Blown To Pieces (PTO Murder Club Mystery Book 2) (4 page)

“Okay, I’m hanging up now, but I’ll throw you a bone. I’m buying.” Monica never picked up the check. We left that up to Haley, who had more money than most midsize countries and a lovely willingness to share.

If Monica was buying, the sky was falling, and we’d all be eating fried Chicken Little and waffles at Kerbey Lane.

“I’m up.” I rolled out of bed, clicked a selfie of my feet standing on the maple floorboards, and texted it to her.

“Wow, you need a pedicure. Your toes look like you crawled out of a well.” Monica hung up.

I glanced at the selfie and flinched. My feet did look like I’d had to tunnel my way to freedom using only my toenails. Tennis shoes it was.

An hour later, Max and I walked through Kerbey Lane Café’s front doors. The mint-green and white booths and overabundance of woodwork was American diner meets Zen prayer garden. The scents of gingerbread pancakes and burned coffeepot arm-wrestled for restaurant dominance. I had to give it to the burned coffeepot.

Monica, her son Landon, Haley, and Haley’s twin daughters, Reese and Riley, all sat at our “table,” which was three tables pulled together in the back corner of the restaurant.

Max sat beside Landon and across from Riley and Reese, who were deep in iPad-landia. I sat between Monica and Haley.

Once I was sure that all of the kids weren’t paying attention, I turned to Monica. “Spill it.”

“Rich wore gloves the whole time.” Monica’s whole body wilted in relief. “You have no idea how wonderful it was.”

“Thank God.” Haley’s hand covered Monica’s and patted. “I had nightmares about his hands last night. Bad ones.”

T-Rex hands...smee Rex hands. “What about...” I glanced at the kids, “Big Tommy?”

Monica’s grin was practically dripping with canary feathers. “Rich had some very interesting things to say about the fire. The explosion was so violent and the fire burned so hot that not much of Big Tommy was left, which doesn’t make sense. If he lit the propane burner, he would have been thrown back and the fire would have washed down him, catching his clothes on fire, but only on the front of his body.”

“So?” What was I missing?

“Think of it like this.” Monica picked up a yellow Splenda packet out of the white caddy in front of her. “Say this is Big Tommy.” She bent the packet in half, mimicking him bending over to light the burner. “The flame hit the gas and threw him back.” She laid the packet down, logo-side up. “Only the front of his body would have been burned because the backside was against the ground.”

“But his whole body was burned?” Haley nodded. “Front and back?”

“Yep, and there was very little of it to be found.” Monica took a drink of her Diet Coke.

“How little?” Big Tommy had been a big man...at least six-five and close to three hundred pounds. Little was relative.

“Let’s just say that they were having trouble distinguishing him from the chili.” Monica had a way with words. There was no doubt about it.

Haley’s face turned a sickly shade of oatmeal. “That’s terrible.”

That was it, no sausage for me for breakfast...or ever.

“What else?” Not that finding out they’d had to mop Big Tommy out of the grass wasn’t enough, but there had to be more.

Monica watched the kids as she continued to whisper. “Only that the fire was so hot that it couldn’t have been only the propane burner. They think the natural gas on the kitchen stove was on, and there was some sort of accelerant in the garage.”

“Accelerant? Like what? Gasoline?” Okay, she had a point. This was starting to sound like murder.

“Something that burns hotter than gas, like jet fuel.” She sucked down more Diet Coke. I knew it was Diet Coke because she never drank anything else. “They can’t be sure it was jet fuel, but it burned hotter than regular gas.”

“Did the fire department tell all of this to Lakeside PD?” Accidental was out the window.

“Yes.” Monica leaned in close. “But they’re still ruling it an accident.”

It figured. Unless you had millions in the bank, nobody cared.

“So, his house blew up because the stove burner was left on, which ignited some jet fuel in the garage. Still, the police are ruling it an accident?” Haley looked from Monica to me and back to Monica. “This wasn’t an accident. Sounds like too many coincidences.”

“I know, right?” I nodded. “For the sake of argument, let’s say he was murdered. Why?” I’d learned from our last murder investigation that the “why” was the key to the “whodunit.” “Who wanted Big Tommy dead so much that they would cobble together all of these coincidences and blow him to pieces?”

We all shook our heads.

“I can’t think of a single person who would want him dead.” Haley was all about the good and kind, but this time she had a point.

