Flourless to Stop Him

by Nancy J. Parra

  “Geeze, Toni.” Tim yawned again. “You’re not Mom, you know.”

  “I know.” I switched ears as I followed Officer Bright’s progress down the steps and across the parking lot. “This is important. Do you have an alibi for last night?”

  “An alibi—what are you talking about? I was at work.”

  “Are there witnesses?”

  “Toni—”

  “Listen carefully.” I spoke fast, doing my best to get it all out before Officer Bright entered the lobby. “There’s been a murder at the Red Tile Inn.”

  “What? When? Who?”

  “I think last night,” I said. “Maria found the body about an hour ago. I called you because the room was registered in your name.”

  “What?”

  “Officer Bright is going to find out that the room was registered to you and then they’ll be calling you in for questioning. So please, whatever you do, have an alibi. I’m going to call Brad right now.”

  “Toni, this is a bad joke to play on a man who’s gotten only four hours of sleep.”

  “I’m not joking. I’ve got to go. Don’t talk to anyone until Brad gets there.” I hung up on my brother as Officer Bright stepped into the lobby. I smiled at him. He nodded and headed to where Tasha worked at the counter.

  I turned my back on him and hit Brad’s number on my cell phone.

  “Ridgeway and Harrington Attorneys at Law,” Brad’s receptionist, Amy Jones, said. “How can I help you?”

  “Hi, Amy,” I said. “This is Toni Holmes. I need to speak to Brad. It’s a matter of life and death.”

  “Um, okay, hold on. Let me see if I can find him.”

  She put me on hold and the Muzak played in my ear. I glanced over and saw Tasha handing Officer Bright the room receipt. My heartbeat picked up. “Come on, Brad,” I whispered. I turned my back on the officer and Tasha. If he wanted to catch my attention he’d have to call out or come get me.

  “Brad Ridgeway.” Brad’s voice was a deep rumble and a comfort. Back in the day, Brad was a high school jock. The tall, handsome, deadly blond kind with electric blue eyes and a killer body. He’d played everything from football to baseball but had excelled at basketball and gone to KU on a basketball scholarship before earning his law degree.

  Brad had been crush-worthy in high school and continued to be crush-worthy as a grown-up lawyer with his own practice. There were simply two things wrong with that thought: 1) I wasn’t ready to date after my divorce from hell and 2) Brad was my lawyer. You should never get involved with your lawyer. Even if he smells divine.

  “Hi, Brad, it’s Toni.”

  “Hey, Toni, what’s up? Amy said your call was life-or-death.”

  “Maria found a dead man in room two-oh-two of the Red Tile Inn,” I said. “I’m here with Tasha.”

  “Please tell me you’re not a suspect again.”

  “I’m not a suspect.”

  “Good.”

  “Tim is.”

  “Oh.” He blew out a breath. “That’s not good.”

  “Listen, can you go to Tim’s place?” I stared out and up at the open door of room 202. “I think he may be in real trouble.”

  “Ms. Holmes, who are you talking to?” Officer Bright asked over my shoulder.

  “Got to go.” I hung up the phone before Brad could answer. I felt as guilty as a kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar. My face heated up. With my being a redhead, my porcelain skin would never let me get away with anything. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “Who were you calling, Toni?” Officer Bright took in my heated face. “Was that your brother Tim?”

  “Um, no.” I shook my head. “Why would I call my brother?” I widened my eyes and tried to look innocent.

  “According to the hotel registration, room two-oh-two was rented by your brother. Have you seen him?” Officer Bright tilted his head. His brown gaze studied me.

  It made me very aware of each facial tic. I’m certain my skin was blotchy with guilt. “No, I haven’t seen him today,” I replied as honestly as possible. “He works third shift at FedEx and is usually sleeping at this time of day.” I swallowed. “You say the room was registered to Tim?”

  “That’s what the record shows,” Calvin said. “Does this look like his signature?” He held out the slip of paper.

