Killer Colada: a Danger Cove Cocktail Mystery (13 page)

"We should check out the rear of Pandora's property," Vernon said. "If Ian did climb Pandora's fence after Tim left, he may have dropped some incriminating evidence."

We walked to the end of the street and swung a left down a small pathway under a canopy of trees. We made our way through a clearing, counting the houses we passed, stopping outside Pandora's back fence. In between the trees and her fence was an area of short scrub, the ground covered in a carpet of decaying leaves. We wandered along the fence, gazes peeled to the floor, coming across a few rusting Coke cans, an empty water bottle, and a plastic bag that had wrapped itself around one of the tree trunks.

And there, partially sticking out of a bed of leaves, was a cheap black cell phone.

I bent down to look at it, but Vernon grabbed my arm.

"Don't touch it. We need to phone Detective Dick Head and let him know. I've got some latex gloves in the car. I'll go get them. I want to make sure this is the same phone that was used to call Tim Baxtor."

"It's got to be. It can't be coincidence that it's lying here."

"I agree, but we need to be sure." Vernon limped back to his car while I whipped out my own phone and called Lester, but he wasn't answering. He was probably too busy texting someone. I left a message, telling him what we'd found and that we were waiting at the scene.

"I wonder whose prints are on that phone," I said to Vernon as he slapped on the gloves and picked it up.

He turned the phone on and scrolled through the phone's menu. There was only one call listed on the log, and it was at 12:02 p.m. on the day Pandora was murdered. I punched in the number on my own phone and waited for it to connect. Tim Baxtor's voice mail kicked in as I held my phone between us, both listening.

Vernon studied the area carefully. The phone was a yard away from Pandora's fence. "I'm guessing either Ian called Tim to lure him here so he could frame him, probably using some kind of voice software to alter his voice and pretend he was Pandora. Then Ian dropped it after killing Pandora and escaping into the woods. Or Tim threw it over the fence from Pandora's garden to hide the evidence that he'd really called himself from this phone so he could tell everyone Pandora phoned him and he had an excuse to be there."

"That doesn't seem likely, does it? Why throw the phone away but leave the needle and vial at the scene?"

"I admit, it doesn't sound that plausible, but if he'd just killed her, he wouldn't have been thinking straight. It's easy to make mistakes then. Or maybe he heard you pull up outside and didn't have time to hide anything else. Or it really was Pandora that called Tim and asked him to visit her." Vernon let out an angry blast of air as loud as a balloon being suddenly deflated. "Lester didn't do a very good job of investigating the scene, as usual. The crime scene team should've swept this area too. He's an idiot."

If Lester had missed the phone, what other crucial evidence had he missed too?

Vernon replaced the phone on the ground exactly where we'd found it and removed his gloves, turning them inside out and shoving them into his pocket.

Twenty minutes later, Lester Marshall appeared.

"Well, well, well." He swaggered up to meet us. "I suppose you two were just out for a cozy stroll in this area, were you?"

I bristled. If Lester had been doing his job properly, we wouldn't have needed to get involved in this whole sad mess.

"Actually, we were concerned you may have missed something." Vernon gave Lester an accusing gaze. "And it looks like we were right. This is probably the same phone Tim claims Pandora used to call him on the day she was killed." Vernon didn't let on he knew for certain it was, in case heavy-handed Lester arrested him for tampering with evidence. Anyway, as an ex-FBI agent, Vernon had far more experience than Lester. "You need to do a whole sweep of this area and see if there's any other trace left out here." Vernon waved a hand around the spot we were standing in.

"Are you telling me how to do my job?" Lester gave Vernon an ugly glare. "And what does a
retired teacher
know about crime scene work?"

"Let's just say I watch a lot of police shows."

Lester barked out a laugh. "People watch
CSI
or
Law & Order
for five minutes and think they're experts these days. I'm a highly trained professional. I know what I'm doing."

Vernon muttered something under his breath.

I didn't like to point out that maybe Lester should watch those shows, too. He might learn something useful.

