Two Funerals and a Wedding (Domestic Bliss Mysteries Book 8)

by Leslie Caine

  Steve put his arm around Michelle’s shoulders. I was a little surprised that he didn’t resent her claim that Steve had started a rumor about her being abused.

  “They don’t prepare you for days like this in couples’ classes at church,” she said to him.

  Zoey had started crying and was now hanging onto her mother’s leg for dear life.

  “It’s okay, Peanut,” Michelle said to Zoey, stroking her hair tenderly. “Daddy will be home tomorrow.”

  “You know what I always say,” George said to Zoey. “When the going gets tough, the tough get ice cream.”

  “You never said that once, Dad,” Michelle replied.

  “Oh, yeah?” George bent down to Zoey’s height and said, “What does Grampa say about ice cream, Zoey?”

  “De tuh get I keem!” Zoey cried.

  “Oh, my gosh!” Michelle smiled. “She says that to me at least once a day. I never understood what she was saying!”

  “Yes,” Eleanor said, with a smile in her voice, “Your father is turning your two year old into a sugar fiend.”

  “But an articulate one,” George countered.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Sullivan said after a long silence as we drove back to Crestview.

  “I was thinking that this was one of the best times I’ve had with your family. During our trip to the ice cream shop, I mean, and then our dinner. Not the shootout.”

  “Funny. That’s what I was thinking, too.”

  “I was glad to see you had such a nice conversation with your father tonight.”

  “So was I. Relieved, even. My parents have forgiven each other. That made it easy for me to follow their lead.”

  He paused, and I watched as his face grew sad. “I miss Drew, though. And Amelia. Even though she came with us. She just wasn’t there. You should have known her when she was younger. She was my champion. Such a tomboy. A great athlete, popular, pretty. Then she had a psychotic break. Her sophomore year in high school. Started hearing voices.”

  Steve had told me this story before. “Was Amelia friends with Drew?” I asked.

  “She was nearly four years older than us, so no, not really. We weren’t even in high school yet. Drew started dating Michelle, though, a couple of years later. By then Amelia had pretty much been shut out by her peer group. She was in a private school that was better equipped to work within her parameters. She’s just…had such a lonely life.”

  “Maybe you should talk to your folks about helping her find a place of her own, as she likes to say.”

  “Yeah. I mentioned that to my dad just now. He agrees. We’re going to have to work toward convincing my mother, though.” We stopped at a light. “I guess I should take you to Audrey’s house now.”

  “She and Hildi will be fine on their own tonight. And it’s been a difficult day. Let’s go home.”

  Chapter 25

  The following morning was Monday. Five days until my wedding. Steve asked if we could stop by the office before dropping me off at Audrey’s. He wanted to check if a missing delivery of glassware for Parsley and Sage could have been shipped there by mistake. While we pulled into his space, we saw a box by the back door. “Huh. That’s probably it.”

  “Strange that they’d just leave out here, unprotected,” I said, “without notifying you.”

  “It was supposed to go to the restaurant. The delivery service must have screwed up.” We got out and headed toward the door. “It’s sure heavy enough,” he said as he lifted it.

  “I don’t even see a shipping label,” I noted.

  “Yeah. It doesn’t really feel like sets of glasses. It weighs too much.”

  “Maybe a distributor tried to drop in and left us a sampling of bricks.” I joked.

  “That’s probably it,” he said, playing along.

  Steve carried the box inside and put it on the oval-shaped cherry coffee table in the cozy corner of our office beside the exposed red-brick wall. We often sat here with new prospective customers to discuss our work and show them our portfolios. He and I stood looking at the mysterious box for a couple of seconds.

  “I hope it’s not a bomb,” I said.

  “Me, too. I don’t hear any ticking sounds, or smell any noxious fumes.” He removed an X-acto knife from his desk drawer, saying, “I’m going to take the risk and open it. You might want to duck and cover.”

  I chuckled a little. “Thanks, but I’ll stand right here beside you. We’ll both go up in flames. It will be terribly romantic.”

