A Slice of Murder (24 page)

“You’re lying,” Maddy said, but there wasn’t a lot of belief in her words.

“Call Pickering and ask him yourself,” Faith said. “Just don’t show my husband that letter until you find out I’m telling the truth.” The pleading in her voice died as she added, “If you show him tonight, by tomorrow morning I’ll make sure he gets every inspector on the payroll checking out your pizza place. It’s up to you.”

I turned to Maddy. “This can wait until tomorrow.”

“Okay,” she said.

I looked at Faith and said, “If you’re lying to us, we’ll be back.”

“Fine. Just go now, all right?”

“We’re leaving.”

Maddy and I were twenty yards away, safely buried in the fog, when we heard the front door open. We could both hear Steve Baron say, “What are you doing out here? I thought the Thompsons were here.”

“It’s the cat,” Faith said. “She won’t come in.”

“Then leave her,” her husband ordered. “Get back inside. You don’t want to look like an idiot when our friends get here.”

“Yes, dear,” Faith said, and as she walked back inside, I saw her look back over her shoulder toward us.

We made it back to Maddy’s car, and I dug out my cell phone.

“Who are you calling?” she asked.

“Bob Pickering. I have to see if she’s telling the truth.”

“And if she’s not, we’re going back, aren’t we?”

I nodded. “I’m tired of this mess. I just want it to be over.”

“Dial away, then.”

I had Bob’s home number and dialed it, my hands shaking as I did. It wasn’t just from the cold fog, though. I was getting close to finding the killer. I could feel it.

“Sorry to call you so late,” I said when he picked up.

“I was just catching a movie,” he said. “Don’t tell me you lost another window, Eleanor. You still owe me the deductibles for your insurance on the last two.”

“I’ll come by in the morning and pay them,” I said, “but I’ve got an odd question for you tonight about one of your customers.”

“I don’t exactly have privileged information on any of them,” he said, “so I’ll tell you what I can.”

“It’s pretty simple. Were you working on the Barons’ VW the night Richard Olsen was murdered?”

“No, not that night,” he said, and I felt my spirits soar. So, she’d been lying to me after all.

I was about to thank Bob and hang up when he added, “I’d fixed it that afternoon, but they didn’t pick it up until the next morning. Something about an early dinner reservation, I believe. It came up all of a sudden, and they asked me to stay late so they could pick it up after dinner, but I told them in no uncertain terms that they weren’t the only ones who’d be eating that night, and they could just as well wait until morning to pick it up, which is what they did. Why do you ask?”

“Where were the keys when it was in your garage?” I asked.

“On the peg board with all the rest of them,” Bob admitted. “Believe it or not, I don’t have duplicate keys to all of my customers’ cars.”

“Could anyone get to that board with the keys on it?”

“No, it would have to be one of my mechanics, since the board is back behind the desk.” He thought about it a second, then admitted, “Though if a customer was there paying a bill, they’d be close enough to it to just reach over and snag a key. What’s going on, Eleanor?”

“Nothing. I was just asking.”

“There’s more to this than you’re saying.”

“We can talk about it tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll be by before nine to pay you.”

“That’s fine. You don’t have to rush.”

“I hate owing anybody money, especially my friends.”

After I hung up, I told Maddy what I’d learned, finishing up by saying, “So we have to take the Barons off our list.”

“Not necessarily,” Maddy said. “Have you ever considered the possibility that they left the car at Bob’s on purpose so they’d have this alibi if anyone found out they’d been chasing Richard all over town?”

“I don’t see how,” I said. “They left the car there at the last minute, according to Bob. I can’t see them going through all that work, then killing Richard Olsen in the heat of the moment.”

“What makes you think the murder wasn’t planned?”

“The knife, mostly,” I said. “It was from his own kitchen. That sounds like it was spur of the moment to me.”

“Or is that what they want you to think,” Maddy said.

“We can go round and round like this all night, you know that, don’t you?” I asked as a pair of headlights started toward us.

The car slowed near us, and for a second I had an irrational thought that the police chief had been following us and was going to arrest us both.

