A Killer Cake (19 page)

“But you’d rather I didn’t say anything to
her at all. Is that true?” I asked, pushing a little harder.

“You know what? You have my blessing to tell
her anything you want to at all, Victoria. Just don’t let her know
how you found out. Will you do that much for me?”

“I won’t say a word to her about anything.
Your friendship is more important to me than any murder case.”

“I appreciate that,” Rebecca said, “but if
you keep my name, and Paul’s, out of it, that will be enough.”

“Okay, if you’re sure.”

“I am,” she said as she stifled a yawn.
“Listen, I’m beat. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Bye,” I said, “and thanks for going to such
extreme lengths to get me that information.”

“It was my pleasure,” she said, and then,
Rebecca added with a laugh, “and I mean every word of it.”

After we hung up, Greg saw me start to dial
another number. “You’re not calling Loretta now, are you?”

“Were you listening in?”

“Shamelessly,” he admitted with a grin.

“No, I thought I’d touch base with Moose
before I did anything,” I said.

“That’s a good plan. What do you think this
all means?”

“Well, I’m certainly going to start looking
at Kelly Raven harder than I have been before. I’ll tell you one
thing; Moose is not going to like this.”

“Why not?”

“He thinks that Kelly is too sweet to get her
hands dirty with murder.”

“With the motivation we know she had now,”
Greg said, “it wouldn’t surprise me if she decided to speed up her
inheritance and spread a little poison.”

“I think it’s possible, too.”

Moose answered on the first ring. “What’s
going on, Victoria?”

“Were you waiting by the phone for me to
call, Moose?” I asked with a smile.

“Well, I’m guessing that Rebecca called you.
Do I have to beg, or are you going to share what you learned with
me?”

“No begging required,” I said. After I
brought him up to date about my conversation with Rebecca, there
was silence on the other end of the line. “Moose? Are you still
there?”

“I’m trying to digest everything you just
told me. We’ve got two suspects that just went to the head of the
line, don’t we?”

“Three,” I said. “We can’t sell Sylvia short.
She could have done it to insure her son of what she must think of
as his birthright.”

“True, but if Roy told Loretta that she
wasn’t getting a dime of his money, she could have killed him out
of anger instead of greed.”

“So, the only ones we can eliminate now are
the two businessmen who got skewered in their deals with Roy, is
that how you see it?” Moose asked.

“No, they’re still viable, too. This murder
might not have anything to do with Roy’s will.”

“Then what good does it do knowing anything
about who Roy was planning to leave his holdings to?”

“Moose, you know as well as I do that all we
can do is collect information at this point. Who knows which
particular piece is going to be the one that gives us the answer to
the entire puzzle? You’ve got to keep the faith.”

“It just gets frustrating sometimes, you know
what I mean?”

“Oh, trust me, I know,” I said. “I think that
we should wait until morning to tell Loretta about her father’s
intentions to write
everyone
out of his will.”

“He couldn’t write her out if she was never
there to start with,” Moose reminded me.

“That’s a good point, but I still want to see
how she takes the news that she’s not getting a dime of Roy
Thompson’s money.”

“Let’s do it together. I’ll see you when you
get off at eight tomorrow morning, and we’ll tackle her first.”

“That sounds great,” I said, and then hung up
the phone.

“I heard most of that,” Greg said. “Moose is
right. The new information really didn’t do you much good at all,
did it?”

“Not yet, but who knows what tomorrow might
bring?” I asked.

My husband hugged me, and then he said, “I
don’t know, and as long as I get to spend at least some of it with
you, I’m okay with that.”

“So am I,” I answered.

It was ten minutes after six in the morning
when Loretta Jenkins walked into the diner, looking as though she
hadn’t slept an hour the entire night. If I had to guess, I’d say
that someone had already told her about her father’s will. I
wondered who’d beaten me to it.

“Do you have a second?” she asked me as I
helped Ellen wait on the first of our customers. We had a handful
of regulars who never missed having breakfast with us, and one of
the things they said they liked best about us was our prompt and
friendly service.

