Wedding Cake Killer: A Fresh-Baked Mystery

by Livia J. Washburn

  Phyllis opened the door and stepped into the room. Carolyn had brought her needlework back from Eve’s room and was working on it as she sat by the window.

  “I didn’t know if you’d be here or still with Eve,” Phyllis said.

  “She wanted to be alone for a while after that meeting with Juliette,” Carolyn explained. “I think it upset her more than she was letting on. Still, it’s nice to see her showing some spunk again.”

  Phyllis nodded. “Yes, it certainly is. I came to tell you that Sam and I are going out for dinner this evening.”

  “With all of this trouble going on?” Carolyn asked with a frown.

  Phyllis smiled and shrugged. If Carolyn wanted to think this was a date she was talking about, that was fine. That way Phyllis didn’t have to explain the multitude of theories going through her head or admit that they were going to talk to Tess Coburn about the case.

  “I’m sorry if it’s a problem,” she said.

  Carolyn shook her head and waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, it’s not, of course. I can throw some supper together for Eve and me. I don’t mind at all. I was just a little surprised; that’s all.”

  “We won’t be out late.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We’ll be fine.”

  Phyllis nodded. “All right. I just wanted to let you know.”

  “Go ahead. Have fun.” Carolyn’s statement managed to sound a little disapproving, despite the words she spoke.

  Phyllis left things at that. Carolyn might feel differently later, especially if Phyllis’s efforts paid off and she discovered the identity of the person who really had killed Roy.

  She spent the rest of the afternoon poking around on the computer, but she didn’t find anything else related to the case. Around six o’clock she went upstairs to change. At this time of year, full night had fallen by then. With the stubborn overcast hanging on, it got dark even earlier than it might have otherwise.

  The restaurant where they were going was one of the chains, known for its informality, so Phyllis didn’t see the need to wear anything fancy. She settled for a nice dress and jacket. As she came out of her room, Sam was leaving his, wearing jeans, a denim shirt, and a corduroy jacket. He looked very handsome in a rustic way, she thought.

  “Too bad we’re not really goin’ out for a night on the town,” he said with a smile. “We clean up pretty good, even if I do say so myself.”

  “Well, there’s no reason why we can’t enjoy ourselves at the same time,” Phyllis said.

  Sam linked his arm with hers as they went downstairs. He asked, “Did you let Eve and Carolyn know we were goin’ out?”

  “I told Carolyn. She said she’d fix some supper for her and Eve.”

  “We could bring somethin’ back for them,” he suggested.

  “No, Carolyn has things under control. That’s one thing you can say for her. It takes a lot to shake her out of her routine. Unfortunately, in recent years, we’ve had a lot going on.”

  “Retirement hasn’t played out exactly like you thought it would, has it?”

  “No, it certainly hasn’t,” Phyllis answered honestly. “But I think we’ve done some real good, too.”

  “So do I,” Sam agreed.

  They took his pickup, since Phyllis didn’t particularly like to drive at night. The bright headlights bothered her. And there were plenty of headlights, since the area on the southern edge of town along the interstate was extremely busy at the best of times, let alone on a Friday evening. To Phyllis, it seemed like only a few years had passed since nearly all the land on both sides of the highway was pasture, but in reality, the area had developed at a tremendous pace over the past two decades. Now there were businesses and people and cars everywhere, and she seldom came down here unless she had to.

  The restaurant was on the outer edge of the parking lot for a huge shopping center packed with big-box stores and specialty retailers. Sam found a parking place for the pickup, although it wasn’t easy. As they walked in and saw the crowd of people waiting for tables, Phyllis hoped that Tess had thought to make a reservation.

  Phyllis looked past the hostess into the restaurant and saw a familiar blond-haired figure sitting in a corner booth. She lifted a hand and caught Tess’s eye. Tess returned the wave.

  “How many?” the hostess asked. “And I’ll need your name.”

  “There are two of us,” Sam said, “but we’re meetin’ that lady over yonder in the corner.”

  When Sam pointed her out, Tess waved again and nodded to the hostess, who said, “All right, follow me, then.”