I looked at Monica. “I got nothing. Big Tommy was the town teddy bear.”

“Maybe his neighbors?” Monica sounded like she didn’t really believe it. “Lakeside couldn’t have been thrilled about all of his yard art.”

Calling it “art” was a stretch.

We both turned to Haley. She had Lakeside wired.

“No, his neighbors loved him. Big Tommy was in charge of the neighborhood watch. Charles-Ray Taggart and his wife, Jennifer, live on the left of Big Tommy, and they always hit him up for chili for the block parties. Neeta Dubois lives on the other side. She did file a complaint when Big Tommy put up Chewing Gum Willie, but they worked it out. Plus, she’s in a wheelchair, and I don’t think she could make it up the stairs to get into his house.”

“Yeah, I know Yard of the Month is a huge deal in Lakeside, but I don’t think anyone would kill Big Tommy over it.” I’d learned firsthand how seriously Lakeside took Yard of the Month when I’d gotten a notice from the landscape committee that my grass was three centimeters too long and needed to be cut immediately. Since I got it the day after my husband ran off to Grand Cayman, I wasn’t too worried about it. The next week the committee sent over a man to cut the grass and then sent me the bill. I still hadn’t paid it. What were they going to do? Tape the grass back together in the yard of a house I no longer owned?

Rebellion comes in many forms. I’d won the Battle of the Grass.

“Doesn’t he have some ex-wives?” Haley turned to me like I’d know.

“I have no idea.” I was relatively new to Lakeside, meaning I’d moved here eleven years ago instead of having grown up here like Haley. Monica and I would always be on the outside looking in, which was fine since window shopping was all we could afford to do in Lakeside. “I guess tomorrow I can take a look at his medical records and see who the emergency contact is.”

Being the billing manager had its privileges. I was always looking up people I didn’t like in hopes of finding out some wonderfully terrible news about them, like that they’d tested positive for chlamydia or had intestinal worms. Karma was so much fun when I got to be in on it.

“I tried running his name through our system but didn’t find anything.” Monica had access to all sorts of info through the insurance company where she worked. I was a little jealous. I could only find out medical things, but she could look up arrest records and credit reports, and the company even had on-staff private detectives. With all of that power, I could run the world. Thankfully, I’m not that ambitious. I’m content knowing that my boss, Larry Pappis, only has one testicle thanks to a fireworks accident last Fourth of July.

“I’ll pull all of his medical records and we can start there. Not sure what that will tell us, but it’s a start.” I couldn’t think of anything else.

“I’ll work my gossip contacts and see what they’re saying.” Haley sounded so hopeful.

“I’ll call around and see if I can find an insurance policy on Big Tommy. Maybe I’ll find a greedy relative with a history of arson.” Monica guzzled more Diet Coke. I noticed that her forehead didn’t move. Forget Botox, it must be all of the preservatives in the Diet Coke that kept her looking young. The way she sucked it down, she’d shrink back to infancy any day now.

“It looks like the PTO Murder Club is back in business.” I banged on the table with my fist and finally spoke above a whisper. “I now call this meeting of the Bee Creek Parent Teacher Organization to order. With the other thing out of the way, we need to discuss the Spring Carnival. Who do we hate enough to put in charge of the raffle baskets?”

“Tiffany Smith-Heart,” Monica and Haley said in unison.

“I second that.” I follow parliamentary procedure about as closely as I follow football. Now, when is that Super Bowl thingy again? “Motion carries. Tiffany Smith-Heart will head up the raffle baskets whether she likes it or not.”

You should always assign horrible jobs to people you hate. It makes life worth living.

Sometimes our PTO meetings include our treasurer, Lyle Grinchwalt, but that’s only when he knows we’re having a meeting and he follows one of us and then crashes it. The Bee Creek Elementary PTO works so much better when we don’t have some jackass insisting that we have to stick to the budget, the bylaws, school policy, and the law. Honestly, it’s taken me years to break Haley of her need to rule-follow. I don’t have the energy to do it again.

“Now, on to the Carnival Planning Committee. Who do we hate more than Tiffany Smith-Heart?”

A few days later, bright and early-ish, I walked into my office at Lakeside Regional Hospital and flicked on the overhead fluorescent light. After a few seconds of whining and working up the energy to turn on, the light burst forth with, well, light.

