Twice Dipped Murder

by Daphne DeWitt

  I looked down at Mayor McConnell. “You don’t have to come with me,” I said.

  Still, his lean body was tensed, and he began growling as he lunged his body forward, toward the shop.

  A warm feeling moved through me as I followed. He might not have been the most easygoing dog in the world, but the truth was, he was there when the chips were down, like any good civic leader.

  Mayor McConnell reached the door before me but, since he lacked the key (or fingers) necessary to open the door, he had to wait until I caught up.

  I pulled the keys out of my pocket and tried to be as quiet as possible as I slid the correct one in the back door. I pulled it open quickly and threw the lights on, yelling, “Stop right there!”

  There was no one to stop though. Looking around, I saw the shop had barely been touched. Everything was in the same place. Nothing had been disturbed aside from three table in the far left corner which had been flipped over on their sides.

  The flashlight lay in the center of the room, and the door was still closed. If the person who broke in here had left in a hurry, that would mean they would have dropped the flashlight, and closed the door behind them but not bothered to set the tables upright. That didn’t seem likely. What had probably happened was that I’d been mistaken about the person leaving and, when they heard me at the door, they hid.

  Of course, if that was true, it would mean the person was still in here.

  My heart sped up, and I considered turning around to leave. The lights were all on now. All I had to do was stand at the window and watch and wait for Darrin to get here. If the thief went running through the door, I would get a full view of them as they made a break for it.

  I didn’t have to go through any of that though. Mayor McConnell started growling again and headed toward the walk-in freezer. As he did, I saw the door was slightly ajar.

  Pushing it open with his snout, he revealed the interior, as well as the woman standing in the center of it with her hands over her head.

  Wanda Sulkin stared back at me, dressed all in black with tears streaming down her face.

  “I can explain,” she sobbed. “I can explain everything.”

  19

  Darrin stared down at me as he tapped his foot against the tile of the pie shop. His expression said everything about the anger he was feeling.

  “Do I need to tell you I’m upset?” he asked, his nostrils flaring as he huffed.

  “No,” I answered in a decidedly chirpy voice. “Something tells me that’s not going to stop you though.”

  “I told you not to come in here,” he said, shaking his head. “You promised me you would wait until I got here.”

  “Actually, you asked me to promise you, and then I hung the phone up without really committing to it one way or the other,” I clarified, wincing as I saw the agitation inside of him grow. “Which I now see is not better, but hey, everything is okay.”

  “And what if everything wasn’t okay, Rota?” he asked, lifting his hands in the air. “You had no idea who was in this shop. For all you know, it could have been a man with a gun. You could have walked in here and gotten yourself killed.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” I quipped, trying to lighten the mood.

  “Don’t,” he said flatly, breathing heavy and pointing a finger at me. “Don’t do that. Do you have any idea what would have happened if I’d have come in here and found you dead on the floor? You have to treat yourself better than this and, if you can’t, then at least be considerate of the people who care about you.”

  My heart sped up as I took in his words. I was always considerate of the people who cared about me. At least, I tried to be. The thing was, I hadn’t known until this moment that he was among them. It was more than that too. The way he spoke about it, the tone of his voice and the determination in his eyes, hinted that not only did he consider himself among the people who cared about me, it might have suggested he thought of himself as one of the most important.

  A wave of warmth ran through me but, with it, also guilt. It was true. I should have been more considerate. It was something I needed to work on.

  “I’m sorry,” I said carefully, sighing loudly. “I shouldn’t have done that. It’s just-”

  “You can’t help yourself,” he answered, finishing my thought. “I get it. You have a reputation to protect as the stubbornest and foolhardy person in the world. Just be careful, okay?”

  “You too,” I said, looking over at Wanda.

  She was sitting in a far booth, nursing a cup of coffee I had given her and waiting for Darrin to come and question her. If that didn’t sound like the harshest punishment for someone who had broken into a business in the middle of the night and then been caught red-handed by the business’ former owner and her reincarnated dog, that was because it wasn’t.

  Wanda dissolved into a puddle of tears when I approached her and, I figured rather than question her and give her a chance to win me to her side, I’d wait until Darrin got here and glean what I could from his questions.

  Also, she looked like she could use the coffee and I just didn’t have it in me to be mean to widows, even if they had technically just done something illegal.

  “She doesn’t look very dangerous,” Darrin said, looking past me to Wanda.

  “No,” I answered. “She actually looks heartbroken.”

  “I suppose that’s starting to make a little bit of sense,” Darrin answered. “Regardless of what she was doing here, she has just lost the love of her life. That’s not an easy thing to get past.”

  Darrin’s eyes sort of wandered the way they did whenever he alluded to his past and the loss of his wife. I wanted to reach out, grab his hand, and give it a squeeze, letting him know I was there for him. This was business though, and I knew Darrin well enough to know he wouldn't appreciate that sort of intrusion.

  Instead, I asked him a pertinent question. “Does that mean you don’t think she had anything to do with what happened?” I asked, remembering the suspicious way in which he acted around her before.

