Killer Colada: a Danger Cove Cocktail Mystery (11 page)

"And I'm not stressed," Vernon said.

"Then why do you look like a sweaty lobster who's about to pass out?" I put a hand on my hip and cocked my head, raising a questioning eyebrow.

Vernon sat down on a stool. "Okay, okay." He glanced at Ruby. "Look, I'm relaxing now. Satisfied?" He turned to me. "Anyway, what were you saying?"

"I was telling you how Lester is adamant that he's already got the killer. Tim's being arraigned today."

"Will he get bail pending the trial?" Ruby asked Vernon.

"I doubt it, but you never know."

"So what can we do next?" I asked.

"We need to talk to Pandora's neighbors," Vernon said. "Find out if they saw Ian near Pandora's house around the time she was killed. I've printed off a couple of photos of him from his website." Vernon headed back to the office to retrieve them and handed them to Ruby and me. I stared down at the picture. Ian was smiling, exuding confidence and compassion. But was that the smile of a cold, calculating murderer? Or was Donna involved somehow?

I glanced around the tavern. The lunch rush was over, and we'd have a few hours before the evening diners came in.

"I've got time to canvas the neighbors and visit Donna if you two can hold the fort here," I said.

"Of course," Ruby said.

"I'll come with you." Vernon took the printout from Ruby's hand.

"I thought you were resting," Ruby said.

"I did. Now I'm going to help Hope. There's no time like the present, especially if someone is threatening her. We need to get to the bottom of this before whoever wrote that note takes things one step further."

Ruby reached out and squeezed Vernon's arm. "Well, please be careful." She turned her gaze to me. "Both of you. I don't want to lose either of you guys."

*   *   *

I'd never set foot in Baxtor's Pharmacy before. Like Ruby and Pandora, I preferred to use natural herbal remedies if I felt ill. When I was traveling in remote places of the world, a lot of the local people used such methods, passed down from generation to generation, because it was impossible to get hold of traditional modern medicine.

Vernon stopped before we entered the shop. "It might be better for you to speak to her. She may open up more to a woman asking questions. I'll wait out here."

"Okay." I pushed open the door to the brightly lit pharmacy and grabbed the first packet of something I could see from one of the aisles before approaching the counter.

Donna stood behind it, dressed in a white lab coat over a simple gray blouse and black trousers. She looked more together today, less stressed and upset. Gone were the traces of red around her eyes. Her thick, curly hair was more tamed than when I'd seen her talking to Bud Ohlsen. She nodded sympathetically at the elderly woman in front of me who was asking advice about a carbuncle.

Donna retrieved some cream and told the woman how to apply it, before ringing it up.

"And I've got a repeat prescription I need to fill too," the woman said, handing Donna a piece of paper.

Donna examined the slip, opened a drawer behind her, and pulled out a packet of tablets, then went to a laptop at the end of the counter and typed something in. With a few clicks of her mouse, the printer behind her spewed out a label, which she stuck to the front of the box and added to the woman's purchase. Handing her the bag, she gave her a smile and told her to have a nice day.

"How can I help you?" Donna turned to me as the woman left.

I put my purchase on the counter, noticing for the first time that I'd picked up a bumper pack of condoms. Oh well, hopefully, even if I didn't get any info out of Donna, I'd still be able to put them to good use with Harvey. If we ever got to spend any time with each other without Carmen hanging around, that is.

"Just these?" Donna asked, scanning the barcode at the till, her smile still in place, although it looked tired.

I did a fake cough. "I've actually got a bit of a cough at the moment too." I did another one, just to sound believable. "Do you have anything for that?"

"Is it chesty or tickly?" Donna asked.

"Er…um…"
You see, this is the trouble with lying.
You could get muddled up in all sorts of ways, which was why I hated doing it, but I needed to stall for time while I thought of something to say. "Both?"

She turned behind her to a shelf stacked full of medicine, retrieved a bottle of cough syrup, and put it on the counter. "This is a very good brand. Should sort you out very quickly."

"Okay, great." I pulled out my wallet. "I'm sorry to hear about your husband being arrested. It must be awful for you both."

The smile slid off her face and turned into an angry scowl. "It's terrible. He's completely innocent. He was innocent all those years ago when they accused him of having something to do with Jenna's disappearance, and he's innocent now. That woman tried to ruin Tim's reputation, and now she's doing it again from beyond the grave!"

Hmmm…she didn't sound exactly sad that a woman was now dead. Was she angry enough to have killed her?

"I told Tim so many times we should get out of this place. Even though it was proven he had nothing to do with Jenna, people still hated him. Hated us. And believed all those lies that woman spouted about him. There are too many gossipers in this town."

She didn't go so far as to say she was glad Pandora was dead, but the sentiment oozed between the layers of her words.

"Did you know Pandora had called Tim that day? Trying to get him to go to her house?"

"Yes. I was here when he took the phone call." Her mouth formed into a thin, tight line. "I told him not to go there. Said nothing good could come out of it. But you know what men are like! He wouldn't listen to me, and now look what's happened." She glanced around the shop. "Business has dropped off. We've only had a few regulars in who stuck by Tim all those years ago. I used to love this town. I grew up here, it's my home, and I didn't want to be forced to move. But now I just want to get the hell out of this place and start afresh somewhere new. I've had it with all this stress."

"So you met Tim when you were both studying at the university?"

"Yes. We didn't go to the same school here, so I didn't know him that well before, but we became friends at the university."

"Did you know Jenna then, when he was seeing her?"