Then the sedan pulled into the Barons’ driveway, and I realized it was most likely the long-awaited Thompsons.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said. “This fog is giving me the creeps.”

“Okay, but I still say we bust in there and take care of this, once and for all.”

“If I thought we had anything that even approached being solid, I’d agree with you. Maddy, whether we like it or not, this is just one more dead end.”

“We’re not just giving up, are we?”

“Maybe for tonight, but don’t worry, we’ll start poking around again tomorrow.”

“That’s my girl,” she said as she started her car and drove me home.

I’d had such high hopes for the Barons as our main suspects, but suddenly I wasn’t all that certain anymore.

Maddy was right about one thing, though. One or both of the Barons might have been clever enough to set the whole thing up.

But if they were that smart, were we good enough to catch them?

By the next morning, the fog had lifted, and the world looked bright and fresh. I had coffee in the dining room as I admired the way the sunlight reflected off the oak that Joe and I had so painstakingly restored. Maddy had tried to convince me to move out soon after my husband’s death, but I couldn’t do it. My life was in a shambles, but I had a home, a haven that protected me from the world and, more importantly, kept a strong link to Joe that would never end.

And one dinner out with David wasn’t going to change that. I’d have to call him sometime soon to let him know that our one chance was over. I might be able to open my heart again sometime, but it wasn’t now, at least not with him. The closeness and easiness we’d experienced almost felt like a betrayal to my husband’s memory, though I knew it was a ridiculous way to look at it.

But feelings weren’t always logical, and mine at the moment were swirling in a thousand different directions.

I got dressed and left the house early. Maddy and I hadn’t made any specific plans for today, but I had a stop to make before I went to the Slice. I owed Bob money, and I was going to take care of that as soon as I could.

I found Bob talking on the phone, his face already frosted with grease.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know what to tell you,” he said into the receiver. “Your car was running fine when you left here.”

He shrugged an apology, but I just smiled as I got my checkbook out. I knew my deductible, so I could write the check. I probably should have just dropped it off in the mail, but I wanted a chance to thank Bob again personally for taking such good care of me.

“I’ll look at it again, but I’ll tell you right now, I couldn’t find anything wrong with it the first time.” He paused, then added, “Then take it to a Mercedes dealership if you think they’re any better than I am.”

He slammed the phone down with a flourish.

“Let me guess—another happily satisfied customer,” I said as I handed him the check I’d just written.

“Some people shouldn’t own automobiles. I had it in my shop two days, but none of the guys could find anything wrong with it. I didn’t charge her a penny, but did that satisfy her? It did not.”

He shook his head vigorously, then added, “Let’s talk about more pleasant things.” He looked at the check, then said, “Exactly right. You didn’t have to bring it by, though. I trust you.”

“How else could I do this?” I asked as I hugged him.

He pulled away quickly. “Hey, you’re going to get yourself dirty.”

“I don’t care. Thanks, Bob. You’re a lifesaver.”

“Anytime,” he said. As I walked back to my car, he added, “Just not in the next three days. I should be able to get more windows in by then.”

“Hopefully that trend is over,” I said.

I’d come to ask him about the Barons’ VW as well, but as I started to speak, the telephone rang again.

He said, “Pickering’s, hang on a second,” then looked at me. “Was that all?”

“I hate to bother you, but do you have a list of cars that were here the night Richard Olsen was murdered?”

“No, but I could probably scare one up for you. Why, is it important?”

“I don’t know, but it might be.”

He nodded. “I’ll have it for you sometime after lunch. Is that soon enough? We’re really buried right now.”

“That’s fine. Thanks again,” I said, but he was already talking on the telephone again. I would have loved to go through his receipts and appointments right then, but I’d already pushed my luck with him, and if there was one man in Timber Ridge I didn’t want mad at me, it was my mechanic.

I walked in the door three minutes before nine and found Maddy pacing around the dining room of the pizzeria.

“Why isn’t your cell phone on?” she snapped at me.

“It is,” I said.

