by Joyce Tremel
I wasn’t sure what to say. I didn’t want to reveal anything that Melody had told me yesterday, or that Jake and I thought she might have been drugged. “I honestly don’t know what to think,” I said. “That was Jake’s first thought, but Dwayne’s reaction doesn’t seem like an act to me. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what my dad finds out.”
“And what you find out.” The corners of his mouth turned up. “You won’t be able to help yourself.”
I would have protested, but he was right. I was in too deep. Even though Jake and I couldn’t possibly be considered suspects any longer—even to Vince—I couldn’t stop now. I had to know what happened to Melody. And I was determined to find out.
* * *
I can’t believe it,” Candy said when I told her what was going on. She and Kristie had arrived shortly after I returned to my station. Jake was helping Mike at our makeshift counter, and Sean had just left to take Mom home. The festival was scheduled to run until nine and while the police activity had scared some people away, it was still crowded for the most part. Dwayne’s tent was one of the few empty ones. It hadn’t taken the crime scene techs long to gather any evidence and the area was forlornly void of people.
“
Candy, Kristie, and I stood off to the side of my booth, out of earshot of the crowd. “I can’t, either,” I said. I finished telling them everything that Melody had said when I spoke to her earlier that day.
“You told your dad all this, right?” Kristie said.
I nodded. “I filled him in when we went to dinner. He planned to ask Dwayne about the deposits.”
“It sounds like blackmail to me,” Candy said. “I looked into that closure of the restaurant owned by Ronald Moore. It was much more than a mere shutdown by the health department. There had been a serious case of food poisoning. Ten people were affected and one woman died. Ronald Moore was officially cleared of any wrongdoing, but the woman’s family still blamed him. If Moore and Mobley are the same person, Dwayne must have found out about it and blackmailed him to keep it a secret, and killed his sister because she’d discovered it.”
“How do we find out if Moore changed his name?” I asked. “Wouldn’t it be a matter of public record?”
“If he changed it legally, yes,” Candy said. “But if the dead woman’s family filed suit against him, I doubt the court would let him change it. If he really didn’t want to be known as Ronald Moore any longer, and didn’t want anyone to know that had been his name, he probably didn’t go through proper channels. But I’ll check. For all we know, we’re off base and Ronald Moore is still out there somewhere.”
“Jake thinks Dwayne killed Melody, but I’m not so sure. I talked to Dwayne for a minute before Dad and Vince got to him. He was really broken up. He kept saying it was all his fault and he should have protected her better. That he should have been the one lying there because the poison was meant for him.”
Kristie said, “What the heck is that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know. That’s when my dad and Vince came over to ask him some questions. The last thing Dwayne said was to not tell anyone yet, which I took to mean the police. I’m not sure why.”
Candy’s gaze roamed the area. “Is Dwayne still here? We could talk to him.”
“I haven’t seen him since I left him with Dad.”
“Maybe he arrested him,” Kristie said. “I don’t know the guy, but it’s too hinky that his sister dies right after talking to you when he told her not to, and especially after what happened yesterday. I think he’s playing you. He wants you to feel sorry for him.”
“I guess that’s possible,” I said, “but if Dwayne isn’t the killer and someone really is out to get him, he’s in danger. I need to talk to him and find out why he thinks someone wants to kill him.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I woke up at five a.m. wide-awake. There was a church not too far away that had a six o’clock Mass, so I decided since I was up, I might as well get an early start to the day. It was a quick service, with no singing and a two-minute homily. I was back in my car and headed to see Dwayne in less than thirty minutes.
The Mobley residence was located in Shadyside, one of the more upscale neighborhoods of the city. Even smaller houses sometimes sold for half a million dollars, which was well above average for Pittsburgh. The Mobleys’ house, a large Victorian on South Negley Avenue, would probably be pushing the million-dollar mark. As I pulled up in front at a very early seven a.m., I remembered Linda Mobley telling me her ex had been well-off. She had also mentioned that she didn’t know where he’d gotten his money. And now I wondered about that again.
If Reginald Mobley really was Ronald Moore, how did his fortune fit into that scenario? An owner of a small restaurant, no matter how overpriced the food, wasn’t going to accumulate a fortune in a few short years, even if he invested wisely. The timing of everything was a little fuzzy in my mind, so I tried to figure it out. Ronald’s restaurant, Le Meilleur, closed fifteen years ago. Linda had been married to Reginald ten years and they had a ten-year-old son. He’d been a food writer for the newspaper at that time. That made a gap between the restaurant closure and their marriage. But Linda said he’d already had money when they married. If he was Ronald Moore, was he already well-off when he owned the restaurant? Maybe that’s why he was able to disappear and possibly reinvent himself.
I suddenly had another thought that turned my stomach. With both Melody and her husband gone, Linda’s son would likely inherit the estate. To my mind, that was a mighty big motive. She hated Melody and blamed her for Reginald’s no longer paying the medical bills. I hadn’t seen her at the festival this weekend, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been there. If she put poison in the bottle of water, though, how would she know who was going to drink it? She would have had no way of knowing that Melody would be the one. If she had planned to kill Melody, it would have made more sense to do it another way. Not that killing ever made sense, but still.
