by Gayle Trent
“That’s why we want you to keep your doors locked!” Myra rolled her eyes and then sipped her coffee. “Maybe Todd was trying to write you a note to warn you when he died.”
Before I could respond, my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number. I answered and put the phone on speaker.
“Daphne, sweetie, how are you?” asked the man I’d known as Hunter Hampton.
“I’m getting antsy, Hunter. How’s everything going?”
“Well, the florist is hounding me to get a little more of the money up front. Is that doable?”
“Yeah, sure. How much do you need?”
“A thousand should do it.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll write you a check. Hey, do you mind coming here? I’ve got a cake in the oven, and I can’t leave.”
Mark gave me the “okay” sign.
“No problem. What’s your address?”
I rattled off the address, and Hunter/Monty said he’d be at my house within the hour. I ended the call and looked at my co-conspirators.
“And now we wait?”
Mark shook his head. “Now we get prepared. I’ll call McAfee and tell him to park on the next block over so Harlow won’t be spooked when he arrives.”
“I can go pick up Officer McAfee if he’d like for me to,” Myra said.
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary. He’s fit enough to walk a block.” Mark arched a brow. “I have to keep both eyes on you all the time, don’t I?”
She winked. “No need to be jealous. My heart belongs to you.”
* * *
An hour and a half later, Mark, Myra, Officer McAfee, and I were crouching on my living room floor with the curtains drawn.
“Call him one more time,” said McAfee. “If he doesn’t answer, we give up. He’s not coming.”
I nodded and made the call. It went directly to voicemail. “Hi, Hunter. It’s Daphne. Do you need to reschedule? Let me know what’s going on. Thanks.”
McAfee stood. “We’ll give him fifteen minutes. If he hasn’t called or shown up by then, I’ve got to go. You stay inside with your doors locked and don’t answer the door if he comes by here, Ms. Martin. Got it?”
“Got it.”
Apparently pretty certain that Harlow wasn’t going to arrive, McAfee went into the kitchen. “Dang, this cake looks good.”
“Come to the wedding, and you can have a piece,” I said.
“Might just do that.” He smiled. “I’m sorry this guy jerked you around.” The smile faded as he encompassed Mark and Myra in his gaze. “And even though it seems like he could’ve been working with your ex-husband, that’s purely conjecture at this time. We need to interrogate him to learn the truth about what he’s doing, who he is or was working for, and where he was at the time of Todd Martin’s murder.”
Fifteen minutes crawled by, mainly with Mark and me hemming and hawing and trying to make polite conversation to pass the time while Myra looked at Officer McAfee as if he’d just stepped down from Mount Olympus.
“Folks, please do as I’ve asked you to do, and leave the investigation to me and the rest of the Brea Ridge Police Department.” With that, McAfee headed for the front door.
“Wait!” I called. “What about Monty Harlow? What will you do about him?”
“I’ll have my men looking for him.”
Officer McAfee left, and I turned to Mark with a sigh. “Great. Harlow will probably show up as soon as McAfee gets out of sight.”
“If he does, Myra and I’ll still be here.”
“You don’t think he’s coming either, do you?”
He shook his head.
“But why?” I walked to the side door and looked out the window to make sure there weren’t any cars headed in our direction. “Do you think he was on to us?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Mark said. “Either something spooked him, or he decided to get out while he still could. Maybe he hadn’t known about Todd’s body being found and then saw it in today’s paper or something.”
Myra peered over my shoulder. “Or maybe lightning struck him when he went out to get in his car.”
“There’s not a cloud in the sky, sugar plum.”
I had to agree with Mark. We couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful day.
“So? That doesn’t stop the Lord from striking down the wicked if He takes a notion,” she said. “And a man who’d steal a woman’s wedding money is wicked.”
“Have you personally ever known any wicked person—say, in the past century—to get struck by lightning?” Mark asked.
I closed my eyes, knowing it was coming.
“Oh, honey.”
There it was.
“Why don’t we go back into the living room and get comfortable?” I asked. Mark simply nodded and led the way.
Myra didn’t need to be prodded to continue her story.
“One beautiful day—not a cloud in the sky, mind you—Leroy Millsap decided he’d call on the Widow Spencer. Now Widow Spencer was a nice looking woman, and her husband had died at a fairly young age working in the coal mines, so Widow Spencer wasn’t too awfully old herself.”
“How old are we talking?” Mark asked.
“I’d say mid-forties or thereabouts. Anyhow, Widow Spencer was outside hanging a load of clothes on the line. Now she lived out in Ford’s Holler and didn’t have a single neighbor for miles. And Leroy Millsap never did have an ounce of propriety about him anyway, so he just whipped it on out.”
“Whipped it on out?” I echoed.
“Yep. He whipped it out and lightning struck him right on it.” She gave an emphatic nod. “The paramedic said that if Leroy hadn’t been wearing his tennis shoes, it’d have killed him.”
Mark looked confused. “What about her?”
“Oh, I don’t know if she was wearing tennis shoes or not.”
“I mean, didn’t the lightning hurt her?”