  “Well, now, I’m not sure.” I studied the paper. “I suppose it could be . . . but I’m not a handwriting expert. Really I haven’t seen Tim’s signature in a while.” I took a deep breath and tried to calm my nerves. “You don’t think my brother was involved in this murder, do you?”

  “Being as the room was registered in his name, he is a person of interest. Do you know where he is?”

  “I suppose he’s home sleeping.” I shrugged. “I don’t know for sure. He moved out of my house last month.”

  “Can I have his new address?”

  “Sure. Listen, you can call him if you want. . . .” I pulled up Tim’s number on my cell phone.

  “No need. Give me the address and I’ll send Emry over to ensure your brother’s still alive.”

  I blinked rapidly. “Wait—you think Tim could be dead?”

  “Most likely not,” Officer Bright reassured me. “But we should check on his well-being, and if he’s good, then we need to speak to him.”

  “I sincerely doubt Tim killed anyone,” I said in defense of my baby brother.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Officer Bright said. “Either way I need you to stay out of the investigation, Ms. Holmes. Can you do that?”

  “It depends, Officer Bright.”

  “On what?” He put his hands on his hips.

  “On how much trouble Tim’s in. I know my brother. He wouldn’t kill anyone.”

  “Let’s hope you’re right,” Officer Bright said.

  “Oh, I’m right,” I said. “I’ll bet my life on it.”

  “This time we’ll hope you don’t have to go that far.”

  CHAPTER 3

  “What’s the scuttlebutt?” Grandma Ruth drove her scooter up the ramp on the side porch and onto the gray-painted floorboards of the wide Victorian porch that wrapped around my house.

  “Tim’s at the police station being questioned,” I said from my seat on the porch swing. The porch had a robin’s-egg blue–painted ceiling. The siding on the house was clapboard and painted white, with the posts and eaves painted maroon and forest green in the tradition of the painted ladies of the time it was built.

  Grandma Ruth frowned, her freckled skin bunched around her mouth. Grandma had been five foot eight, but time and bad joints had her hunched over to a little over five feet two inches. Today she wore her orange-red hair in a short cap of permed curls. Her black jacket was puffy from the feather filling. Her hands were covered by black knit gloves. She wore a bright printed skirt with little penguins dancing across a navy blue background. Her kneesocks were thick white wool and she wore white and navy athletic shoes.

  A dark brown fedora perched atop her head. Her blue eyes sparkled. “Did you call Brad?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He’s with Tim.”

  “Well, it’s freezing out here. We can either sit out here while I have a cigarette or we can go inside and warm up by the fireplace.”

  “I vote we go in,” I said and got up slowly. “It’s supposed to snow tonight.”

  “I heard, they’re calling for six inches,” Grandma said as she drove her scooter along the porch behind me.

  I opened the front storm door and then the white panel door and let her go inside first. She darn near ran over my foot with her scooter. “Hey!”

  “Sorry,” Grandma said almost gaily as she waved her hand in the air. “You need to make the door bigger. Handicap accessible,” Grandma said as she motored her way into the foyer.

  My mother had died the previous spring of ca
ncer complications. Like I said, it was just me and Tasha and Kip living here now. Tim had moved out. Grandma lived in the senior care apartments on Central. My other brother, Richard, and his family lived in Washington State. My sisters Joan and Rosa lived within fifty miles of Oiltop and had the habit of popping over whenever they needed something—like space from their own broods. Or a babysitter. Or a party caterer. At least Eleanor lived in California and rarely showed up unannounced.

  “You usually park the scooter outside,” I said and closed the door behind me. The floor bounced as Aubrey came running through the foyer to see who was coming in. The pup made a flying leap into Grandma’s lap. She laughed until she coughed. I took off my mittens, hat, and coat and hung them up on the coat tree in the foyer.

  The house was over a hundred years old, and while it had been remodeled almost every ten years, there were rooms still stuck in the seventies. Then again, when you had a house as big as this one, there were a lot of rooms to remodel. Generally by the time you finished updating the whole house it was time to start over.

