Sweet Taffy and Murder: Sweet Taffy Cozy Mysteries Book #1 (20 page)

“Dammit, Ellie! What are you doing?”

“Sorry, it’s just so tight.” More horn blaring. “Sorry.”

“Stop it! Someone will hear.” Another long horn wail.

“It’s okay, we’re out in the middle of nowhere. Let me just readjust.” Several short blasts now.

Taffy, scented with eau de gasoline, rolled from the woodpile, managed to get one hand free, and pulled the partially loosened tape from her lips. Arming herself with a log from the fire, she crept toward the car, which was rocking slightly now. Poor Ellie.

“Maybe we should wait,” Ellie said. “Till we’re married, you know, before going all the way.”

Gravely moaned. “Okay, but just keep doing what you’re doing, Baby. It’s nice.”

“Like this?”

Taffy peeked at the window as she slid alongside the car toward the trunk. Ellie's head bobbed and then turned her way. Her eyes widened hopefully when she saw Taffy, who continued slithering toward the back of the car.

“Did you hear something?” Gravely said.

“That’s a little noise I sometimes make,” Ellie said. “You’ll get used to it.”

Ellie leaned on the horn again.

“Dammit, you’re making me lose my concentration.”

“Maybe if we just move your gun.”

“Don’t you dare touch my gun!” This time when the horn sounded, Taffy didn’t think it was Ellie. The driver’s door flew open, and Gravely jumped out, pants undone.

“What the—?”

From the back of the car, Taffy saw him staring at the empty woodpile.

Taffy’s fingers gripped the baseball bat lying on the ground near the back wheel of the car. Slowly she stood up.

As realization dawned for Gravely, he withdrew his gun, still facing the woodpile. Turning slowly, his gun arm swiveled toward the Corvette windshield.

Taffy was behind him to his left, in his blind spot. She wound up and swung hard, hitting him just below the ear. The gun went off. Glass shattered. Ellie screamed.

Headlights arced through the forest. Accompanied by blue and red flashers and a whistling siren. The police car skidded to a halt behind the Corvette.

“Took you long enough,” Taffy said, dropping the bat next to the car.

Maria trained her drawn gun on Gravely, who was sprawled across the hood of the car and slowly coming to.

Ellie had crawled from the passenger door. She was shaken and bloody from tiny cuts on her face and shoulders. Gravely’s bullet had hit the windshield, which had shattered on impact and sent glass exploding through the interior, so Ellie was pretty cut up but not shot.

A second police car pulled up, and Chief Green got out. His eyes were wide with disbelief at the scene before him.

“Maria, I never would have imagined.” He shook his head in disgust as he looked at his nephew with his pants unbuttoned and a gun not far from his fingers. He snapped the cuffs on Gravely as he read out his Miranda rights in a low drone. When he was done, he said, “Good work, Salinas.”

“You’ll have to thank Taffy, too,” Maria said as she helped the chief drag Gravely toward his car with the bars in the back. He was just beginning to realize what was going on. He was moaning and whining. He tried to reach for the growing bump on his head, but his arms were caught behind his back.

“Uncle Rory, I can explain. It’s not what it looks like.”

“I never listened to my doubts about you, Allan. Your Aunt tried to convince me—”

“She hated me! Just like my mother, and Janet. I was going to make this town better for everyone, better for me! And for Ellie! My true love!
Ellie
!!” He ranted nonsensically until the car door slammed on him.

The chief turned to Maria and then gestured toward Ellie. “You’d better bring her in, too. Accomplice and all.”

“Ellie acted under duress,” Taffy said. “She actually saved me. If she hadn’t gone along with his plan we’d probably both be dead.”

Taffy put her arm around a trembling, shocked, and bleeding Ellie, who managed to smile at this act of friendship.

The chief nodded. “We’ll still need her statement. And yours, too, Miss Belair.”

“I’ll meet you at the station.”

He glanced at Maria again, who was giving him a look, and so he cleared throat. “And, Miss Belair, you have my thanks. At first I thought you were just a busybody stirring up trouble, but I see now you have an eye for details and a solid dose of courage.”