"Why didn't you search this area?" Vernon asked.

Another glare from Lester. He was silent for so long I thought he'd ignore the question, but eventually he grudgingly snapped, "I didn't think it was necessary to extend the search area outside of the fence."

"Not necessary?" Vernon stared at him incredulously. "This was a murder scene. You should've been all over it!"

"We already have the suspect in custody!" Lester took a step toward Vernon and poked him in the chest. "Keep out of my investigation.
I'm
in charge here, and I don't want no
Columbo
-watching do-gooders interfering. You got that?" He poked Vernon again.

Vernon's eyes narrowed to slits. "If you poke me one more time, you'll regret it."

"Really? Whatcha gonna do about it?"

Even though Vernon was in his sixties and walked with a limp, he was still a strong, stocky guy. And his FBI training meant he could take out Lester before he even had a clue what had hit him. Yep, I'd put my bets on Vernon every time. Luckily, I didn't have to find out, as Lester squatted down then and looked at the phone, so the tension between them was diffused. He pulled his own latex gloves from his pockets and went through the call log, writing down the number in his notebook. Pulling an evidence bag from his pocket, he dropped the phone in and sealed it. Then he got his own cell phone out and dialed a number, watching us with suspicion.

"Yeah, I need some crime scene officers out to Pandora Williams's place. We need to do a full sweep of the area behind her property," Lester said into the handset, as if it were all his idea.

I caught Vernon's gaze. Vernon shook his head and looked as if he wanted to do Lester an injury.

Lester hung up and treated us to another glare. I bet he sat at home practicing it in the mirror to try to look intimidating.

"Well, this just proves that Tim Baxtor is the murderer," Lester said to us.

"How?" A confused frown spread across my face. "Someone else could've phoned Tim to lure him to Pandora's house. Someone who climbed the fence and slipped in through the kitchen door to kill her. They could've dropped this phone when they left the same way. Did you know there's software that can disguise a voice? Whoever called Tim could've used that to
pretend
they were Pandora so Tim was framed for her death. That person could easily have been Ian."

Lester exhaled an impatient sigh. "I think it's pretty obvious what happened."

"Really?" Vernon said. "It's not obvious to me."

"Nor me," I said, waiting for Lester to enlighten us.

Lester spoke slowly, as if he were talking to a couple of idiots. "Pandora was the one who phoned Tim and asked him to come to the house. A neighbor overheard them arguing about Jenna. He killed her in a fit of rage. Then he left through the front door, which you were witness to. No one slipped in or slipped out again. Tim did it, and I'd appreciated it if you'd leave the police work to the people who know what they're doing."

Vernon folded his arms across his chest. "So maybe you can explain something about your theory."

Lester sighed again.

"If Pandora called Tim, why is the phone on the
other
side of her property fence?"

"I don't know why.
Yet
. But I'm sure when we get the fingerprints back, they'll prove Pandora used this phone."

"And what about the pentobarbital that was stolen from the vet's?" Vernon asked.

"I'm certain Tim Baxtor stole that to try to muddy the waters and point the finger at someone else," Lester said.

"Did his prints match those found at the vet's, then?" I asked.

"No. But he obviously got someone else to act on his behalf, although he's denying that too. We've checked his wife's prints, but they don't match."

"I just spoke with Pandora's neighbor, Lillian, who saw Ian turn up at Pandora's the day before she was killed."

"So?" Lester huffed at the inquisition "That's not important. Lillian also told us she heard the argument between Tim and Pandora that obviously made him snap and murder her."

"So you're not going to compare Ian's fingerprints with the ones found at the vet's clinic to see if those ones match up?" Vernon asked.

"There's no need. Like I
keep
telling you, we've got the murderer. Now stop interfering in my investigation, or I'll have you arrested. Am I making myself clear?" He made shooing gestures with his hands. "Run along now."

Vernon and I walked slowly back to his car.

"He's an idiot," Vernon muttered.

I agreed. "I'm not convinced Tim did it. There are too many inconsistencies."

