For Letter or Worse

by Vivian Conroy

  “I heard,” Wild Bunch Bessie said, “that one of them got awfully close with Drake, and his wife didn’t like it. Maybe their planned cooperation tanked because of her?”

  “And then they wanted revenge,” Rattlesnake Rita wrote with lots of exclamation points and open-mouthed emojis. “But I don’t think they would actually kill someone for it. They seem the type to simply send a box with a big spider in it to give Mrs. Drake a scare.”

  Delta thought about the perfume bottle with the skull and the word DEATH and wondered if Lydia and Clara had anything to do with that. They could have decided to use it to put their own kind of pressure on Mrs. Drake.

  “Put aside that phone and have some appetizers,” Hazel said, shoving a bowl of walnuts in Delta’s direction. “The pizza will be ready soon.”

  Delta sighed. “I know you said this one has nothing to do with us, and it’s a relief that it doesn’t, but I must admit I’m fascinated by the dynamics. Lena Laroy, a former model now married to a hugely successful interior designer who has women smiling up at him everywhere he goes. That must create bad blood.”

  “Not enough to kill for, I suppose. And it wasn’t Lena dying, but Drake’s sister.” Hazel popped a slice of cheese into her mouth. “Do you want some ice tea?” Without waiting for a reply, she opened the fridge and pulled out a pitcher.

  Delta got two glasses from the cupboard. “It’s odd that Sally is the one who died. I mean, the party was for Lena’s birthday, so all those people present were her friends. Did they even know Sally? Why would someone who hardly knew her want to kill her?”

  “I’d assume the killer did know her. So, it has to be someone from the Drakes’ inner circle.” Hazel nodded as she filled the glasses. “I think the dog walker is very suspicious. I heard she found the body and acted like she was in a panic.”

  “Acted?” Delta echoed. “Did you think she wasn’t then?”

  “I don’t know. I was in the tent cleaning up when it happened, but I heard Una Edel say that Zara’s panic was overdone.”

  Delta recalled the woman shaking the girl. She seemed to have little patience with emotions.

  Hazel said, “I thought about it and it could be true. I mean, when we saw her earlier in the afternoon, with the poodles, something about her struck me as a bit…too much. The whole air of the young twenty-something who doesn’t really know what she’s doing. Like she can’t handle the dogs and all. She got the job, so she must know something about taking care of them.”

  “Not necessarily,” Delta said with a grimace. “Ray told me he saw her and Drake at the Lodge, and Drake put his arm around her. He may have hired her not for her experience with dogs but because he liked her.”

  “See.” Hazel passed Delta a glass of ice tea and returned the pitcher to the fridge. “There’s more to Zara Kingsley than meets the eye.”

  “But why would she kill Sally? If she’s after Drake, you’d think she’d kill his wife. If she would want to kill anyone at all. It’s so drastic.”

  “Maybe Sally had seen them together and threatened to tell Mrs. Drake. Zara would have been fired then and not been able to see her lover anymore.”

  Delta sipped her drink, considering this theory. As Sally had been staying at the villa, she could of course have seen or heard something. “If Drake really likes her, they could stay in touch, even if she no longer worked for them. No, I think if she killed Sally for anything, to keep her job, she must want the job for another reason than being near Drake.”

  “That’s it.” Hazel pointed a finger at her. “She wormed her way in by flirting with Drake while she has some ulterior motive. Vengeance against the Drake company for some injustice done in the past…”

  Delta waved a hand. “That is all pure speculation because you think she’s more than an ordinary dog walker. And the Paper Posse”—she pointed at her phone, which was still beeping every thirty seconds—“is discussing what Lydia and Clara from a Tundish design agency might have to do with it. Wild Bunch Bessie said she heard that one of them was close with Drake. I admit he’s a handsome man, if you like the type, but he can’t have been having affairs left and right. I mean, Ray also told me Drake was close with Rosalyn. Seems he wants to modernize the Lodge’s interior look. Not all of these can be true, right?”

