Murder by the Slice

by Livia J. Washburn

  “Are you going to let her go, Sheriff?” Mike asked.

  “We can hold her for a while without charging her—” Haney stopped and shook his head. “But what would be the point? That woman’s not gonna let her say anything else, and the evidence we have now isn’t strong enough to get the DA to bring charges.”

  Mike was glad to see that the sheriff was going to be reasonable about this. He knew that Haney wasn’t really a vindictive man by nature. Clearly, the sheriff didn’t like Juliette Yorke very much, but he was professional enough not to let that influence his decision.

  Haney nodded as he made up his mind. “Go back in there and tell them they can go,” he said. “Warn Mrs. Gonzales not to leave the area without letting us know, though.”

  “Sure.”

  Mike waited until Haney had gone back down the hall to his office; then he opened the door of the interrogation room again. Lindsey looked up anxiously from the table.

  “The sheriff said for me to tell you that you’re free to go, Mrs. Gonzales, and he also thanks you for your cooperation,” Mike said. Haney hadn’t said any such thing as that last part, but Mike figured it wouldn’t hurt anything to add it. “Please don’t leave the area without letting us know first, though.”

  “Does that mean I’m still a suspect?”

  “We just, uh, might want to ask you a few more questions.”

  Juliette Yorke got to her feet and picked up her briefcase from the table. “I assume that the sheriff won’t be unreasonable about this matter?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Lindsey said, “I know your mother, you know.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mike said. Lindsey’s comment struck him as odd. It was the sort of thing a grown-up would say to a child, and she probably wasn’t more than two or three years older than he was.

  “Ask her if she thinks I’d kill anybody,” Lindsey said. She was starting to look angry now, and she might have gone on to say something else if Yorke hadn’t touched her arm and murmured that they should be going.

  Mike couldn’t really blame Lindsey for being mad, he thought as he perched a hip on the table and watched the two women leave the interrogation room. Somebody who was innocent never liked being accused of a crime. Their first reaction was usually fear, as Lindsey’s had been, but once that started to wear off, they began to get angry that anyone could believe such a thing of them. Law enforcement officers saw similar reactions all the time. In this case, Lindsey’s anger tended to make Mike think she was telling the truth.

  Or maybe she was just a good liar and actress. Maybe she really had gotten mad enough to stick that knife in Shannon Dunston’s chest.

  Haney appeared in the doorway. “They gone?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Find out everything you can about that woman. And about all the other members of the PTO board, too. And everybody else who had any possible connection to Ms. Dunston.” Haney shook his head. “That woman,” he said again.

  “Mrs. Gonzales, you mean?”

  “The lawyer,” Haney said.

  Mike couldn’t tell what he heard more of in the sheriff’s voice—anger or admiration.

  Chapter 24

  The call from Marie came sooner than Phyllis expected. “We’re getting together at the school this afternoon,” the younger woman said. “Can you and Carolyn make it?”

  Phyllis had already talked to Carolyn, who was reluctant to continue their involvement with the PTO board, but felt like they could do some good by helping out. “We’ll just give them some advice and let that be it,” she had said when Phyllis told her about Marie’s earlier phone call.

  Now Phyllis told Marie, “All right, this one time. But really, you and the other members of the board will have to decide what to do.”

  “Sure, we know that,” Marie said. “We’ll see you at one thirty.”

  Phyllis went upstairs and told Carolyn about the meeting. Carolyn said, “I’m starting to believe Marie thinks of you and me as surrogate mothers. She wants us to tell her how to fix things.”

  Phyllis nodded. She had a feeling that Carolyn was right. Marie was in over her head these days. Unfortunately, things were even worse than Marie thought they were, because she didn’t even know about her husband’s involvement with Shannon.

  Nothing had really happened between Shannon and Russ, Phyllis reminded herself. At least, that was what Russ had claimed. And Phyllis was going to make herself believe it until she had evidence to the contrary.