"And we owe it to Tim Baxtor to make sure an innocent man isn't sent to jail."

"So what do we do next?"

"We need to get it straight from the horse's mouth."

"Huh?"

"My contact told me Tim's arraignment was postponed because the judge is off sick. He's still in the Danger Cove jail. We need to pay him a visit and find out what he's got to say."

As we trudged up the steps of the Danger Cove police station, my heart pattered nervously in my chest. I hoped Lester would be tied up at Pandora's for the next few hours and wouldn't catch us talking to his prime suspect. It was only a few months ago that Lester Marshall had locked me in one of the cells, believing I was responsible for Bob's murder. I knew how it felt to be innocent and scared, worrying yourself stupid about being convicted of a crime you didn't commit. And if Tim was innocent, we had to get to the bottom of it to prevent a miscarriage of justice from happening. If Lester caught us interfering, he'd probably sling me into jail quicker than you could say
Innocent until proven guilty!
The thought of being arrested again and incarcerated in another cell made me shiver. But what choice did we have?

Officer Richie Faria was back on the front desk today, filling in some traffic violation paperwork with a satisfied grin on his face. We explained we wanted to visit Tim Baxtor. Richie was so overeager to do well and make detective that I was worried he might call Lester and let him know we were there, and I was pretty sure Lester would use Richie's enthusiasm to his advantage, having a pair of ears and eyes on the street. Thankfully, Richie was distracted by another person coming in to report he'd lost his wallet, and told us to wait in the seating area by the front door. A few minutes later we were led by Officer Fred Fields to the very cell I'd been in before.

"These people want to visit you. That okay?" Fred asked Tim through the bars.

Tim sat on a metal cot, back against the wall, knees drawn up to his chest. His hair was flattened to his head in places. He had a few days' worth of stubble on his face, and his eyes were red and watery. Wearing a pumpkin-orange jumpsuit, he looked nothing like the smartly dressed man I'd seen emerging from Pandora's front door on that fateful day. Tim wearily dropped his feet to the floor. "I guess."

Fred unlocked the door for us to enter. We stepped inside the cramped cell, and he locked it behind us with a loud click.

"I'll give you fifteen minutes." Fred took off back down the corridor, shiny boots squeaking on the linoleum floor.

"Who are you?" Tim glanced between Vernon and me warily.

Vernon introduced us, then said, "We're trying to find out what really happened at Pandora's house that day. It seems Lester Marshall is convinced you're guilty, but there are things that don't seem to add up."

"So…you're here to help me?"

"We're here to find out the truth," I said, giving him what I hoped was a reassuring smile.

"Oh, thank God for that," he wailed, throwing his head in his hands. His shoulders heaved up and down as he sobbed into them. He sniffed a few times. Wiped a snotty nose on his rumpled sleeve and looked us in the eyes. "My lawyer's trying to help too, but…everyone thinks I did it. I know Pandora and I had some unpleasant history, but I didn't kill her. I didn't!" he wailed. "I was framed."

"So tell us what you know," Vernon said. "What happened the day she was murdered? How did you come to be at her house?"

Tim took a shuddering deep breath and began. "I'm sure you've heard the rumors that Pandora spread about me? About how she thought I'd killed Jenna, her daughter?"

"Yes," I said.

"It's not true. None of it is true. I loved Jenna. It took me a long time to get over what happened." He shook his head softly to himself and stared at a spot above our heads, a look of anguish twisting his features. "I felt like I was the luckiest guy in the world to be with her. We were so happy together. I'd just started my pharmacy business, and I proposed to her. I was living with my parents while the business got off the ground, and I saved up for a house. We had a small engagement party and were planning our wedding. Our life together was just starting, when…" He trailed off for a moment, wiping his eyes again. "Jenna phoned me on the morning of the Independence Day celebrations and asked me to meet her at the lighthouse that night, but she never showed up. At first I wasn't worried. Jenna was always late for things, but for her not to show up at all, that just wasn't like her. I waited an hour, and then I got worried she might've been in an accident, so I rushed back to Pandora's house, but Jenna wasn't there either. Pandora and I searched for her with no luck. The next few days were terrible. The police carried out their own search with volunteers from the community. I looked everywhere I could think of too, but there was no sign of her. It was like she'd vanished."

