Killer Crab Cakes (25 page)

“Then who do you think killed Sheldon Forrest? Give me something else to go on.”

“First I’d like to know why you arrested Consuela.” Phyllis had been pondering that very question, and when Abby hesitated and didn’t answer, she went on, “I suppose it was because the murder weapon came from the kitchen at Oak Knoll.”

If she had hoped to startle Abby into agreeing with that theory, she was disappointed, but the sudden look of surprise in the assistant chief’s eyes was enough to convince Phyllis she was on the right track.

“If that’s all you’ve got to go on, it’s not very much,” she continued. “I’m sure you’ll find Consuela’s fingerprints on the knife. It came from her kitchen. She used it all the time. And she had absolutely no reason to kill Sheldon Forrest.”

“Then who did?” Abby asked. “Who had a motive to murder Mr. Forrest?”

It was Phyllis’s turn to hesitate. All she had to go on was speculation, but if she wanted to help Consuela, she was going to have to share that with Abby.

“If I were you,” she said, “I’d take a close look at Raquel Forrest, as well as Leo and Jessica Blaine.”

“The spouse is always one of the first people we look at in a murder,” Abby said. “We’ll question Mrs. Forrest as soon as she’s recovered from the shock of finding her husband’s body. Don’t worry about that. But what motive would the Blaines have? It’s my understanding that they’re all good friends.”

“Sheldon and Jessica may have been very good friends.” Again, Phyllis felt like a gossipmonger, but it couldn’t be helped.

“As in, they were having an affair? Now, that’s interesting. I hadn’t heard that.”

“Well, I didn’t actually . . . you know . . . catch them in the act.” Phyllis felt her face warming. “But I saw enough yesterday to suspect that it might be possible.”

They were interrupted then by Boaz, who brought a huge platter containing their cheeseburgers and Dr Peppers over to the booth. He set the food and drinks on the table with an easy grace unusual in such a big man and asked, “Anything else I can do for you?”

Phyllis and Sam shook their heads, and Abby said, “No, we’re good. Thanks, Boaz.”

He lumbered off, and Abby went on, “I don’t know what I’d do without him.” She gestured toward the burgers. “Dig in.”

The cheeseburger was huge, dripping with grease, and surrounded by potato chips. Phyllis was rather intimidated by the size of it, but she managed to pick it up and take a small bite.

That was enough to convince her that she did have an appetite, after all. It was probably terrible for her health, but the first bite of burger tasted so good that she immediately wanted more. Fire speared into her mouth with the second bite, and she knew that the burger had jalapeño slices on it. She reached for the big glass of crushed ice and Dr Pepper and gulped some down to quench the fire.

“Mighty good,” Sam said as he crunched on some chips. “Almost decadent.”

“Sin on a plate,” Abby agreed.

Now that the burning from the pepper had subsided a little, Phyllis was ready for more. She might pay for this later with a fine case of heartburn, she told herself, but it might be worth it.

They devoted themselves to their food for a while. The pounding rhythm and incomprehensible lyrics of “Louie, Louie” came from the jukebox, followed by the catchy but almost-as-incomprehensible “Incense and Peppermints.” Phyllis began to enjoy herself.

It was too bad they were here to talk about murder.

Eventually they got back to the topic, though, as Abby asked, “What else do you think about Sheldon Forrest’s death? If he was carrying on with Jessica Blaine, that would give both his wife and Leo Blaine a reason to plant that knife in his chest, but what about Jessica herself ?”

“Lovers’ quarrel,” Sam said. “Been known to happen.”

Phyllis nodded. “And any of the three of them could have had a chance to take the knife out of the kitchen. Whoever it was could have worn gloves, too, to make sure that only Consuela’s prints were found on the knife.”

Abby still didn’t confirm that that was the case, Phyllis noted. Instead the assistant chief asked, “What about the other people in the house?”

“None of us who came down from Weatherford ever met him until we got here. As far as I know the same holds true for the other guests, Nick and Kate Thompson.”

