by Harper Lin
“No. The autopsy should be just about done. I’ll have more information once I read that. But dollars to doughnuts, it’s an ex.”
Looking out the window, Amelia watched the scenery become more and more familiar as Dan drove.
“You don’t think you’re maybe just a little biased about who the suspects might be?” The words ran out of her mouth and left a bitter taste behind. What are you doing? He’s been completely nice all night, right? Why jump down his throat? She bit her lip and looked at Dan. His face seemed to darken with shadows as his eyebrows creased in the middle.
“After all the years I’ve been on the force, I just know what to look for.” He looked at Amelia as if he were laying out evidence in front of her that proved she was a jerk. “You can’t learn what I know by watching television.”
Clearing her throat, Amelia fidgeted with the cuff of her shirt again.
“I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just…”
“You were just voicing a suspicion that most of the public has these days about cops. That we cover for one another.” His voice was cool, low, but very agitated. “No matter what the crime.”
“No. That isn’t what I meant.”
“Sure it is.” He took a deep breath. “It’s tough being the good guy when bad guys wear the same clothes, but that isn’t me. And it isn’t anyone in my department.”
“Dan, I certainly didn’t mean to…”
“You’re down this street, right?”
Looking at the detective’s face, Amelia was sure she saw a genuine hurt there.
“Yeah. Just down two blocks and take a left. You’ll see the truck at the end of the street.”
As they were pulling into the driveway, Amelia gathered up the empty food wrappers and containers to throw away in her trashcan. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door and stepped out. But before closing the door, she leaned down.
“Thanks for taking me along. I really had a good time. It was better than any movie that’s out there.” She smiled, hoping to get a reaction, but instead just got a couple of nods and what looked like a very forced grimace.
“Have a good night, Amelia.” Dan’s voice was low, as if he were talking to a child. It made Amelia think of John and all the times he’d sulked, knowing full well that she was right about something but refusing to give her even that small victory.
“Okay, maybe you are right. Maybe I did think you were willing to protect your friends first. I know if it were one of my children in this kind of trouble, I’d turn over ever rock, every leaf, every clue to prove it wasn’t them.” She swallowed. “And only then, when I was sure of the ugly truth, would I hand them over. That doesn’t make me a bad guy.” Standing up straight, she slammed the car door and walked up to the front door. Only once she was inside and the front door was shut and locked did Dan finally pull away.
“Everyone is always so touchy,” she mumbled, rubbing her arms as she went upstairs. In the quiet of the house, she got ready for bed and wondered about Dana Foster.
With her entire Sunday free, Amelia thought it might be a good day to do a little snooping, starting with Tabitha Miller, the mother of the bride at the party.
Chapter Eight
“What a pleasant surprise,” Tabitha said when she opened her front door to see Amelia standing there. Her eyes were clear and sparkly, and her makeup, although perfectly applied already at 9:00 a.m., was lighter and made her look at least ten years younger that the heavy paint she had been wearing the previous day. “Please come in.”
“I’m sorry to call on you so early, Tabitha.”
“It’s no trouble. We’re early risers here. Is there a problem with the check or…”
“No. No. Nothing like that.” Amelia followed Tabitha into the kitchen. It was a beautiful red-bricked room with stainless steel appliances and an island in the middle with four barstools placed around it. The fridge was covered with pictures of Darcy and Mr. Miller and grocery lists, a calendar with days circled, and other reminders. “I was hoping I could talk to you about Dana Foster.”
“What a mess.” Tabitha shook her head while pulling down two coffee cups. “Cream or sugar?”
“Black is fine. Thanks.”
“I first heard of Dana Foster when Darcy was a freshman at the academy,” she said while pouring coffee for both of them.
Tabitha went on to explain that Dana had been wild from the get-go. Her parents lived in an even nicer area of Sarkis Estates, her father having some government ties and her mother being extremely successful in real estate, selling million-dollar homes on the waterfront and in downtown Portland.