That brought me back to Dwayne saying he was the one who was targeted, which was the reason I was here. I hadn’t talked to my dad last night—or his partner, thank goodness—so I didn’t know whether Dwayne was even here. It was an assumption on my part that he would still be staying at his sister’s house if he wasn’t in jail.
Fortunately my assumption was correct. Dwayne answered the door after I’d rung the doorbell twice, and I was pretty sure I’d woken him up. I doubted he was an early riser on the best of days. The hair on top of his mullet went in five different directions, and one side was flat and the other stuck out. I wished I’d brought scissors. He stared at me in a way that made me think he was going to slam the door in my face, but instead he opened it wider and let me in.
The interior of the Mobley residence wasn’t the typical Victorian layout. Not at all. They must have completely gutted it and started over. Instead of the usual small distinct rooms, this one took open concept to the extreme. An architectural historian would have had a stroke. There were no walls anywhere, only some Grecian columns that I imagined were hiding some heavy-duty support posts. At least I hoped something was supporting the upper floors. The walls were all white and the hardwood floor was a bleached color somewhere between white and gray. The only thing original to the house was the staircase, but all that gorgeous wood had been painted white. There was some color in the room, however—the sofa and chairs were upholstered in a bloodred velvet.
“I’m sorry if I woke you,” I said.
“I had to get up anyway. The cops kept me late last night,” he said. “I’ll make some coffee.”
I followed him across the room to the kitchen at the rear of the house. The cabinets were white like everything else, and the marble counters matched the bleached floor. I watched while Dwayne struggled with the high-end coffeemaker. He finally got it working and we took seats at the island.
Dwayne waved his hand i
n a swooping motion that encompassed the room. “Pretty impressive, isn’t it?”
“I guess you could say that.” I couldn’t come up with anything nicer. I didn’t want to tell him I hated it.
“Reggie designed it himself after he dumped his second wife,” Dwayne said. “She had a conniption when she dropped the kid off one weekend after it was done. Went on a rant about how he ruined the house.”
I would have to agree with that. “I bet Melody liked it, though.”
“She loved it.” He shook his head. “I still can’t believe she’s gone. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up from a bad dream.”
I wasn’t used to Dwayne not being confrontational with me. It was almost like having a normal conversation. There was an awkward pause before I figured out what to say. “You said the cops kept you late last night?”
“Yeah. Your dad’s a nice guy. He tried to play bad cop to that other loser’s good cop, but I saw right through them. They should have reversed roles.”
I tried not to smile. That was a pretty accurate assessment. “They let you go, though.”
The coffeemaker beeped, so Dwayne got up and poured two cups. He retrieved a container of cream from the stainless steel refrigerator, which was bigger than my kitchen. “You take sugar?” he asked.
I nodded and he brought over a sugar bowl from the counter beside the coffeemaker.
He put a splash of cream into his coffee and sat back down. “They asked a lot of questions, but they couldn’t arrest me, because I didn’t do anything.”
“What did you mean yesterday when you said that water bottle was meant for you?”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it? I’ve been working the festival alone. No one knew Melody was going to be there. I didn’t even know that. I told her to stay home—especially after that fiasco the night before. I can’t believe she got so drunk she could hardly walk.”
“She told me she only had two drinks.”
Dwayne snorted. “Right. It was way more than that. It had to be. It was unlike her, though. She wasn’t a big drinker.”
“Is it possible she was drugged?” I studied his expression to see if I could catch him in a lie when he answered.
“Why would you think that?” He looked puzzled and not like he was hiding anything.
“It would explain her condition if she really only had two drinks, plus the fact she couldn’t remember why she wanted to talk to me.”
Dwayne’s face lost the little bit of color it had and his hand shook when he raised his cup to take a drink. “Oh no.” He put his cup down abruptly and some coffee splashed onto the countertop. “Why didn’t I see that? I didn’t believe her when she told me she hadn’t had that much. I just assumed . . . Oh God. It really is all my fault.”
“You said that yesterday. Why is it your fault?”
“Because it is.” He stood and began pacing.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “You’re going to have to do better than that, Dwayne.”
“It’s a long story and I’m sure you don’t want to hear it.”
I gave him a look Candy would be proud of.
Dwayne stopped pacing. “Fine, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. I have to show you something. I’ll be right back.”
While I waited, I sipped my coffee. I resisted the urge to snoop and see what was in the fridge and the cabinets, but only because I didn’t know how long it would take Dwayne to return. It was a good thing I stayed put—he was back in a few minutes, holding a checkbook and some sheets of paper.
He sat at the counter again. “I don’t know why I’m going to tell you any of this. I know you’re friends with Shipley and the others, and none of them want to have anything to do with me.”
For good reason, too.
