“I promise,” Lilly said.
“We think it’s probably something simple,” Amy said. “But we’ve overcomplicated it for ourselves and now can’t see the answer.”
“I feel like we’re close,” Heather agreed. “Like we’re just one step away.”
“Aha!” Lilly said.
“Did you solve it in two seconds while we’ve been trying for days?” Amy asked. “You’re raising a genius.”
“Well, you helped,” Lilly said. “When you said you were one step away, I realized what it was. It’s one letter off. Nicolas and I used this before. You just use the letter next to it to spell your word. B equals A. And A has to equal Z because it’s at the end.”
“That was incredible,” Heather said. “You can have another half a donut as a reward.”
“Half a donut?”
“Well, we can’t spoil your dinner.”
“Okay,” Lilly said, relenting. “The first word is ‘affair.’ That seems like a word related to murder, doesn’t it?”
“Thank you for all your help,” Heather said quickly. “I think you need to get back to your homework and finish it off.”
“Okay. I’ll finish my homework,” Lilly agreed. She finished her snack and left the adults to finish decoding.”
“She’s right. It does work,” Amy said. “ZEEZHQ RDBQDSZQX translates to Affair Secretary. It seems like C.D. was taking his secretary out to fancy French restaurants.”
“These smaller things like affairs must have been how he was paying for Trudy’s jewelry. But something big must have happened recently to make him think that he could travel with his girlfriend and still live like kings when they returned.”
“I think I found it,” Amy said. “Next to L.C. is says bribe officials, steal computers, and potential murder.”
“Well, now I’m sure that L.C. stands for Lyle Clarke,” Heather said.
Chapter 14
“Miss Shepherd,” Lyle Clarke said with a toothy smile. “You always pay me the nicest visits and keep me up to date on the crime world of Hillside.”
“As if you didn’t already know about all the crime in Hillside,” Heather retorted.
Lyle Clarke was like a shark. He glided through any situation and exuded danger. Heather knew that he had been behind at least several murders in Hillside but had allowed other men to take the fall. She didn’t want that to happen again.
“Are you suggesting I have something to do with it?” Lyle asked. “In that regard, you must be mistaken. Maybe you’ve been eating too much sugar.”
Heather took a deep breath. She couldn’t let this man get under her skin. She needed to be calm so she could question him correctly. He was able to weasel out of most situations, but she had to try and catch him in a lie.
“It’s actually about a dinner that we’re here,” Heather said.
Amy nodded encouragement to her friend. She would normally be taking notes during an interview like this, but their experience with Lyle Clarke had shown them that he would try to show them the door as soon as was possible. He liked to show off that he was untouchable and then kick them out, but they would do their best to prove that no one could get away with murder.
“Oh, really?” Lyle asked. “Are you asking for suggestions? Or perhaps you’d like me to make a donation to a charity dinner. I do that all the time.”
“Have you ever eaten at L'oie D'or?” Heather asked.
“I might have,” Lyle said. “I frequent many of the fine establishments in Hillside.”
“It’s a French restaurant?”
“Oiu?”
“We believe you did visit L'oie D'or and that a waiter overheard a conversation at your table. He tried to blackmail you about what you said.”
“That would be very naughty of the waiter,” Lyle said. “I hope you investigated him for this potential crime and that he found his just desserts.”
“He was murdered,” Heather said.
“Such a shame,” Lyle said. “I do not condone eavesdropping and blackmail, but one shouldn’t be murdered for it. Of course, if he did listen in at my table, he wouldn’t have heard anything that was blackmail worthy. Perhaps some complaints about the food or some office gossip. But nothing that would lead to blackmail.”
“So nothing about bribing officials and stealing computers?”
“No,” Lyle said.
“And no potential murder?”
“I don’t know where you get these ideas,” Lyle said. “But I am a very busy man. I don’t have time to discover where these wild theories come from.”
Another man walked into the office and looked surprised to see anyone else there. Heather knew a few of Lyle Clarke’s associates, including a mole who had a literal mole. However, this person was new to her. He was a big man with a large ring on his hand.
“I have a meeting now,” Lyle said. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“We just have a few more questions about L'oie D'or.”
“What’s that about L'oie D'or?” The new man asked.
“Nothing, Frank,” Lyle said. “Now, these ladies were just leaving us.”
“But—“
“Unless you have a court order,” Lyle said with a larger smile. “You’re leaving us.”
Heather and Amy reluctantly left the room.
“He’s definitely involved in Phillip’s murder,” Heather said. “I can feel it.”
“Yes,” Amy said. “But can we prove it?”
