Chapter 30
“
NO, MITZI, THAT’S
simply not true.” Mayor Zeller turned winter white. She gazed at the crowd in the diner’s kitchen and zeroed in on me. “Jenna, help me. Sam and I have never been involved. Ever.”
“You can’t fool me, ZZ,” Mitzi went on. “I wasn’t planning on being home that night.” She edged closer. “I had a dinner to cook for the owner of the Aquarium by the Sea, but my hairdo wasn’t working and my skin was dry. I was home, reapplying lotion, but I wasn’t supposed to be. Did you come over to meet Sam on the sly?”
Mayor Zeller sucked in air. “No.”
Sam said, “Mitzi, babe—”
“Hush up, Sam.” Mitzi ogled the mayor. “Your dear friend Natalie found out you were having an affair with my Sam. Isn’t that so, ZZ? You killed her so she’d keep quiet.”
Mayor Zeller flapped a frantic hand. “Stop this insanity, Mitzi. Do you hear what you’re saying? I was with everyone outside The Cookbook Nook the day Natalie was murdered. Remember, the alarm went off?” She pumped her hand as if pulling the alarm’s handle.
“I don’t recall seeing you,” Mitzi said.
How could she have
?
Two witnesses had spotted her near the rear of the café. I revisited my theory that Mitzi had killed Natalie. She’d had enough time to throw the alarm. She knew Natalie was a smoker. Was she casting all this suspicion on the mayor as a diversion?
“Natalie had a moment of conscience, didn’t she, ZZ?” Mitzi continued to stalk her prey. “She threatened to tell me about the affair.”
“No.” The mayor worried her hands together. “Somebody do something. Stop her. Please. Your husband and I did not have an affair. Sam, tell her.”
“I’ve tried,” he said. “She always thinks I’m having an affair. You’re not the first she’s accused.”
Mitzi ignored him. “Why did you want Sam, ZZ?”
“I didn’t. I don’t.”
“You did. You do.” Mitzi’s hand started to shake. I was convinced more than ever that she had a drinking problem. Any second she could fire the gun accidentally.
Think, Jenna. What would Cinnamon or Dad do
? I scanned the kitchen for a weapon to take down Mitzi. The place was filled with them: knives, sauté pans, trays. All out of my reach. I checked out the prep table: a salad bowl, tongs. Where was a weighty object when I needed one?
Mitzi continued her taunt. “You’ve always had eyes for Sam, ZZ. I can see. I’m not blind. You’re sexy and scheming.”
The mayor sputtered. She knew, as did everyone present, that an Ewok was sexier than she could ever hope to be.
“I will not share him with you,” Mitzi said. “Not my sensitive Sam.” She glowered at her husband. “How could you continue to screw around on me after all I’ve done for you?”
“Mitzi, babe. I am not having an affair with Mayor Zeller. I’m innocent. So is she. Let’s go home. We’ll talk.”
“I know you didn’t stay at the MONEY conference, Sam. I put a tracker on your car.”
Aha! I knew it. Mitzi had used GPS.
“I did stay,” he argued. “I was there all day.”
“Why do you continue to hurt me so? When I found out you borrowed my gloves, did I call you on it? No. I even moved the coat back to the right hook in the diner. And don’t get me started about the car trash. All for you. I do it all for you. But what do you do? You fool around with ZZ and Ellen and Norah. Who else?”
Mitzi continued to rant, but I couldn’t hear her as the words she had let slip replayed in my mind. She had
moved the
coat?
To the
right
hook? That meant she presumed Sam had left a coat on the
wrong
hook.
Of course
. Mitzi was talking about Ellen’s coat. The maid at the motel had seen the murderer wearing a knee-length black coat. The coat was long on Ellen; it hit her at mid-calf. Mitzi and Norah were about the same height as Ellen. But Sam was taller; the coat would have been shorter on him. He’d dressed like a woman to kill Willie. Had he murdered Natalie, too?
