed them around, carefully choosing their little pieces and making num-num noises as they sampled.

  Lexy took the opportunity to interrogate them. “I’m catering a brunch right near the Pendletons’. Olive sure is eccentric.”

  “I’ll say,” Navy-Blue Shirt said. “Why, do you know she sometimes has her assistant go to author conferences in her stead?”

  “You don’t say,” Lexy said. “Do they look alike?”

  Yellow Shirt shrugged and swallowed a big chunk of frosted brownie. “They’re the same height, same hair, which I think is done on purpose, and if the assistant doesn’t talk to anyone that personally knows Olive, then all the papers see is someone that looks like Olive doing things Olive should be doing.”

  “But why does she do that?” Lexy asked. “I would think she would want to go to those places herself.”

  “No. In fact, if you go to our official fan page on Facebook, you’ll see that she is somewhat reclusive.”

  “Then you think she wouldn’t want to travel off to France.” Lexy accepted the tray back from the ladies, put it in the case, and started constructing the white bakery box. “Pick out whatever you want, and I’ll fill the box for you.”

  “Yeah, that’s why we don’t think she’s in France.” Navy Shirt tapped her fingers over some coconut-covered brownies then moved to some macaroons. Lexy dutifully put two of each in the box.

  “Because she likes to stay home?” Lexy asked.

  “Well, that and the fact that she hasn’t left her house all week.” Yellow Shirt bent and squinted into the case. “Can we have some of these chocolate scones?”

  “Sure.” Lexy picked up chocolate scones and nestled them in bakery paper then laid them in the box. “But how do you know she hasn’t left her house all week?”

  “Like we said, we’re on watch. We monitor her comings and goings. Sometimes we even get a photograph for the page. There’s a few others who take shifts for us. Between us, we’ve been there quite a bit this week, and the only activity we’ve seen has been the sister coming and going in her little white Fiat. In fact, seems she’s still there. Oh! And the husband took his truck out last Saturday and came back with a load of stuff for that gazebo they’re building. He was gone an awfully long time. But Olive hasn’t left that house all week.”

  As the ladies picked out pastries, Lexy put them into the box on autopilot, her mind whirling with new information. Was it possible they had been watching the house the entire week? Surely they wouldn’t be able to watch it all day and night, but if Olive had left to fly to Europe, wouldn’t they have seen her? And why was the sister still there when she lived just on the other side of town?

  Too bad they hadn’t been there when Olive fell off the balcony. They’d have witnessed it and called the cops. But in order to have seen Olive fall, they would have to have been in the backyard or in the Kingsleys’ backyard. The patio wasn’t visible from anywhere else.

  “Couldn’t Olive have taken the Fiat? Borrowed it or something?”

  “Oh no, she only ever drives the red Cadillac.”

  The ladies left, thanking Lexy profusely, with their overstuffed box. Lexy couldn’t wait to tell Nans and the ladies this latest discovery, because everything the four women had said further reinforced the theory that Olive was dead and Rupert and the sister had had something to do with it.

  12

  “Now why didn’t I think of that?” Ruth tapped furiously on the iPad. “I should’ve known to look for Olive’s fan club page.”

  “Well, you can’t think of everything.” Nans pretended she was studying her nails. “That’s my
job.”

  “Yep, here it is.” Ruth slid the iPad around. The page banner showed a sampling of Olive’s books along with a picture of her. The posts were filled with sightings of Olive and some selfies from the four ladies who had been in Lexy’s bakery.

  “Look! This is her assistant.” Helen pinched her fingers together over one of the photographs and pulled them apart to enlarge it. The photograph was of a woman with blond hair like Olive, large sunglasses, and a scarf wrapped around her blond hair, obscuring part of her face.

  “She does look like Olive,” Ruth said.

  “But it says below this is Connie,” Lexy said. “The ladies at the bakery said she has Connie stand in for her sometimes when she doesn’t want to go to events.”

  Nans' brows mashed together. “Really? You don’t think that could be Connie in the Paris picture, do you?”

