Deadly Desserts (Sky High Pies Cozy Mysteries Book 6) (14 page)

CHAPTER
31

Early the next afternoon, as I sat
at my desk finishing a turkey and avocado sandwich on a jumbo buttermilk
biscuit, I heard the incoming email chime on my laptop. I relished the last
bite of lunch, wiped my hands with a napkin and swiveled around in the chair to
peer at the newest arrival.

It was from Dina:
Call me
.

After I dialed her number and she
answered, I asked why she hadn’t sent a text with the message instead of an
email.

“Isn’t that what I did?”

“No, detective. It was—”

“Well, what’s the diff? Here we are
talking.”

“Another one of those days?”

“So far, it feels like three of
those days crammed into one,” she answered. “But do you hear me complaining?”

“Not yet.”

She actually laughed. Then she
delivered the same taunt Nana Reed often used whenever my siblings and I tried
stealing cookies from the cooling racks. “Think you’re a regular joker there,
wise guy?”

As a child, I’d back away from the
fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies and apologize. Of course, that was easy to
do because our grandmother would always tell us to go ahead. “Take two,” she’d say
with a smile. “And then make like a ghost and vanish!”

I was still thinking about Nana
Reed when Dina launched into a recap on the lab results from the coffee mug,
Russian nesting dolls and Twizzler package that I’d given her the previous day.

“Are you ready for the outcome?”
she asked finally.

“Is it good news?”

“Well, it’s a mix of good and bad,”
she said. “One set of prints that you brought us actually matched the plastic
carryout container found with the used syringes and vial of poison.”

“And the bad news?”

“None of the prints are in the
system,” she said.

“How is that bad news?”

She grumbled. “Because, Katie.
They’re not in the database, so it doesn’t help us identify Lacy’s killer.”

“No, no,” I said quickly. “I didn’t
mean it that way. I just meant…well, I can tell you who the prints belong to.”

“Then why did you have us run them
through the lab?”

“To see if they matched the prints
from the carryout container.”

“Okay, then who do the prints
belong to?”

“One set is Daphne Wright,” I
answered. “And the other is—”

“Portia Pearson?”

“Yes, how’d you know?”

“Lucky guess,” she said. “Actually,
I remember seeing the Russian dolls on Portia’s desk.”

“Okay, so which set matched?” I
asked. “Coffee mug, nesting dolls or Twizzler package?”

A rush of adrenaline flashed
through me as I heard the answer. But instead of feeling a sense of
satisfaction at possibly helping to identify Lacy’s killer, I felt an
overwhelming sense of sorrow.

“Why aren’t you saying anything?”
asked Dina.

“I don’t know.”

“Because you actually know the
potential suspect?”

I considered her comment, but the
sense of sadness continued to grow.

“Let me think about that. I’ll get
back to you, okay?”

“Sure thing, Katie. And, who knows?
Maybe the next time we take, we’ll have the case buttoned up and the killer
behind bars.”

CHAPTER
32

“Is that you, Kate?”

I didn’t recognize the woman’s
voice on the other end of the line, but she sounded apprehensive. I’d been in
the Sky High walk-in doing inventory when the phone rang, so the mad dash to my
office had left me gasping for air.

“Yes,” I said, trying to catch my
breath. “This is Kate Reed.”

The line crackled with static. I
could hear someone breathing, but it didn’t seem like she was going to say
anything more.

“Hello?”

I waited again, hearing more faint
noise.

“Okay, I’m going to hang up now,
so—”

“It’s Daphne Wright,” she said
finally. “From Portia Pearson’s furniture store.”

“Oh, sure! What’s going on?”

She exhaled slowly. “Can I talk to
you for a few minutes?”

“Absolutely. What’s on your mind?”

The first part of her answer wasn’t
entirely unexpected, but I was surprised by what followed. “It’s Lacy Orvane,”
she announced. “I think that I may have had something to do with her death.”

I waited for a moment to let the
news sink in. Then I asked her to tell me more.

“I’m an idiot,” she said. “I never
would’ve agreed to go along with it if I knew…” Her voice caught in her throat
and she took a moment to regain her composure. “If I knew what would happen to
Lacy.”

