Killer Crab Cakes (28 page)

“He’ll be welcome to join us for breakfast if he wants to,” Phyllis said. “For that matter, so are you, Officer.”

“Well, ma’am, maybe I’ll just, uh, take one of those flap-jacks with me and eat it out on the porch while I wait for the chief.”

Sam said, “Suit yourself, son,” and gave the officer one of the pancakes from a platter piled high with them.

The cop said to Raquel, “The chief will want to talk to you, ma’am, so if you’ll do like we talked about and wait for him . . .”

“Don’t worry,” Raquel said in a voice seemingly dulled by grief and the hangover from the sedative she had been given. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Everyone sat down at the table and began to eat, passing platters of food around with a minimum of talk. No one seemed to be in much of a mood for conversation. Approximately forty-eight hours had passed since Ed McKenna’s death. That wasn’t much time, and the shock of Sheldon Forrest’s murder was still fresher and more painful.

Nick tried to perk things up by saying, “Kate and I thought we’d go through that big mansion up the road this afternoon. Anybody want to come with us?”

“I’ve been meanin’ to take one of the tours through there myself,” Sam said. “I like historical sites, since I was a history teacher myself before I retired.”

Nick said, “I thought you told me you coached basketball.”

“I did, but coaches have to teach an academic subject, too, at least in most places. In my day, most of ’em taught history. Texas history was my subject, so I know a little about the Fulton mansion already.”

“Why don’t we go, too?” Leo suggested to Jessica. “All the times we’ve come down here, we must’ve driven by the place a hundred times, but we never stopped and went in to have a look around.”

“I suppose we could,” she said with a shrug, still not being very friendly toward him. “If you want to.”

Raquel gave a wan smile. “I think I’ll pass. I have . . .” She paused and drew a deep breath. “I have arrangements to make.”

Jessica reached over to pat her hand. “Oh, dear, I’m so sorry. I should have thought . . . Here we are talking about taking some stupid tour . . . I’ll stay here with you today.”

“No, no, that’s all right,” Raquel said. “There’s really nothing you can do, Jess . . . nothing anybody can do. Anyway, I’m sure the police wouldn’t let you stay with me. The chief will want to talk with me alone.”

Phyllis knew that was true. Still, she felt bad about abandoning Raquel, too. But she would be finished with her baking by the time the others left, and she was interested in the mansion because she had been a history teacher like Sam, although she had taught world history and American history rather than Texas history.

Sam turned toward her and asked, “Are you comin’ along?”

“We’ll see. But I think I might.”

“I hope you do,” he said with a nod.

The conversation might have continued, but at that moment the uniformed officer returned from the front porch where he had been waiting. Chief Dale Clifton was with him. The chief gave everyone around the table a smile and a nod and said, “Good morning, folks.” He looked at Raquel. “Mrs. Forrest, you have my deepest sympathy on your loss. I’m really sorry to intrude on you at a time like this, but I have a few questions that I need to ask you.”

Raquel nodded, put her hands on the table, and pushed herself to her feet. “Of course. I understand, Chief. Let’s get this over with.”

P
hyllis had a hard time concentrating on cleaning up after breakfast and then getting her cookies in the oven, because she knew that Chief Clifton was questioning Raquel Forrest in the parlor. She didn’t think that Raquel would break down and confess to stabbing her husband, but anything was possible. She might even admit that she had poisoned Ed McKenna, although Phyllis couldn’t think of any possible motive for her to have done such a thing.

Clifton surprised her by coming to the kitchen door and saying, “I have some questions for you, too, Mrs. Newsom.”

“Me?” Phyllis said. She glanced at the timer attached by a magnet to the refrigerator door. It was counting down the minutes and seconds until the first batch of cookies was supposed to come out of the oven. “I thought you were talking to Raquel.”

“Mrs. Forrest and I are finished for now. And you and Mr. Fletcher
were
the first ones on the scene after she discovered her husband’s body.”

“But . . . but I have cookies in the oven,” Phyllis protested.

Carolyn was sitting at the table. She and Phyllis had been chatting aimlessly. Now she said, “I’ll take them out and put the next batch in for you, Phyllis.”

“I really ought to check them when they come out and make sure they’re done.” It wasn’t that Phyllis was worried about being questioned by Chief Clifton. She really was concerned that the cookies she was going to enter in the contest be as good as they possibly could be.

“I can tell when cookies are done, and I know how long to bake the next batch,” Carolyn said as she got to her feet. “For goodness’ sake, I’ve even watched you make this particular recipe before. I won’t mess them up. I give you my word on that.”

“You don’t have to give me your word,” Phyllis said. She didn’t want Carolyn to think that she didn’t trust her. She did . . . especially since they weren’t competing directly against each other this time. If they had been . . .

But they weren’t, Phyllis reminded herself, so it wasn’t necessary to even think such things. She went on, “Thank you, Carolyn.” Then she turned to Chief Clifton and said, “I suppose you’d like to talk in the parlor?”

“That’ll be fine,” he said. “I’ll try to have you back out here before that next batch of cookies needs to come out of the oven.” As they left the kitchen and started down the hall toward the parlor, he added, “Are you baking them for the guests here?”

“No, for the Just Desserts contest at the SeaFair tomorrow.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “The SeaFair. Just what we need around here . . . more excitement. It actually starts tonight, you know. My men will be busy keeping up with all the extra traffic, not to mention the fights and the drunk-and-disorderly calls.”

“Goodness. Is it really that bad?”

“No, by and large the SeaFair visitors are a really well-behaved bunch. But you put a large number of people together with beer and you’re going to have a little trouble here and there. You shouldn’t have to worry about it tomorrow during the contest. That’s during the middle of the day, right?”

“One o’clock, I think.”