Abby took a drink of her Dr Pepper and then asked, “If Sheldon was enough of a dog to be carrying on with Jessica Blaine—even though he sure didn’t look like the type—maybe he made a pass at Mrs. Thompson, too. She could have told her husband about it.”

“That seems awfully unlikely to me,” Phyllis said. “Anyway, they were together in their room when Sheldon was murdered.”

“Husbands and wives alibiing each other . . . not the strongest evidence in the world.”

“Probably not,” Phyllis agreed. “But if it was me, I’d be checking to find out exactly where Leo, Jessica, and Raquel were during the afternoon.”

Abby nodded. “That’s on the agenda. One thing at a time. You can’t think of any other motive for Sheldon’s murder other than jealousy over his possible playing around?”

Phyllis hesitated. She didn’t want to tell Abby everything she had found out about the corporate intrigue going on between McKenna Electronics and the Jefferson-Bartell Group, because they were only linked indirectly to Sheldon Forrest. But if there
was
a connection, it went right through Sheldon, whose father-in-law headed Jefferson-Bartell and who worked for NASA, which did business with both companies.

“What about Ed McKenna?” she finally said. “Could Sheldon’s death have anything to do with McKenna’s murder? Maybe Sheldon found out who was responsible for that and threatened to turn them in.”

“Or tried to blackmail them,” Abby suggested.

Sam shook his head. “The fella didn’t strike me as a blackmailer.”

“He didn’t strike me at first as a philanderer, either,” Phyllis said. Sam shrugged in agreement with that point. Phyllis went on, “If you’ve made any progress in solving Ed McKenna’s murder, it might lead you right to Sheldon’s killer, too.”

Once again, Abby didn’t rise to the bait. She didn’t say anything about how well the investigation into McKenna’s murder was going. Instead, she swallowed the bite of cheeseburger she had been chewing and then said, “You wouldn’t think that there would be two separate murderers at work in a single bed-and-breakfast, would you?”

“Especially not within two days’ time,” Phyllis said. She hoped she had planted a seed in Abby’s mind. If the police investigation turned up the resentment Oliver McKenna felt for his father, or the fact that Ed McKenna had been trying to block Charles Jefferson’s takeover of his company, well, then,
she
couldn’t be held responsible for bringing all that out into the open, Phyllis told herself.

“What we’re going to have to do is just carry out a thorough investigation of everybody in that house,” Abby said. “I hope that won’t offend you or your friends, Mrs. Newsom. But the more people we can eliminate as suspects, the more sure we can be that we’ve got the right person under arrest.”

“You
don’t
have the right person under arrest,” Phyllis said, “at least not right now. But I’m glad that you’re not going to concentrate just on finding evidence that implicates Consuela and ignore anything else.”

“We’re just after the truth, whatever it turns out to be. My dad taught me that.” Abby smiled. “And Boaz taught me how to grill burgers. What did you think?”

Phyllis looked at her half-eaten cheeseburger. “I think I’ve eaten so much already that I won’t need another meal for a week.”

“Not me,” Sam said with a nod toward his empty plate. “That just about hit the spot, Abby. My compliments to the chef.”

“I’ll tell him you said so.” She started to slide out of the booth. “Food’s on the house, folks, but you can drop a tip in the jar on the bar if you want.”

“I’ll do that,” Sam said as he stood up and reached for his wallet.

While he was doing that, Phyllis said, “What about us seeing Consuela?”

“Sorry. Tom’s already been to see her, and we’re just waiting for her lawyer to show up in the morning now.”

“How long are you going to keep her there? You have to either charge her or release her—”

“Within forty-eight hours. I’m hoping it won’t take that long.”

“So do I,” Phyllis said with a sigh. “I’m sure she must be scared.”

“Probably not as scared as Sheldon Forrest was when he saw that knife coming at his chest,” Abby said.

P
hyllis couldn’t bring herself to dislike Abby Clifton, especially after the trip to The Dancing Pelican. Abby had certainly had a colorful childhood.

