When he pulled up to Betty’s, Timothy Eckels was waiting for him near the entrance. The two men shook hands and headed inside.
“I was glad when you showed up, Beckett,” Betty called out when they entered. “I was about to go out there and see why your friend was loitering,” she smirked.
“Hi Betty. This is Tim. I need coffee strong enough to make the spoon stand up,” Chas replied, sitting in a red vinyl covered booth in the corner.
“You came to the right place. Need some food to cushion the blow?”
“Not now, thanks. Tim, do you want anything?”
The timid coroner shook his head, intimidated by the brash, iron-haired diner owner.
“Bring us a couple of waters too, please,” Chas smiled at Betty, who had given him valuable information more than once. Betty knew everything and everyone in Calgon, and overheard more gossip in a day than most folks heard in a lifetime.
“Lightweights,” she muttered, irascible as ever.
“Have you had a chance to do the autopsy for Maria Markham?” Chas asked quietly, once their drinks had been delivered.
Tim considered his answer carefully. “I haven’t submitted my official report yet.”
“Is your report going to include information about a serrated murder weapon?”
Tim blinked at him. “It will,” he nodded. “How did you know that?”
“Can you step outside with me for a moment?”
“Of course,” Tim stood.
“We’ll be right back, Betty,” Chas assured the diner owner, who raised her eyebrows when they headed toward the door.
“Darn right you will. You can’t dine and dash, I know where you live,” she threatened from behind the counter.
Chas went to his car, with Timothy Eckels trailing along behind him, and opened the door behind the driver’s seat. He carefully picked up one of the sculptures that he’d bought from Bradley Fostmeier, barely touching the piece, and showed it to Tim. The coroner examined the piece and nodded.
“It’s possible,” he murmured, squinting and moving closer to the sculpture. “Where did you get this?”
“From the garage of the victim’s boyfriend.”
“It’s old,” Tim frowned.
“Yes it is. The victim’s cousin was murdered about five years ago… with a serrated knife. Do you think that’s blood?” Chas indicated some brown spots on the knife that was woven into the sculpture, welded in place by its handle.
“I can check. Do you have autopsy photos from the cousin? I’d like to look at the wound and read the report.”
“I’ll get them to you today. How soon can we get results?”
“I’ll be able to tell whether it’s blood or not as soon as I test it. DNA results will take longer.”
“Do you have gloves on you? I want to preserve any prints and DNA that might be on here.”
“Of course,” Tim pulled a pair of nitrile gloves out of his pocket and put them on, accepting the sculpture from Chas. “What about the other one?” he asked, nodding toward the second piece.
“That was just a decoy so that he didn’t think I was singling out the one with the murder weapon in it.”
“Makes sense,” Tim nodded.
“I’ll walk next to you on the way to your car, so no one in the diner will see you with the sculpture,” Chas directed.
“Okay. I’ll take it to the mortuary to take my samples, that way it won’t get discovered at the morgue either.”
“Perfect.”
Tim wanted to get started on collecting samples right away, so he left the diner and Chas went back inside.
“Your little friend have a better offer?” Betty teased.
“Something like that,” Chas smiled, slipping back into the booth. There was no way that he was going to let his coffee go to waste.
CHAPTER TWELVE
* * *
Chas brought a paper bag containing three cheeseburgers, a large order of fries, and onion rings with a side of southwest sauce back to the office with him. He knew that Ringo performed much better on a full stomach, and he needed information quickly, before Solinsky’s bumbling derailed the entire investigation.
“Thanks, dude,” Ringo nodded as Chas tossed him the bag of food. “Ketchup?”
“It’s in there. Got anything for me?”
“Yep, found some interesting stuff,” the unkempt young man replied, stuffing four fries into his face.
“Great, let’s hear it,” Chas sat down after brushing cake crumbs from an office chair.
Before Ringo could swallow and speak, Holly Meadows, Chas’s receptionist poked her head in the door.
