Breezy Spoon Diner Box Set Collection Page 12

  “If you look in your waste basket I think you'll find the label said Iris Spring. It's Al's knock-off brand.”

  “You're kidding!”

  “Nope, I've done it myself. At least you didn't get bedbugs. The Emporium is famous for them.”

  “Well now, we don't know that for sure, do we? I'd have to check out my bed and it's king sized; I don't see how I could possibly do that alone. Any suggestions?”

  “Yes, I think Cooter might be available.”

  “Not quite what I had in mind.”

  It was later during the last dance and they were playing The Way You Look Tonight. Everyone was slow dancing and somehow or another my arms had ended up around Mark's neck and his were around my waist. I looked up at him and he kissed me and I kissed him and it lasted for a while and it was great, but...

  “That might not have been a good idea,” I said.

  “Any particular reason why not?” he asked.

  “You're my landlord and I'm your tenant. It could be awkward. I've never kissed my landlord before.”

  “Well, yes, but the only other landlord you've had was Mrs. Hamsky. However if you were renting from Howard Keel things might have been different.” He leaned down and kissed me again. These were very nice kisses. “Oh, dear,” he said, “I should have warned you. I have a very addictive personality. For example, I can't stop at eating just one M&M , or one piece of popcorn, or one potato chip like most people do. I'm afraid I'm becoming addicted to kissing you. Whatever can I do?”

  Just then, Mark's phone chirped in his pocket. “That had better not be Bob,” I said. “He's always trying to be funny.” He answered and was silent for a second. Then he said, “Urgent? Damn and blast! Okay. Right. Five minutes.” As he hung up he told me, “That was the station. I've got to go.”

  “You're sure it's not just Bob playing a joke on you?”

  “Not unless Bob set a townhouse on fire. Tim Carmichael was supposed to be on call instead of me, but his wife chose this very moment to go into labor. Gotta go.” He gave me a quick kiss and left.

  On the one hand I thought that on behalf of all the women in the world I should explain to him that women don't choose when to go into labor. On the other hand, he was gone. I followed him out to the front door of the school and waved goodbye.

  When I turned around I saw Cooter James standing in the hall by the trophy case, leaning on a mop.

  “Bad date, huh? I know how that is,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Actually Mark just got called to the station,” I said.

  “I wish I could get outta here too,” Cooter grumbled. “Still, once I finish up mopping these floors I'm more than half done with my community service.”

  “At least it's easier than hauling sod.”

  “That's for sure, and me still with no car to haul it in! I been trying to find something to replace the old hearse, but everybody's charging an arm and a leg! I've half a mind to get my brother Jake's truck and tow the car out of the lake and see if it still works, even if I gotta fight the lake monster for it!”

  “There's a car in the lake?”

  “Yeah, you know where Old Bucket Road curves around the hill near the lake? That's where it is; when the light hits it just right you can see the tail lights like they're glowin'. Sombody must have rolled it right down the hill and into the water. It's been there almost six months, I reckon. That counts as abandoned property, if you ask me, so I figure if Jake and me haul it out, I could claim it.”

  The two red eyes! “The lake monster....” I mused.

  “Jake and me ain't afraid of no lake monster,” Cooter continued. “I figure that monster got disturbed when someone dumped the car in the lake and that's why it's been showin' up. Now I know that Jimmy and Charlene figure it's the Flatwoods Monster, but Jake's pretty sure that it's the Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp, him stayin' in the water like that.”

  “It sounds like Jake would know.”

  “Yeah, but he says it ain't likely to bother us 'cause it'll just be happy we pulled the car out of his lake. I reckon it's worth the risk. Now, I ain't sayin' the car wouldn't need work or nuthin' but I could get me a new motor and if the body's in any kind of shape I'd have me a car for free.”

  Suddenly a thought struck me that sent a chill down my spine: the car had been in the lake almost six months; just about as long as Sheila and Justin McElroy had been missing!

  “What kind of car is it, Cooter?” I asked. “Could you tell?”