“If you can give me five minutes, I can
manage it, but right now I’m jammed,” I said.

Loretta nodded, and then she pointed to a
booth off to one side. “When you get a chance, I’ll be over
there.”

“Can I get you something while you’re
waiting?” I asked.

“Coffee; black, and lots of it.”

“Rough night?” I asked.

“You don’t know the half of it,” she
said.

I had a hunch that I did, but I wasn’t about
to spoil the surprise if she was here because of something else
entirely. After I helped Ellen with the crowd of customers we had,
I walked over to Loretta. “Are you sure that I can’t get you
something to eat? It might make you feel better.”

“After what I heard last night, I doubt
that,” she said.

“I don’t know. My mom makes a pretty mean
Denver omelet.”

“You make your mother work in the kitchen at
this hour of the day?” Loretta asked, a little unbelieving.

“That’s nothing. My husband takes over when
she goes home. When we say that this is a family business, we mean
that everyone pitches in, even our mascot moose.”

As I said the last part, I gestured to my
hand-carved moose, but Loretta didn’t even look in his
direction.

“Whatever,” she said. “My dear, sweet
half-brother dropped a bombshell on me last night. He gets half of
everything according to the latest will, and I don’t get a
dime.”

“You don’t say,” I said, trying to hide the
fact that I already knew. “Who gets the other half, if it’s not
you?”

“Some trollop that worked for him,” Loretta
said with clear distaste. “If they think that they’re going to get
away with this, they are sadly mistaken. I was up all night talking
to Steve. He told me that I should just let it go, can you believe
that? Just because my father and I never had a relationship is no
reason that I shouldn’t be one of his heirs, you know?”

“Well, I’ve never been in your position,” I
said as tactfully as I could. “I’m not quite sure how I would react
if I were.”

“Trust me, you’d want the money,” Loretta
said. “Do you know any good lawyers around here?”

“I might know one,” I said. “Why do you
ask?”

“I need someone on my side in this mess. I
hear there’s a woman named Rebecca Davis in town. Is she any
good?”

“She’s the best,” I said. “Are you sure
there’s no other way than litigation to work something out?”

“Hey, I never started this. I was willing to
settle for something reasonable, but Asher just laughed when I
suggested it. Now I want it all.”

“But he has the will in his favor, isn’t that
right?”

“Who cares? Clearly our father wrote that
before he knew that he had a daughter, too.”

Maybe Roy did, and then again, maybe he
didn’t, but it wasn’t my place to tell her that. Besides, how could
I say a word now, since I hadn’t disclosed it earlier? For now, I
was going to have to go with the strategy I’d adopted of feigning
ignorance. “Rebecca is an excellent attorney, but I should tell you
up front, my recommendation isn’t unbiased. We’ve been best friends
forever.”

“Can I trust your opinion about her skills?”
she asked.

“I think you can, but how can you take my
word for it that I’m telling you the truth?”

She just shrugged. “I need to trust somebody
in this ugly business. Why shouldn’t it be you? Where can I find
this Rebecca woman?”

I glanced at the clock. “If I know her, she’s
still in bed. She doesn’t open her office until ten.”

“I’ll get her up before that,” Loretta
said.

“She’s not going to open her office up early
just for you,” I said. I was pretty safe in saying that, since my
friend enjoyed her sleep more than just about anything else.

“When she finds out how much money she stands
to gain if we win, she’ll wake up, you can trust me on that. Is she
in the book?”

I nodded. “She sure is; it’s listed under R.
Davis. Good luck.”

“I don’t need luck,” Loretta said as she slid
a dollar down beside her mug. “I have the truth on my side.”

She might have thought so, but I had the
feeling that even with Rebecca’s vast legal skills, it was still
going to be a lost cause.

Then again, I’d been wrong before.

Chapter 14

“Are you ready to roll, Victoria?” Moose
asked as he came into the diner around eight, rubbing his hands
together, just as he’d promised.

Martha kissed me on the cheek as he added, “I
want to catch Loretta before she has the chance to duck out on
us.”

“I’m sorry, but it turns out that you’re too
late for that,” I said. “She came by here a little after six this
morning.”