She shrugged. "I met her a few times around town when she was with Tim after we graduated, but I didn't really know her. Tim and I started going out with each other years after Jenna disappeared."

I thought carefully about how to word my next question, not wanting her to clam up if she suspected I was accusing her of being involved in Pandora's death. "So what happened after Tim took the phone call?"

She eyed me carefully, probably wondering if I was one of the gossipers. Then she gave a defeated shrug. "He was upset, obviously, but he said that woman told him she had some kind of evidence that proved what had really happened to Jenna. I told him not to go. I said knowing her and everything she'd done to cause trouble, it was probably some kind of trap." Her curls shook as she spat the words out. "Anyway, he ignored my advice, and he left the shop to go see her. He said he had to clear his name. When he came back, he was all flustered and upset and angry, but he wouldn't really tell me what had happened, just that they'd had some kind of argument—the same old thing, raking up the past—and he'd left. I was very tempted to go round and see her myself and tell her to stop meddling in our lives and spreading rumors about my husband."

"So then what happened?"

"Well, the next thing I knew was that Tim had been arrested for Pandora's murder while I was out the following morning taking our dog for a walk. And—" Then she burst into tears. She put her hands over her face, shoulders heaving with sobs. "There's no way he would've killed Pandora." She wiped her tears away with determined strokes of her fingers and stood up straighter. "I know what people probably thought when I married him. But it was proven he had nothing to do with Jenna's disappearance. He was completely innocent, and I believed him. He's not perfect, my husband, far from it, but he couldn't kill anyone. I just want everyone to leave us alone."

I was about to ask her another question, but she rounded the counter then and walked toward the
Open
sign hanging on the door, turning it to
Closed
.

"I'm shutting up for the day now." She held the door open for me. "I've had enough of all this."

I looked into her moist eyes and saw a deep weariness behind her glasses. "I'm really sorry for upsetting you. This must be so stressful."

She nodded and sniffed.

I said good-bye, and she closed the door behind me. I slid into the passenger seat of Vernon's car and told him what she'd said.

"She's obviously angry and upset, understandably. It must've been tough to be the wife of someone accused of murder all those years ago. And now it's starting all over again. She wants to leave town."

"Yeah, but is that because she's guilty herself?"

"I don't know. She said Tim left her in the shop that afternoon and went to Pandora's. She's got a laptop there that prints off labels for the prescriptions they sell. Is there anyway your contact can hack into it and find out if she sold any drugs at the time Pandora was killed? That would prove she was in the shop at the time."

"Or not."

"Exactly."

He whipped out his cell and spoke to his contact, telling him exactly what he needed.

*   *   *

There were about twenty houses on Pandora's street, and they all looked pretty similar in appearance. I took the ones on the same side of the road as Pandora's house, and Vernon took the opposite side. I started at one end, walking up the path of a home painted in a sunny lemon yellow. The door was opened a couple of inches by an elderly woman whose permed gray hair perched on top of her head like a bowl of crispy-fried noodles.

"Oh, hi, my name's Hope Foster, and I was wondering if I could ask you a quick question."

"I'm not buying anything." She suspiciously peered one eye through the small gap.

"I'm a friend of Pandora Williams." Ooops, another lie.
Sorry, Universe!
"And I'm trying to find out what really happened to her."

Her eyes narrowed further. "I thought the police got that Tim Baxtor for it."

"Yes, they did, but I'm not sure they're right."

"Course they're right. They're the police. They wouldn't arrest the wrong person, would they?"

I thought back to when they arrested me for Bob's murder. "Actually, yes, they could."

"Hmmm," she muttered in a disbelieving tone. "What do you want, then? I've got a carrot cake in the oven I need to get back to."

"Do you remember seeing this man hanging around Pandora's house recently?" I showed her the photo.

"This is her son, Ian, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"As far as I know, they haven't seen each other in years. Not that Pandora and I chatted much. She was a bit of a recluse, you know. I haven't seen her out for a long time."

"I know. So you haven't seen Ian here lately?"

"No."

"How about a woman?" I thought about Donna. "With long, curly dark hair and glasses? Did you see anyone like that hanging around on the day Pandora was killed?"

"No. And if I were you, I'd leave things to the police. They know what they're doing." She closed the door in my face.

I went to the next house. A young mom in her early twenties answered, carrying a baby on her hip. I introduced myself again.

"Oh, it's terrible what happened." She gasped, clutching the baby closer to her and smoothing his downy hair. "I thought this was a nice, quiet street, but now we're thinking about moving. Still, they got the guy, I suppose, so it's not likely he's going to come back, is it?"

"I'm not sure they have the right guy."

She gasped again, eyes wide. "Oh!"

I showed her the photo of Ian. "Do you remember seeing this man visiting Pandora recently? He's her son, Ian."

She nodded. "Actually, yes, I do remember. I was taking this little one to the clinic for his checkup." She kissed her son's head. "I was walking down the road with the stroller, and I saw that guy getting out of one of those flashy SUVs. It was…" She scrunched her face up, thinking. "A Range Rover! That's it. I know because it's my husband's dream car." She grinned affectionately. "It was red."

My heart rate kicked up a notch. "And then what happened?"

"I saw him knock on Pandora's door."

"Did you see him go inside?"

"No, I was late for the appointment, so I was rushing. You know what it's like when you've got little ones. It takes you about an hour to even get out of the house! Anyway, his car was gone when I got back about an hour later."

"And when exactly was this?"

"Um…his appointment was Tuesday at 11:30, so it would've been about 11:15."