  She led them over to the booth, where Phyllis slid in first, opposite Tess, and Sam followed. “It’s good to see you both again,” Tess said. “Even though I didn’t really expect to when I left your house the other day.”

  The restaurant was crowded and noisy, and a football game was playing on the big-screen TV that dominated the horseshoe-shaped bar area. Phyllis had no trouble understanding what Tess said, though.

  A server came up to the table and got their drink orders—water for Phyllis, decaf coffee for Sam—and then Phyllis said, “I certainly didn’t expect that you’d still be here in Weatherford. If you don’t mind my asking, why haven’t you gone back to New Orleans? Of course, it’s none of my business—”

  “No, no, that’s all right,” Tess said with a smile. “I don’t have any pressing cases at the moment, and so much of my work is done on the computer, it doesn’t really matter where I am most of the time, as long as I’ve got a fast Internet connection. I don’t mind admitting, I’m curious to see how all this is going to play out, so I thought I’d hang around for a while.”

  “By all this, you mean Eve being charged with Roy’s murder?” Phyllis asked.

  “I don’t mean to be insensitive about it. It’s just that I was on his trail for so long. And then when I finally do find him, he’s dead. I thought going to the funeral would give me a sense of—I don’t know—closure, but it really didn’t.”

  Sam said, “Maybe that’s because you’re a detective, and you’ve got your doubts about whether or not Eve really killed him. I’d think that’d bother somebody whose job is gettin’ to the truth.”

  “You may be onto something there, Mr. Fletcher,” Tess admitted. “But why would I have any doubts about whether your friend killed him? The district attorney certainly doesn’t seem to have any.”

  “Timothy Sullivan is a horse’s patoot. You can’t go by what he thinks.”

  “What about the evidence, then?” Tess said.

  Phyllis said, “It’s circumstantial. The murder weapon belongs to Eve, and she doesn’t have an alibi. No one has come forward to offer testimony that would put her on the scene at the time of Roy’s murder, and until you showed up, no one had any reason to think that she might have a motive.”

  “But they do now,” Tess said.

  “If Eve has a motive, so do those other women.”

  Tess leaned back against the upholstered bench seat on her side of the booth. “And that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? To talk about those other women you claim were victims of the man you knew as Roy Porter?”

  “They had as much reason to want him dead as Eve did,” Phyllis said. “More, really, because they knew what he had done to them. Eve didn’t know what he was planning to do to her.”

  “You have only her word for that.”

  “That’s enough for me,” Phyllis said.

  “And me,” Sam added.

  “That’s all well and good but—”

  Tess stopped as the server brought the drinks and then asked if they were ready to order. Phyllis hadn’t even glanced at her menu, but she had eaten here before and knew what she liked. She ordered and so did Sam. Tess had looked at her menu before Phyllis and Sam arrived and knew what she wanted, too.

  When the server was gone, Tess went on. “You know that ethically I still can’t tell you anything about my clients, don’t you?”

  “Not even to confirm that Alice Jessup
and Ingrid Pitt are two of the women you were working for?”

  “I’ve never heard of Alice Jessup before in my life,” Tess said.

  “What about Ingrid Pitt?”

  Tess’s lips thinned. She didn’t say anything.

  “So I was only half right,” Phyllis said. “Well, Alice Jessup was a long shot, anyway. But all three of us know that Ingrid Pitt used to be Ingrid Olsen Callahan, and that she was married to a man calling himself Monte Callahan who stole a considerable amount of money from her, ten years ago in Minneapolis, and then disappeared.”

  Tess sighed and said, “All right, I guess it doesn’t make any sense to deny it. I didn’t know anything about her being here in Weatherford, though. I was shocked when you told me.”

  “You didn’t tell her this is where Roy was?”

  “I sent reports to all my clients after the funeral, like I told you I was going to.”

  Phyllis shook her head. “That’s not answering the question. Ingrid and her new husband were here before Roy was murdered. Why?”

  Tess was starting to look angry now. She said, “I don’t think we’re going to be able to talk about this.”