  This explained the 1970s take on vintage Victorian den that now resembled a bordello on crack. It screamed outdated, from the dark red and cream velvet wallpaper to the dark wood and green tile around the fireplace.

  “Grandma, no scooters on the carpet!” I warned her as she started to turn into the den.

  “Geeze you’re fussy.” Grandma hit the brakes, leaving skid marks on the polished wood floors of the hallway. The house had a central foyer with the original wood floors. To the left was a formal parlor that opened into the den. To the right was the sweeping staircase. Behind the staircase and across from the den was the formal dining room. A tiny half bath was tucked in between the den and the eat-in kitchen at the back of the house.

  “What? I’m not fussy. That carpet is close to a priceless antique,” I joked. The carpet in the den was a deep green shag from the era before I was born. Over the years Mom had covered it with a variety of area rugs, so the center of the room was practically pristine flooring. Too nice to rip up and throw away just to update a room.

  “Fine, I suppose a little walk won’t kill me.” Grandma pushed Aubrey off her lap and grunted as she climbed off her Scootaround senior scooter. The scooter took up most of the room in the hallway and would not have fit through the door to the den anyway. If she really wanted to scoot into the den she would have to go around and enter through the front room, where the pocket doors were wider. I suspected that was Grandma’s real reason for giving in and walking.

  She ambled over to the brocade- and velvet-trimmed love seat. “What do you have to eat?” She sat down with a humph and I noted the dust that puffed out.

  “I have gluten-free lasagna I can heat up. I take it you didn’t eat dinner.”

  Grandma frowned at me and took off her fedora. “They were serving some kind of casserole at the senior center. It looked oddly gray.”

  “No worries, I’ll heat something up. Do you want salad?”

  “Have you ever known me to turn down food?” Grandma called after me. “Put it in front of me and I’ll eat it.”

  Which she did on a regular basis, thus adding to her ample size. I loved Grandma, but she had never been a small woman. Once when I was very young she had lost over 150 pounds and even gone so far as to have a face-lift to get rid of the loose skin that comes with such a large loss of weight.

  “They called it a face-lift.” Grandma would tell the story with a twinkle in her eye. “But they lifted everything from the belly button up.” Her orange eyebrows would wiggle. “I lost nearly thirty pounds of skin and got a boob lift in the process.”

  Grandma Ruth was an old flapper with a wicked sense of humor. Over the years she had gained back all the weight and more. She would tell you she was old, so what did size matter?

  “Is Bill coming?” I popped my head into the den. Bill was Grandma’s boyfriend. A taxidermist she had met in an art class.

  “No, his granddaughter had a play thing in Augusta,” Grandma said and settled into the couch. “My fingers are cold.”

  “I’ll turn on the fire.” I put the key in the floor and turned on the gas, lighting the fireplace. “Let me have your coat.”

  I took Grandma’s outer garments as the pup settled in her lap. “Aubrey, get down,” I commanded. The puppy looked from me to Grandma and back to me. “No dogs on the furniture.”

  “What kind of rule is that?” Grandma asked as she petted Aubrey.

  “A good rule to enforce now, when he’s little. Especially if he grows to be the hundred-and-ten-pound dog the vet thinks he’ll be.” I looked at Aubrey and snapped my fingers. “Down. Off.”

  Grandma pushed him and the pup reluctantly climbed down.

  “Good boy,” I said and turned on my heel. I hung Grandma’s coat and hat in the hall. Then I popped the lasagna into the oven to reheat. If it were just me I would have heated it in the microwave, but Grandma liked it reheated the old-fashioned way—in the oven.

  I don’t blame her. There was something about the microwave that dried out food. I fixed us both bowls of salad and poured Grandma a cup of coffee, placed it all on a tray, and took it into the den.

  Funny, but I swear Aubrey had heard me coming and climbed out of Grandma’s lap again. I narrowed my eyes at him. He did a turn and lay down at Grandma’s feet.

  “I can’t believe you gave Candy the scoop on the murder,” Grandma chided me when I reentered the den.

