Survival of the Fritters

by Ginger Bolton

  Brent asked, “Why’d you call me?”

  “If I tell you, you’ll be working.”

  “Tell me after we eat, then.”

  I gobbled two of those delicious slices, and Brent ate four. Outside, the rain let up and the thunder diminished. The last shreds of clouds drifted away. Beyond the shadow of my sloping roof, sun glittered on drops of water clinging to leaves and grass. Dep jumped down from her perch and stood beside the door leading to the backyard. “Meow!”

  I opened the door. She stalked to the patio. At its edge, she touched a blade of grass with one delicate forepaw. She lifted the paw and shook it. “Meow!”

  Brent said in a teasing voice, “Do you have a leaf blower? I could dry a pathway for her.”

  I attempted to sound serious. “No. We’d have to use a hair dryer.”

  “Let’s not, then.” He helped me put the dishes into the dishwasher. Reluctantly, it seemed, he opened his ever-present notebook. “Okay, what did you learn today?”

  I told him about Georgia’s neighbor coming into Deputy Donut and describing the car that she and her husband claimed they saw, first in Georgia’s driveway, and then at the mall where her husband had his dental office. “Maybe you’ve already interviewed them, and you know all of this already,” I said. “Misty talked to Mrs. Jierson at Georgia’s on Monday night.”

  “Mrs. Jierson didn’t tell Misty more than her name and address. This is all new. Sorry, but I’d better call it in so Yvonne can send someone to interview these folks.”

  He left a terse message. I noticed that he didn’t mention me as the source of the information, but Yvonne Passenmath would probably find that out, courtesy of Mrs. Jierson.

  Chapter 21

  I said, “There’s more.” I described Lois’s and my trip to the mall and told him about our conversations with Honey and with Dr. Jierson’s receptionist. I explained my theory that Honey could have murdered Georgia. “And then, because Dr. Jierson saw her car, she searched for one like hers, discovered Randy, and described him to us.”

  Brent looked skeptical.

  I defended my theory. “Honey knew about Georgia and Lois trading vehicles, and that Lois was moving back to Fallingbrook. All Honey had to do was find out where Lois lived, wait until dark, break into Lois’s, attack her, and rip those photos out of the albums.”

  “But what about the car that Lois thought was Randy’s, leaving the scene of Matthias’s burial? Are you saying that Honey Bellaire owned a car matching Randy’s five years ago, also?”

  “That does sound like too much of a coincidence. But Randy might have been there innocently, fishing or something.”

  “If so, there was no need for him or for anyone else to steal those photos. It’s the theft of those photos that makes the driver of that particular car a person of interest.”

  “You’re right.” And I have more to tell you about Randy and that car. . . .

  “You should have stayed out of it, Em, all of it.”

  “Mrs. Jierson volunteered the information. I said she should tell the police, but she acted like telling me was enough, and I guessed that she wasn’t going to tell you what she told me.”

  “You were right, unless she left a message today while we were in meetings. Let us do the investigating, Em. Civilians snooping around can put themselves in danger. You can add to the risks for law enforcement, also.” He said it gently, and I pictured Misty running into trouble because of something I did. Or Brent. Or other men and women on the force.

  I admitted, “I learned more at the mall.” I described Dr. Jierson’s receptionist corroborating that the dentist worked long and unusual hours.

  Brent wrote it all down. “And that’s it?”

  I said reluctantly, “I learned one more thing today.”

  “Thank you, but please tell me you’ll stay out of the investigation from now on.”

  “I will.” Unless I have a good reason not to. “I did stay away from suspects after we left that mall. The other thing I discovered was here, on my computer.”

  One of his eyebrows twitched up slightly, and then he went back to being poker-faced.

  I explained, “I didn’t turn it off last night after Lois copied those files onto a drive for herself. This evening, I discovered that Lois had been looking at another picture from a different folder on her thumb drive. The picture is time-stamped three days after she photographed the river valley. It shows Randy standing in front of a packed car. I’m almost certain that it’s the car Lois photographed the evening that Matthias Treetor disappeared. The picture should be on the thumb drive Lois gave you last night.”