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” she answered plainly. “A person can still be heartbroken over something even if they’re the one responsible for it. I’d wager it might even make things harder. That being said, I do have a record of her phone call to the police station the day before Lionel fell. If she was going to murder her husband, I don’t see why she would make it look like a suicide and then go through all the trouble of making it look like a murder again.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I agreed. “But Darrin, if you have a record of Wanda calling, why didn’t you look into it.”

  “We did,” Darrin answered. “One of the deputies went out to the hotel, but Lionel refused to speak with him.” Darrin shook his head. “Said everything was fine.”

  “Why would he say that?” I wondered, quirking my mouth to the side. If someone was threatening him, why would he push his only lifeline away? It didn’t make any sense.

  “I’m not sure,” he answered. “But I’m going to find out.”

  “We’re going to find out,” I answered, grinning as I looked up at him.

  “Like I said, stubborn,” he answered, smiling himself.

  We turned and made our way over to Wanda. There was still time for one more question from me though.

  “I can’t help but notice Angie’s not here. Does that mean you didn’t inform her about what was going on?”

  “It means I still can’t trust her,” he answered. “It also means that her car wasn’t in the driveway of the apartment she’s renting when I passed by.”

  “At eleven o’clock at night?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. “Is that normal for her?”

  “Is it normal for anyone in Second Springs?” he asked. “It doesn’t matter. One mystery at a time, Rita.”

  I sighed. That gut feeling that all of this was somehow connected reappeared in my stomach. I pushed it aside though. We had a much more pressing issue to deal with first.

  �
�Are you going to arrest me?” Wanda asked, looking over at Darrin as we settled in front of her.

  “That depends on what you tell me now and whether or not the owner of this establishment decides to press charges,” he said.

  “I didn’t mean any harm,” Wanda said, looking over at me desperately.

  “I believe you,” I said, speaking more to instinct than evidence. “But I don’t own this place.”

  At least, not anymore.

  Her face fell.

  “The lady who does is really nice though.”

  “Rita,” Darrin said. “That’s enough. There’s no need in speculating what Peggy will do. It’s well within her legal rights to have her carted off to jail for this.” He leaned closer. “And she just might do that if I don’t advise her against it.”

  Ah. He was playing a scare tactic. It would no doubt be effective, though I personally thought it was unnecessary. Wanda was dying to talk, and I was confident enough in both Darrin and I for us to know whether or not her story held water.

  “I didn’t want to steal anything, and I certainly didn’t want to hurt anyone if that’s what you’re thinking,” she started, taking deep breaths that were probably meant to calm her down.

  They failed.

  “I only wanted to retrieve something.”

  “Something from the pie shop?” I asked, looking from Wanda to Darrin. “What could you possibly have here?”

  “Something I left here the night my husband died. Something I wasn’t supposed to have,” she answered.

  “Mrs. Sulkin, I suggest you start speaking in full sentences, and I also suggest they consist of the truth,” Darrin said, his voice terse.

  “The day before he died, the day I called your police department, Lionel gave me a flash drive to hold,” she answered.

  “A flash drive?” I asked. “What was on it?”

  She shrugged. “I have no idea. I’m not good with computers and, even if I was, I think I would have been afraid to look.”

  “And why would you be afraid of a flash drive, Mrs. Sulkin?” Darrin asked, pulling up a seat across the table from her and sitting down.

  Judging by the way tears began to form anew in Wanda’s eyes, it was the perfect question. It cut right to the heart of what she was doing here.

  “Because I didn’t want to know what was on it, Sheriff?” she said, hanging her head.

  I sat down too, looking over at Wanda with a mix of heartbreak and concern.

  “Why, Wanda?” I asked. “What were you afraid you were going to see?”

  She lifted her head, wiping away the moisture under her eyes.

  “Last year, my husband went against my advice and made some investments,” she said. “They weren’t smart investments, Ms. Redoux. Lionel might have been successful, but he wasn’t a businessman by nature. He just didn’t have it in him.” She took a deep breath. “When those investments blew up in his face, it left us without much money to speak of. That was fine by me. I grew up in a poor household, Ms. Redoux. So long as we had a meal on the table and a song in our hearts, we were doing well.” She looked down again. “Lionel was different though. He’d become accustomed to the finer things in life. He wanted me to have nice things, and so he went to work trying to get them.”

  “Work how?” Darrin asked. “He picked up extra dog shows?”

  “That’s what I thought at first too,” she answered. “But the money was too good. It came too quickly.” She shook her head. “I knew he was doing something bad, but he was finally happy again. He was finally himself. So I looked the other way. I didn’t ask him any questions and pretended to believe him when he told me everything was on the up and up.”

  I pulled a tissue from my purse and handed it to her. She dabbed her eyes.

  “When he gave me that flash drive and told me to keep it safe, I knew something was wrong. I asked him what was on it, but he lashed out at me. He said it was the proof he needed, and he refused to tell me anything else.” She began crying harder. “I let this happen. I turned a blind eye to what my husband was doing, and I let it get him killed.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the police any of this?” Darrin asked, keeping his voice firm.