  “Maybe so, but that’s going to wreck our wedding photos.” He cut open the strapping tape and opened the box. We both peered down at the unexpected contents.

  “Huh,” Steve muttered. “Looks like bags of flour. And there’s a note in the top.” He pulled out a standard size sheet of copier paper. “‘Mr. Andrew Benson,’ he read, ‘Here’s the order you requested. Our finest quality flour.’”

  He handed me the note. It was signed, Mike Smith, CEO, India Flour Company. Stapled to it was a second sheet with the handwritten words: Ship to me, at this address, followed by Steve’s and my office address. “Does this look like Drew’s handwriting?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he replied after glancing at it. “This is the strangest packaging for flour I’ve ever seen.” He lifted one of the bags. It was in a 24-inch by 36-inch bag of extra-thick plastic with a label that read: All-purpose Flour and appeared to have been cut from an ordinary five-pound paper bag of flour, which was then glued onto the center of the bag. The plastic itself had been stenciled: ‘White Flour, India Flour Company’.”

  Steve was also examining one of the bags. As we looked at each other, I could tell that his thoughts were mirroring mine.

  “Is it my imagination, or does this look like one of those bags full of drugs from when a cop show on TV uncovers a smuggling operation?” I asked.

  We brought the box and all of its contents to the police station. Not surprisingly, we wound up waiting for well over an hour in an interrogation room at the police station, with some nice female uniformed officer checking in on us every so often to ask if she could get us more coffee. By the time O’Reilly returned to the room, closely followed by Linda Delgardio, we were impatient and eager to leave, but well-caffeinated.

  “The good news is only one bag contained anything but flour,” Detective O’Reilly told Steve and me. “The bad news is that one bag contained cocaine.” “Were you able to find out where it came from?” I asked. “Did you get any fingerprints, or anything?”

  “Not yet,” Linda Delgardio told me. She was playing second fiddle to O’Reilly today.

  “Not counting your and Mr. Sullivan’s prints,” O’Reilly hastened to add. “And none of the delivery services in the area have any record of the package. Needless to say, we couldn’t find any record of an India Flour Company. Is there any chance that this was a wedding present to you from Drew?”

  “Zero,” Steve replied.

  “Could this have been intended for Drew’s personal use?” I asked.

  O’Reilly shook his head. “It’s a hundred-grand’s worth of coke. It was a bizarre risk to leave it unguarded by your door. You almost have to believe it was a setup. Unless Drew made all the arrangements himself and died before his plan came to fruition.”

  That was very possible, I thought. I could picture Drew setting up this shipment with the intention of having it blend in with everything else for the new restaurant. He had likely assumed that he’d simply pick it up and claim it was specialty flour for some of Lucas’s gourmet recipes.

  “Drew dealing drugs with that much money changing hands could certainly give someone a strong motive for murder,” I said. A sorrowful look crossed Steve’s features, and I cringed. It was inescapably obvious that Drew had been dealing drugs. I didn’t need to rub it in.

  With little to gain by keeping us there, O’Reilly allowed us to leave. Steve went home to “sort through some things.” He was obviously deflated, and my statement hadn’t helped. Rather than let my
thoughts run me ragged, I decided to be proactive about looking into our “flour” shipment. I drove to Audrey’s to ask my self-proclaimed sidekick if she’d come with me to drop in on Lucas Leblanc and see what he had to say. His being miffed at Steve and me had worn off the moment we hired him to cook for Wednesday’s wake.

  Delighted with my invitation, Audrey insisted upon driving and was all smiles as we made the short drive to the Parsley and Sage. “I have decided to find inspiration in Eleanor’s affair with Fitz Parker,” she suddenly declared, just as she was unbuckling her seatbelt.

  “Wait. What? You’re going to have affairs because of Eleanor?”

  “No, silly! My point is that Eleanor was thirty years older than Fitz. That’s the same age-gap as Lucas and I have. He always comes on to me. Eleanor’s affair has made me realize that I can be flattered…and take advantage of his attraction.”

  “But, Audrey, think about how that particular story ends. Fitz blackmailed Eleanor and made her life miserable. Two men are dead, and it’s possible they’d both be alive today if it weren’t for her horrendous judgment to embark on that affair!”

