Thin Crust Killers

by Chris Cavender

  “What do you two want?” Trent Caldwell asked when we walked into the Timber Talk’s office. There was no love lost between our families, and I wasn’t exactly sure how we were going to get his cooperation in our investigation, but Maddy and I had to at least give it a try.

  “We want to settle this ridiculous feud,” I said. “I don’t even remember how it got started, do you?”

  Trent scratched his chin. “Not offhand, no.”

  “Then don’t you think it’s time we put it to rest, once and for all?”

  Maddy, bless her heart, was keeping quiet, for once in her life, and letting me handle it.

  “I don’t know,” he said as he looked around his office. It was a one-man newspaper, if a sheet that had more ads than news counted as such. “It’s gotten to be some kind of tradition around here.” Trent was in his late forties, his hair thinning and his waistline expanding.

  “Some traditions we could all live without,” I said.

  Trent shrugged. “Maybe so, but I’m kind of busy right now working on a special project. Can we bury the hatchet later?” Trent looked pretty rough, as if he hadn’t been getting much sleep. Or perhaps he had a guilty conscience about something.

  “It really can’t wait,” my sister said as she held a flyer in the air. “We’re here about the auction, and we don’t have a whole lot of time.” So much for my sister’s silence.

  “I’ve already heard about it,” he said as he shuffled some papers, then he took out an order sheet. “So, how large an ad would you like to take out? I’m thinking a full page will do the trick.”

  I smiled at him and said, “That’s so generous of you. We were hoping for a simple announcement, but if you want to contribute an entire page, we’d be most appreciative.”

  His pencil suddenly hit the counter. “Ladies, as much as I like to support the community, I can’t just donate my services.”

  Maddy frowned. “Why not? Everyone else is. Thanks anyway. We’ll go to Charlotte or Hickory and see what they’ll do for us. It should make an interesting story, how our local paper wouldn’t support our community fundraiser. I guess you don’t want to bury the past after all.”

  She opened the door, and I turned to follow her out. We had no intention of blackmailing Trent with the news story, at least I didn’t. Who knew what my sister was up to?

  Fortunately, we didn’t have to find out.

  “Hold on, I didn’t say I wouldn’t help out. How about an eighth of a page? That will make a nice announcement.”

  “How about half?” I countered.

  “Can we agree on a quarter-page ad?” he asked, clearly losing his desire to haggle.

  Maddy was ready to press him harder, but we were there for more than just a free ad, so I decided to graciously accept his offer.

  “A quarter-page would be perfect,” I said.

  Maddy rolled her eyes slightly at me, but I ignored it, much like I normally did.

  “We’d like this flyer reproduced, if you can do it.”

  “I can do anything,” Trent said as he took the flyer from me.

  As he started working up the job, I said, “I was kind of surprised you didn’t print a newspaper this morning about the bank robbery. What happened? Was there too much competition?”

  Trent shrugged. “I know the big papers from Charlotte and Raleigh covered the story, but they don’t have the insights I do into our town. I plan on running a special edition as soon as I can finish writing it up. That’s the project I’ve been working on. I was up most of the night.”

  “Do you have any scoops the police don’t have?” Maddy asked.

  “I’ve found out a few things most folks don’t realize.”

  “Are you going to mention that Hank was working as a private investigator on the side?” I asked.

  Trent’s head snapped around to look at me. “How’d you hear about that?”

  “Word gets around,” I said. “I take it you already knew that.”

  Trent nodded as he tapped the eraser of his pencil like it was a bomb detonator. “Of course I did. Hank did some work for me from time to time. He could do more digging than I could around town without looking suspicious, so I used him as my anonymous source whenever I could. I’ll miss having him at the paper. He was a real asset.”

  “Did he ever investigate you?” Maddy asked.

  I wasn’t sure about her decision to ask such a straightforward question, but his response to it surprised me.

  Trent started laughing, and when he finally calmed down, he said, “Why would he investigate me? My life’s an open book.”

