Traci Tyne Hilton - Mitzi Neuhaus 03 - Buyer's Remorse (17 page)

Mitzy sat in the waiting room at the police station and turned on her phone. She thought they would rush her in for new evidence, but the murder of Lara Capet had been interesting enough for the public at large to create a waiting line to talk to the officers on the case.

Alice
had sent a number of texts…Mitzy opened the picture first. She squinted at it to see if she could make out what it was. She could see a lipstick, a wallet and…a piece of something…her platter? Then she read the messages. Her platter was bouncing around inside of Fiona’s purse.

Her turn came to sit with an officer and she pulled out her phone first thing.

“This is my platter in Fiona’s purse,” she began. “Someone broke into my office, busted my platter and has been leaving bits of it all over town. And there are more of them in her purse.”

The office looked at the picture and passed it back to Mitzy.

She opened pictures of the greenhouses full of marijuana. “Neveah’s is a store that prides itself on selling local product, so why was she getting regular deliveries from
Idaho
? We went to the address and this is what we found.” She turned the phone to him.

He raised his eyebrow. “That’s a lot of marijuana.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“How did you find that?”

“Alice McNinch sells a line of her clothes at Neveah’s. She dug around in the recycling and found a bunch of boxes all tied together. One of them had a return address. She brought it to me. We were wondering how the employees at Neveah’s had so much money. Wouldn’t selling marijuana answer that question?”

“How did you get from the return address to selling pot?” the officer asked.

“First I googled it.
The address is in the
Magic
Forest
region of
Idaho
. That area has a problem right now with people growing these crops on government land. Then I drove there. Here’s the picture of the actual address.” She pulled up the picture of the house and showed it to him.

He nodded and made a note.

“If Fiona is selling drugs from her store, she might have a motive for murder.” Mitzy said.

“She might. It would be worth looking into, but I have to say, it is kind of a stretch.”

“I get it. But add this to the picture, according to David who works for Fiona at the shop, Fiona pays generous holiday bonuses. But Lara wasn’t satisfied with that. David implied Lara was pressing Fiona for more money. I think she may have been demanding extra money for silence.”

“I admit I like your theory. But going from broken plates to drug money with no physical evidence won’t work.”

“Then I’ll bring you physical evidence.” Mitzy put her phone back in her purse. “When I was in
Idaho
someone tried to kill me by running me off the road and then someone else held my friend up at knife point. Fiona is behind this, and I’ll get the physical evidence to prove it.”

“I bet you will,” The officer said with a smile. “There’s a reason Backman told us to trust you.”

Before Mitzy could go back and get Alonzo for the start of their honeymoon she had to get her physical evidence to the police. She was keeping her stash of broken platter pieces in her room at the inn. She climbed back into Alonzo’s pickup and drove straight there.

Mitzy flew through the front doors of the inn and ran up the steps past the crowd of women in tulle. She opened her closet and dug through her suitcase. Somewhere in there were the bits of ceramic she had collected. She’d take them all in to the police station along with the
Idaho
address label and beg to get them fingerprinted. She was sure they’d find a match.

She got to the bottom of the bag without finding anything. But maybe, she thought, maybe she had put them under the bed. She turned to the bed and got on her knees. She slid her long arm across the wooden floor, feeling for the small stash of evidence. She felt something soft and pulled her hand back. What was under her bed? She lifted the bed skirt and looked again, but only saw her slippers. She pulled back out and sat up on her knees. Where had she put them?

She decided to try the closet again. She could hear the clatter of high heels on the wooden floor of the hallway. Then she heard her door creaking as it opened.

“Looking for something?”

Mitzy turned. Fiona.

Fiona smiled. She held the doorknob with one hand. “Let me give us some privacy.” She shut the door. “I don’t think you will find what you want in the closet.”

Mitzy brushed the legs of her pants with her hands as she stood up. She felt Alonzo’s keychain as she passed over it. She stuck her hands in her jeans pockets and gripped the keychain tightly. A girl’s best friend, when it came to self-defense.

Fiona was here. Mitzy was pleased that she hadn’t been wrong, but what to do with her now? Mitzy could still hear the clicking heels and the tittering laughter of bridesmaids in the hall. She was alone with Fiona, but not entirely alone. That was a good thing.

“I don’t think those girls are interested in what’s going on in here.” Fiona said. “Why don’t you sit down and we can have a chat. You’ve been learning all sorts of things about my business.”

Mitzy crossed the room and stood in front of the mirror.

Fiona followed her with her eyes. “I hope you don’t think you can sneak away from me, Mitzy. I am not dumb enough to let you get out.”

Mitzy remained silent. Her laptop was behind her. It was opened and turned on. Ben hated it when she left her laptop turned on. She put one hand out, as though leaning for support, but she didn’t set it on the dresser. She set it on the keyboard of her Mac Book. The small computer woke up.

She stretched her long fingers across the small keyboard and clicked the button to turn on the camera.

“Get your hand off that computer.” Fiona flicked her hand at Mitzy. “Do you think you can email the police, you little fool? Not with me standing right here.”

Mitzy moved her hand ever so slightly and clicked the film button. Then she held both hands out in front of her. She stayed right next to the computer, hoping Fiona would keep talking and looking toward the camera.