I powered on Bertha, my work computer, and went in search of coffee. Being the good and caring boss that I am, I’d spent our entire supplies budget on a Keurig coffeemaker and a year’s supply of K-cups. True, we had no staples, notepads, copy paper, or pens, but we were all highly caffeinated. Two out of three of my minions, Jack Seymour and Mellie Johansen, and I managed to “find” what we needed. Sometimes that meant working late so we could raid the nurses’ station and Radiology for supplies, but I always authorized the overtime, so it was win-win. My third minion, Roz Jones, worked from home, which was a good thing. While she was a demon when it came to collections, her questionable personal hygiene and obnoxious personality made her hard to take face-to-face.

“Hey, Mustang.” Mellie was at her desk shopping on eBay. Her one goal in life was to marry a doctor. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Lakeside Regional wasn’t the best place to pick up men. We had no eligible doctors because all of the doctors who worked out here were retired from big city life and were already over their quota on trophy wives. Since Mellie had front teeth that would have made a chipmunk proud and a body that was shaped like a refrigerator box, her chances of becoming a trophy wife were right up there with winning the Powerball. “Jack’s stuck in traffic.”

“Thanks.” I picked up a Dunkin’ Donuts Chocolate Glazed K-cup and stuck it in the coffee machine. Chocolate Glazed was my favorite, so we had boxes and boxes of those. Funny how that worked out. “Want a cup?”

Mellie shook her head and pointed to the steaming cup next to her monitor.

“You saw Big Tommy blow up?” Her voice was somewhere between Betty Boop and Mickey Mouse. Bless her heart, she wasn’t much to look at and she had an annoying voice. Dr. Right better be blind and deaf.

“Sort of.” I hadn’t counted on spending the day retelling that story. I had a murder to solve.

“So...” Her eyes were muddy-brown pools of expectation.

“When Jack gets here, I’ll tell you both at the same time.” I waited and waited for the coffee to drip down into my waiting mug. It was taking twice as long as usual. Finally, a thick stream of brown flowed down. I seriously considered sticking my head directly under the stream and cutting out the middle-man coffee cup. That would be one less dish to clean, but hell, I didn’t wash them, so I guessed I could wait for the mug to fill.

“Sorry I’m late.” Jack breezed in with his black motorcycle helmet in hand. Unfortunately, he was more Sons of Vespa than Sons of Anarchy, but he got credit for wearing a helmet. For some stupid reason, motorcycle helmets are optional in Texas while bicycle helmets are mandatory. I’ve always wondered if lobbyists for organ donation had been behind the no-motorcycle-helmet law. It made sense. Every year during the Republic of Texas motorcycle rally, organ donation went through the roof, or, well, over the handlebars.

“No worries.” I picked up my steaming, full mug and was disposed to believe that all was right and good in the world. I leaned against the counter and sniffed my Chocolate Glazed cup of joy. Risking third-degree burns on my lips and tongue, I took the first sip. It was like a first kiss—hot, sloppy, and over way too soon. “Get settled, and then I’ll tell you all about Big Tommy.”

“What happened to Big Tommy?” Jack set his helmet down beside his desk, hooked his battered, brown-leather messenger bag on the back of his chair, and sat down.

His desk butted up against the right wall, and Mellie’s desk faced the left wall, so their backs were usually to each other. Now they both watched me, so I told them everything. I left out the part about murder and what Monica had found out from T-Rex Hands, which was need-to-know only.

“Wow, that’s really terrible.” Mellie’s muddy browns sparkled with interest. She was about as horrified as a kid on Christmas morning. Some people thrived on the misfortune of others, and Mellie was definitely a misfortune hunter.

“That’s sad. I really liked Big Tommy.” Jack wiped an actual tear from the corner of his eye. He suffered from an overabundance of hipster. I liked to think of him as the male equivalent of a PMS-ing teenaged girl—heart on his sleeve, tears at the ready, and drama, drama, drama. To think, he had a girlfriend. I’d met her. She had breasts and everything...I was like eighty percent sure she’d been born female.

“Are you planning on working your magic?” Mellie wiggled all ten of her fingers.

I looked down at my hands. I had magic fingers. I didn’t remember having magic fingers. “What?”

“You know, investigate Big Tommy’s death.” Mellie shot me a you-know-what-I-mean grin.

“I don’t know what you mean. Big Tommy’s death was an accident.” She still didn’t need to know. PTO Murder Club business was private, which meant that everyone in Lakeside knew we’d solved a murder a couple of weeks ago, but this time around, it really needed to stay private.