  “I heard he had files on quite a few folks in town,” Maddy said.

  “Well, if he had one on me, it would most likely be empty.”

  I nearly told him it was, but I managed to bite my tongue in time. There was nothing else to ask, so Maddy and I thanked him and left, stopping to put a poster in his window on the way out.

  “That explains just about everything,” Maddy said once we were outside.

  “It was a little too much, and told too well, don’t you think?”

  “You don’t believe him?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He seemed to have his answers ready for us before we even asked our questions. Did he rehearse them for us, or for Kevin Hurley?”

  “I’m not sure, now that you mention it,” Maddy said. “My, you’ve gotten cynical over the years, haven’t you?”

  I shook my head. “I like to think I’ve gotten some clarity. It used to surprise me when people lied to me. Now I almost expect it.”

  “You really do need that vacation, Sis,” Maddy said. “You’re getting too jaded. As a matter of fact, you’re sounding a little bit like me.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Who’s next on our list? Do we want to tackle Bailey Bradshaw, Doc Parsons, or Missy Plum?”

  “I’m not all that eager to grill any of them,” Maddy said. She glanced at her watch, then she said, “We’ll never get in to see Doc Parsons, not without an appointment.”

  “We can always deliver a free pizza to his office,” I said. “We’ve done it in the past to drum up some business, and it might get us an audience with him. It should at least get our foot in the door.”

  “Okay, how about Missy and Bailey?”

  “Let’s tackle Missy first,” I said. “Her dance studio’s close, and we might catch her if we’re lucky. I know she teaches after school, so even though the kids got out early, I’m guessing that her hours didn’t change.”

  “Missy it is,” Maddy said.

  We went to Missy’s dance studio, which really wasn’t much more than an old storefront that she’d converted into a place to teach jazz, tap, and modern dance, with a beginner’s ballet class thrown into the mix.

  “I’m surprised she doesn’t add ballroom dancing to her class list,” Maddy said as we walked in.

  Missy was standing near the door, though we hadn’t seen her at first. “As a matter of fact, I’ve got a class tomorrow night. You should come,” Missy said. She was young and thin, her complexion pale enough to complement her light blonde hair.

  “We’d love to,” I said, “but we work evenings.”

  “And afternoons, too,” Missy said. “I don’t know how you do it.”

  “It’s pizza. What’s not to love?” Maddy said.

  Missy frowned. “Sorry, I never much cared for it.”

  “Hey, not everyone has to eat at my place,” I said. “I’m not offended by it.”

  “And not everyone has to dance. So, if you two aren’t here to sign up for a class, what brings you by?”

  “We were wondering if you’d like to donate something for our auction,” I said. “It’s to raise money to honor folks in our community who have fallen in public service.”

  “I suppose I could donate a class or two,” Missy said, slightly frowning as she spoke. Clearly she wasn’t all that excited by the prospect, but it was a tough request to turn down, and my sister and I were fully awar
e of that fact.

  “That would be great,” I said, forcing my brightest smile. “We were thinking that the first person who should be honored is Hank Webber. What do you think?”

  “He died in a bank robbery. How is that serving the community?” So, it seemed Missy wasn’t all that big a fan of Hank’s. She didn’t even try to disguise her feelings about the man.

  I wanted to say something in Hank’s defense, but I held back my temper. I knew I had to speak before Maddy could say something biting, though. “Hank was protecting citizens who were at the bank,” I said. “We think that’s worthy enough.”

  “I suppose so,” Missy said.

  Maddy peered over Missy’s shoulder and looked out the window. “There’s Doc Parsons. Is he coming by for a lesson?”

  Missy raced toward the window, but after a second, she said, “I don’t see him.”

  “Sorry, it’s my mistake. I thought it was him, but it must have been somebody else. Do you know the doctor very well?”

  “Brad and I are just friends,” Missy said, as she tried to put an air of distance in her voice.