“She was only sixteen and was at some party. She and another girl got into an argument. Dana drove the girl’s new Jeep off a pier. Just put it in drive and let it go.”
“Well, there had to have been consequences, right?” Amelia was pretty sure she already knew the answer.
“Yeah, for her father, who wrote a check and headed off to the golf course.”
Amelia’s eyes bugged, and she took a sip of coffee.
“Is that the only thing?”
“No.” Tabitha shook her head. “There were other things. There were lots of stories that included men. Boyfriends and other girls’ boyfriends and even some husbands.”
“Really?”
“The stories with the boys, I can believe because you know how dumb young people can be when they are in love. But there are some people out there who will testify under oath that they know Dana had more than one man paying her bills, buying her clothes, and I just don’t know if I believe those.”
“Why? What makes you doubt them?”
“Well, Dana’s uncle owns the Twisted Spoke. Now, that place is great. You met Rusty, and before the…murder”—Tabitha whispered the word—“everything is fine, the food is great, drinks aren’t too expensive. But at night, a pretty rough element shows up there. Well, you can bet that Dana slipped right in.”
Amelia nodded and took a sip.
“Some of those bikers are just weekend warriors. You know, the kind of guys who pay thousands of dollars for a motorcycle and ride it when the weather is nice on weekends, just to be seen.” Tabitha shook her head. “Then you have those people who live that lifestyle. They ride their bikes in any kind of weather, work hard jobs, maybe, or maybe don’t have anything higher than a high-school education.”
“Sure.” Amelia thought of Rusty, who was obviously a real biker but the manager of a restaurant as well.
“And then there are those people that survive on the road. They have ways of making money, and it’s all in cash. They don’t necessarily sleep indoors unless you want to count the time they’ve done in prison. They live differently than you and me. A lot differently.”
“Did Dana hang with this crowd?”
“From what I heard, she really just flitted around the fringe. To be a biker’s woman is no different than joining a gang in the city. One man’s ‘old lady’ belongs to the group, if you catch my meaning. You party hard and find ways to scrape by, and those ways aren’t usually safe. Dana had a Corvette. She had a cell phone. She had credit cards. She wasn’t going to give all that up to live off the back of a bike. But I think she liked to slum it with them.”
“Do you think she made one of them mad and they did this to her?”
Tabitha thought for a moment and rapped her manicured red nails on the counter.
“I think it is more likely than not.”
Amelia took another sip of her coffee.
“Tell me, Tabitha, how is it that you know so much about this? I feel I’ve gotten a real education today.”
“You forget, Amelia, my daughter is a police officer. I’ve read up on anything and everything going on in various crime worlds, so I know what my daughter is doing. Thankfully she is mostly pulling over speeders and locking up drunks.” Tabitha’s eyes began to water. “But we never stop being parents. I want her to be able to talk to me if things ever get too serious. And that meant tou
ghening up about some of the seedier things in life.”
“She’s lucky to have you, Tabitha.”
The two women talked for a few more minutes before Amelia said her good-byes and left the Miller home. As she drove, she thought about the world of bikers and thought she might just pay a visit to Rusty at the Twisted Spoke.
Chapter Nine
“How’s that friend of yours, Miss Bergman?” Rusty asked Amelia as he scooted behind the bar of the empty restaurant.
The Twisted Spoke had been shut down while the police investigated the crime scene that was the ladies’ room. Then it remained closed while the hazmat team had to come and clean up the blood.
“She’s fine, Rusty. I’ll tell her you asked,” Amelia replied, pulling up a stool.
Rusty’s smile was tired.
“Just a Coke. Keep the good stuff for the regulars. When do you get to open up again?”
“They said in another twenty-four to forty-eight hours.”
“That’s not too bad.” Amelia tried to sound cheery.
“Considering the alternative would be to close down altogether. Yeah, another two days won’t kill us. Poor choice of words.” He let out a deep breath as he pressed the button for Coke on the head of the nozzle that squirted water, seltzer, Coke and 7UP.
