Chocolate Chip Custard Murder: A Donut Hole Cozy Mystery - Book 46

by Susan Gillard

  “Sure. Just like a family. Keeping family secrets,” Amy said.

  “You can either tell us where you were or the police can come back and ask,” Heather said.

  “Is it good for business to have the police keep arriving?” Amy asked.

  “Fine!” Uncle George said. “I don’t have anything to hide. Before coming into work, I went to the dentist. I had an early morning appointment. My charming smile is an important part of my work. And for some reason, I’ve been grinding my teeth a lot lately. I might have to get a mouth guard.”

  “Thank you for telling us that,” Heather said. “We’re going to have to ask your staff where they were as well.”

  “Now, see here, this is a place of business.”

  “We’ll talk to them one at a time, so it doesn’t interfere with your business,” Heather said. She had been planning on talking to them one-on-one anyway.

  “And,” Amy suggested, “Maybe we’ll be able to clear your family of any wrongdoing.”

  Heather was not sure that was likely, but Uncle George could not come up with any more protests. They left to begin their questioning.

  ***

  Heather was happy to have Amy working with her again. Their teamwork with Uncle George had determined that he had an alibi. Now they would talk to the first salesman, Tim. Amy set up the tablet and opened Evernote. The ladies shared a smile, excited to see where the information would lead them.

  Tim joined them, looking less than excited. He was sweating and was trying to hide it.

  “Is everything all right, Mr…?”

  “Timmons. But you can call me Tim. Yeah. Everything is fine. Hunky-dory.”

  Heather and Amy shared a look. They had never heard someone use the words “hunky-dory” when things were actually fine.

  “We need to ask you a few more questions about the car crash.”

  “I don’t know what I can tell you. I wasn’t working the day he came in.”

  “But you worked the next day?” Heather prodded. “You said you came in early?”

  “Around seven thirty. I helped Otis move cars around the lot. It helps people to buy if the lot is set up nicely.”

  “Did you help the mechanic Otis a lot?” Heather asked. She wanted to make sure Amy understood who all the players were, even though she missed the first interview.

  “Sometimes. I might test cars with him. Make sure they’re running correctly. We’re a small group here. We help each other out. We would never do anything to hurt one another. I know that.” He wiped sweat from his brow. “Are we almost finished? I need to make some more sales calls?”

  “Almost. Have you noticed anything strange about the car borrowing promotion?”

  “No. Nothing strange. What do you mean?”

  “Did any of those borrowers actually buy the car?” Heather asked.

  “Promotions work with different degrees of success at different times. Look I gave the police all the info I found about the promotion.”

  “Do you know the name Lyle Clarke?”

  Tim paled. “No. Did he buy a car here too? I can’t help with that. Are we done?”

  “One more question. Where were you before you came into work?”

  “I was at home. I slept until the last minute because of the party the day before. Then I came right to work.”

  “Can anyone verify this?”

  “I live alone,” he said. “Can I go? I really need to get back to work.”

  “Of course. Thank you for your time.”

  He left Heather puzzling. Ryan had said that Tim had been helpful, but today Tim was sweating out buckets of water.

  “No alibi,” Amy said. “And he definitely seemed nervous.”

  “Yes,” Heather agreed. “But is it because he’s our killer?”

  Chapter 15

  “I don’t know why you want to talk to me,” Otis growled. “I don’t deal with the customers.”

  “But you do deal with the cars?”

  “Of course, lady. This is a car lot, and I’m the mechanic.”

  Heather kept her cool and asked, “Do you remember anything strange about the car that Inspector Lemon took? Was it up to your safety regulations?”

  “Any car I work on is safe,” Otis said. “That car was fine.”

  “But you would know how to sabotage a car if you ever wanted to?”

  “Anyone who worked here could. But why would we want to?”

  “Do you know anything about the car borrowing promotion?”

  “No,” Otis said, growling again. “I don’t work on the sales floor.”

  “Have you heard of Lyle Clarke?”

  “No. I said I don’t work on the sales floor.”

  He began organizing his tools. He probably wanted to pick up a wrench and hit something but was containing himself. It didn’t seem like they could get him to talk any more about the sales, but he could tell them his alibi.

  “I was at home before I came in,” he responded after prodding. “Like any normal person would be.”

  “But you did come in early to work with Tim?”

  “I suppose I did.”

  “What time was that?”

  Otis thought about it for a while and then said, “Must have been seven thirty.”

  “I want to thank you for your cooperation. I just have one more question to ask.”

  Otis folded his arms and waited.

