by Rae Davies
The dogs followed, but my adrenaline was pumping too hard for me to care.
“What? Figured out who did what?” I stage-whispered into the phone.
“I just told you. Aren’t you listening to me?”
I gritted my teeth, sucked in a breath, and replied, “Sorry. Things are a bit crazy right now. What did you say?”
Ten seconds of wounded silence followed, then finally, “I figured out who killed that chef. It wasn’t your brother, not that either of us or anyone with half a brain thought that.”
Insinuating that Stone did not possess a full half of a brain.
I couldn’t find it within myself to disagree.
“It was Kathy!”
“Kathy?” I flipped through everyone I knew, trying to settle on anyone with the name that had the remotest connection to Tiffany.
“My friend. I mean my FriendTime friend.”
At my confused silence, she got frustrated. “You told me to check on her.”
I did? Oh, wait... “Kathy. On FriendTime.”
“That’s what I said.” More annoyance, but it was short lived. “Anyway, she is definitely who killed that poor chef.”
I turned to face the pile of straw.
“Uh, Mom...”
“I can’t believe the police missed this. I hate to be critical of your people there, but seriously, everything was there to see. Well, once I figured out Tiffany’s password. But it wasn’t like that was that hard. Cook2. I tried Cook1 first and then—”
Three police officers lifted Hope’s limp body and placed it on a gurney.
“Mom!” I interrupted. “I don’t think it was Kathy.”
“Well, I don’t know how you would—”
I hung up on her. I would pay for it later, but staring at Hope’s lifeless form, my mind and body had gone numb. I didn’t even realize I had hung up until my phone started ringing again.
I shoved it into my front pocket and stared down at my canine guards. “What now, guys? What now?”
o0o
Detective Stone arrived five minutes later. I could feel his presence as soon as his foot hit the asphalt of Lyndale Avenue.
Peter was standing next to Jeremy and talking on his phone. Calling Shelia, or some other family I guessed, to come and get his son. His gaze latched onto me and then shifted to Stone. Within seconds, he’d put his phone away and was striding across the parking lot toward me.
I didn’t wait for accusations. I threw up my hands and pleaded for help. “I don’t know how I found her. I didn’t even know I had found her, or at least that it was Hope. Don’t make me talk to Stone.”
The detective in question already had me in his sights.
“Crap.”
Peter heaved out a breath. “You, at least, have the situation firmly in focus.”
Double crap. But then it occurred to me that no one had said how Hope had died. Maybe my original thought that it was an accident was correct. Maybe she was Tiffany’s killer too, and this horrible event was just a big cosmic kick of kismet—her dying before she could be charged with the chef’s murder.
My conversation with Stone quickly dissuaded me of this fantasy. Not, of course, that he told me Hope’s death hadn’t been an accident, but he did come out of the box in attack mode.
The conversation started off nicely enough. He greeted Peter with a nod that wasn’t exactly friendly, but it also didn’t scream excuse me while I roast your girlfriend.
But then he lit the fire and pulled out the skewers.
“Another body, Ms. Mathews?”
“Call me Lucy.” He and I had spent enough time together. It seemed time to advance the relationship. I smiled. Then, remembering why he was here, I felt the smile slip from my face.
“I understand you know Hope Bridges.”
“We’ve met.”
“She was in HA! with your brother?”
“Yes.” A one-word answer. I wondered if I could take it down even further, to maybe a grunt.
“Did she know your brother well?”
I glanced at Peter. I could tell by his expression a grunt wasn’t going to cut it.
I filled my lungs with air before answering. “You would have to ask Ben.”
“Oh, I will.”
I sucked a breath in—through my nose this time—and held it for a second. “That would be best.”
“Hmmm.” He tilted his head and stared at me as if doing so would force me into a confession of... I didn’t know what.
He couldn’t think I had killed Hope to cover for Ben. Could he?
My gaze shot to Peter.
His face stayed as stoic as ever, but the expression in his eyes intensified. Take another breath. Don’t say anything.
I took his unvoiced advice and returned my gaze to Stone.
We stood there, neither of us saying a thing, for the count of ten.
Finally, he inclined his head. “Fine, Ms. Mathews. I’ll have one of the officers take your statement. I assume Detective Blake will be able to find you if we have any other questions... later.”
I didn’t move until he’d walked away, then I deflated like a punctured balloon.
Peter stepped closer. He didn’t hold me, but his face brushed against my hair. “Don’t let him rattle you. You did fine.”
A truck pulled in behind one of the trailers loaded with cattle. An older version of Shelia stepped out.
“Jeremy’s grandmother,” Peter explained, watching as his son raced across the parking lot and into the woman’s arms. “And I have to get back to work.” He glanced down at Alphie. The dog hadn’t moved, not his body or his gaze.
Peter laughed. “I’m not sure if I should send him with Jeremy or not. He seems to be invested in you.”
I looked at the rest of the herding pack. “If you take him, take them too.” The other dogs had relaxed some, but they hadn’t completely moved away.
Peter laughed again, then whistled and threw up his arm, pointing at the parking lot where Jeremy and the trailers waited.
