Wedding Cake Killer: A Fresh-Baked Mystery

by Livia J. Washburn

  “Are the Pitts and the Mitchums still here?”

  Jan shook her head as she got cups and saucers from a cabinet. “No, they left yesterday. So did Alice Jessup. Everyone who’s here came in yesterday evening. I guess that means everyone who was here when . . . when . . .”

  “When Roy Porter was killed,” Pete finished for her. “They’re all gone now.”

  “Except for Pete and me, of course,” Jan added.

  “Yeah, but we don’t count.”

  Phyllis wasn’t completely convinced of that. Pete didn’t seem nearly as friendly this morning. Was that because he was afraid that Phyllis was investigating Roy’s murder? Did he have something to hide?

  Jan poured the coffee for Phyllis and Sam and moved a plate of fritters from the counter to the table. “Sit down,” she said. “Tell me how Eve’s doing today.”

  “She’s starting to get her appetite back and seem more like herself,” Phyllis said. There was a glass container on the table with packets of sugar and artificial sweetener in it, along with a bowl full of individual creamers. She started fixing her coffee the way she liked it as she went on, “It’s just a matter of time.”

  “Of course,” Jan said with a nod from the chair where she’d sat down on the other side of the table. “She’s had a lot of shocks. I just hope she doesn’t have too many more.”

  “So do I,” Phyllis said.

  Sam took a sip of his coffee and picked up one of the fritters to take a bite. When he had swallowed, he said to Pete, “Your wife mentioned the other day that you’d been havin’ some trouble with your water well.”

  “Yeah, the pressure switch has been acting up,” Pete said. He seemed relieved to be talking about something other than Roy Porter’s murder. “I’ve had to go out there and reset it several times lately. I just hope the pump’s not fixing to go out.”

  “You know, I had a well where I used to live in Poolville, and I had to work on it quite a bit over the years.” Sam chuckled. “Once, I was convinced that the pump needed to be replaced, so I set up an old metal swing set over the wellhead, put a block and tackle on it, and pulled the whole hundred and fifty feet of pipe out of the ground.”

  “By yourself?” Pete asked.

  Sam shook his head. “No, I had a friend help me. Took most of a day to get that pump up, and when we did, it turned out there was nothin’ wrong with it. Problem was actually in the wirin’ in the well house. Fire ants had got into it. For some reason, those little varmints really like electricity.”

  “You know, I haven’t checked the wiring,” Pete said with a frown. “I was going to call the well-repair people the next time it gave trouble.”

  “No need to do that,” Sam said as he waved a hand. “Let’s go out there and take a look at it. They say you learn by foulin’ things up, so I’d be glad to give you the benefit of my vast experience.”

  “Are you sure you don’t mind? It’s pretty cold out. Although I’ve got a heat bulb burning in the well house to keep it warm enough the pipes won’t freeze on these nights the temperature gets so low.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Sam said. “Especially if I can take this coffee and fritter with me.”

  “Sure, come on,” Pete said as he got to his feet. He led Sam out the back door.

  When they were gone, Jan said, “Men are all alike, aren’t they? They just love to piddle with things.”

  “Sam’s pretty good with his hands,” Phyllis said.

  “That, too,” Jan said.

  Phyllis felt her face warming and tried to ignore it. Jan had given her an opportunity, though, so she took it.

  With what she hoped was a serious, solemn expression on her face, she said, “I’m really sorry about what you had to go through with Roy. It must have really taken you by surprise and upset you when he . . . when he . . .”

  “Put his hand on my butt and asked me to go upstairs with him when Eve wasn’t here?” Jan nodded. “Oh, yeah. Not taken by surprise that much, really, because like I told you, I’ve had guests make passes at me before. But it did bother me, because I like Eve and I didn’t want to think that she’d gone and married an old lech.” She shrugged. “But hey, it wasn’t really any of my business. I just moved his hand and told him as politely as I could that I didn’t think it would be a good idea.”

