A Tale of Two Biddies (League of Literary Ladies)

by Logan, Kylie

  Somehow, I managed to block out the discordant rhythms of Guillotine and concentrate on the case. Song after song didn’t exactly float past (they were more of the stomping variety), and I found myself facing the inescapable fact: Gordon was looking like a good choice for most-wanted perp, but there were still others I needed to consider.

  As if the Universe was listening and providing me the push I needed, across the park I caught sight of a flutter of gauzy yellow.

  Didi and Dan Peebles. Believe me, I hadn’t forgotten that of all the people who hated Richie’s guts, Peebles had one of the very best reasons. Gordon Hunter might be currently at the top of my list of those-who-might-have-dunnit, but I am nothing if not thorough, and I knew I needed to get my information lined up nice and neat. I zigzagged my way through the crowd and as luck would have it, arrived at the picnic table where Dan was entertaining a group of people just as Dino called out, “Good night, Put-in-Bay! We love you!”

  Yes, the word cliche crossed my mind.

  I waved a greeting to Peebles and his guests and said no thank you to a glass of wine which they weren’t supposed to be drinking in the park in the first place. Since I knew Dino and the Boyz would be coming back onstage soon for the encore they’d been anticipating and thus practicing all week, I asked Peebles if I could speak to him privately for a minute.

  “She’s looking for a deal on a car!” Like we were long-lost buddies, Peebles looped one arm around my shoulders and spoke loud enough to be heard in Sandusky, all the way across the lake. “Best used car deals on the mainland,” he added, and with his free hand, slapped the nearest man on the back. “You have my promise, and she knows it, too.” He gave me an extra squeeze. “Girl is from New York, and even she knows you can’t get a better deal on a used car than you can from Dan Peebles. I’ve got financing, too,” he told me with one of his signature, broad winks. “I promise, I can get a nice, low payment, even for somebody like you who must just barely make a living operating a motel like you do.”

  Good thing my teeth were gritted, or I might have set him straight both about the motel and what he assumed were my reduced circumstances. Too bad. It would have been especially satisfying to point out to the big blowhard that I could buy and sell him a couple thousand times over.

  Instead, I controlled my temper and my tongue. At least until we crossed the road and stood just outside the dock where, what seemed a lifetime ago, we’d all gathered to celebrate the start of the big Bastille Day weeklong celebration. That’s when I slipped out from beneath Dan’s clingy grip and said a little prayer that I hoped Peebles was about to incriminate himself.

  Honest, it would have given me a special kind of tingle to see him in prison orange.

  “So . . .” He didn’t just rub his hands together; he chafed them as if he was sure this was one way to start a rousing good bonfire. “What can I do for you, little lady?”

  “You can stop calling me little lady.” Since I managed to say this with a smile, he thought I was kidding.

  “I was going over the final bills back at the B and B,” I said, emphasizing those two initials just a bit and hoping he realized they did not in any way, shape, or form spell motel. “I knew you’d be busy tomorrow morning over at the B and B, and I didn’t want to bother you then, what with you packing and leaving the B and B. I just wanted to make sure. You arrived at the B and B . . .” Yes, I was laying it on a tad thick. I reminded myself that pride goeth before the not finding out who the murderer was, and told myself to get a grip. “You checked in at the . . . You arrived at my place on Thursday morning. The same day you arrived on the island, right?”

  “Checked in to your sweet little place on Thursday.” Peebles nodded right before he gave me another anything-but-subtle wink. “But truth be told, little lady, that’s not when I got to the island. Nope. Got here on Wednesday.”

  Wednesday. And Richie was killed on Wednesday night.

  This bombshell from Peebles was something I hadn’t expected and I thought it over, wondering what to say next. “Wednesday! Is that so? I was just checking—”

  “Just checking to see if I could have possibly killed that no-good loser, Richie Monroe.” Peebles slapped my back with so much force, it nearly knocked me off my feet. He held out an arm to keep me from falling over, but he didn’t apologize. “Of course you’re checking! Everybody on the island says you’re some sort of detective or something. That you’re looking into the murder. I’ve been waiting for you to ask me if I killed the SOB.”

