Murder Has a Sweet Tooth Page 16

  Beth plucked at the skirt of her jumper. “It wasn’t supposed to happen,” she whispered. “Nobody ever meant it to. Going out on Tuesdays and meeting guys, it was just supposed to be a way for us to be ourselves. You know, without even our friends looking over our shoulders or judging our behavior. Nobody was ever supposed to fall in love.”

  It wasn’t what she said, it was the way she said it. And the way she looked when she was talking, too. Suddenly there was a whole new sadness in Beth’s eyes. When she leaned back into the video chair, she looked tired and disappointed.

  Call me Dr. Phil, I knew exactly where this was going. “Vickie wasn’t the only one, was she? You fell in love with someone you met on a Tuesday night, too.”

  One corner of Beth’s mouth thinned. “I never told anyone. Not anyone but Vickie. I mean, it was perfect, wasn’t it? She had a secret and so did I. And we were both dying to share our news. Oh.” She blanched. “I didn’t mean that. Not about the dying.”

  “It’s OK. I know what you mean. You were excited. What did Vickie tell you about Alex?”

  She shrugged. “Not much. She said he was handsome and funny, and that he had the most incredible accent. He’s Scottish, you know.”

  I did. I nodded.

  “Vickie said she knew we weren’t supposed to go back to the same bar two weeks in a row, but that she just couldn’t help it. She couldn’t wait to see Alex again. I told her . . .” She looked away and lowered her voice, embarrassed. “I told her that’s exactly how I felt about Jack. You know, the guy I met.”

  “Was Vickie going to divorce Edward? Do you think that’s why he killed her?”

  “I don’t think Vickie and Alex’s relationship had gotten that far. I mean, I know it hadn’t between me and Jack. It was just fun, you know? Exciting. I loved the thought that he would be waiting for me every Tuesday at Preston’s Colonial House. Don’t get the wrong idea!” she added quickly. “It’s not that I don’t love Michael to pieces. I do. I love him. And the kids. I adore my kids. I love the life we have together. But being with Jack . . .” A shiver snaked over her shoulders. “Being with Jack makes me feel alive and excited. That’s what Vickie said about spending time with Alex, too. That’s why . . .” Beth stared straight ahead at the blank TV screen. Color raced into her cheeks. She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “You’re not going to tell anyone about this, are you?”

  “I can’t make that promise. At least not until you tell me more. But I can . . .” I reached out to touch a hand to her arm. My chair bucked, and maybe I had some residual weakness from the sauna incident; my head spun and so did the room. I waited until it settled down before I said, “If it doesn’t have anything to do with solving the case, I swear I’ll never breathe a word. If it does, I’ll tell only the people who absolutely have to know. If you have a secret, Beth, it’s safe with me.”

  I guess I’m pretty convincing. Or maybe I just have an honest face. Beth sighed and said, “Jack and I wanted to spend a night together. I know, I know . . . I know it’s sleazy. And some people would say it’s wrong. But I wasn’t talking about running off with him and leaving my family and never taking care of them again. It was just one night.” Fresh tears welled in her eyes. “It was just supposed to be one, fun night.”

  None of this meshed with the way I thought about Beth. But then, if I’d learned nothing else in the detective business, it should have been not to judge a book—or a person—by its cover. Embroidered teddy bears sometimes masked the beating of a passionate heart. “What happened?” I asked.

  “I couldn’t pull it off on my own. You know what I mean.” I didn’t, but I didn’t let on. “I told Vickie what Jack and I were planning. I asked her to help me out. I told her that I was going to tell Michael that after cooking class that Tuesday, I was going over to Vickie’s to help with the Girl Scout cookie order. That way, I could sneak back into the house early the next morning, climb into bed, and Michael would never know the difference. I’d just tell him that I’d gotten home from Vickie’s really late.”

  “Did it work?”

  Beth’s expression soured. “Yes. And no. My Jeremy called Vickie’s that Tuesday night I was with Jack. And Vickie told him I wasn’t there.”

