by Anna Drake
I’d never met the sheriff, and as we walked down the short hall toward his office, I hoped he didn’t have the fondness for separating heads from shoulders that Oberton had suggested. The first sight of the man wasn’t all that reassuring. He stood well over six feet tall and looked like he wouldn’t mind taking on the world’s crazies, even if it was some frail, elderly woman..
If I didn’t believe so firmly in what I wanted to do, I think I might have turned around just then and fled the room.
“Oberton,” he said, nodding at my companion.
Oberton returned the nod and waved a hand my direction. He kept my introduction short. “Sheriff, this is Hetty Fox. She as a proposal she’d like to run past you.” And with that, he sat himself down and left me standing there on my own.
Deets looked me over and suggested I take a seat. “Why don’t you explain what this little disagreement is all about.”
Under the the close examination he was giving me, I already felt my heart in my mouth. But after taking a deep breath, I laid out my case. After I finished, Deets sat in the chair behind his desk and blinked a couple of dozen times. “You’re volunteering to wear a wire?”
“Yes.”
His gaze swung to his left to take in Oberton. “So what do you think of this idea?”
Oberton let him have his thoughts in full color, complete with all the negative phrases he could dream up. Then he finished with, “Besides the fact that we don’t have any facts supporting this, I don’t know if we can keep Hetty safe.”
“Do you have a better suggestion?” his boss asked him.
“No, sir. I don’t.” Oberton answered. “As it stands now, we know everything Hetty does, but we can’t lay our hands on any evidence to support her suspicions.”
“But you agree what she’s suggested fits the facts as we know them?”
Oberton nodded. “It’s a good theory.”
Deets returned his attention to me. “And when would you like to act out this little plan of yours?”
“As soon as possible, sir.”
***
I hadn’t been home long that day, when Andrew popped back into my world.
“What do you think you are doing?” he hissed.
We were in the kitchen. I was roasting a chicken to make chicken salad for tomorrow’s lunch. “Where have you been?” I demanded.
“That doesn’t matter,” he answered. “What matters is that you’re about to do a very stupid thing.”
“You know what I’m planning?”
“Of course, I do.”
“How?”
“Never mind that. Right now, all that matters is that you call that sheriff and back out of this stupid plan.”
“It’s not stupid.”
“Maybe not, but it is highly dangerous.”
“I’ll be perfectly safe.”
“So you say.”
“So they say.”
Andrew harrumphed. “A bunch of cops hiding out in a kitchen while you put your life on the line? Somehow that fails to impress me. What if your mic breaks? What if instead of confessing, she pulls a gun? Who’s gonna keep you safe then?”
“Andrew, I’ll be fine.”
He shook his head. “You darn well better be.” And with that he once again removed himself from my life.
I stood there blinking. I couldn’t help wondering what this meant. Had he come back into my life? Would he stay, or had he left me again?
Chapter Twenty-Two
The next day, Toby Spires knocked on my door at noon on the dot. Her wiry hair was tied back in a low bun. Her narrow mouth bore a tight smile. She wore black slacks paired with a black top and had a long, colorful scarf draped about her scrawny neck.. “This is very kind of you,” she said, as she stepped inside my home..
“Actually, I felt a little bad about how the vote in the knitting club turned out,” I said. “I didn’t want you to think our settlement was aimed at you personally.”
“Oh, I never take things personally.”
Right.
She stared down her nose at me. “Besides, the victory wasn’t your doing. Laura Day must have pulled that little trick off. She was probably up half the night twisting arms getting members to vote your way.”
I laughed. “She was determined. I’ll give you that…. Well,” I said, rubbing my hands together to chase off a bad case of nerves. “Everything’s ready.” I ushered her into the dining room. “Why don’t you make yourself at home.” I waved a hand toward the table. “Would you like water or iced tea?”
“Iced tea, please.”
I smiled, “Super. I’ll be right back.”
Once in the kitchen, I stepped around Oberton and Deets and two of their men and retrieved the tray from the counter.
“How is everything going out there?” Oberton whispered, as a worried frown played across his wide forehead.
“Fine,” I whispered back.
After surveying the tray, I nodded with satisfaction. Then, I took a deep breath and headed back to the dining room.
Toby remained where I’d left her. She had been staring out the window, but her gaze turned my way when she realized I had returned to the room.
“I hope you like chicken salad,” I said.
She nodded curtly. “It will do.”
I distributed the two plates. Each contained a serving of chicken salad along with garlic bread and sliced tomatoes. Then, I poured tea.
“You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble,” she said stiffly.
I wondered if the woman knew how to relax. “It wasn’t that much work. I would have had to fix lunch anyway, whether you’d joined me or not.”
“Oh.”
She almost sounded disappointed — which bothered me not at all.
I sat and placed my napkin in my lap. She took a sip of tea.
“You must feel rather pleased” I said.
She glanced up from her plate. “About what?”
“Seeing Sam arrested for Willa’s murder.”
“At least they’ve caught the killer.”
“I don’t think so.”
She gave me a closer look. “Really? Why would you say that?.”
“You see, I think, when all was said and done, Sam loved his wife. I can’t believe he would have killed her.”
“I guess that puts you in the minority then,” Toby snapped.
“Don’t you want to know who I think did it?”
She shot me worried glance. “Not particularly. The cops have arrested the killer. Justice has been done. What makes you think you know anything at all about what happened that night?”
