Missy had to take a breath. Her cheeks were red and her hands were shaking. She stopped and took a deep breath, her eyes never leaving the other woman.
Abella had listened quietly the entire time, her expression remaining neutral. Missy waited for her to say something, to deny it, to challenge her, to threaten to call the police, to do something. But the woman just sat there, unnaturally calm.
Then she smiled.
“You’ve got quite an imagination.”
Missy said nothing.
“It’s a good theory. Except for one thing.”
Missy’s heart sunk like a stone.
Abella just kept smiling. “Everyone here knows I’m in a diet club. They didn’t know anything else about it, in keeping with Mrs. Butterworth’s rules and the contract I signed with her. But I used to struggle with my weight. It’s difficult to maintain a good physique when you work sixty or seventy hours a week. So I struggled for years with my weight, till finally I did something about it. Everyone knows I’m in a diet club. I’m hardly ashamed by it, in fact, I’m proud of it. I had a problem, I was strong enough to admit it, and I got the help I needed.”
Missy’s legs were weak. In one fell swoop, all her arguments and reasoning were rendered faulty. Everybody at the firm knew about Abella’s now non-existent weight problem. Karen wouldn’t have revealed her membership, because it was already revealed.
Missy swallowed her pride. “Thank you for your time.”
Abella checked the time again. “Twelve minutes, exactly. Thank you for respecting my time, Missy. If you have anything else you’d like to ask me, please feel free to call my legal assistant. The receptionist can give you her contact information.”
Missy was already at the door.
“Oh, and Missy? One more thing.”
Missy stopped and looked back.
Abella smiled cheerily at her, but her eyes burned with an intense dislike. “I trust you didn’t share this theory of yours with anyone. Like I told you at the viewing, my reputation is very important to my career and I take slander very seriously.”
Missy’s throat had gone dry. It took her a moment to be sure she hadn’t told anybody as she went over the last few days in her mind.
“And I trust you’ll keep this little theory of yours to yourself forever, now that you can see I had no reason to murder that poor woman.”
Missy nodded.
Abella cupped her ear. “I didn’t hear you.”
“Yes,” Missy said, grinding her teeth. “I won’t tell anyone.”
“Thatta girl.”
Chapter Fourteen
Missy went back to work. She hoped for a rush of customers to help take her mind off this afternoon’s embarrassment. Abella Garcia hadn’t killed Karen by giving her tape worms. And the more Missy thought about it, the more ridiculous the idea seemed. Abella would have just gotten her fired. She was a senior partner at the firm and if she wanted Karen gone, she could have made that happen easily.
Missy’s anger toward the woman had blinded her. She’d made a huge mistake in suspecting her.
Her mother would have told her to look on the bright side. But what was the bright side here? Well, she’d ruled out one of her suspects as the killer. That left her with Ron and Connie.
And a third unknown suspect. Mrs. Butterworth was almost certain it had been Karen that broke trust and revealed someone’s membership to the Diet Club. Missy had assumed that person was Abella Garcia. But now she knew it wasn’t. Which meant Karen had revealed someone else’s membership in the club. But who?
As soon as she asked herself the question, it became obvious to her.
She clocked out at six, went home to feed Cody and let her outside, then got back into the truck, bringing Cody along for this trip. She was about to leave, when she realized she hadn’t even checked herself in the mirror since this morning.
Her dark, wavy, red hair—usually her best feature—was a little flat, and the t-shirt was stretched out and loose in the neck, and the jeans were wearing thin in some places. Missy went upstairs and changed quickly into a pair of black pants (slimming!) and a green blouse that accented her hair. Speaking of her hair, she did her best to tease it up a little bit but ultimately it was non-cooperative. She settled on the look and got back into the truck.
Rush hour was over so her trip to the police station was quick. Fifteen minutes later, she pulled into the parking lot and got a space right near the entrance. Must have been a slow night.
Inside the station was quiet. The female sergeant who always answered the phone was packing up her stuff. She gave Missy a look.
“Tyler is in his office, if you want to go back.”
“Thanks.”
The sergeant hit a button so she could open the door from her side. There were only a couple of cops at their desks. One was surfing the net and the other was filling out paperwork. They both looked at her, recognition flashing in their eyes. She waved and kept going.
Tyler’s office was the second from last. His door was open and he was already looking at the doorway when she filled it. He must have heard her coming.
“Hi, Melissa.”
He stood behind his desk and the awkwardness began. Missy didn’t know if she should hug him or shake his hand or neither. She just stood there, feeling like an idiot, while he stared at her.
She couldn’t help but notice that he was not wearing his wedding ring. Immediately that girlish, naïve hope filled her. She couldn’t help it. For so long she’d thought of Tyler as the man of her dreams, this was just a natural reaction.
Then she saw he still had the same pictures on his desk. His wife featured prominently in most of them.