“So, I hate to bother you at this difficult time but…”
“It’s not difficult. Not for me. Except that I’m going out of my gourd without work to do.” Rusty ruffled as he spoke. “That girl was nothing but trouble. Even when she’s dead, she’s got everything and everyone in a tizzy.”
“Well, I don’t think she planned it.” Amelia took a sip of her Coke and watched for Rusty’s response.
“To be honest, I’m surprised she made it to the age of twenty.”
Amelia pursed her lips and shook her head, shrugging her shoulders.
“Why would you say that?”
“Miss Amelia, that girl was just bad news all around. She didn’t have a kind bone in her body.”
Rusty’s blatant honesty was surprisingly refreshing.
“You see, there are young people who are spoiled and throw tantrums and fits, pouting and sulking when they don’t get their way. But Dana, she was different. If she didn’t get her way, she didn’t just sulk around. She got revenge.”
“What do you mean?”
Rusty cracked his knuckles and leaned on the bar.
“Well, let me just say that there are a few broken relationships and a few broken homes due to Dana Foster’s bruised ego.”
Amelia’s eyes widened.
“Oh, yeah.” Rusty continued, leaning in closer. “You know, her uncle owns this place. That is the only reason she had a job here. She barely waited tables, didn’t clean or cook. She managed to drink a good bit of the booze. Let’s face facts. She was more than a little good-looking. The men were never in short supply when she was on the roster to work.”
Amelia watched Rusty shake his head.
“It makes me queasy to even say it out loud, but there was a little more going on between her and her uncle.”
Amelia gasped.
“You can’t be serious.” She put her hand up to her lips.
“I am one hundred percent serious. And the crazy thing is that Jack, her uncle, was a jealous man. He hires her to work at his biker bar. Then, he blows his top every couple of nights because some Hell’s Angels wannabe has her sittin’ on his lap.”
Rusty went on to explain that a good number of the fights in the Twisted Spoke were a result of the uncle’s jealousy.
“So are you saying they…you know…” Amelia cupped her hands as if she were rubbing a crystal ball.
“I ain’t sayin’ they did that. But I ain’t sayin’ they didn’t. All I know is that I have a couple of nieces, and it would be a cold day in hell before I brought them to this place on a Friday or Saturday night. I also wouldn’t slap them on their backsides, or slow dance with them, or pull them aside to whisper to them in the dark corners of this place. Call me crazy, but I just wouldn’t do that.”
“Did you ever say anything to him?”
“No. I’m just the manager of this place. But I did witness his wife step up to the plate and give Dana a good tongue lashing.”
“And what did that do?”
“Are you kidding? It just turned up the heat. That girl found every opportunity to put her hands on the man. And he was lovin’ it, too.”
“But you don’t think Dana’s aunt would kill her, do you?”
“Her name is Cindy. Cindy’s no stranger to the streets. She has her own bike. She and Jack met at Daytona Bike Week almost two decades ago. Cindy certainly wasn’t and isn’t some babe in the woods. If she wanted to get ugly, she knows how. And if she didn’t kill Dana herself, she certainly knew of people who were more than willing to do some dirty work for a few dollars.”
“What about Jack? Could he have gotten jealous enough to, you know?” She nodded her head toward the ladies’ room.
“Oh, I wouldn’t put it past him at all,” Randy scoffed. “Dana had him wrapped around her finger.”
“So if all that is true, why isn’t he here?”
“He and Cindy are in Malibu. It’s their anniversary.” Rusty rubbed his stubbly chin, giving off the sound of scratching sandpaper.
“Well, that’s a pretty good alibi,” Amelia muttered.
A few moments of quiet passed between them before Amelia spoke up again.
“What about the women that were at the bridal shower when it happened? Do you think any of them had anything to do with it?”
Rusty shrugged, pulling the corners of his lips down.