“What are you talking about?” I
asked. “What did you agree to do?”

“Leave the backdoor unlocked.”

Portia’s words from the other day
sparked in my mind:
“…someone left the delivery door wide open and unlocked
as if we were advertising for all the local riffraff to come right in…”

“Who asked you to do that, Daphne?”

“I don’t know.”

I frowned at the answer. Then I
asked her to explain the comment.

“What do you
mean
?” she
said, her voice sharper and louder. “Some guy called and said he’d pay me a
thousand bucks if I left the delivery entrance unlocked. He said it was a
surprise for Portia. Since her birthday’s coming up, I thought it had something
to do with that.”

Yep
,
an idiot
, I
thought, recalling how she’d described herself a moment earlier.
Not to
mention gullible and naïve.

“I’m guessing that you needed the
money?”

“Well, duh!”

“I mean, you needed it enough to
jeopardize your job?”

She huffed into the phone. “My boyfriend
totally ripped me off, Kate. He took my credit card, ran up this huge bill and
then skipped town. Do you know him? His name is Lucas Breen?”

“No, I’m sorry. I don’t know the
name. And I’m sorry for what he did with your credit card. But, I’m having
trouble grasping what you just said about someone paying you to leave the door
unlocked.”

“What don’t you get?”

“The whole thing,” I said. “Someone
that you don’t know just called out of the blue and offered to pay you a
thousand dollars to leave the door of Portia’s furniture store unlocked?”

She heaved a sigh. “Well, when you
say it like that, I can see how it’d be difficult to understand. But I was…I
was desperate. My rent was due. My bank account had, like, five dollars in it.
And Portia had refused to advance anything on my next paycheck.”

“This isn’t Portia’s fault,
Daphne.”

“I know that! I’m not blaming
her
!
And I didn’t call you to be yelled at.”

“I’m not yelling at you,” I said in
my most mellow tone. “I’m trying to understand what you’re saying.”

“I know, see? I’m an idiot. And I’m
responsible for what happened to—”

“Who knew about your money
problems?”

“Huh?”

“Besides your ex-boyfriend and
Portia, who knew you were strapped for cash?”

“I don’t know. I guess…well, my
best friend, but she would
never
tell a soul. And I talked to a couple
of girls who live in my apartment building, but they’re totally on my side.
They’d never spread gossip or anything.”

I ran through what she’d just
revealed: disreputable boyfriend, money trouble, discreet friends. And then I
had a thought, so I asked Daphne if she’d ever talked about her financial woes
on the phone during business hours.

“You mean at my desk?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, yeah…” Her voice softened.
“Do you think one of the customers might’ve overheard me?”

“Quite possibly,” I said. “Have you
told the police about this?”

“Not yet. Since I knew you were
friends with that detective, I wanted to tell you first to see if you think I
could go to jail as an accomplice or something.”

“You really need to call Dina Kincaid,”
I advised. “Like, right this second.”

“Can you do it for me?”

My jaw tightened. “No,” I said
firmly. “You need to tell Dina everything.”

“But I’m afraid. He said that if I
went to the police, he’d find out about it.”

“Who—the guy that paid you to leave
the door unlocked?”

“Yes. He called that morning and
asked me to do it. He somehow knew that my bank account was low and my credit
card balance had, like, totally gone through the roof.”

“Did you recognize his voice?”

“No, he was using one of those
things,” she said. “He sounded like a robot, you know? All distorted and
mechanical.”

“Okay, so he was using a voice
scrambler and he had access to your financial information. Could it have been
your boyfriend?”

She huffed angrily. “You mean my
ex
-boyfriend?”

I ignored the remark. “Could it
have been him? Maybe disguising his voice or something?”

“It was definitely a guy,” she
answered. “But there’s no way it was Lucas. He’s got a little, um, stutter, so
I would’ve definitely heard that if he’d made the call.”

“Possibly one of his friends?”

“You haven’t met Lucas; he didn’t
have any friends. And now I know why.”

“Well, there’s always a chance
that—”

“The guy called back the next day,”
Daphne said suddenly. “That’s when he threatened me. And he said…there was something
he said that made it seem like he knew about the poison, but it wasn’t supposed
to really hurt Lacy or anything.”

