Sam turned toward her and asked, “Are you comin’ along?”
“We’ll see. But I think I might.”
“I hope you do,” he said with a nod.
The conversation might have continued, but at that moment the uniformed officer returned from the front porch where he had been waiting. Chief Dale Clifton was with him. The chief gave everyone around the table a smile and a nod and said, “Good morning, folks.” He looked at Raquel. “Mrs. Forrest, you have my deepest sympathy on your loss. I’m really sorry to intrude on you at a time like this, but I have a few questions that I need to ask you.”
Raquel nodded, put her hands on the table, and pushed herself to her feet. “Of course. I understand, Chief. Let’s get this over with.”
Chapter 20
Phyllis had a hard time concentrating on cleaning up after breakfast and then getting her cookies in the oven, because she knew that Chief Clifton was questioning Raquel Forrest in the parlor. She didn’t think that Raquel would break down and confess to stabbing her husband, but anything was possible. She might even admit that she had poisoned Ed McKenna, although Phyllis couldn’t think of any possible motive for her to have done such a thing.
Clifton surprised her by coming to the kitchen door and saying, “I have some questions for you, too, Mrs. Newsom.”
“Me?” Phyllis said. She glanced at the timer attached by a magnet to the refrigerator door. It was counting down the minutes and seconds until the first batch of cookies was supposed to come out of the oven. “I thought you were talking to Raquel.”
“Mrs. Forrest and I are finished for now. And you and Mr. Fletcher were the first ones on the scene after she discovered her husband’s body.”
“But … but I have cookies in the oven,” Phyllis protested.
Carolyn was sitting at the table. She and Phyllis had been chatting aimlessly. Now she said, “I’ll take them out and put the next batch in for you, Phyllis.”
“I really ought to check them when they come out and make sure they’re done.” It wasn’t that Phyllis was worried about being questioned by Chief Clifton. She really was concerned that the cookies she was going to enter in the contest be as good as they possibly could be.
“I can tell when cookies are done, and I know how long to bake the next batch,” Carolyn said as she got to her feet. “For goodness’ sake, I’ve even watched you make this particular recipe before. I won’t mess them up. I give you my word on that.”
“You don’t have to give me your word,” Phyllis said. She didn’t want Carolyn to think that she didn’t trust her. She did … especially since they weren’t competing directly against each other this time. If they had been …
But they weren’t, Phyllis reminded herself, so it wasn’t necessary to even think such things. She went on, “Thank you, Carolyn.” Then she turned to Chief Clifton and said, “I suppose you’d like to talk in the parlor?”
“That’ll be fine,” he said. “I’ll try to have you back out here before that next batch of cookies needs to come out of the oven.” As they left the kitchen and started down the hall toward the parlor, he added, “Are you baking them for the guests here?”
“No, for the Just Desserts contest at the SeaFair tomorrow.”
“Ah.” He nodded. “The SeaFair. Just what we need around here … more excitement. It actually starts tonight, you know. My men will be busy keeping up with all the extra traffic, not to mention the fights and the drunk-and-disorderly calls.”
“Goodness. Is it really that bad?”
“No, by and large the SeaFair visitors are a really well-behaved bunch. But you put a large number of people together with beer and you’re going to have a little trouble here and there. You shouldn’t have to worry about it tomorrow during the contest. That’s during the middle of the day, right?”
“One o’clock, I think.”
They went into the parlor. “I know you talked to my daughter yesterday,” Clifton began, “and Abby said she even went to The Dancing Pelican with you and Mr. Fletcher for supper. I appreciate any help you gave her. Right now I just want you to tell me in your own words what you saw when you and Mr. Fletcher got back here yesterday afternoon and found Mrs. Forrest coming out of the room where her husband’s body was.”
Phyllis went through it again, knowing that her story hadn’t changed from the other times she had told it. Chief Clifton nodded a lot and made a few notes in a little notebook, then asked her if she could account for the whereabouts of everyone else connected with the house during the half hour or so previous to that time.
