Killer Crab Cakes (21 page)

Ever since the previous Christmas, she’d had a cookie recipe in mind that she wanted to try. It was one she had considered for the Christmas cookie contest sponsored by the local newspaper, but in the end she had decided to go with something more festive that tied in with the holiday itself. That decision had worked out all right, since her recipe had received an honorable mention in the paper. Carolyn’s recipe had won, but that didn’t really bother Phyllis. Not nearly as much as the murder that had taken place next door . . .

She put those bad memories out of her mind and turned her thoughts back to the cookies she was considering making for
this
contest. Oatmeal Delights . . . the name just popped into her head. It described the cookies very well. They were oatmeal cookies with pecans, coconut, and vanilla chips. She had made them several times at home and everyone liked them. Since she knew they were good, she wouldn’t have to experiment with them before the contest, as she sometimes did with the recipes she entered.

With that in mind, she needed to gather up the ingredients. And, of course, once she was in Wal-Mart she thought of other things she needed, so for the next half hour she and Sam walked around the sprawling store, Sam traipsing along just behind her like a dutiful husband. That thought made Phyllis’s face flush warmly, and she was glad that he couldn’t see how pink she must be. By the time she brought the basket to a stop again, she had told herself to stop being silly and was back to normal.

“Why don’t you go look at the books or something?” she suggested. “There’s no reason for you to have to tag along with me.”

“I like taggin’ along with you,” he said with a smile. “Anyway, I got myself a whole sack of paperback Westerns the other day at that big used bookstore on the edge of town. I’ve got plenty to read.”

“Well, all right. I just don’t want you to get bored.”

“Not much chance of that,” Sam said, and darned if she didn’t blush again. “What’s all this stuff for, anyway? Your entry in the dessert contest?”

“That’s right. I’ve decided to make those oatmeal cookies you liked so much the last time we had them.”

“The ones with the vanilla chips in ’em?” A grin spread across Sam’s face. “Oh, man, those are good. Carolyn won’t stand a chance.”

“I wouldn’t count on that. She nearly always manages to find a way to top me. But I don’t even know what her entry is going to be. She might bake a cake or a pie.”

“Maybe so, but whatever it is, it won’t be as good as those cookies of yours.”

Hearing that pleased her, too, although she might not have admitted it . . . even to herself.

By the time they got back to the bed-and-breakfast, Ed McKenna’s death had crept into her thoughts again, but she was no closer to figuring out who had killed him than she was before. Today’s revelations had increased the number of suspects, but none of them stood out above the others.

She was puzzled, too, by the fact that Leo Blaine hadn’t seemed to know anything about a connection between Jefferson-Bartell and McKenna Electronics. Since Leo was a vice president of the company, shouldn’t he have known about the impending takeover deal?

Unless for some reason Jefferson didn’t trust him and had been keeping the deal a secret from him for a reason.

Everything just got murkier and murkier, like the sea after it had been stirred up by a storm.

Consuela was already back, Phyllis noted as she saw the woman’s car parked behind the house next to the garage and the toolshed. Since the front of the house was right on the street, the people who were staying there, both the full-time residents and the guests, all parked in a large area in back, paved with gravel and crushed seashells. Phyllis had been surprised when she first saw the crushed shells mixed in with the gravel until she thought about it and realized just how plentiful that material was around here. The bottoms of the bays were covered in many places with shells. All you had to do was scoop them up.

The entrance to the parking area was a lane from the next street inland. Sam drove along it and parked next to Consuela’s car. They got out and carried the bags from Wal-Mart into the house through the back door.

Consuela had what smelled like chili simmering on the stove in a big pot as they came into the kitchen. Not surprisingly, she still looked upset, but she wasn’t letting that interfere with her work. The chili smelled delicious. Phyllis smiled and told Consuela as much.

That brought a tiny smile to Consuela’s face as well. “It’s one of my favorite dishes—tamale soup—it’s like a dressed-up chili,” she said. “The guests always like it.” Her expression grew more solemn. “Not that I expect them to eat tonight. They still don’t trust me, except for Mr. and Mrs. Thompson.” The look on her face hardened even more. “And I don’t care if that Mr. Blaine ever eats any of my cooking again. If anybody deserved to be poisoned, it was him, not Mr. McKenna.”

Phyllis figured it would be a good time to change the subject. “I hope you don’t mind sharing the kitchen tomorrow. I have to bake some cookies.”

“For the Just Desserts contest?” Consuela’s expression brightened a little again. “Of course not. I’m looking forward to it. To tell you the truth, I thought about entering my coconut cake.”

“Oh, you ought to,” Phyllis urged. “You fixed it the first night we were here, and it was delicious.”

“No, that’s all right. Nobody would want to eat it.” Consuela gave a bitter laugh. “After what happened to Mr. McKenna, everybody would think it might be poisoned.”

“I’m sure no one would believe that,” Phyllis said.

But she wasn’t sure at all. With the cloud of suspicion hanging over Consuela, it would only be human nature for people to wonder.

“No, I won’t be entering any contests. There’ll already be your cookies and Mrs. Wilbarger’s pie from Oak Knoll—”

Consuela stopped short, her eyes widening. “
Dios mio,”
she went on. “She told me not to tell—”

“It’s all right, Consuela,” Phyllis assured her. “We didn’t hear a thing, did we, Sam?”

“Not a thing,” Sam said, lazily closing one eye in a conspiratorial wink.

Inside, though, Phyllis was glad. With Carolyn baking a pie, that meant the two of them would be competing in different categories. She could honestly root for Carolyn to win for a change.

“Where is everyone?” Phyllis asked as she began putting away the items she and Sam had brought in.