"And she didn't take anything with her?" Vernon asked. "No clothes or passport or anything?"

"No. Nothing. Her bedroom was as she'd left it. Nothing was gone. Then the days turned into weeks and months, and she didn't come back. I know Pandora always thought she would never run away, but I believed she must have, for some reason. I was brought in for questioning by Detective Ohlsen. I know it's always the partner the police look at first, so I didn't blame him. He was only trying to find out what had happened to her, the same as we all were. They let me go, of course. But there was still no word from Jenna and no leads. And we…" He threw his head into his hands again. "We never heard from her again." His voice was muffled in between his fingers.

"I'm so sorry," I said. "It must've been a terrible time."

Tim sat up and composed himself again. "It was. But I wasn't allowed to grieve for losing Jenna, because Pandora thought I was responsible. She thought I'd…killed Jenna. How could she think that?" His eyes pleaded with us, but I didn't think he was expecting an answer, and he plowed on again. "She said Jenna was going to leave me. That she'd wanted to meet me that night to end things, but I didn't believe her. We were so happy together."

"So you weren't trying to control Jenna?" Vernon asked. "You weren't obsessed with her?"

"I was
in love
with her. Maybe I was young and a little jealous, and maybe overprotective of her, too, but I never did anything to hurt her. You have to believe me! But Pandora went to the papers, accusing me of murder. She stood outside my pharmacy every day with placards calling me a murderer. She phoned me constantly, harassing me, telling me to confess."

"That must've made you pretty angry," Vernon said.

"Not angry. I could understand why she was doing it. She was grieving like I was, but I just wanted it to stop. She turned people against me in the town. My business started to suffer. And I was heartbroken too."

"So you took out a restraining order and threatened to sue her?" I asked.

"I didn't want to do it, but I had to. I didn't have a choice. She just wouldn't stop."

"Why didn't you leave town and start again somewhere new if it was affecting your business?" Vernon asked.

Tim shrugged and stared at the floor. "At first, I wanted to stay in case…in case Jenna ever did come back. I never believed she was dead, you see. I thought she'd just run away. There was always that little bit of doubt. That little bit of hope that got me through the days. I prayed for her to be alive. And I thought one day she'd walk through the door and into my arms again. And I was innocent of having anything to do with her disappearance. If I'd left, it would've looked as if I was guilty, wouldn't it? It was tough, but eventually, a lot of people forgot about what had happened. My business was going okay, and I didn't want to start again. Then I met Donna, whose roots are here, too, and we…we were happy in Danger Cove."

My heart clenched. For Jenna. For Pandora. And for him, too, if he was telling us the truth.

"So after you threatened Pandora with a lawsuit, she stopped hounding you?" Vernon asked.

"Yes. I think Pandora had some kind of breakdown. We avoided each other around town, which was easy to do, as she became kind of a recluse. And we never spoke again until the day she called me."

"Did Ian harass you in any way?" I asked

"No."

"How did he act after Jenna disappeared?" Vernon asked.

Tim scratched his head. "Well, he helped search for her with the rest of us. He was kind of a quiet guy anyway, so he didn't say much to me when I was going out with Jenna. We didn't really hit it off, if you know what I mean. He was aloof, I guess you'd call him. I wasn't into fishing or football like he was, so we didn't really have much to talk about. I struggled to find things to say to him."

"And Jenna and Ian…how did they get on?" Vernon asked.

"Um…the same, I guess. They weren't very close."

"Did he seem jealous of his sister?" I asked. "Jealous that Jenna was his mom's favorite?"

