by Rae Davies
He hung up, leaving me to stare at my phone horrified.
I looked up to see Betty watching me with a smirk. “Deere mansion, huh? Who would want to break in there?”
CHAPTER TWENTY
My conversation with George left me in a bit of a quandary. My first instinct was to panic.
The Deere mansion had been broken into.
This did not sound “fine.” It didn’t sound anywhere near fine.
Betty, however, talked me off the ledge. “You didn’t break in, did you?”
I shook my head. The door was clearly open when I arrived.
“And you didn’t take anything that Darrell hadn’t promised you, right?”
Eh. I made a face.
Betty muttered under her breath. “Okay, did you keep anything Darrell hadn’t promised you?”
No, definitely not.
I glanced around to assure myself that nothing else had somehow made its way into my shop.
“Then you’re fine.”
There was that word again. I made another face. “Should I call Cindy?”
“Why don’t you call Peter instead and just admit everything?”
She was right. I reached for the phone.
She slapped my hand down. “What are you doing?”
“Calling—” Seeing her expression, I stopped. “Oh.”
With a shake of her head, she pushed me toward my chair. “You need to think about something else. What did George say about Joe?”
Betty had walked in after that part of the conversation. Plus, that was when George was muffling his voice.
“Someone called in this morning and suggested the police take another look at Joe’s house. Whoever it was told them where to look to find the pictures and notes that Bev mentioned.”
Betty tapped her chin. “Interesting. And this isn’t the first call they’ve gotten. There was the one that sent them here the other day too.”
“But they didn’t do anything except look around.”
Betty squinted. “Someone still sent them here. Someone thought they were going to find something. What about when they found Phyllis’s pills. How did they know about them?”
It was a good question. I hadn’t even known about them.
“Do you think all the calls were from the same person?”
“Maybe. Who would have known all of that?”
“All of what? We don’t know why Klein and Peter came here that day.”
“Could you ask?”
I could, but I would rather wait to talk to my boyfriend until after I got more information on what was happening with the Deere mansion “break–in.”
Betty waved her hand, signaling she knew what I was thinking without me saying it. “Let’s start with the pills. Who could have known they were in your car?”
Phyllis was the obvious answer, but neither Betty nor I could think why she would want the police to find them.
I picked up a pencil and waved it in the air, as if it might magically bring us some answers. “The B&B owner? She knew Phyllis was staying there. With that picture running in the paper and Missy being killed, maybe she wanted Phyllis out, and alerting the police about the pills was a way to get rid of her.”
Betty didn’t buy it. “Why not just call and tell them she was there then? And how would she have known about the pills? She could have seen you carrying out the laundry, but how would she know the pills were in the bag?”
“Phyllis’s laundry was already in the bag when I got there. Maybe she saw them?”
Betty tilted her head. “Eh.”
I sighed. She was right. It didn’t flow. “What about my mother?”
“Your mother?”
I nodded, maybe a little too vehemently. “She’s who sent me to the B&B. I know she did it because she knew Phyllis was there.”
“But how would she know about the pills? And why would she call the police on you?”
I was frequently at a loss as to why my mother chose to do things, but Betty was right. Even if my mother had wanted Phyllis caught, she too could have just called the police and told them where she was hiding.
“Maybe...” Betty sat on my desk. Right on top of my latest copy of Antiques Today. “... we’re thinking about this wrong. Maybe the person who called knew the pills were in your car because...”
“They put them there,” we finished in unison.
In less than ten minutes, we had narrowed it down to the only person I knew who had had access to my unlocked car and, coincidentally, the pills.
“Laura.”
And I’d really started to like Laura, what with our shared love of some of life’s most important things: wine, cheese, and dogs. Framing me for murder and quite possibly being a murderer herself was really going to put a damper on our burgeoning relationship.
o0o
Laura was not the picture of remorse and embarrassment that I’d imagined. “Why would I want the police to find the pills? I told you that I put them in Missy’s drink. If anything, I’d be hiding them, not calling the police and telling them where to find them.”
She picked up a wheel of cheese and dropped it onto the counter. After turning her back on me and digging around in a drawer for a few minutes, she turned to face me. In her hand was the biggest, sharpest cleaver that I’d ever seen.
I shrank backward. The cheese shop wasn’t open yet, meaning Laura and I were alone.
Not, I realized now, the best plan.
Caught up in whatever emotions were rolling through her, she didn’t seem to notice my unease. “Did you tell them?” She whacked the cleaver down toward the cheese. The blade slammed into the wax–covered wheel and then stopped, lodged only a quarter–way into its depth. Laura picked up the cleaver, cheese wheel still attached and waved it around. “Dammnit. I told him I needed the saw fixed.”
“Him?” I asked politely, hoping to turn the conversation away from the saw and other sharp objects.
“My rat bastard husband,” she responded. Just as quickly as her anger had soared, it dissipated. She deflated, dropping the cheese on the counter and dropping her body onto a stool that sat behind it. “I wish I could afford to leave him.”