“Oh, no, honey. It seems Leroy was packing a thumbtack instead of a rail spike, so she wasn’t anywhere near the thing when he got struck. Or should I say smote?”
Mark opened his mouth, closed it again, and looked down at the rug between his feet.
“So you see, sometimes the Lord’ll just smite evildoers if He takes a notion,” Myra said. “He did that day, and he might’ve today too.”
Like Mark, I had nothing to say. In fact, we sat in awkward silence until my phone rang.
It was Officer McAfee. “Ms. Martin, I called to let you know for certain that your wedding planner—or fake wedding planner—won’t be arriving at your house today. So, you don’t have to be concerned about that any longer.”
“Did you find him?”
“Yes, ma’am. He’s—”
“Did he confess?” I interrupted, eager to get the whole Todd-Hunter-Monty fiasco behind me. “Did he tell you why he duped me?”
“No, Ms. Martin. He’s dead. Shot in the chest—just like your ex-husband.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“W
hat is it?” Myra asked as soon as I put down my phone.
“It’s the wedding planner. He was found shot to death. Just like Todd.” I slumped in the chair. “How can this be happening?”
“That’s what we need to figure out.” Mark stood. “I’ll go back the newspaper office and get Ben. I’ll fill him in on the way to the police station, and we’ll see what we can find out there. Meanwhile, you two stay together—preferably here—and keep the doors locked.”
“We aren’t going anywhere,” Myra said. “Just get back here as soon as you know something.”
He gave her a peck on the lips. “I will. You two be careful.”
“You be careful.”
As soon as Mark left, I decided to call China. “I need to let her know what’s going on. I asked her to see what she could find out about the wedding planner—of course, this was before I knew he was in cahoots with Todd—and I might’ve been putting her in danger.”
She didn’t answer her phone.
“I really might’ve put her in danger, Myra.” I stood and began to pace. “This is terrible. If anything has happened to her, I’ll never forgive myself.”
“China is tougher than anybody I know. St. Peter will probably have to knock her in the head on Judgment Day.”
About that time, a vehicle roared up into my driveway. My eyes widened as I stared at Myra. She simply shook her head. “That’s her. I’d recognize the sound of China York’s little pickup truck anywhere.”
She was right. I looked out the window, and here came China with her shotgun in her arms. I quickly went to the kitchen and unlocked the door to let her in.
“Heard what happened over the scanner.” She propped the gun against the wall by the door. “McAfee answered the call. Said he was en route from your street, so I figured the murder victim had something to do with Todd Martin.”
“It was the wedding planner,” Myra said. “Mark has gone to get Ben, and they’re going to the police station to see what they can find out.”
“Come on in and have a seat.” I led the way to the living room. “Anybody want anything to drink?”
They both said they were fine, so we all sat down.
“We need to get to the bottom of this.” China took a small spiral notebook from the pocket of her red plaid shirt. “Daphne, got a pen?”
I went back to the kitchen and got China a pen.
China flipped open the notebook. “First, let’s go over what we know. Todd came to town two days ago.”
“As far as we know.” Myra spread her hands. “He could’ve been here for days but didn’t show up to Daphne’s house until then.”
“Good point. Daphne, when did this wedding planner guy first get in touch with you?”
“Well over a month ago.”
“And you said that Jason found out that Todd had been out for two months, right?” Myra asked.
I nodded. “So the two of them had planned this all along. But why? That’s the part I can’t figure out.”
Myra leaned forward and put on her therapy-is-now-in-session face. “The man told you he loved you. Now, we know that if he did, he certainly had an odd way of showing it, but is it possible that is why he came here to Brea Ridge?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “He was in prison for seven years. In all that time, I didn’t get one phone call, one card, one letter, one email saying as much as hello. Then he shows up here and says he’s had all this time to think and that he’s still in love with me? I don’t buy it.”
“I’m not buying it either.” China tapped the pen on the notebook. “He wanted something. Judging by his connection with this wedding planner fellow, I’m guessing Todd needed money. He couldn’t come right out and ask you, given the fact that you were divorced and he’d just finished a stint in prison for trying to kill you.”
“So he talked with my mom, found out what was going on in my life, and cooked up this wedding planner scheme.” I leaned my head back against the chair and looked up at the ceiling. “I knew I shouldn’t have trusted that Hunter or Monty or whatever you want to call him. But he had these great references, and I thought he could really be a help to me.”
“Of course, you did. Although why you didn’t run the idea by me or Ben or someone first is beyond me.” Myra was obviously miffed because I hadn’t asked her to plan my wedding in the first place.
“I thought I could handle it all myself,” I said. “It didn’t seem like such a big deal at first. And then cake orders picked up, and I got slammed.”
“I know.” Myra sighed. “I just wish you’d come to me, that’s all.”
“I wish I had too. But I didn’t want to impose.”
China scoffed. “We’re family. Helping each other is never an imposition. Now, back to business. If Todd was getting his money though the wedding planner scheme, then why did he show up here?”
