Motion for Murder (19 page)

I didn't want to know that kind of stud. I didn't even want to hear about him. I had enough on my hands trying to figure out whom I could safely turn my back on in the office.

"But I guess I'll give it back." She sighed. "You want to see it first? It's really pretty nice, for an ice chip. It's square."

He'd probably used his head as a mold.

"How about tonight," Sherri said. "I'll stop by around eight."

"You really don't have to," I said. "You can just take a picture and
"

"I don't mind," Sherri said, oblivious to the fact that I did. "I can pick up my dress, and we can plan our next step in Project Husband. Since it won't be Frankie Ritter, I mean."

"Tonight might not be the best…" I began, but she'd already hung up. Evidently Sherri got her phone manners from the soap operas, where love meant never having to say good-bye.

"Who's engaged?" Paige asked immediately.

"My sister." I pulled open the printer drawer to add paper. "She's not engaged. He just gave her a diamond ring."

"Sounds like engaged," she said. "How big is the diamond?"

"I'm not sure," I said, "but it sounds like you've flossed bigger pieces of food out of your teeth."

That killed her interest. She wrinkled her nose and went back to work. Missy gave me a knowing smile and bent her head back to her keyboard. It was nice to see Missy smile again. Despite Hilary's suspicions, I didn't believe Missy had anything to do with Dougie's death. Or I didn't want to believe it. Sometimes I get confused between the two.

Each of us was deep in the pretense of being productive when Adam Tiddle appeared. "I'm here to see Heath."

Now this was interesting. If Tiddle didn't know Dougie was dead, he obviously hadn't killed him. Unless his stupidity was so pure that he had killed him and forgotten all about it. Or was trying to throw everyone off his track.

On the other hand, the man had variously shown up with a gun, a knife, and malice aforethought. Hard to scratch him off the suspect list.

Because we knew he wasn't a threat to anyone but Dougie, and it was too late for that, none of us wanted to be the first to acknowledge him. Paige held out the longest, so Missy got up to find a free lawyer while I got up to get a head start before he pulled out his weapon
du jour
. "You're a little late," I told him. "Mr. Heath passed away last week."

"He what?" Tiddle's bloated jawline slackened. Anyone who could fake surprise that convincingly belonged in Hollywood.

"Died," Paige said without looking up. "Cashed it in. Bought the farm. Went to the big courtroom in the sky."

"That's enough," I said. She shrugged and shut up.

"That sonuvabitch," Tiddle said, which wasn't the reaction I was expecting. "I come all the way up here with this." He reached for his waistband and pulled out a hatchet big enough to scalp a bison. "And now you're tellin' me someone beat me to it?"

"Got any ideas?" Paige asked. I glowered at her, and she gave me a wide-eyed w
hat'd I say?
look.

The front door opened on a horse-faced woman in a badly fitting coatdress and cheap shoes. Clearly she was a lawyer. She saw Tiddle and his knife immediately, and her mouth fell open. She reached out and slammed the door shut in her own face.

Tiddle didn't notice. "Well, hell." He tucked the hatchet back in his belt. "Who else you got?"

I was about to tell him no one was in, but Wally came thumping down the stairs, and I decided to hell with it. Let the Boy Lawyer work his magic.

"Mr. Tiddle." Wally grabbed his hand and pumped it vigorously, a large and disingenuous smile on his lips. "It's a real pleasure to meet you." He was a good liar; I almost believed him. "Because of the unfortunate demise of my partner, I'll be handling your case from now on."

"Partner?" Missy said.

Tiddle looked at him with suspicion. "What's 'demise' mean?"

Wally stared at him for a moment, then put his free arm around Tiddle's back and guided him toward the stairs. "Why don't we go on up to my office, and I'll bring you up to speed."

I suspected Adam Tiddle only had one speed and it wouldn't take long to reach it, but he followed along without protest.

"Wally handled that well," I said when they were gone.

"He learned that from Doug," Missy said.

Paige smirked. "He learned how to play kissy-face with the clients?"

Sometimes life is all a matter of interpretation.

Curt was nowhere in sight when I got home, which meant I had nowhere to hide from Sherri. I didn't want to entertain, even if it was my sister. I wanted to put on ratty clothes and eat junk food and create a nice organized spreadsheet of suspects and motives. I might be taking the detecting thing a little too far, but Missy was my friend, and the office was my livelihood, and I really didn't want to move back with my parents and go to cosmetology school. I wasn't altogether sure how to create a spreadsheet, but some things were nagging at me, and I hoped if I approached them logically, it might help set them straight.

But there was no time for that now. I made a pot of coffee, laid out the box of Dunkin Donuts I'd picked up on my way home and sat down with the day's mail to wait for Sherri and her diamond ring.

Unfortunately, she didn't arrive alone. She showed up fifteen minutes later with Frankie Ritter draped over her shoulder like a scarf and breezed into the kitchen waving her left hand. "See? Isn't it beautiful?"

"Cost me a bundle," Frankie said, going straight for the doughnut box. "But she's worth it. Ain't you, babe?"

"I am," Sherri agreed. Her cheeks were flushed, like she'd been walking in the cold, and her eyes were a little too bright. She wasn't happy. And I wasn't happy, either, because Frankie Ritter was eating the cinnamon doughnuts, and they were my favorite.