  “I think that when you believed you had located Roy, you let something slip before you were able to confirm that he was the man you were looking for,” Phyllis pressed. “You told Ingrid the name you believed he was using and that you thought he was here. The sheriff’s department can find out from the Delaneys exactly when Frank and Ingrid Pitt made their reservations and arrived at the bed-and-breakfast.”

  Tess glared across the table for a couple of seconds, then, surprisingly, let out a laugh. “I have to say, Mrs. Newsom, you’re as sharp as all those newspaper articles I read made you out to be. I’m not surprised you’ve been able to solve murders in the past. You wouldn’t be interested in doing some consulting work as a PI, would you?”

  As always, being praised didn’t sit that well with Phyllis, especially being praised for her detective skills. She said, “All I’m interested in is finding out who really killed Roy Porter, because I know good and well Eve didn’t.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Tess admitted with a shrug. “And I hate to think about it, but maybe it’s my fault.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Tess sighed and shook her head. “Ingrid Pitt isn’t the only one I told.”

  Chapter 25

  A couple of servers arrived then with their food, so they stopped discussing the case until after the man and woman had placed their plates in front of them, asked if they needed anything else, and then went away.

  When they had some measure of privacy again, Phyllis leaned forward and asked, “What do you mean, Ingrid isn’t the only one you told?”

  A look of dismay had appeared on Tess’s face. “Look, I know it was unprofessional,” she said, “but I was so excited about finally having a lead to the man I was after that I shared what I’d found with several of the clients I’d grown close to. If you’d heard these women’s stories and seen the damage that man did to some of them—” She stopped and shook her head. “But that still doesn’t excuse what I did. These things have to go through proper channels. I should have turned over the evidence I had to the authorities, let them arrest the man, and then reported to my clients . . . all my clients . . . instead of getting ahead of myself with some of them.”

  Excitement gripped Phyllis. “How many clients are we talking about?”

  Now that Tess had revealed as much as she had, she must have thought there was no longer any point in being reluctant to answer. “Four,” she said. “Counting Ingrid.”

  “Then that means there are four people who knew where Roy was and had a reason to want him dead.”

  “Maybe more than that,” Sam put in. “This lady Ingrid was married. Some of the others may have been, too. I know if I found myself face-to-face with somebody who’d hurt my wife that bad, I’d be liable to do somethin’ I’d regret. Or if I was mad enough, I might not regret it at all.”

  Phyllis nodded. “That’s right. There could be half a dozen or more likely suspects that the authorities don’t know anything about. You have to tell them, Ms. Coburn.”

  “And risk losing my PI license for ethical misconduct?” Tess said.

  “The threat that’s hanging over Eve’s head is a lot worse than that,” Phyllis said.

  She and Tess looked intently at each other over the table. After a moment, Sam said, “There’s been a whole lot to think about spilled out here in the last few minutes. We don’t want our food to get cold, so why don’t we eat while we mull it all over for a little while?”

  Phyllis wasn’t particularly hungry anymore. She didn’t want Eve having to live with that cloud of suspicion over her head for even one minute longer than was necessary.

  And yet she didn’t know anything that would point the finger of guilt at anyone else, she realized. Yes, the women Tess had unwisely told where they could find Roy had to be considered suspects, but that was all they were. It would be better in the long run if Phyllis knew exactly which one of them—or which of their husbands—had shoved that letter opener in Roy’s throat. She would stand a better chance of doing that if she didn’t make an enemy out of Tess Coburn.

  So she took a deep breath and said, “I agree with Sam. We’re getting carried away here. We need to stop and settle down, and then we can hash all this out.”

  The tension on Tess’s face eased, too. “You’re right.” She managed to smile. “Hey, the food here’s not great, but even so, we don’t want to waste it, do we?”

  For the next few minutes they ate in near silence, speaking up only to say inconsequential things about the meal or the weather. Finally Phyllis said, “You know, I was thinking. There’s really no reason why we can’t—”

  “Work together,” Tess finished for her. “Does this mean you’re accepting my offer?”