“Lara was greedy, wasn’t she?” Mitzy said.

“Ah ha.
You’ve been talking to David.”

“And Hector and Trish and all sorts of people who knew her.
The consensus is that she was difficult to satisfy.”

“She was a lot like you,” Fiona said.

“Fiona, what are you doing here?” Mitzy spoke as clear as she could. She wanted to be understood on the video.

“I’m here to take care of a problem. You know, problems come up in business sometimes. But without risk there is no success. I’m sure you believe it.” Fiona took a step closer. She spoke with fluttering hand motions. “Paying Lara more money was not an option in the end, and keeping her around was not a risk I could absorb. She had to go.
Poor girl.
There just wasn’t an alternative.”

“Why did you use a rock? I can’t think you are strong enough to break her skull.”

“Oh heavens, of course I’m not strong enough. But I don’t need to get myself messy, do I?”

Mitzy was thrown by that. She had slated Fiona as someone who took care of her own dirty work. “But how could you know it would get taken care of if you didn’t do it yourself?”

“A man takes the life, but the gun does the shooting. The gun can’t do the job if the man isn’t there.”

“You were there when Lara was killed?”

“
Tsk
tsk
,” Fiona said. “You, my dear, are a more complicated problem. What can be done with you? I suppose you assumed you could just force your way past me, if you wanted to. I am a small, older woman after all and you are, well you are rather large.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Mitzy said.

“That saves me that effort. I appreciate it. I don’t suppose you are old enough to understand what ‘drink the
Kool
-Aide’ means, are you?”

“I think I get it. Drink the poisoned
Kool
-Aide because your leader told you to.
Self-sacrifice.”

“Yes, that’s right. Well I’m glad. So when I say, you’ve already drunk the coffee, the pun won’t be lost on you.” Fiona waved to the coffee mug on Mitzy’s side table. “In fact, you drank it this morning.” She smiled, letting her yellow teeth show. “How are you feeling?”

Mitzy’s stomach turned over. She hadn’t had any coffee this morning. She hadn’t been here at all.

“I—” Mitzy covered her stomach with her hand.

“I know. It’s hard to believe that it could end like this. You drink your regular morning coffee and then—poof, your life is gone. But everyone’s turn ends sometime. It’s just too bad about Alonzo. He seemed so excited to marry you.”

Fiona didn’t know about the wedding, so she didn’t know about the trip to
Idaho
either. “You know a lot about me, Fiona.”

“Yes, I’ve had my eye on you, ever since Lara made the offer on your house. It seemed to me that you could be trouble.”

“You sound like my
gradeschool
teachers,” Mitzy stared at the coffee mug. “But how did you get poison in my cup?”

“You are a creature of habit my dear. You take a cup of coffee every morning. You wander all over the inn with it, but before bed you always rinse it out in the sink, and leave it on the sideboard behind the dish soap. It was so easy to poison that I mistrusted my fortune, but when I watched you do it myself I knew it would be easy as pie.”

“But…”

“I know. It seems too easy, and it was. I took care of your cup last night while you slept. I see your empty cup sitting there by the bed. It worked like a dream.”

Ah ha! That cup on the side table wasn’t hers. It was the one Alonzo had left there the last morning she stayed at the inn. It had been sitting there for two days. Her cup was sitting with some kind of poison in it behind the bottle of dish soap still, or so she hoped. She faked a small groan and held her stomach.

“It explains your terrible pains doesn’t it? I’m sure you thought it was just stress. Well, if you had the whole cup this morning, I’m sure you haven’t got much time left. I’m awfully sorry that you brought
Alice
into this. She’s a rather good designer. But she likes her coffee too, so I’ll have to go visit her at home soon.”

“Why…why tell me all of this?” Mitzy dragged her words out as though she was running out of strength.

“Just for my own satisfaction, of course.
The same reason I went with
Pierre
to kill Lara.
To have the pleasure of seeing the results of my hard work.”

“
Pierre
!” Mitzy groaned again.

“Oh yes, my dear.
Sadly, I think the police finally have enough evidence to arrest him, poor man.”

“Yes, I-I’m sure they do.” What now? Mitzy asked herself. How do I get this video to the police before Fiona gets to
Alice
?

“Goodbye, Mitzy. You’ve been a real pain. I won’t be sorry when you are dead.” Fiona gave Mitzy one last glance, and then let herself out. Her face was triumphant. She pulled the door shut behind her. Mitzy heard it click. Mitzy stood next to the mirror and counted to three. Then she stepped across the room, barely touching the floor with the heels of her boots. She leaned against the doorjamb and listened.

There was a ruckus in the hall. A number of young voices twittered in the hallway but one girl moaned in a despairing way. Mitzy cracked her door and looked out.

A mess of bridesmaids and friends of the bride surrounded Fiona. She had her arms up, trying to push herself through the crowd. One girl held her by the elbow.

A girl with deep black circles under her eyes pulled Fiona around by the shoulder. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you,” she snipped.

“I’m not—” Fiona tried to say something.

“I don’t care if you are ready. We’ve got pictures in an hour and everyone upstairs is looking for you. Did you think we could do this without you?”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” the girl with her hand on Fiona’s elbow said.