  Carolyn asked, “Did Marie say anything else about Lindsey?”

  Phyllis shook her head. “I guess she hasn’t heard anything more. It can take quite a while when someone is brought in for questioning, I suppose.”

  But to her surprise, when she and Carolyn walked into the meeting room at the school that afternoon, Lindsey Gonzales was sitting there at the table with the other members of the PTO board. Lindsey’s face was pale and drawn, as if she’d been through an ordeal, but otherwise she seemed to be all right.

  Of course she was all right, Phyllis told herself as that thought crossed her mind. It wasn’t like members of the sheriff’s department shone bright lights in the eyes of suspects and beat them with rubber hoses. Things like that only happened in old black-and-white movies.

  Phyllis noticed how Lindsey looked away from her as she and Carolyn sat down. An awkward silence had fallen on the room as they entered. She said, “I’m sorry. If you’d like for Carolyn and me to go, or just me—”

  “Of course not,” Marie said quickly. “We need you here. Isn’t that right, Lindsey?”

  “Yes.” Lindsey met Phyllis’s eyes and went on, “We were just talking about it, so we might as well go ahead and get it over with. Clear the air. I’m not mad at you, Mrs. Newsom, or your son. He was there, but he was just following the sheriff’s orders, I’m sure. I don’t think he really believed I was guilty.”

  “Mike’s always prided himself on doing his job properly.”

  “Well, you can tell him for me that I didn’t kill Shannon. That’s about all my lawyer will let me say.”

  “They didn’t charge you?” If Lindsey was willing to talk about it, Phyllis certainly was, too.

  Lindsey shook her head. “No. They didn’t have any real evidence against me, just somebody who said they saw me arguing with Shannon earlier that afternoon. And that part was true.” A note of defiance came into Lindsey’s voice. “I finally got fed up with the way she treated me all the time and told her to stop it.”

  Kristina Padgett said, “Good for you. It was about time somebody stood up to her.”

  Holly Underwood looked around the table and said, “I think all of us here probably wanted to tell Shannon off more than once.”

  “I would have,” Irene Vernon said, “if I hadn’t been afraid that it would just make things worse.”

  “Look,” Abby Granger put in. “Shannon was a bitch, no two ways about it. All of us knew it, none of us liked her, and I don’t mind saying it now.” She looked at Phyllis. “But none of us would have killed her. No way. You should tell your son that.”

  Phyllis began to feel a little irritated. “I’m not here working as a spy for the sheriff’s department, if that’s what you’re all thinking. Marie asked Carolyn and me to come to this meeting.”

  “That’s right. I did,” Marie said. “Please don’t get mad, Phyllis. We’re all just shaken up by what’s happened.” She looked around the table and went on, “Why don’t we put the tragedy aside for now and get down to business? The carnival was a major fundraiser, and it looks like most of that money is gone for good. How are we going to replace it?”

  “I don’t know that we can,” Holly said. “The parents won’t sit still for it if we try to hold some other fundraising event right away. They’ll be sorry about Shannon, of course, and sorry that the money got stolen, but they feel like they’ve already done their part for a while.”

  Marie said, “Surely they would understand—”

  “I’v
e had four kids go through the school system,” Holly stopped her. “When you’re already struggling with taxes and credit card debt and house payments, you get tired of the PTO coming around with their hands out for more money, even though you know it’s for a good cause. There’s always a good cause that needs money.”

  A couple of the other women nodded in solemn agreement. Kristina shrugged and said, “Maybe we just won’t do as much for the school this year as other boards have. It’s not our fault.”

  “We can have something else in the spring,” Abby suggested. “A pancake supper or spaghetti supper or something like that. That’ll replace some of the money. But for now I think we just have to let it go.”

  Marie looked disappointed. Clearly she had hoped for a more enthusiastic response. She turned to Phyllis and Carolyn and asked, “What do you ladies think?”

  Carolyn said, “Holly’s right about the constant fundraising from all the different groups. We saw it as teachers. We always bought the PTO candy, too.”