  “I was about to say there’s no reason we can’t work together, as you guessed,” Phyllis said. “That doesn’t mean I’d be working for you. And it would only be for this case.”

  Tess held up both hands. “I know, I know. Sometimes I try to be funny, but I don’t have the greatest sense of humor in the world.” Her expression grew more solemn. “But here’s what rubs me the wrong way. Sure, I should’ve been more discreet about what I told those ladies. But that doesn’t excuse one of them killing the guy, if that’s what happened. You’re right, Mr. Fletcher, I want the truth. I guess that’s why I became a detective in the first place.”

  “I figured as much,” Sam said. “Just like I figured the two of you ladies ought to be workin’ together instead of against each other.”

  “Oh, I’m not totally altruistic. I’ll stand a better chance of not losing my license if I can pinpoint Roy Porter’s killer.”

  “I guess we should start by sharing information,” Phyllis said. She paused, then took the plunge. “I think there’s a chance either Jan or Pete Delaney could have killed Roy.”

  Tess’s eyes widened in surprise. “The people who run the bed-and-breakfast? Why, other than the fact that they were on the scene?”

  Phyllis went through the scenario she had developed in her head after she and Sam had visited the bed-and-breakfast that morning. Tess listened intently, nodding every now and then as if agreeing with one of Phyllis’s points.

  “It certainly sounds plausible,” she said when Phyllis was finished. “But it’s the sort of thing that Mrs. Porter’s attorney could use during the trial. If she could get Mrs. Delaney on the stand and press her about this pass Porter supposedly made at her, there’s no telling what might come out.”

  “Maybe not,” Phyllis said, “but I don’t want to wait that long. I don’t want the case to ever get to the trial stage. Eve needs to be cleared before it goes that far.”

  “Ideally, yes. But so far, all we’re talking about is material to create reasonable doubt.”

  “That’s what it keeps coming back to,” Phyllis said with a sigh. “W
e need something more concrete.”

  Tess smiled. “Hey, we’re just getting started here. There’s plenty for us to look into. Who knows what we’ll find?”

  “Here’s something that Sam brought up earlier. Ingrid Pitt was staying at the bed-and-breakfast. Roy must have seen her. Why didn’t he recognize her?”

  “That one I can answer,” Tess said. “Have you ever seen Ingrid, or a photo of her?”

  “I saw the wedding photo from when she married Frank Pitt.”

  “Ten years ago she looked a lot different. Her hair was longer, all the way down her back, in fact, when she wasn’t wearing it in a braid. She looked like one of those Norse Valkyries.”

  “The choosers of the slain,” Sam murmured.

  “Exactly. Also, she looked a good ten years younger than she really was. I didn’t know her then, of course, but I’ve seen pictures of her. Now her hair is short and gray and she looks ten years older than she really is.”

  “But if Roy was introduced to her, he would have heard her name . . .” Phyllis’s voice trailed off for a second before she went on, “Which is Ingrid Pitt now, of course. That’s the only name he would know her by.”

  “And while Ingrid isn’t the most common name in the world, by any means, it’s not so unusual that he would automatically think an Ingrid he ran into in Texas was the same person as the woman he’d married and conned ten years ago in Minneapolis.”

  “You’re right,” Sam said. “Still, she was runnin’ quite a risk by stalkin’ him like that.”

  Phyllis said, “Not really. She hadn’t done anything illegal then. Even if Roy recognized her, he wouldn’t be very likely to blurt out that he’d married her and stolen that money from her.”

  “No, he would have kept quiet,” Tess said, “and hoped that she didn’t recognize him, and that her being there was just a wild coincidence.”

  “Wouldn’t he have gotten a mite suspicious if she came to his room while Eve wasn’t there?” Sam asked.

  “Probably, but what could he do but talk to her?” Phyllis said. “He had to try to talk her out of reporting him to the police.” She shook her head. “Let’s face it. He’d been talking women into doing what he wanted for at least twenty years. He had to be confident enough to at least try to smooth things over with Ingrid.”