“Maybe it’s because I’m not local. I don’t have the blinders that living here gives all of you. You see, I think both murders were all about love. First, there was your love for your cousin. You adored her. You couldn’t stand the thought of seeing her hurt.”
Toby scooped up a forkful of chicken salad and stared at me over her plate. “You like making stuff up don’t you?”
“No, I don’t. But I don’t like seeing an innocent man charged with murder, either,”
“Innocent man,” she scoffed. “He was going to run off with another woman. Innocent my foot.”
“Yes, he thought about running off with Eva. That’s why you decided to kill her. You couldn’t allow anything that bad to happen to someone you loved. And you loved Willa, didn’t you. From a child onward, you had always adored her.”
“Shaw,” she responded. “What do you know about my life?”
“Not much, maybe. I’ll give you that. But I know enough to see past your lies.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She yanked her napkin from her lap and threw it down on the table.
“Then, there was your second love,” I continued, ignoring her theatrics.
“My second love?” Toby asked, her eyebrows rising into her forehead. “And where did you dig that person up?”
“It wasn’t hard. There was only one person you loved
better than Willa, and that was yourself.”
She blinked. “Me? You are crazy.”
“No, I only wish I were and that none of this ever happened. That poor Eva’s body hadn’t lain undiscovered in that attic for all those years. That you hadn’t been forced to kill the only person in the world who you had loved.”
“Me? Kill Willa. That’s absurd.”
“No, it isn’t. You killed her because of your third love.”
“And who’s that?”
“Not who… what. The bottom line is you love money.”
“Oh, right. That’s why I slaved away all those years as an underpaid secretary.”
“And, if I may point out, at the same time bought yourself a very nice house and lacked for little else that I could see.”
“You’re insane.”
“No, I’m not. And it was easy for you wasn’t it? You said it yourself. Sam wasn’t an innocent man, he’d flirted with the idea of running off with Eva. He deserved to be punished, didn’t he? Is that how it happened. Is that how the blackmail began?”
Next to her plate, Toby’s fingers curled into a fist. “He had a beautiful wife who loved him. He had two bright, wonderful children. He had it all…. Everything. And with one glance from that big-city hussy, he was ready to toss it all over.”
“What did you tell him, Toby? That Willa had killed Eva? Is that what you said? Is that how you got him to pay you hush money all these years?”
“Well, why not? She knew what he was up to. She’d seen them together in the woods. If she’d been half as strong as I was, she would have done it, too. She would have killed Eva, and I wouldn’t have had to. Why shouldn’t I have made that man pay?”
“So why did you kill Willa?”
Toby’s eyes blazed. “Because she’d figured it all out. It was all the talk from the mummy being found. Once she knew Eva was dead, she realized exactly who’d done it.” Toby gave forth a sharp, brittle laugh. “She even expected me to turn myself in.” Toby shook her head in disbelief. “She wanted me to confess.”
“So you met with her out in the woods, and you killed her... just as you killed Eva. You strangled her to death.”
Her teeth caught and held her lower lip for an instant. Tears started to fall. Finally, she pulled in a deep, sobbing breath. “But I loved her,” she wailed. “I sacrificed myself for her, I’d have done anything for her, and she wanted me to turn myself in.”
Two men moved into the dining room from the kitchen. Oberton took the lead. He crossed to the table and placed Toby under arrest.
***
A couple of hours later, Megan handed me a cup of warm, sweet tea. It had been generously doctored with honey. “Drink this,” she said. “It should help restore you.”
Sheriff Deets had sent a deputy to bring over to my house. I sobbed as I told her that both murders had been solved and that Damon was no longer a suspect in his aunt’s death. Later, after she’d shared that news with him, he’d insisted I be put on the phone line.
“Thank you,” he said. “You’re one in a million. I don’t know many women who could have done what you did.”
“You’re welcome. But I really didn’t do that much.”
“Well, neither your daughter nor I agree with that statement. I have no idea of how we can thank you.”
I chuckled. “You just take good care of those grandsons of mine.”
“Deal.”
Later that night, after things had settled, Andrew made his appearance in the living room. I’d been napping in my favorite chair. I was too exhausted to even attempt to take up my knitting. But when I opened my eyes, there he was.
“You were wonderful,” he said.
I waved off the compliment. “Oh, Andrew. I’m so glad to see you.”
He smiled. “Those are welcome words.”
“I do care, you know.”
“Care about what?”
“That you’re here. That you’ve come back into my life.” I lowered my head and stared at my hands. “I thought… “ I pulled a deep breath and started over. “I thought I’d lost you. I was certain that I’d never see you again.”
“And that saddened you?”
My eyes filled with tears. “I was devastated.”
He lowered his head nearer to mine. “Hetty, I’ll never leave you, again. I love you as much today as I did all those years ago. Surely you must know that.”
From his basket by my ankles, Blackie glanced up at the two of us and hissed.
***
I hope you enjoyed this story. As for me, I’m a former journalist who lives in a small house in a small town in rural Illinois.
To learn when new books in my mystery series are available, you may follow my blog, like me on Facebook, or follow me on my Amazon Author Page.
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Other Books by This Author:
Bones & Boxes, a Hetty Fox Cozy Mystery
High Stakes, a Hetty Fox Short
Death Among the Roses, a Melanie Hart Cozy Mystery
The Case of the Missing Elf, a Melanie Hart Cozy Mystery
Other titles are available at my website.
