A Rip Roaring Good Time (15 page)

"I'm sorry, Ms. Runcan, but I think I'm going to have to reconsider working as a server here. The arthritis in my spine is beginning to rear its ugly head, and the gout in my big toe seems to be flaring up all of a sudden as well. I'm afraid I'll need to look for employment in a position that requires less time on my feet. But I do appreciate the opportunity to find out if I could handle such a challenging occupation at this stage in my life."

I didn't even wait around long enough to hear her response. I threw the silly-looking apron I'd been given to wear down on the counter and walked out the front door. I felt as if I'd gained a lot of insight into what I considered a trifling motive to kill Trotter Hayes. But I had to admit it wasn't out of the realm of possibility for someone as emotional unstable as Alice Runcan appeared to be.

* * *

I got in the truck, glad my tedious morning as a waitress was over. I quickly realized I had no clue how to get back to the inn. Once again, out of stupid pride, I had foolishly declined Rip's offer to show me how to program the return address into the GPS device. At the time he offered, I'd thought I'd be able to retrace my steps easily enough. Unfortunately, I discovered I'd overestimated my memory capacity by a great deal.

Sometimes I even worried I might be in the early stages of Alzheimer's Disease and there was no medical affliction I feared more. When you get to be my age, just forgetting where you left your glasses is cause for concern. More so when it happens six times a day and at least one of those times you find them propped up on the top of your head.

So I did what Rip had always done with electronic devices he didn't understand. I started randomly pushing buttons. I was about to give up on the GPS when the address of the Alexandria Inn popped up on the screen. I then pushed an option called "select as destination" and was delighted when the female voice told me to drive east for a mile and turn left on Weeping Willow Drive, which I remembered driving down earlier that morning.

I was following the directions being voiced by the GPS device on the way home when I decided to name the gadget Ms. Ratchet. Every time I made one small misstep, the bossy voice said, "recalculating," in what I considered to be a very snotty tone. She even forced me to make a U-turn in downtown Rockdale that I feared might get me thrown in the can alongside Lexie.

Back at the inn, I found the place eerily silent. The sisters were probably visiting their parents and a note written by Rip, lying on the kitchen table, read, "Stone and I are following a lead. Be back soon."

The note was encouraging. It made me hopeful they were on the right path to nailing the real perpetrator. I was anxious to find out what, if any, discoveries they'd made. I had a little insight of my own to relate but was convinced it was of little or no significance.

In the meantime, I wanted to sit a spell with my feet up and a drink in my hand. It'd been a long morning, and I'd been missing my afternoon cocktail. There was no tequila in the house so I grabbed a Miller Lite out of the fridge instead. I retreated to the screened-in back porch and stretched out on a chaise lounge. Dolly followed me outside and let out a series of pitiful squawks as soon as I'd gotten comfortable.

By the way she was flopping over like a fainting goat, I knew the chubby cat was trying to entice me into serving her two o'clock feeding an hour-and-a-half early. Now, I know what you're thinking. And I'll admit it's Rip's and my fault the cat is overweight. But you've never had to look into the adorable kitty's pleading eyes and deny the poor hungry thing some sustenance. It's damned near impossible to do. So, after I fetched Dolly a scoop of Science Diet Light, I stretched out on the chaise lounge again.

While I sipped on my beer and relaxed, I was going back over my discussion with Alice Runcan in my mind. I wished I'd thought to ask her why the three close friends had not kept in touch with each other in the years following high school. I still talked on the phone with my best school chum at least once a month. I could go back to Zen's Diner for breakfast the following day, but that might really raise a red flag with the restaurant owner. She might even get the impression I was stalking her. But, if nothing else, maybe I could find out where Joy lived or worked from Wendy and figure out some way to get into a conversation with her.

I needed to try to think the way Lexie would if our roles were reversed. It sounded to me as if she had always been able to find clever, if occasionally risky, ways to get the information she wanted out of suspects. I went over the list of possible suspects in my mind as my eyes got more and more difficult to keep open. A short time later her majesty's rhythmic purring next to me lulled me to sleep.