  “Did you?”

  Peebles didn’t need to turn up the volume so I could hear him over the musical stylings of Guillotine. He was way louder than the band. “I guess I’m the logical suspect,” he finally admitted with a snort of laughter. “But I’ll tell you what, lately, it never crossed my mind.”

  “Because . . .”

  “Because I’m not that kind of man!” I wasn’t sure if it was a particularly drawn-out bass note or Peebles’s rip-roaring laugh that vibrated the sidewalk where we stood. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said, “I thought about it a time or two. I mean, back when the house first blew sky-high. But that was months ago, and I’m over it now. Have been since we went to court and I got justice.” There was the wink again. “And damages.”

  It wasn’t that I didn’t believe him. Oh wait, it was. “What time did you arrive?” I asked him.

  “On the island? Got the five forty-five ferry out of Port Clinton,” he told me. “So it must have been a little after six.”

  Which meant he was on dry land by the time someone laced Richie’s drink with pokeberry.

  “But I didn’t kill the guy,” Peebles said. “I was . . .” This time, he didn’t bother with a wink. I got an elbow to the ribs instead. “Me and Didi, we were over at the new house site. You know they laid the foundation last weekend. And I wanted to check it out, make sure it was done right. Even planned a little surprise for Didi while I was there. Brought along a little pop-up tent and we set it up right there where the house is going to stand. We kept each other busy keeping busy, celebrating, if you know what I mean.”

  I did.

  As for taking his statement at face value, that was another matter altogether, and I guess Peebles realized it. He raised an arm and made a semaphore wave toward his party in the park. “Didi! Hey, Didi honey!”

  Yes, she heard him over Guillotine.

  I was pretty sure all of Put-in-Bay did.

  In short, short white shorts and a skintight orange tank, Didi shimmied across the street and Peebles didn’t waste any time. “Hey, honey, Bea here’s asking about us staying out at the house site on Wednesday night. You took pictures, right? Show them to her. I mean . . .” I think the way he lowered his voice to a manly growl was supposed to be sexy, and in Didi’s world, maybe it was. She giggled. “Show her the ones you can show her.”

  Didi pulled out her phone and when her very long and very pink fingernails clicked, clicked, clicked to the proper screen, she turned the phone so I could see it. There in living color were Peebles and Didi dressed in matching black shorts and red camp shirts, outside a pop-up tent, champagne glasses in hand. Since he was far taller than her, I imagined he was the one who’d held up the phone above his head to snap the picture. Behind them, I could see a broad cement slab and the beginnings of wood framing, and beyond that, a strip of blue lake.

  Scroll.

  There they were again, Peebles and Didi, their smiles a little bigger, minus the red camp shirts.

  Scroll.

  And there they were again, minus just about everything else.

  I’m hardly a prude but my cheeks were hot. “Well, then . . .”

  “Oh, come on.” A poke from Peebles. “We’re all adults here. Don’t be so shy. And take a good look. A really good look.”

  I swallowed hard and forced myself to do as I was told.

  That’s when I saw the date and time stamp on that last picture.

  And that proved it.

  Dan Peeb
les was up to a whole lot of something on Wednesday night. But it had nothing to do with poisoning Richie Monroe.

  You have my promise.

  • • •

  By the time I crossed back over to the park the concert was over, but the party was just getting started.

  Groups of revelers streamed toward the bars across the park and the boardwalk in the other direction. Other people sat and got comfortable, waiting for the fireworks show to begin. They laughed and sang and called out greetings. As for me, I was too busy with my own thoughts to care about any of it.

  Peebles was out. So were Rosalee and Mike.

  Gordon Hunter was in.

  Who did that leave?

  “You bet your life I want that other bottle of scotch! Just like it says in our contract.”

  I was near the stage, and the voice thundered out from behind it, unmistakable to anyone who’d been at the concert for the last couple hours.

  Dino.

  I froze, my mind racing.

  Dino and Richie.

  Theirs was a relationship that went back decades, and if what Tiffany had told us about the song that made Boyz ’n Funk famous and Richie’s and Dino’s dueling claims about who wrote it, animosity was the name of this game.