  “That’s at work.”

  “I can show it to you.” Dep was still outside. I opened the sunroom door and called her. My funny cat hadn’t ventured off the patio. She condescended to join us inside, and then she plunked herself on the mat inside the door and licked her front paws as if she could not bear any raindrops that she might have collected while trying her hardest not to touch the grass.

  Brent and I laughed and went upstairs. For once, we got there before Dep did. Seconds later, though, she was perched on the windowsill and staring out at the maple tree.

  I loaded both of Lois’s pictures of the black car with the white fender, and then gave Brent the chair while I stood behind him.

  He studied both photos. “Do you mind if I e-mail the picture you found this evening to myself, to make certain that we have it at work?”

  “Go ahead.”

  After he sent the picture, he stood and rested a hand on the monitor. “The techs will go over the photos—all of Lois’s photos—more carefully, but to me, it looks like the same car in both pictures. Do you think a print of the second photo was stolen from Lois’s album along with the ones from three days before?”

  My guest room seemed too small for both of us to stand facing each other. I took a step back, away from him. “I think she said that all of the prints from images she took that day were missing from the albums. I don’t know about pictures she took later, and I didn’t look through the album beyond the pages that were missing pictures.”

  Dep jumped off the windowsill and sat at Brent’s feet. He looked down at her. “Now that the investigators have her digital images from around that time, it might not matter. Could Lois have removed the photos from her albums herself, and hidden them?”

  “Anything’s possible. But I went back to check on her Monday evening. I didn’t ring her doorbell because I could see her through the sheers in her living room window. She was looking at that album, and she seemed shocked by what she saw.”

  Staring up at Brent’s face, Dep meowed. He bent and scooped her into his arms. “Shocked by missing pictures, or by pictures that she later removed from the album?”

  “Missing pictures, I’m guessing, or she never would have admitted to me that pictures were missing, and we wouldn’t have known to ask for that thumb drive.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Do you have surveillance videos from the mall south of town where the post office is? I saw three cameras inside the post office and one outside. You might have videos of that gray car and its driver. The driver could be Randy, as Honey described, or it could be Honey.”

  Dep squirmed. Brent put her down on my ivory and cobalt rug. “We should have videos. I’ll go over them.”

  I started toward the doorway, but stopped and turned toward Brent. “The evidence against Randy—it’s all circumstantial, isn’t it?”

  “You got it. Even if all you’ve told me tonight leads to him, it’s not enough for a charge, but it might be enough for a search warrant for those stolen photos. He’s probably tossed them by now. It won’t be the first time I’ve searched through garbage.”

  Dep batted at my leg. I picked her up. “Lois told me that Randy thought of Matthias as a sort of big brother, and that Georgia was like another great-aunt to Randy. They were like family to him. He wouldn’t have killed them.”

  “Mmp.”

&n
bsp; “I guess you’re right,” I conceded. “People do murder family members.” Now I was interpreting his mmps. I wasn’t sure we were helping the English language evolve in a useful way.

  “Mmp.”

  Dep struggled. Putting her down, I asked, “Will you keep an open mind about possible cover-ups by Dr. Jierson and his wife, and by Honey Bellaire?”

  He grinned down at me and tapped his head. “My mind is always wide open.”

  I leaned against the doorjamb. “And you won’t rule out Fred Aggleton, the man who blames Georgia for the failure of the grocery store he bought from her? He says she ripped him off, yet Lois told me that he got that store for a very low price.”

  Brent tilted his head as if asking me a question, but he didn’t say anything, not even mmp. Dep meowed up at Brent. He lifted her off the floor.

  I asked Brent, “Didn’t you know about that?”

  “I did.”