  Ruth shook her head. “No. Look. Here is a picture of Olive with Connie. They don’t look that much alike when looking at their faces straight on. It’s only at a distance with the scarf obscuring her face.”

  Lexy studied the picture. Sure enough, the two women were similar, but the picture of Olive that Rupert had on his phone definitely was not Connie.

  “Well, this is confusing,” Ida said. “Is Olive in France or is Connie in France?”

  “It could be that no one is in France,” Ruth said. “Look, to show you how easy it is to photoshop, I have taken the liberty of sending Mona to China.”

  Ruth tapped on the iPad and brought up a picture of Nans standing on top of the Great Wall of China. It looked pretty good, but on close inspection, Lexy could tell it was faked.

  “This is okay, Ruth, but anyone who gives it a good gander can tell that you messed with it,” Ida said.

  “Well, sure they can.” Ruth took the iPad back and scowled at Ida. “This was just a quick thing I did up, and besides, we didn’t get a good gander at Rupert’s. For all we know, it was just as unprofessional. I merely wanted to illustrate what is possible.”

  “Okay. So this doesn’t get us any further than we were yesterday except now we know a little bit more about Olive’s assistant.” Nans got a whiteboard marker, went to the whiteboard, jotted something down, and then turned to Ruth. “Did you do any research on her?”

  Ruth looked pleased. “As a matter of fact, I did. Connie has been Olive’s assistant for quite a few years now. They work together closely, and she lives here in town. If Olive met with foul play, I think it would be only a matter of time before Connie realized something was amiss.”

  “Unless Connie is in on it,” Ida suggested.

  “Right. So far we’ve just been going on the assumption that it’s Rupert and the sister. Maybe it’s Rupert and Connie,” Nans said.

  “Or Connie and the sister,” Helen added.

  “The ladies that came to the bakery did say that they’d only seen the sister leave the house. I guess she drives a little white Fiat,” Lexy said. “Oh, and Rupert went out and got some building stuff for the gazebo. But not Olive. They haven’t seen her all week.”

  “Well, that’s new information,” Nans said.

  “And they seem to think the Fiat has been at the house all week,” Lexy said.

  “Meaning that Susan has been there since Olive was murdered,” Ida said.

  “Right.”

  “With Olive out of the picture, Rupert and Susan are free to do as they please,” Helen said.

  “But there is one thing that bothers me still.” Nans stood at the whiteboard, studying the clues. “If Rupert and Susan killed Olive because they were having an affair, then what is the deal with the cashier’s checks? Something else is going on here.”

  “The plot thickens,” Ruth said. “A simple affair might not be the only motive. Or maybe it has nothing to do with the affair and everything to do with money.”

  A doorbell chimed inside Ida’s purse, and all heads swiveled toward it.

  “Must be my phone.” Ida rummaged in the purse and pulled out an iPhone, her face collapsing into a frown. She looked up at them with serious eyes. “It’s Jason. He needs the drone for Tuesday. Ladies, we have a priority-one mission.”

  13

  Lexy couldn’t believe Nans and the ladies had talked her into driving them back to Castle Heights. The big catering job at the Kingsleys’ was tomorrow, and she still had a lot of prep to do, but when Ruth threatened to drive in her giant blue Oldsmobile, Lexy capitulated. Ruth was known to run over every curb and shrub in sight, and her driving had been getting worse. Lexy didn’t want an accident and potential bodily injury of Nans or one of her friends on her conscience.

  So later that day, she found herself parking her car a few houses down from the Pendletons’.

  Ida clutched the controller in her hand and flipped it on. “I just hope we can find it. You know, Jason is a pretty big real estate agent. He has a million-dollar property that he needs the drone to take pictures of. I don’t know what will happen if I don’t produce the darn thing by Tuesday.”

  “Do you see any activity over there?” Ruth leaned against the car, her eyes looking in the direction of the Pendletons’.

  “No, but the last time we didn’t see anything, and we almost got eaten by those dogs,” Ida said. “I say we stick to the neighbors’ yards. This house here looks like the people are on vacation.”