  “But why? You were friends. Why would Vickie—”

  “Honestly, I don’t know. I mean, I loved Vickie to pieces, but she could be bitchy with the best of them. I think she was jealous. She knew what Jack and I had planned that night—the suite at the Ritz, the champagne, the candlelit dinner—and she didn’t have the nerve to do anything like that with Alex. She didn’t have the guts to have any sort of real relationship with him. And she saw that I was willing to take a chance. She wanted Michael to find out what I was up to.”

  “And did he?”

  “Michael?” Beth’s laugh was watery. “Michael’s easy to fool. I didn’t know any of this was going on, of course, so the next morning when I got up and Michael asked me where I was when Jeremy called, I’ll tell you, it really knocked me for a loop. I was so nervous, I dropped the box of cereal I was holding and spilled Cheerios all over the floor. Good thing, too. By the time I was done cleaning them up, I had come up with a story for Michael. I just told him that Vickie was all mixed up, that by the time Jeremy called, I’d already left Vickie’s and that I stopped to see another friend on the way home.” She waved a hand. “He bought it hook, line, and sinker. Besides, Michael’s been so preoccupied with the whole thing about getting a promotion, I don’t think he would have noticed if I walked into the kitchen that morning wearing the same see-through red negligee I wore for Jack the night before.”

  That was more information than I needed. At the same time I tried to erase the picture from my head, I glommed onto part of what she said. Thinking about that piece of the puzzle was better than wondering if see-through red negligees came with embroidered teddy bears.

  I narrowed my eyes and gave Beth a careful look. “Are you telling me—”

  “I mean I was pissed, that’s what I mean.” Beth shot out of her chair, paced to the far side of the room, and came back again. “I was so mad at Vickie for what she tried to do to me that I called Edward and I . . .” She bucked up her courage. “I told him everything. Everything I knew about Alex and Vickie.”

  “Wow.” It was anticlimactic at best, but I couldn’t help myself. I pulled myself out of my chair, too. Or at least I tried. It took a couple pushes and a whole lot of thigh muscle twinging before I was on my feet. “That’s why you think Edward killed Vickie. He knew she was seeing Alex.”

  “Uh-huh.” Beth clutched her hands together at her waist. “And I just figured they’d have some big fight and that would be the end of it. But then Vickie ended up dead.”

  “And Michael ended up with a promotion.”

  Beth looked miserable before. Now she looked positively wretched. The waterworks started again. “Yes, yes, I admit it. I’m a low-down dirty scumbag. See, what I did is I mentioned something to Edward at the funeral, something about how much Michael deserved that promotion and how it would be smart if Edward gave it to him. And I tried to be really cool when I said it, you know? I didn’t come right out and say or else. I was calm and collected. But I guess my hints weren’t good enough. Edward acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about. So I wrote him a note. And I couldn’t make it look suspicious, so I put it inside a sympathy card to him and mailed it to the house. I told him he had to give Michael that job, that if he didn’t, I’d go to the cops and tell them that he knew Vickie was spending her Tuesdays with Alex. It sounds terrible, I know, but Michael’s worked so hard and that whole thing about that big scandal that he was responsible for . . . none of that was true. He’s a good man.”

  “And you were feeling guilty for stepping out on him.”

  She nodded. “I figured getting that promotion for him was the least I could do for Michael. And . . .” She twisted the skirt of her jumper in nervous fingers. “I made Edward let Jeremy play in the soccer ga
mes, too.”

  So I was right about the blackmail. It made sense from every angle. I shifted my gaze back to Beth. “And now?” I asked.

  “Now you’d better be careful,” she wailed. “Because if Edward knows that you know he killed Vickie, he’s going to try to kill you again.”

  Twelve

  AFTER AN EVENING AS EXCITING AS THE ONE I’D just had, believe me when I say all I wanted to do was go home, jump into bed, and pull the covers over my head. Unfortunately, as often happens when I’m in the middle of an investigation, reality tends to intrude. What with visiting Sonny and following Celia, Glynis, and Beth, and nearly getting roasted to death, I hadn’t put in nearly enough hours at Bellywasher’s that week, and as much as I didn’t want to think about it, I knew what that meant: Invoices were piling up on my desk like snow-drifts in Alaska. Bank deposits hadn’t been made, and that meant we were losing out on interest. As little as it was, we needed every penny. If I didn’t do something and do it fast, the well-oiled machinery of the business side of the restaurant was going to grind to a halt, and soon.

