by Woods, Lori
“You finding holes in the walls everywhere too?” he called back.
“I’ve seen two so far,” she said.
“I’ve come across a couple as well,” he said, and they reconvened just outside the master bedroom.
The bedroom itself was fairly well decorated. There was a desk in the corner that Molly went to first, where she found two broken picture frames sitting in a pile, as though Rita had intended to come back to them at a later date to attempt to repair them. Molly shook her head as she began sifting through Rita’s desk, eventually coming across a business ledger with Charlotte’s name written across the top in bold, red lettering. “Check it out; I think I found something,” Molly said, and Jeffrey hurried over from where he had been snooping around in the woman’s nightstand.
She showed Jeffrey the chart, and they observed together where Rita had kept a very detailed and articulate list of all the work Charlotte had done for her and all the checks the woman had written her. Originally, Rita had calculated that Charlotte owed her exactly $2,315.75 in damages. Molly could not imagine having to pay someone that much back, and for a moment, she started thinking that Charlotte could be a potential suspect — the women had certainly not seemed to be best friends when they had interacted with one another at the festival. However, when Molly’s eyes came to the bottom of the page, she saw that Charlotte had a remaining balance of only $75.04.
“Looks like Charlotte worked hard to pay Rita back for all of the damages,” Jeffrey said.
“If she only had a measly seventy-five bucks left to pay Rita, that doesn’t really seem worth picking a fight over after hashing out over two grand,” Molly said.
“I agree,” Jeffrey said. “There was some pretty obvious tension between the two women over the money, but you’re right. I can’t imagine working hard to pay someone all of this back, only to pick a fight when you were almost free from your debt. This doesn’t even have the time Charlotte worked for Rita at the back to school bash, so she probably owed her less than seventy-five.”
“We might still want to talk to Charlotte,” Molly said. “But I’m pretty sure this is going to be enough for me to want to focus my attention elsewhere.”
“Same,” Jeffrey said, and the two of them continued rummaging around Rita’s room.
Molly got down on her hands and knees to take a peek under the woman’s bed. Like most women, the underneath of her bed was cluttered with mostly shoes, dust, and various forms of junk. However, something did catch Molly’s eye. She reached for it, and pulled out what appeared to look almost like a large, wooden Rubik’s Cube with no color. “What’s that?” Jeffrey questioned.
“I’m not sure,” she said, and then twisted one of the notches. “Oh! It’s a storage box!”
“Well, open it,” he said.
“I can’t. It’s a puzzle,” she said. “You have to twist it the right way and solve the puzzle to get it to open.”
“Oh, I’ve seen that sort of thing before,” Jeffrey said. “I was never any good at them.”
“I’m awesome,” Molly declared. “Give me some time, and I’ll figure it out. Though, this one does look pretty complicated.”
“You’re one of the smartest people I know,” Jeffrey said. “I bet you will figure it out in no time.”
They continued searching the home, but ultimately, they turned up rather empty-handed. They took the ledger with them as evidence, and Jeffrey gave Molly permission to take the puzzle box with her to try to solve. Once they were back in the patrol car, Jeffrey checked his phone, only to find that he had a message from the forensic pathologist who had been examining Rita. “What did she send you?” Molly asked.
“According to the autopsy, most of the bruises on Rita’s knuckles were several weeks old,” Jeffrey said. “But it had been difficult to tell because fresh bruises had started to form over and around the old ones from her altercation at the back to school bash.”
“Most of those bruises were old?” Molly questioned. “What on earth does she have a bunch of bruises for on her knuckles? Where did they come from?”
“My bet is Troy,” Jeffrey said. “Remember that bruise on his chin? I bet they got into another altercation recently and it just wasn’t reported. He probably went after her again, and thanks to her little boxing practice and training at the house, she might have defended herself pretty well.”
“So, you think she and Troy got into it a couple of weeks ago, and then he went back at her during the back to school bash?” Molly asked.