“A few of them lost their boyfriends to Dana. She collected men like some people collect stamps. She’d fuss and fawn over them until they finally gave in to the temptation. Then she’d stick them in a tight place where they’d be gawked and stared at. It amused her to see women upset.”
He turned and opened a cooler to pull out a bottle of water. He twisted off the cap, took a gulp, then set the bottle down.
“My waitress, Rita, stumbled across the body first. She is just a sweetheart. Always on time. Never sick. Well, not long ago her daughter got pregnant. She and her husband apparently had been trying for some time. So the girl got pregnant, but something happened where she lost the baby.”
“Oh, how sad.” Amelia had had a close call with Adam when she was in her third month of carrying him. She had never prayed to God as hard as she had at that time for him to be okay. She couldn’t imagine the sadness and disappointment Rita’s daughter must have felt.
“Well, Dana, in her infinite wisdom, made light of it. Now, I’m just an old redneck, but there are certain things that just aren’t joke appropriate. Vietnam is one. And babies passing is another.” He said this through tightly held lips. It was as if he were reliving the incident and it made him angrier and angrier. “That witch said something about the baby being ugly or brain damaged or some other cruel assumption. Well, that sweetheart named Rita nearly tore Dana’s head off. Had Jack not stepped in, I think Rita would have put Dana in the hospital, but not before she lost a few clumps of that hair of hers.”
“But I saw Rita,” Amelia protested. “She didn’t look strong enough to choke a kitten.”
“I don’t think she’s a suspect, but I do know that she has a couple of Chicago mobsters as close cousins. Real kneecap breakers, you know?” Rusty took Amelia’s glass and held it under the nozzle, giving her a refill. “I’m not saying she did anything any more than Jack or Cindy did. I’m just saying that Dana had more enemies than friends. The police are going to have a hard time narrowing down who had the strongest motive.”
Amelia thanked him for the refill then swiveled in her seat.
“What about you, Rusty? Did she put on any shenanigans with you?”
“Oh, she tried, but nothing stuck.” Rusty smiled as if he were proud of himself. “I’ve learned over the years that a pretty face comes a dime a dozen.
I’ve got a more distinguished palate.” He winked, the right side of his face crinkling into happy wrinkles.
“I’ll bet you do. Thanks for your time, Rusty.” Amelia smiled. “On that note, I’ll make sure I tell Lila you’ll be back up and running in the next day or two.”
“You do that.”
Rusty shook Amelia’s hand, and she left the Twisted Spoke feeling nowhere nearer any answer as to who might have done this to Dana. But she sure was getting an education about the woman and her lifestyle, if that’s what you’d call it.
It wasn’t until she was handling the midmorning rush that she got a break.
Chapter Ten
“I might go pay Rusty a visit,” Lila chirped while adding one fresh Bing cherry to the fourth batch of coconut cherry cupcakes that were flying out of the truck and into the hands of the long line of customers.
“Well, I’ve seen twitterpated, and that boy is under your spell, for sure.”
Lila laughed but shook her head.
“I’m not sure how to let him down easy. I’m just not interested.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve got too many other things on my mind. Plus, as a very active staff member of the Pink Cupcake, I really can’t jeopardize my position with such a distraction.”
“Oh, you’re going to break his heart.” Amelia sighed.
“He’ll get over it.”
It was a noisy, giggling group of women appearing in the window that made both Amelia and Lila freeze and stare.
“Remember us?” came the singsongy voice of a woman with long hair and heavy mascara.
Both Amelia and Lila stared.
“The shower? You brought those delicious cupcakes?”
Like a slap across the face, Amelia recognized The Crier, her friend The Smoker, and next to her, down a few inches, was Shorty.
“Oh, yes, hello, girls.” Amelia grinned and leaned on the counter.
“Your cupcakes are addictive. We’ve walked all the way from State Street.” The Crier teetered.
“In heels,” Shorty added.