  “It’s true that the school relies on the PTO to provide things that the budget just doesn’t have room for,” Phyllis said. “But nobody’s going to blame you if you just don’t have the money. Like Christina said, it’s not your fault.”

  “No, it’s the fault of the son of a bitch who stole that cash box,” Marie snapped. “And because of that, we’re going to wind up letting Shannon’s memory down.”

  She might not be so worried about Shannon’s memory, Phyllis thought, if she knew that Shannon had been trying to get Russ to have an affair with her.

  Something else was nudging at Phyllis’s brain. She said, “You were collecting the money during the carnival and locking it up in the cash box, weren’t you, Marie?”

  “That’s right,” Marie said with a nod. “What about it?”

  “It’s just that Shannon’s daughter heard her say something about the cash box not long before … well, before what happened. That’s why the sheriff thought that maybe Shannon caught the thief in the act. But why would she have been going into the office if you were the one responsible for collecting the money?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t really that formal,” Marie said. “Maybe somebody at the ticket booth or the concession stand thought they were getting too much cash on hand and gave some of it to Shannon to deal with. Or maybe she just wanted to check and see how we were doing. She was the president, after all. There wouldn’t have been anything unusual about her doing a quick count of the take.”

  Phyllis nodded, feeling a little disappointed. She had thought there might be something unusual about Shannon’s involvement with the cash box that would point in the direction of the murderer. But instead, it was just business as usual. Shannon had had every right to go to the office and check on the money.

  “I heard that Mr. Oakley, the custodian, was a criminal,” Irene said. “Wasn’t he arrested here at the school?”

  “Yeah, but they let him go,” Abby said. “They must not have had any real evidence against him.”

  Marie said excitedly, “Wait a minute. I just thought of something. If whoever took the money killed Shannon, then maybe if we could find the murderer we might be able to get at least some of that money back!”

  The other board members stared at her. Kristina said, “Are you saying that we should investigate the murder? We’re not detectives.”

  “Phyllis is.” Marie pointed at her.

  “Hold on,” Phyllis began.

  “Carolyn told me how you solved that murder at the Peach Festival last summer,” Marie went on. “And your son’s a deputy sheriff. You could tell us how to go about investigating a crime.”

  Phyllis looked over at Carolyn, who shrugged and said, “I know there was nothing in the paper about your involvement with solving those other cases, but I didn’t see what harm there would be in mentioning it. After all, you saved me from being arrested. I was grateful.”

  It was too late to worry about such things now. The damage was already done. But it could get worse, Phyllis realized. The sheriff really would be unhappy if a whole group of PTO moms started poking their noses into an active murder investigation.

  Better if only one amateur detective did that, she thought wryly—or two if you counted Sam Fletcher.

  “Look, I’m sure the sheriff’s department will find the killer,” Phyllis said, “and maybe when they do, if the same person was responsible for stealing the cash box, maybe you’ll get some of the money back. But in the meantime, you don’t need to get involved with the case.”

  Lindsey said, “We’re already involved. I was arrested, for God’s sake. And the sheriff probably still suspects me. If we’re taking a vote, I say we try to find the real killer.”

  “We’re not taking a vote,” Marie said quickly.

  Thinking rapidly, Phyllis said, “How about this? Let’s go over everything that happened Saturday afternoon and see if we can come up with anything that we haven’t thought of so far. If we do, I can pass along the information to my son.”

  That brought nods and mutters of agreement from the assembled women. Phyllis went on, “Let’s start by all of you figuring out the last time you saw Shannon that afternoon, what she was doing, and whether or not anyone was with her.”

  “That’s easy,” Lindsey said. “I saw her about thirty minutes before I … I found her body. That’s when I argued with her. But after that I was so upset I spent the next half hour just wandering around the school, trying to get over being mad.” She sighed. “I don’t like being mad. I’d rather get along with people.”