Jeffrey nodded. “I think that’s a workable theory, but we’re going to need more evidence than just a hunch.”
“Absolutely,” Molly agreed.
Jeffrey’s phone buzzed, and he checked his text messages. “I got a message from Charlotte. I had texted her earlier today, asking for a sit-down.”
“Best to completely rule her out, I suppose,” Molly said. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 9
Luckily, Charlotte was near River Street and was willing to meet at Molly’s Dessert Emporium, so Molly and Jeffrey headed straight there after leaving Rita’s home. Whip and Dazzle were hard at work when they arrived, taking turns serving customers while the other worked on their caramel apple pops concept. Molly and Jeffrey pulled up some chairs at a table and waited for Charlotte to arrive.
A few minutes ticked by, and soon the woman was entering the shop. She spotted Molly and Jeffrey, and headed over. Jeffrey pulled up a chair for her. “Thanks for agreeing to meet us here, Charlotte,” he said. “I hope we didn’t catch you at a bad time?”
Charlotte shrugged. “Not really. I was in the area, so it worked out. You wanted to talk to me about Rita?”
“Yes,” Jeffrey said. “Let’s just start with the day of the back to school bash. You were there working for her?”
“Just that morning,” Charlotte said. “She just needed some help loading her car up and then setting up her booth. I helped bring everything from the car while she put out all the decorative plates.”
“How long have you been working for Rita?” Jeffrey asked.
“I wouldn’t call it working; I was just trying to pay her back for the damages I caused,” Charlotte explained. “I owed her over two thousand dollars. I felt awful for knocking over that shelf.”
“Do you feel like Rita treated you fairly when you two worked out a payment plan?” Molly asked.
Charlotte grunted. “The agreement itself, I felt, was fair. We agreed I could work off some of the money — I’d get a minimum wage pay deducted from my debt while I worked the shop for her on the weekends. I was also writing her checks on Fridays after I got paid at my regular job. Believe me, I was eager to pay her back as quickly as possible. She worked me like a mule. I’ll admit that I felt pretty agitated at her during the whole thing. I think she enjoyed having the free labor, and she took advantage of it. It was a little extreme at times. I was really starting to get tired of it, but I knew that after working the back to school bash for her, I would have had just about all of it paid back and I could have written a check for the rest. Believe me, I was looking forward to it.”
“You owed her around seventy-five dollars still, is that correct?” Jeffrey asked, pulling out the ledger they had found at Rita’s home. “This is your signature right here, yes?”
“That’s mine, yes,” Charlotte said. “Yeah, I was about finished paying her off. I was really looking forward to having my weekends free again. It was getting old really fast.”
“Was it really that difficult to work for Rita?” Molly asked.
“She was awful,” Charlotte said. “She had a temper, and she yelled at me and her actual employees all the time. She even threw a plate once at a girl who showed up half an hour late for work. It didn’t hit her or anything, but it was an expensive plate. She was just miserable to be around.”
“Are there any witnesses who can confirm your whereabouts during the time of Rita’s murder?” Jeffrey asked.
“Sure,” Charlotte
said. “After Rita told me I was good to go for the day, I walked around and checked out some of the other booths for a little bit, but I left the event shortly afterwards. So, I was out. I went and had coffee with some girlfriends. You can ask them, and I used a credit card to pay, so that should be evidence enough to show where I was at.”
“Thank you. We will look into it,” Jeffrey assured her. “Can you tell us about who is running Rita’s shop now?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I think it has been closed ever since she was killed,” Charlotte said. “I imagine she has some family who will be contacting her landlord for the location soon to take care of getting her merchandise out and such.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have been given access to the shop location?” Molly asked.
