Sweet Suspects (The Donut Mysteries) (14 page)

He was about to add something when his cellphone rang.
 
After a quick glance at the caller ID, he said breathlessly, “I have to take this.”
 
Grace and I stood firm as he answered his call.
 
“Hang on one second,” he said as he answered it, and then he held the phone to his chest.
 
“Please?
 
This might be my last chance.”
 
He was pleading now, and there was no doubt in my mind that Janet was the one on the other end of the line.

 
“We’re going.
 
Thanks for your time,” Grace said.

“And the information,” I added.

He led us out, but before he closed the door, Billy said, “Remember, you didn’t hear any of that from me.
 
You promised.”

“We promised,” I echoed the sentiment, and then he closed the door and deadbolted it.

“Well, that was productive,” Grace said once we were out in the hallway alone.
 
“Who do you suppose was on the other end of that telephone call?”

“Is there any doubt in your mind?
 
It had to be Janet,” I said.

“After the way she stormed out of his room after yelling at him?
 
Do you really think so?”

“I have a hunch that Janet may have suddenly realized that she couldn’t afford to have Billy as an enemy while the police are looking into her husband’s murder.”

“Not to mention us,” Grace added.

“So far, we haven’t been much of a threat,” I said.
 
“And don’t tell me that these things take time.
 
I know that, but it still frustrates me.”

“It frustrates both of us,” she said, “but we can only do what we can do.”

“True enough,” I said, “but what do we do now?”

“We don’t have much choice, do we?
 
We have to talk to Helen and see what Billy was talking about.”

“Do you think that
she
might have killed Zane?” I asked as we headed back to my Jeep.

“At this point I’m not sure of anyone that we can clear,” she said.
 
“How about you?”

“Everywhere I look, I see people who wanted to see Zane out of the picture,” I answered.
 
“It must have been a tough way to live his life.”

“He still deserved better than he got,” Grace said.

“That’s one of the reasons that I keep pushing,” I said.
 
“I’ll be honest with you, though.
 
The main thing that motivates me right now is solving this before your earlier indiscretion comes to light.
 
I don’t want you to take any hits that you don’t deserve.”

“I stole,” Grace said softly.
 
“I deserve whatever I get.”

“What you deserve is compassion,” I said tenderly.
 
“Once this is all over, we’ll figure out a way to make this right.”

“I don’t know how that’s possible,” she said.
 
“Everyone I wronged is gone.”

“We’ll come up with something.
 
Trust me,” I answered.

“I always have, and I always will,” she replied.

It was a somber drive back to April Springs, and I struggled to keep myself from speeding to get there quicker.
 
I wanted to talk to Helen Marston, and the sooner, the better.

“Helen, do you have a second?” I asked her as we walked into the office at the high school.
 
She was a guidance counselor there, which may have explained how she’d gotten involved with one of our former teachers.
 
I’d read somewhere that proximity in the workplace was the number one reason couples got together, and in a way, I suppose that’s how Jake and I had met.
 
The only difference was that he had been investigating a murder at the time, and I was one of his suspects.

Helen frowned before she spoke.
 
“Sorry, but I have a meeting with a parent in three minutes.”

The secretary behind the desk piped up at that point and said, “Mrs. Porter canceled.
 
Didn’t you get my email?”

“I haven’t had a chance to read it yet,” Helen said testily.

“Listen, we can talk out here, or we can do it in your office,” I said.
 
“Personally, I’m fine with it either way.
 
I just thought you might want to have a little privacy for this particular conversation.”

We all glanced over at the secretary as I said it, and she looked quickly away.
 
It was pretty clear that she’d been eavesdropping on our conversation, and just as obvious that Helen wasn’t pleased about it.
 
“I suppose that would be best,” she said before turning to the secretary.
 
“Marcy, call me in ten minutes.
 
I have to get my notes ready for the meeting tonight.”

“Sure thing,” Marcy said, and we followed Helen into her office.
 
She took her chair behind a large dark oak desk, a commanding presence that was not so subtle about telling visitors who was in charge, at least in that particular room.
 
It didn’t faze me a bit, but I was willing to bet that it intimidated most of the students who sat where I was sitting now.

“Now, what can I do for you?” she asked as she shuffled a few papers on her desk.

“For one thing, you can tell us exactly what your relationship was with Zane Dunbar and Billy Briscoe,” Grace said before I even had a chance to come up with a question.
 
I didn’t mind; I might have taken five minutes trying to work myself up to that question, but Grace had cut straight to the point.

