Wedding Cake Killer: A Fresh-Baked Mystery

by Livia J. Washburn

  Chapter 32

  “What in the world are you talking about?” Carolyn asked.

  Juliette leaned forward intently. “You’re onto something, Mrs. Newsom?”

  Phyllis held up a hand to stop them from asking any more questions as she heard footsteps coming down the stairs. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Tess needs to be here for this.”

  A moment later, Tess came into the living room, and she must have sensed that something had changed, because she looked around, frowned, and asked, “What is it? Is something going on?”

  “Sit down,” Phyllis told her. “There’s something else we need to talk about. Something we haven’t even considered.”

  Tess sank into the armchair she had occupied before. “What is it?” she asked.

  “The letter opener,” Phyllis said.

  “The murder weapon?” Tess frowned. “It belongs to Mrs. Porter, doesn’t it? Without it, there’s no physical evidence against her.”

  Juliette said, “And without any physical evidence, there’s no case. At least, not one strong enough to take to a jury.”

  Phyllis leaned forward and said, “So if we accept the fact that Eve’s innocent, we also have to accept the fact that she has no reason to lie about how the letter opener got to the bed-and-breakfast.”

  “I don’t know how it got there,” Eve said. “I didn’t take it with me. I swear I didn’t.”

  Phyllis smiled. “I believe you. That’s because the murderer brought it to the bed-and-breakfast.”

  “Wait just a minute,” Carolyn said. “The last time any of us saw that letter opener, it was upstairs in Eve’s room. At least, that’s the last place I remember seeing it.”

  “That’s right,” Phyllis said. “That means the killer must have taken it from Eve’s room at some point before Roy’s murder.”

  “You’re right,” Juliette said, excitement growing in her voice. “But how could the murderer have gotten hold of it?”

  “That’s been the key all along,” Phyllis said. “I just didn’t realize it. Someone who was in this house took the letter opener.”

  Carolyn said, “Well, it certainly wasn’t any of us! Although I might have felt like killing Roy if I’d known what sort of scoundrel he really was.”

  “I’d advise you not to say things like that in public, Mrs. Wilbarger,” Juliette said.

  Carolyn snorted.

  “Now, hold on a minute,” Tess said. “I’m getting confused here. You just said somebody who lives here took the letter opener and killed Roy Porter.”

  Phyllis shook her head. “No, I said someone who has been in this house did that.”

  “Well, who could that be?”

  “Only one person I can think of,” Phyllis said as she looked straight across the living room at Tess. “You.”

  All the others except Sam turned to look at Tess, who stared at Phyllis in evident disbelief. Sounding stunned, Tess said, “Me? How is that possible? I didn’t even get to Weatherford until after Roy Porter was dead. I arrived on the day of his funeral, remember?”

  “And what proof do we have of that?” Phyllis asked. “Your word; that’s all. You could have been in town for a week or a month or even a year, and none of us would know any different. But you told us that’s when you got here, and you even showed up at the cemetery to reinforce that in our minds. None of us ever thought to question it until now. So it never occurred to us that you might have killed Roy.”

  “Why in the world would I do that?” Tess demanded.

  Phyllis shook her head. “I don’t know, exactly, but I suspect it has something to do with that story you told us about the woman who committed suicide after Roy broke her heart. Was she your mother? Your aunt? Maybe an older sister?”

  Tess blew out a breath of laughter. “I think you’ve let your reputation as a detective go to your head, Mrs. Newsom. You’re grasping at straws here. I have no motive, no means, no opportunity! I wasn’t in town, and I never set foot in your house until a few days ago. I couldn’t have gotten my hands on that letter opener.”

  “Oh, you were here before,” Phyllis said, and confidence made her voice strong and clear. “You were here on the day of Eve’s bridal shower. When I first saw you at the cemetery, for a second I thought you were one of the teachers from Eve’s last couple of years at the high school. I don’t know all of them, you see, so it was an easy mistake to make. Even then, I must have recognized you, even though I wasn’t aware of it at the time. You probably looked considerably different at the shower. Maybe you were wearing your hair different, or you wore a wig, or maybe even a more elaborate disguise. But you were here.” Phyllis paused. “Otherwise how would you have known just now where the upstairs bathroom is?”