  “I don’t see anything wrong with the Lodge’s furnishings as they are right now,” Hazel said with a sour expression. “Maybe Rosalyn does like him and is using changes to the Lodge as a reason for seeing him.”

  “Nah, I don’t believe it.” Delta shook her head. “He’s a charming man, and people read far too much into that. Right now, he’s very upset about his sister’s death. He mentioned to me she had such a hard time, losing her job, and with her marriage ending as well… Seems her husband harassed her to get money off her.”

  “I see. Is he here in Tundish? He might have asked her for money again, and when she refused, killed her. Not that he meant to, just in anger, you know. Those things happen.” Hazel looked into the oven. “I think it’s done. Let’s eat.”

  Delta picked up her phone. “I’ll turn this off. I want to eat in peace and then dive in for a nice long night. We can better leave the speculating to Marc LeDuc and his news hunters.”

  Chapter Five

  The next morning, when Delta awoke, she remembered snippets of dreams that had plagued her all night. In them, she had been chasing a black poodle, who ran off with a 3-D card in her mouth before jumping into the lake and swimming away while glitter rained down from the trees on the bank. On the other side of the water, someone was calling for Delta, but she couldn’t make out who it was or what it was about.

  So much for a quiet night. She rubbed her sandpaper eyes and stretched, then sat on the edge of the bed, wriggling her toes. The dream images still whirled through her mind, and she took a couple of deep breaths to restore some calm. Her gaze fell to the small rug she had brought with her from Cheyenne. The text on it read: follow your dreams. A smile spread across her face. Yes, even when she had still been in an office job, she had believed in following her dreams. And in moving to Tundish and joining Wanted, she had made her biggest dream come true. All thanks to Gran, who had given her the money to buy into the shop. I’ll send her a message to say how happy I am every day for that chance!

  With a grin, she turned on her phone. Over one hundred twenty messages?

  The Paper Posse had been busy.

  Delta wanted to swipe away without even looking at what they were talking about, but curiosity got the better of her, and she went to the website of Marc LeDuc’s online newspaper. The headline read: Who sabotaged former model’s birthday party? with a smaller caption underneath: Gift table turns into crime scene.

  There was a badly lit picture of the table in question, no doubt illegally snapped with Marc’s cell phone when she had seen him skulking about the night before, but Delta doubted people would really mind the photo’s quality, as the accompanying piece was full of clickbait—exaggerated statements about tension brewing during the party as the guests had gathered for what was a birthday “resting under a cloud of bad feelings.”

  Delta read the next bit half aloud, “Tundish residents feel like Mr. Drake swept in last July and claimed too much space, both with his villa, which dominates the lake view, and his professional enterprises, encroaching on some locals’ very livelihoods.”

  She frowned. When they had been invited to do the workshop, Mrs. Cassidy had told them in passing that the villa had been built in the forties, right after the second world war. So why blame Drake for the way in which it dominated the lake view? The original builder had chosen that site.

  Shaking her head at LeDuc’s total lack of accuracy, she read on. “But also, personally, the Drakes never felt at ease. Lena’s previous engagement ended abruptly for reasons undisclosed, and one can’t help but wonder if her new husband discovered the same thing her ex-fiancé
already knew after their recent marriage vows. The big secret that led her ex-fiancé to ask the model to return his diamond engagement ring.”

  She frowned, recalling Ray’s mention, when he had popped into the shop with his bouquet for the birthday girl, of Lena being with some musician when they had first met at a team party, years ago. So, this bit could contain some truth. However, Marc would have to give more substance to the “big secret” before she could judge whether there was anything there that would have upset Drake.

  She continued reading. “One of the reasons for retreating to the quiet of Montana was the constant pressure from the media, who often wrote unkindly about the former model’s tendency to team up with men with the reputations and wealth to boost her career. While her previous interest was music and her ex-fiancé an award-winning musician who had already arranged a record deal for her, her current husband allowed her to dabble in interior design, and there are rumors she was to come into his company, Drake Design, as a partner. Perhaps even taking the place of current right-hand woman, Una Edel.”