“Oh, really?” She pulled her own cell phone out and punched in a number. The phone rang and rang until Maddy said, “If it’s ringing, you’re not answering.”

I pulled the phone out of my purse and flipped it open. The screen was blank.

“I must have forgotten to turn it off yesterday. Can I borrow your charger?”

“It won’t fit your telephone,” she said as she stowed hers back into her purse.

“What’s so urgent that it couldn’t wait until now?” I asked.

“This,” she said as she waved a piece of paper in front of me.

“Am I supposed to know what that is?” I asked.

“You should. It’s the paper I pulled out of Richard Olsen’s safety-deposit box.”

“Where’d you find it?” I asked as I held out my hand.

“It was in my jeans. I don’t know how I missed it the first time I checked.”

I tried to smooth the paper out, but it was wrinkled beyond belief. “What happened to it?”

“I washed it, okay?” she said with a snap to her voice.

“It’s not going to do much good then, is it?”

“There’s one thing you can still read. The paper must have been folded just right, but it’s still there.”

I studied the paper but couldn’t make anything out. “I’m sorry, I don’t see it.”

She snatched the paper from me, then frowned as she looked at it. “It was right there,” Maddy said as she pointed to a spot. “Hang on a second.”

She turned on one of the lights and held the paper up to it. “Come here. You can still see it.”

I leaned forward and tried to see what she was talking about. At first I missed it, but then she shifted it just right, and for a moment, I caught a glimpse of something.

It was a series of letters and numbers: SN3 769.

“What does it mean, though?” I asked Maddy.

“You don’t bank at Third Southern National, do you?” she asked.

“You know I don’t,” I said.

“One of my husbands used to,” she said. “I’ve been staring at that number for an hour waiting for you to answer your phone or show up. I’m not positive, but I think Richard Olsen had another safety-deposit box that we didn’t know about.”

“Even if that’s what this is—which I’m not saying at all—we still can’t get in. We need Sheila for that.”

“Then let’s go see if we can find her,” Maddy said. “We’ve got time before you have to rush your crust.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “She’s not exactly our biggest fan at the moment, is she?”

“All the better to ask her before she leaves town,” Maddy said.

“How do you even know where she’s staying? There’s no furniture left at the house, and I don’t see Sheila curling up on the floor, do you?”

“I’ll have Tom Frances call her and have her meet us.”

I couldn’t think of any more reasons to say no. “Call him, but if he refuses to do it, I’m making dough.”

“He won’t say no,” Maddy said.

She called him, and within one minute, he agreed to make the call.

“Remind me never to get on your bad side,” I said.

“You’ve got it.”

Her phone rang, and after a brief conversation, she hung up. “Funny thing is, Sheila’s at her brother’s house after all. Tom wasn’t too pleased with me, but he said he’d come by in half an hour. Come on, what are we waiting for, a golden invitation?”

Reluctantly, I followed my sister out to her car. “We’re running out of time, you know that, don’t you?”

“All the more reason to jump on this while we can. Just take it easy, we’ll be there in a flash.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. You drive too fast, you know that, don’t you?”

“At least it’s not foggy anymore.”

“Not until tonight,” I said.

There were still no cars in sight when we arrived at the house, and I wanted to peek inside the garage, but Maddy pulled me away. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“We don’t have the time to skulk around,” she said. “And besides, this time we’ve got an invitation.”

“We don’t. Your Realtor friend does.”

“Same thing,” Maddy said.

I saw some movement around the side of the house, and before my sister could restrain me, I hurried toward it. She followed, fussing at me all the way, but someone had been back there, and I was going to see who it was.

I was startled to see Faith Baron running away from us down the alley.

I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach that we were too late. Maddy and I hadn’t acted quickly enough, and the murderer had returned to the scene of her crime, only to strike again.

“W
as that who I think it was?” Maddy asked me as she stopped beside me.

“It was Faith Baron,” I said, starting to visibly shake. “I don’t want to go in there. I found the last one.”

Maddy looked at me, then glanced over at the house. “Do you think Sheila’s really dead?”