  I might not feel like tackling the Bellywasher’s checkbook, but never let it be said that Annie Capshaw is not nose-to-the-grindstone.

  I left Celia’s and by the time I got back to Old Town Alexandria, it was already late. Back in colonial times and even in the Civil War era, Old Town was a bustling Potomac port, just on the other side of the river from Washington, D.C. These days, its quaint cobblestone streets are lined with shops and restaurants and the entire town is a haven for tourists and weekend partiers. The area is an ideal spot for a pub like Jim’s. But there’s a downside to its popularity, too. Even on the best of days, parking is difficult. On Friday nights, it’s a nightmare. In living color. And 3-D. I tried to be patient as I circled the block three times, but let’s face it, being locked in a sauna and then having someone tell you that another someone wants to kill you . . . well, that tends to take the starch out of even the most plucky of detectives. By the time my virtue was rewarded and I found a parking space and dragged myself around the block and down the street to Bellywasher’s, I didn’t even care that I had to step aside and wait for a large party to leave the restaurant. Large parties mean big business. That lifted my spirits, sure enough. Besides, standing and waiting gave me a chance to rest, at least for a bit.

  No sooner was I inside the restaurant, though, than every trace of fatigue disappeared. Jim was standing behind the bar. Eve and Tyler were there, too, and so was—

  “Alex!” I couldn’t cross the room and get over to the bar fast enough. Even as I practically tripped over my own feet, I caught Alex in an enormous bear hug. Just to be sure he was real and not some figment of my steamed-in-the-sauna imagination, I pulled myself out of his arms and gave him a careful look, then I hugged him again. “This is wonderful!” I didn’t need to tell Jim and Eve. They were watching and smiling up a storm. I slipped onto the bar stool next to Alex’s. “OK, somebody tell me what’s going on. You didn’t escape from jail or anything, did you? Did somebody smuggle you a file inside a cake?”

  I was going for funny, but of course Tyler didn’t appreciate the joke. He’s that kind of cop. He was at the end of the bar and Eve was standing next to him with her hand on his shoulder. When someone called her over to ask for clarification about one of the menu items, she got to work and Tyler explained what was going on.

  “You’ll be happy to know that Alex is out on bail,” he said. “With any luck . . .” He measured what he was going to say against the temptation of saying too much. Then, in a very un-Tyler-like moment that pretty much proved that, like the rest of us, he was relieved to have Alex back where he belonged, Tyler threw caution to the wind. “With any luck, all the charges against him are going to be dropped.”

  My breath caught behind the ball of mixed disbelief and excitement in my throat. I pressed a hand to my heart. “That’s fabulous!” With one hand, I patted Alex’s shoulder. With my other hand, I reached across the bar, grabbed onto Jim’s, and gave it a squeeze. “Explain. Somebody tell me what happened. Tyler, did you guys finally find the real killer?”

  “No such luck.” Tyler’s words cast a pall over the celebration. He grimaced. Jim frowned. Alex was deep in thought. He had a frothy dark beer in front of him, and he sipped it and licked the foam from his lips.

  “Nectar of the gods!” Alex crooned, and as quickly as the mood darkened, it brightened again, and we all laughed. Beer was such a simple pleasure, and it was such a joy to watch Alex savor it! “They finally know I didn’t do it, Annie,” he said. “The medical examiner says the murderer was right-handed.”

  I would have slapped my forehead if Jim hadn’t put a glass of white wine in front of me and if I didn’t already have it in my hand. I looked to Tyler for confirmation. “The wounds—”

  “Definitely made by a right-handed person, and one who’s a whole lot shorter than Alex. We couldn’t know for sure, of course, until the medical examiner’s final report was in. The killer—”

  “After Alex passed out, the killer put the knife in Alex’s hand to implicate him, but he put it in his right hand!” I was so happy Tyler didn’t point out that I was wrong, tears sprang to my eyes. “The killer couldn’t possibly have known Alex was a leftie. So we know Alex was framed.”

