Assault and Buttery

by Kristi Abbott

  Reverend Lee stepped forward. “For the past six or seven months, I would come into the church to find minor repairs having been completed during the night. Sometimes it’s been as simple as a squeaky hinge on a door, but there have also been plumbing repairs and some electrical issues resolved. I didn’t know who was doing it. I mentioned it during a few of my sermons, but no one came forward to take credit.” He clapped Justin on the shoulder. “I found out today that it was Justin who had taken the words of Matthew 6 very much to heart. He has been anonymously making repairs to keep the church running and safe.”

  Justin stepped up next to Reverend Lee again. “To the blackmailer out there, I will not be cowed. I want to serve the city of Grand Lake, and you will not stop me.”

  He walked down the steps with Reverend Lee. They walked across the street and got into Justin’s sedan and drove away.

  • • •

  I couldn’t wait to tell Cathy what I’d seen when I got back to the cell. Well, minus the parts about people running up to hug me and yell words of support. I didn’t think she was getting much of that and I didn’t want to lord it over her. I wanted to tell her about Justin.

  “And at the end, he got into this car with Reverend Lee and took off like some kind of special God squad,” I told her as I brushed out Sprocket’s fur. He snorted.

  So did Cathy. “That smarmy little son of a bitch. He lucked out on that one.”

  “What do you mean?” I hadn’t thought being blackmailed represented any kind of luck at all, much less the good kind.

  “Seriously, what are the odds of someone blackmailing you in a way that reveals a bunch of good deeds you’re doing? I mean, I guess if they have proof that they aren’t good deeds, they send anonymous notes to the Sentinel rather than DVDs to your doorstep. Still, though. He lucked out.” She shook her head. “Some people really do have all the luck.”

  I stopped brushing. “You think Justin’s up to something else?”

  She stretched and yawned. “Actually, I don’t. I tried like hell to dig something up on him since I knew he was planning to run and I couldn’t find anything. He’s squeakyclean. Irritatingly so.”

  “Wait. You were digging around in Justin’s life?” It sounded so sneaky, so underhanded, so like someone who had been embezzling from the city for years.

  “Of course I was. It’s called opposition research. It’s how the game is played, my dear.” Cathy rolled onto her side and did a few leg lifts. My hips creaked just watching her.

  A thought occurred to me. “Do you think that’s how someone found out about your scam? Someone did opposition research and figured out what you were up to and turned you in?”

  “I prefer to call it my arrangement rather than scam. Scam sounds so . . . negative.” She turned and did leg lifts on the other side.

  I wasn’t sure how you could put a positive spin on embezzlement, but that seemed like an argument for another time. “I mean, do you think that the person who sent the anonymous note to the Sentinel was one of the other city council candidates, someone who knew you were planning to run and wanted you out of their way?”

  Cathy stopped leg-lifting and sat up, arms banded around her bent knees. “I suppose. I’m still not sure how any of them would have figured it out, though. Like I said, I was careful. Even my husband didn’t know what I was up to. I don’t think any of them are that smart.”

  “Well, someone was. Someone figured it out. You didn’t turn yourself in.” I finished brushing Sprocket and put away his brush.

  “True enough,” she said.

  The door to the cell block opened and the three of us jumped to attention.

  “Your buddy Faith stopped by with these,” Vera said. At least, I was pretty sure it was Vera. She looked like a big stack of pillow and linens on top of two legs.

  “What is all that?”

  “Pillows, blankets, curtains, a throw rug.” Vera set the stack down and unlocked my cell door. She slid the stack through with her foot and then clanged the door shut again. “She said it didn’t look cozy in here.”

  She had a point, but I didn’t think cozy was one of the concepts whoever had designed the holding cells had been going for. I went through the stack. There were enough pillows to turn the bottom bunk into a daybed arrangement. I knew what to do with most of it, but I wasn’t sure what she’d thought I was going to do with the drapes. Vera saw me puzzling over them.