He looked around the sanctuary lot once more and then gave Taffy a tiny nod. Climbing in to his car, he drove Gravely away.

Taffy was finally able to notice that her limbs were weak from adrenaline and she was shaking and short of breath. She leaned into Maria, who screwed up her nose and said, “You stink.”

“I know you love me anyway.”

“That I do,” Maria said with a smile.

Another siren blared and then drowned out as the ambulance drove up.

“I’m fine,” Taffy said to the medic, the same cute one who had tended to her at the fire. “Best check on Ellie.” He did, bringing Ellie to the back of the ambulance to deal with her cuts and bruises. She started chatting nonstop, and Taffy felt oddly relieved to think that Ellie was already moving on to her next crush.

Taffy turned to Maria. “The chief? What happened? How did he know to come?”

“I called him.”

“But why? We thought—”

Maria pulled caution tape from her car and started stringing it around the Corvette and burn pile.

“Your suspicions about him really got me worried. I went through all the different paperwork to see if I could find anything that might implicate him directly. I couldn’t. I also saw that Swain’s medical exam had been filed without his signature, so I called him up. He got back to me on our way to Blancheville. He said Zoe hadn’t given him the report to sign. And so we both wondered who had filed it, without the signature. I asked him if he knew where Gravely was, and he said he’d gone down to the bar to play pool with Mick and Austin, like he usually does.

“We knew Austin was supposed to be out with you. I called Gravely, but he didn’t answer his phone, so the chief said he’d go down to the bar to check. Then I got another call. Anonymous. About this site.”

“Who called?”

“Don’t you know what anonymous means?”

“It was Mick, wasn’t it?” Taffy was pretty sure he’d been the one to call Ethan before the house fire.

A broken smile tugged at Maria’s lips. “He didn’t say.”

But Taffy knew she was right.

Maria looked sad now. “The information he gave us led us to you in time. That’s enough.”

“What about Austin? Do you know where he is now?”

“Ethan went to check his house, but my bet is he’s long gone. As soon as Gravely went after you.”

“Austin sent him though. He set me up on the date, but he was planning to send Gravely to deal with me the whole time. Like he sent him to deal with Janet.”

“Austin pulled the strings, but Gravely did the dirty work?”

Taffy nodded. “He’d been promised a lot of money and a secure position of power in this town following the building of the casino. Kickbacks that would make him feel like a king, and a convoluted plan to get him instated as Chief after the false scandal they planned to unleash to destroy his uncle. They had it all mapped out.” Taffy patted her gasoline-damp dress. “I should have a bunch of that recorded. At least enough to nail Gravely. And hopefully Austin.”

“And Mick, too.”

“Mick? Clearly, he didn’t agree with his brother’s dangerous tactics. He helped us tonight. Maybe he’s not so—”

Maria gave her a resigned smile. “I don’t think we’ll see him around here again anytime soon. Picture him in a Mexican hacienda.” She sighed.

“I’m sorry,” Taffy said. “I know you were beginning to open your heart.”’

“I would have had to close it anyway. He’s a criminal, Taff, an accomplice at minimum, and I’m law enforcement. We were doomed from the beginning. But you—”

Maria turned at the sound of a vehicle approaching. She glanced over Taffy’s shoulder and smiled as a blue pickup barreled up the narrow sanctuary road.

“I see hope on the horizon for you.”

Ethan jumped out of his truck and ran over to Taffy. He grabbed her up in his arms and swung her around.

“Ouch!”

He put her down quickly and gently. “Sorry, what hurts?”

“Just my ego,” she said, smiling.

His green eyes focused hard on her face.

“I can’t begin to imagine what you’ve been through. Can I get you anything? Is there anything you want?”

She snort-laughed.

“You know, McCoy, someone once told me that I can’t always get what I want, but sometimes, if I try…”

He raised an eyebrow, gave her a lopsided grin, and then his impatient lips were on hers, absorbing the last line, which, Taffy found, was exactly what she needed.

Everyone met at the police station early the next morning.

Rosa insisted on coming with Maria and Taffy.

“But you don’t even like it when I
talk
about my work,” Maria said.

“Shush, I’m coming along and that’s that.”

Maria sighed. “Whatever you want, Mama.”