“Uh...” Marriage advice was well out of my comfort zone. Unsure what else to do, I reached out and patted her hand. “I’m sure it can’t be that bad.”
“Maybe. Maybe I just expect too much.”
She didn’t look as if she believed that. Not for one nanosecond. I gave her hand another pat.
“It wouldn’t be so bad if he wasn’t giving money to those hookers.”
I nodded, understanding... wait. “Hookers? In Helena?”
She looked at me, her expression a mix of humor and surprise. “The Coffee Cartel? What did you think that we were trying to prove?”
I flapped the hem of my shirt at her.
She laughed out loud.
At least I was putting her in a better mood.
“No. I mean that is annoying, but we knew the police wouldn’t do anything about that. It’s the prostitution that gets us, or more specifically for me, the money my husband spends on it.”
“Why not divorce him?”
“Oh, I will, but I need proof that that’s where the ten grand missing from our savings went.”
Ten grand. Her husband was lucky all she wanted to do was divorce him.
“That’s why Phoebe and I turned the WILers onto them.”
“You and Phoebe? I got the idea that Kristi was the leader of the group.”
Laura made a face. “She is, but going after the Cuties wasn’t her idea. She was more into street beautification.” Another face.
“Street beautification?”
“Planting trees, picking up trash...” She waved a hand.
“But she was part of the protest, and was there that night, right?”
“I think she was just keeping track of us. I don’t think she trusts us a whole bunch.”
I couldn’t imagine why not, what with Laura and company
thinking it was a good idea to drug Missy.
I asked about that.
“Oh, yeah. That was actually her idea. She said it would be cleaner.”
So much for Kristi being the responsible one.
“But originally, she wasn’t real big on our plans, and after... you heard how she talked at the meeting. She seems to think the Cuties are going to change their ways now.” She rolled her eyes. “Last I checked, another $250 was missing from my savings.”
As we were talking, I realized all of this gave Laura an even better motive for murdering the Cutie.
“Was your husband...” Unsure exactly how to ask this, I paused. “Was Missy who your husband was sleeping with?”
Laura shrugged. “I don’t know, but she was the boss. She made no secret of that.”
“So you haven’t followed him or—”
The look on her face gave me an answer. I filled in the unspoken bit myself. “Your walk with Abi when you had your camera. You were looking for something. Was your husband there... cheating?”
She lifted one shoulder. “I don’t know. He’s sneaky. I haven’t been able to trail him yet. Instead I started following the Cuties.”
“And one of them—” I remembered then that a few days before I’d seen Laura in the B&B neighborhood, I’d seen Rachel there too. I mentioned this to Laura. “She said she was coming from the B&B. Is it a brothel?” I could not imagine the lecture I would get if I booked my mother and my dad for a week’s getaway at a brothel.
“Maybe,” Laura answered cheerfully.
My horror knew no bounds.
“But most likely she was visiting a client. I’ve seen her there a lot, and she’s always headed to one house in particular. A house you’ve visited too.” She raised a brow.
“A house...? The Deere’s! Darrell...” Pieces fell into place like ice dropping off a snow–laden roof. How Darrell had greeted me. How he had responded to my requests for Ruby’s things. How Cindy had acted. The “toy” we’d found at the house.
Oh my... I rubbed my hand against my thigh as if I could rub off the contact I’d had with the thing.
“You didn’t know?”
“No, I didn’t know. Why would you think I’d know?”
She shrugged. “Everyone knows, and you were talking about your window display. Then you offered to go to the kiosk.”
“You asked me to. Or Phoebe did.” I certainly didn’t volunteer. “Besides what does that matter?”
“You don’t really blend with the WILers. Phoebe and I thought you might be spying on us.”
I had told Betty I wouldn’t blend. I couldn’t wait to tell her how wrong she’d been. Fishing for more, I asked, “I don’t?”
Laura looked at me. “Well, maybe you do. You’re just younger than most of us.”
That was nowhere as satisfying as I’d hoped.
“And less prissy.”
That was better. I beamed. I couldn’t help but share the compliment. “You’re not prissy either.”
She glanced down at her cheese shirt of the day. “I guess not.”
Suddenly, I got the feeling she thought prissy was a good thing. She’d obviously been hanging around with Phyllis and Kristi too much.
“Anyway, I didn’t call the police on you.”
“Did you put the pills in my car?”
“No! I told you, I don’t remember what happened to the bottle after I gave some to Missy. It was empty. So I don’t think I would have given it back to Phyllis.” She frowned. “I probably dropped them.” A look of horror flitted across her face. “The police could have found them.”
“The police did find them.”
“Oh, yeah, but not there. They don’t know that we gave them to Missy.” Her relief was quickly followed by suspicion. “Do they?”
I hesitated. The police didn’t, because Gregor had told me to admit nothing, but I’d seen enough cop shows to know that admitting I hadn’t told the police might make me a killer’s target—to insure that I didn’t reveal the information later.
