J
ust because she had been wrong about Sheldon and Jessica, though, didn’t mean that Leo was in the clear, Phyllis reminded herself. There was still the matter of the connection between Ed McKenna’s company and the Jefferson-Bartell Group, the corporation that Leo worked for. And since Leo seemed to be in a talkative and friendly mood—rare for him—she wanted to take advantage of that.
As she set aside the pan with the burned milk and began looking for another pan in the cabinet, she said, “I thought you didn’t really know Ed McKenna all that well.”
“I didn’t,” Leo said, the change of subject not seeming to bother him.
“Your boss, Mr. Jefferson, certainly knew him.”
Leo scowled. “Yeah, and that bothers me. I get the feeling that Charles had some sort of business deal going on with old McKenna, and I should’ve known about that, blast it. If you’re gonna have a vice president in your company, don’t you think you ought to trust him enough to let him in on what you’re doing?”
“You’d think so,” Phyllis agreed. Leo appeared to be sticking to his story about being unaware of the pending deal between McKenna Electronics and Jefferson-Bartell.
“When we get back to Houston, I’m gonna have to have a long talk with Charles. I don’t want to work for anybody who doesn’t trust me.”
He sounded awfully self-righteous for a man who had paid an eighteen-year-old girl to pose for indecent pictures, Phyllis thought. But she supposed that one thing really didn’t have anything to do with the other. Business was one thing; Leo Blaine’s perversions were another.
“And after the way I’ve tried to help out with Raquel, too,” Leo went on.
Phyllis found another pan, poured milk into it, and started heating it again, vowing to keep a closer eye on it this time. But that didn’t stop her from asking, apparently casually, “What do you mean, you’ve helped out with Raquel?”
“Taken her under my wing. You know, tried to teach her everything I know about the company.”
“That’s what you’ve been doing?”
“Sure. She wanted to know all the details.” Leo gave a curt, unpleasant laugh that sounded more like his usual arrogant self. “Daddy’s girl never could get Daddy to pay enough attention to her, so she figured she’d impress him by learning all she could about his business. She even had some crazy notion that Charles might give her a position in the company one of these days. I could’ve told her that was never gonna happen, but what would be the purpose in that? I didn’t figure it would hurt anything to give her a few pointers.”
So Jessica had been helping Sheldon with a bad back, and Leo had been giving Raquel a crash course in the business of designing and selling electronic guidance control systems to the space program. Phyllis sighed as she stirred the warming milk. It appeared that she had been pretty far off base with her deductions this time.
Did that mean she’d been wrong about everything else? Maybe Consuela had poisoned Ed McKenna and stabbed Sheldon Forrest after all . . . even though Phyllis still couldn’t see any reason why she would have committed either crime.
Obviously, she wasn’t seeing everything.
She stirred the milk and asked, “How did Raquel wind up married to Sheldon, anyway? They don’t really seem the sorts who would have paired up, even though they got along all right as far as I could tell.”
“They got along fine,” Leo agreed. “I think she went after him because right then she was looking for somebody as unlike her father as she could find. And Sheldon and Charles were different as night and day, that’s for sure. She met him at a reception the company was giving for some of the NASA engineers and administrators on the project they were working on at the time. This was like fifteen, sixteen years ago. Raquel latched on to Sheldon right away. She swept him off his feet, instead of the other way around.” Leo smiled, and fondness and sadness were mixed in the expression. “I really did like the guy, but he was a real nerd, no two ways about it. He’d probably never had a date, let alone a real girlfriend, and suddenly here was this . . . well, you’ve seen her. Raquel’s still a pretty hot babe, but she was really something back then. Sheldon never had a chance once she set her sights on him.”
“But it worked out all right,” Phyllis said.
“Yeah,” Leo agreed. “Yeah, it did.”
And then, to Phyllis’s amazement, he reached up and knuckled a tear out of his eye.
Of course, he could be acting, she reminded herself. His grief could be completely phony, even though it seemed real to her. She no longer trusted her instincts one hundred percent.