  “When I first came in to ask questions, I noticed you were holding a blue key. It was the same color as the key for the car that crashed. Was it for that car too?”

  “I don’t know,” Otis said. “I don’t remember. That was your last question, right?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he slid under a car to begin working on it. It seemed he was making more noise than necessary to get them to leave. Heather and Amy obliged.

  ***

  “So, so sad that there was a death.” Rita said,” But if you’re thinking there’s foul play, there’s no way any of us could be involved.”

  “Did you find the car borrowing promotion to be successful?”

  “Yes and no,” Rita said diplomatically. “I know you looked at the forms. Customers didn’t always buy the cars they tested. But it was a great goodwill promotion.”

  “Last time I was here, Uncle George made it sound like it doubled your business.”

  Rita brushed that away. “He’s a salesman.”

  “That means he tells lies?” Heather asked.

  “That means he presents things in the best possible light. But being a good salesman doesn’t mean you’ll lie and cheat and kill. Everyone here is as honest as you can be in the profession. And I know everyone here like I know these cars.” She laid her hand on the hood of a Ford Focus and purred, “Reliable. Consistent. Four cylinders. And unfailing.”

  “Really? You know your coworkers like you know the cars here?” Amy asked.

  “That’s what I just said.”

  “Because that is a three cylinder car. Not four.”

  Heather resisted patting her bestie on the back but was very impressed with her catch.

  Rita reddened. “Okay. Maybe I don’t know cars that well. I don’t need to. I’m in sales. I just need to tell a customer how good they look driving it, and get them to sign on the dotted line.”

  “Where were you the morning of the crash?” Heather asked.

  “I was home,” Rita said. “My sister and my niece were visiting if you need to check.”

  Heather thanked her for cooperation, and Rita left them muttering about cylinders. Amy beamed.

  “I missed this.”

  “And I needed you here for this car talk,” Heather said. “If Rita doesn’t know that much about cars, she might not have been able to sabotage it.”

  “Otis and Tim were the ones with weak alibis. It’s a shame neither of them would talk about Clarke.”

  Heather nodded. Now that she had her bestie back up again, she had someone else that she wanted to question.

&nb
sp; Chapter 16

  Lyle Clarke smiled at them with a shark-like grin. Someday, Heather thought, she would find the evidence to wipe that smirk off of his face. Today she would have to settle for asking questions about the cars and see if he could be officially implicated.

  “You two are fast becoming my favorite investigators. So thorough. Even investigating honest people like me.”

  Heather wasn’t going to let him rattle her. Amy was prepared to take notes, and Heather was prepared to ask some pressing questions.

  “I am thorough,” Heather assured him. “And I make sure that criminals are caught.”

  “What are you investigating today?” He asked with the air of someone asking about the weather.

  “The murder of Inspector Lemon.”

  “Oh my,” Clarke said. “It does seem to be getting dangerous for investigators, doesn’t it?”

  “I believe he was murdered while looking into a case about a used car lot.”

  “What does that have to do with me? I fortunately never have to get a used car. Nice, new and shiny. Those are the cars I like. Maybe I’ll show you sometime.” He said to Amy, flashing another smile.

  “It seems that many of your employees were going to Uncle George’s Pre-Owned Cars.”

  “Is that so? We do provide excellent salaries to our employees. It’s nice to know that so many of them are upgrading their cars.”

  “It seems that many of them were borrowing the cars temporarily as part of a promotion and that they weren’t buying the cars.”

  “That’s a shame. Maybe Uncle George should change his business model.”

  “I believe your employees were borrowing these cars to run errands for you. Hoping that with different cars, these errands couldn’t be traced back to you.”

  “And what sort of errands would these be?”

  Heather couldn’t help herself and responded, “Illegal ones.”

  Clarke laughed. “This is what you think, is it? Well, tell me. What can your prove?”

  Heather took a deep breath and tried to ignore that one of Clarke’s employees was opening the door for them to leave.

  “What did Inspector Lemon learn?”

  “Mrs. Shepherd, I’ve never met this Inspector Lemon, but if he is anywhere as charming as you are, I am certainly sorry to have missed him.”

  “How can you say you don’t know him when you sent one of your goons after him?”

  “I don’t have goons,” Clarke said as one of his large employees started showing the ladies to the door. Clarke flashed another smile. “And I’ve certainly never gone after Inspector Lemon.”

  Amy left quietly, allowing her to keep the tablet and their notes safe. Heather flashed one more angry look at Clarke. He looked smug as if he was in on an inside joke that she wasn’t.

