by Rae Davies
When chased by a dog, don’t run. Don’t run... I repeated the mantra, realizing it sounded a whole lot better when you weren’t facing a creature the size of a small pony that had the obvious intention of eating you for lunch.
Rhonda was wearing her favorite crunchy Granola sandals. Great for slouching around looking earth conscious. Not all that great for sprinting away from sure death.
Some would take this as good news. I figured, just like with bears, the first rule of surviving a dog attack had to be being faster than the person behind you.
It didn’t give me a lot of comfort, however. I was, after all, kind of fond of my best friend.
Besides, I wasn’t going to run. That would be... the dog lunged closer... my foot, developing a mind of its own, slid forward. My body leaned too.
The mind was strong, but the body was scared—
“Beauregard!” a voice bellowed.
I spun to see Phyllis, dressed in a fluffy pink housecoat and carrying a lowball glass filled with something mint green, waving a white towel above her head. Or a kind–of white towel. The thing had seen better days.
Either way, I hoped she wasn’t throwing it in and was instead using it to come to our rescue.
It appeared she was doing the latter. The dog, Beauregard, I presumed, lowered his head in sullen shame and ambled toward her.
After giving Rhonda and me looks that dripped with judgment and disbelief, Phyllis took a sip of her drink and bent down to wipe the strands of spittle that dangled from the beast’s mouth.
The back door to the townhouse opened, and Betty walked out. She took in the scene with one sweeping glance. “Seriously, Phyllis? A bloodhound? And what is that get up? Could you be anymore cliché?”
Realizing that Betty was right, and that Rhonda and I had just dropped into a scene straight out of Tennessee Williams, I shook my head and wondered yet again, what I had done in a previous life to deserve this one.
Betty, however, done with her pronouncement, settled right in, filling a glass with a green drink of her own and stretching out on one of two unoccupied chaise lounges. She took a sip and choked. “What is this? Not a mint julep, that’s as sure as Shanghai.”
Phyllis took her place on the other lounge. “Green smoothie. They keep my skin wrinkle free.” She analyzed Betty’s profile. “You should drink more of them.”
Before Betty could fire back, I launched myself onto the end of Betty’s lounge chair, grabbed the glass she was holding and handed it to a welcoming Rhonda.
I didn’t watch as she drank it. Betty did. She shivered.
“So,” Phyllis said. “You found me.” She crossed her legs at the ankle and fluttered her filmy wrap over them.
Betty, obviously still insulted by the drink, put her feet on the ground and leaned forward. “We did. What were you thinking, leaving Lucy—”
I placed a hand on Betty’s knee and interrupted. “I didn’t know you have a dog.” I was changing the subject to keep things from getting violent, but that wasn’t all. If Phyllis had kept her dog ownership from me, of all people, what else had she kept hidden? Did I know the woman at all?
“He’s a puppy,” she explained, sounding more than just a little grudging for having to admit that she had been caught in this lie of omission. “My parents raised bloodhounds. When my mother passed last month, Beauregard was willed to me. He only arrived today.”
“Really?” It was all the response I could come up with. I’d had no idea that Phyllis’s mother had died. I’d had no idea Phyllis’s mother had still been alive. And so far as the dog only just arriving, it seemed darn convenient to me, but calling this out as a lie would only antagonize her. The dog looked happy and healthy enough, now that he wasn’t all teeth and gums and rushing toward me with the obvious intention of sending me back over the fence in bite–sized pieces.
“He’s gorgeous,” I added, and he was. Again... without the snarling teeth.
This seemed to please her. “His father was a Grand Champion.” She smiled and adjusted herself a bit more in the chair.
“So—” Betty started again.
I elbowed her.
She ignored me. “Why were your pills in Lucy’s rig? Did you kill that Cutie?”
Rhonda and I blanched. Phyllis, however, seemed unfazed by the accusation. She rotated in the lounge chair until her feet were firmly on the ground and she was facing her accuser. “I did not kill that girl. I would be hurt that you would think such a thing, if I thought you truly believed it, but I know you don’t.” She paused, obviously giving Betty the opportunity to agree.