Without giving me a second glance, the dogs bounded away.
Peter left too. He didn’t bound with the same enthusiasm as the dogs, but his exit still left me feeling alone and vulnerable.
I filled the void by calling my mother, or trying to. The phone rang ten times with no answer. I called again with the same results.
Ten minutes later, I gave up. My mother, it appeared, was not talking to me. A week ago, this would have been a dream. Now? Not so much.
My conversation with the uniformed officer describing my discovery of Hope was blessedly short. He didn’t ask if I knew her or any of the other questions Stone had seemed focused on.
When I was done with that discussion, Peter was gone, but George walked up to tell me that he was in charge of giving me a ride back to my Cherokee. Our drive was quiet. My mind was still recovery from my latest discovery, and George seemed happy that for once I wasn’t pumping him for information he wasn’t supposed to share.
Back home, I let the terrible twosome outside and, once they were done with their tasks, took them inside so I could call my mother.
This time, my father answered. He mumbled something I couldn’t make out.
“I don’t talk to people who hang up on me,” my mother’s voice called, clear as spring water. “She asked for my help, and I gave it and then she—”
Her words became muffled too. My father cutting off her rampage, at least to my ears, with a hand over the phone.
“Tell her Kathy is dead!” I yelled.
There was silence then. I waited, wondering if my father still had his hand over the phone or if I had actually managed to quiet my mother myself.
“He walked off.”
It took a second for me to realize that my mother was, in fact, speaking to me again.
“Just set the phone down and walked off, after I’d told him how mad I was.”
Her anger was shifting from me to my father. It was a good sign. I kept silent and let th
e metamorphosis continue.
“Been married thirty-eight years, and he still doesn’t listen to me.” She muttered something else, then I heard the sound of a chair being pulled over a floor.
“When did she die?” she asked, all signs of her supposed anger gone.
“Today.”
“Well, then, she still could have killed that chef.”
My mother’s coldly logical analysis made me realize where I’d gotten the whole no need to speak nice of the dead just because they were dead mentality.
“How’d she die?”
I explained how I’d found Hope crushed under the pile of straw.
“Makes sense she’s in HA! You should have seen some of her messages.” Mom made a disapproving clucking noise.
“She’s dead, Mom.” I might be a fellow disbeliever in the “don’t speak ill of the dead” thing, but my mother didn’t have to know that.
“Doesn’t change the facts.”
I rolled my eyes and watched as Pauline picked something off of Kiska’s side with her beak.
And since my mother had mentioned it... “What were in her messages?”
“So you do want to know.”
Gloating was so unattractive.
“She was... what’s the word... trailing her.”
“You mean stalking her?”
“Yeah, stalking her, sending her messages, posting on her restaurant page. Did you know she was impersonating Pauline?”
Mom didn’t wait for my reply.
“Now, don’t get me wrong, her messages were friendly enough. I’m guessing if they weren’t, this Tiffany would have blocked her. I know that’s what I would have done. But she talked to her a lot, and, based on other messages she sent, I can tell their friendship wasn’t real.”
“Like what?”
“Like those posts by Pauline. Then there was other stuff too. Looks like she had it out for Tiffany. She got all the information on her opening, right down to the special of the night. Did you know she was serving goose liver?”
“That’s one reason the police suspected Ben.”
“Really? Well, I guess that makes sense...”
Afraid I’d lost her, with her mind wandering to some new puzzle, I brought her back. “What else?”
“Oh, well, she wasn’t just stalking the chef. She was stalking a lot of other people too.”
“Like who?”
“A man who owns a fur shop in L.A. A couple who slaughter horses to eat. Did you know people did that?”
I didn’t, and knowing it now didn’t add anything to my life. I grimaced.
“There was also some guy who led big game hunts...” She continued on, listing every atrocity against animals that I could imagine. Finally, I couldn’t take any more. “Stop.”
She did. Mid-sentence.
Afraid I’d ticked her off again, I sucked in a breath. “Sorry, I just... I’d rather not think about all of that.”
Apparently, I said the right thing. Her voice softened. “I understand.”
Now she was talking to me like I was six. Still, it was better than her being angry with me.
It seemed like a good place to step away. I managed to hang up with her still happy and still convinced that Hope had not only killed Tiffany but was also probably harboring plans to kill many other animal rights offenders too.
I, however, wasn’t as confident. Hope’s death just seemed too convenient. While I didn’t doubt that having a tractor trailer’s worth of straw dumped on you would kill you, I couldn’t see how it could have happened by accident. It wasn’t like the straw was dropped from the sky. A truck or trucks had to have been unloaded by hand, and I sincerely doubted that Hope would have lain in the street while someone tossed bale after bale onto her prone form. Even if she had been unconscious from something else, the odds that whoever was doing the unloading wouldn’t have seen her there seemed slim.
Which brought me back to the idea that Hope’s death wasn’t an accident.
And if it wasn’t an accident, it was murder. So who would want to murder the young activist?