  “He’s a nice-looking man,” Maddy said.

  “There’s a great deal more to him than that. He has a tremendous heart,” Missy said. She scanned the sidewalk outside again, then said, “Ladies, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a class to prepare for. Put your poster in the window, and leave a few flyers on the desk. That’s the best I can do.”

  We were clearly being dismissed, and once we were out on the sidewalk, I turned to Maddy and said, “Pretending to spot Doc Parsons on the sidewalk was as subtle as slapping her in the face with a dead fish.”

  “It worked, didn’t it? Did you see her expression?”

  “I have to admit, she looked awfully eager to see him.”

  Maddy shook her head. “I still can’t believe it’s true. Can you picture the two of them together? It’s hard to imagine.”

  “Be that as it may, I don’t think we can cross her name off the list just yet, do you?”

  “If anything, she moved to the head of the line in my book. Do we go tackle the good doctor now?”

  “No,” I said. “We’ll drop a pizza off at Doc Parsons’ office later, but we still have time to see Bailey.”

  “I don’t know how we’re going to handle that. We can’t exactly ask him to donate insurance coverage, can we?”

  “There’s got to be something we can ask for,” I said. “Does he have any hobbies that you know of?”

  “I don’t know,” Maddy admitted. “Instead of standing here on the sidewalk guessing, why don’t we just ask him?”

  “My sister, the champion of the direct approach.”

  She laughed. “Is there a better way to get information than requesting it? It’s amazing how much people will tell you if you just have the courage to ask them.”

  “That’s a point.”

  “So, let’s go talk to Bailey.”

  “We might as well,” I said. I hated grilling Bailey, but it wasn’t the first time one of my unofficial investigations put me at odds with my friends. In the end, the truth was all that mattered, and if that meant hurt feelings and burned bridges, I just had to realize that sometimes it couldn’t be helped.

  We found Bailey in his office. His secretary wasn’t at her station out front, and he was standing in front of his desk, holding a putter and practicing his stroke as he attempted to get a golf ball into a coffee cup lying on its side. From the balls absent from the cup—but neatly surrounding it—it appeared that he hadn’t met with any success so far. Bailey had been rail-thin and an athlete in high school, but that had been years ago, and about twenty pounds ago. He still wasn’t chubby, but it was pretty obvious that was a battle he fought every day.

  “You caught me goofing off,” he said with a grin as we walked in. “It’s my major weakness getting in some practice when things are slow around here. Is there anything wrong, ladies?”

  “Why do you ask that?” I said.

  “You’re here during working hours, so I doubt you just dropped in to chat.”

  I smiled. “Actually, we close for an hour each day now between lunch and dinner, and today we’re using our free time to put up posters and hand out flyers for the charity auction we’re sponsoring.”

  He nodded and took one of the flyers I offered him. “I thought I knew everything going on around town. Why haven’t I heard about this until now?”

  “It’s being thrown together at the last minute,” I admitted. “Maddy and I know how strong your sense of community and civic duty is, and we didn’t want to leave you out.” It wouldn’t hurt to stroke his ego a little, though I doubt Maddy could have managed it. “We were wondering if you had anything to contribute.”

  After a few moments, he said, “I guess I could offer a free appraisal of someone’s insurance needs.”

  Before I could turn it down, he added, “Though I’m sure no one would bid on it. It lacks flair, doesn’t it?” He swung his putter back and forth, then he said, “I’ve got it. How about if I offer a round of golf with me at the country club over in Hickory? I could throw in lunch, too. It might be fun.”

  “That’s a great idea,” I said, happy to have anything we could use. There was no use putting off my main reason for being there, though. I had to get Bailey to respond to what we’d found in his file, but I couldn’t be as blunt as my sister preferred. “But we wouldn’t want to be too much trouble. There’s one thing, though. Since this is for charity, we’re doing everything we can to keep it respectable. Don’t a lot of people gamble when they golf?”

