by Misty Simon
What was already complicated had just become convoluted. And I just wanted Gina off the hook for Craig’s murder. There was no way she had hurt Brenna, and if Burton even hinted that he thought Gina had, I might just do him some bodily harm. To hell with the consequences. Once everything was cleaned and soaking, Jeremy left and Gina said she just wanted to rest. Neither of them would tell me where they were going to dinner tomorrow. The dinner I was not invited to.
Since I had time on my hands after snagging a sandwich for lunch, and Max had gotten a work call that he was taking in my apartment, I decided to head down to the station.
Suzy sat at the front desk in the police station. The second she saw me come in the front door, she buried her head in a novel.
“Come on, now, Suzy. I’m not going to go away until you tell me where Burton is. I have info for him, and I’d like to see if he has any info he wants to share with me.”
She rolled her eyes as she set the steamy romance down. I approved of her tastes and might have to find a copy of the book for my own, if only for the hot guy on the cover.
“You know he’s not going to tell you anything,” she said. “He’s going to want to have the info coming in, not going out. Why do you have such a hard time understanding that? Burton is a private man and likes to solve things himself. And, well, you tend to step all over his toes.”
Censure was not a new thing to me. As always, I just barreled over it. “And yet I still want to see him, and he’s going to want to talk with me. Right about now would be good. I’m just saying.” Repeating myself was not my favorite thing, but she hadn’t moved, so I persisted. “I have info, and he’s going to want it, and I’m not leaving it at the desk.”
She did some hemming and some hawing of her own. I took note of the effective technique to add it to my repertoire for my car ride with Max as we looked for restaurants, and my brother, tomorrow night.
In the end, she called Burton in his office, and I literally heard him growling my name all the way at the front of the building. He could deal with it.
Straightening his tie and looking right at me, he made his way up the hallway. Maybe he had tried to hang himself with it when he heard my name. Who knew? And I didn’t care.
“You might as well come on back. I have ten minutes. You can have five of them. No more.”
Looking at the clock on the station wall, I wondered where he was going at twelve-thirty in the afternoon. Not that it was any of my business. Maybe it was lunch, but maybe it would have to be on hold once I told him everything I’d found out.
I mentally composed what I was going to say, and how I was going to say it, to cram it all into five minutes. Spitefully, I decided I’d watch the clock and at five minutes I’d stop totally and make him ask me nicely to continue.
After five minutes, I had just gotten to the point where Lily had announced that Michelle was mistaken about her widowhood.... And then I trailed off and didn’t say another word.
“That’s it? You can’t leave me hanging like that.”
“My five minutes are up. I don’t want to take any more of your time. I’m sure you have other, more important things to do than figure out the murder. Actually, I guess this really doesn’t have anything to do with the murder, and so I shouldn’t have brought it to you at all.” Would I ever live down the irresponsible person I’d been when I was Mrs. Walden Phillips the Third? Burton and I had had run-ins before, but the way he dismissed my ideas made me think I would never get through to him.
I expected a big sigh from him or the pinching of the bridge of his nose, maybe even rubbing his chin or covering his eyes. What I did not expect was for him to laugh out loud. A really long laugh that nearly shook the walls and definitely shook his shoulders.
“You’ve got me. You have totally got me. And it would make sense that you would be the one to best me. I knew years ago, way before Waldo, that you’d be a thorn in my side.”
“So glad to not disappoint.” I sank back into my chair, completely defeated.
“Now, don’t go getting all pouty. It’s meant as a compliment. Do you remember when you wanted the albino squirrel that ran around your backyard protected? You wanted color-accurate road signs posted so that people wouldn’t think it was a fly-away trash bag and accidentally run it over. It was so important to you that you started a petition and had over fifty signatures. I ordered a deer-crossing sign, then tacked a drawing of the squirrel to the front of the sign.”
God, that had been forever ago, maybe when I was about five. I was definitely precocious even at a young age. I still hadn’t figured out exactly why I had agreed to marry someone who had wanted to cut that part out of me, but I might never know.
“So, yeah, I knew what I was up against from the beginning. You just went astray with that jerk Waldo. Now that you’re back, I’m going to have to remember that the thorn in my side can also be what gets me back on the right track.”
I was quite honestly speechless. Who had taken my Chief Burton and how did we keep the old one from ever coming back?
“Not a word from you, huh? Okay then. Let’s do this. You write out all the things you know. Give it to Suzy, she’ll make a copy. I’ll look it over tonight, then tomorrow we’ll talk about it.”
I finally found my voice, though I had to dig hard for it. “Are you really serious, or are you just pulling my leg to get all the info? I’ll give this to you, then you won’t talk to me at all and fine me for obstruction of justice or framing someone, or something else that will get me out of your hair?”
He shook his head. “No, I’m really very serious. I can’t have you helping in an official capacity, but if you happen to bring the facts to me and we talk about it, then I guess that’s the way it’s just going to have to be. Although I have some restrictions and some rules.”
“I’m not going to like either one of those, am I?” I sat forward in the chair, no longer feeling the need to shrink away from his displeasure.