  I slipped behind a small mountain of amplifiers that Paul, Scotty, Nick, and Jesse were just beginning to wrangle, stepped over a spaghetti tangle of wiring, and got to the space between the back of the stage and the motor home that had been parked parallel to it to allow the band a fifteen-foot by ten-foot green room of sorts. I arrived just in time to see Dino down half a tumbler of amber liquid and hear Gordon promise he’d have the other bottle of scotch for him in a jiffy.

  When Gordon hightailed it out of there, Dino caught sight of me and stepped back, his chin high, his arms raised, his face flush with the excitement of being back in the spotlight. Or maybe it was the scotch. “Huh? So?”

  I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say, so it’s a good thing Tiffany zipped past me to snap a few dozen photos of Dino.

  “Huh? So?” This time Dino asked Tiffany.

  “Fabulous!” She chittered like a fledgling, darting left and right to get more pictures. “I’ll have these up on the fan page in just a bit,” she told Dino. “Along with a little video clip. Only a few seconds,” she added with a gulp when it looked as if he might object. “Just a couple lines from ‘Come Down the Road,’ that second song in the set after intermission. Just enough to make people crazy to hear more.”

  “Well . . .” He pretended to think about it, then gave in with a smile that apparently carried a higher wattage over where Tiffany stood than where I was; she melted. I pretty much stayed my ol’ regular self, unmelted and just as curious as ever.

  “‘Come Down the Road.’ Did you write that one, Dino?” I asked.

  His shoulders inched back. “You bet I did, and I’ll tell you what, it’s going to be big. Mark my word. Bigger than big. As soon as people have a chance to hear it, they’re going to be all over us for more.”

  The way I remembered “Come Down the Road” . . . well, truth be told, I didn’t remember it. Each one of Guillotine’s songs blended into the next, until my overall impression of the concert was one of noisy discord.

  This was not the time to mention my opinion to Dino, so instead I said, “Writing songs. That’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  He spit out a laugh. “Not everyone’s got the talent, honey. So if you’re thinking of giving it a try—”

  “Oh, not me.” There was a table nearby strewn with the remains of a sandwich platter. I brushed aside a scattering of potato chip crumbs and perched myself on the edge of it. “Actually, I was talking about Richie.”

  “I didn’t say anything!” Tiffany blurted out, even though just the fact that she felt she had to blurt—and the bright red color that rose in her cheeks—pretty much proved she did.

  Dino crossed his arms over the white shirt with the ballooning sleeves. “If you know the story,” he told me, “then you know that scumbag . . .” His spite was tempered by a hiccup. “That Richie Monroe—”

  Okay, whatever I expected, it wasn’t that Dino would get all choked up.

  He coughed behind his hand and acted like it was no big deal. “It was a long time ago,” he mumbled. “Back then, me and Richie were friends.”

  “And these days, Richie rigged the guillotine to cut off your head.”

  “Did he?” Dino belted out a laugh. “That son-of-a-bitch! Leave it to Richie to do something that crazy.”

  “You’re not mad?” I asked him.

  “I would have been if he cut my head off.”

  I didn’t bother to point out the flaw in his argument, but then, I didn’t have much of a chance. Dino came and sat down on the table next to me.

  “We were friends,” he said, and this time I knew it was the scotch talking because his words were slurred. “A long . . . long time ago, me and Richie were friends. We were roomies. Sure I was mad when it all went down. But . . .” He burped and pounded his chest. “I didn’t want the guy to die.”

  Which is different than saying I’m not the one who poisoned his drinks.

  “When Richie showed up at my place the other day, you told me you didn’t know him,” I reminded Dino.

  He reached for the bottle of Johnny Walker. There wasn’t much left in it, but then, Dino’s glassy red eyes and his slurred speech were pretty much proof that the glass he was drinking out of on stage wasn’t filled with water. No matter, he emptied the bottle into his glass and slugged it down. “So I didn’t want to bring up ancient history. What difference does it make?”

  “I think it made a lot of difference to Richie.”