“Don’t you?” I asked.

“I haven’t given it much thought,” Maddy admitted.

“Call Kevin Hurley,” I said as I headed toward the house.

“Hang on a second,” she said. “If there’s another body in there, let him be the one who finds it.”

“How are we going to explain even being here, let alone calling in the homicide? He’ll lock us both up.”

“Then let’s get out of here before anyone sees us,” Maddy said as Travis White called out, “What are you two doing lurking in the alley behind my house?”

“We weren’t here to see you,” I said.

Travis nodded. “If you came to see Sheila, you’d better dart in right now. The last I heard, she’s leaving town forever this evening.”

“We don’t want to bother her,” I said, trying to get us out of there.

“Nonsense. Don’t be so timid.”

Travis headed for the Olsen back door, and we had no option but to follow.

As he approached the window, he muttered, “That’s odd.”

“What is?” I asked.

When he didn’t answer, I moved around and looked for myself. That was one of my problems. My curiosity often got the better of me, mostly at the worst possible time.

But when I looked inside, I saw that Sheila was still alive, leaning over the fireplace burning the contents of a small box!

“Thank goodness she’s all right,” I said without realizing I’d spoken aloud.

Travis turned to look at me oddly. “Isn’t that an odd thing to say.”

Maddy came to my rescue. “She’s still traumatized about finding Richard’s body. It’s really affected her.”

That got a note of sympathy from him. “As well it might.”

He tapped on the door, and Sheila looked at us quickly before dumping the last bit of contents into the fire. What on earth was she burning? All I knew was that it wasn’t firewood.

She came to the back door, and after she opened it, Sheila said, “It’s customary for visitors to come to the front door.”

Travis said, “Don’t get yourself in a snit. We came to say good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” Sheila said as she started to close the door on us.

“Hang on a second. We’d like to talk to you,” I said, maneuvering my foot into the doorway before she could close it all the way.

“All three of you?” Sheila asked.

“No, just them,” Travis said with a snort of disgust. “Me, I’m done with you.”

He stomped off, and after he was gone, Maddy couldn’t help herself and started laughing. I joined in, and a few seconds later, I actually saw Sheila smile. “I’ll miss that odd old bird,” she said, “as hard as that might be to believe.”

“I understand completely,” I said.

“What can I do for you two?” she asked.

“It’s about the safety-deposit box,” Maddy said.

Sheila’s eyes narrowed for just a split second before she managed to compose herself. “We cleared it out together, remember?”

Maddy said, “We forgot all about this, though. Remember? We found this paper, too.” She held the slip of paper up, but carefully disguised the fact that the printing on it was nearly gone.

“I’d forgotten you had that,” Sheila said. “I’ll have it back now, please. After all, it belonged to my brother.”

Maddy still held it back. “It’s got another number on it, a safety-deposit box from Third Southern National.”

The hint of triumph in her voice was nearly thick enough to see.

It vanished instantly as Sheila said, “So you found it, too. You might as well come inside.”

Warning bells were going off in my head, and I found myself wishing we’d called Kevin Hurley after all. “That’s fine. We don’t really need to stay.”

Maddy looked at me as though I were crazy. “Don’t listen to her, Sheila. We’d be delighted to come in.”

At that point, I really didn’t have any other option but to follow my crazy sister inside.

We all walked into the living room, and I glanced down at the fireplace.

“Having one last blaze?” I asked.

“You might say that,” Sheila said. “Those are the things I found in that second safety-deposit box you were telling me about. It appears my dear, sweet brother had a penchant for blackmail. Dirty business, that.”

“So you just burned everything you found?” I asked.

Sheila nodded. “Not without a few tears, either. I wasn’t sure what I’d found at first, but it didn’t take long to put it all together. After that, I stopped reading it.” She took a poker and nudged the last bits of paper into the dying flames.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” she said.

“You could have turned it all over to the police,” I suggested.

“What, and have these people live through the trauma of being exposed after all? I don’t think so.”

