A Catered Halloween Page 13

Clyde put his fork down. “If he does, he isn’t telling me.”

  Sean sat and thought for a moment. “It’s true we have minimal connections between the two events,” he finally said. “We only have Jeanine’s word that Amethyst wanted to talk to Banks.”

  “Okay,” Clyde said.

  “But why would Jeanine lie?” Libby asked.

  “I’m not saying she did. In fact, I don’t think she did. I’m just talking it through,” Sean said.

  “And we don’t know if Amethyst actually went up and talked to Banks,” Clyde pointed out.

  Sean nodded. “Maybe Banks’s personal assistant knows.”

  “I’ll find out, but it might take a little while,” Clyde told Sean. “When I spoke to him, he was leaving for a sailing trip.”

  “And even if he did,” Sean said, continuing with his train of thought, “we have a very thin line linking Amethyst and Banks. A very thin line. Maybe she wanted to talk to him about some sort of charity affair. Or about opening up a shop of some kind. We really don’t know.”

  Bernie tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “I’m getting the impression you agree with Lucy that there is no connection between the two homicides.”

  Sean leaned back in his wheelchair and folded his hands over his stomach. “No. I think there is. I just think it has to be ferreted out. In order to find it, we need more information.”

  Clyde finished off his piece of cheesecake and looked at the plate wistfully. He sighed. “I can’t eat another thing,” he said.

  “Not even a sliver?” Libby coaxed.

  Clyde shook his head. “You’re a very bad person.”

  “I know,” Libby said as she took his plate, cut him a small piece of cheesecake, and handed the plate back to him.

  “Tell me,” Clyde asked Sean after he’d taken a bite, “do you still think that Bessie Osgood had anything to do with this mess?”

  “Without a doubt,” Sean said. “All the names that have come up have been linked to her death. I still think that if you find out what happened the night she died, and you’ll find out who killed Amethyst and, possibly, Banks.”

  Clyde leaned forward. “The question is, why is all of this happening now?”

  “That is the question, isn’t it?” Sean said.

  “There has to have been a precipitating incident,” Clyde mused.

  Bernie stifled a yawn. “But what?”

  “I wish I knew,” Sean said, and he went back to watching the street. A little girl decked out in a Hello Kitty outfit skipped by, holding her mother’s hand. He smiled, remembering how the girls used to wear their costumes around the house during the week before Halloween.

  “You know,” Bernie said, “not to change the subject, but Kathy—”

  Sean turned away from the window. “Big Kathy?”

  Bernie made an impatient gesture. “Garden shop Kathy. My friend Kathy.”

  “What about her?” asked Sean.

  “She told me that Zinnia was killed by a hit-and-run driver a year after Bessie Osgood died,” said Bernie.

  “I remember that one,” Clyde said. He turned to Sean. “Didn’t Porter get that guy?”

  “Guys,” Sean corrected. “Two of them. They’d just robbed the Quick Mart in Oakley when they got McGuire. They said they didn’t see her, because she was sitting in the middle of the road. She had enough alcohol in her to embalm an elephant.”

  “So much for that one,” Clyde said.

  Everyone was silent for a moment. Then Bernie said, “We still don’t know about Timberland’s daughter.”

  Clyde stifled a yawn. “Refresh my memory as to why we care about her.”

  “Because she might furnish a motive for Timberland’s animosity toward Amethyst,” said Sean.

  “Maybe I can find out,” Libby said.

  “How?” her dad finally asked.

  “Well,” Libby stammered, “I know his sister from yoga class.”

  Bernie’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re taking a yoga class?”

  Libby straightened her shoulders. “As a matter of fact, I am.”

  “Since when?” asked Bernie.

  “Since last week, if you must know. Why?” said Libby.

  “I’m just surprised. It doesn’t seem like your kind of thing,” replied Bernie.

  Libby put her hands on her hips. “And why ever not?”

  Sean intervened before things got started. “Bernie, maybe you could talk to Inez. She spends a lot of time at R.J.’s, and I can talk to Jeanine and see if she’s figured out the View-Master yet.”