Betty squinched one eye closed. I could tell she was weighing whether to let Phyllis off the hook.
After a few seconds, Phyllis gave a dramatic roll of her eyes and settled back into the chair. “I did not kill that girl, and I have no idea how my pill bottle got in Lucy’s Jeep. I hadn’t seen it since—” She cut off whatever she was going to say next.
“Since what?” Betty prompted.
“Since...” Phyllis squished up her face. “The night we used them to make it easier for the Cutie to share information with us.”
I wasn’t sure which word in that barrage to attack first.
I decided to let the appearance of the pill bottle in my Jeep go for now. “Us?” I prompted.
“Those WIL women, I’m sure,” Betty said. “Bunch of holier–than–holy–water busybodies.”
Phyllis didn’t disagree.
Rhonda spread out her skirt and positioned herself cross–legged in the grass. “How exactly did you make it easier for her to share?”
“And share what?” Betty interrupted.
Phyllis tapped one finger against the lounge chair’s armrest. “Well, now that is the part where things get difficult.”
We waited.
“You see, we knew that kiosk couldn’t just be selling coffee, but we had no proof. We’d staged the protest and Kristi, even though she wasn’t sure about the protest to start with, asked that nice young TV reporter to come over and cover it, but she was busy and that Daniel...” She shook her head. “Did you see his article? He made it sound like we were bullies picking on these poor innocent young girls.” She made a pffting sound. “But we had no proof and we needed proof.”
She looked at each of us, obviously expecting our agreement. I gave a weak nod. It seemed to be enough.
“So, Phoebe had the idea that we should get inside the kiosk and go through their records. Then we’d have proof that they were doing something other than just selling coffee.”
Betty’s eyes widened. “So you broke in?”
“No, of course not. I would never do such a thing.” Phyllis’s outrage was palpable. She lifted on shoulder. “We drugged her.”
We inhaled as a group. I recovered first.
“You what?”
“Drugged her.” Seeing our expressions, she waved off our horror. “Nothing dangerous. You saw the pill bottle. Just a sedative. Just something to make her... less resistant to sharing with us.”
Betty looked at me. I could see what she was thinking. We’d been wrong. Phyllis had killed the Cutie.
“I did not kill that girl!” the accused declared.
Her vehemence was laudable, but I feared misguided.
“Phyllis,” I said, calmly, like I try to speak to all crazy people who I encounter. “She is dead. She died. I’m sure you didn’t mean to kill her. No one thinks that—”
Phyllis rose to her feet, housecoat swirling. “I did not kill her. I didn’t even give her the pills, but it doesn’t matter because she was alive when we left.”
I grabbed hold of the lifeline. “We?”
Phyllis, still in a snit, gathered her housecoat around her and sat down. “Yes.” She glanced at Betty. “It was WIL.”
Betty only gloated a little.
“All of them?” I asked, trying to imagine the whole crew crowding into the tiny kiosk.
“No, just Phoebe, Laura, Kristi, and me.”
; Four of them? Still a pretty big crowd.
“Laura slipped her the pills. She has that all American you–can–trust–me face. Kristi and I waited in my car. And Phoebe went through the files.”
Again, I weighed which question to ask next. This time Betty beat me to it.
“What was in the files?”
Phyllis pursed her lips. “Nothing.”
“How long were you there?” I asked.
“Not long, at least not long after the kiosk closed. We didn’t think that would ever happen. It was past two in the morning when that girl finally shut off the outside lights. I’d dozed off, and by the time I was fully awake, Laura and Phoebe were already halfway across the parking lot.”
I held up my hand. “So, you never went inside the kiosk?”
She took a drink and shook her head. “Not so much as my pinkie toe.”
“And Laura and Phoebe both did?”