“You’re right.” I inclined my head. “He could’ve stayed in the background, and I’d have kept giving the wedding planner money until the day of the wedding when I learned that nothing had been done.” I blew out a breath. “Thank goodness I found out in time. I’d have been devastated.”
“Something made him desperate,” said Myra. “He either needed more money faster than it was coming in, or else he wanted you to do something for him and believed he could manipulate you into doing it.”
I gave this some thought. “Before Todd went to prison, he had a good job in a local manufacturing plant. In fact, he was a shift supervisor. But he’d have been hard pressed to find work after serving time for assault with a deadly weapon.”
“Okay.” Myra rubbed the underside of her chin. “So Todd runs through whatever money he had, and what does he do now? He can’t find a job. He’s trying to walk the straight and narrow, but now he can’t.” She flung her arms out, nearly hitting China. “He wants out, but they keep pulling him back in! Like in that movie, right? So he calls his old pal Monty. ‘Monty, buddy, I’m in a bind. Help a fellow out here.’ And so they cook up this scheme to get money and get back at the old ball and chain at the same time.”
“I can see that,” said China. “But let’s also consider this. Monty Harlow might not have been the only friend Todd turned to.”
I groaned. “I need to be baking. Could we please move this conversation to the kitchen?”
“Sure, hon.” Myra was the first to stand. “Did you get a new order in?”
“I’m supposed to have a carved dog done by Sunday, but I’d like to get another tier of the wedding cake baked. That doesn’t require a lot of concentration at this point, but it gives me something to do so I don’t go crazy.”
I preheated the oven and got the clean mixing bowl out of the dishwasher.
China ambled into the kitchen and leaned against the island. “What did you do in Tennessee? Your job, I mean.”
“I was an administrative assistant for a government housing agency,” I said. “Why?”
“Well, I’m just trying to figure how you tie in to all this—except for the fact that you were married to Todd Martin. It’s either like Myra said and you were the one person he believed he could manipulate into helping him, or there was more to his choosing you than meets the eye.”
“I don’t know why or how my old job could factor into Todd’s choice of a patsy.” I put butter and shortening into the bowl and turned the mixer on low. “I haven’t worked there in over a year, and I’m only close to one person who’s still with the agency. Besides, how could government housing factor into some sort of criminal enterprise?”
“And Todd and the wedding planner are both dead.” Myra joined us at the island. “So no matter what they were up to, their boss or some other third party wound up killing them both, right?”
“Looks that way,” said China.
“Then why would the third guy kill Todd and Harlow unless he didn’t need them anymore? And if Daphne here was the target in their schemes all along, why would guy number three kill the wedding planner and Todd—especially Todd—if he wanted to get close to Daphne?”
“I did get the emergency order of protection,” I said. “Maybe that clued the third guy in to the fact that I didn’t want anything to do with Todd.”
Myra shook her head. “I don’t think so. We don’t think Todd knew about the EPO because he didn’t try to make contact with you later that night. I think he was going to try again the next day. And if Todd didn’t know about the EPO, then guy number three wouldn’t know about it either. Unless he was having you tailed or something.”
I slowly added sugar to the butter and shortening mixture. “As paranoid as I’ve been after finding Todd in my kitchen, I believe I’d have noticed if someone was following me.”
“True.” China squinted at a spot just above my head. Had I not known that she tended to do this when she was deep in thought, then I’d have looked to see if there was a spider on the wall behind me. “What I can’t figure out is why our third guy would kill the other two.”
> “He didn’t need them anymore,” said Myra. “That’s the only thing it could be.”
* * *
Ben and Mark came in about twenty minutes after I’d put the cake in the oven.
Stopping in the kitchen to breathe deeply, Ben smiled. “Heaven.”
“It does smell good in here, doesn’t it?” Mark sniffed the air. “Yesterday it was chocolate, and today it’s vanilla.”
I explained how I was alternating flavors of the wedding cake tiers with chocolate and vanilla pound cake.
“How many pieces of each can I have without looking like a pig?” Mark asked.
“As many as you want.” I patted his shoulder and then turned to give Ben a kiss before we went into the living room. “What’s the word at the station?”
Mark sat on the sofa beside Myra. “Monty Harlow and Hunter Hampton were definitely the same person. The vic had a bunch of the wedding planner business cards on him when he was found.”
“He had some other interesting cards in his wallet too,” said Ben, sitting on the pink-and-white gingham chair. “In addition to your Daphne’s Delectable Cakes business card, he had one from Chilton Housing Authority. Isn’t that where you worked in Tennessee?”
I sat on the arm of Ben’s chair and put my arm around his shoulders. “It is.”
“Told you,” said China. “I told Myra and Daphne that Todd’s coming here and whatever shady dealing got him killed might’ve had something to do with where she used to work.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Ben said. “Daphne hasn’t worked there in well over a year.”
“Are you still friends with some of the employees?” Mark asked.
“Only one. Her name is Bonnie, and she works in the accounting department. But I doubt Todd would have known that I still keep in touch with her. Even when things were going normally in our marriage—for us, anyway—he and I didn’t exactly have warm conversations about my day at work or my friends.”
“What areas of the agency did you have access to while you were there?” China asked.