  I can’t say if Dino believed this or not. He pulled out his phone, and a couple seconds later, shoved it under my nose. The screen showed a website called Richie’s Telling the Truth.

  “You see this?” he asked. “It’s brand-new. Showed up on the web earlier this week.”

  I hadn’t seen it, and I gave it a quick once-over. The website was neither well-written nor artistic, but it did convey a message. Years ago, Richie said in a rambling, misspelled message, I wus cheated, but I won’t be cheated again. The world needs to no the truth.

  I glanced at Dino. “What is the truth?”

  “Tell her, Dino.” Tiffany advanced on us even before Dino could open his mouth. “Tell her how you wrote ‘Ali,’ and how Richie tried to say it was his. Tell her how all these years, you’ve had to live under the dark cloud of Richie Monroe’s lies. People have thought less of the Boyz,” she said, clearly for my benefit. “Because of the lies. But tell them, Dino . . .” Tiffany scrambled over to stand in front of her hero. “Tell her how you wrote the song that made Boyz ’n Funk famous.”

  Dino still had the phone in his hands, and he stared down at the picture of Richie that looked back up at him. Richie, looking grungy and disheveled, and in spite of his fifty years, still young around the eyes.

  Dino clicked off the website. “What difference does it make?” he asked no one in particular.

  Which is different than saying of course Richie lied and I’m the one who wrote that song.

  I knew it, and so did Tiffany.

  “He besmirched the band’s name,” she said, her voice tight. “Tell her, Dino. What difference does it make if the jerk is dead? Tell her the truth!”

  With a grunt, Dino got up and lurched to the other side of the little enclosure. He scrubbed a finger under his nose. “I dunno,” he mumbled. “Maybe . . . maybe there was a little bit of truth in what Richie said.”

  I bounded to my feet.

  A far less dramatic response than Tiffany’s, which consisted of her jaw opening and shutting but no sound coming out.

  I found my voice first. “Dino, are you saying—”

  He whirled around and slashed a hand in the air. “I’m not saying anything!”

  But I had news for Dino; he already had. Okay, so it might have b
een the scotch talking, but even silence can speak volumes.

  “I can’t believe it.” Tiffany’s arms hung at her sides. Her shoulders drooped. “All these years I thought Richie Monroe was the bad guy. And now you’re saying . . .” Tears splashed down her cheeks and she swallowed hard. “You’re telling me . . .”

  Her head snapped up and her face, already pale, turned ashen. “Oh my God!” She hyperventilated. “Oh my God! If it’s true . . . if Richie really did write that song . . . if all this time I thought he did what he did to hurt the band . . . Oh my God! What have I done?”

  And before I could ask what, indeed, Tiffany raced out of the enclosure.

  Which is different than saying I did it, I killed Richie Monroe, but I had to admit, it looked mighty fishy.

  16

  Whatever remorse Dino may or may not have felt over his broken friendship with Richie, Richie’s death, and maybe Richie’s murder, didn’t stop him and the other Boyz from dragging down to breakfast late, turning green at the sight of the banana-Nutella crepes, and demanding so many pots of coffee, I caught myself wondering how much it would cost to put Juan Valdez on the payroll.

  By the time they went back up to their rooms to sleep off the combined effects of those couple bottles of scotch and the celebrity that came from being the center of attention in the park the night before, and I cleaned up and made sure everyone’s bills were slipped under their doors, I didn’t have much time to get downtown. There was a parade scheduled at noon, and after that the big Dickens trivia contest. I’d promised Marianne Littlejohn I’d be there early to look over the questions she’d prepared.

  The important word there is parade and I guess I hadn’t been paying much attention to the chamber of commerce bulletins that arrived in my email, because I had no idea the word extravaganza also applied. The closer I got to downtown, the more congested the streets were. Roadblocks, high school marching bands, Marie Antoinette (complete with huge powdered wig) in the horse-drawn cart that would take her to the guillotine, and costumed peasants running behind to throw insults at her . . . Everywhere I tried to drive or turn or get by was a dead end, and I ended up looping around downtown and heading off to the far side of the island in the hopes of finding less congestion and easier access to the park from the other direction.