  “That’s it?” Tess asked. “You came up with this crazy idea because I needed to go to the bathroom?”

  “When you came here on the day of the funeral, you didn’t use the bathroom, upstairs or down.” Phyllis nodded toward Sam. “Sam can confirm that.”

  “While I don’t usually concern myself with ladies’ bathroom habits,” he said, “yeah, I can testify that you didn’t go while you were here. You sat in the living room and talked to us for a while, and then you left when Eve came downstairs. You gave me your card right there in the foyer.”

  Tess shook her head. “This is so far-fetched—”

  “But it seems to fit together,” Juliette said. “Go on, Mrs. Newsom. How did she plan the whole thing?”

  Before Phyllis could answer, Tess burst out, “You can forget about me working for you!”

  “Oh, yes, I think so,” Juliette said with a nod.

  “I don’t know what her plan was,” Phyllis said. “Maybe she just came here to get a look at the woman who was going to marry the man she hated so much. Maybe she planned all along to kill Roy and frame Eve for the murder. I just don’t know. But I’m convinced she waited until the downstairs bathroom was occupied so she’d have a good excuse to go upstairs. I sent a number of ladies up there myself, including some I didn’t know.”

  “So did I,” Carolyn said. She studied Tess’s face. “She could have been one of them.”

  “You’re just going along with what your delusional friend says,” Tess practically spat at her.

  Juliette said, “How did she know about the shower? How would she know she could get away with pretending to know Eve?”

  “Like I said, we have no idea how long she’s really been in town,” Phyllis replied. “She could’ve been investigating Eve for a long time, long enough that she already knew all of our names at the funeral. She’s a real private investigator, you know. That doesn’t mean she can’t be a murderer, too.”

  Tess heaved a sigh of apparent exasperation and said, “You’ve gone off the deep end.”

  “Maybe she didn’t even mean to come in that day,” Phyllis went on as if she hadn’t heard Tess’s comment. “Maybe she was just watching the house, trying to get a look at Eve. But then when she saw so many people arriving for the shower, she realized she could blend in with them and get an even closer look. I’m sure that as a private investigator, she’s had some experience at pretending to be people she’s not. And then she went upstairs to look at Eve’s room and saw the letter opener and realized that if she bided her time, she could kill Roy and put the blame on Eve.”

  “That’s premeditation, whether she planned it all along or just came up with that when she stole the letter opener,” Juliette said. “But why even show up in Weatherford at all after he was dead?”

  “So she could make sure the authorities knew that Eve had a motive for killing Roy,” Phyllis said. “And I think she probably wanted to keep an eye on the case, too, and make sure things were going the way she wanted them to. She dragged in those other suspects to muddy the waters, just in case Eve was cleared somehow. I’m sure that’s why she told those other women where they could find Roy. It wasn’t a mistake at all. But all of them except Ingrid Pitt failed to cooperate. They didn’t come to We
atherford, so they couldn’t serve as alternate suspects in case she needed them.” Phyllis nodded slowly. “The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced she’d been planning to kill Roy for a long time.”

  Tess stood up. “I’ve listened to enough of this garbage,” she said. “Even if there was anything to it, you can’t prove anything that you’ve said. You’re just some crazy old woman who thinks she’s a detective.”

  “I’m not,” Juliette said as she came to her feet, too. “I’m not a detective, but I know how to dig out the facts once somebody has pointed me in the right direction. And I think you’d better stay right here, Ms. Coburn, while someone calls the sheriff’s department.”

  “Go to hell,” Tess muttered as she swung toward the door.

  Sam started to get up, but Juliette reached Tess first and put a hand on her shoulder. Tess turned sharply, slashing out at Juliette with a savage expression on her face. Carolyn and Eve both cried out in alarm. Phyllis and Sam bolted to their feet. In Tess’s job, she had probably learned how to handle herself in a violent situation.