Tim chewed on his fingernail, thinking about that. "Maybe. I remember one time that really sticks out in my mind. Jenna was about twenty, so Ian must've been fourteen. He'd won an award in a biology competition at school and wanted Pandora to go to watch the ceremony one night. But it corresponded with an exhibition the Danger Cove Art Museum was holding of local artists' work, where Jenna was exhibiting her sketches. I was having dinner with them, and Pandora told Ian she couldn't possibly go to his event, as she'd already agreed to go to Jenna's. Ian got so angry, he punched a hole in the Sheetrock wall and stormed out of the house."

So Ian had a temper. And he must've been jealous of his sister, craving his mom's affection and attention and probably not receiving much. I knew how that felt, growing up in the commune with two alcoholics who didn't even notice if I was there or not, being palmed off onto other people all the time, having to find my own amusement, my own happiness, my own sense of belonging. At times I'd been angry, frustrated, jealous, upset too, although that hadn't made me want to kill anyone. But it could've pushed Ian over the edge. As a hormonal teenage boy growing up without the father who'd been the only parent to nurture him, I could see how it could've tipped the scales. Pushed him to do something drastic in an angry heat of the moment. Pushed him to get Jenna out of their lives so he could get his mom to finally take notice of him.

"Did Ian get angry a lot?" Vernon asked.

"I didn't see anything else, but he had it in him. He was always quite broody, you know. Like there was an inner anger just bubbling away under the surface." A sudden thought seemed to strike him then. "What, do you think Ian could've killed Jenna?"

"It's possible," I said.

"You're right." Tim sat up straighter. "I guess I'd never thought about that before because I always believed she was still alive somewhere."

"What happened after Pandora stopped hounding you?" Vernon asked.

"Well, she had the breakdown, and Ian left Danger Cove. I think he couldn't compete with his sister's memory in Pandora's eyes, and he felt neglected. He couldn't compete with her alive or dead. I haven't seen him since he left all those years ago. But if he did really kill Jenna, then he could've killed Pandora too, couldn't he?"

"It's possible. Was it definitely Pandora who called you that day and asked you to come to the house?" Vernon asked. "Think carefully."

Tim chewed on his lower lip. "I…I haven't heard her voice for nearly twenty years, so I suppose it's hard to be certain, and she was kind of hysterical and sounded drunk, slurring her words. The voice was a bit muffled, but I think it was her. Why would someone else call me and pretend to be her?"

Vernon and I glanced at each other. Even though Tim seemed forthcoming and honest in what he was saying, we couldn't give away our theory of some unknown person slipping inside Pandora's kitchen after Tim had left, in case it influenced what he told us.

"And anyway, when I got to her house, she was expecting me, so it must've been Pandora."

"She was?" I wondered if that little snippet had just bounced our theory out of the water.

"Yeah."

Vernon pursed his lips at that revelation. "What did the person on the phone say to you?"

"Like I said, she sounded drunk, but she said she wanted me to come over at half past three that afternoon because she'd discovered some kind of evidence about what had happened to Jenna. Of course, I agreed instantly. If Jenna was still alive, I wanted to know about it as soon as possible. And if she wasn't, I wanted to know who'd killed her. Donna didn't want me to go and bring up all the old history, but I wanted to clear my name once and for all. There are still a lot of people here who shun me, thinking I'm a murderer who got away with it."

"Did you know Pandora was dying of a brain tumor?" I asked.

"What?" Surprise registered on his face. "No. No, of course not. Like I said, we hadn't seen each other or spoken in years. She obviously didn't use my pharmacy for any medication."

"So what happened when you arrived at Pandora's?" Vernon asked.

"When I got there, she accused me of killing Jenna again, which was completely opposite to what she'd said on the phone. She demanded to know what I'd done with Jenna's body. I tried to calm her down. Tried to tell her she was wrong, but she was irrational and emotional. She wouldn't take any notice of what I was trying to say."

"Did she threaten you?" Vernon asked.

"No, not really. She just kept asking me to tell her where Jenna was. And then…when I knew she wouldn't listen to reason, I left." He rested his hands on his knees, leaning forward, eyes imploring. "She was alive when I went out of her house. You have to believe me."