  “Not rightly, but it looks to be silver. Hey, Miss Dani, can you ask your brother if it's all legal and stuff for me to have it if I haul it out? I don't wanna catch no more community service, believe you me!”

  “I'll do that,” I replied. “In fact, I'm going to talk to him right now.”

  I hurried back to the gymnasium and spotted Bob and Kitty at a table near the dance floor.

  “Bob! What color was Justin McElroy's car?” I asked.

  “Dani? I thought you left with Mark. What's wrong?”

  “McElroy's car; can you remember what kind of car it was?”

  Bob scratched his head. “It was a nice one, as I recall,” he said, “It was a silver sedan of some kind, maybe a Mercedes.”

  “Sorry, Kitty, but I need to borrow Bob for a while,” I said, pulling Bob by his sleeve.

  “Hey, what's going on?” Bob protested.

  “I'll tell you on the way to the lake.”

  The Firebird's headlights were the only light on Old Bucket Road, and when we reached the lake we could see nothing but a pitch black hole at the bottom of the hill. I fished a flashlight out from behind the seat and we walked to the edge of the hill.

  “Careful, the hill's pretty steep,” Bob cautioned. “So you really think there's a car down there? This could be a case of Cooter being Cooter; remember that this is the same guy that mistook a corpse for a mannequin.”

  “I know, but he sounded like he was sure,” I replied, shining the light down at the water. “Also, Charlene said that she and Jimmy saw two red glowing eyes; it was probably the tail lights shining in the moonlight. It's too bad there's no moon tonight.”

  “The fact that you still put any stock in something Charlene said is a wonder to me!” Bob sighed. “If there is anything in there, we're not likely to find it tonight. Why don't we go back to the school and we'll look for the car tomorrow.”

  “After Cooter and his moronic brother have taken a crack at hauling it out themselves? That's a great way to preserve evidence!”

  “Evidence of what? Sis, I think all this Sherlock Holmes stuff is going to your head!”

  “I was right about Nancy Sheldon, wasn't I?”

  “I seem to recall the term 'serial killer' being mentioned.”

  “Oh sure, if you take it out of context it sounds- Oh, look!” Something red flashed in the beam of my flashlight. I trained the light on the spot and a shimmering reflection of a red lens shone from the water. I moved the beam a few feet to the right, and another red light flared out. “There! Say hello to the lake monster!” I said.

  Bob swore under his breath and held out his hand. “Let me see that,” he muttered. I handed him the flashlight and he strafed the beam back and forth between the two lights. Finally he handed it back to me and took out his phone. “I'm going to call the sheriff. Go back to the school.”

  “I'll wait here with you.”

  “No, you won't. I want you to go back to the school and drive Kitty home, and then you go home and stay there.”

  “I want to know if it's Sheila and McElroy,” I said. “Sheila was my friend, you know.”

  “I know. If it's them, I'll call you. I promise.”

  The next day The Breezy Spoon was busy and buzzing with excitement over the news that had come from the lake: The sheriff had gotten the car hauled out of the lake in the wee hours of the morning and had found that it contained the bodies of Justin McElroy and Sheila Hamsky. They had not gotten there by some accident on Old Bucket Road, either; the
y had both been shot to death before the car had been rolled into the lake.

  I called Ham Hamsky but his mother answered and said he wasn't up to talking right then, but thanked me for calling. I could hear Letty's voice in the background, so at least Ham wasn't alone.

  Mark was not home when I got up in the morning, and when I called the firehouse I was told that Edna Carswell had tried her hand at cooking hamburgers on a charcoal grill after polishing off a bottle of whiskey, and she had ended up cooking her house, a few of the neighbors' houses and most of the park beyond her back fence. It had taken firefighters all night to control the blaze, and they still hadn't gotten it completely out.

  I planned to call both Ham and Mark again after my shift was over, but for now I had a busy dining room to attend to. The needlework club had convened in their usual afternoon spot, and the topic was murder. As I came to their table to bring coffee and take away the lunch plates, I heard Abigail say, “It could have been gambling debts, you know. I heard from Jolene that McElroy's tax business up in Kettletown wasn't doing as well as he put on.”