  Far be it from Tyler to let anybody get too carried away. Especially when that anybody was me. “We’re pretty sure,” he said, in a way that told me pretty sure didn’t mean defi nitely and I’d better not forget it. “But Alex isn’t out of the woods yet. We still have some details to work out. For instance . . .” He spun his bar stool so that he was looking at Alex head-on, and slipped into interrogator mode so quickly and effortlessly, it was uncanny. I knew he wasn’t being hard-assed just to cause trouble. Tyler knew what kind of questioning Alex had been through, and what he was in for in the coming weeks. He was just trying to get Alex ready for what was to come.

  “How about those threats you made?” Tyler asked. “That waitress . . .” Even though Tyler wasn’t directly involved in the case, it was obvious he had an interest in the outcome. He pulled his leather-covered notebook out of his pocket, flipped through the pages, and read over his notes. “The waitress at Swallows is named Jennifer. She says she heard you say that you wanted Vickie dead.”

  It was clear Alex had spent the long, dull hours in jail trying to work through this problem. It was just as clear that no matter how hard he tried, he was no closer to finding a solution now than he had been then. He scraped a hand back and forth across his chin. “I never would’a threatened Vickie,” he said. “You all know that. I liked Vickie. And I’d never speak like that to a woman. It’s disrespectful. I never said I wanted Vickie dead. If I did, I would have been out of my head.”

  This time, I didn’t let the wineglass stop me. I set it down and slapped my hand against the bar. “That’s it, of course!” Even before I explained, Tyler had already caught on. I had a funny feeling that if Derek Harold had been within earshot, Tyler would have read him the riot act about being a lead detective on a case and missing something so obvious.

  It took Jim and Alex a little longer to get it. But then, they’re the ones with the accents that are nearly impenetrable, especially to us Americans. To Jim and Alex’s ears, they didn’t have an accent at all.

  “Dead and head.” I stared at Alex. “Say the words again.”

  “Dead. Head.” That’s what he said, only it came out sounding more like daid and haid.

  Jim got it. I could tell by the sudden gleam in his eyes. Alex needed a little more help, and I gave it to him. “So Jennifer heard you say something about Vickie being out of her head—”

  “Aye. That’s right.” Alex’s eyebrows veed. “That’s what I told her when she started acting daft. I said she was out of her head.”

  “And if Vickie hadn’t been murdered, that would have been the end of that. Jennifer never even would have remembered the conversation. But Vickie was murdered, and because she
waited on you two, people started questioning Jennifer. And by then, of course, she wasn’t just thinking of a man and a woman at a table together in the restaurant. She knew you’d been arrested. Whether she was aware of it or not, she was thinking of Vickie as the victim and you as the murderer. So just naturally—”

  “She thought she heard dead instead of head. To her ears, the words sounded alike. You Americans need more practice in the proper way of speaking.” Jim grinned. “It makes great sense in a mixed-up sort of way.”

  “Happens all the time with witnesses.” Tyler had a beer in front of him, too, and he took a drink.

  Alex did, too. “Well, I’ve certainly learned my lesson,” he said. “From this moment forward until the day I get back on the plane to go home again, I’m not leaving your house, Jim. I’m going to work on that—”

  In all the excitement of the investigation, I’d forgotten about the renovations on the house. Too bad I remembered now and was so eager to hear more, I leaned too far forward and almost fell off my bar stool. Otherwise, Alex might have spilled the beans.

  “Oh, no!” Laughing, Jim reached across the bar, grabbed my shoulders, and pulled me back in place.

  “But I could drive Alex home tonight. And if he needed anything, I could take it over to him. That way he wouldn’t have to leave the house.” It was worth a try.

  Jim wasn’t buying it. “I’ve given my word that I will keep an eye on Alex. And you . . .” He had a beer, too, and he raised it in a gesture that was more a friendly warning than a toast. “You will mind your own business. Which might include murder, but definitely does not include snooping around the house.”

  I may have grumbled. Like anyone could blame me? It was hard to stay in a good mood when even Tyler bought into the whole Annie-can’t-see-the-house-before-the-wedding scenario.