“Maybe, maybe not, but you have to follow them if you want to help. Look, I love Gina. I’ve known her since she was little, and Mama Shirley and I are cousins, which makes us blood. But I have to find the person who did this. I have to look at all avenues. This job is about serving the community, not favoring my relatives and looking the other way.”
This was not new to me. I had plenty of relatives who wouldn’t give me the easy way out. But that usually involved making the sauerkraut for New Year’s Day or poking fun at me when I finally left Waldo. This was murder, and Burton had to know that his cousin once removed would never do something like that. Frowning at me, he leaned forward, breaking into my thoughts. He must have said something I had missed in my musings.
“Sorry about that. Just trying to remember if I fed Mr. Fleefers today.”
“Right, anyway. Rule Number One, and this is a big one—you do not put yourself in harm’s way.”
I was quick to agree. “I can do that.” My last brush with a killer had not exactly been a picnic. I was in no rush to repeat the whole hiding-in-a-drop-bottomed coffin thing. I didn’t fear tight spaces, but I had feared I wasn’t going to be quick enough to escape before it became my real coffin.
“Number Two. You can bring me things you find, or happen to overhear, as a concerned citizen, but you are not an investigator. I do not want you violating other people’s rights by sneaking around in places you don’t belong or pretending to be something you’re not.”
I opened my mouth. Ignoring me, he kept right on talking over me.
“These are nonnegotiable, and this is on a case by case basis. I don’t need you out there being an amateur sleuth. You want to do something like that, then go join the police academy and get hired here like everyone else.”
I paused to think about the possibilities there.
He shook his head. “Don’t even do that. Your dad would kill me and your mother would take my head as a trophy. I remember when Dylan wanted to get into the police academy. Your parents absolutely for
bade it. That’s why he took up landscaping. Don’t tempt them to put you on lockdown, even if you are technically an adult.”
“Can I talk now?” I asked after a long pause where he just stared at me.
“I suppose.”
“I appreciate your vast belief in my accomplishments, but I can’t promise that I’m not going to ever get in trouble or fake something to get information. You guys do it by the book, but don’t you think that you have a unique opportunity here to let me do my thing and hand stuff over to you through the proper channels?”
After a pause, he shook his head again. “No, I don’t, because some of the stuff you think you might get could be thrown out in court.” He rapped his knuckles on his desk.
“I suppose that does make sense.” I still thought my idea was better, but I wasn’t going to argue about it. I had other, more important things to tell him. “So, it turns out that the widow isn’t actually the widow since she was never legally married to the dead guy.”
“What?” He rose halfway out of his chair, then settled back down with his arms crossed over his chest.
“Yep. Right after we got to the Bean I was talking to a woman named Lily Kellerton, who walked over to Michelle, slapped her, and told her that she was not going to inherit anything because it all belongs to this Lily, whom no one knows anything about.”
“Good Lord, so the plot thickens. This means I can’t talk to Michelle anymore about the deceased, or about anything having to do with him.”
“I don’t think she cares.” Wailing erupted from the lobby of the police station. “Or, I didn’t think she cared,” I said.
It was definitely Michelle. She must have gotten herself back together quickly since Jeremy had only driven her home an hour ago. Or at least together enough to drive back into town intent on chaos. Currently, she was throwing a tantrum of monumental proportions. Again.
* * *
I thought it might be a bad idea for Michelle to see me. I didn’t want to make her lose her mind even more, so I stayed back in Burton’s office after he very pointedly told me not to touch a single thing or the whole deal was off. I sat on my hands just in case as I listened to Michelle plead her case.
I almost felt sorry for her as she started the sob story of her non-widowhood. Almost. Until she slammed something into the counter and went on a tangent.
“I want that bitch, Gina, tested for those poisons. I want every cabinet and drawer searched in her store. I think she poisoned him. I think she put something in his coffee, something that killed him that night, and I want her taken out and hanged for her crimes against my husband.”
Who was going to be the first to tell her that they couldn’t talk to her anymore?
Dead silence for at least a minute as I leaned further and further forward in my chair. I could hear the clock tick down the hallway and the low hum of the computer on Burton’s desk.
“I’m very sorry, ma’am, but in light of recent discoveries we can’t talk to you about Craig Johnson’s case.”
“What? What did you say?” There was a scrambling noise, then something fell, and when Burton spoke next, he was out of breath.
“Do not come over the counter at me like that again. I will have you arrested for assault and then you can sit in my jail until I’m done with you.”
I moved around the desk to see if there was a clear visual shot to the front and found that there was a camera feed on Burton’s desk. I sat in his chair and leaned in to catch everything on the visual as well as hear everything from down the hall.
In Technicolor, he straightened his shirt, then ran a hand over his hair. “Now, you either stay over there or I will have someone restrain you. Are we clear?”
She snarled at him, her lip rising over her teeth.
“I’m going to take that as a ‘no we don’t understand each other’ and have my deputy come in unless you answer me in five, four, three, two—”
After throwing her hands up in the air, she tugged on the ends of her hair until they looked like they would break. “Fine! Fine, I’ll stop, but I want you to explain to me why you can’t talk to me. The man is my husband. I demand you let me know what you’ve been able to uncover.”