  “That's no surprise,” Audrey replied. “Men always want to act like big shots when it comes to business, but it's just a front more often than not.”

  “He had just opened a new branch here in town, so business must not have been that bad,” Tom suggested, as he struggled with his popcorn stitch. “He was going to put Sheila in charge of it, isn't that right, Dani?”

  “That's true,” I said. “Poor Sheila.”

  “Poor Sheila indeed,” Jenny agreed. “I guess this means there was nothing romantic going on between her and McElroy.”

  “I wouldn't rule it out,” Audrey said. “Men like McElroy usually have a roving eye!”

  “Oh, I heard that McElroy definitely had a roving eye,” Helen spoke up in a conspiratorial tone, “but I have it on good authority that it wasn't Sheila that had caught his attention; it was Millie!”

  “Millie?!” Abigail cried. “That's impossible! There's not a sane man in town that would take up with Millie!”

  “But he wasn't from town,” Heather pointed out. “And Helen's right; Justin McElroy was positively obsessed with Millie! You should have heard what he did at the Chamber of Commerce Christmas Gala!”

  “Jeff Goodwin saw the whole thing,” Helen cut in. “He was there to take pictures for the Gazette, and Justin McElroy walked right up to him about half way through the event and wants to get copies of the photos he's taking. Well, Jeff is supposing that he wants pictures of himself with the mayor or some such for advertising and the like, but no! He wants the pictures of Millie!”

  “You can imagine how surprised Jeff was,” Heather said.

  “Speak of the devil and he is sure to appear!” Jeff Goodwin called as he came through the front door. “Especially when the lunch special is Philly Cheese Steak!”

  “Of course!” I laughed. “Sweet potato fries and apple salad with that?”

  “It's like you read my mind!” Jeff said.

  “Oh, Jeff!” Abigail called, waving for him to come over to the table. “Has there been any news?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, I am sitting on a hot development in the Lake Murder case (that's what we're calling it), but I shouldn't say anything until it appears in the Gazette.” Just as the wave of protest was building from the needlework club, Jeff grinned and said, “On the other hand, since Millie has hogged the story for herself, I might just tell you before I tell her! This isn't official yet, mind you, but word from the sheriff's office is that the bullets that killed McElroy and Hamsky were a ballistic match for the one that killed Rafe Duval!”

  This bombshell set the needlework club abuzz at a fever pitch; soon they were speculating on who in town was the most likely to be a serial killer. I could hardly blame them for their excitement; I was feeling stunned, too. What could Rafe have known about the murder of Sheila and McElroy? If he had been blackmailing the killer, why would the killer wait all these months to silence him? Or did Rafe's threats outside The Breezy Spoon that had made everybody afraid that their secrets would be uncovered get the attention of someone with a very dark secret?

  I was still turning the possibilities over in my mind when I brought Jeff his food. He was sitting at the counter, and as I slid the plate in front of him, he said, “Stand back. I had to skip breakfast to cover the story at the lake, and I've been waiting for this for hours. I don't want you to get hit by any flying crumbs.”

  “The Jameson sisters tell me that Justin McElroy had the hots for our favorite journalist Millie,” I said.

  Jeff laughed. “Sorry, I warned you about the crumbs,” he said, brushing the front of his shirt. “The ladies may have embellished the facts on that one a little, although it's true that McElroy wanted some pictures from me at the Christmas Gala.”

  “Pictures of Millie?”

  “Millie was getting into most of the pictures, so I think McElroy just wanted photos of the event. I told him the pictures were going to run in the Gazette the next day and he could get them from there. Well, the next day he calls me and wants to get copies of the original photos from me again! It turns out that Millie had the ones in the Gazette cropped so that only she was in them! Okay, she let one with the mayor sneak through once, but only because he was posing with her. None of the pictures of the local business owners made it into the paper, unless you count the back of Al Sholes' head in the background of one photo, and even though she dragged Jack Hartley to the event you wouldn't even know he was there! We actually got an angry call from Sammy Brown, who had catered the event and didn't get so much as a picture of his face for publicity! Millie told him that it was my fault; the pictures I had taken of him weren't 'Gazette-worthy'!”