  But Juliette was in no danger. She ducked under the blow that Tess aimed at her head, drove a stiffened hand into Tess’s midsection, and then swung her leg in a roundhouse kick that sent Tess crashing against the wall so hard a couple of framed pictures leaped off their hooks and fell to the floor. Tess collapsed, stunned.

  “Good Lord!” Carolyn said.

  Juliette was breathing a little hard. “Somebody better call 911,” she said.

  Sam had already beaten her to it. He was punching in the three digits on the phone.

  Eve was staring at the stunned Tess Coburn. “Oh, dear,” she said. “I guess I was right not to like her all along, wasn’t I?”

  “I’d say so,” Phyllis told her with a smile.

  * * *

  “She didn’t change her appearance to go to the shower,” Juliette told them that evening when they had all gathered in the living room of Phyllis’s house again. Mike was there, too.

  Juliette took a printout of a photograph from her briefcase and went on, “This is what she normally looked like. I got it from her Louisiana driver’s license. It was when she showed up later that she looked different than she usually did, just to make sure none of you remembered her from Christmas Eve.”

  The picture showed a woman with dark brown hair pulled back away from her face. Phyllis and Carolyn both nodded, and Carolyn said, “I’m pretty sure I recall her being here on the day of the shower.”

  “I do, too,” Phyllis said. “I’m not sure I could testify to that in court, though.”

  “You shouldn’t have to,” Mike said. “According to the sheriff, the woman’s probably going to reach some kind of plea deal with Sullivan.”

  “Oh, so he’s going to let her get away with it, after all the misery he put poor Eve through,” Carolyn said.

  “You know, it would be all right with me if I never heard the expression ‘poor Eve’ again,” Eve said.

  “She’s not going to get away with it,” Mike said. “But she might only spend a few years behind bars. After all, what Roy did drove her mother to suicide, so I’m sure her lawyer will play up the sympathy angle.”

  “So it was her mother who died,” Phyllis said.

  “Yep,” Mike replied with a nod. “Tess had been looking for him for years. She sought out all those other victims and made them think she was trying to help them, and they wound up hiring her and funding her search for revenge. It’s a shame. From what I can tell, she was actually a pretty good PI.”

  “As well as a ruthless murderer,” Carolyn said.

  “Well, yeah. I don’t think there’s much doubt about that.”

  “It is a shame,” Phyllis agreed. “I can’t blame her for hating Roy. But when she tried to make it look like Eve killed him . . . well, that crossed a line.”

  Juliette said, “If you hadn’t figured it out, Mrs. Newsom, she would have continued pretending to work with you, and she would have tried to steer you away if you started coming too close to the truth. It was a pretty bold game she was playing, all the way through.” She replaced the photograph in her briefcase and snapped the latches closed.

  “What happens now?” Carolyn asked.

  Mike said, “The sheriff’s department has reopened the investigation. Burton and Conley are pretty ticked off that they bought into the frame. They’ll keep digging until they have everything there is to find about Ms. Coburn.”

  “But what about Eve? She’s still charged with murder!”

  “District Attorney Sullivan has already called me,” Juliette said, smiling. “He informed me that he’ll move for a dismissal of the charges first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Can’t it be done any sooner?” Carolyn asked. “Eve shouldn’t have to spend one more night like this!”

  “It’s all right,” Eve said. “Everyone knows the truth now. That’s the most important thing.”

  “What I’d like to know,” Sam said, “is where you learned to handle yourself in a ruckus like that, Ms. Yorke.”

  “Martial arts training,” Juliette said. “It’s a good workout.”

  “Well, it certainly came in handy today,” Phyllis said.

  Eve asked, “Will I need to go into court in the morning?”

  Juliette shook her head as she stood up. “No, I can take care of it. From now on, you can just go ahead and live your life, Eve.”

  Eve got to her feet and hugged her. “Thank you,” she said, her voice catching a little. She looked around at the others. “Thank you so much, all of you. You never lost faith in me.”

  “We certainly didn’t,” Carolyn said.

  “And you, Phyllis,” Eve went on. “I don’t know how you do it.”