  “I understand Bob Small is going to be out on bail tomorrow,” Clyde said.

  “Then I suppose one of us should go talk to him as well,” Sean said.

  “Not me,” Clyde said.

  “Obviously,” Sean shot back.

  Clyde stifled another yawn. “Okeydokey. Time to get going.” He rose. “After all, another glorious day in Longely’s police force awaits me tomorrow morning.”

  “By the way,” Sean called out, “who put up Small’s bail?”

  “Kane,” said Clyde.

  “Interesting,” said Sean.

  “It’s not that high,” added Clyde.

  “Still,” said Sean.

  “While we’re on the subject, I found out some more info on Kane,” said Clyde.

  Sean leaned forward. “Such as?”

  “Nothing that we didn’t already know,” said Clyde. “He’s considered a genius with numbers, which is how he got so rich. He’s pretty much a workaholic. No surprise there. He had a minor heart attack a couple of years ago, and his doctors advised him to get a hobby. Hence the Foundation. I also talked to the guys that rigged up the Haunted House show. They said he couldn’t even put in a lightbulb without help.”

  “That’s what he said about himself,” Libby commented.

  “Well, it looks as if he was telling the truth,” Sean said. “So there you go.”

  As Clyde headed down the stairs, Sean reflected on how nice it was to be working with him again. That was probably the thing he missed most from his days on the force.

  Chapter 16

  Libby walked into the class, hung up her jacket, and looked around. It was seven-thirty in the morning, and everyone in the class looked disgustingly perky, but then they probably hadn’t been up since five making lemon squares and chocolate chip cookies.

  And then there were the clothes. Everyone was wearing cute little yoga outfits, the kind that cost a couple of hundred dollars or so, while she was in her old stretched-out sweatpants and T-shirt. It was true she could have gone and bought one of those outfits—nothing was stopping her—but she hated spending money on stuff like that. Okay, that was a lie. What she hated to do was wear stuff like that. Even trying it on was painful. One look in the mirror and she wanted to reach for the cookies—not exactly a productive response given the circumstances.

  She was taking this class to tone up, but she didn’t know how long she could stand it. The ad had promised results in three sessions. Well, this was her third session, and she had yet to see any results. She surreptitiously pinched the roll of fat on her belly. Yup. It was still there. She felt especially depressed as she scanned the rows of women rolling out their yoga mats. They were all so trim and taut, and she was so…so not. Even their mats looked better than hers.

  Libby sighed. Everyone was doing their warm-up stretching. Little tinkling bells chimed in the air. There was incense burning on the front table, where the instructor, an impossibly lithe woman wearing adorable yoga pants and a bralike top that showed off a midriff with no fat at all, was talking to someone. A sign that said, BREATHE! BREATHE! was hanging on the wall.

  She spotted Timberland’s sister in the fourth row and reluctantly headed for her. Why couldn’t Ramona be in the back? Why did she have to be up front? God. Libby reminded herself she was here to do a job and that no one was looking at her—yeah, right—as she unrolled her yoga mat and plopped herself next to Ramona.

&nbs
p; “Hi,” she said.

  Ramona smiled. She had perfect blond hair and white, white teeth, and was extremely flexible. “Hi,” she said, with her head down almost to her right thigh.

  Libby, who couldn’t even touch her toes and hadn’t been able to since high school, hated her.

  “How are things going?” Libby asked. General questions were always best in situations like this, her dad had taught her.

  “Good. We’re all going to the Haunted House tonight. Which waffles would you recommend?”

  “The pumpkin ones are my favorite,” Libby replied promptly. “But lots of people like the chocolate ones.”

  Ramona switched to her left thigh and held the stretch for a moment. “This class makes me feel so alive.”

  “Me too,” Libby lied as she followed Ramona’s lead. What it really made her feel was sorer than anything she’d ever done.