  “She wanted us to bring in a frame so you could section off the, uh, bathroom area. She thought you might want a little more privacy.”

  She wasn’t wrong about that. “And?” I asked.

  Vera sighed. “I’ll check with Dan. I couldn’t figure out anything that you’d be allowed to have back here that would work.” Vera pushed herself off the wall and left.

  “Must be nice,” Cathy said.

  “Hmmm?” I wasn’t sure what she was talking about and I was trying to figure out how to use those drapes. Faith wasn’t wrong about the privacy thing.

  “To have friends bringing you things.” Cathy gestured around her cell. “Nobody brought me any extra pillows.”

  “You want one? I’m pretty sure there are more than I can use here.” I held one up.

  Cathy eyed it. “I wouldn’t say no.”

  It took both of us to get it through the bars from my cell to hers, me pushing and her pulling, but we did it. She set it on her bunk and lay down on it. “Ah,” she said. “That’s nice. My neck has been killing me since I got here. This will definitely help.”

  I sat down on my bunk. “Nobody has brought you anything? Nothing?”

  She sighed. “Nope. I think everyone wanted to distance themselves from me as quickly and completely as possible.”

  “I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say.

  “It’s amazing how happy everyone is to accept gifts without questioning where they came from and how fast they back away once they find out.” She lay down on the floor and started doing sit-ups again. I was pretty sure her workout routine was fueled by anger.

  “They’re probably embarrassed,” I said.

  “My husband wasn’t embarrassed to come on that trip to London with me. Geraldine wasn’t embarrassed to ride in my Lexus. Neither of them were embarrassed to go on shopping trips to Chicago with me.” The pace of the sit-ups picked up.

  At this rate, she was going to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his glory days by the time she went to trial. “You’re friends with Geraldine?”

  “I thought I was. I’m not sure anymore.” The sit-ups got even faster.

  “She’s one of the city council candidates.”

  “I know. She’s using all the campaign ideas I was going to use.” Cathy was starting to blur she was moving so fast.

  “Why were you going to run?” She’d clearly had a pretty good thing going for her. London. Paris. Fancy cars.

  “It was time to start moving up. That’s the way these things work. You start out small. You make a few connections. You learn how the system works. People start to know your name. Next it’s city council. After that, maybe mayor.” Thank goodness the sit-ups were slowing down.

  I made a noise in the back of my throat.

  “I get your point,” she said. “No one’s going to be mayor of Grand Lake until Allen dies or decides to retire. So maybe state representative after that. Before too long, you’re looking at senator and representative. Imagine the bank you can make on those positions.”

  “Bank?” Sometimes I felt like Cathy didn’t even speak the same language I did.

  “Sure. People need favors. They pay for them all kinds of ways. Sometimes it’s actual cash, but a lot of times its trips and dinners and products. It’s all good stuff.” She collapsed onto her bunk. “Or it would have all been good stuff.”

  Sometimes it was hard to feel sorry for Cathy.

&
nbsp; Eight

  I was tired of playing Sudoku and reading. I’d counted the tiles on the ceiling of my cell. If I didn’t find something to distract me soon, I was going to start exercising like Cathy. Instead, I decided to use Cathy to distract me.

  “What were you going to do with all that money anyway?” I asked. She’d had a pretty nice life. A house. A car. A husband.

  “What does anyone do with money? I was going to spend it. I did spend it.” She turned on her side on her bunk so she could look at me through the bars.

  “On what?” I knew some of the things I would spend a windfall on. It was always interesting to hear what other people’s fantasies were.

  She shrugged. “I always wanted to go to Italy. That’s expensive. Don wanted a Jet Ski. I really like that one eye cream with the sea kelp. That stuff’s crazy expensive.”

  “You wanted it bad enough to risk everything else?” It didn’t sound like enough to me. I was as unhappy as the next woman about wrinkles, but I wasn’t willing to break the law to fight them.