“I’m so sorry, Michelle, but the question of your status as the wife is a problem. Until we figure that out, I can’t share anything with you.”
“But I have the marriage certificate,” she screamed. The hands came off her hair and waved around in the air. She was going to hit something, or someone, whether she meant to or not, if she didn’t calm herself down. “You can’t take the word of some crazy woman who just walked into town. We’ve been married for years. Years! And now he’s dead, and you’re trying to take him from me.”
That was a far cry from the way she had been speaking when I cleaned her house the day before the funeral. Then, her determination to eradicate him overpowered any other emotion. She’d wanted to get rid of all his stuff just so she could redecorate and forget he’d ever existed. Maybe it was grief, but I doubted it. I was pretty sure she was possessive now because if he was dead, and they weren’t married, then she had nothing at all.
Burton stood with his arms crossed, not giving an inch. “Bring the certificate in. I’ll get a hold of this other paperwork, and we’ll see what we can do. I understand that’s not what you want, but it’s the way it has to be. I’m sorry.”
In the monitor, I saw Michelle’s head droop and her shoulders with it. What did she expect? She wasn’t the wife unless she could prove it. And not being the wife put her in a position of absolutely no power.
“I still think you might want to look at the apothecary cabinet that Gina has,” she said in a far more subdued voice. “The poison had to come from somewhere and there are a lot of different bottles in there that have been there for years. You don’t know what she could have done. She was mad enough to say she was going to boil him in coffee. Poisoning his coffee would have been easy enough for her.”
I ground my teeth in Burton’s office as he answered.
“I will certainly look into that. I know you’re concerned. We are as committed as possible to finding out what happened to him. I’m just not going to be able to discuss the details with you other than as a concerned citizen. Now, please go home. See what you can find in your paperwork. Bring it back to me so I can start one of my guys on a search. We’ll figure this out.”
“You’d better, and if it’s Gina, you’d better bring her down hard before I get to her.” The snarl came flying back, her head erect, the veins in her neck straining.
“I wouldn’t go bandying around threats like that if I were you.” Burton didn’t move, yet even I could tell his patience was thinning.
“You’re not me. I’m not even sure who me is anymore.” She buried her face in her hands, making me shake my head.
I probably should have felt sorry for her for possibly losing everything, even her name, but she was trying to throw my best friend under the bus for something she didn’t do. I couldn’t, let’s be honest, I wouldn’t, forgive her for that. She’d made her bed; now she’d have to snuggle on into the mess that was her life and leave Gina out of it. Something had to give here, and I knew precisely what I needed to do. I just had to wait for Michelle to leave. I didn’t think she’d want to see me at this point. I knew for a fact I didn’t want to see her.
* * *
After waiting ten minutes, watching the small monitor in Burton’s office, I quickly jumped out of his chair when he disappeared from the screen. He came into the office with narrowed eyes.
“You were awfully quiet back here. I didn’t see a single piece of you peeking around the corner to get a better view of what was going on.”
“Just staying out of the way like you told me to.” I threw out as much of an innocent vibe as I could muster. “And I could hear her all the way down the hall, so there was no need to come find out what she was saying.”
“Okay then. This poison thing. I’m going to have to look into
it.”
“I know. I’ll let Gina know.” My stomach hurt and my head started pounding.
“You can’t let her know anything, Tallie. I already sent one of the officers over to get into the cabinet. I can’t have her hiding anything because she had prior notice.”
Gina was going to be pissed, but there was nothing I could do about it at this point. “Okay, so do you really think that might be what happened? Someone took something out of the cabinet and dosed his coffee?”
Gina had an old roster of everything that was in there. As far as I knew she hadn’t opened the thing in years and many of the bottles were empty. It was just for show, after all. And Gina was the only one with the key that unlocked it. I needed to get to Gina now so we could start gathering our own evidence and finding names and reasons that the culprit would have been anyone but her. I couldn’t remember if she had any hemlock in that cabinet. I hoped she knew and could show very clearly that the bottle was empty and had been for years. What would it take for them to believe it wasn’t from her place if there was even a trace of the poison in an old glass bottle?
When I asked, Burton told me he couldn’t answer that. “Just report anything that’s out of the ordinary. I’d warn you to not go looking for stuff, but since it seems to find you regardless, I’d be an idiot to not have you tell me the things you learn.”
Not the most ringing of endorsements, but not a no either.
Okay, I’d have to go about this the old-fashioned way.
I left the police station, intending to call my cousin Matt, who was with the police, as soon as I got far enough to pull over and make a call. He’d tell me what he knew and then we could get on our way with looking for clues. But when I got to my car, Michelle was standing next to my passenger door looking as if the weight of the world was sitting on her shoulders.
It was so tempting to just get in the car and leave, to ignore the fact that tears streamed down her face and if she hunched her shoulders anymore her chin would be tucked into her belly button. It had been an extremely long day already and it was only two in the afternoon.