Before I nodded off, I'd considered some of the ramifications of the story Lexie had told us when we'd visited her the previous afternoon. The fact that Trotter's drink was spiked with cyanide made it clear that whoever killed him had planned the crime in advance. At the very least, whoever killed him had attended the party prepared to kill him if an opportunity to do so without being caught presented itself. And to their delight, no doubt, the opportunity had.

The killer could be any number of people. A guy like Trotter Hayes probably had a whole lot of enemies. The perpetrator might not have even been invited to the party, I realized. If they had knowledge of Trotter's plans to attend the event, they could have sneaked in the rear door, hidden in the pantry, spiked his drink, and left without ever being seen by anyone. But if that were the case, how could the killer know in advance Trotter would request a drink and Lexie would leave the drink unattended in the kitchen long enough for them to slip cyanide into his Crown and Coke? And, more importantly, who then slashed his throat? After more consideration, it seemed certain to me the killer
had
to have been at the party, instead of an intruder who slipped in, killed his victim, and slipped out, undetected by anyone else.

A coincidence of those proportions just didn't seem like a viable possibility to me. I decided we needed to concentrate on party guests who had previous issues with the victim. And it was beginning to seem like it could be a lengthy list. Unless something else popped up to indicate otherwise, looking into whatever motives the various guests might have had to kill Trotter Hayes is what appeared to me to be the best way to spend our time. The only way to discover motives a guest might have had was to talk to them, which might also result in finding out any possible motives other guests might have had. It was human nature for people to postulate and point fingers at others.

The next thing I knew I was being awakened by a tender kiss on my forehead. Startled, I pulled back abruptly and knocked my half-empty beer can off the wrought-iron table. Startled by the sudden noise, Dolly practically jumped out of her skin on the other side of me. She was trying to get traction to flee before she even hit the ground.

Rip laughed and took his handkerchief out of his back pocket to start swabbing up the spilt beer. I ran into the kitchen and came back with a dishtowel, knowing the handkerchief wouldn't be adequate to clean up the mess.

We worked together to sop up all the liquid. Fortunately, the floor was concrete and no permanent harm was done. Rip smiled at me as we finished and asked, "Drinking alone again, huh?"

I playfully punched him in the shoulder and asked him what they'd been up to all day. When Rip started to explain, I sat back down to listen to his remarks. The murder case was getting more intriguing every day.

* * *

"Stone and I drove over to the country coroner's office on the pretense of taking Wendy to lunch, which, by the way, we did. Guess what Wendy's favorite restaurant is," Rip quizzed me with a smile.

"Red Lobster?"

"No, it's a fast-food joint."

"Kentucky Fried Chicken?"

"No, it's a burger joint. Guess again."

"McDonalds?"

"No, it's a—"

"Oh, for God's sake, tell me!" I insisted, tiring of the guessing game.

"Duh—it's Wendy's! So anyway, while we were finishing our 'baconators,' Stone asked Wendy if she could somehow get us a copy of Trotter Hayes's autopsy report. We thought there was a remote possibility that something in the report might prove valuable in getting Lexie released from custody."

"Was there?" I asked impatiently. My husband had a bad habit of taking forever and a day to cut to the chase. Like Lexie, he tended to get mired down in the insignificant details. It was particularly annoying when I was waiting on pins and needles to find out something important.

"Don't know. We couldn't get a copy. As I expected, not even Trotter's father, Chief Leonard Smith, was permitted to receive a copy of the autopsy report in this homicide case. Wendy told us that, unfortunately, it was considered a conflict of interest for her to even view a copy. She hasn't been allowed in the lab since, out of necessity, Nate, the county coroner, called her in to assist by sniffing for the presence of cyanide. I'm sure you recall her telling us about her being the only one in the lab who could detect the telltale presence of a bitter almond scent."

"So you're telling me you accomplished absolutely nothing but boosting your cholesterol levels over burgers and fries?" I asked.