  She said, “I didn’t think I was risking it. I didn’t think I’d get caught. I still can’t believe I did. I was so careful.”

  I flipped over onto my stomach and kicked my feet up in the air. There really was no comfortable position on this bed, even with all the extra pillows. “How’d it happen? What was your big mistake?”

  “I’m still not sure.” She did a pull-up on the upper bunk. “Someone noticed, though. Someone did some digging.”

  Now that was interesting. Apparently there was someone else in town who couldn’t resist digging into things that didn’t make sense to them. “They haven’t come forward?”

  “Nope. Anonymous tip to the Grand Lake Sentinel and then they peaced out.” She did another pull-up.

  “What kind of tip? To look at your finances? Or into one of the companies?” I asked.

  She plopped back down on her bunk. “What’s it to you? Hasn’t nosing around where you have no business gotten you in enough trouble?”

  It had, but I was bored. “I can’t see what more trouble I can get into now.” I kicked the bars.

  “You have a point. It was a tip to look into one of my companies. Hutchinson Paper Supply.” She made a face.

  Interesting. “So who would know to look into that?”

  She sat up and stared at me. “Do you think I’ve thought about anything else since I got here? Do you think I wouldn’t have found a way to bitch-slap whoever it was if I could figure it out?”

  I’d sort of thought that she might be thinking about what she’d done and how she could make amends, but I might not have the full measure of Miss Cathy yet. “Did anyone know you had set up fake vendors? Anyone who might have had an inadvertent slip of the lip?”

  She shook her head. “No. Not even my husband.”

  That didn’t seem likely. “Where did he think all that extra money was coming from?”

  She smiled. “My awesome investment skills.”

  I counted a few more tiles, and thought. “What about someone at one of the banks?”

  She chewed her lip. “That’s possible, but I really spread my business around. It would have taken one heck of a set of coincidences for someone at one of the banks to figure it out.”

  I stewed on that while I scratched behind Sprocket’s ears. “What about someone who saw you at one of the other banks?”

  “Nope. I did pretty much everything electronically.”

  “There has to be something. There has to be some way someone else found out.”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” Cathy said and turned her back.

  • • •

  Annie showed up to my jail cell with an armload of flowers.

  “I’m locked up for the weekend, not dying.” Although the possibility that I might die of boredom had occurred to me.

  “Faith told me what your cell looked like. I figured flowers brighten up everything. These were for an order that was canceled.” Annie set the flowers down and pulled her long gray hair back and knotted it.

  “They look like funeral flowers. Who cancels a funeral?” I asked. Lucky people, I supposed.

  “Someone who didn’t die. Well, the relatives of someone who didn’t die.” Annie moved a frond of fern into a different position and looked at it critically.

  “Someone was sick enough that their relatives started ordering flowers and then got better instead?” Cathy asked.

  Annie shrugged. “Pretty much. I think they might have actually been hoping to use them, but I’m not judging.”

  “Who?” That sounded like one callous group of relatives.

  “Someone who’s a tougher old broad than anybody realized.” Annie sniffed a lily.

  “Come on. Give. A little gossip might liven things up for us.” Cathy leaned forward at her bars to try to sniff a bouquet.

  “An old lady over at Loving Arms. Marta something.” Annie rearranged some baby’s breath.

  I felt like my own heart might have just stopped. “Marta Hansen?” I asked.

  She smiled and nodded. “Yeah. That’s the name. Miraculous recovery. The doctors thought she was a goner. Apparently she’s made of iron.”

  I sat down hard on my cot. “I don’t believe it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Annie said, setting down the flowers and walking over to the bars of my cell. “I didn’t realize you were close with her.”

  “I’m not, but I just spoke to her. Only a few days ago. She’s the one who owned my shop before Allen did.” She’d seemed frail, but not sickly.

  “Oh.” Annie bit her lip. “That’s not good.”