  Delta whistled. “First thing I’ve heard about that,” she said to herself and scrolled through the rest of the article. Lena Laroy was painted as an opportunistic woman who made friends one day and dropped them the next when someone more advantageous came along. Someone with enemies who might have wanted to plant a dead body at her party to ruin it all for her and drive her away from her mountain hideout.

  Apart from the overdone tone of the article, Delta had to admit that Marc LeDuc had managed to unearth quite a lot about Lena’s past and current relationships and turn it into a piece people would be talking about. Still, knowing the deceased had been Calvin Drake’s sister and not some randomly planted dead body, she had a hard time believing the murder had happened only to ruin Lena’s birthday party. It seemed more likely that someone had wanted to remove Sally from the scene.

  But why?

  Why Sally?

  Having showered and dressed, Delta came downstairs to find a big breakfast laid out on the table. Yogurt with fresh fruit flanked nuts, cheese, cold cuts, and a platter of hot toast, while Hazel stood at the stove, making scrambled eggs. “Good morning,” her friend called out to her. “I figured you’d like something substantial before we hit the store. We need to do a lot of unpacking today.”

  “Right. New washi tape and erasers. Can’t wait to see them. Especially the animal line with the llamas and pandas. They looked spectacular in the catalog.” Delta sat down. “Did you have a look at the news?”

  “About yesterday? No, of course not. I want to stay far away from it.” Hazel shivered. “I was locked up last time. I dreamed about it again. I don’t want to think of anything remotely involving murder.”

  With a pang of sympathy for her friend, and guilt that she had looked already and was sort of intrigued by the revelations, Delta nodded. “I understand.” She picked up some warm toast and scooped jelly onto it. “Did you know Lena Laroy had been engaged before?”

  “Done, I think.” Hazel took the pan with scrambled eggs off the stove and came to the table. “With that musician guy, you mean?”

  “Yes. A musician or a singer.” Ray had mentioned meeting Lena at a football party and all his teammates wanting to dance with her. Her boyfriend had not been with her because he was doing a concert in Nashville. “Who was that exactly?”

  Hazel frowned as she shoved the eggs onto her plate. “You don’t want some, huh?”

  Delta shook her head. “Sweet things for me, thanks.”

  “I think he was a country star. Probably still is. I’m not really into all that celebrity news. But she was engaged to him. It ended quite suddenly, and nobody knew why. Usually, there is someone talking after the breakup, one of the two exes, or a friend of them, a management person who wants to set the record straight. But they never said a word. Odd thing.” Hazel gestured at Delta with the spatula. “I know, because Mrs. Cassidy told me all about it yesterday. We had enough time to chat as we sat waiting for those workshop participants that never showed.” Frustration lined her voice.

  Delta smiled encouragingly. “The little girls liked it.”

  “Liked sprinkling everything with glitter, you mean. I think when the company comes to remove the party tents, ours will leave a circle of glitter on the grass.” Hazel half-grinned and sat down to eat. “I hope we won’t get asked for birthday parties for eight-year-olds now. I do love kids, but they can get everything so messy in a heartbeat. Rosalyn won’t allow us to do it at the Lodge, and we don’t have the space in the shop.” She dug into her eggs and chewed with an expression of bliss. “Just right.” Tilting her head, she asked, “Is that your phone beeping?”

  “Yes, the Paper Posse are sending a gazillion messages. Probably about the murder. But as you said you don’t want to hear about it, I won’t be looking at what they say.”

  “Good.” Hazel nodded and ate on. The beeping continued.

  “I wonder what they can be messaging about,” Hazel said. She glanced nervously at the phone on the sideboard. “The sheriff was quite friendly to me yesterday when he asked for a brief statement, but I still feel like he’s angry he was wrong last time and wants to get even with us.”

  “I suppose he’s trying to do a good job and save some face. He came out to the villa to look at that perfume bottle with the threat on it, and then someone died…” Delta pulled a face. “If you think about it, it doesn’t put him in a very favorable light. If Sally died right before her dead body was discovered, his men were at the villa when it happened.”