“Mr. Beckett, sorry to interrupt, but there’s a Mr. Eckels here to see you.”
Chas’s eyebrows shot skyward, and he stood, hoping that Eckels had some conclusive news for him.
“Not a problem. Send him to my office please,” Chas instructed. “Ringo, I’ll be with you shortly. Enjoy your snack.”
“That’s what I do best, dude,” Ringo replied, his mouth full.
***
Timothy Eckels came in with a worried look on his face.
“Have a seat,” Chas indicated the chair across the desk from him and Tim sat. “What have you got?”
The coroner sighed. “Solinsky told me that I shouldn’t talk to you, but I checked the regulations and spoke with the chief, and he doesn’t have the right to do that.”
“Go on…” Chas encouraged, feeling a bit unsettled at something in Tim’s manner. The coroner was a bit lacking in social skills, but it seemed that he was having a more difficult time than usual looking Chas in the eye.
“I wanted to come to you before I submit my official report,” Tim looked extremely uncomfortable.
“Thanks, I appreciate it.”
“When I attended your holiday party, I noticed your wife’s college degree on the wall. She went to Central Louisiana University, as I recall,” Tim blinked at Chas, pushing his glasses up his nose.
“Yes…” Chas wondered where he was going with this and wished that he’d just get on with it.
“Their school colors are orange and blue?”
“Yes, I believe so,” Chas frowned, beginning to lose patience. “What does that have to do with anything?”
Tim sighed and cracked his knuckles, one by one.
“When I did the autopsy on Maria Markham, there was an old orange and blue streamer from a football game at CLU stuffed down the front of her dress. I checked the year, and it was from the year that your wife graduated.”
“So, it was a weird coincidence,” Chas shrugged.
“Maybe, but that’s not all. Look, I’m telling you these things because I don’t know if Solinsky is smart enough to figure them out, but if he does, he’s going to try really hard to arrest your wife for murder.”
“What else do you have?” Chas leaned forward, his heart in his throat. It was sounding an awful lot like someone had set his beloved Missy up.
“The knife wound that you asked me about, the one that killed the victim… it was made by a serrated knife, but that’s not all,” Tim sighed again. “There was particulate matter in and around the wound that I analyzed.”
“What was it?”
“Cupcake crumbs and frosting.”
“Someone set Missy up,” Chas murmured, expelling his breath forcefully.
“So it would seem,” Tim nodded. “Which means you have to find out who and why before Solinsky puts the pieces together.”
“How long can you hold back the report?”
“It’s logged into the system, it’ll be available to Solinsky tomorrow. I didn’t make mention of your wife’s degree in the report, but the year and school are on the ribbon, and he’s been wanting to bring her down, so…”
Chas nodded. “So I need to work quickly. What about the sculpture? Was that knife the same kind that killed Maria Markham?”
Tim shook his head ruefully. “No. The serrations in the sculpture were shallower. The kni
fe that killed Maria Markham was no kitchen knife, it was a weapon, and when I tested the brown substance, it definitely wasn’t blood. Looked like barbeque sauce maybe.”
“Well, there’s fifty bucks down the drain,” Chas sighed. “And another dead end.”
“Do you want the sculpture back, or…?”
“Nah, just toss it.”
“I’d like to take it home if you don’t mind. It’s… unique.”
“Be my guest, and thanks for the heads-up.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t have better news,” Tim stood to go. “Thank you for the sculpture.”
“You’re welcome,” Chas shook the coroner’s hand and sunk back down into his chair, lost in thought.
“You ready for me, dude?” Ringo barged in, one hand stuffed in a box of chocolate-covered peanuts.
“Sure Ringo, have a seat.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
* * *
“That ought to do it,” the young man from the electronics store told Missy, climbing down from the ladder after installing her surveillance equipment. “You have remote monitoring and your husband’s computer dude already programmed it to go to your husband’s laptop and phone, as well as his work computer, so he can see what’s going on at all times.”