Maddy asked, “Is it any worse than waiting for someone else to call asking for money? It has to be torture waiting for a stranger’s tap on your shoulder.”

“I never thought of it that way,” Sheila said softly as she stared into the flames. “It’s too late now. It’s all gone.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“I found his post office box key near the one to the safety-deposit box,” she said. “There was one last letter at the post office box, and I canceled the box after I retrieved it. From now on, the letters will go back to their senders. It’s all done now.”

“Not quite,” I said. “We saw one of our suspects running away from your house a few minutes ago. That’s what we were doing in back.”

“I didn’t think you had any suspects,” she said. “Who was it?”

Maddy started to answer but I cut her off. “We aren’t completely sure, so it’s not right to say.”

“She has a right to know,” Maddy said. “Her life could be in danger.”

“Tell me,” Sheila said. “It’s only fair.”

They both had a point. If I didn’t tell Sheila, and something happened to her, I’d never be able to forgive myself. “It was Faith Baron.”

Sheila’s expression hardened. “The tramp that was having an affair with my brother. Why would she want to hurt me?”

“Did you burn any letters in lavender envelopes?” I asked.

“There was a stack of them,” Sheila admitted.

“There’s your answer. Faith wrote them to your brother, and he must have been using them against her.” I looked at the last of the embers. “You didn’t happen to read any of them, did you?”

“No, I figured it was none of my business.”

I looked at Maddy. “But will Faith believe that? Did she see Sheila with the letters?”

“More importantly, did she see me burn them?” Sheila asked.

“You’d better call the police,” I said.

Sheila was taken aback by the suggestion. “How can I possibly do that? My brother wasn’t a saint, but I’m not about to expose his last dirty little secret to the police.”

“Aren’t you afraid of what might happen?” I asked.

“I’m leaving tonight. In the meantime, I’ll keep an eye open.”

“Why delay it,” Maddy said. “It doesn’t make any sense taking a chance.”

“I found a buyer for the house. They want to meet me here later to sign the papers.”

Suddenly I felt guilty for my part in setting the meeting up. “Tom Frances was calling you for us,” I confessed.

“He doesn’t represent the buyer,” Sheila said. “But honestly, why did you two think you needed subterfuge to meet me? I would have gladly come by the pizzeria before I left. I’ve been a little on edge these past few days, but you have to understand, my system’s gone through more shocks than I thought I could take.” She smiled as she added, “Though it did seem to cure me of my tendency to faint. That’s the only silver lining in this entire mess. Except for my brother’s generosity, that is.” Sheila sifted the ashes, put them in the black bucket by the fireplace, then started to carry them outside. Maddy and I followed her to the ash pit in the backyard, where the secrets Richard had exploited were finally gone.

“It’s a bad business, but at least it’s over,” she said.

“I hope so,” I said.

“What do you mean by that?” Sheila asked me.

I wasn’t about to tell her about Penny’s belief that Richard had been blackmailing our chief of police. “We know the leverage your brother kept is gone, but the folks he was blackmailing don’t.”

“What did you expect me to do, send them all letters telling them they were off the hook? How could I have possibly done that?”

“I don’t have the slightest idea,” I said. “I’m just saying you need to be careful.”

“You don’t have to keep repeating it. I’m not a child.” She glanced at her watch, then said, “Now, if you two will excuse me, I’ve got some errands to run before my meeting this afternoon. Thanks for coming by.”

“Glad to,” I said.

After Sheila went back inside, Maddy and I started walking back to her car.

As we did, my sister said, “I believe her.”

I nodded. “I do, too. Burning it all might not have been my first reaction, but I think it’s a good one. That information is better off destroyed.”

“I still think she should have called the police about what she found. She’s taking a real chance by not doing that.”

“How’s that?”

Maddy said, “Think about it. We know she destroyed that stuff, but how would anyone else? It just follows that anyone being blackmailed by Richard would assume that his sister had the information now.”

“How would they know Richard was the one blackmailing them?” I asked. “He had a post office box, so you have to think he was at least a little careful.”