Chapter 15
“I can’t believe you went to talk to Lyle Clarke without telling me,” Ryan said.
“I knew that you’d advise me not to,” Heather admitted.
“And you didn’t stop her?” He said to Amy.
“How could I stop her?” she said. “What if she threatened to never give me donuts again?”
“Well,” Ryan said finally. “Did you learn anything from the interaction?”
“It reaffirmed how slimy he is,” Amy said. “He won’t admit to anything.”
“I could have told you that,” Ryan said. “He thinks that he can get away with anything. He can’t be scared into confessing.”
“I thought it was worth trying,” Heather said. “A man was murdered. It’s worth it to talk to the main suspect.”
“Okay,” Ryan relented. “But next time, keep me in the loop. He’s dangerous, and I like to know when you’re talking to him. And maybe next time I could help.”
“Agreed,” Heather said. “And there is one thing that we learned. Lyle Clarke has a new associate named Frank. He seemed worried when we mentioned L'oie D'or. Maybe we could get him to talk.”
“Let’s get our other potential victim to talk first,” Ryan said.
Heather agreed. After a lot of work, Ryan had recovered some credit card records from L'oie D'or. Comparing it to Phillip’s notebook, they had found C.D. They had decided to confront him altogether in the hopes that it would help make him talk. They needed him to admit that Phillip had blackmailed him in order to prove the blackmail conclusively. There was also a chance that they were talking to the killer.
Heather’s gut was telling her that Lyle Clarke was the man behind Phillip’s murder and that Phillip had been hoping for a big payoff from him before he was killed. However, Heather couldn’t allow herself to be blinded on a case. She needed to consider that other blackmail victims had escalated to murder.
They knocked on C.D., or rather Chet Dixon’s front door. A man with curly hair opened the door.
“Mr. Dixon?” Ryan asked.
“Yes,” he said. “What is this about?”
“I’m Detective Shepherd with the Hillside Police. These are my associates who are consulting on the case with me. We need you to answer a few questions.”
“What is this about?” He asked. “I’m not involved in anything. I haven’t witnessed anything.”
“Who is it, honey?” came a female voice inside the house.
“Would you mind stepping outside for a mo
ment?” Ryan asked.
“I don’t understand,” he started.
“Come on out,” Amy said. “Your wife doesn’t have to know about a certain payment you made to keep a secret quiet.”
Chet Dixon paled.
“It’s a question about work,” he yelled back inside. Then he hurried outside and closed the door.
“Why are you coming here now? That was months ago,” he said. “And I broke off the affair. It’s all over. Why now?”
“Because the man who was blackmailing you was murdered,” Heather said.
“That would make things permanently over,” Amy said. “No more worries about blackmail.”
“I didn’t know who was blackmailing me. Really,” Mr. Dixon said. “I got a message explaining how someone knew about the affair. It said if I didn’t pay, he would tell my wife. It wasn’t a crazy amount of money, so I paid it. It was a one-time payment. I didn’t hear anything else from the man.”
“How did you make your payment?” Heather asked.
“He wanted it delivered to a wooded area. It was a few miles from some restaurants and businesses. I delivered it in a brown paper bag at the time he said. Then I left.”
“That matches what we thought,” Heather said.
“But I never knew who it was,” Chet Dixon reiterated. “I just followed the instructions and never heard anything else. I still don’t know who it was. I couldn’t have killed anyone.”
They double checked on his alibi for the night of the murder. He said he was working late.
“But I was really working late. That’s not an excuse to stay with the secretary. That’s over. I was actually working. All my coworkers were. We had a big project coming up. They can vouch for me.”
“We’ll be checking on it,” Ryan said.
“Good,” Mr. Dixon said. “Then you’ll see I couldn’t have killed whoever it was. Who was it? How did he find out about my little indiscretion?”
Heather was about to explain, but then Ryan said, “The blackmailer is dead. He can’t bother you again. How about you just learn from this experience and not let it happen again?”
Chet Dixon nodded vigorously and went back inside the house.
“We were right about how the blackmail worked,” Heather said as they walked away.
“Phillip was looking for his brown paper bag payoff when the killer struck,” Ryan said.
“Phillip didn’t double charge Mr. Dixon, so I think it was probably the same for the other people he blackmailed too,” Amy said.
“Then it would have been a recent conversation that he overheard that was asking for payment on,” Ryan agreed.
“You know my thoughts on the matter,” Heather said. “Based on the code, that it is the most recent entry in the notebook, and on what we know about the character of the man, I think Lyle Clarke is the killer.”
“We need to get physical evidence to tie him to the scene,” Ryan said. “Otherwise it won’t hold up in court, and he won’t have to talk to us beforehand.”