"Not exactly. Here's where it gets interesting," Rip replied. He was now resting in the chair beside me, sipping on a tumbler of Crown and ice and rubbing his bad hip as he talked. "While on the way back to the lab to drop Wendy off, she commented on the fact that Falcon Jons had been in earlier, also requesting a copy of the autopsy report. He said he was merely curious about his old classmate's death, but was denied a copy, too, of course. But Wendy said that Falcon had been at her birthday party, and Mattie had told her that Falcon was fixated on his ex-girlfriend, Joy White, who had come to the party with Trotter as her guest. Joy and Falcon had split up when he learned that she'd hooked up with Trotter."

"Hmm," I replied. "I recall Wendy also telling Lexie and me that Joy had just recently dumped him for Trotter and she wondered if Falcon wasn't trying to make Joy jealous by slobbering all over Rayleen Waters, his date for the evening."

"According to what Falcon told Wendy, he had planned to attend the birthday party alone. But then, Rayleen called him earlier that morning and practically begged him to let her attend the party with him. I'm not sure how happy she was about the overly zealous affection at the party that you told me you witnessed, because she'd never been particularly close to Falcon before that night, according to Wendy. Mattie had told Wendy she hadn't invited Rayleen to the party since they'd only hung out with her on occasion in high school and neither had seen her in years. Rayleen, Wendy explained, was kind of a loner who only interacted with a few select friends, primarily Alice Runcan and Joy White." As Rip talked, he kept referring to a yellow Wendy's napkin that he'd scribbled notes on.

"Joy told me this morning she hadn't seen Alice in years," I said. "And she didn't indicate having seen Rayleen recently either. Could the notion of reuniting with her high school buddies be why Rayleen was so determined to be at the party in the first place? Maybe she felt left out because she knew both Alice and Joy had been invited. I can understand why she'd want to be included."

Rip shrugged and said, "That's probably it, but if time allows, it might be worth looking in to." I nodded and wrote some notes in my own little notebook. I'd taken it out when Rip began outlining his day. I had remembered Lexie telling me in Cheyenne that she always utilized a notebook to keep track of all the details. At the time, I'd thought she was being too anal about her impromptu investigation. However, I was quickly learning the importance of keeping a meticulous record of every single issue and clue we unearthed in a quagmire like the one we were involved in. It helped to have all the intricate details in writing to refer back to should the need arise. Especially with so many young people involved in this convoluted web of friends and lovers.

While I scribbled down the particulars, Rip went inside to get me another beer, and I was guessing he would refill his half-finished drink too. When he returned I said, "Alice Runcan described Falcon as having a 'screw loose,' and Mattie had said he'd just recently been dumped by Joy White, who came to the party as Trotter's date. Joy was a reasonably close friend of Wendy's in high school, according to Mattie, who was the one who invited her to the party. But apparently Joy had no knowledge of the sexual assault Trotter had perpetrated against Wendy not long before Wendy began dating Andy."

"How have you come to that conclusion?" Rip asked.

"If Joy knew about the attempted rape incident and was close to Wendy, I can't believe she'd show up at her friend's surprise party with the man who'd assaulted her friend. If for no other reason, wouldn't she worry the same fate might befall her too?"

"Your reasoning makes perfect sense to me. Who'd have thought the little Mayberry RFD town of Rockdale, Missouri, could be such a cesspool of relationships gone bad?"

"Yeah, no kidding! It's more like Peyton Place than Mayberry. Still, I can't imagine any of their petty grievances escalating to the point they'd murder the feller. I'm wondering how Joy fits into this whole equation and what possible role, if any, she might have played in Trotter's death." I was thinking out loud as I was trying to fit the pieces together in my head.

"To me, Joy appeared genuinely grief-stricken about her boyfriend's death," Rip replied. "I don't know how she could have pretended to be that overcome with despair directly after the murder. She'd be a movie star if she were that convincing of an actress. They had to transport her to the hospital in an ambulance, if you remember."