  A moment later Ramona put her left arm up, bent it toward the middle of her back, and grasped her right arm with it. Libby did likewise. She could hear her shoulder pop. She ignored it. All the same, it wasn’t a good sign.

  Ramona looked around the room for a moment, then scooched closer to Libby and whispered, “Did you really find Amethyst’s head?”

  Libby nodded. She had an idea that this wasn’t exactly yoga-class discussion material.

  “It must have been horrible,” Ramona said.

  “It was.”

  “You know my brother knew her,” Ramona continued as she stretched out her other shoulder.

  “Yeah. He told me they used to hang out back in the day,” Libby lied again.

  Ramona set her mouth in a thin line.

  Libby waited. Ramona remained silent.

  “He didn’t seem that sorry,” Libby ventured after it became obvious that Ramona wasn’t going to say anything else.

  Ramona snorted and worked her legs into a lotus position. Libby tried to emulate her and failed. Her calves didn’t seem to want to do that.

  “I don’t think anyone is that sorry about Amethyst,” Ramona observed. “Are you?”

  “Not really,” Libby confessed.

  “Exactly my point.”

  “But I thought she and your brother were friends.”

  “Zachery thought they were friends, too,” Ramona said.

  “So what happened?”

  “What happened?” Ramona repeated. She took a deep breath and let it out. “What happened was that Amethyst didn’t have any friends. She had people she used, and she had people she was going to use.”

  “You don’t sound like a big fan of hers, either.”

  “I’m not.”

  Libby started to lean over to ask Ramona why, but the instructor stared at her, brought her hands together, gave a slight bow, and chirped, “Namaste.”

  “Namaste,” the class replied.

  Libby took a deep breath. Her questions would have to wait. Class was beginning.

  Forty-five minutes later it was over, and Libby was still smarting from having gotten stuck in the lotus position. Life was so unfair. She’d finally managed to get herself into the stupid position, and then she couldn’t get herself out of it. She closed her eyes and tried to blot out the memory of her tipping over and falling into Ramona. Someone else might have laughed. Ramona hadn’t. What she had done was look very annoyed.

  “It will get better in time,” the instructor murmured in her ear as Libby walked by her. “You just have to practice, practice, practice. Remember if at first you don’t succeed…”

  Libby nodded. Could you get any more clichéd, she wondered. She didn’t feel it necessary to tell the instructor there wasn’t going to be a next time. She had four more classes. Maybe Bernie would like to go in her place.

  So much for self-improvement, Libby thought as she walked out of the class. Aside from publicly humiliating herself, she’d learned absolutely nothing about Timberland, and now she was behind schedule at the shop. She was standing by her van, eating a piece of dark chocolate and thinking about the costume Bernie wanted her to wear this evening—she was not going as a bowl of Special K!—when she saw Ramona walk to her car. She was talking on her cell and making angry gestures in the air with her free hand. Okay, Libby decided. Maybe I should give this one more try. After all, what did she have to lose?

  Even though Ramona was half turned away from her, as she got closer, Libby could hear Ramona saying, “Listen, Madison, don’t do this. No. I don’t have an address to send a card. Neither does your dad. And for heaven’s sake, don’t ask him. He doesn’t need any more aggravation. I mean it, Madison.”

  Libby bit her lip. Madison was the name of Timberland’s daughter. Someone had been talking about her recently. As she was trying to remember who it was, she watched Ramona glare at her phone.

  “Great,” Ramona muttered under her breath as she flipped the phone closed and shoved it in her bag. She gave a little jump as she spotted Libby, but quickly recovered. “Just be happy you don’t have kids,” she said to Libby. “Even if they aren’t yours, they’re an epic pain in the ass.”

  “Can I ask you a question?” Libby inquired.

  Ramona looked at her. “That depends on what it is.”

  This time Libby got right down to it. “It’s about why your brother disliked Amethyst.”

  Ramona put her hand on the door handle of her Caddy Escalade. “Everyone disliked Amethyst. We already discussed that.”

  “But your brother seems to have a special reason.”