“Why didn’t you call me?” he asked
petulantly.

“Well, first of all, I wasn’t about to wake
you up, and second of all, there was no time. She was in and out
during our first push of customers, and when I finally had a chance
to chat with her, she left before we could get into anything
significant.”

“Did you tell her about Roy’s will?”

“I didn’t have to,” I said. “Evidently Asher
called her last night. She’s going to fight him in court for a
share of the inheritance, and she’s trying to hire Rebecca to
represent her.”

“She could do worse,” Moose said.

“That’s what I told her. I’m sorry, but there
was just no time to bring you in on it.”

“That’s fine,” he said. “Did I come by for
nothing, then?”

“No, I think we should go have a chat with
Kelly right now.”

“Do you honestly think that she bothered
coming into work after finding out how much she is going to inherit
from her boss? I doubt that I would, given those
circumstances.”

“We
both
know that’s not true,” I
said. “Your worth ethic wouldn’t let you skip out, not if you knew
there were things that needed to be done.”

“Maybe not, but how do we know that Kelly
feels that way, too?”

“There’s only one way to find out,” I
said.

“Let’s go, then.”

“Thanks again for covering for me again,” I
told my grandmother. “I’m trying not to make a habit of it.”

“You’re doing something extremely important,”
she answered.

“So are you,” I said as I hugged her on the
way out.

Moose and I drove to Roy Thompson’s office,
and I was beginning to have my doubts that we’d find Kelly there.
That fear was reinforced when I realized that the only vehicle
parked out front was one that I didn’t recognize. Moose and I
walked in the door, and I saw a handsome man in his early forties
dressed in a nice suit leaning over Kelly at her desk, studying a
computer monitor. So, she was there after all.

“Sorry. We didn’t mean to interrupt,” I
said.

“You’re not,” Kelly said as she automatically
tried to scoot her chair away from the shadow of the man. It had
the unfortunate consequence of striking him directly on the knee,
though.

“Careful,” he said with a hint of irritation
in his voice before he turned to us. “May I ask what business you
have here?”

“We came by to see Kelly,” I said. I offered
him my hand as I added, “You must be Paul Gray.”

He took it, but frowned slightly as he did
so. “How could you possibly know my name?”

“Rebecca Davis is my best friend,” I said
with a smile.

His frown vanished in an instant, replaced
with more than the hint of a smile. “Rebecca’s something, isn’t
she?”

I glanced at Kelly and saw that she was not
at all pleased by Paul’s change of attitude. Was she interested in
the man herself? “She is first class all the way,” I said.

“You must be Victoria,” he said, and then he
turned to Moose and offered his hand. “And I’m guessing that you’re
the famous Charming Moose.”

“I hope that at least some of the things
you’ve heard about me are positive,” my grandfather said with a
grin.

“Some are,” Paul said, matching my
grandfather’s grin with one of his own. I liked this man, and I was
hopeful that something might work out between him and my best
friend. “I’ll give you all a little time to chat. I need to make a
phone call to my office anyway.”

The attorney left the room and went into
Roy’s space, and after he was safely behind closed doors, Kelly bit
her lower lip. “I didn’t know that he was seeing Rebecca.”

“They’re pretty new,” I said. How new, I
wasn’t about to explain. “We understand that congratulations are in
order.”

“What? Oh, the money. I suppose so.”

“Tell me that you’re not excited,” Moose
said. “No matter how unfortunate the circumstances, you’re a very
wealthy young woman now.”

“That might all be a bit premature,” Kelly
said, “but even if it were true, I’m not so sure I’m going to
accept it. What was Mr. Thompson thinking, leaving me all of that
money? And if I take it, what are people going to say?”

“Do you mean this wasn’t just a reward for
your years of loyal service?” I asked her.

“That sounds so ridiculous I don’t even know
how to respond to it. Do you know what my Christmas bonus was last
year?”

“I don’t have a clue,” I said.

“He bought me a turkey. It wasn’t even
cooked. What was I going to do with a turkey? I live alone, and I
don’t eat meat anyway.”