Chapter 22
The next morning, I took both Kiska and Pauline with me to the shop. After seeing their cooperation on releasing Pauline from the laundry room, I was a bit afraid of leaving them alone.
There was really no telling what the pair might be capable of.
Speaking of pairs, we entered the store to see that the previous day’s split was still in effect.
Kiska settled down in the Victorian side, on the bearskin rug that had made its way onto the floor, while Pauline gravitated to an oversized blown glass bowl that sat on a post-modern buffet.
I scurried to my office, where I hoped to hide for the best part of the day.
Unfortunately, my plan was quickly shot when Betty and Phyllis arrived and stormed my sanctuary, both waving receipts from the day before and claiming victory in their sales.
“I outsold her by $400,” Phyllis stated, looking calm and secure in her success and a tailored blazer that had to have cost more than most of the merchandise on Betty’s side of the room.
“I cleared out ten square feet more of space,” Betty declared. She waved a silk scarf at Phyllis and then turned to face me. “If you want to get things out of Rhonda’s garage, we’re going to have to sell things with some girth.”
Both points of view had merit, but with Hope’s death still fresh in my mind, I couldn’t stir up much of an opinion as to which was more important.
Instead, I waved my hands at both of them in an attempt to herd them back into the store.
Neither, of course, moved, but then the front bell rang and both bolted.
I had just relaxed against the back of my chair when Phyllis returned, looking none too pleased. “How do people stand the country look?” she muttered.
Sensing her disgust would lead shortly back to more nagging that her extra $400 should qualify her as the winner, whatever that meant, I quickly turned the conversation to something that might be of real use in my quest to clear Ben.
“How much do you know about Richard Danes?”
“Know?”
“Like...” I wasn’t sure how to bring up the fact that he was the owner of the underwear we found.
Apparently in no mood to wait on my stuttering mind, Phyllis interrupted. “I know his wife has no taste.” She folded her arms over her chest and glared toward the main shop.
I followed her gaze. “How do you know that?”
“She’s out there, looking at the ‘original’ items that came from the Antlers.”
I was on my feet and out of my office before Pauline could shake a tail feather.
A petite brunette wearing leggings, sheepskin crepe-soled boots, and a sweater that hit her mid-thigh was bent over one of the seats from the old theater. If Phyllis hadn’t told me Danes’ wife was in the shop, and if I hadn’t known Tiffany was dead, I would have thought the woman standing next to Betty was the chef.
She stood and, despite the additional 30 years or so, the resemblance held. Both women had high cheek bones and wide eyes. Both women, I guessed, had very little trouble finding dates, at whatever point in their lives they had been looking for such things.
“Lucy Mathews?”
Startled that she knew my name, I glanced at Betty. Taking a step back so our guest wouldn’t see her, she mouthed, “Don’t bend.”
I gave Leslie Danes an uncertain smile. “That’s me.”
She cocked her head and frowned. “Have we met?”
Remembering our phone conversation, I stammered, “I don’t think so. Do you come to Helena often?”
“No.” She looked around. “At least I didn’t used to, but that’s about to change.”
“Oh, well, that’s nice.”
Betty waved her arms above her head in a “warning” motion.
“So...” Leslie spun slowly, taking in every bit of inventory in my shop. “How much of this is from the Antlers?”
“Uh...”
>
Betty’s motions were becoming hard to ignore. I frowned at her.
“Those seats—”
Betty cleared her throat. “This is Leslie Danes, Richard Danes’ wife? She’s here to collect the things he consigned.”
My mouth dropped open. “He’s changed his mind?”
Leslie shook her head, making her short locks dance and then fall back into glossy perfection. “I’ve changed his mind. I was just at a spa...” She paused and looked at me, frowning.
I swallowed hard and tried to look as unlike someone who would be writing an article on spas as I could.
After a moment, she continued, “While I was there, it came to my attention that there is a serious lack of spas in Montana. There is a real niche that is wide open.”
A niche. Who knew that I’d be responsible for revealing a niche?
“We already own a building here in Helena. Why not use it? It will take some renovation, of course, but that’s trivial.” She waved her hand in the air.
“You’re not selling the Antlers?” Carl Mack was going to be steamed.
“No, we’re not, and we’re not selling the furnishings either. At least not the things original to the building. People who come to my spa are going to expect a certain feel.” She picked up one of Tiffany’s red blob art pieces. “And this is not it.” She waved the blob. “These you can keep. The rest needs to be returned to the Antlers.”
I corrected my earlier thought. Carl Mack was going to kill me.
Even with that unsavory fact, there was nothing I could do. Consignors always had the right to remove their merchandise before it sold, and Carl hadn’t given me any money yet.
I didn’t, however, have to haul the stuff back to the Antlers at my expense.
I said as much.
Leslie crossed her arms over her chest and stared at me, giving me the distinct feeling that she was a woman who was used to getting her way.
But while I was a pushover, I was also cheap. In this case, cheap won. I stood my ground.
“Fine. Richard and some of his ranching buddies can haul themselves over here and move everything. It’s the price he’ll have to pay for buying the building in the first place without my approval and then thinking about selling it behind my back too.”