I thought of what Mitzi said about the gloves and the car trash, her words forming a picture the same way the edges of a jigsaw puzzle defined the center.
“The gloves.” I whirled to face Sam. “Mitzi said you borrowed a pair of her gloves. Were they her prep gloves?” Mitzi, being a home chef, probably had tons of gloves. “No, she wouldn’t have minded losing a pair of cheap prep gloves. You borrowed her facial gloves, didn’t you, Sam?” The ones she uses for her nightly ritual. “I’ll bet they’re expensive. That would tick her off.”
“Mitzi is missing a pair of her facial gloves,” Mayor Zeller cut in. “She was counting them the night I showed up at her place. She was one pair short.”
Mitzi was obsessive about her beauty treatments. Sam had said so himself.
Sam shook his head. “Babe, I never took your gloves. I know how precious they are.”
“You wore them when you killed Natalie,” I said. “Mitzi realized what you’d done when she found the gloves in the car trash.”
“Me?” Sam sputtered. “Kill Natalie? You’re off your rocker.”
Was I? I flashed on Sam and Manga Girl and what Lola, my father, and I had discussed last night at dinner in relation to David. Suddenly a string of mnemonic words came to me. I glanced at the ledger in front of Sam. Rhett told me that Willie had looked perplexed while reviewing the ledgers. What if Mitzi’s
sensitive Sam
, like David, was a
schemer
? What if he was
skimming
money from his clients? Not just from Mum’s the Word but from all of his clients? What if he was
stowing
all that money in a special account at the bank? What if Natalie found out? On the day Natalie and Lola argued at The Pier, Natalie had asked Sam if everything was all right. She had wanted to know if something had been bothering him lately. She’d said he seemed distracted. When she teased him about not balancing the books if he was feeling a little
off
, she winked. What if she was discretely warning him that she knew he was skimming? A few days passed before she wound up dead. She could have confronted Sam. He would have denied any wrongdoing, or maybe he admitted his guilt and said he would fix it. Maybe Natalie even forgave him. But Sam didn’t believe her. He started planning how he would kill her. He established an alibi by signing up for the conference. Midday, he returned to town. When the Grill Fest took a break, he struck.
I shared my theory out loud. “You did what my husband did, Sam. You moved funds from various accounts. You siphoned money into an account of your own. Natalie figured out what you were up to. Tell me if I’m warm.”
Sam kept mum.
The day Natalie died, the woman at the knitting shop had seen a person in a UPS uniform. If Sam had dressed up as a woman, maybe he had dressed up as a deliveryman, too. I said, “I bet you look good in brown, Sam.”
“What are you talking about?” he hissed.
“You donned a uniform to sneak anonymously into town. You stole down the alley. You knew Natalie would be there for a smoke.”
“No way.” Sam rubbed the nape of his neck with frustration. The action made me remember the moment when I’d run into Sam and Mitzi at the grocery store. Sam scratched his neck, supposedly because he couldn’t remember where his money had disappeared to. When he caught me looking, he quickly dropped his arm. I’d noticed a rash on his neck. What if it wasn’t a rash? What if it was a cigarette burn?
“You hate cigarettes, Sam,” I said, trying out a theory. “You call them coffin nails because your mother died of cancer.”
“Yeah, so?”
“I’ll bet you told Natalie she shouldn’t smoke, but she didn’t attack you for nagging her. She lashed out when you pulled a gun on her. Natalie was a fighter, wasn’t she? She scorched you on your neck with the tip of her cigarette. There’s a mark, right beneath your shirt collar.”
Sam jerked his chin reflexively.
“Her assault startled you. You dropped the gun or whatever weapon you showed up with. Maybe Natalie retrieved it, maybe not. You didn’t waste time going after it. You saw another weapon, a discarded panini grill, and you remembered what Lola had said on The Pier. You grabbed it and hit Natalie upside the head. Then you ran.”
“This is insane,” Sam said. “You’re cuckoo.”
“Mitzi, you track Sam’s comings and goings via GPS, right?”
Mitzi blinked a yes.