  “How did he take that?”

  “He kept flirting at first, saying that nobody would know and that I’d be surprised how much I would enjoy myself. I told him I had other things to do. He got the idea, and he didn’t keep pushing, I’ll give him a little bit of credit for that. He laughed it off and said I didn’t know what I was missing.”

  “So he gave up?”

  “For the time being,” Jan said. “I remember thinking, though, that I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried again.” She shook her head. “But of course he never got the chance.”

  “Did you tell Pete what he’d done?”

  “Why would I do that?” Jan asked with what appeared to be genuine puzzlement. “Nothing happened. Not really. Roy got a quick feel; that’s all. Nothing to cause a big ruckus about.”

  Phyllis wondered if that meant Pete would have caused a big ruckus if he had known what Roy had done. And was it possible that Pete knew, even though Jan wasn’t aware that he did? Phyllis decided that she couldn’t rule that out.

  “Well, you’re more tolerant than I would be,” she said.

  “One thing you learn pretty quickly in this business,” Jan said, “is that everybody has their own little eccentricities when it comes to romance. You learn not to pay attention to some of the things you hear . . . and some of the things that happen.” The back door opened as she added, “So I didn’t worry about Roy making a pass at me—”

  Pete stepped inside in time to hear that, and when he did, his face instantly darkened with anger.

  “Blast it, Jan!” he burst out. “She’s interrogating you again! Didn’t I warn you about this?”

  Chapter 28

  Jan stood up, and so did Phyllis. “Pete, take it easy,” Jan said. “We were just talking—”

  “No, you weren’t,” he said. “She was asking you all sorts of questions, wasn’t she? Just like the other day when they came out here snooping!”

  “We just came out here that day to get Eve’s things—,” Phyllis began.

  Pete took a step toward her. “And you took advantage of me not being here to meddle in things that are none of your business. The men from the sheriff’s department warned us not to talk to anybody about what happened, but my wife just can’t keep her big mouth shut!”

  “Pete!” Jan said. “Stop it!”

  “No, I won’t. This old woman’s just trying to play detective and get us in trouble. She’ll do anything to help her friend, even if it means blaming somebody else for that murder, somebody who didn’t have anything to do with it!”

  Sam had followed Pete into the kitchen. He put a hand on Pete’s shoulder and said, “Hey, amigo, you’d better settle down there—”

  Pete jerked away from him and turned quickly, and for a second Phyllis thought he was going to throw a punch at Sam. From the way Sam tensed and got ready to meet the attack, he thought the same thing.

  But Pete kept his clenched fists at his sides and went on, “And you, trying to act like my friend! Helping me out by taking a look at my well, when all you really wanted to do was get me out of here so this old biddy could ask her meddling questions!”

  “Pete, that’s enough!” Jan said. “I won’t have you talking to our guests that way.”

  “They’re not guests,” he said. “They’re detectives! Or at least in their deluded minds they think they are.”

  “Sam, I think we should go,” Phyllis said.

  Pete sneered at her. “I think you should go, too. In fact, get the hell out of here!”

  “By God, mister—,” Sam said. He moved toward Pete, and now he was the one who looked like he was going to start swinging.

  Phyllis stepped quickly ar
ound Pete to intercept Sam. She grasped his arm and said, “Let’s go.”

  She steered him around Pete, who stood there with his feet planted and an angry glare on his face. Jan stood by looking embarrassed and upset. She wasn’t wringing her hands, but she might as well have been.

  She started to follow Phyllis and Sam toward the front of the house as she said, “I’m so sorry about this—”

  Pete grabbed her arm and jerked her to a halt, startling a little cry from her. “Just let them go,” he said. “You’ve done enough damage already.”

  Sam opened the door and let them out. Phyllis glanced back over her shoulder and saw Jan’s stricken face staring after them. Then Pete stomped up and slammed the door behind them.