She realized she hadn’t even greeted him yet. “Hey, Tyler.”
She was about to sit, but then he came around the desk and surprised her with a hug.
“I’m sorry about Karen.”
“Thank you.” She could feel the power in his arms and back as he hugged her. And she smelled his soap. They held onto each other a little longer than friends would have.
“Have a seat,” he said. “As always, my office is a mess.”
Much like Paul Johnson’s office in Templeton, his chairs were covered with files. But Tyler wouldn’t let her lift a single one. He came around the desk and cleared both chairs for her. She selected one and sat. He went back around his desk.
She caught him staring at her. His gaze lingered a second longer than it should have. She wanted to ask about his wife. She wanted to ask him about everything. Why he’d left Philly to return here, why he and his wife had separated, why they were trying to work things out, if they were split up again, if it was for good this time…but there was no way to politely ask those things.
She laughed to herself. Earlier today, she’d had no problem accusing a highly-respected member of the bar of murdering her paralegal. But now as she sat across from her high school sweetheart, she couldn’t bring herself to ask him the most important questions, the ones she’d wanted answers to ever since he came back to Grove City.
“You look nice,” he said.
Was he being polite? Since they’d dated, she’d put on significant weight. In high school she’d been chubby-cute, but these days she was voluptuous. Did he even like a woman that looked like her?
“Thank you.” She folded one leg over the other. “Tyler, I wanted to apologize.”
He frowned. “For what?”
“We haven’t said more than five words to each other in the last three months, and then I got the bright idea to ask you to pull some strings in Templeton, and now here I am asking you for help on a murder investigation in a different town.”
“Melissa, you can always call me. No matter what.”
What did that mean? Why was his wedding ring gone? Why were the pictures still on his desk?
“I don’t even know where to begin,” she said.
He winked. “How about at the beginning.”
She laughed, feeling her breath
catch in her throat. He’d winked like that at her in high school, before he’d asked her out on their first date. That gesture alone had made her weak-kneed, and it was having the same effect right now.
“So I don’t know if you heard, but Karen died from—’
Tyler’s cell phone buzzed. He held up a finger for her to wait, and he checked the caller ID. She watched his face the entire time and it absolutely broke her heart when he frowned. If he gave her three chances to guess who was calling, she’d only need one. It had to be his wife.
He turned back to her. “Missy, I’m sorry, but I have to take this.”
“Is it Jill?”
He nodded and answered. “Hey, Jill, can you hang on for a second?”
Missy couldn’t help but feel disappointed. She’d come here for help. He knew she thought Karen had been killed, but instead of taking the call from Jill later, he’d dropped everything to take it. She felt deflated.
Tyler put his hand over the phone and looked at her. “Can you just give me a few minutes?”
Missy shrugged. “You know what, I should really get going.”
“Missy, you don’t have to go.”
“Tyler.” She looked him in the eye. “It’s your wife.”
“Melissa, you don’t…” He looked like he had more to say, but now wasn’t the time with his estranged wife waiting on the other end of the line. “Just five minutes, okay?”
Missy nodded. “I’ll wait out here.”
“Okay. Thanks.” He winked at her again, but this time the gesture didn’t have any effect on her.
Missy didn’t wait for him to get off the phone. Instead she stopped at the sergeant’s desk.
The woman looked up at her. “Yes?”
“Detective Brock had to take a call before we could talk,” Missy said. “Could you pass a message along to him?”
“Sure.”
“Can you tell him I need to find a man named Ron Moore? Either a place of business or his home address?”
Missy didn’t know if Tyler would give her the information, but it didn’t hurt to ask. If worse came to worst, she could call a private eye she’d worked with briefly on the last case. He’d be able to get the information, but it would cost her. And unlike Abella Garcia, Missy didn’t have money to burn. If anything, she’d be in serious trouble next year if they raised her property taxes again.
Cody was waiting for her in the truck. She petted the dog after she got in. For a moment, she considered calling Connie and confronting her, but where would that get her? She suspected but couldn’t prove that Karen revealed she was in the Diet Club…but so what? Connie didn’t seem like the type to care, considering how very comfortable she must have been with her body to make a living off an adult webcam service.
Missy just didn’t know if talking to Connie would get her anywhere tonight. Before she faced the woman again, she needed more information about her and she figured the best way to get that information was through Ron. If Karen and Ron had still been talking, if they had even kept things going, then there was a good chance he had some dirt on Connie. Maybe he’d have that piece of information that would tie everything together.
But then what?
Missy leaned her head back against the truck. The longer she sat there, the more she was beginning to doubt her own theory. Infecting somebody with tape worms was such an unreliable way to commit murder…of all the things she’d read online Missy hadn’t come across one story of anybody dying. The medical articles warned against the use of tape worms, but those things were always written from a worst-case scenario vantage point. One article had explained that the tape worm could enter the blood stream and find its way into the brain…another article had hinted at the possibility of seizures…basically a lot of bad things could happen. But wasn’t that true of any disease? She’d made the mistake before of researching one of her random ailments once and had walked away from the computer five minutes later thinking cancer had riddled her body.
