Deadly Desserts (Sky High Pies Cozy Mysteries Book 6) (12 page)

CHAPTER
26

As I drove past Blanche Speltzer’s
bungalow on the way home, I spotted her on the front porch. When I stopped at
the curb and honked, she waved for me to come inside.

“Well, look at you!” she exclaimed
as we stepped through the front door. “So cute and such perfect timing! I was
just getting ready to fix a cup of tea, Katie. Will you join me?”

After I declined, she upped the
ante by offering one of her renowned dirty martinis instead.

“Oh, I’m fine,” I said. “But I
appreciate the hospitality.”

She headed for the hallway, nodding
her head to invite me along. “Why don’t we sit back here, dear? The front room
seems particularly drafty this afternoon for some reason.”

Once we were settled in the
kitchen, I asked Blanche about her matchmaking business. She’d started the
enterprise a few months earlier, but I hadn’t heard her talk about it much
since then.

“Oh, it’s ticking along, Katie. Do
you know of someone in need of my services?”

I instantly thought of Thomas
Green, the pale bank gnome who seemed slavishly devoted to Nathaniel Craig.
When I mentioned his name, Blanche threw back her head and cackled loudly.

“Why on earth would
he
need
me
,
Katie? He’s married to that sweet Vivian Baxter.”

I blinked at the news. “The
pharmacist at Food Town?”

Blanche nodded. “Yes, they’ve been
married for several years. And, even though they haven’t all been filled with
bliss, Vivian says she’s devoted to Thomas.”

I felt a couple of loose ends knit
together in my mind.

“I guess she didn’t take his last
name when they married?”

The frisky, gray-haired matchmaker
raised one finger and wagged it at me with a fluffy laugh. “It’s a new age,
Katie. Not every woman does that these days.”

“Right,” I said, trying to picture
Thomas Green and Vivian Baxter together. “I suppose it
is
a new age.”

While she toyed with the white
poodle salt and pepper shakers on the table, I asked if she’d had any new
success stories with her matchmaking service.

Her eyes creased as she smiled. “I
introduced Samuel Clay and Ramona Reece just last week! I think they’re going
to fall madly, deeply, truly in love and then I’ll officiate at their wedding
and everyone will live happily ever after!”

“Did you say that you would
officiate?”

Her eyes twinkled. “I did indeed! I
just got my certificate in the mail yesterday. I am now an ordained and
licensed ceremonial minister, Katie. I can do weddings, funerals, vow renewals
and baptisms. It’s really easy. I filled out the form while I was watching
Jeopardy
,
sent in my forty bucks and—
voilà!
—I’m a genuine ceremonial minister.”

I had questions about the
unexpected news, but decided they could wait for another day. Instead, I
congratulated Blanche on her latest achievement before asking if she’d heard
anything new about Lacy Orvane.

“Why don’t you just come out and
ask the question directly, Katie?”

I smiled. “Okay, Blanche. Do you
know who she was involved with?”

“I only wish,” she said, lowering
her voice. “I’ve been alive a very long time, Katie. Nearly eighty-one years,
as you may remember. And I know just about every living soul in Crescent Creek.
But I’ve
never
had this much trouble getting to the bottom of something
as simple as the identity of a local adulterer.”

“Maybe he’s not local,” I
suggested.

“True. But I did hear something
from one of my sources.” She winked and grinned. “They told me that Lacy was
involved with a fellow who took her boating a time or two.”

“That’s something I hadn’t heard,”
I said. “But I’m not sure—”

“Hold your taters, Katie. I wasn’t
finished. They told me that she was seen with a man at Inlet Bay Marina.”

“I don’t know the name,” I said.
“Where is it?”

“Horsetooth Reservoir,” Blanche
answered. “It’s not a huge operation, but they’ve got reasonable rates. One of
my grandsons loves to go there in the summer and rent those jet ski thingies.
Although I prefer the party cats whenever the girls and I get away for a
weekend.”

“What’s a party cat, Blanche?”

She got up from her chair, grabbed
a package of Oreos on the counter and came back to the table.

“A party cat?” she sighed
rhetorically. “Well, it’s only the Shangri-La where my second husband and I
celebrated our wedding night. After the reception, we drove up to Horsetooth,
rented a party cat and sailed out into the middle of the reservoir. He had a
buddy who worked at the marina, so we got a little discount. But the best part
was, my hubby’s friend let us stay out on the water until morning
and
I
overcame my fear of going down a slide in my birthday suit!”

She blushed. I giggled. And then we
shared a warm smile.

“Well, Blanche,” I said. “That
sounds romantic. But, I still have a question. A party cat is one of—”

“Yes, yes,” she interrupted. “It’s
a double-decker boat with a slide and its own restroom. There’s plenty of room
for up to six, or you can simply sail away with the man of your dreams.” She
stopped, closed her eyes and hummed softly. “Gosh, but I miss that man! He was
such a charmer; witty and smart and always ready with a kind word.”