Someone rapping on the locked front door saved me from answering.
Laura looked at her watch. “Damn. It’s twenty after.” She gave me one last assessing look before going to open the door.
o0o
After the enlightening chat with Laura, I went back to Dusty Deals. Betty was helping a customer, but she’d opened one of the two remaining Deere boxes while I was gone. Deciding that was as good of a use of my time as anything else, I went about unpacking more newspaper wrapped glassware. Halfway through the box, I gave up on finding anything of Ruby’s, shoved that box to the side and opened the last one.
This one hadn’t been taped shut, at least not for a while. Instead, the tops were tucked inside each other to hold the box closed.
This box looked more promising, at least at the top. The first item I unwrapped was the perfume decanter. The next was a woman’s watch, the kind that would hang on a chain.
After saying goodbye to the customer, Betty joined me at the box. “What did Laura say?”
“She didn’t do it.”
Betty gave me a “don’t be stupid” look.
I ran my thumb over the watch’s engraving and tilted my head to the side. “I believe her.”
“That she didn’t call or that she didn’t put the bottle in your Jeep?”
“Both.”
With a shake of her head, Betty apparently decided to let that go. At least for a while. I knew she’d come back to it. Lucky me, she had other topics to discuss. “What about the website? You didn’t tell me how Rachel liked what I’d done.”
“She loved it.”
Betty smiled.
“But.... She said it didn’t go with their new upscale image.”
“Upscale? Do those paper cups have a china lining now?”
Pretty much my reaction too. I lifted a shoulder.
She muttered to herself for a while and then asked, “Does she want her money back?”
“She didn’t mention it.”
More muttering. Then, “What about the rest of the payment?”
“I don’t know,” I squeaked.
That earned me a scowl. I hid by diving deeper into the box and pulling out an armful of paper–wrapped bundles.
“Lucy?”
I sighed, thinking Betty wasn’t going to let me off the hook about the payment. Then she said my name again and pointed.
“What is stuck on your head?”
“I...” As I turned, something brushed against my face. Something soft and wispy and... I screamed and slapped at my face. A strand of black dropped onto the box.
Not a spider web. Whew.
Then I looked, really looked, at what had been clinging to my face.
A stocking. A black fishnet stocking.
Betty reached for it. “Was it Ruby’s?”
I slapped her hand away before she could touch it.
A stocking and not a Christmas one. In my shop.
o0o
Thirty minutes later, I was still staring at the box and the stocking that lay on top of it like a cobra waiting to strike.
Betty was still there too. She’d turned our signs to closed though, locked the door, and pulled up a stool so she could sit beside me as we stared at the stocking.
I’d already filled her in that, according to Rachel, just such a stocking is what had landed Joe in jail.
“How did it get in the box?” she asked. “Do you think it’s the mate... to the one Joe had?
“I don’t know.”
We stared at it a bit longer.
“I should call Peter.”
Betty squinched up her face. “Should you?”
“Yes, definitely... don’t you think?”
“I don’t know, but think about it... could this be why Klein came here that day? Was this what he was looking for?”
My eyes widened. She was right. She had to be. So if I called and said I had it, what would the police think? That I was a good citizen? O
r that I’d figured out that they were on to me and was trying to cover my tracks by claiming I’d just found it?
We stared at the stocking a bit more.
“Bag it,” Betty declared.
“What?”
“Bag it. That’s what the police would do.”
“But then they’d know I’d seen it.”
“True. Leave it then. Put the stuff you took out back in and fold the top back up. Then there’s no proof you even knew it was there.”
But that would mean not using the lady’s watch that I’d been caressing for the past hour.
Betty held out her hand. With a reluctant sigh, I dropped the watch onto her palm.
After it and everything else was back in the box, I asked, “Now what?”
“Now we figure out what that stocking was doing in the box.”
CHAPTER TWENTY–ONE
With the two Deere boxes shoved as far out of sight as I could get them, Betty and I began working out how the stocking had gotten into the box and what it meant.
“Maybe it isn’t related to the murder at all,” I offered.
Betty gave me scolding stare.
Okay, considering that Klein and Peter had come to my shop looking for something right after the boxes had been delivered, and that the murder weapon that had been found at Joe’s was also a fishnet stocking, this idea was farfetched at best.
Joe. The boxes had come to him first and he’d been found with the other stocking.
Betty and I shared a look. We were both obviously on the same track.
“Joe wouldn’t have tried to frame you,” she stated, confident.
“No... but what if the stocking the police found didn’t come from the dumpster at all. What if someone was working on framing me?”
We both looked at the box. We both knew who it had come from. Darrell.
o0o
After some deliberation, Betty and I decided to confront Darrell ourselves. Our reasons for this were many. First, I’d accused Darrell of murder once before and not come out looking all that well. And this time, I couldn’t even make that accusation. I’d be stuck with a claim of him trying to frame me. Something that I suspected would barely warrant a call from the police, but would almost surely land me back at the cold table of the interrogation room.