“Somebody must have known,” Maddy said. “Unless Faith or her husband killed him. Why was Faith here? Did we really stop something bad from happening just by showing up?”

“I wish I knew,” I said. “I feel so helpless right now. We can’t go to the police—Kevin would probably lock us both up if he knew what we’ve been up to—and we can’t confront Faith, at least not without more evidence than we’ve seen so far.”

“Don’t forget, we still have that letter from her to Richard,” Maddy suggested.

“That confirms they were having an affair. In my mind, that’s a long way from proving she killed him.”

“Then what do we do?” Maddy asked.

“I’m not sure there’s anything we can do,” I said. I pointed to my watch. “I need some time to think about it, and I can do that at the Slice just as easily as I can driving around town with you. Let’s go make some dough, and in the meantime, we can try to figure out what’s going on.”

“We might as well,” Maddy said as we got into her car.

“That’s what I like, enthusiasm in the people I work with,” I said.

“Eleanor, even you have to admit that making pizza isn’t nearly as exciting as tracking a killer.”

“Who said excitement was all that great?” I asked. “Give me the predictability of yeast, flour, and salt any day.”

I couldn’t stop thinking about Faith Baron, and her presence behind Richard Olsen’s house. Was it a part of her regular jogging route, or was there something more ominous about her being there? Even if Sheila wasn’t taking the threat seriously, Maddy and I were. But what could either one of us do? If I called Kevin Hurley, I was opening myself up to a great deal of aggravation, and what could I tell him, honestly? The only thing I had proof of was that Faith and Richard had an affair.

Did I owe it to Sheila to show him that much, even though she’d destroyed a bundle of letters herself? And for that matter, if Faith saw Sheila destroy those documents, she might think I was the only one with proof tying her with the murder victim.

Suddenly, I didn’t feel so safe myself. No matter what, I had to get that letter in the chief of police’s hands. If he wanted to lock me up for withholding it, then so be it. I wasn’t going to hand it over in my kitchen, though. I had to get that letter from home, then take it to the station. It would be much harder for him to dismiss me if we were in his office. At least I hoped so.

We opened to a small stream of customers, and by two, our lunch crowd had ended, with a few folks occasionally coming by for a quick soda or sandwich. I often thought of closing between two and three o’clock just to give us all a break. The income I’d miss would barely show on my cash register report at the end of the day, and the hour of free time would be most welcome.

Now was as good a time as any to implement the new policy, I decided.

I walked out front and found Maddy and Greg sitting at a table talking. Greg had the decency to stand when his boss came out, but Maddy barely looked up.

“We’re closing,” I said.

“Come on, business isn’t that bad,” Maddy said.

Greg grabbed a dishrag. “I’ll clean the tables again.”

“It’s no reflection on the business or your job performances,” I said, “and it’s not permanent. I was just thinking we’d shut down for an hour in the afternoon, at least for a week or two, to see how it goes.”

“That’s a brilliant idea,” Maddy said.

I turned to Greg. “How about you?”

“Isn’t there anything I could do while we’re closed? To be honest with you, I need the hours.”

I thought about it, then said, “The storage room needs to be cleaned and organized. You can work on that while we’re closed, if you really want to.”

“That would be great,” Greg said. “I’ll jump right on it.”

Maddy looked at me after he was gone and asked, “What are you going to do on our break? I can’t see you going home and taking a nap.”

“What makes you think I’m going anywhere? How do you know I’m not planning to help Greg with the storage room?”

“Because you’d already be back there working instead of being out here talking to me. Don’t try to duck the question. You’ve got an idea, don’t you?”

“Not anything I want to drag you into,” I said.

“Good luck with that. We’re together on this, no matter what.”

“Okay, but don’t ever say I didn’t warn you. I’m going to get that letter of Faith Baron’s we found and I’m giving it to Kevin Hurley.”

I waited for a storm, but my sister just smiled. “I think that’s an excellent idea. I would have suggested it myself, but given your history with the police chief, I wasn’t about to make you do something you weren’t comfortable with.”