  Ramona threw Libby what her father would have called a measuring glance and said, “Go ask him.”

  “You were going to tell me back in class.”

  “Maybe I’ve changed my mind.”

  “Because you think that your brother had a motive to kill Amethyst?”

  Ramona composed her mouth into a shocked O, only Libby wasn’t buying it. Too much drama. “Heavens no. What a terrible thing to say.”

  “Then why won’t you tell me?”

  Ramona shrugged again. “Because it’s none of your business.”

  “True,” Libby told her. “It isn’t. But the fact that you’re not answering me will make other people curious.”

  “And I should care why?”

  Good question. Libby improvised. “The police will care,” she said.

  “You’ll have to do better than that,” Ramona said. “The police already arrested Bob Small. They’re not interested in me.”

  “How about if we make a deal,” Libby said.

  Ramona arched one of her perfectly tweezed eyebrows. “Which would be?”

  “You tell me what I want to know, and I’ll never come to your yoga class again.”

  Ramona burst out laughing. “Good. But not good enough.” Ramona’s phone started ringing again. She took it out, looked at it, and grimaced. “Madison,” she said.

  And all of a sudden, Libby remembered where she’d heard the name. It was from Amber, one of the kids that worked in her place.

  “She’s your niece, isn’t she?” Libby said.

  Ramona raised her eyebrow again.

  “One of the girls who works for us went to school with her,” said Libby.

  Ramona didn’t say anything.

  “She was telling me about her. She dropped out of school.”

  Ramona sighed. “It’s not that big of a deal. Lots of kids drop out.”

  Libby closed her eyes for a moment and concentrated on remembering the details of what Amber had said. “But she was at the head of the class. Number one. Editor of the school newspaper. Varsity track. Student council president. Had been admitted to Yale. People like that don’t usually do that type of thing.”

  “Who knows what kids will do these days?” Ramona said, trying to sound casual and failing, as she opened the door of the Escalade and tossed her yoga mat into the backseat.

  “Still, you have to admit it’s pretty unusual.”

  Ramona shrugged.

  “Your brother must have had a fit.”

  “It’
s true he was very disappointed. Everyone in the family was. He thought she was going to Yale and then on to law school. But what can you do.”

  “I guess not much,” Libby said.

  “If she wants to work as a waitress down in the city, that’s her business. I’m hoping that eventually she’ll come to her senses. And now, if you’re through, I have to get back to my house. My cleaning people will be there shortly….”

  Libby raised a finger. “Just one more thing. Amber said all this happened because your niece had an affair with an older woman, and she dropped your niece in a particularly not nice way.” Judging from Ramona’s expression, Libby knew that what Amber had told her was correct. “And,” Libby said, making the logical leap, “I’m betting the person she had an affair with was Amethyst.”

  Ramona blinked.

  “It was, wasn’t it?”

  Libby watched Ramona’s hand come up and finger the heart-shaped locket she wore around her neck.

  “So what if it was?” Ramona snapped. “That’s no reason for my brother to kill her. Other kids end up a lot worse off. If you want someone who had a reason to kill Amethyst, talk to Bob Small or Inez.” With that, Ramona got in her vehicle and drove off, missing Libby by inches.

  “Maybe it’s not a great reason,” Libby said to herself as she walked back to her van, “but it’s good enough.”

  Especially these days, when more and more parents are living through their children.

  Chapter 17

  Libby looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. It read twenty minutes past eleven. Great. Only an hour and a half behind schedule. She had to get the Rogets’ birthday cake done before three, as well as the chicken curry for the Mathers’ party, which meant she might not be able to make the two apple pies for the Haunted House, which she hadn’t gotten to last night.

  Fortunately, she had a couple of lemon tarts in the freezer. They might not be very Halloweeny, but it was the best she could do. And she had made the black cat cookies, so they were ahead there.

  She wiped her spatula off and went back to the pumpkin chocolate cake she was icing. This time she’d used a different kind of chocolate, one with a lower butterfat content, and the icing was not as shiny as she would have liked.