  “Only if you look at it from the negative side, and if that’s where you choose to end Eleanor’s story—the way things are right now.”

  “Well, that is the end for Fitz and Drew. They don’t get to appear in Eleanor’s epilogue.”

  Audrey sighed. “I’m in no way implying that I am willing to have an affair with Lucas. I’m simply saying that I should enjoy the notion of having that possibility. Being self-confident can give you the upper hand. Lucas represents our opponent, Erin. We’re going to need an edge to prevail.”

  “Only if he’s guilty of playing a role in the murders.”

  She shook her head. “He’s the opponent because he won’t want to give us the information we need in order to solve this crime. He’s a hostile witness.” She glanced at me and wiggled her eyebrows. “I’m going to soften him up until he sings like a canary.”

  “Yeah, that’s just what we need,” I grumbled as we got out of her car. “A soft canary.” Audrey fell in step with me as I strode past her toward the door.

  “You mock me now, Erin, but you forget that, as a dancer, it was my forte to capture and command the audience’s attention. They would forget their concerns and hang on me every breath.” She swept past me as I opened the door for her. “In short, the man is toast.”

  I now had an image of Audrey dancing the calypso around Lucas, who’d been flattened into a human piece of toast.

  Lucas was in the kitchen when we entered. He’d been reasonably successful at restoring order and airing out the place after his near brush with arson. He greeted us warmly, dropped a handful of blueberries into his batter, and explained that he was happily working on a new dessert recipe. I couldn’t help but stare at his flour. Currently, at least, it was in a large rubber bin. Surely he would have noticed if he was putting cocaine into the batter instead of flour.

  Audrey wasn’t exactly dancing toward him, but her pointy-toed stride did indeed resemble that of a ballerina crossing the stage to strike a pose. “Lucas, my darling man,” she cooed, “whatever astonishing concoction are you in the midst of creating?”

  “Ah, ma cherie, this is a Blue Brûlée à la Lucas. My second batch.” He grabbed a spoon and dipped it into a creamy concoction nearby. “Here, mademoiselle, taste.”

  “Mmm. Heavenly,” she said, staring with bedroom eyes into his. “You can spin the most mundane ingredients into a delectable ambrosia for the gods.”

  I had to resist rolling my eyes at her hyperbole, but Lucas put his hands over his heart and bowed, clearly smitten. “Speaking of mundane ingredients,” I said, “did you order several bags of flour from the Indian Flour Company?”

  “I have never heard of such a place.” His expression and voice remained free of concern. If he was lying, he was doing an exceptionally good job. “Why do you ask?”

  “We need your help, Lucas,” Audrey quickly interjected. “This morning Erin found a bag of cocaine mixed among bags of flour at the door to her office. She has no idea who sent it, but it was addressed to Drew Benson, care of her business, Sullivan and Gilbert Designs.”

  “And…?” he said.

  “And I’m freaked out and want to know who sent it to me and why,” I explained.

  “Ah, yes,” Lucas replied with a nod. “The drug drop-off. That was a regular event in California. It is unusual that he used a friend’s business address. Normally he would simply send it to the restaurant. But it always came in different, oh, let us say, disguises. It might be powered sugar one time, or carpet deodorant the next. I told the officers when they were asking me about Drew’s death.”

  “I’m surprised they didn’t arrest you for not reporting the crime in California, the first time a shipment arrived,” I said.

  He widened his eyes as if surprised by my statement. “I didn’t know for certain that they were drugs. Drew told me that the powder was to assist building big muscles. I pretended that I believed him. Drew would sell the goods, then get another shipment. Two, three, or four times a year. I know nothing more. Whatever we did outside of the restaurant was never a topic for us to discuss.”

  “You knew he was dealing drugs…yet you entered into a fifty-fifty partnership with him for this restaurant?”

  “He told me that he was done with selling his muscle powder,” Lucas said with a shrug. “I knew nothing about those transactions. I was happy to keep it that way, and happy that he had ended it. Yet, now, here it has come around again. It seems he had gotten as far away as he could only to find that he had gone in a full circle.”