“All right,” Heather said. “Let’s look at the evidence again.”
Chapter 16
“Is it possible that we can match the killer’s shoe to what you found at the scene?” Heather asked.
They were back in the Shepherd kitchen and back to analyzing the Philip Ruth murder.
“It’s a common shoe and a common size so we could make a case for a match, but with all the trampling of the samples I don’t think we could say one shoe was definitely there,” Ryan said.
“So we could say what shoes the killer was wearing were the same, but it’s not conclusive proof. It would be circumstantial evidence, and Lyle Clarke knows how to evade that sort,” Heather said.
“So what else did we find?” Amy asked.
“Just the murder weapon,” Heather said. “But there were no prints and no DNA samples on it. At least not from the killer. Phillip’s blood was on it.”
“There was that mark on it though,” Ryan said. “That was probably left by the killer.”
“But we haven’t figured out what caused it?”
Ryan shook his head. They looked at a picture of the murder weapon and at the mark on the end.
“This is so frustrating,” Heather said. “We are so close and still so far away.”
“Would donuts help?” Amy suggested.
“We might as well have some,” Heather said.
The each had a donut and quietly ate them.
“You don’t look as happy as you should for eating something so delicious,” Amy said.
“I’m sorry,” Heather said. “This case was like a maze. There were so many twists and turns, and we keep ending up at dead ends.”
“You figured out that a man was blackmailing customers from discovering that he didn’t need a hearing aid,” Amy said. “I’m sure you can figure out a way to prove who the killer is.”
“Maybe if we can figure out what this mark on the murder weapon is, we can prove something.”
“That’s the spirit,” Amy said.
“This just seems like a hard one to prove,” Ryan admitted.
“Don’t you get down too,” Amy said. “You did all the work with the credit cards. And from that didn’t you prove that the L.C. credit card number is Lyle Clarke?”
“Yes,” Ryan said. “But his expensive lawyer will say that Phillip, a now known criminal blackmailer, and possibly confused old man, was writing down nonsense. All we can really prove is that Lyle Clarke ate at L'oie D'or.”
“It’s a start,” Amy said. “Come on. Give me a hand with this.”
“Sure,” Heather said. “We’ll try and be more…”
“More what?” Amy asked. “Upbeat? Appreciative of your friend’s efforts? Willing to watch Beaches on a weekly basis?”
“I was going to say cheerful.”
“But?” Amy asked.
“You have that look,” Ryan said. “What did you figure out?”
“Amy said ‘give me a hand.’”
“Right,” Amy said. “Did I solve the case?”
“You might have,” Heather said. “That mark on the murder weapon. It’s by the end. Right where a hand would hold it.”
“I’m so glad I solved the case,” Amy said sarcastically. “Now please tell us how I did it.”
“Could that mark have been made by a large ring?”
“I think so,” Ryan said, as they consulted the photo.
“And if we get your lab to compare a certain ring to that spot, could they confirm that it made the mark on the murder weapon?”
“They should be able to,” Ryan said. “I think you’ve just caught our killer.”
Chapter 17
“Twice in one week?” Lyle Clarke said as they entered his office again. “I really am getting spoiled. And this time the Mr. Shepherd is with us.”
“That’s Detective Shepherd,” Ryan said.
“But of course,” he said with a smile.
“You might not be smiling when you hear the reason for our visit,” Heather said.
“Somehow I doubt it,” he answered. “I always find it so amusing.”
Frank was in the room as well and didn’t look as amused as Mr. Clarke. However, he was keeping silent.
“We’ve come to arrest you and your friend for the murder of Phillip Ruth,” Heather said.
“That’s ridiculous,” Lyle said. “I don’t even know who that is.” He turned to Ryan and asked, “Are you really going to allow this?”
“I am,” Ryan said. “I’m about to read you your rights.”
“Before we begin this charade and I have to bring in my highly qualified lawyers, why don’t you tell me what evidence you think you have against me?”
“We cracked the code in Phillip Ruth’s blackmail book,” Heather said. “And we have a witness to back up how the blackmail worked.”
“This still has nothing to do with me. I’ve done nothing to be blackmailed for.”
“Your credit card says that yo
u dined at the restaurant where Phillip Ruth gathered his information. And I’m sure we can find some more witnesses who remember you there. You have a memorable face,” Heather continued.
“A gift and a curse,” Lyle said. “But eating at a restaurant doesn’t prove I murdered a man. Many people eat at L'oie D'or.”
Banana Fudge Murder: A Donut Hole Cozy Mystery - Book 50 Page 6