  “I didn’t give her the scoop.” I set the tray down and picked up a bowl of salad, sat down in a flowered wingback chair. “She listens to the police scanner.”

  “I saw her article on the front page of the afternoon Oiltop Times.” Grandma pouted. “She says you called the police when Maria found the body.”

  “I did.”

  “You could have called me right after.” Grandma gave me the narrowed eye of guilt.

  “There was no time.” I settled back into my chair and took a nice forkful of salad. “I was lucky to call Brad before Officer Bright could stop me.” I shoved salad in my mouth so I had an excuse not to talk.

  “We need some kind of text signal,” Grandma muttered and smothered her coffee in artificial sweetener and a dash of cream. Then she picked up her own bowl of salad. “Like 411 or something, so I know to come hunt you down.”

  I chewed and swallowed. “I was at the Red Tile Inn. How would you have known where to find me?”

  “There’s such a thing as the senior network in this small town.” Grandma’s blue eyes twinkled. “I’m telling you that if you sent me a simple 411 text I’d be able to find you anywhere, anytime, within five minutes. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about the cops. It would simply be your old grandma, showing up as planned.”

  “Snapping pictures and writing in her notebook,” I said and forked more salad in my mouth.

  “Everyone in town knows I carry my notebook everywhere. Once a newswoman, always a newswoman.” Unlike me, Grandma had no qualms about talking with her mouth full of salad.

  “Are you telling me that when Candy is in her nineties, she’ll be running around with her computer tablet in hand, taking notes?”

  “That’s right.” Grandma nodded and waved her fork, sending lettuce flying around the room, much to the pup’s delight. “Once a newswoman, always a newswoman.”

  “Then how come you don’t have a police scanner?”

  “I had one a few years back, but Bill said it kept waking him up.”

  I winced and put my salad down on the table. “Grandma, I don’t want to know that Bill spends the night with you.”

  “Oh, he doesn’t. The police scanner kept disturbing his afternoon nap.”

  Not that the image of chubby Bill, with his shock of white hair and round jelly belly, napping at Grandma’s was much better. “You’re getting soft if you choose Bill over the news,” I pointe
d out as I rose to check on the lasagna.

  “If you dated, you would do things for your man, too.” Grandma huffed.

  “I’m still working through the trauma of my divorce,” I said as I stepped out of the room. Mom’s death had come on the heels of my divorce from Eric. I had come home from work early to find him naked in my bed with his best friend’s wife. I was less disturbed by his behavior than I was by the idea that I had let him dupe me. It had been less than a year since I signed the divorce papers. I still didn’t trust myself to make smart choices when it came to men.

  I plated the lasagna and took it into the den. “Brad tells me the police grilled Tim for three hours.” I snapped my fingers to catch the dog’s attention and then pointed at the living room. The rule was no dogs in the area of food. I’d been lenient with the salad, but I wasn’t going to tempt him with the casserole.

  “Your brother had nothing to do with that murder,” Grandma said and slurped her coffee.

  “Well, I know that and you know that, but Chief Blaylock has no other leads at this time.”

  “That’s because it takes six months to get evidence back from the county lab. Real life is nothing like those crime shows on television,” Grandma said around a forkful of lasagna.

  “I know,” I said. “The county lab is understaffed, overworked, and underbudgeted. You wrote a blog on it last month.”

  “And I got great feedback.” Grandma waved her fork. “Paula Ashford is on the ballot for the county board. She needs to know that people expect more from the justice system.”

  “I’m sure Paula reads your blog.” I took a bite of the lasagna. I had discovered gluten-free rice noodles at the grocery store. It was simply a matter of practice before I perfected my gluten-free lasagna recipe. Thankfully I wasn’t lactose intolerant as well as celiac. I could indulge in ricotta cheese and mozzarella. I had added spinach and mushrooms to jazz up the meat sauce and ricotta filling. Not bad if I say so myself.

  “Too bad you don’t have any bread to go with this,” Grandma said around her bites of dinner. “Garlic bread and butter would be perfect with this meal.”