“Oh yeah, I’ve got a key,” Charlotte said. “Believe me, no one lasted there long before getting fired or quitting. Rita couldn’t really get along with anybody. I only lasted as long as I did because I didn’t have much of a choice, so I sort of became an unpaid manager. Rita gave me a key. Hold on…” Charlotte went digging through her purse, pulling out her keyring. She pulled a key that had been painted pink off her keychain and handed it to Jeffrey. “You’re welcome to go take a look. I mean, I guess that’s really not up to me, but I don’t suppose there is anyone to stop you. I would appreciate that key back, though. I’m probably going to have to turn it into Rita’s landlord.”
“Thank you for that,” Jeffrey said, placing the key in his pocket. “You never know. We might be able to find some evidence there.”
“Glad I could be of help,” Charlotte said. She wound up buying herself an ice cream cone before leaving the shop. Once she was gone, Molly leaned back in her seat.
“So, what are you thinking?” Molly asked.
“I’m pretty confident in saying that Charlotte had nothing to do with this,” Jeffrey said. “She doesn’t like Rita, obviously, but there’s just not a solid motive there.”
“So, you want to go check out Rita’s shop?” Molly asked.
“You good to go with me or you want to hang out here?” Jeffrey asked.
Molly glanced over at Whip and Dazzle, who seemed to be handling things well. Whammy was getting a little irritated in his cage, but other than that, everything seemed to be in order. “I’ll take Whammy with us,” she said, opening up the cage door and placing him in the small little purse-like carrier that hung at her side. Whammy curled up inside, seeming quite pleased to be in his favorite sleeping spot.
After bidding Whip and Dazzle farewell, Molly and Jeffrey headed across town towards the strip of shops where Rita’s collectibles store was located. After finding a parking spot, the two of them hurried to the empty shop. The lights were out, so it was clear that no one else was running the shop since Rita’s passing. Once inside, there really was not much to the shop at all, other than a huge assortment of shelves filled with collectible plates and various other trinkets. There wasn’t much in the desk or behind the counter, and there was no back room — which explained why Rita kept all those boxes in her home. Frankly, the place was a bit of a disappointment, as it did not seem to present them with any new evidence or point them in any new direction.
However, as they were leaving the shop, something caught Molly’s eye. There was a shop right next door that seemed to also sell collectibles. “Let’s go in here,” Molly said, as Jeffrey locked the door behind them.
“Why?” he asked.
“Just a hunch,” Molly said, and they entered the shop. The place had nearly the same sort of merchandise as Rita’s shop — mostly collectible plates, and many of them were the exact same ones that Rita sold. “You can tell this place has been here longer than Rita’s,” Molly said. “Rita told us herself that her shop was new.”
“She opened up a shop next door selling the exact same merchandise,” Jeffrey said, taking a look at some of the plates. “She was selling the plates cheaper in her store, too.”
“That’s… really terrible of her,” Molly said. “Who owns this place?”
“I don’t know, but I’m about to find out,” Jeffrey said, and they walked up to the counter, where an uninterested teenager was texting away on his phone. “Hey, kid, is there a manager or owner in today?”
The kid looked up. “Yeah, hold on. Manager’s in the back,” he said, and picked up the store’s phone. “Hey, Karen, got a cop up here looking for you.”
A few minutes went by and an older woman came scurrying out of the back. Molly noticed that the kid quickly hid his cell phone from the manager, and Molly smirked slightly at him. “What can I help you with, Officer?” the woman, Karen, asked nicely.
“Do you own this shop?” Jeffrey asked.
“No, I just run it,” Karen said.
“Can you tell me who does?” Jeffrey asked.
Karen eyed Jeffrey for a moment. “Is there a problem?” Karen asked.
“I’m in the middle of an investigation,” Jeffrey said. “The woman who owned the shop next door was murdered.”
“Oh dear!” Karen exclaimed. “I was wondering why the shop has been closed all week. Um… yes, the man who owns the shop is named Glen Fetters. He owns about six other shops all over Savannah, but this is the only one that I run for him.”
Molly and Jeffrey exchanged glances. “Thank you for that bit of information,” Jeffrey said. “I’ll probably be calling Glen.”