Consuela shook her head. “I don’t know. Everything’s been quiet since I came in a little while ago. I haven’t seen any of the guests.”

Phyllis wondered if she might be able to pry a little information out of Leo about the Jefferson-Bartell takeover deal. If she “accidentally” let it slip to him that she knew about it, his reaction might confirm or deny that he had been aware of it. If he hadn’t known, if Charles Jefferson had been keeping it from him, there had to be a reason, and Phyllis wanted to know what it was.

When she had finished putting away the groceries, she went into the hallway with Sam and said quietly so that Consuela wouldn’t overhear, “I want to talk to Leo again. Do you feel like coming with me, or have I taken up enough of your time today?”

“Hey, I’m on vacation,” Sam said with a grin. “I got no place to be and nothin’ to do. I’m glad to lend a helpin’ hand.”

“Come on, then.” Phyllis started up the stairs.

They had just reached the second-floor landing when the door of one of the rooms down the hall was jerked open. Raquel Forrest stumbled out, her eyes wide and glazed-looking. Phyllis and Sam came to an abrupt halt, both of them shocked by the horrified expression on Raquel’s face.

“He . . . he’s dead,” she said. She held out her hands toward Phyllis and Sam, as if she were displaying the crimson stains on them. Phyllis felt sick because she knew what those stains had to be.

What she didn’t know was who she was going to find in that room. As she rushed past the stunned Raquel, she remembered the distasteful hanky-panky she believed was going on between the two couples, and she halfway expected to see Leo Blaine’s body inside the room.

But instead it was Sheldon Forrest, Raquel’s husband, who lay sprawled on his back on the rug beside the bed, the handle of what appeared to be a steak knife protruding from his chest. Feeling sick, Phyllis put a hand over her mouth, and she was glad that Sam had hurried into the room behind her and put his hands on her shoulders to steady her. All the life was gone from Sheldon’s wide, staring eyes.

Outside in the hall, Raquel finally began to scream.

“
I
didn’t expect to be back here this soon investigating another murder,” Abby Clifton said.

“Believe me,” Phyllis said, “I wish you didn’t have to.”

Abby was in the parlor downstairs with her and Sam. Upstairs, crime-scene technicians were going over the room and the body of Sheldon Forrest. As the first officer on the scene and the assistant chief, Abby had called for assistance from the county sheriff’s office this time. Chief Clifton hadn’t arrived yet, but according to Abby, he was on his way.

“Tell me again what happened.”

Phyllis sighed. She and Sam had been over this with Abby a couple of times so far, and none of the details of their stories had changed. Phyllis knew from talking to Mike that sometimes a rigidly consistent story was an indication of false testimony, since people seldom remembered all the details of an incident exactly the same every time they told it, even a very recent incident.

But in the case of her and Sam, both of them had had enough unwelcome experience in this sort of thing so that they tended to be more observant than most people. Phyllis wondered if she ought to point that out to Abby Clifton. She certainly wasn’t going to make up inconsistent details just to make her testimony sound more believable.

For the moment, she settled for telling Abby once again about how she and Sam had gone upstairs—omitting the part about how she intended to question Leo Blaine about the impending takeover of McKenna Electronics by the Jefferson-Bartell Group—only to see Raquel Forrest come out of the room with blood on her hands.

Raquel had been too hysterical to be questioned right away. One of the ambulance attendants, who were standing by to take Sheldon’s body away once the crime-scene techs were through with it, had given her a sedative, and she was lying down in one of the empty guest rooms with a uniformed officer on duty just outside the door.

Sam seemed to have picked up immediately on the fact that Phyllis wasn’t telling Abby about the business intrigue involving the two companies, because he didn’t mention it, either, when he repeated his version of the story when Phyllis was done. They might be letting themselves in for some trouble by keeping quiet about that, she thought, but they could honestly state that they had answered Abby’s questions truthfully. Abby hadn’t asked anything about McKenna Electronics or the Jefferson-Bartell Group. She mentioned Sheldon’s work, but Phyllis had said honestly, “He’s some sort of engineer for NASA. I don’t really know what he does there.”

Finally Abby said, “Can you account for the whereabouts of the other people staying here during the afternoon?”

Phyllis wanted to provide alibis for Carolyn, Eve, and Consuela, but she couldn’t do that since she and Sam had been gone. “I’m afraid not,” she said. “Sam and I were out most of the afternoon.”

“Out where?” Abby asked.

Phyllis suppressed a surge of impatience. Like everything else, this had already been asked and answered. “We drove up to the Copano Bay Causeway and walked out onto the fishing pier,” she said. It was possible that Abby might come up with witnesses who had seen them there, and she didn’t want to be caught in a lie.

“Did you do any fishing?”

“No, just sightseeing. Looking at the bay.” Phyllis smiled. “I’m not much of a fisherman.”

“What about you, Mr. Fletcher?”

Sam said, “Oh, I like to get my hook wet. I’ve mostly fished in freshwater until now, though. I’m still gettin’ used to this saltwater fishin’.”

“I mean, did you do any fishing from the causeway pier?”

“Oh. Nope, didn’t even take my tackle with us today.”

“Did you talk to anyone while you were there?”

“The fella you have to pay if you’re goin’ to fish,” Sam said. “And we shot the breeze a little with folks on the pier. I swear, people down here are just about the friendliest I’ve ever run into.”

Abby smiled. “We pride ourselves on being friendly in the Coastal Bend.” She looked at Phyllis again. “So you don’t know where any of the guests were?”

“No, I’m afraid not,” Phyllis said.

“What about Consuela Anselmo?”

“She goes home for a while between lunch and supper,” Phyllis explained. “I suppose that’s where she was.”

“But you don’t
know
that she left.”

Phyllis shook her head. “I suppose not.”