  “People being at death’s door is generally not good, no.” It seemed like an obvious statement.

  Annie cringed as she said, “Not just that. They think Marta was poisoned somehow.”

  “Poisoned?” I was up off my cot and over at the bars. “Like Lloyd was poisoned?”

  Annie made a face. “Pretty much.”

  “And she got sick right after I visited her?” I pressed.

  “Again. Pretty much.” Annie took a step back from my cell.

  “Crud.” I started to pace.

  “Did you bring her any popcorn?” Annie asked.

  My heart sank. “Annie, I did.”

  “Don’t panic. I’ll leave the flowers and go see what else I can find out.” Her face creased with concern.

  I thought for a second. “See if someone else visited her. Maybe someone came after me and poisoned her.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out.” She looked over at Vera. “Could you open the cell door, please?”

  “I don’t think I can let her have those.” Vera frowned at the flowers.

  “Why not?” Annie asked.

  She plucked one of the roses from a bouquet and poked her finger with the stem. “She might make a weapon out of them.”

  “Out of a Coral Beauty? What’s she going to do, sharpen the stem into a shiv? And for Pete’s sake, who’s she going to stab? Sprocket?” Annie shooed her away from the arrangements. “And don’t mess with the flowers. I spent hours on these.

  “What about the vases?” Vera asked. “She could do something with them.”

  “No vases. These are actually cardboard. One hundred percent biodegradable, too.” She smiled. “It’s good to be green.”

  Vera sighed. “Well, okay, then.”

  “Thank you.”

  Vera cuffed me and opened the cell and Annie strode in and began arranging the flowers around the cell. She frowned at the toilet. “Too bad we can’t use that as some kind of container.”

  “It’s actually serving a purpose at the moment. I’d just as soon not stick flowers in it.” It was already hard enough to keep Sprocket from using it as a water bowl.

  “Suit yourself.” She placed one last bouquet, plucked a
pink pearl lily from it, came out of the cell and handed it to Vera. “I hope you have a lovely weekend.”

  Vera blushed. Apparently it had been a while since anyone had given her flowers. “Thank you.”

  Annie walked toward the door out of the cell block. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Rebecca.”

  “Thanks, Annie.”

  The door clanged shut behind them. I went over and sniffed one of the bouquets, loving its delicate aroma and the steel underneath the soft exterior of my friend as she did whatever she could to help me. I swear those tears in my eyes had to be from allergies.

  Cathy sauntered up to the bars between us. “So now you’ve poisoned two people?”

  “Of course not!” I hadn’t. I hadn’t poisoned anyone. This was all a terrible mistake. I had to talk to Dan again. I had to make him realize what kind of mistake he was making. Someone was framing me. Someone was trying to ruin me and they were doing a damn good job.

  • • •

  Cynthia came by in the afternoon. She had some books and magazines and some puzzles and a lot of questions. Vera brought me down to the conference room to meet her. If I hadn’t already felt shabby in my orange jumpsuit, I definitely did after seeing Cynthia. She had on the simplest outfit: black trousers with a white silk shirt and a string of pearls. She made it look like the essence of glamour and sophistication.

  “How on earth did you manage to become a person of interest in yet another poisoning when you’re safely tucked away here behind bars?” She thumped a file box onto the table. “And when will your brother-in-law enter the digital age?”

  “I don’t have an answer to either of those questions.” I reached for the files.

  “Uh-uh-uh,” she said, giving my hand a whack. “No peeking at what they’ve got on you until I hear all about it. I don’t want to taint your recollection.”

  I leaned back in the chair, nursing my smacked hand and trying to marshal my emotions. I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. I knew I hadn’t poisoned Lloyd McLaughlin or Marta Hansen. I didn’t know why I couldn’t seem to convince anybody else of that. How many other people would get hurt in someone’s attempt to bring me down? Cynthia was still my best way to clear my name, though. I needed to make sure she knew everything I knew. “You know everything about Lloyd already.”