She considered this for a minute. “Yes, but I don’t know if it was at the same time. As I said, it was taking forever for the girl to shut the place down. So about 1 a.m., Laura decided we should speed things up by dosing her early. She went to the kiosk by herself then, just walked up and knocked on the back door, went inside and a few minutes later she came back and we waited some more. Phoebe didn’t go in until after the lights were off. Like an hour later.”
So Laura had been inside the kiosk twice. I wasn’t sure that was important, but at this stage anything could be important.
Rhonda set her empty glass down on the grass. “How’d she get Missy to take the pills?”
Looking completely unconcerned, Phyllis shrugged. “I told you, she has that all American charm.” She paused, then added, “She also might have cried.”
I felt my brows rise.
“At least it looked like she’d been crying, but she didn’t seem upset when she came back.”
In my experience, tears worked better on men than other women, but maybe Laura was just better at it than I was.
“How long was she there?”
“Twenty minutes or so. Long enough that one car pulled out of line and left.”
Phyllis looked pleased with this.
I decided it was time for a recap. “Okay, so you, Kristi, Phoebe and Laura came to the parking lot that night in your car fully planning on drugging Missy and going through her files.”
Phyllis nodded as if nothing I had said had been in the least bit disturbing.
“Laura went over to the kiosk around 1 in the morning with the pills and came back looking as if she’d been crying.” That right there didn’t sound good at all now that I’d said it out loud, but Phyllis continued to look unfazed.
“Then, an hour or so later, Missy turns out the lights, sending everyone in the line home and Phoebe and Laura went back to the kiosk, where Phoebe, at least, went inside and looked through Missy’s files while you and Kristi stood watch in the parking lot.”
Phyllis beamed. “Yes, see, I couldn’t have killed that poor girl. I was never even near her.”
But two other WILers were. This, however, didn’t seem to bother Phyllis at all.
“How much of this did you tell the police?” I asked.
Her expression quickly shifted to disdain. “As if I’d tell that trussed up rooster from Chicago anything.”
Rhonda caught my eye, then edged forward. “But if you know someone else saw Missy after you did—”
“Like he’d believe me. Besides, I won’t betray the WILers. We didn’t do a thing wrong, and I won’t be part of people thinking that we did.”
Except drug someone and then pilfer through their personal records.
And that was assuming one of the WILers hadn’t killed Missy either accidentally or on purpose.
The set of Phyllis’s jaw had taken on a particularly determined set, telling me that no more information would be forthcoming from her, at least for now. But there were others who knew what had happened that night and at least one of them had had possession of Phyllis’s pill bottle and access to my unlocked Jeep.
Suddenly, I had an uncontrollable craving for cheese.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I’d left Kiska at Rhonda’s while we performed our sting on Phyllis. I picked him up and went to find Laura’s dairy store. Turned out it was snuggled in between a car wash and a fast food place that specialized in “healthy” choices. Needless to say, I hadn’t seen the need to visit either in my recent past.
I left Kiska in the Jeep with the windows partially down and went inside.
The place was tiny, with fluorescent lighting that was a little too reminiscent of the vacant jerky store where WIL had held its last meeting. There were also two full displays of bagged jerky sitting to the right as I entered.
I had to guess that cheese was not Laura’s first or only love.
Laura was helping a man in cargo shorts and hiking sandals pick some cheese out of an open–front cooler. Today she was wearing a T–shirt that proclaimed: “I love Jesus, but I drink a little.” I had to wonder if it was targeted at Kristi.
When she saw me, she waved and motioned that it would be a minute.
I maneuvered to a spot beside the jerky and stared out the front window at my dog. He was sitting in the driver’s seat, looking for all the world as if he might at any moment put it into reverse and pull out.
Which, of course, would never happen, because he’d seen where I’d gone.
Cheese was one of his top three favorite things. I didn’t make the list until somewhere way south of that.
The man left, and Laura greeted me with what appeared to be a sincere grin. “Gotta love tourists. He bought one of every Montana cheese that I had.”
