by Maisy Marple
“I don’t always preach about it,” I giggled, “but you do bring up a good point. I should have thought a little bit more before I made that joke.”
“Anyway, you went to see Mable’s friends this morning. What happened? Obviously, you’re still alive, so it couldn’t have been that bad.”
“You’d be surprised.” I raised my eyebrows. “I had a knife pulled on me by Dotty Brennon, and was practically chased off her property. She’s a real pitbull, you know. Now, to be fair to her, she did throw the knife into the ground before she chased me back to my car.”
“Like, by your feet into the ground,” Reba asked.
“No, like straight down. She wasn’t trying to hurt me or anything like that. I think she just wanted me to know that she was not a person I should reckon with.”
Reba nodded. “Sounds like she sent that message loud and clear.”
“Amen to that, sister.” I took a sip of the water that was on the table when we’d sat down. “After that, I went to see Wendy Ferris.”
“Oh,” Reba rolled her eyes. “She’s a bird, isn’t she?”
“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “I didn’t get close enough to her to find out.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I was half way up her sidewalk when she pulled a gun on me.”
“What kind of gun?”
“I don’t know. The sun was in my eyes. But at that range, I don’t think it would have mattered that much what kind of gun she had, I’d have been a goner for sure.”
“No, you knuckle head,” Reba shook her head. “You just said Officer Freeman was shot twice in the back, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“Do you think it’s possible that those old bats attacked him at your place and that Wendy Ferris pulled the trigger?”
The thought sent the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. At this point, anything was possible.
“I guess, I should give Ted a call and see what he thinks.”
“Ted?” Reba asked, giving me a puzzled look.
“Oh, wow,” I said, shaking my head. “A lot has happened in the last few days, I suppose. Officer Billings and I are kind of on a first name basis now.” I blushed.
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah.”
“How did that happen? Did your mother ask him out for you?”
“How did you know?” I asked, blushing an even deeper shade of red than before.
“Shut up!” She laughed. “I was joking about that. Your mother really asked him out for you?”
“Yes,” I nodded in shame. “She really did.”
“How’d she do it? Did she make a bunch of cookies for you to bring over to the police station or something?”
“How did you know?”
“I may have told her that would work.” Reba grinned, leaning back and folding her arms, very satisfied with herself.
17
After lunch, I headed home and went up to my bedroom to make some more notes on yellow legal pad.
I wrote down Dotty’s name first. Next to her name, I put a big question mark. I still didn’t know what she was capable of, if anything. She seemed angry, and she was definitely strong, but she put the knife down pretty quickly, and she mentioned the Lord. Anyone who mentions the Lord wouldn’t kill someone to prove that murder was wrong, would they?
The next name I wrote down was Wendy Ferris. She had not mentioned God, and had actually pulled a gun on me. Reba brought up a good point that her gun may have been the gun that shot Officer Freeman. I would have to check with Ted to see if they had uncovered any information in that regard. My guess was he wouldn’t tell me. But maybe this new found connection we had would result in me getting some inside intel.
Even though Wendy had a gun, it certainly didn’t seem like she was capable of doing anything to James Popper without significant help. Plus, James wasn’t shot. He was strangled, which would have taken a significant amount of strength.
That led me back to Dotty. But again, the God thing. I shook my head, trying to wrestle with everything. How could this be so darned difficult?
Next on the list was Mable. She hated my guts like no other person I’d ever encountered. Dotty had said that they were drinking before they went to dinner.
Could it have been possible that Mable and the girls got a little tipsy and murdered James on a whim?
And what was up with Piper getting paid by Mable and given a red marker like the one that was used to write the notes. They even used a combination of Mable’s message of ‘murderer’ and Dotty’s faith based condemnation.
It was all so strange. The only one on the list of Mable’s friends I hadn’t seen was Fern Rosewood. She didn’t strike me as being a terrifying figure. She was diminutive in stature and legally blind. At least, I thought that was what I’d heard about her.
So, was it possible that all four of Mable’s friends had convinced James to let them into the building to look around? Then, once they had him out on the deck, they overpowered him, tied him to the chair, and choked him with his tie. And before they left, Mable stashed a note that Piper hand written into the pocket of his shirt for the officers to find when they were investigating.
I didn’t seem likely.
Was it possible?
Yes, it probably was possible.
But not probable.
I had to call Ted.
He answered after just one ring. What a sweetie.
“Hey Connie, how are you doing?”
“I’m doing well,” I said. “Listen, not to be rude, but I really need the answer to a quick question, and then I have to get back to work.”
“Okay?” His voice sounded suspicious, which I fully understood.
“Did James Popper have a key to my shop on his person at the time of his murder?”