  “Typical Millie. Did you give McElroy copies of the photos?”

  “Sure, why not? Might as well let at least one person see what three hours of standing around in uncomfortable shoes and a rented tux had gotten me.”

  “Did he say anything to you about the photos after that?”

  “No, never heard from him again about it,” Jeff replied. He looked up from his food. “Hey, that was right before he disappeared, now that I think of it! Do you suppose it could be related to the killings? Please tell me there's a way we can pin the murders on Millie.”

  “No such luck!” I laughed.

  I excused myself and went back to my office. An idea was forming in my head; a weird idea, but seeming less weird the more I put the pieces in place. If I was right, there might be a way I could prove it.

  I picked up my phone and called Bob. “How soon can you get to The Breezy Spoon?” I asked him when he answered.

  “I dunno, maybe in a couple of hours,” he said. “Why?”

  “How soon could you get here if I told you I can solve four murders for you?”

  “Four murders? There are only three murders... aren't there? What are you saying, Dani?”

  “I'm saying you'll find out when you get here. Now excuse me, I have some other calls to make. See you in twenty minutes!”

  Chapter 14

  An hour later, Linda and Don were tending to the customers in the front of The Breezy Spoon, but I had reserved a section in the back for guests of my own. I saw Sheriff Wilkerson come in the door and waved to him. When he reached my gathering, I introduced him to my guests; at one table sat Sammy Brown and Al Sholes, looking nervous at the sight of the sheriff, and behind them Kitty sat at a table across from Penny Bowman, the most dubious ambulance-chasing lawyer in the county, who Sammy and Al had hired to represent them in the painted pill case since she was also the cheapest lawyer in the county. The booth by the back wall was occupied by Jack Hartley and Millie Farnsworth.

  Millie stood up and snapped, “It's about time you showed up, Sheriff!” She pointed at me. “I want this woman arrested for false imprisonment! She lured us here under false pretenses!”

  “I didn't call you at all,” I said. “You came with Jack on your own. You can leave right now.”<
br />
  “Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you?!” Millie retorted. “I'm staying right here! So there!”

  “Take it easy, Millie,” Jack sighed. “I'm sure the sheriff can explain what this is all about.”

  “Yes, I can,” Sheriff Wilkerson replied. “Dani has suggested and I've agreed that we should gather some of the people who were at the diner when Rafe Duval made his threats. All of you were were witnesses to his actions that morning, except Millie Farnsworth. As you know Rafe Duval was run over and---”

  Millie jumped to her feet again. “Well, of all the nerve!” she turned to me. “Dani O'Shea will obviously stop at nothing to be the center of attention! She's been like this since we were in high school. How dare you arrange such a stunt! The rest of you can stay here and let her browbeat you, but Jack and I are leaving!”

  “What is this woman, a jack-in-the-box?” Sammy Brown growled. “Either stay or go, but quit telling us about it!”

  “I'll thank you to keep your smart remarks to yourself!” Millie shot back. She turned to the Sheriff. “I obviously am not the sort of person to have dirty secrets that would make me afraid of the likes of Rafe Duval, and neither is Jack. Besides which we have ironclad alibis!”

  “For heaven's sake, Millie, we don't need alibis,” Jack said. “The Sheriff isn't accusing any of us of having anything to do with Rafe's death! We're witnesses, that's all.”

  “You don't understand, Jack,” Millie replied. “This is just another attempt by Dani to get back at me because she's jealous that I have a boyfriend and she's an old maid who can't find anyone who's interested in her!” A peal of laughter erupted from the rest of the group. “See, you're just making a fool of yourself and everyone's laughing at you, Dani!” she went on, sitting down again.

  I had given everyone coffee when they first arrived, and I collected the cups on a tray now and handed it to Jimmy, who took them away to the kitchen. “You are all witnesses to Rafe Duval's threats, that's true,” I said, “but for some of you, his threats hit a little too close to home. Like Sammy and Al, for instance, who knew that if Rafe said a word about boxes of expired aspirin and blue paint, they would be in serious trouble.”