“What did he say?” I asked. “Do you
remember his
exact
words?”

“No,” she answered. “To be honest,
it freaked me out so much that I didn’t know what to do. I felt horrible about
leaving the door unlocked, like I had made it possible for the person to sneak
inside and go downstairs to poison all of the—”

“Daphne?”

It took a moment, but she finally
responded. “Yes?”

“Can I ask you a couple of
questions?”

She mumbled her consent.

“Do you have a tattoo on the inside
of your wrist?”

There was no reply, so I asked the
question again.

“Why do you want to know?”

“It may be related to Lacy’s case,”
I explained. “I can’t go into the details, but I have a theory about who may
have wanted to harm her.”

“And the person had a tattoo?” she
said.

“Yes.”

“But lots of people have them. I
don’t see how—”

“The tattoo is one word.”

I heard her gasp faintly. “Is it…
love
?”

“That’s the one.”

“Well, it’s not me,” she said, her
voice quivering. “But I think…”

She began to cry, quietly at first
before it gained volume and intensity.

“Can you tell me the name?” I
asked.

She coughed a couple of times
before revealing the identity. I felt a faint twinge of sorrow deep inside; my
intuition was on track, but it left me wondering how someone who seemed
reasonable and law-abiding could not only betray a friend but also kill her.

“Call Detective Kincaid,” I advised
her. “You need to tell her
everything
. About the man who threatened you.
About the scheme to leave the door unlocked. And about the person with the
tattoo.”

It took a few moments before she
was composed enough to talk. When the tears had faded and her voice was steady
enough, she asked a simple, obvious question.

“Do you think I’ll go to jail?”

She sounded like a child that’s
been caught doing something wrong—skittish and delicate and afraid.

“I can’t advise you on that,” I
said finally. “But it’s time to do the right thing. Please call Detective
Kincaid, okay?”

She mumbled a reply and hung up. I
waited a few minutes before sending a text to Dina:
If you don’t get a call
from Daphne Wright, please get in touch with her
.

I stared at the phone, waiting and
hoping. I didn’t have to wait long.

On the phone with her now
,
read Dina’s reply.
I’ll call you later
.

CHAPTER
33

As I drove to Food Town to buy
ingredients for the chili I planned to make for dinner, I spotted Pinky
Newton’s sister on the sidewalk in front of Smoky Joe’s Bar-B-Q. She didn’t
hear me honk, so I took the first parking spot I could find and headed inside
the restaurant.

“Hey, stranger!” Barb called as I
approached the booth where she sat alone. “My sister’s on the way. Do you want
to join us for some ribs?”

I slid in across from her,
explaining that I’d just stopped to briefly discuss the call Nathaniel Craig
had made to the flower shop.

Barb’s face crumpled into a frown.
“What call?”

“Pinky told me that you talked to
him when he called to order flowers,” I said.

“Oh, that’s right. The way you asked
the question, it sounded all official or something; like he was talking about
bank business.”

“No, it was…” I paused as she
stopped to check her phone.

“Sorry,” she apologized, turning
her attention back to me. “Pinky will be here in a sec. Now, what were saying
about Nathaniel Craig?”

“I was curious about the call,” I
said. “And what he told you regarding poison in the food samples at Portia
Pearson’s the other day.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What’re you
talking about, Katie?”

“The call from Nathaniel Craig. Didn’t
he tell you that all the desserts and snacks had been tainted with cicutoxin?”

The withering frown flipped into a
smile. “Have you been drinking?”

I shook my head. “Not yet, but…”
There was no denying it; the look of confusion on her face was genuine. “Did I
get that wrong then?”

“What? The poisoned desserts
thing?”

I smiled. “I’m sorry, Barb. I
haven’t been sleeping very well. And Sky High’s been super busy this week, so…”
I chuckled and held up both hands. “I’m obviously having a brain misfire!”

She giggled. “Happens to me all the
time.”

We commiserated about fatigue and
sleep issues and frazzled memories. I didn’t listen to her comments with much
interest; I was too busy trying to figure out who was telling the truth about
the call from Nathaniel Craig—Pinky or her sister Barb.