Taffy had slept on their couch. She woke up with a headache from where she’d been hit, and she was feeling sad—she’d made Maria drive her back to the house to find Midnight, but he’d disappeared again. She didn’t think he’d come back this time. But she was also feeling relieved. They had found Janet’s killer, and he was in custody. Though the real culprit, Austin Vallee, had hightailed it out of town.

The night before, Ethan had gone by Austin’s magazine-perfect house and found it had been emptied out, right down to every last stitch of artwork. The chief had still opted to post surveillance at the house and put out an APB on both brothers, but nothing had turned up by morning. In all likelihood the FBI would catch up with them eventually, but unfortunately, they were still lacking the key evidence that Janet supposedly had to link the Vallee brothers to Umberto Secca. It had probably gone up in smoke.

When Taffy, Maria, and Rosa arrived at the station, Ethan’s blue pickup truck was already there. He slipped his arm around Taffy’s shoulder.

“Did you sleep all right?” His green eyes were full of warmth and concern.

Rosa sighed seeing them together, and then she nudged Maria. “That could have been you.”

“Mama, stop. Sorry, Taffy.”

Taffy laughed as she walked into the station snugly, and happily, tucked under Ethan’s arm.

“Don’t worry, Rosa. I’ve got my eye out for our tough nut, Maria.”

“Both of you, give it a rest!” Maria barked, but she was trying hard not to smile.

Zoe, the clerk, had made a big pot of coffee and served everyone as they arrived.

Chief Green had called in Mayor Gifford, who was beside himself with the latest turn of events. “I’ve been played like a fool,” he said.

His wife was by his side. “There, there, Stanley. Things aren’t always what they seem to be, even with people you think you know well.”

Chief Green said, “I couldn’t agree more.”

He’d been doing some digging and had managed to find out a lot about Janet’s history. He sat everyone down around the big table at the back of the station.

“Janet Harken, aka Jane Doe, was known to authorities in California, Ohio, and Texas as an extreme eco-activist, but this was more than twenty years ago. Her troublemaking dates back to Kent State, for crying out loud, though she was underage back then and never charged as an adult. But seriously, this woman used to be the Indiana Jones of thwarting government and big business.”

Ethan jumped in. “She actually came to Abandon to retire. But when the Vallee brothers moved in and bought up the Castle Rock Resort and Golf Course, plus some of the other smaller businesses, she started keeping a close eye on them. At first they seemed like a couple of good nuts revitalizing a tourist town that couldn’t attract tourists anymore. They had money to spend, and the town needed that. But it was when the Vallee brothers cast their eyes on the sanctuary that Janet got suspicious enough to come out of ‘retirement.’”

Taffy knew Ethan wanted to share as much information as he could without giving away his FBI connections.

“The Vallee brothers were able to charm or bribe everybody they needed to help them with their development projects,” he said, adding, “Goodness knows the mayor loved them. He rezoned properties, gave out special permits—”

“I had no idea!” sputtered the mayor. “It was all meant to bring prosperity to our shabby little town. I was trying to do a good thing!”

His wife pulled him back down to his chair and tried to hush him.

Taffy said, “They also lined Davenport’s pockets with cash with all the legalities concerning their business, not all of which were legal, as his stressed-out assistant, Janice, can attest to. Supposedly, Janet had gathered enough information to get Davenport disbarred, so he had a reason for keeping her quiet, too, or at least not speaking up after she was killed. But we think her proof was destroyed in the house fire.”

Ethan frowned, and Taffy knew he was feeling disappointed about not having any solid evidence to pass on to his FBI friends.

Rosa piped up. “I’d like to know what you found out about the MBC.”

Taffy, who learned more from Ethan and the files she’d read, said, “The Magpie Baking Club was once a legitimate group of townsfolk swapping recipes. Then it transformed into the Magpie Bowling Club, taking the same initials as Janet’s other covert activist groups, like the Mission Brave Cohort, the Mischief Blood Chapter. This so-called bowling club became the next cover for a group of vigilantes intent on sabotaging the plans of these incoming developers. They would meet at the bowling alley every two weeks or so.”