That had to mean Sheldon Forrest had been stabbed during that half hour, she thought. And she couldn’t truthfully account for the whereabouts of anyone just then except her and Sam. They had been on the Copano Bay Causeway fishing pier with Oliver McKenna, Charles Jefferson, and Roger Fadiman. She hadn’t mentioned that little detail the day before, though, so she kept quiet about their companions now and crossed her fingers for luck that her deception wouldn’t be discovered. She didn’t want to be charged with obstruction of justice. Mike would be very disappointed in her. She regretted now trapping herself in that lie of omission.
Finally, Chief Clifton nodded and said, “I guess that’s all. Thank you for your cooperation, Mrs. Newsom.”
“You’ve arrested the wrong person, you know.” Phyllis couldn’t resist saying it.
“Oh?” Clifton’s white eyebrows rose. “Is that right? You think Consuela Anselmo is innocent?”
“I’m convinced of it.”
“Then who do you think is guilty?”
Feeling a little like she was—what was the expression?—throwing Raquel under the bus, Phyllis said, “I thought that a spouse was always the first suspect in a murder.”
“That’s true. By all accounts, though, the Forrests were happily married. Nobody says that they quarreled recently. In fact, they seem to have been very much in love, despite the differences in their background.”
“But why would Consuela want to hurt him? You can’t just go by the fingerprints on the murder weapon. It came from her kitchen, after all.”
Clifton looked surprised again. “Abby told you about the fingerprints, eh?”
“Your daughter didn’t confirm or deny anything, Chief … but you just did.”
Clifton frowned at her for a moment, then burst out in a laugh. “Son of a gun! I sure did … But as for motive, did you ever stop to think that maybe Sheldon Forrest wasn’t Consuela’s intended victim?”
Now he had totally lost her, and Phyllis said as much.
“Maybe she took that knife and went upstairs intending to stick it in Leo Blaine’s chest,” the chief suggested. “She could have known that Blaine’s been spending a lot of time with Raquel Forrest—”
“That’s completely innocent, from what I’ve heard,” Phyllis said. “He was teaching her about her father’s business.” If Clifton didn’t already know about that, he would as soon as he questioned Leo.
Clifton nodded. “That’s what Mrs. Forrest told me. But what if Consuela went upstairs looking for Leo, intending to settle his hash for that business with Bianca? She didn’t find him in his room, so she looked in the Forrests’ room, and Sheldon Forrest saw her with the knife and guessed what she was up to. He could have threatened to tell Leo that she was gunning for him, so to speak, and then Consuela lost her temper and struck out with the knife … and when she saw what she’d done, she got scared and hurried back downstairs.”
“Leaving the knife in Sheldon’s chest? Do you really think she could kill a man and then calmly go downstairs and start cooking a pot of tamale soup?”
“Well, when you put it like that,” Clifton said with a grudging frown, “it does sound pretty unlikely.”
“It certainly does!”
“Unfortunately, we have a limited amount of forensics evidence to go on.”
“I don’t mean to lecture you, Chief, but there’s more to it than forensics evidence. You have to know the people inv
olved. People have to have a reason to commit murder. If Leo Blaine was the one with the knife in his chest, then Consuela might have thought she had a reason to do that.”
“Like I said, it could have been an accident.”
Phyllis shook her head. “I can’t believe the scenario you laid out. I just can’t.” She lifted a hand to her mouth as a thought occurred to her. “Oh, good grief. I’m arguing crime-solving with a chief of police.”
Clifton grinned. “And arguing quite well, I must say.”
“Why did you let me go on like that?”
“Because I’m interested in your point of view, Mrs. Newsom. You’ve solved murders before. You know more about this sort of thing than the average citizen. To tell you the truth, I was sort of hoping you’d read me the riot act and come up with another viable suspect for me. But …”
“I didn’t, did I?” Phyllis sighed. “Chief, there was no affair between Sheldon Forrest and Jessica Blaine. No one had any reason to kill him. Just like no one who was actually here in the house had any reason to poison Ed McKenna. These are … are senseless crimes.”