After we’d exhausted the topic of
insomnia and late-night television, I asked her if she had actually talked to
the bank president.

“Oh, heck yeah!” Barb said
enthusiastically. “And he was nice enough once I got him calmed down.”

“Was he upset?”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m just
filling in to help Pinky out for a few days, so he got a little steamy when I
answered the phone and he had to give me the details of the order. I mean, it was
like I was supposed to read his mind about sending a dozen roses to his wife.”

I ignored the remark and moved on.
“Why did he get upset when you wanted details for his order?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t most people have to do that anyway?”

“Not Nathaniel Craig,” Barb
answered. “Normally, when he calls and Pinky answers, they’ve got a shorthand.
He’ll say, ‘Hey, Pinky. It’s Nathaniel at the bank. I want to send the usual
order to the usual address on Saddleback.’ Then she’d say, ‘Okie-dokie! Do you
want that on the usual MasterCard?’ And he’d say—”

“Sorry to interrupt,” I said
quickly. “But you are aware that Nathaniel and Suzanne don’t live on Saddleback
Drive, right?”

Barb’s head jerked back on her
neck. “Say what?”

“You just told me that Nathaniel
Craig ordered a dozen roses to be delivered to—”

“458 Saddleback!” Barb said.
“That’s what he told me. I’m not making this up or anything.”

I smiled. “Well, Nathaniel and his
wife used to live there,” I explained. “But they sold that house a few years
ago after they built a new place out on Prairie View Trail.”

“Is that right?” she asked. “If
somebody told me that before, it slipped my mind. Do you know who bought the
house when Nathaniel and Suzanne moved?”

“You bet,” I said. “They sold the
house to Lacy Orvane.” I paused to let the news sink in. “So…I guess that
means…”

“Hold up,” Barb said. “If that’s
true, then that means that Nathaniel Craig’s been sending roses to...”

“Lacy Orvane,” I said.

Barb cupped both hands around her
mouth. “Then does that mean Nathaniel Craig is the man that Lacy’s been having
an affair with?”

I shrugged. “That’s the rumor.”

She was still trying to absorb the
news when Pinky Newton came through the door and zipped across the restaurant.

“Well, hey Katie!” She slipped out
of her coat and plopped into the booth alongside her sister. “You joining us
for dinner?”

“No, I was—”

“What the
heck
, Pinky?” Barb
hissed, ignoring the fact that I was starting to answer her sister’s question.
“Did you know that Nathaniel Craig and his wife moved and he’s been sending
flowers to Lacy Orvane?”

Pinky shook her head. “Do we
really
have to talk about flowers?” she moaned. “I’m off the clock and not in the
mood. Not to mention that I don’t know a thing about anybody’s affair with a
cheating, lying, no-good dog!”

Barb huffed, leaning toward her
sister with the squinty stare still ablaze. “Oh,
c’mon
! Everybody in
town knows Lacy’s been seeing a married man, but she’s done a really good job
of keeping his identity a secret.”

Pinky shook her head. “I don’t want
to discuss poor, poor Lacy. It’s just so sad, you know? So incredibly sad.
It’ll be hard enough to enjoy my dinner knowing that my flower shop has been an
accomplice to marital discord for the past few months.”

“Oh, come on!” Barb said again.
“You’re not guilty of any crime, sis. I mean, sure you knew that he was sending
flowers to another woman. And, you knew he was doing it on a weekly basis. But
as far as any kind of conspiracy, I disagree. Lacy was a grown woman. And we
all know that if you play with fire, you just might get burned.”

Pinky reached over and swatted her
sister’s hand. “Shame on you,” she said sharply. “Our friend’s dead. And if she
was having an affair with…” She stopped long enough to take a deep breath.
“Well, if she and Nathaniel have been carrying on, then maybe…”

There was no need to finish the
thought; all three of us were on the same wavelength.

While the two sisters sat in
stunned silence, I got up from the booth and slipped my purse under one arm.

“Where are you going?” Pinky asked.

“I need to make a quick call,” I
explained. “And you two have some barbecue to enjoy.”