  “What brought you back to the end of the hall where you found Shannon?” Phyllis asked.

  “Actually, I was looking for her. I wanted to apologize, and that was the last place I’d seen her.”

  “Did you tell that to the deputies?”

  Lindsey shook her head. “Not really. I … I didn’t want to tell them that I’d been arguing with Shannon. I was afraid they would think … what they wound up thinking anyway.” Her forehead creased in a frown. “I wish I knew who it was that told them about seeing me with her. I didn’t think anybody was around just then except a little girl who came wandering out of the boy’s bathroom down there.”

  “The boy’s bathroom?” Abby said.

  “Yes, but she wasn’t more than four or five.” Lindsey couldn’t help but smile. “She was so cute in her little Elmo shirt. She must have just gone in the wrong bathroom.”

  Carolyn nodded. “When they’re that young, it’s a common mistake.”

  Phyllis looked around the table. “What about the rest of you? When was the last time you saw Shannon?”

  “It must have been before that,” Holly said. “Irene and I were working at the concession stand. Do you remember seeing her in that last half hour or so, Irene?”

  “No, but she could have come through the cafeteria, I suppose,” Irene said. “We were busy, so I might not have noticed her.”

  “Carolyn and I didn’t see her, either,” Phyllis pointed out. “That means there were four of us in the cafeteria, and none of us saw Shannon there toward the end of the carnival. Not only that, but her exhusband came through looking for her, and he didn’t find her in there, either. So I’d say there’s a pretty good chance she was somewhere else in the school during that time.”

  “I was working at the face-painting booth,” Kristina said. “I don’t recall seeing her except during the early part of the afternoon.”

  Abby said, “Same here. I was helping keep the kids in line while they were waiting to get in the bounce house. I remember seeing Shannon… .” She shrugged. “But I couldn’t tell you when.”

  “My friend Eve saw her outside with her son,” Phyllis recalled. “That must have been around the time of her argument with you, Lindsey, either right before or right after. Do all of you know Shannon’s son by sight?”

  “Kirk is hard to miss,” Abby said dryly, “what with the tattoos and piercings and all.”

  “I saw him at the carniva
l,” Kristina put in. “He was walking around with a friend of his.”

  Phyllis thought of something else. “Shannon was married twice. Did she ever talk about her first husband? Does he still live around here?”

  “Goodness, no,” Marie said. “Roy moved away years ago. I think Shannon said one time that he lives in Oklahoma now.”

  “So he wouldn’t have been at the carnival?”

  Marie frowned. “I can’t think of any reason why he would have been. He didn’t hang around much even when his son was still a kid, and Kirk’s a grown man now. I don’t think Shannon saw anything of him for years except the child-support checks, and those stopped coming when Kirk turned eighteen.”

  So they could just about cross off that angle, Phyllis thought. Even if Shannon’s first husband had been nursing a grudge against her for years, it was highly unlikely he would have driven down from Oklahoma to murder her at a school carnival.

  “So we don’t really know where Shannon was or what she was doing during the last half hour or so of her life,” Phyllis summed up. She turned to Lindsey. “One other thing. Did the two of you argue about anything in particular, or was it just because of the way she always treated you?”

  “I guess it had been building up for a long time,” Lindsey said, “but what really made me lose it was when she tore into me again about those posters. She said we weren’t doing as well as she had expected, and it was all my fault because the posters didn’t get put up in the stores in time to advertise the carnival properly.”

  Phyllis felt her pulse speed up a little as Lindsey spoke. Something important was in those words, and Phyllis’s brain quickly isolated it.

  “Shannon said that the carnival wasn’t doing as well as she had expected?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “She had to be talking about the money, didn’t she?” Phyllis asked.

  Marie said, “How else could anybody judge whether or not the event was a success? It was a fundraiser, after all.”

  “So when Shannon said that, she had to have a pretty good idea how much money had been taken in,” Phyllis said. “That means she’d already checked the cash box.”