A frown of concern appeared on Clifton’s face. “You think maybe we’re dealing with some sort of deranged serial killer? Somebody who kills for the thrill of it?”
“That seems impossible. That sort of murderer is usually, well, some sort of squalid little man who just wants to feel powerful.”
“Studied profiling, have you?”
Phyllis shook her head. “No more so than anyone else who’s watched the news on television and read a few books. But no one involved in this case … no one! … strikes me as a thrill killer.”
Clifton nodded. “For what it’s worth, I agree with you. There’s a motive, or motives, behind both killings. We’re just not seeing it.” He got up from the armchair where he had been sitting. “But Abby and I will keep poking around until we find it. You can be sure of that.”
Phyllis stood as well. “We’re finished, then?”
“For now. Unless I think of anything else.” Clifton held out his hand, and as Phyllis took it, he went on, “Thank you for talking things over with me, Mrs. Newsom. It’s sort of like having an unofficial consultant whose business is murder.”
She shook her head firmly. “My business is being a retired schoolteacher. And right now, it’s also baking cookies for that contest tomorrow … Oh, dear. I forgot about the cookies!”
“Darn it, so did I. But at least you had Mrs. Wilbarger out there in the kitchen backing you up.”
“That’s true. I assume you’ll be around for a while, questioning the others who are staying here?”
“That’s the plan,” Clifton said.
“Stop by the kitchen before you leave. I think I can spare one or two cookies.”
A grin spread across his face. “I’ll sure take you up on that offer.”
My business is murder, Phyllis thought as she headed back to the kitchen. It sounded like the title of some silly old tough-guy paperback. How ridiculous.
While Phyllis was talking to Chief Clifton, Carolyn had taken the first batch of cookies out of the oven, put in the second batch, taken them out, and put in a third batch, which used up more than half of the dough Phyllis had prepared. That third batch was now baking. When Phyllis checked the cookies that had already come out of the oven, she saw that they were perfectly done.
Carolyn was putting spoonfuls of cookie dough on the pan when she stepped aside to let Phyllis take over.
“I feel like this should be a team entry now,” she told Carolyn.
“Nonsense. I didn’t do anything. All the credit for them goes to you.”
“I’d be glad to help with your pie,” Phyllis offered.
“I appreciate it, but that won’t be necessary. I’m not going to bake it until tomorrow morning, so that it’ll be nice and fresh for the contest.”
“You’re not going to the SeaFair before then?”
“Wander around in a crowd of people swilling beer and smelling of insect repellent and sunblock? No, thank you. I don’t plan to get there until right before the contest, although I’ll probably check out some of the arts and crafts exhibits afterward. Let’s face it, though, Phyllis, this is the same sort of thing as the Peach Festival, and we already go to that every year.”
Carolyn had a point, but the SeaFair certainly wasn’t exactly the same as the Peach Festival. For one thing, you couldn’t stand in the town square in Weatherford and see the surf rolling in on the beach or smell the salt air or hear seagulls calling to each other. As much as she loved her hometown, it was good to get away and see some different things sometimes, too.
Like the Fulton Mansion, which she planned to join the others in touring later that afternoon. She had read a little about it and knew that the waterfront mansion was well over a hundred years old. Like many of the other historic old buildings in Rockport and Fulton, it had survived for so long because the occasional hurricanes vented most of their fury on the barrier islands offshore, rather than roaring in with full force.
While Phyllis was getting the last batch of cookies out of the oven, Chief Clifton stuck his head in the kitchen door. “Looks like I’m just in time for those cookies you promised me,” he said with a smile.
“These are too hot,” Phyllis said, “but you can have a couple off that plate over there on the counter.”
“Much obliged,” the chief said as he moved over to the counter. He picked up two cookies from the pile on the plate and took a bite out of one. Making a face of pure pleasure, he said, “Oh, now, that’s really good. I always try all the entries, and I think you’re going to be one of the favorites in the contest tomorrow.”