“What are you doing, Connie?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Can you please just answer the question.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Are you sure?” I started to turn up the charm with my sweet and innocent voice. “Not even for me?”
“Especially not for you,” he said. “If anything ever happened to you, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”
“That’s so kind of you to say,” I replied. “Can you hear me blushing through the phone?”
“What?”
“Never mind,” I said, trying to move on from my failed attempt at humor. “Are you sure you can’t give me just one little crumb?”
He sighed deeply.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Hang up and I’ll text you a one letter response.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I owe you.”
“Goodbye, Connie.”
He hung up and I waited for his text.
It never came.
I was fuming! How dare he tell me that he was going to help me out and then just hang up on me without doing what he promised?
Fine.
I’d have to solve this without him.
The key. That was everything as far I was concerned. If James had it on his person when he went into the shop, then it was possible that Mable and her crew committed the crime.
Of course, It was possible that they took the key with them after the murder took place.
And if that happened, that meant that a murderer now had possession of the key to my shop. That was a scary thought.
Who else, besides James could have had the key to the shop?
Would they have kept an extra key at the realtors’ office? If they did, then it was possible that Matthew Grant and Tiffany Elizabeth had it.
That made me feel a little better.
That was, until I really started to turn it over in my mind. Could they have killed James?
Of course, they could have.
The real question was, did they?
What would their motive be?
Mable’s motive seemed clear — to send me a message that she wasn’t going to tolerate someon
e that she deemed a murderer establishing a business on her street. That I could kind of understand.
But why would James Popper’s colleagues kill him? Were they jealous of him? He did have a reputation for being the best realtor in Coffee Creek. Was that it?
That seemed like a pretty weak motive. There had to be more?
I had to take a break. All this thinking was making me hungry.
Mother didn’t disappoint.
She had made us homemade veggie pizza with a nice semi-dry Riesling. The two went together perfectly and helped to pick me up a bit.
“Hey,” she said, about halfway through dinner, “I have a question.”
“What’s that?”
“Do you have any idea why Teddy would be sending me a text?”
“He sent you a text?” I was flabbergasted. He wouldn’t even send me the text that he promised me, and here he was firing off messages to my mother.
“Yes,” she said, squinting at her screen as she typed in her password and retrieved the message in question. “He sent it at three thirty, and it says only one letter: N.”
“Is that it?” I laughed as I stood up to get another slice of pizza and another glass of wine.
“Yes,” she said, scrolling through all of her messages.
“Mom,” I chuckled, “Your phone doesn’t work like that. If he sent you more, it would have been there with the first one.”
“Oh,” she said, “okay.” She put her phone away. “Well, in that case, that’s all he sent.”
I smirked.
“Do you know what that means?” She asked, crinkling up her nose.
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
“Well, are you going to tell me, or not?”
I smiled. “It means Ted knows how to use his phone about as well as you know how to use yours.”
“Smart aleck,” my mother slapped at me.
“I do have one question. How does Ted have your number?”
“Well, dear, sometimes your mother needs to set things up with others without you knowing.”
“Are you serious?” I asked, my mouth hanging in disbelief. “Reba said the cookies were her idea. Are you telling me that Ted knew we were coming to the station beforehand?”
She shrugged, smirking her way through a sip of wine. “Maybe.”
“You guys are unbelievable,” I exclaimed, sitting back in my chair. “I’m going to have a talk with Ted about having conversations with you behind my back.”
My mother just shrugged.
18
Ted came by after dinner. My mother, thankfully, stayed inside and cleaned up the kitchen before retiring to the living room for a Hallmark movie.
It was one I hadn’t seen, and I would have loved to have watched it with her. But I wasn’t about turn down an evening with Ted, either.
“What do you want to do?” He asked as he joined me in a chair on the front porch.
“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “If you don’t mind, I’d just kind of like to sit here and talk.”
“Whew,” he said, swiping his hand across his forehead dramatically. “I was hoping you’d say that. Today was a busy day, and the thought of going out and doing something late into the night, was more than I was really hoping for. Sitting here with you, though. I’m up for that.”
I smiled at him.
“While I’ve got you in a good mood,” I began, “can we talk about you and my mother texting each other?”
He stood up and walked away from me. “Well, it was a lot of fun getting to know you. You’re a real swell gal,” he joked.
“Get over here and sit down, goofy,” I laughed, pointing at his chair. “But I’m serious. You can’t send my mother messages behind my back and expect me to trust you.”
He nodded. “I understand. That was an honest mistake, though. I really did mean to text you, I just hit the wrong Cafe in my contacts list.”
“I get that,” I said. “But I’m not just talking about this time. I mean all the time. And granted, it’s not lost on me that we’re spending this wonderful time together because you and my mother and Reba went behind my back. But now that we’re here, you can just communicate with me, okay?”