They went into the parlor. “I know you talked to my daughter yesterday,” Clifton began, “and Abby said she even went to The Dancing Pelican with you and Mr. Fletcher for supper. I appreciate any help you gave her. Right now I just want you to tell me in your own words what you saw when you and Mr. Fletcher got back here yesterday afternoon and found Mrs. Forrest coming out of the room where her husband’s body was.”

Phyllis went through it again, knowing that her story hadn’t changed from the other times she had told it. Chief Clifton nodded a lot and made a few notes in a little notebook, then asked her if she could account for the whereabouts of everyone else connected with the house during the half hour or so previous to that time.

That had to mean Sheldon Forrest had been stabbed during that half hour, she thought. And she couldn’t truthfully account for the whereabouts of anyone just then except her and Sam. They had been on the Copano Bay Causeway fishing pier with Oliver McKenna, Charles Jefferson, and Roger Fadiman. She hadn’t mentioned that little detail the day before, though, so she kept quiet about their companions now and crossed her fingers for luck that her deception wouldn’t be discovered. She didn’t want to be charged with obstruction of justice. Mike would be very disappointed in her. She regretted now trapping herself in that lie of omission.

Finally, Chief Clifton nodded and said, “I guess that’s all. Thank you for your cooperation, Mrs. Newsom.”

“You’ve arrested the wrong person, you know.” Phyllis couldn’t resist saying it.

“Oh?” Clifton’s white eyebrows rose. “Is that right? You think Consuela Anselmo is innocent?”

“I’m convinced of it.”

“Then who do you think is guilty?”

Feeling a little like she was—what was the expression?—throwing Raquel under the bus, Phyllis said, “I thought that a spouse was always the first suspect in a murder.”

“That’s true. By all accounts, though, the Forrests were happily married. Nobody says that they quarreled recently. In fact, they seem to have been very much in love, despite the differences in their background.”

“But why would Consuela want to hurt him? You can’t just go by the fingerprints on the murder weapon. It came from her kitchen, after all.”

Clifton looked surprised again. “Abby told you about the fingerprints, eh?”

“Your daughter didn’t confirm or deny anything, Chief . . . but you just did.”

Clifton frowned at her for a moment, then burst out in a laugh. “Son of a gun! I sure did . . . But as for motive, did you ever stop to think that maybe Sheldon Forrest wasn’t Consuela’s intended victim?”

Now he had totally lost her, and Phyllis said as much.

“Maybe she took that knife and went upstairs intending to stick it in Leo Blaine’s chest,” the chief suggested. “She could have known that Blaine’s been spending a lot of time with Raquel Forrest—”

“That’s completely innocent, from what I’ve heard,” Phyllis said. “He was teaching her about her father’s business.” If Clifton didn’t already know about that, he would as soon as he questioned Leo.

Clifton nodded. “That’s what Mrs. Forrest told me. But what if Consuela went upstairs looking for Leo, intending to settle his hash for that business with Bianca? She didn’t find him in his room, so she looked in the Forrests’ room, and Sheldon Forrest saw her with the knife and guessed what she was up to. He could have threatened to tell Leo that she was gunning for him, so to speak, and then Consuela lost her temper and struck out with the knife . . . and when she saw what she’d done, she got scared and hurried back downstairs.”

“Leaving the knife in Sheldon’s chest? Do you really think she could kill a man and then calmly go downstairs and start cooking a pot of tamale soup?”

“Well, when you put it like that,” Clifton said with a grudging frown, “it does sound pretty unlikely.”

“It certainly does!”

“Unfortunately, we have a limited amount of forensics evidence to go on.”

“I don’t mean to lecture you, Chief, but there’s more to it than forensics evidence. You have to know the people involved. People have to have a
reason
to commit murder. If Leo Blaine was the one with the knife in his chest, then Consuela might have thought she had a reason to do that.”

“Like I said, it could have been an accident.”

Phyllis shook her head. “I can’t believe the scenario you laid out. I just can’t.” She lifted a hand to her mouth as a thought occurred to her. “Oh, good grief. I’m arguing crime-solving with a chief of police.”

Clifton grinned. “And arguing quite well, I must say.”

“Why did you let me go on like that?”

“Because I’m interested in your point of view, Mrs. Newsom. You’ve solved murders before. You know more about this sort of thing than the average citizen. To tell you the truth, I was sort of hoping you’d read me the riot act and come up with another viable suspect for me. But . . .”

“I didn’t, did I?” Phyllis sighed. “Chief, there was no affair between Sheldon Forrest and Jessica Blaine. No one had any reason to kill him. Just like no one who was actually here in the house had any reason to poison Ed McKenna. These are . . . are senseless crimes.”

A frown of concern appeared on Clifton’s face. “You think maybe we’re dealing with some sort of deranged serial killer? Somebody who kills for the thrill of it?”

“That seems impossible. That sort of murderer is usually, well, some sort of squalid little man who just wants to feel powerful.”

“Studied profiling, have you?”

Phyllis shook her head. “No more so than anyone else who’s watched the news on television and read a few books. But no one involved in this case . . . no one! . . . strikes me as a thrill killer.”

Clifton nodded. “For what it’s worth, I agree with you. There’s a motive, or motives, behind both killings. We’re just not seeing it.” He got up from the armchair where he had been sitting. “But Abby and I will keep poking around until we find it. You can be sure of that.”

Phyllis stood as well. “We’re finished, then?”

“For now. Unless I think of anything else.” Clifton held out his hand, and as Phyllis took it, he went on, “Thank you for talking things over with me, Mrs. Newsom. It’s sort of like having an unofficial consultant whose business is murder.”

She shook her head firmly. “My business is being a retired schoolteacher. And right now, it’s also baking cookies for that contest tomorrow . . . Oh, dear. I forgot about the cookies!”