  “Because all I have left of him is his memory, Sheriff Dash,” Wanda answered. “With that flash drive, you’ll uncover something about my husband that I don’t want to know, that I can’t ‘un’ know.” She shook her head. “Then the whole world will know too. It’ll ruin the only part of him I have left, and I couldn’t bear that.” She looked over at me. “That’s why I came to you, Ms. Redoux. I figured you might be able to find answers even without all the evidence, given the reputation you have in this area. And, when you invited me to this place, I took the opportunity to hide the drive. While you were getting pie for us, I taped it under one of the tables in that corner.” She pointed to where the tables had been flipped over. “I figured it would safer here, given the scrutiny I’d be under after what happened to Lionel. I started thinking though. What if you find it? Then what? So I decided I needed to destroy it but, to do that, I needed come back here the way I came,” she said.

  “After hours,” I finished. Her story seemed both farfetched and realistic in a way that can only happen when someone is in shock, when their mind is so shaken by recent events that the outlandish and the everyday can coexist in the same space.

  I understood that because I lived in that space for a long time after I came back. If I was being honest with myself, part of me still did. So I believed what Wanda had to say because, in a similar situation, I might have done the same thing.

  “But it’s gone. I looked through all the tables in that corner and found nothing,” she said, shaking her head. “Someone took it.”

  “How?” Darrin asked. “Who would have known where it was? Who even knew It existed.”

  “I can’t answer the first question, Sheriff,” she said. “But as to who knew the drive existed, I’m guessing it’s the same person that forced my husband off the roof that night.”

  20

  “Are you nervous?” Peggy asked, walking toward the annex building with boxed pies up to her neck.

  My mind was still spinning from the night before, and my thoughts had been firmly placed on the whereabouts and contents of that flash drive ever since I found out about its existence. So, when Peggy asked me that question, naturally, my mind went right back to it.

  “A little,” I admitted. “I just can’t figure out what on earth would be on that stupid drive? I mean, it would have to be proof of whatever Lionel was doing to make money. Otherwise, I don’t see why he’d have stashed it with Wanda, or why someone would have come into the pie shop and stolen it from right under our noses. You know what else is weird? Darrin looked into things and said that Lionel’s accounts were cleaned out a few days before he died. So either he blew the money on something before he came off the roof, or someone stole it.”

  “Right,” Peggy answered uneasily. “I actually meant about the dog show. You know, since you’re in it and since it’s starting today.”

  “Oh,” I said, shaking my head and feeling like a dolt. Since all that had happened with Wanda, I hadn’t given the Southern Skies Dog Competition even a millimeter of room inside my mind. Ironic, seeing as how heavily I guilted Mayor McConnell about it last night.

  ‘Where’s your dog anyway?” she asked, looking over at me as the pies in her hand wobbled like the sweetest tower anyone had ever seen.

  “I sent him with my-with Mr. Clarke,” I said, narrowly missing another ‘my dad’ incident which, admittedly had become a less frequent thing lately. That was both a good and a bad thing, I guess. It meant that I looked like an idiot less of the time (at least, for that reason) but there was also a very real and primal sadness that came with the truth that I wasn’t calling my dad my dad as much anymore.

  It was like I was moving on, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

  “Mr. Clarke really loves Mayor McConnell,” Peggy mused, blis
sfully free of the weighty things I had just been contemplating.

  “He seems to,” I said, smiling politely and holding the door open for Peggy as we entered the annex. “Which is good, I guess. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed or not, but my dog is kind of picky when it comes to, well, everything.”

  Peggy chuckled loudly. “He’s definitely a prima donna, but after today, at least he’ll have an excuse.” She tried to shrug, but the sheer amount of pies in her arms weighed her down too much. “He’ll be a show dog after all.”

  “Oh gosh,” I answered. “I hadn’t thought about that. What if his head gets even bigger?”

  “You’ll have to start looking for a bigger house.” She was nearly howling with laughter. This was so good. Back when I was Rita Clarke, making Peggy laughing like this was an everyday occurrence for me. We got along like peas and carrots back then. Which wasn’t to say we were at odds now. Peggy had taken me into her professional life and allowed me to move into the extra apartment she owned.

  Still, it wasn’t the same. The effortless nature of our friendship had died when I did, and it was only times like this when I felt like there was even a chance I’d get to have it back one day.

  “You never answered my question,” she said, making her way to the table in the corner. It was just as decorated as the other day, but the tablecloth and décor was completely different, meaning Peggy had gotten here earlier and redid things.

  She was a consummate professional like that.

  “As to whether or not I’m nervous?” I asked, scrunching my nose. “Not really. I mean, people train for this kind of thing for years. I’m not even sure what I’m supposed to do here. The only reason I’m even involved is because Mayor Hester thinks I might be able to help her change the narrative.”

  “If only she knew,” Peggy smiled, setting the pies down and taking a well-earned sigh of relief.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” I asked, opening the boxes and helping her set the table up.