  There was something expectant in his gaze, like he thought I knew something that I hadn’t mentioned. I felt myself blush as if I truly had concealed evidence implicating Randy.

  Wait. Alec had told me something in his oblique way, something about one of the suspects in Matthias’s murder. I dredged it up from the depths of my memories from five years ago, memories that had, like everything else, been overwhelmed by Alec’s death two years later. “Wasn’t there someone besides Honey that you and Alec looked at in Matthias’s death, but you didn’t find sufficient evidence about him?” I asked. “Something to do with a Little League team coming in only second in the state? Only second! I remember Alec being disgusted by one father’s attitude. The father blamed Matthias for the loss, insisted that Matthias took a pitcher out of that final game too soon, and if he hadn’t, the Fallingbrook team could have gone on to the regional finals.”

  Brent continued to watch me, but I thought I caught a slight but encouraging nod. From the security of Brent’s arms, Dep meowed at me. What did she want me to do, grab her away from Brent? At this rate, we were never going to make it out of my combination guest room and office.

  I asked, “Didn’t that father say something like Matthias should be taken out and shot?”

  Dep meowed at me again. Brent smiled. “ ‘Relieved of his misery’ was the wording I heard.” Brent held Dep out toward me.

  I grasped the warm kitty and cuddled her. “Right. Now I remember.”

  “Do you remember who that father was?”

  Dep wriggled. I set her down again. “Alec didn’t tell me. Randy doesn’t have children, does he?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Dr. Jierson?” I was having problems imagining Mrs. Jierson being motherly.

  “Nope.” Dep threatened to climb Brent as if he were a piece of her playground equipment. I was about to grab her, but he picked her up again.

  I pushed myself away from the doorjamb. “The bridegroom who jilted Honey?”

  “Nope.”

  Frederick Aggleton had mentioned having a kid. “Frederick Aggleton?”

  “Mmp.”

  “So, Aggleton had been putting in lowball offers for Taste of Fallingbrook for years, offers that Matthias always rejected. For some reason, Aggleton thought he should own that store. Then Matthias had the gall to give another young pitcher a turn, and Aggleton had two grudges against Matthias. I remember Alec saying that the person you guys found with the strongest motive also had an alibi. Wasn’t it something about a vacation?”

  Scratching Dep between the ears, Brent paused, probably deciding how much he could tell a civilian. “His alibi wasn’t watertight, but we had no actual evidence against him. It was like Honey Bellaire. Both she and Aggleton had griped about Matthias Treetor, and Bellaire even sued him, but there was no firm evidence tying either of them to the murder.” Although Brent’s attention was making Dep purr, she stared at me under half-closed eyelids and meowed.

  I ignored her. “Now they’re both complaining about Georgia Treetor, and she’s been murdered.”

  Brent eased Dep to the floor. “That, too. I promise I won’t rule anyone out, Em.”

  “Including me.”

  “Including you.”

  “Great.”

  He reached toward me as if to pat my shoulder, but seemed to think better of it.

  Dep meowed at me, and all of a sudden, I remembered her acting this way when Alec was alive. The only way we’d been able to stop her ping-ponging between us was to hug each other with her in the middle.

  Blushing, I ducked around Brent and hurried down the stairs. Brent followed. Dep got there first and strode purposely toward the back of the house. “Meow!”

  I said, “Dep must be desperate for her sardines from Lois.” Maybe Brent would think that’s what Dep’s attention-getting upstairs had been about. “You wanted to see Dep’s secret passageway. Do you have time now?”

  “Sure.”

  I started toward the dining room, then stopped and whirled to face Brent. “I just thought of something else. But you’re probably already investigating it.”

  “What?”

  “They say to follow the money. Georgia inherited from her son. Do you know who inherits from her?”

  Brent’s eyes held a hint of apology.

  I asked, “You can’t tell me, can you?”

  He gave his head a slight shake.

  “Maybe Lois knows.”

  “I would feel better about you hanging out with her if I was sure she can be trusted. You don’t know her very well.”