Montana had cheese? I’d thought all the cattle here got eaten.
I wasn’t here to discuss Montana agriculture, however. “Yes, you do,” I agreed. I followed her to where a couple of stools sat near the register.
“So, you didn’t get anything on the Cuties,” she said.
“I kind of wanted to ask if you did.”
She tilted her head in question.
“I talked to Phyllis. She told me about your visit with her, Kristi, and Phoebe.”
She blinked and for a minute I thought she was going to play dumb. Then she sighed. “We didn’t find anything. At least nothing worth knowing.”
“Was there a lot of cash there?” I asked, still wondering if robbery could be a motive.
“Cash?” She looked shocked that I would ask. “I didn’t go into the till.”
Seriously? I held her gaze.
She dropped hers. “Okay, Phoebe looked. There was some, and assuming someone had dropped off the day’s earnings at five before the banks close, it was a lot for a coffee kiosk, but it didn’t really prove anything.”
This pretty much matched my own conclusions. Still, I made a mental note to prod George or maybe Daniel for information on what cash was still in the kiosk after Missy’s death.
“What about Missy?”
“What about her?”
The question was obvious. “Was she alive when you left?”
Laura’s outrage was obvious too. “Of course she was. We didn’t kill her. I thought you believed that. I thought you were on our side.”
“So, you went back into the kiosk too? You saw her?”
She made a pained face. “I talked to her outside the kiosk while Phoebe snuck inside. She was fine. She wasn’t even knocked out. Just groggy. Nothing a cup or two of coffee wouldn’t have fixed.”
I could see Laura was losing patience with my questions, but I wasn’t done yet. “So, why drug her at all?”
She sighed, a big annoyed sigh. “I don’t know. Phyllis suggested it. It sounded like a good idea.”
Great. My partner was back in the suspect seat.
“How many pills did you give her?”
“I don’t know. Two, maybe three. She let me into the kiosk because she recognized me from some other times I’d stopped by.”
Like
when I’d seen her banging on the truck window.
“She didn’t want me to make a scene, so she let me inside. While she was flipping that light of theirs to yellow, I dropped the pills into her cup.”
“And then what did you do with the bottle?”
“The bottle?” Guilt danced across her face.
I leaned forward, ready to pounce.
“I don’t know. I think I dropped it. Either then or when Phoebe and I went back. It was late and I was keyed up.”
I raised an eyebrow.
She made a face. “I might have bought a coffee when I talked to Missy the first time.”
That hadn’t been why I’d raised my brow, but still...
“Don’t tell Phoebe,” she added.
“So, you talked to Missy. For how long?”
“Fifteen minutes or so. Not long. We were worried—” She snapped her mouth shut.
“What?” I asked.
“We weren’t the only ones watching the kiosk,” she admitted.
“Really?” I didn’t know why she looked so long faced. Another suspect was good news. “Who?”
She sighed. “I don’t know who it was, but someone pulled in with their lights off and waited. They were parked behind the Dumpster. I couldn’t really make out what kind of car it was.”
A lead that didn’t route its way back to me or Phyllis. Finally.
“We left right after that.”
“You didn’t drive by to get a look?”
She widened her eyes. “Actually, we kept our lights off and backed away. We didn’t want whoever it was seeing us. We were just glad he didn’t get out and go to the kiosk while we were there.”
“So, it was a he?”
She scrunched up her face. “Maybe. I guess I just assumed. It was late and I figured whoever it was, was there to give Missy a ride. A boyfriend. It could have been a woman though.”
Which narrowed things down not at all.
o0o
I had a date with Peter that night.
It started fine enough. He brought beer and burgers, and I supplied the grill.
Kiska sat politely next to the sizzling meat, willing it to fly off the grate and into his mouth.
Our conversation was fine enough too, for the first twenty minutes. Then, when we’d used up everything we had to say about the weather, Peter’s son and how Peter had heard strangles, a horse disease of some sort, was going around the county, we fell into silence.