  “Did you tell the police all of this?” I asked.

  He made a wavering gesture with one hand. “All that I know is that Drew had a habit he could not support, and he was getting farther and farther into debt. I told the police already. I think he was going out of his head. I think he killed Fitz Parker, then took his own life.”

  “Did Drew say anything to you about killing Fitz, or considering suicide?”

  “No, but that is what the police will figure out. That is, I am certain, where the evidence will point.”

  In my dismay at Lucas’s confounding story about Drew’s shipments, I’d forgotten all about Audrey’s presence. I met her gaze and saw that she looked unhappy. She would have enjoyed being the one to get this information—or, more accurately, this informed opinion—from Lucas. I stepped back and gave her an encouraging gesture to signal that she should take over the conversation.

  “I don’t blame you for a second,” Audrey said in sugary tones. “We can all see how dangerous it is to concern ourselves with other people’s…white powder of questionable origins. But why do you think Drew would have wanted to kill Fitz?”

  “Perhaps they were competitors for customers.” He gave Audrey a sideways leer as he smoothed his mustache. Her flirtation might have gone too far. “People have their strange habits. Nothing that one puts up one’s nose compares to a good bottle of Beaujolais in front of a fireplace.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Audrey said.

  “Shall I open a bottle?” Lucas asked, looking first at Audrey, then at me.

  “No, thanks,” I answered quickly. “I’m strictly an after-five p.m. drinker.”

  “And I’ll take a rain check,” Audrey replied, “which hopefully won’t need to be cashed in until after the wedding. We’re hoping for clear skies.”

  As I stood up, I spotted an ashtray below the bar. It had a single cigarette butt in it, with that salmon-colored lipstick Aunt Bea often wore. The sight clicked in my head. I remembered now seeing that ashtray with its lone cigarette butt on Friday when Lucas had been mopping up gasoline. Lucas, I realized, had followed my gaze. “Was Bea Quinn here recently?” I asked.

  “Yes, she was. I called her after last week’s debacle with my foolish brush with arson. Considering that I want to make a go of it with the restaurant, I needed to talk about money with her.�
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  “So…we just missed her then?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Was she in favor of opening Parsley and Sage in spite of everything?” I asked.

  “She was. She’s going to continue to be an investor, I am happy to say.” His smile looked a bit plastic.

  We said our goodbyes and left, but not without Audrey and Lucas exchanging some flirtatious banter.

  As we got into Audrey’s car, she immediately turned to head south, opposite our house. “We’re going to drop in on Aunt Bea,” she said, “auspiciously so that I can see her wine cellar for myself.”

  “Good idea.”

  “I have a good sense of smell, and I don’t believe that we’d just missed Aunt Bea. There wasn’t a whiff of smoke lingering.”

  “I’m pretty sure that cigarette butt has been there since Friday. Maybe Aunt Bea had poured the gasoline, not him.”

  “I suppose that’s possible,” Audrey said with a nod. She flashed a smile at me. “See? We make such a good team. If the design business starts to dry up for you, we could call ourselves ‘Gilbert and Munroe Detective Agency’.”

  “If that ever happens, I would relocate our design business with Steve, not change professions. But I appreciate the top billing.”

  She shrugged. “It just sounds better than ‘Munroe and Gilbert’ somehow. But you’re welcome.”

  Aunt Bea answered her door with a big smile. “Well if it isn’t Audrey and my favorite honorary niece,” Bea said as she ushered us inside. “What a pleasant surprise!”

  “We happened to be out and about, and I was just saying to Erin that I haven’t gotten the chance to see the fruit of her labor yet.”

  “Nor to taste the fermented fruit to which it was devoted,” Bea rejoined. “Shall we select something?”

  “I already had to decline a glass of red wine recently,” Audrey said. “I can’t hardly say no twice in a row. It seems the powers that be are determined to have me be blotto today.”

  “In that case, we’ll just have a little Pinot Grigio,” Bea said. She looked at me. “Should I make it three glasses?”