“Okay,” He smiled. “I will just text or call you. Scout’s honor.”
“Can we talk about something else?”
“That depends.” He sat up straight and turned to face me. “You know there are things I’m not allowed to talk to you about. Things like the James Popper case.”
“Am I that obvious?”
“Yeah. You are,” he chuckled, shaking his head and staring off into the distance.
“I just can’t tell you how devastating it is to have someone murdered because they helped you. You don’t know what that’s like.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I don’t. But you can’t understand how hard it is to want to keep that person safe when she goes all over town looking for a lead and ends up with a gun pointed at her face.”
“You heard about that?”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “I heard.”
“How?”
“One of Ms. Ferris’s neighbors called it in. Turns out she points that thing at just about anyone who comes to her door, especially if she doesn’t know them. Between you and me, she’s starting to lose it up here, a little.” He pointed to the side of his head. “Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, you don’t know what you’re doing, and if you keep it up, one of these days, the gun’s not just going to be pointed, it’s going to get fired. And that, Connie, is just a little more than I’m prepared to handle at this point in time.”
I nodded, remorsefully. “I know. I understand. It’s just…have you ever had a compulsion. Something within you that you just can’t seem to control? That’s the way I feel about finding whoever did this.”
He nodded and smiled. “Why do you think I became a cop? I’ve always had a compulsion to stop the bad guys. When I was a kid I was obsessed with super heroes…with a capital O. At about the age of twelve, I started to realize there were no such things as super heroes. Not the ones I was used to anyway. There were not masked men in capes and tight underwear, flying around and saving the innocent people of the city from certain doom. But, there were professions, like police officers who tried to fill that role, all be it without the tight underwear — on the outside of their uniform, that is.”
We both laughed. It felt good. Sitting here with Ted made me realize how good I had it to have a guy like him on my side. He was so many things that I’d been missing.
“But seriously,” he said, finishing up his laugh, bringing his voice down. “Please, don’t go down to Main Street tomorrow. Please, don’t drive all over the place searching for clues, or the next lead, or an eye witness testimony. Can you please just stay home for the day, watch some TV, read some books, play a board game with you mother, or whatever else you do, and then be ready for me at seven O’clock when I pick you up for dinner?”
“I think I can manage that,” I nodded.
He stood up.
“Okay, then. It’s settled. I’ll take you to dinner tomorrow night. Right now, I’m going to head home. I am pretty wiped out.”
“Sounds, good,” I said, standing up and walking him to the end of the porch. “Get some rest and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
As he drove off, I couldn’t pull myself away from the porch, even after his taillights were long out of view. There was something happening to me. And I had an idea that I knew what it was.
19
The next morning I was awoken by the buzzing of my phone on the nightstand next to my bed.
What time was it?
I picked up my phone and saw that I was getting a call from Ted.
That’s odd. He would never call me at this hour, would he?
“Hello,” I said into the phone, trying not to sound too much like I was still asleep.
“Hey, Connie,” Ted’s voice came through. It wasn’t soothing and calm like usual. Rather
, it was tentative and shaky, like he had some more unpleasant news for me. “Did I wake you?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, sitting up. “What’s up?”
“I wanted you to hear this from me before you heard it from anyone else.”
“Okay…”
“We’ve arrested a teenager by the name of Piper Lomback.”
My heart jumped into my throat. What had Piper been arrested for? Was she being accused of the murder of James Popper? Did this have something to do with the money she had gotten from Mable the day before? Could she have been the one who shot Officer Freeman in the back?
I thought about Rebecca who’d given her niece an opportunity and gotten paid back in the most ungrateful way possible. Poor Rebecca.
“What did she do?” I asked.
“She was caught this morning posting nasty messages on all of the store fronts. They were all written in red maker like the notes we found on James Popper and Officer Freeman. Every one of them alludes to you being a murder and you suffering some form of eternal damnation.”
“That’s awful,” I said, struggling to find words to comment on the shock of everything I’d just been told.
“We think she has a connection to the murderer,” Ted told me. “Detective Tolbert is going to interview her later.”
“Okay,” I swallowed hard. “What does that mean for me?”
“It means that you should do exactly what we talked about last night. Stay home, lay low. And I’m going to be sending Donald West over to your house to make sure you and your mother aren’t in any imminent danger.”
“Didn’t Detective Tolbert tell you not to do that?”
“That was before these messages got posted all over town. As things change, we have to change. We believe that there is now a definite risk to your safety. Don’t worry, Officer West will stay outside, in your driveway, just to make sure that nobody tries to do anything to you at your house.”
“Thank you, Ted. What am I supposed to tell my mother?”