“And maybe I deserve it. But I didn’t steal their recipes. If they didn’t want anyone else to have them, then they shouldn’t have shown me how to brew them.”
“That doesn’t make it right for you to brew the same thing and call it your own. Did you ever think that maybe if you’d asked Dave or Cory, they’d have given you permission to use their recipes? And why wouldn’t you put your own twist on them, anyway? One little change would have made all the difference.”
Dwayne stared at the counter. “It doesn’t matter. No one takes me seriously anyway.”
“Maybe you should talk to Dave and Cory. An apology would go a long way.”
He shook his head. “It’s too late for that. They won’t listen to me.”
“You won’t know that unless you try.” When he didn’t respond, I said, “I guess we’re back to why you even want to talk to me.”
“Because you’re not like the others. You at least listen to me, even if you think I’m wrong.” He slid the checkbook over to me. “I’m sure this is part of the reason someone is out to get me.”
He was aware that Melody had talked to me, but I didn’t know if she’d told him she knew about the checkbook, so I played dumb. “Why would anyone care about this?”
“Melody said she told you about Reggie giving me money.”
So she had told him. “She did. She was understandably upset. She had no idea he was doing it.” I flipped through the entries quickly, doing the math in my head. “Twelve thousand dollars over the past year or so? That’s a lot of money.”
Dwayne fidgeted in his seat. “If I thought even once that it would get him and my sister killed, I never would have taken the money.”
“Why did you?”
“Like I said before, it’s a long story.”
“I’d like to hear it,” I said.
There was a pause while he seemed to be gathering his thoughts. “I knew Reggie a long time ago. Way before he met my sister. He owned a little restaurant downtown called Le Meilleur.”
Jake’s dad had been right.
“Le Meilleur means ‘the best,’ and it really was. It was a great place. I was between jobs and working part-time as a busboy. He was really easy to get along with back then—not the guy everyone knows now. He was friendly and outgoing and always smiling.”
I couldn’t wrap my mind around that. He had been such a bitter and nasty man that I couldn’t even picture him smiling.
“The customers liked him and he loved cooking and dreaming up new dishes. His pastries were the best I ever tasted. Even better than your friend’s.”
“So what happened?”
“I don’t know exactly how, but a day after he served one of his brand-new dishes—I don’t even remember what it was—eel something or other, I think—a bunch of people got really sick. The health department came in and shut down the place and there were all kinds of accusations against Reggie, especially after one woman died.”
“That’s terrible,” I said.
Dwayne nodded. “He was devastated. He took it so hard, some of the staff worried that he might kill himself. He never went back to cooking. He closed up the restaurant permanently. He even moved out of town for a while and changed his name because he was getting threats.”
Although I already knew, I asked him what Reggie’s name had been.
“Ronald Moore.”
“Were any of the accusations proven?”
Dwayne shook his head. “No. It was definitely food poisoning, but no one could prove it was Reggie’s fault. All the lawsuits were thrown out of court. He was meticulously clean. There was no way he did anything wrong.”
“Then why were you blackmailing him?”
“It wasn’t like that,” he said. “When I recognized Reggie at the casino, I called him Ronnie and he about had a fit. There were a lot of people around and he was afraid someone would hear it. And I guess someone did, because not long after that, he started getting threats again.” He took a drink of his now-cold coffee and made a face. “He thought they were from me, even though I told him time and again t
hat they weren’t. That’s when he started giving me money. I told him I didn’t want it, but he kept it up.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “He thought you were threatening him, he was giving you large sums of cash, and he still married your sister.”
“Weird, huh?” Dwayne smiled slightly. “They really loved each other. I promised to keep Melody in the dark. She knew nothing about his past and we wanted to keep it that way. It was only in the last three or four weeks he realized I wasn’t the one sending the notes when I started getting them, too. These are the ones I’ve been getting.”
He passed the papers to me that he had been holding. There were three pages in a very generic-looking Courier font. The first two read, “You’re as much at fault as he is. Your silence makes you an accomplice. Keep looking over your shoulder.” The third was different and a chill went through me when I saw it. It was in the same font but in all caps and read, “YOU’RE NEXT.”
He explained the third note had come a few days after his brother-in-law was murdered. “Whoever killed Reggie is after me now, and killed my sister.”
I asked him if he had any idea who was sending the notes.
He sighed. “I wish I did. All I know is that it has to have something to do with Reggie’s former restaurant. Someone at the casino heard us talking and put two and two together.”
I pushed the papers back across the countertop. “You need to tell the police everything you’ve told me.”
“I can’t do that. They’ll think I was blackmailing Reggie.”
“But you weren’t. Not technically, anyway,” I said. “And even if you were, it’s not going to matter now. He’s dead. He can’t accuse you.”
“I don’t know.”
I stood. “Dwayne, you have to tell my dad. You’re still in danger and I don’t think this person is going to stop at killing your sister.”
He picked up the papers and the checkbook. “I’ll think about it.”