“Is there something wrong? Glen’s not in trouble or anything is he?” Karen asked.
“No, nothing like that,” Molly assured the woman. “We are just talking to anyone who might have known Rita, and since his shop is right next door, we just wanted to chat.”
“Did you know Rita personally?” Jeffrey asked.
“No, not really,” Karen said. “I saw her in here a few times looking at our merchandise, but we never really talked.”
Probably in here checking to see what they were charging for everything, Molly thought. Jeffrey shook Karen’s hand and thanked her for the information before they headed out. “So, what are you thinking now?” Molly asked.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “But I think we have more than just Troy on our suspect list now. Perhaps some unfriendly competition?”
“Maybe,” Molly said, though she couldn’t be sure just yet.
Chapter 10
Molly and Jeffrey wound up heading back to the shop just as Whip and Dazzle were headed out once Bonnie and Braxton had settled into the afternoon shift. Whip and Dazzle bid them farewell, and the twins got to work on prepping for any evening customers who would make their way into the shop. Molly and Jeffrey, however, found themselves a seat at one of the pink tables to discuss the case. Once they were seated, Whammy began chirping from Molly’s side carrier, so she released him to let him fly around for a bit while they did not have any customers in the shop.
“Here’s what I’m thinking,” Jeffrey began. “We really got two primary suspects. Troy, the abusive ex-husband, or Glen — the competition.”
Molly nodded in agreement as she continued working with the little puzzle box they had found at Rita’s home. She twisted and pushed on the individual pieces, but try as she might, she couldn’t seem to figure out how to get the thing open. “I agree, but so far we don’t seem to have any real evidence to nab either of them other than that bruise under Troy’s chin. And what the autopsy found actually confirms Troy’s story there. Rita had older bruises on her knuckles, so the two of them probably did get into it a couple of weeks ago, and she wound up socking him.”
“Glen didn’t really seem like the revengeful type,” Jeffrey said. “We only met him briefly, but he was just a real quiet guy. A business man — an opportunist. Frankly, if his collectibles shop wasn’t doing well, he probably could have afforded to close it down and open up something else. He has multiple small businesses all over town, so how much of a burden was Rita’s shop to him anyhow? But that doesn’t necessarily mean they didn’t get into some sort of altercation.”
“I got to say, my money is still on Troy,” Molly admitted. “But we need more proof outside of just an old bruise on his chin and a domestic violence charge from a couple years back. Plus, Jack really seems to think that Troy was with him at the time of murder. And, say what you will about Jack, I don’t see a reason for him to want to lie about that.”
The door to the shop had opened, and Molly turned her head to greet the customer, but she frowned to see Jack standing there with his arms crossed, looking rather smug. “I heard my name,” he said. “You talking about me, honey?”
“Forget you, Jack,” Molly said. “I thought I told you to stay away from my store.”
Jack smirked at Jeffrey. “Believe it or not, I came by to offer some assistance. I was checking out some hospital records your chief managed to snag for me. Guess who made a hospital visit the morning after the murder for some stitches?”
“Who?” Molly asked.
“Glen Fetters,” he said. “The hospital records weren’t particularly detailed, but I did manage to find out the guy got stitched up. You two spoken to that guy yet?”
“No, not yet,” Jeffrey said.
“Well,” Jack said. “Based off what I saw at the crime scene, Rita definitely put up some sort of fight. Her knuckles were pretty bloody too. And she had that broken plate as a weapon. If she had managed to stab her attacker with it hard enough to slide her hand up the way she did, the attacker would probably have required some medical repair.”
“He waited until the next day?” Jeffrey asked, and Jack nodded. Jeffrey thought for a moment before speaking. “That could either mean he did attack Rita and he waited to go to the hospital or he got hurt in an unrelated incident the following morning.”
“Yeah, but it’s worth looking into, I think,” Jack said. His eyes fell on Molly, who was still messing with the puzzle box. “Hey, I love those things,” he said, and took it right out of her hands.