“We’ll see,” Phyllis said with a shrug. “You’ll have to try Carolyn’s pie, too.”
“Oh, I will, you can count on that. But I want to be sure and get the recipe for these cookies for Boaz. Of course, he’ll come up with something crazy to put in them and ruin ’em, but he’ll have fun with it.”
When the chief was gone, Phyllis and Carolyn started getting ready for lunch. Without looking at Phyllis, Carolyn commented, “I’m not very fond of the police, you know, ever since they tried to arrest me for murder, but I have to admit, Chief Clifton is a rather handsome man.”
“Really?” Phyllis replied, smiling to herself. “I hadn’t noticed.” She couldn’t remember the last time Carolyn had commented on a man’s looks.
“In a weather-beaten sort of way, of course.”
“Of course.”
Carolyn didn’t say anything else, but still, Phyllis thought, it was progress of a sort. Maybe one of these days Carolyn would find someone she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. If she did, that was fine. If she didn’t … well, she would always have her friends. Thank goodness for that, Phyllis thought, because she knew that the same thing applied to her.
Tours began every hour at the Fulton Mansion, Sam had found out from looking at the mansion’s Web site. At two o’clock that afternoon, he and Phyllis were waiting in front of the massive three-story house, which sat facing the water over a long, narrow lawn dominated by four towering palm trees and several of the picturesque bent oaks. Eve was with them, along with Nick and Kate Thompson and Leo and Jessica Blaine. Jessica seemed to have warmed up a little to Leo, although it would probably be a long time before she forgave him for what had happened with Bianca. Phyllis knew that Jessica had to be wondering what other unsavory activities her husband had gotten up to over the years.
A historical monument and marker along the walk that led to the house had explained that it was built between 1874 and 1877 by George W. Fulton, an early-day settler and cattle baron for whom the town was named. It was constructed in the mansard style, and the latest technological advances of the time had been installed in it, including running water, central heating, and gaslights. What would now be considered the bare necessities of life had been the height of luxury back in 1877 when the Fulton family moved in, Phyllis thought.
B
ut it was that way with everything, she mused. People got used to having certain things, and they didn’t want them taken away.
There were other visitors to Oakhurst, as the mansion was named, besides the group from Oak Knoll. When one of the volunteers who conducted the tours opened the front door at two o’clock, everyone trooped up the rather steep set of stairs to the porch and filed inside. Phyllis was struck immediately by how ornate the furnishings were. The rooms were crowded with overstuffed furniture, thick rugs on the floors, and crystal lighting fixtures. The guide pointed out not only the obvious luxuries, but also things like the pipes that conducted heat from room to room. She also talked about the life of George Fulton, who had fought in the Texas Revolution as a young man, long before becoming a successful rancher and financier.
For someone interested in history, it was a fascinating forty-five minutes, Phyllis thought. She and Sam both took it in avidly. Eve didn’t care much about the historical aspects, but she was impressed by the furnishings and the elaborate garden behind the house. So was Jessica Blaine. Leo looked bored at times, Phyllis thought, but he made an effort not to, especially when Jessica was looking at him. Maybe he really did want to clean up his act and earn his wife’s forgiveness. Phyllis hoped that was the case.
When she and Sam finally wandered back out onto the mansion’s front porch, they found Nick and Kate standing there looking across the long front lawn to the bay. Nick’s hands were thrust in the pockets of his cargo shorts, and he sighed as he said, “You know, if you knocked down those palm trees and those funny-looking oaks, you could put up condos in that space, or some sort of club.”
“That’s terrible!” Kate said. “It’s a perfectly beautiful view, and you want to spoil it?”
Nick laughed. “Hey, just force of habit. You know me, can’t let go of the ol’ work mentality.” He took his hands out of his pockets and slipped an arm around Kate’s waist. “But you’re right, it is a beautiful view. Romantic, even.”
“Yeah,” she agreed as she rested her head on his shoulder, stooping a little to do so. She put an arm around Nick.
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