I gave her ring the obligatory inspection. "Nice."

"Nice?" Frankie ran his forearm over his mouth. "That's real ice, honey."

"Oh," I said. "Then it's very nice."

Frankie made a face in the direction of my sister, meant, I presume, to convey my lack of intelligence, which gave me an idea. If I could irritate Frankie, I could get rid of the two of them and get on with that spreadsheet. I could deal with Sherri later, when she wasn't reprising the role of a Stepford Wife.

"Do I smell coffee?" Sherri took a seat. The one farthest away from Frankie.

I nodded. "I just made it. This morning." I shoved the doughnut box toward her. "Here. I got you chocolate glazed."

"Uh-oh." Frankie waggled his forefinger at her. "You don't wanna be eating too many of them, babe. You got enough merchandise in the ass department." He ate half a cinnamon in one bite. Things were getting urgent. I was already down to two.

Sherri looked wounded, but I pushed the box under her nose. "Don't listen to him. Winters women eat what they want to eat. Right?"

"Right," she said doubtfully. She took a doughnut and nibbled a dime-sized piece from it.

"How about that coffee, hon?" Frankie yanked his shirttail out of his waistband. I caught a brief and blinding glimpse of chubby white belly.

Sherri nibbled coins from her doughnut while I gathered cups and spoons and filled each to the brim. To Sherri's, I added a dollop of milk and two teaspoons of sugar. To Frankie's, I added twelve teaspoons of sugar. I slid each in front of its respective target with a cheery smile and took a seat with my own undoctored cup. "Drink up."

Frankie took a good long swig and set the cup down with a wet smack of his lips. "That's good stuff."

It was worse than I thought. I turned to Sherri. "Don't do this."

"Do what?" She'd gnawed at least two solid half-dollars from the doughnut in her hand and was already eyeballing a Boston crème. Good to see Frankie Ritter and his pinhead diamond ring had nothing on a heaping helping of fat and sugar.

"You're not ready for marriage," I told her. "You love chocolate glazed. You love blonds. You
"

"I used to be a blond," Frankie said. "It's overrated. Hey, got any coffee cake? Coffee cake would really hit the spot here."

In the first place, if I had any coffee cake, I wouldn't have any coffee cake, because I'd have eaten it in my car on the way home from the bakery. Which was a shame, really, since that would deprive me of the chance to cut Frankie a nice thick slab powdered with Ajax or rat poison or—

I fell back against the chair, stunned. What was I thinking? I didn't even kill bugs. Well, okay, spiders, maybe, but spiders didn't count. How could it even enter my mind to off Frankie Ritter like that? Maybe I was no better than Dougie's killer. Maybe that person had hatched his or her scheme over something as stupid as coffee cake. That tasty crumb topping could warp a person's mind. But I couldn't sink to those depths. There were worse things than running out of bakery goods.

Then Frankie reached for the last cinnamon doughnut, and I couldn't remember what they might be.

It occurred to me later, after four aspirin and eleven hours of sleep, that I should have asked Frankie about the Black Orchid. Too late now that I was back at work, waiting for my computer to boot up and my coffee to kick in. That gave me time to think, though, and what I thought was no harm in peeking in Paige's desk. No telling what I might find there, and it would get Donna's accusations off my mind. Suddenly Parker, Dennis, and Heath seemed more like Southfork than a law firm, with everyone accusing everyone else of murder. Scary thing was, someone had to be right.

Paige's desk was pretty much what I'd expected, full of little plastic makeup containers and cotton balls and hand cream and some medieval-looking silver gadget with handles like scissors. Just looking at all of it made me feel too girly, so I slammed the drawer shut. Enough of that.

Just to be thorough, I slid another drawer open just a bit. What scant amount of work Paige did, she kept there. It all seemed legitimate, so I closed that drawer, too. There was nothing here. Paige wasn't up to anything more nefarious than searching out the perfect lipstick. So much for Donna's theory. Maybe she'd made those accusations to throw me off her own trail. They say you have to look out for the quiet ones, and a mouse was raucous compared to Donna.

The phone rang. I hustled over to my desk to answer it. "Hey, Missy," a male voice said.

I shook my head. "No, I'm not
"

"You've got to let me know what to do with the stuff here," he said. "I don't want it in my place anymore."

Oh, my. I closed my mouth and made a sort of muttering sound that might be interpreted, by the hearing impaired, to sound like Missy.

"I mean, come on, you told me you wouldn't keep it here longer than a few days."

"Sorry," I grunted.

There was a momentary silence before he said, "You got a cold or something?"

"Cold," I agreed.

"I'll bring you something for that." So it was Braxton Malloy, the pharmacist. "You think about what you want to do, and let me know. I want the stuff gone by the weekend." And he hung up.

The stuff? What stuff? Did poison qualify as
stuff
? Was he looking to get rid of evidence stashed in his home by Missy? My head was buzzing as I rolled my chair up to my keyboard. I'd wanted to rule out Missy, but it looked like she'd just been ruled back in. I wondered what Donna's theory was on that. While I was wondering, I wondered what she might do if I failed again to talk to Ken. Definitely too much to think about.