I said, “Sam went to and from the MONEY conference the day Natalie died, didn’t he?”
“I was there the whole day,” Sam countered. “You can check.”
“I did check,” I said. “On a whim. And yes, the conference coordinator remembers seeing you there, but she can’t confirm you stayed the whole time. I think you went back and forth. It’s an hour’s drive, maybe less if you speed. You ran up the mileage on your car that day, which is why you’ve been riding your bicycle this past week, to keep the mileage down in case anyone got curious.”
Sam huffed.
“Here’s the rest of my theory. You purchased a ticket to San Diego. There’s a suitcase by your feet. But you’re not planning to run away with another woman. You’re heading south alone so you can exit the country through Tijuana. You were seen signing all sorts of documents at the bank. Did you create an offshore account, Sam? Is that where you stashed all your skimmed earnings?”
Mitzi whispered, “Sam?”
“Willie was onto you, wasn’t he, Sam?” I went on. “He wasn’t as dumb as he made out. He figured the books weren’t adding up. But Willie wasn’t altruistic. He wanted in on your moneymaking scheme. That’s what you two were arguing about that day outside the Word, not his childrearing skills. You knew you had to get rid of him. You arranged to meet him at the motel, then you borrowed Ellen’s coat. It’s short on you. You put on makeup, including Mitzi’s red lipstick, the lipstick Ellen found in her coat pocket.” I eyed Mitzi. “You’re missing a lipstick, right? Sassy Woman Red.”
Mitzi bit her lip and nodded.
“Do you own any wigs?”
“Three,” she muttered. “I wear them when my roots are showing.”
“Is one short and spiky, like Ellen’s hair?”
“No.” She faltered. Her eyes fluttered.
“Sam cut one of them, didn’t he?” I held out my hand hoping Mitzi would relinquish the gun. She didn’t.
“Mitzi, don’t listen to her,” Sam said.
But Mitzi was listening. She wasn’t as wild-eyed as before.
“Willie killed Natalie,” Sam said.
“Willie figured out the discrepancies,” I countered. “That’s why he went to the bank teller and asked her about the diner’s finances. Soon after, Willie was seen arguing with Mitzi.” Without losing sight of Sam, I said, “Mitzi, Willie must have believed you were in on the scam. A witness said you called him ‘loco,’ but he confirmed what you already suspected.”
“You’re the one who’s crazy,” Sam said. He glanced at the exit door leading to the alley behind the diner. “None of this is true. And, for your information, I have an alibi for the night Willie died. I was home with my wife. I was making calls all around town looking for Willie. I spoke to lots of people. Tell them, Mitzi.”
She said, “I . . . I . . .”
“You didn’t see or hear him, did you, Mitzi?” I said. “You were busy doing your beauty routine. He slipped out without you noticing. Using a cell phone, he could have made those calls from anywhere in town. After you killed Willie, Sam, you dialed me to set the time of murder after ten
P.M.
Maybe you thought if I told the police about the call, it would be taken more seriously.” I eyed Mitzi. “Sam is ready to let you take the fall, Mitzi. Why else would he have put your lipstick in Ellen’s coat pocket?”
“No,” Sam said.
Mitzi whimpered.
“What I can’t figure out, Mitzi, is why you didn’t turn in Sam the moment you suspected he was a murderer, but then it dawned on me. You didn’t because love is blind.”
“Not anymore.” Bitterness flooded Mitzi’s words. “The blinders are off. I tried to help you better yourself, Sam, but you’re not worthy of me. I’m through with you.” She aimed the barrel of the gun at him. “Through.”
Sam retreated a step. “Babe, I didn’t do any of what she’s saying. I love you. Willie killed Natalie. She knew he was an abuser. She was going to turn him in. Willie admitted it to me that day on The Pier.”
I thought of Tito, with his pec-flexing moves, and my old coworker, who was now the muscle-bound co-owner of a gym, and said, “Good try, Sam, but Willie wasn’t physically strong enough to kill Natalie.”