  Bailey smiled. “Sure, there’s no harm in placing a little wager every now and then. It keeps the game interesting, and who gets hurt?”

  “I’m sure some folks get carried away with it, though, don’t they?” I was trying to press without actually appearing to have an agenda, but it was tougher than I thought it would be.

  “Probably, but that’s likely to be true with anything, isn’t it?”

  Maddy, clearly tired of my subtle tack, asked, “Has it ever happened to you, Bailey?”

  He was a decent actor, but I still managed to catch the quick glimpse of fear registering on his face before he managed to bury it. “Me? Why do you ask, Maddy? Have you heard something?”

  “No, but I am curious,” she said. “I’m just making conversation.”

  “Well, I don’t see that there’s a whole lot to talk about there, so we should change the subject.” Though he was still keeping a friendly tone to our discussion, there was an edge to it now that told me he was finished talking about gambling with us. That left one more topic we had to cover while we were there.

  “What did you think about what happened to Hank Webber?” I asked.

  “It’s a real shame,” he said abruptly. It was pretty clear he was tired of talking to us. “I’d love to chat more, but I’ve got an important telephone call to make. If you’ll excuse me, it was nice of you to drop by.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “What do you make of that?” Maddy asked as we went back to the pizzeria.

  “He lost his interest in talking to us pretty fast after we mentioned gambling and Hank’s murder, didn’t he?”

  “I thought he was going to take us both by the arm and throw us out,” she said. “We definitely hit a nerve there.”

  “At least one,” I replied.

  “So, are we any further along in our investigation than we were?”

  “Honestly, I’m more suspicious of everyone we talked to today than I was before,” I replied. “I’m not quite sure what to do next.”

  “Then it’s a good time to get back to work. Don’t worry, we’ll find out what happened. We can’t give up now.”

  “I’m not planning to,” I said. “I just wish it were a little easier.”

  “If it was, then everyone would be doing it,” Maddy said.

  “Somehow I doubt that’s true.”

  She shrugged. “Sorry, but it�
��s the best I can do.”

  As we headed back to the Slice, I said, “Let’s think about what we do know. Physically, any one of them could have robbed the bank, though I’m not sure Trent Caldwell could pull it off. The descriptions we got were that the robber was skinny, and while Bailey might be mistaken for someone thin, Trent’s quite a few pounds shy of that.”

  “Unless he wore loose clothing, or had a girdle on.”

  “A girdle? Seriously?” My sister wasn’t afraid of coming up with theories that more than stretched the realms of credibility at times, but sometimes she managed to come up with something that no one else had thought of.

  “I don’t know what they call them for men, but he could have been wearing something to hold in his gut. Think about it. It would be a pretty good way to disguise himself, and don’t believe for a second that most men are less vain than we are.”

  “I suppose so,” I said. “The others fit the description, including Missy.”

  “I can’t see her robbing a bank and shooting Hank,” Maddy said.

  “Neither can I, but we both know that desperate times can bring out the worst in people. If Missy believed her affair with Doc Parsons was about to be exposed, she might have done anything to keep it quiet.”

  “They all had their reasons to want to see Hank out of the picture, even Trent. The more I think about what he said, the less inclined I am to believe him. You’re right, Eleanor. We’re no better off than we were before.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” I said.

  “How so?”

  “If we haven’t done anything else, at least we’ve stirred up the pot,” I said. “Maybe something will come to the surface.”

  As we got back to the Slice, Maddy said, “Let’s just hope it doesn’t come after us when it does.”

  Greg came into the kitchen just after I’d checked on our pizza dough. We’d had a great run of customers for the lunch crowd, and I wasn’t sure we’d be able to get through the night shift without more. I decided it might not be a bad idea to make a small batch just in case, so I was measuring ingredients when Greg joined me.

  “I just heard about what you two are doing, and I want to contribute to the auction,” he said.

  “That’s sweet of you, Greg, but we’ve got plenty of donations already. You should keep your money.”