Taffy held up the notebook full of cryptic scribblings.

“There had been a meeting the night Janet died.”

Ethan cleared his throat. “I was a member of the MBC, along with Randall Swain and several others. As Janet’s friends, and fellow nature lovers, we wanted to support her efforts to protect Castle Rock Sanctuary from the Vallee brothers’ exploitation. They had mafia support to build a massive casino on the bluffs.”

The mayor stood up again. “For the record, I had no idea the Vallee brothers were in bed with the mafia.” His wife tried to pull him back to his seat. He shrugged away from her pinching grip.

“We’ll be conducting a full investigation about all that, Stanley. I’ll be under the microscope as well, I’m afraid, after my nephew’s corrupt involvement.”

Finally, the mayor sat down, deflated. “We were all duped.”

Ethan said, “Just before her death, Janet had discovered proof of the link between the Vallee brothers and Umberto Secco, a man she had stood up to decades before, when she was an eco-activist in Nevada. She knew of his ties to the Vegas mafia and wanted to keep him out of Abandon at all costs. She paid for that with her life.”

They all took a moment to remember Janet. Zoe took a break from taking notes and refilled everyone’s coffee cups. Then she went to collect phone messages. When she returned, she said to Maria, “You’ll be interested in this.”

Maria perused the page Zoe had handed her.

“The Texas police have tracked down the white Mercedes and are holding the drivers, who have apparently admitted to fleeing Oregon with embezzled money.”

Maria raised an eyebrow and looked at Taffy, who explained to the group, “This past year, while Janet was busy covertly fighting the developers, she wasn’t paying all that much attention to the factory business. She didn’t notice Herbert was embezzling until it was too late. She’d trusted Herbert implicitly, up until a few weeks before her death, when she found out what he and Gillian were up to. It wasn’t their affair she was upset about, but their embezzlement of factory funds and their link to Secca Industries. Gillian had been sent out from Nevada to set up the embezzlement scheme under Janet’s nose. When she discovered this, she threatened to expose them if they didn’t return the money.”

Maria added, “But Herbert was in deeper than simple embezzlement. We found emails on his computer connecting him and Gillian to Secca Industries. When Janet refused to divulge the secret identity of the other factory owner, Herbert was paid off to drive the candy company into the ground, into bankruptcy, so that the property could be picked up cheap and developed into a casino by Secca, who, with the Vallee brothers’ help, had done this successfully in two other small towns, one in Florida and another on the Texas coast.

“The Vallee brothers had been wanting to find out who this secret partner was for more than a year, so they could buy them out and develop the land on the bluff as a casino site, and they were trying to get to the partner through Janet, who kept everything a secret and wouldn’t budge or back down.”

The mayor had dropped his head in his hands and was shaking it slowly. His wife rubbed his shoulder and then asked, “So it was Austin Vallee who killed Janet?”

“Not directly,” Maria said, standing up. “But he ordered it.”

Late last night Maria had taken a statement and a confession from a defeated and dejected Lieutenant Gravely, now stripped of his badge. He’d admitted everything.

“Allan Gravely was Austin’s henchman. He told Gravely who to threaten and who to keep quiet. In one sense Janet’s death was accidental. No one was trying to kill her just yet, only threaten her, keep her quiet, get her out of town, and she was acting as if she was going along with it, selling her house, planning to move to Arizona. But the situation that Saturday night got out of hand. Gravely had shown up disguised, but Janet had recognized him, so he felt compelled to hit a little harder than he might of. The blow killed her.”

“But he was the first officer on the scene,” Mayor Gifford said, looking up. “He
thought
it was murder, remember?”

Maria nodded. “True. No one ever considered him a suspect. But sometimes the best way to hide something is in plain sight. Gravely’s overzealous reaction, totally in character for all who knew him, allowed him to rise above suspicion. His position as an officer allowed him to be close to the crime scene, tamper with evidence, influence reports.”

Chief Green shook his head. “It’s my fault. I should have been more diligent with him. I spoiled him, because of what happened to my poor sister, dying of cancer. I felt like I had to give him what he missed. My wife hated it. She never trusted him. I should have trusted her more.”

Rosa put up her hand. “What about poor Randall Swain?”