  She allowed herself to be escorted out and realized that he had been right.

  “That could have gone better,” Amy said. “A sinkhole could have opened up in the room, and it would have gone better.”

  Heather hurried to the car and Amy followed.

  “Did he freak you out that much?”

  “No,” Heather said. “But we’ve been looking at this all wrong.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Inspector Lemon wasn’t the intended victim. That’s why it didn’t all make sense. But now we have to hurry to make sure that killer doesn’t try and correct his mistake!”

  Chapter 17

  Heather let Amy drive in the hopes they would get there faster. She had called Ryan for backup too. She only hoped that they wouldn’t be too late.

  “I can multitask,” Amy assured her. “Explain to me what’s going on. And it’s not that I’m a bad detective for not knowing. It’s that I missed half the legwork.”

  Heather didn’t have time to laugh at this quip of half-truth. Amy raced around a corner, and Heather raced to describe what happened.

  “Inspector Lemon wasn’t the intended victim. He got in the way of the killer’s plan.”

  “But he did break into the car lot?”

  “Yes,” Heather said, bracing herself as Amy picked up speed. “He was investigating the Clarke angle with the cars. He probably wanted to prove himself as an investigator, and so he broke into the car lot that morning to search for evidence. He took the car without knowing it was a murder weapon.”

  “So he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time? That’s so sad. He did have the worst luck.”

  “Clarke’s employees were using the cars to conduct his business. We probably won’t ever know exactly what they did unless someone confessed, but we can imagine.”

  “So how did that lead to murder?”

  “I think someone was getting cold feet about the operation, and so someone else took action to make sure that it kept going.”

  “They were willing to kill for it.”

  “Exactly. I’m sure if we look at the employee’s financial records, we can see everyone who profited from the car borrowing.”

  “Great. I understand why,” Amy said, impatient that she had to stop at a red light. “Now tell me the who.”

  “Who looked like they were nervous to you?”

  “Tim!” Amy said, cleared to go with a green light and pulling away from the intersection. “It makes sense because he helped Ryan with the papers. He was nervous about working for someone like Clarke. Good boy.”

  “He must have said something that tipped a co-worker off that he could blow the whistle on the operation.”

  “Much as I’d like to accuse the loud-mouthed Uncle George, I have to put my money on Otis as the murderer.”

  “He and Tim were alone the morning of the crash. Otis must have been planning to stage his own accident when they moved cars around. Then Lemon ruined his whole plan.”

  “And now you think Otis is going to try and kill Tim again?”

  “Tim could still talk. He has to cover his tracks.”

  Amy gulped and kept her eyes on the road, going as fast as she could.

  ***

  Heather and Amy hurried into the sales building. Rita and Uncle George were nowhere to be seen. It must have been dinner break time.

  Amy was about to ask a question, but Heather held a finger to her lips. They both listened. They heard movement in the garage area and hurried as quietly and quickly as they could.

  It took a moment for them to understand what they saw as they looked into the garage. Otis had found another inventive way to murder in a vehicle. Tim was sitting unconscious in the driver’s seat of a car. Otis had fashioned a device to send the carbon monoxide into the cab. He was poisoning Tim with the air.

  “Stop right there,” Heather said. She and Amy ran forward. It was her intention to open the car door and give Tim some needed air, but Otis grabbed a tire iron and blocked her way to the car.

  “Let him go,” Heather said, acting braver than she felt. “We’ve seen what you’ve done. No one will believe it was an accident now.”

  “Why do people keep sticking their noses in where they don’t belong?”

  “You mean Tim and the car borrowing scheme?” Amy asked, trying to get Otis talking. She slowly started moving to the left. Heather picked up on her plan and inched in the opposite direction.

  “We had a good thing going,” Otis moaned. “Then he grew a conscience and wanted to ruin it all. If we kept going, I could have made enough to retire. I wouldn’t have to be covered in oil all the time.”

  “Instead you decided to cover your hands in blood,” Amy retorted.

  “And I think they’ll have to get a little dirtier.” Otis started planning aloud, “You brought your car. That’s where your accident will have to happen. None of our cars here. If it’s your car, it won’t look suspicious.”

  He took too long with his plan. Amy and Heather were far enough apart that he couldn’t reach both of them at the same time.

  “Now!” Heather yelled.

  Otis raised his tire jack, realizing his mistake. He wen
t after Heather who rushed towards the shelf of tools.

  Amy ran towards the car and opened a door. Tim spilled out, and she did her best to pull him away from the poisoned air.