But neither could Phyllis really warm up to the assistant chief, at least not as long as Consuela was locked up for a crime she hadn’t committed. Phyllis clung to that belief, even though she knew she didn’t have any real evidence to support it. All of her instincts told her that the two murders were connected, though, and for the life of her she couldn’t think of any reason why Consuela would have wanted to kill either of the victims.

As she and Sam headed back to the bed-and-breakfast in Sam’s pickup, she said, “I feel a little bad about going off and having supper at that place when we left everybody else to just fend for themselves.”

“We had a good reason,” Sam pointed out. “You were tryin’ to get information out of Abby so you could solve these murders.”

“Was it that obvious?”

“No more obvious than it was that she was tryin’ to get information out of you.”

“But that’s her job,” Phyllis said. “And she admitted that she wanted to pick my brain.”

Sam chuckled. “I’d say you two are a pretty good match. Neither one of you is liable to outwit the other by too much. You were pretty sly yourself, tryin’ to put her on the trail of Charles Jefferson and Oliver McKenna. You think both killin’s are tied together somehow, don’t you?”

“I’m sure of it,” Phyllis said. “There’s something out there, some part of the puzzle that I’m not seeing yet . . . But I’ve gone over it and over it in my head and can’t come up with it.”

“You will,” Sam said without hesitation. “I got plenty o’ confidence in you.”

Phyllis appreciated that, but she wasn’t sure she had that much confidence in herself. Even though this case wasn’t yet forty-eight hours old, she had run into brick wall after brick wall so far.

“Anyway,” Sam said, going back to what Phyllis had been saying a moment earlier, “we left ’em with a pot full of tamale soup on the stove, so nobody should’ve starved unless they wanted to.” He paused, then added, “Speakin’ of that tamale soup, I might just have a bowl of it when we get back, if it’s still warm.”

Phyllis looked over at him. “My God, you can’t still be hungry after eating that enormous cheeseburger.”

“I’ve been accused of havin’ a hollow leg when it comes to food,” Sam said with a grin.

Phyllis just rolled her eyes and shook her head. For someone who bordered on downright skinny, Sam had an impressive capacity for eating, all right.

A police car was still parked in front of the bed-and-breakfast when they got back, but other than that everything looked normal again. The ambulance and the crime-scene vans were all gone. Carolyn and Eve sat in two of the rocking chairs on the front porch, while Nick Thompson sat on the steps and Kate perched on the railing around the porch.

Sam drove around back to park; then he and Phyllis walked up the side of the house to the front porch. Nick stood up to greet them and asked, “Did you get to talk to Consuela? How is she?”

Phyllis shook her head. “They wouldn’t let us in to see her, but Abby Clifton said that Tom had been there and that Consuela’s lawyer is supposed to be there in the morning.”

“So they’re going to keep her locked up overnight?” Carolyn said. She sniffed in disgust. “Typical.”

Phyllis and Sam took the other two rockers. “I take it there’s still an officer upstairs outside the door to Raquel’s room?” Phyllis asked.

“Yeah,” Nick said. “I guess that even though they arrested Consuela, they don’t want Raquel running off just in case they want to arrest her, too.”

“Well, they still have to question her,” Phyllis pointed out. “She was too incoherent this afternoon after she found Sheldon’s body to make any sense out of anything.” She paused, then asked, “Do any of you happen to know how it came about that Raquel found him?”

“From what I gather,” Eve said, “the four of them all went their separate ways this afternoon. Jessica was still angry with Leo, so she spent the afternoon in some of the boutiques in Rockport. Leo went to a sports bar out on the highway. They came in at almost the same time, but not together, not long after you and Sam left, dear.”

“So maybe they have solid alibis, and maybe they don’t.”

“And of course we don’t know what Raquel was doing or where she was,” Carolyn said, “because no one’s really talked to her. I’m not sure that police officer would let us speak to her, even after the sedative they gave her wears off.”