  I folded my arms. “I feel like I do.” Too trusting, I’d told Lois, you’re too trusting. Did that apply to me, too?

  Apparently, Brent thought so. “Monday night, she lied to you about how she got her injury, and last night, she easily could have told me about that possibly incriminating photo of her great-nephew with his packed car, but she didn’t. I’m seeing a pattern. Be careful around her.”

  “She’s at least forty years older than I am. I think I can take care of myself.”

  “I’m not saying she’s dangerous, necessarily. I’m saying she might be dragging you down the wrong pathways in her attempts to prove that her great-nephew is not guilty of murder.”

  “I know, but I can’t just . . .” I nearly said that I couldn’t abandon a friend, but three years ago, I’d let the ties of my friendship with Brent unravel and fall apart. Brent was probably thinking the same thing. I covered it with a quick comment. “I mean, Lois’s best friend was just killed, and she hardly knows anyone here, just Georgia’s friends, Randy, and me.”

  “She was in Madison for less than five years. She must have other friends up here besides Georgia.”

  “I suppose.”

  “And like her great-nephew, Lois left Fallingbrook shortly after Matthias was murdered, and returned shortly before Matthias’s mother was killed.”

  Lois, a murderer? I shook my head.

  A demanding Meow came from the sunroom.

  Brent grinned. “Let’s go see Dep’s secret passage.”

  The grass hadn’t dried completely since Dep’s first attempt to walk on it, but she picked her way across the yard. We followed.

  Dep disappeared underneath shrubs. “It’s right in front of her,” I told Brent.

  He looked slightly dismayed, but the next thing I knew, he was crawling on damp earth—I wasn’t going to call it mud, exactly—underneath the forsythia. I stayed back. He was swallowed by dripping foliage. He made a few surprised exclamations, one of them about a drop of cold water on the back of his neck.

  Beyond the wall, Lois crooned, “Have you come for your sardine, Tiger?” I assumed that Lois was talking to Dep, not Brent.

  But Brent was the one who answered. “No, I’m not,” he said in an exaggeratedly deep voice.

  Lois quavered, “Who’s there?”

  Before Brent could scare her even more, I called out, “Emily and Brent.”

  “Have you two eaten?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Brent didn’t answer.


  “Would you like dessert?” Lois asked. “I baked a cake.”

  “Yes!” Brent was still using a theatrically dangerous-sounding voice.

  “Wait there. I’ll give Tiger her sardine, and then I’ll bring it over.”

  Apparently, Lois still did not want anyone seeing a detective visiting her.

  Or, a voice said in my head, she doesn’t want a detective snooping around inside her house. It was probably bad enough that he was crawling around on the other side of her wall.

  Chapter 22

  Brent crawled backward out of the bushes next to my wall and stood up. Twigs and leaves were stuck in his hair and mud covered his jeans from the knees down. I did not point and laugh. I might have smirked, though.

  With a rueful look, he showed me the palms of his hands. They were muddy, too. “Is your outdoor faucet where it used to be?”

  “You can come inside for warm water and soap.”

  “Not yet, I can’t.” He lowered his voice to a murmur. “Please don’t tell Lois about that picture you found today. I’d like to give her the chance to mention it.”

  “Okay.” Maybe she hadn’t tried to hide the photo from us. Maybe she’d forgotten it. Last night, she didn’t remember until after dinner that she’d brought her original thumb drive with her.

  I dragged the hose, spitting cold water, to Brent, and then went inside and brought him a handful of paper towels.

  He’d hosed the mud off his jeans. They were drenched from the knees down. My smirk threatened to flare up.

  He dried his hands. “I’ll eat that cake out here.”

  “It’s almost dark.”

  “I don’t want to drip all over your house. I know how hard you and Alec worked refinishing those pine floors.”

  “A few drops won’t matter, but . . .” I eyed his sopping pant legs. “Try stretching out on one of the chaises. They’re used to rain.”