  They didn’t say anything until they were back in the pickup. Then Phyllis said, “Well, he’s certainly not as nice a man as I thought he was the first time I met him.”

  “Sometimes it’s hard to tell about folks from the first impression they make,” Sam said. “I think it’s safe to say, though, that ol’ Pete’s the sort who flies off the handle pretty easy.”

  “You think he could lose his temper enough to stab somebody with a letter opener?”

  “I wouldn’t rule it out,” Sam said as he sent the pickup back along the driveway toward the county road.

  “The problem is that Jan claimed he didn’t know Roy made that pass at her.”

  “Maybe he knew and she just didn’t know it.”

  Phyllis nodded. “I thought about that. It’s certainly possible. Not to change the subject, but Ingrid Pitt is gone.”

  “Yeah. If she came here to kill Roy, there was no reason for her to stay, was there?”

  “But she didn’t want to leave right after the murder because she was afraid that might make her look guilty. Assuming, of course, that she is guilty, which we don’t know at all.”

  “We don’t know she’s not,” Sam said. “If she did kill him, I think she missed a bet. She could’ve left right away, and I don’t reckon anybody would have ever thought anything about it. After all, who wants to stay in a house where a murder’s been committed?”

  Phyllis nodded. “You’re right. No one would have been suspicious of that.” She paused. “I wonder if Tess has come up with anything on those other three women.”

  “Roy’s previous victims, you mean?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You can call her and ask her.”

  “I will, later,” Phyllis said. “If I haven’t heard from her by then.”

  Eve and Carolyn were still gone when they got back to the house, so Sam went out to the garage to do some work while Phyllis got on the computer and searched for any record of Pete Delaney being in trouble for losing his temper in the past. Bar fights, assaults, anything along those lines.

  There was nothing, of course. She had searched for such things before, with no luck. Pete might be the type to lose his temper easily, but evidently he had kept it under control enough that he’d never landed in the newspapers because of it.

  If things were different, she thought, she could ask Mike to check and find out if Pete had ever been arrested. Under the current circumstances, that wasn’t going to happen.

  Tess Coburn called a little before noon. “I’ve spoken to Becky Tuttle, Samantha Hogan, and Mary McLaren,” she said. “All three of them claim they haven’t been anywhere near Texas.”

  “Can they prove that?” Phyllis asked.

  Tess hesitated, then said, “I’m not really in a position where I can ask them for alibis, Phyllis. They were clients, and now the job is over, and they don’t even have to talk to me if they don’t want to.”

  “I know that. But I thought maybe you’d be able to work around to the subject . . .”

  Tess laughed and said, “Give me a little credit. That’s exactly what I did. Becky and Samantha talked about the things they’d been doing with their families, so I think we can be pretty sure they weren’t flying down here to murder Roy Porter. The things they told me would be too easy to check. It’s a little more difficult with Mary, since she’s not married and lives alone. I just had to take her word for it.”

  “Did any of them seem suspicious that you were calling?” Phyllis asked. “Like you said, they’re not really your clients anymore . . .”

  “No, they’re not, but we became friends, too, while I was working for them. It’s hard not to form some sort of bond when these women are telling you everything they went through because of that man, all the emotional turmoil.”

  Phyllis heard Tess pause and take a deep breath.

  “You know, one of my clients was actually the daughter of one of Roy’s marks. The victim herself couldn’t hire me because she was dead. She’d been a widow for a number of years when she met Roy. According to her daughter, it wasn’t really the money he stole from her that was so devastating; it was the broken heart. The poor woman thought she’d never fall in love again, and then she did, and it all turned out to be a lie. She took a bottle of sleeping pills and killed herself.” Tess sighed. “If you ask me, that’s almost the same thing as murder right there. Roy Porter killed that poor woman, just as surely as if he’d poured those pills down her throat.”