Yes, the more she thought about it, infecting someone with tape worms was a really strange way to kill somebody. If the murderer had wanted to make it look like a diet gone bad, there were plenty of other more reliable methods they could have used. An overdose on a cocktail of over- and under-the-counter drugs would have done the trick easily. Guaranteed. No fuss. And Karen’s death would have been ruled a suicide or accidental. Paul Johnson of the Templeton Police Department would have taken one look at her and lumped her into that unflattering category of obese woman, as if that explained everything. PJ would have closed the books on the case just as quickly.
Missy realized she was still sitting outside the police station. There was a good chance Tyler would poke his head out the door, and she just couldn’t deal with him tonight. Three months ago she’d sworn she was over him, but of course all it had taken was a few minutes in his presence tonight for that resolve to crumble.
She really just needed to move on.
Missy started the engine and pulled onto the road, unsure where she was going. She tried Noreen but her friend didn’t answer. Missy didn’t feel like going home, either, because she knew she’d just end up trying to read or trying to watch a movie or trying to go to sleep but there was no way her mind would let her. Karen was dead and now she had no idea whether it was murder, and even if it was, how could she ever prove it? The investigation seemed so pointless now.
Missy drove around town for another hour before heading home.
Chapter Fifteen
The next morning Missy opened the store. It was Brett’s day off. She had exactly zero customers from when she opened till when Noreen arrived at noon, heavy bags under her eyes.
“Hey, sexy,” Noreen said on her way to the back.
“Oh, please.” Missy was in no mood today. She’d slept horribly and was ready to call it quits on the investigation.
Noreen dropped her purse in the back and emerged, squinting. “Water. Tylenol.”
“Check and check.” Missy smiled. They had long ago made sure to keep both on hand at the bookstore at all times. Back in their twenties they had needed it much more frequently, because they went out three or four times a week. It had been so much fun back then, but these days it held no appeal for Missy. She preferred to curl up on the couch with a book and a glass of wine, or sit out back with Cody and look up at the stars.
Noreen came around and leaned heavily against the desk. Her eyes were bloodshot and puffy. She nodded her thanks as Missy handed her two Tylenol and a bottled water. She downed the pills and chugged the whole bottle.
Noreen smiled. “Ahhh, feeling better already.”
“You and your placebo effect.” Missy shook her head. Noreen always acted like the medicine took immediate effect. They both knew it was just her mind playing tricks, telling her she was better.
“Placebo, shmacebo. All that matters is I feel better.”
“Out late?” Missy asked.
Noreen yawned loudly and stretched. “Is it that obvious?”
Missy held up her thumb and forefinger so they were a centimeter apart. “Little bit.”
“We had a good time.”
“We?”
Noreen nodded. “Sorry for not calling you back, but I was, uh, in the middle of something.”
“Something or someone?” Missy asked.
Noreen smiled. “A lady never kisses and tells.”
“So we’re good then.”
Noreen swatted at her and missed wildly. “We’re going out again. Tonight. You should come.”
“Where are you going?” Missy was suddenly interested. Noreen usually stuck to her rule about never seeing a new guy again right away. Her theory was that you had to make a guy work for it.
“Hank’s.”
Missy rolled her eyes. It was Wing Night, meaning it would be packed.
“Thanks, but no Hank’s,” she said.
Noreen pointed at her. “Funny.”
“I’m a big girl, I’m supposed to be funny.”
“Oh, don’t start,” Noreen said. “It’s too early for the self-deprecating humor.”
“Today, that’s all I got.”
“What happened yesterday?”
Missy smirked. “First tell me his name and what he’s like.”
Noreen closed her eyes and tipped her head back. It was obvious she was replaying last night in her mind.
“His name’s Carter, and he’s awesome.”
“Wow.” Usually Noreen was pretty careful in her praise. In fact, Missy often needled her friend for not truly committing to somebody and putting herself out there. Noreen had been burned badly in her twenties by a guy and ever since then she’d played things cool—too cool—with men.
“Yes.” Noreen rubbed the back of her neck, a lusty smile on her lips. “You’re going to like him.”
Missy threw her head back and laughed. “Does he have a brother?”
“I’ll ask.”
“Don’t you dare—”
She was already on her phone though. Missy begged her to hang up and tried to grab the cell phone, but Noreen pulled away.
“Hey, Carter, it’s me, the hottest woman you’ve ever dated. Listen, I’ve got this hot friend. She’s big and beautiful and voluptuous. It takes a real man to handle her.”
Diet Club Death: Missy DeMeanor Cozy Mystery #3 (Missy DeMeanor Cozy Mysteries) Page 10