“I really don’t think that all this is necessary, but he’s really protective,” Missy smiled fondly.
“Can’t be too careful these days, ma’am,” he replied, folding up his ladder and heading to his truck. “I’ll be back in just a second for your signature, and then you’ll be all set.”
When Missy went back inside, Beulah shook her head. “Now we gonna be watched all the time?” she asked. “I don’t like that, Ms. Beckett, I don’t like that at all.”
“We’re not being watched,” Missy assured her, going to the sink to wash up. “The cameras are on the outside of the building, so we’ll be able to tell if someone comes in when they’re not supposed to.”
“What’s this world coming to when you can’t even bake and sell some delicious cupcakes without some fool trying to mess with you?” she griped, fiercely stirring a batch of lemon chiffon cupcake batter.
“I’m with you on that one, Beulah,” Missy murmured, wondering why Chas had suddenly been so insistent upon her having extra security.
***
“Talk to me, Ringo,” Chas directed, flopping into a chair in the computer room after a taxing day.
“Okay, so your guy, Tony Calizzi… I don’t know if he killed anybody, but he’s definitely not a nice guy,” Ringo spun his chair around to face his console and grabbed his laptop.
“And how do you know that?” Chas tossed him an apple.
Ringo caught the apple, looked at it curiously, and set it on the desk, reaching into his pocket for a candy bar.
“Well, he lied about where he was on the night of his girlfriend’s murder. I checked the timecard records where he said he was working, and he wasn’t there. Neither was his friend Phil, but whatevs. He also had a ton of texts and emails with Maria Markham. He’d tried to get her to go out with him after her cousin kicked the bucket, but she said no, and it gets even weirder,” he mumbled, through a mouthful of caramel and chocolate.
“Weirder? How?” Chas listened intently.
“There were some discrepancies in his bank account. I traced them down and it turns out he was transferring money out every month… to Maria Markham.”
“Did you find out why?”
“Naturally,” Ringo grinned like a Cheshire cat. “He was paying her to keep her mouth shut.”
“About what?”
“She needed money, so she threatened to show her cousin Shannon’s parents his emails if he didn’t pay up. Some of them were a bit… suggestive, and he said some nasty stuff about his dead girlfriend too. There was a little bit of extortion going on, dude.”
“Which sounds like motive,” Chas nodded. “Anything else?”
“Not so far. There’s still one transfer of money that didn’t go to Maria that I’m looking for, and it was around the time of Shannon’s murder. I ran out of donuts, so I had to take a break, but I’ll let you know,” Ringo spun back around and placed his laptop on the console again.
“What about a connection between Tony and Bradley Fostmeier? Anything there?”
“Nope, I’m working on it,” was the muffled reply as Ringo descended back into his cyber world, mouth full of candy.
Chas headed back to his office, lost in thought, and nearly didn’t hear his phone when it buzzed in his pocket. Taking it out, he saw Timothy Eckels’s private number.
“Beckett here,” he answered quickly.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but I think I may have made a connection in your cold case.”
“What is it?”
“Well, before I took the sculpture that you gave me home, I took some fingerprints from it. I ran them through the database and nothing came up, but then I looked in the cold case file that you’ve been working on and saw that there were prints found at the scene that no one had been able to identify. I compared those prints with the prints I’d taken from the sculpture, and they were a match. I hope that’s helpful.”
The timid coroner never ceased to amaze him.
“That might be very helpful, Tim. Thank you. Did you make a record of the prints?”
“Of course, but I didn’t log them in anywhere. I thought I’d talk with you first.”
“Perfect. I’ll talk with you soon.”
Bradley Fostmeier’s prints being found at the scene of Shannon’s death might lead to solving the mystery of her murder, but at the moment, Chas was more concerned about who had killed Maria Markham and why. The clock was running and it was only a matter of time before Solinsky started looking at Missy as the primary suspect. He could wrap up the cold case at any time, providing his visit hadn’t spooked Bradley Fostmeier into leaving town, but he had to concentrate on exonerating his wife for now.