  Ida trotted across the street and through someone’s front yard, holding the remote in front of her and fiddling with the controls.

  “Ida! Where are you going?” Ruth asked.

  “We already tried this yesterday,” Helen said.

  “I’m just going to go down by the gazebo,” Ida yelled from across the yard. “We didn’t try near there.”

  The others looked at each other and shrugged then started across the front yard in her wake.

  “Hey, what are you pretty ladies doing here?”

  They jerked around in the direction of the voice to see a man sitting on his screened-in porch. He was wearing a white cotton T-shirt and two days’ growth of beard and had a pyramid of beer cans stacked in front of him.

  “Sorry, sir. We’re just cutting through,” Nans said.

  “Why don’t you come up and have a beer? Especially the pretty little one in the flowered shirt.” The man gestured his beer can toward Helen, who blushed. Lexy had no idea why, but the guys always seemed to go for Helen. She hoped Helen would use the man’s invitation to their advantage.

  Helen sidled closer to the porch and smiled in at the man. “Well, I can’t say as we have time. I’m Helen. What’s your name?”

  “Bud.” The man took a sip from the beer. “Mighty hot out. Sure you don’t want a beer? It’ll cool you off. Always does. The missus is on vacation up to her sister’s in Maine.” He favored Helen with an exaggerated wink.

  Lexy noticed that the man had a perfect view into the Pendletons’ backyard from his perch on the porch. Was it possible he’d seen something?

  “This is a great porch. I bet you take advantage of it a lot,” Lexy said.

  The man nodded. “Ayup. Sit out here most evenings. Most afternoons, too.”

  “You’re nice and tucked away in there. I bet you see a lot of things from the neighbors here that they don’t know you’re seeing.” Helen indicated the two neighboring backyards, one of which was the Pendletons’.

  “I sure do. In fact, I saw you ladies over there at the Pendletons’ the other day. What’s it you’re looking for, anyway?” The man pointed toward Ida, who was down at the edge of the property, pointing her controller toward the gazebo and apparently having no luck.

  “A drone,” Ruth said. At the man’s confused look, she added, “Like a remote-control plane. You wouldn’t happen to have seen one of those flying around or the dogs carrying one, would you?”

  The man pressed his lips together then shook his head. “Nope, can’t say as I saw that. Those three dogs sure do make a ruckus. Especially when the sister comes over with hers.”

  “And she comes ov
er often, doesn’t she?” Helen shot him her brightest smile, and Lexy figured she was buttering him up for more questions.

  “Yep. They’re as close as ducks in a pond.”

  “Must be kind of annoying for Rupert to have his sister-in-law over all the time. Do you know him well?” Nans asked.

  “Nah. Not too much. Been to a few parties over there, but Rupert, well, he’s a little henpecked. I don’t think he’d say boo about having the sister over there. Especially not when she distracts Olive and leaves Rupert to ogle that cute maid they have running around.”

  “Maid?” Lexy asked.

  “Oh yeah. They got one of those services. You know, the one with the green truck that comes around and cleans your house every so often. We’d get one here, but the missus likes to do her own cleaning.”

  “And you think Rupert fancies this maid?” Nans asked.

  Bud snorted. “Well, who wouldn’t fancy her? She’s young, blonde, and…” he let go of his beer long enough for his hands to form an hourglass shape.

  “Do you think he has something going on with her?” Helen asked.

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “Now I didn’t say that. I don’t really know if Rupert is the type. But if he was and she was willing, I wouldn’t blame him.”

  Ida came back with a look of disappointment marring her features. “I didn’t get nothing down there… Oh, hello. Who are you?”

  “I’m Bud. You want a beer? I was hoping your friend here would come up, but you’ll do.”

  Ida scowled at him. “I don’t think so, mister. I don’t play second fiddle to no one.”

  “Ida!” Nans looked at her sharply. “Bud was just telling us about the Pendletons’. Now let’s be cordial to him.”

  “Oh.” Ida flashed him a smile. “Did you happen to see my drone flying around in their backyard the other day?”