“The cops have to find out who killed him,” Leo went on after a moment, when he had regained his composure. “I’ve done plenty of things in my life I’m ashamed of. If somebody wanted to plant a knife in my chest, they might have a good reason for it. But poor Sheldon didn’t have it coming. He never hurt anybody.”
“I’m sure the police will solve the case,” Phyllis said. “They’ll probably be talking to all of us again. I take it that you’ll cooperate with them?”
Leo sighed. “Yeah. I will now. I still don’t like that old chief’s high-handed attitude, but if I can help them find Sheldon’s killer, I’ll do anything I can.”
Phyllis got a glass from the cabinet and carefully poured the milk into it. As she handed the glass to Leo, she said, “It’s hot, so tell your wife to be careful. She might want to let it cool for a minute, so that it’s just warm.”
“I will. And thanks, Mrs. Newsom. I’m sorry about the mess.”
“That was my fault for not watching the first batch closely enough, Mr. Blaine, not yours.”
Leo nodded. “Well, good night.”
“Good night,” Phyllis told him.
Leo left the kitchen, and Phyllis started cleaning up the mess she had made earlier. While she was doing that, Sam came into the room.
“Finished questionin’ Leo?” he asked, keeping his voice low. “I just saw him headin’ upstairs with what looked like a glass of warm milk.”
“That’s what it was. His wife has a bit of an upset stomach from the tamale soup, and she thought it might help her sleep.”
Sam frowned. “You sure that’s all it is?”
“That’s all it could be. Everyone else here ate the soup, too,” Phyllis pointed out, “and they’re all fine.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“And I wasn’t questioning Leo,” Phyllis went on. “I was just talking to him.”
“Uh-huh.”
Sam always saw right through her, especially since they had grown closer over the past year. “Oh, all right,” she said with a touch of exasperation. “I guess I
was
questioning him . . . but I tried to be subtle about it.”
Sam nodded. “You always are.”
Phyllis couldn’t keep what she had learned to herself. “Oh, Sam, I was completely wrong about them,” she said. “Sheldon and Jessica weren’t having an affair at all! He had a bad back, and she was helping him with it because she used to be a physical therapist. She even still has her license.”
Sam’s bushy eyebrows rose in surprise. “You don’t say! So that explains what he was doin’ in her room, and both of ’em lookin’ like things had been a mite hot and heavy.”
Phyllis nodded and said, “That’s right. There was something going on between Leo and Raquel, too, just as I suspected, but it wasn’t an affair, either. He was helping her learn about her father’s business so she could impress him. Impress her father, I mean.”
That drew another frown from Sam. “Isn’t she a little old to be worryin’ about something like that?”
“As long as your parents are alive, Sam, you never outgrow being their child and wanting their approval, no matter how old you are.”
“I suppose that’s true,” he said with a nod. “Now that I think about it, I always wanted my dad to think I was doin’ the right thing, and I was still askin’ his opinion about important decisions when I was in my fifties. He’s been gone for ten years, and every now and then I
still
think to myself that I’m gonna ask him about somethin’.”
“I know the feeling.”
“So you were wrong about what was goin’ on between the Forrests and the Blaines,” he mused. “But you got to remember one thing . . . you’ve got only Leo’s word for all of this.”
Phyllis’s eyes widened as she realized that he was right. “That’s true,” she said. “Why would he lie about those things, though? He didn’t know what I suspected about them.”
“Maybe he’s used to lyin’ to everybody, if he’s been coverin’ up an affair,” Sam suggested. “Could be just a habit by now.”
It was possible, she admitted to herself as she considered the theory. Maybe she didn’t need to rule out Leo as a suspect just yet. Actually, she couldn’t rule out anyone except herself, Sam, Carolyn, and Eve.
It was a good thing after all that she had told Abby Clifton about her suspicions. The police would get to the bottom of it. If there had really been an affair, or affairs, they would be exposed by the investigation.
Milk had burned on the bottom of the first pan. She put some water in it and left it in the sink to soak overnight. “I’ve thought about murder enough today,” she told Sam. “I’m going to turn in and get a good night’s sleep. I have a lot to do tomorrow.”