  “In that case the perfume bottle and the murder can’t be related. You don’t have the police come and then kill someone.” Hazel gestured with her fork. “It makes no sense.”

  The phone rang. Delta shot to her feet. “I’ll answer it now.”

  “Sure.”

  She picked it up. “Hello?”

  “Jonas here. I suppose you will want to be going to the shop soon, but could we meet up briefly? I have something to discuss that I can’t say over the phone.”

  “Um, sure. One moment.” Delta looked at Hazel. “Jonas wants to meet me about something important. Can you drop me off at the Lodge with my mountain bike and then go to Wanted to open up? I’ll bike into town later. I can do with the exercise.”

  “Sure.”

  Delta told Jonas she’d meet him at the Lodge in half an hour, and they finished their breakfast. Hazel winked at her. “I wonder what that is all about.”

  Delta shrugged. “Don’t get anything into your head.”

  “Oh, come on, Delta, Jonas is perfect for you.” Hazel leaned back. “You can at least try.”

  “How do you mean try?”

  “To show him you like him. That you think he’s attractive. To maybe get him to go on a date with you sometime. I don’t know. Don’t you like him?”

  “Sure, but…” Delta felt her cheeks flush. “He has been so distant lately. I think he has his work and his dogs and that is enough for him. We’re just friends, and that’s fine with me. I’m not risking it by playing for anything more that might not work out.”

  Hazel rolled her eyes. “Maybe Jonas is thinking the same thing.”

  Delta got up. “I’m going to change. You eat up, and then we leave.”

  “Put on that red sweater. That looks so good on you.”

  Delta ran up the stairs. Her friend’s attempts to pair her off were no doubt well meant, but also a bit embarrassing. Jonas and she were…

  She opened her closet and reached for the gray sweater she had intended to wear today. Then she hesitated, looking at the red one. Did it look better?

  Did it matter?

  With a sigh, she picked the red one and pulled it over her head.

  * * *

  “Have fun.” Hazel squeezed Delta’s shoulder before diving back into the Mini Cooper and driving off. Delta steered
her mountain bike to a nearby tree and leaned it against it.

  “Morning.”

  She jumped at hearing Jonas’s voice. She hoped he hadn’t caught Hazel’s parting words. In combination with her suggestive look, it might convey the wrong impression. But Jonas had wanted to meet her, so…

  “Good morning. Here I am. What’s up? Hey, Spud.” She leaned down to pat the German shepherd. He wagged his tail and barked once. “You had to stay at home yesterday, right? I bet you could have caught the killer if you had been there. Good boy.”

  Jonas gestured for her to walk by his side across the parking lot. He folded his hands on his back and said, “I told you yesterday that Drake asked me to have a look around at the party. I didn’t tell you exactly what he said when he hired me…”

  “Because it was too personal. I know.”

  “But you should know now.”

  “Why?” Delta studied his tense profile.

  “Because I need your help. You did such a good job with the previous murder case and…I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t really important.”

  Jonas halted. Spud sat down by his side and looked up at Delta with earnest brown eyes, as if he wanted to support his human’s request.

  “You see…” Jonas sighed. “I shouldn’t have taken Drake’s case. I’m not a PI, and… But he flattered me, saying he knew I was really good, and he only wanted me to keep an eye out for anything suspicious during the party. He told me that his wife was under serious strain from someone harassing her with cryptic messages. He had only found out the other day during a grocery delivery. Apparently, it contained a package of cookies and a smoothie. Lena had become agitated and said that she had not ordered them. She didn’t know what they were doing there, that it had to be some mistake, but later she was in tears, and Drake concluded that someone had sent them to her on purpose. I asked him why he thought it was on purpose, whether there had been anything special about them, something threatening added to them, like with the perfume bottle. But he said that the groceries were innocent looking. However, he had noticed Lena was different after they had arrived, very nervous and looking out of the window all of the time.”