“Hey, man, you’re not gonna believe this,” Ringo burst into his office again.
“I hope it’s good, Ringo. I need a break here,” Chas sighed.
“Oh it’s good all right. Guess where that transfer out of Tony Calizzi’s account five years ago went to?”
“Where?”
“Bradley Fostmeier. I couldn’t find exact plans but there are some very incriminating emails where it’s obvious that Calizzi paid off Fostmeier to kill his girlfriend,” Ringo announced.
“Why?”
“Cuz he didn’t want to be a daddy?” the young man dropped his bombshell.
“She was pregnant?”
“Yup.”
Chas closed his eyes briefly. “So it was two homicides. Did Bradley know?”
“Nope, but Calizzi did.”
“So we have both of them for conspiracy and Fostmeier for the murder. Now we just need to figure out who killed Maria.”
“I’ll keep working. What are you gonna do?”
“I’m going to go have a little chat with Bradley and see if he’ll incriminate Tony in Maria’s murder. Looks like Brad killed Tony’s girlfriend and Tony killed Brad’s,” Chas mused.
“Was Tony at the gala?” Ringo asked.
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you… some dude came by today, had a heavy Jersey accent. He was asking about your wife.”
A muscle in Chas’s jaw flexed at the thought of Solinsky trying to pin a murder on Missy. “What did you tell him?”
Ringo grinned. “That she was super hot and that’s all I know about her.”
Chas gave him a look, then nodded curtly. “If you see him around here again, let me know immediately.”
“You got it, boss man.”
***
“Hey, are you looking to buy more art?” Bradley Fostmeier looked happily surprised when he saw Chas Beckett on his doorstep again.
“Not exactly. May I come in?”
“Uh, well. I’m kinda getting ready to leave, so I d
on’t have very long. I gotta go to work soon…” Brad hedged, running a nervous hand through his limp, untidy hair.
“This shouldn’t take long,” Chas said neutrally.
“Oh. Umm… okay, I guess,” Bradley kept glancing behind himself, hesitant, but he opened the door and let Chas in.
Standing between the killer and the door, Chas pulled no punches.
“I know that Tony Calizzi paid you to kill his girlfriend Shannon. You’re already going down for that,” the PI said in a matter of fact tone. “What I want to know is, was it you or Tony who killed Maria Markham?”
Bradley’s eyes darted toward the back door.
“Don’t even think about it,” Chas said mildly. “I’m faster and stronger than you, and I guarantee it wouldn’t end well for you. You’re going to jail. The question is, are you going to go to jail for one murder or two?”
Bradley Fostmeier started shaking like a leaf. “I don’t know who killed Maria. It wasn’t me, I liked her, and I don’t think it was Tony.”
His words trembled and his voice broke at the end.
“Then who?” Chas demanded, his eyes pure steel.
“I don’t know, honest I don’t. Please, you gotta believe me, I didn’t kill Shannon, at least… I didn’t mean to. Tony just wanted me to scare her a little bit, but she fought back and… it was an accident. I didn’t mean to, I swear…” Bradley’s words were choked with tears and fear.
Chas was about to respond, when the tone on his phone that signaled a breach at the cupcake shop went off.
“Don’t move,” he ordered, pulling out his phone.
Glad that he’d had the foresight to tuck a handful of industrial-strength zip ties in his pocket, he whipped them out after quickly shoving his phone back in his pocket. In short order, he secured Bradley at the wrists and ankles, then attached him to the grab bar in his bathtub, taking the young man’s phone out of his shirt pocket and putting it on top of the refrigerator before running out the door.
***
Missy was tired but happy. Beulah had been such a help ever since she started. Filling cupcake orders was easier, and Missy could actually get away, knowing that the shop was in good hands, when she needed to make a delivery. The woman had boundless energy, and Missy often found herself hoping that she’d be even half as vigorous at that age.
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