  “I agree,” Phyllis said, shaken a little by what Tess had just told her. But shaken or not, her brain was still working. “What about the daughter?”

  “What?”

  “The daughter of the woman who killed herself. Is it possible she could have wanted revenge on Roy?”

  “Well, sure. Wouldn’t you? But it’s a long way from, say, wishing somebody would drop dead to actually making it happen. The other problem with considering her a suspect is that I never told her where Roy was.”

  “Oh.” Phyllis tried not to feel too deflated. For a moment there, she’d thought they might be on the trail of another lead. It was looking more and more like they weren’t going to be able to find the real killer. They had plenty of theories but absolutely no proof. The only real evidence was still the murder weapon itself, and that pointed only to Eve.

  “Don’t get too discouraged,” Tess said. “We still have several suspects, and I’m not through digging. I’m just sorry this isn’t going fast enough to keep Eve from having to go through the arraignment.”

  “You’re doing your best,” Phyllis said. “I know that. And at least we have something for Juliette to work with during the trial, if it comes down to that.”

  With a note of heartiness in her voice, Tess said, “We won’t let it come to that. Hey, we’re like Miss Marple and Kinsey Millhone. We’ll find the truth.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Phyllis said.

  After she was off the phone with Tess, she started making tuna sandwiches for lunch. Since she didn’t know exactly when Carolyn and Eve would be back, those would be good to put in the refrigerator so there would be something for them to eat whenever they got there.

  Sam came into the kitchen from the garage. “I heard the phone ring a while ago,” he said. “Good news?”

  “Not really. It was Tess, all right, but she didn’t have anything to report except that we can probably cross off two of those other women from our list of suspects.”

  “What about the third one?”

  “She claims not to have been down here in Texas, but she’s not married and she lives alone, so Tess was less inclined to accept what she said at face value. It would have been easier for her to lie.”

  “So we’re left with Eve, Ingrid Pitt, and the Delaneys as viable suspects?”

  Phyllis nodded. “That’s the way it seems to me.”

  “Well, maybe that’ll be enough for an acquittal.”

  “I don’t want an acquittal,” Phyllis said.

  Sam nodded. “I know. You want Eve’s name cleared, once and for all. But this may be one case where we have to take what we can get, and havin’ her not be in prison is a whole heck of a lot better than the alternative.”

  “She might not go to prison even if she was convicted,�
� Phyllis said. “When you consider her age and the fact that Roy was planning to swindle her, a jury might easily decide to give her probation . . .”

  Phyllis’s voice trailed off as she realized what she was saying. She shouldn’t even be considering the possibility that Eve would be found guilty, she told herself, let alone trying to figure out what a jury might do when it came time for passing sentence.

  But Sam was right. It might come to that. And if it did, they would just have to hope for the best.

  Right now, though, Phyllis felt as helpless as she ever had in her life.

  And she didn’t like that feeling. Not one bit.

  Chapter 29

  The rest of the day passed quietly on Saturday. Carolyn and Eve came back to the house in the early afternoon after their shopping trip. Eve had quite a few bags with her, while Carolyn didn’t have any. That wasn’t unusual. Eve had always been the most extravagant shopper among them. Phyllis supposed that was natural enough, since Eve had all those millions in the bank that none of them had known about. Right now, though, Phyllis considered it a good sign that Eve felt like going out and spending money again.

  Sunday was equally uneventful. The only thing that really changed was that the wind turned around to the south and the cold snap broke. The temperature warmed well above freezing, and the forecast predicted that Monday would be even nicer . . . at least where the weather was concerned.

  Phyllis didn’t think there was anything nice about Eve having to go to court.

  Juliette called that evening to remind them to be at the courthouse at eight thirty the next morning, as if they would forget anything that important, Phyllis thought. Maybe after the arraignment she could sit down with the lawyer and fill her in on everything that she and Tess had found out. Juliette needed the information about the other possible suspects in order to start formulating a defense for Eve.