Taffy sighed. “He was trying to do right by Janet but got tangled between the two sides. When he provided a plausible cause of death by identifying the bowling ball, Gravely and Austin were off the hook. No one knows who put him up to this, or if he really believed it, but it’s most likely he knew who the murderer was, or had been told by someone who knew, and was trying save his own skin by not pointing fingers.”

The mayor’s wife asked, “Who else would have known?”

“Possibly Bill Doucet,” Taffy said.

Rosa said, “Does anyone know where he is?”

Maria shook her head. “He hasn’t been around all week.”

“Bill and Randall called the police the morning after Janet died. When Gravely showed up, Bill kept his mouth shut. He’d had a series of convictions from before he came to Abandon and knew he wouldn’t be believed if he accused a police officer of the killing.”

“My nephew was never a suspect,” Chief Green said. “But he would have had an alibi for that night. He was at the bar playing pool with Mick and Austin. They did that all the time. But now we know the Vallee brothers would have covered for him. He scratched their backs, they scratched his. They were all scheming together.”

“Including a plan to get rid of you, Chief,” Maria said. “We got that on tape.”

“Why didn’t Janet come to us sooner?” said the chief.

“Allegations need proof, and Janet suspected someone on the force was in on the mafia payoffs. To share what she knew too soon was, well… As it was, her investigating brought trouble down on her head, quite literally.”

Ellie’s baseball bat had been entered into evidence as the murder weapon.

The chief cleared his throat. “We have a lot to do now to follow through on all this new evidence. An outside investigative team will be here to review the evidence tomorrow. They’ll be handling future questions from now on. You can all go home and wait until they call you.”

There was a stir of chairs, the final sipping of coffees, and chitchat amongst the small group.

Maria took Taffy aside.

“Zoe had one other message to give me. Remember that Portland Law Firm representing the factory’s secret partner?”

Taffy nodded.

“The Portland firm is linked to one in New York, the one that represents the Belair Family.”

Taffy nodded again, not really understanding.

“It’s you, Taffy. You’re the secret partner.”

“What?” She nearly dropped her coffee mug. It tipped and wobbled, splashing coffee on her toes.

“Those shares have been in your name since your mother died. You inherited them from her. The factory is yours.”

Taffy sat down, trying to let it all sink in. “My
mother
?”

Just then, a car horn started blasting outside. Taffy went to the door. Maria and Ethan followed. A sleek town car pulled up in front of the police station.

The driver, who looked oddly familiar to Taffy, walked around to the back door and opened it.

A tall woman wearing sunglasses, with her hair tied in a flawless chignon, and wrapped in a long cashmere shawl, emerged from the backseat.

“Nana??
Nana
!!” Taffy ran to her.

“Sweet Taffy,” Nana said, gathering her granddaughter into her shawl. “When you didn’t get on that plane last night I decided to fly straight here and pick you up myself.”

“Hello, Miss,” said the driver, tipping his hat.

“José!” It was the little man from her apartment, the one she’d named José. He gave her a strange look. So did her Nana.

“Taffy, this is Atticus Mitchell, one of my financial advisors. He’s here to assess the damage to the candy factory.”

“I don’t understand. I just found out our family owns it?? Why? How?”

“Oh, Taffy. There’s so much to explain. I knew it would all come out in time, but I wanted you to experience this town and the candy factory on its own terms first. And Janet was supposed to help you, only—” There was a tear in the corner of her eye.

“You
knew
Janet Harken?”

“We became friends decades ago, when she tried to stop one of your grandfather’s business expansions in Texas. Chained herself to one the smokestacks. The moxie of that woman! We ended up dropping all charges against her. She explained her position, and your grandfather made adjustments to his expansion plans. We became friends after that, to some degree.

“She became quite fond of your mother, who was only five at the time and who loved candy, especially saltwater taffy. Your grandfather bought the candy factory on the bluff at about that time and put it in your mother’s name as part of her trust. He gave Janet the opportunity to buy up to forty-nine percent of the shares, so long as she stopped going after his business interests, which she agreed to if he would promise to do business fairly and environmentally. He stood by his word until the day he died.”