There was only one more day before the SeaFair and the Just Desserts competition, and she still had to bake the cookies she was going to enter. She planned to spend the next day doing that and let the police worry for a while about catching the murderer, or murderers.
“Yeah,” Sam said. “A lot to do . . . like hope nobody gets killed for a third day in a row.”
She glared at him. She could have done without having that thought in her head.
Phyllis slept surprisingly well, with no dreams of murder to plague her. If she had hoped that the solution to the crimes might come to her in her slumber, though, she was disappointed. When she woke up she was no closer to knowing who killed Ed McKenna and Sheldon Forrest than when she went to sleep . . .
But a nagging thought lingered in the back of her head. She had seen or heard
something
that ought to put her on the trail of the killer. She just couldn’t think of what it was.
She was up early enough so that she was the first one in the kitchen. With Consuela still in police custody, Phyllis knew that the responsibility of preparing breakfast fell to her. She was mixing some pancake batter when a key rattled in the back door lock. The door swung open, and Theresa and Bianca Anselmo came in. Both of the young women were hollow-eyed, as if they hadn’t slept much the night before.
“Good morning,” Phyllis greeted them. She didn’t attempt any artificial cheer. “Is there any news?”
Theresa shook her head. “No, it’s too early. Mama’s lawyer probably won’t even show up for a couple of hours yet.”
“But
Papi’s
already gone down to the police station,” Bianca said. “He’s going to wait there. He told us to come on over here and do our work like normal. He said that’s what Mama would want.”
Phyllis nodded. “I think he’s right about that. No one else is up yet, so you can start downstairs since your mom’s not here to do it.”
“All right,” Theresa said. The two of them left the kitchen, heading for the front of the house.
While the pancakes were cooking, Phyllis began setting out some of the ingredients for her Oatmeal Delight cookies. Might as well get an early start on the baking, she thought. She pulled the butter out of the refrigerator and set it out to soften, then set out the other ingredients she had bought at Wal-Mart with Sam.
Carolyn came in while Phyllis was flipping the pancakes and saw the other preparations. “You’re making cookies?” she asked, evidently surprised.
Phyllis nodded. There was no reason to keep her entry a secret now, especially since she knew that Carolyn planned to bake a pie. Unless, of course, Carolyn changed her mind and decided to make cookies out of sheer contrariness, and if she wanted to do that, Phyllis couldn’t very well stop her.
“Well, that’s . . . fine,” Carolyn said. “Somehow I just assumed that we’d be competing against each other, but I plan to make my chocolate strawberry pie.”
“Why, I think that’s a wonderful idea,” Phyllis said. “I’ve always thought that pie was delicious. Who knows, maybe we’ll both win.”
“Yes, that would be a nice change, wouldn’t it?”
Phyllis noticed that Carolyn refrained from making any comment about how she usually won and Phyllis was one of the runner-ups. Maybe the laid-back atmosphere of this coastal area was making her more mellow.
Although she wasn’t sure how laid-back anything could be with two unsolved murders hanging over the place.
Carolyn pitched in to help with breakfast, and so did Sam and Eve when they came into the kitchen a short time later. By the time the guests began coming downstairs, they had plenty of food prepared. Nick and Kate were the first ones down, followed by Leo and Jessica.
“Are you feeling better this morning?” Phyllis asked Jessica.
She smiled and nodded. “Yes, I am. Thank you so much for fixing that warm milk last night. It always settles my stomach. I’m sure Leo would have made a huge mess if he had tried to do it.”
Leo caught Phyllis’s eye and gave a little shrug. The mess she had made would remain their secret, he seemed to be saying. At the same time, Jessica turned and frowned at him, making it clear that she was still angry with him over the whole Bianca debacle the day before.
“I was glad to help out,” Phyllis said.
Tentative footsteps on the stairs made them all turn and look in that direction. They saw Raquel Forrest descending slowly, following by the uniformed officer who had spent the night in a chair in the hallway outside the door of her room. The officer looked a little bleary-eyed and gratefully accepted the cup of coffee Phyllis offered him.
“I’ve already called and checked in with the station,” he said. “Chief Clifton will be here in a little while.”