“They were classmates of mine, the same as they were with you both,” she said.

“That’s not what we heard,” I said.
 
“Come on, Helen.
 
You might as well be candid with us.”

“I really don’t see why I should be,” she said.
 
“You’ve got no cause to accuse me of anything.”

“Hang on a second,” I said.
 
“No one’s made any accusations, at least not yet.
 
We’re just gathering facts.
 
We know that Billy got into an argument with Zane because of your honor last night.
 
What exactly was
that
all about?”

Helen frowned.
 
“Billy Briscoe has had a crush on me for years,” she said.
 
“When I started seeing Henry, he took it personally.”

“I thought he had a thing for Janet,” Grace said.

“That was old news,” Helen said dismissively.

That wasn’t what the video had shown, but I decided not to bring that up at the moment.
 
“So Billy had a crush on you.
 
That would explain why he might be jealous of Henry, but not of Zane,” I said.

After a few moments, she sighed.
 
“You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?”

I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.
 
“It would be better all around if you did,” I said, trying to sound as though I knew more than I was letting on.

“Fine, I’ll say it.
 
In a moment of weakness last month, I spent the night with Zane at a motel.
 
It was a mistake, and we both knew it the next morning.
 
I’d had a fight with Henry, and Zane had argued with Janet.
 
We ended up at the same restaurant, and one thing led to another.”

“Did anyone else know about it?” Grace asked.

“Billy spotted us coming out of the motel room the next morning,” she admitted.
 
“Listen, I’m not proud of what I did, but nobody took advantage of me.”

“How did Henry and Janet react to the news?” I asked.

She looked surprised by my question.
 
“They don’t know, not unless Billy said something to them, and I’d appreciate it if you’d keep what I just told you in confidence.
 
I could lose more than my job if word got out about what happened.”

“We won’t say anything unless it becomes pertinent in catching the murderer,” I said.

“Why would that matter?” she asked.

“If you didn’t do it, or Zane wasn’t murdered because of your direct actions, then we won’t tell anyone else,” I said.

She was clearly shocked by my conditions.
 
“Do you honestly think that Zane was killed because of our little indiscretion?”

I’d gotten divorced over that same type of “little indiscretion.”
 
How could she not take it more seriously than that?
 
“It’s entirely possible,” I said.

“You are both looking at the wrong people as suspects,” she said curtly.

“Then tell us who we should be focusing on instead,” Grace said.

Helen bit her lip, and I could see the girl she’d been back in school for just a moment.
 
She had been pretty back then in a pouty kind of way, but a lot of that had faded since we’d all left school.
 
After a moment more, she said, “I’m going to regret this, but I can’t have you stirring up trouble in my life when I’m just getting everything sorted out.
 
The person you should
really
be talking to is Candy Murphy.”

We’d seen Candy slapping Zane at reunion, but we still didn’t know why she’d done it.
 
I didn’t want Helen to have that information either if she hadn’t already known, so I asked her, “So why should we consider Candy?”

“She and Zane dated in high school.
 
Surely you both remember that,” Helen said.

I had, but I hadn’t thought it was all that apropos to our investigation.
 
“That’s old news,” Grace said before I could.
 
“You’re not going to try to tell us that she’s still upset over that.”

“Not about the fact that he broke up with her,” Helen said, “but that he took some photos of her that she thought had been destroyed a long time ago.”

“How could you possibly know about that?” I asked her.

She blushed a little as she admitted, “I wasn’t eavesdropping or anything.
 
I just happened to be standing nearby when she confronted him about it.
 
She slapped him hard enough to leave a mark, I can tell you that.”

“How did Zane react to that?” I asked.

“He just laughed at her, which made her even angrier.
 
Zane had a mean streak in him, and he loved it when he was in a position of power over someone else.”

I saw Grace blanch a little, and I knew that I had to change the subject.
 
“It sounds as though you know about that from first-hand experience,” I said.

She nodded.
 
“He tried to blackmail me about our night together.
 
He even threatened to tell Henry, but since he didn’t want Janet to leave him, I knew that he was bluffing.”

“Let me ask you something,” I said.
 
“He treated Janet badly, so why did he even want to stay with her?”
 
It was something that I’d been wondering about ever since I’d found out that they were together.

“You don’t know?
 
Divorcing her, or allowing her to divorce him, would have been a sign of weakness, that he’d failed at something, and that was one thing that Zane wouldn’t tolerate.”

“He stayed with her because of
that
?” Grace asked.
 
It was clearly as foreign a concept to her as it was to me.