  “She’s had to develop those detective abilities,” Carolyn said, “because it seems like the police around here think she lives in a house full of serial killers!” She pointed at Sam. “They’ll arrest you next. Mark my words!”

  Sam grinned and lifted his hands in surrender. “Not me. I’m walkin’ the straight and narrow from here on out!”

  * * *

  Phyllis wasn’t sure what made her come downstairs late that night, after the house was quiet and dark. She turned the light on in the hall, and in the glow it cast into the living room, she saw Eve sitting and looking out the window.

  “Eve . . . ,” Phyllis said as she stepped into the room.

  “Go on and live my life,” Eve said quietly. “That’s what Juliette told me to do. But I can’t really do that, can I? Because my life . . . the life I believed I’d lead from now on . . . was going to be with Roy.”

  Phyllis knelt beside Eve’s chair. “That wasn’t meant to be,” she said, making her voice as comforting as she could. “It’s not your fault. You were honest and sincere—”

  “I loved him, you know.” Eve turned her head to look at Phyllis in the dim light from the hallway. “I really loved him. Even after . . . even after that woman told us the truth about him, about what he did in the past, I might have forgiven him if he’d just . . . stayed with me.”

  “I know,” Phyllis whispered. “But that was never what he intended.”

  “I know that . . . in my brain. But in my heart . . .”

  Phyllis clasped Eve’s hand and leaned her head against her shoulder as Eve began to cry. In the morning, Phyllis thought, Eve would be all right. She would put all this behind her and move on, just as Juliette had told her.

  But the scars on her heart would remain. Those scars always did. They might heal over, but they never went away.

  The two of them stayed together for a long time into the night.

  Recipes

  Sweet Bacon Crackers

  Ingredients

  32 Club crackers

  8 slices bacon, cut into fourths

  Cayenne pepper (optional)

  1/4 cup brown sugar

  Directions

  Preheat the oven to 275°F.

  Arrange the crackers
in a single layer on a large, ungreased baking sheet. Top each cracker with 1/4 slice of bacon, add a light dash of cayenne, and sprinkle brown sugar over all.

  Bake for 1 hour, or until bacon is browned and brown sugar is caramelized. Serve warm.

  These sweet and spicy bites are better warm than cold, but they reheat easily.

  Makes 32.

  Nutty Caramel Pretzels

  Ingredients

  15 ounces mini twist pretzels

  4 cups mixed nuts

  1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter

  2 cups packed dark brown sugar

  1/2 cup light corn syrup

  Pinch of salt

  Directions

  Preheat the oven to 250°F.

  In a 9 x 13-inch baking dish, combine the pretzels and nuts. Set aside.

  In a large saucepan, combine the butter, brown sugar, corn syrup, and salt. Stir together over medium heat until the brown sugar dissolves. Bring to a boil and cook until the mixture is very thick and reaches the firm-ball stage (260°F on a candy thermometer). Remove from heat, pour over pretzel-nut mixture, and mix.

  Bake for 20 minutes, stirring once after 10 minutes.

  Remove from the oven and spread on parchment paper to cool.

  Serves 25–30.

  Cheddar Garlic Palmiers

  Ingredients

  11/4 cups (31/2 ounces) finely grated sharp Cheddar cheese

  1/4 cup finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

  2 teaspoons minced garlic

  1 teaspoon garlic salt

  2 puff pastry sheets (from a 17.3-ounce package), thawed if frozen

  Directions

  Toss the Cheddar, Parmigiano-Reggiano, minced garlic and garlic salt in a bowl.

  Sprinkle 1/4 cup cheese mixture onto a work surface. Unfold 1 pastry sheet and place it over the cheese. With a rolling pin, roll the pastry into a 10-inch square. Sprinkle 1/2 cup cheese mixture all over the top of the pastry, pressing lightly to adhere. Fold the sides of 2 ends to meet in center. Fold once more, lengthwise, into the center, and press the ends together. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and chill until firm, about 1 hour (or freeze 15–30 minutes). Repeat with remaining cheese and second sheet of pastry.