I’d never met Blanche’s second
groom, but I’d heard enough stories from my mother to know that he treated his
wife with honor, respect and appreciation.

“You know something, Blanche?”

She hummed a wordless reply and
smiled.

“You’re a very lucky woman,” I
said. “Finding love is hard enough as it is, but you hit the jackpot more than
once!”

“Yes, I did!” She rolled her
shoulders and giggled again. “Speaking of which, how’s that mantastic Zack
Hutton? You and he still as sweet on each other as when you met?”

I answered the question with a
radiant smile and a nod. Then I asked if we could get back to the Lacy Orvane
case.

“How can I help, Katie?”

“Well, you know just about
everybody in town, so I wanted to pick your brain for another second or two. I
mean, if Lacy was involved with a married man who lives in Crescent Creek, it
just seems that you might’ve heard something to help identify him.”

She shook her head. “It’s like I
told you, Katie. I don’t know much more than he took her boating at Horsetooth
Reservoir a few times. And, obviously, he’s got no problem being a weasel
behind his wife’s back. Other than that, I don’t think I can help identify
either Lacy’s married boyfriend
or
her killer.”

CHAPTER
27

I was in the Sky High kitchen the next
morning concentrating intently on one of Nana Reed’s recipes when someone began
ringing the bell in the pass window. The chime was used throughout the day to
signal new customer tickets coming in or prepared orders ready to go out.
Normally, Harper and Julia tapped lightly on the bell once or twice. But as I
peered at my grandmother’s nearly indecipherable squiggles and curlicues down
the side of an ancient recipe card, the bell rang. And rang. And rang again.

When I finally lifted my gaze, I
saw Dina Kincaid standing on the other side of the pass window.

“Order up!” she called.

“Oh, yeah?” I put down the recipe
and walked in her direction.

“Yeah,” she said, grinning
brightly. “I want thirty-two Swiss and bacon omelets to go!”

“Over my dead body,” I griped.

“That can be arranged,” she said.
“But I think you’re a little too young for the final curtain, Katie.”

I put one hand on my aching lower
back. “Is that right? I may be chronologically thirty, but my lumbar region
feels like it dates back to the days of covered wagons and stampeding buffalo.”

She laughed and motioned for me to
come out into the dining room. When I complied with the request, she was
sitting at the counter relaying a carryout order to Harper.

“Make sure you get cash,” I joked
to our dining room major domo. “Detective Kincaid’s got a habit of dining and
dashing.”

“It’s on Trent’s account,” Harper
said. “Muffins and scones for a meeting at the PD.”

“Some folks from Boulder are coming
in for a debrief session later in the day,” Dina explained. “I figured they
might be more forthcoming if we offered French Roast and some goodies from Sky
High.”

“Works around here,” I joked. “Now,
what’s up?”

She smiled. “I just wanted to see
your gorgeous face, Katie.”

“Oh, really?”

“And to tackle two birds with one
stone.”

“Tackle?”

“I hate to say ‘kill two birds,’”
she said. “We’re dealing with enough of that as it is these days.”

I nodded. “What’s going on?”

“You tell me,” she said. “You left
a message yesterday asking me to call or stop by because you had something for
me.”

“Oh, gosh! I’m so sorry. It was a
short night, Dina. Can you give me a sec? There’s something in my office that I
think will brighten your day.”

“The keys to a new Porsche?” she
quipped.

I smiled. “Two sets. Plus the
tank’s full and I paid the sales tax.”

While she waited at the counter, I
dashed out of the dining room, down the hall and into my office. Three plastic
bags sat beside the stack of unpaid invoices. One contained the coffee mug that
I’d handed to Daphne Wright during my visit to Home Suite Home the previous
day. The second held the Russian nesting dolls from Portia Pearson’s desk. And
the third enclosed an empty Twizzler package that I’d found in my car. I
grabbed the bags and returned to the dining room, arriving back at Dina’s side
as she was signing the credit card slip.

“Thank you, detective!” Harper said
before hurrying toward a table of famished retirees.

I put the plastic bags on the
counter beside Dina’s purse.

“What’s this?” she asked.

I smiled. “Possibly a key piece of
evidence.”

“For the Lacy Orvane case?”

I nodded, but didn’t say anything.

“Are we playing charades, Katie?”

I shook my head. “No, I’m just
basking in the potential glow of victory.”

Her eyes looped around. “Oh,
please!”

“I’m serious. I was following a hunch.
I think these might help crack the case.”

“Really? It looks like a Sky High
coffee mug and some of those—”

“Nesting dolls,” I said. “But it’s
not the dolls, the mug
or
the Twizzler package. It’s what’s
on
them,
specifically the fingerprints that you’ll find when you dust them in the lab.”

She looked at the items encased in
plastic. Then she looked at me. And then she said, “Is this related to the
carryout container we found with the used syringes and vial of cicutoxin?”

“I hope so.”

“Do you want to tell me more?”

“I’d rather not,” I said. “I don’t
want to contaminate the evidence.”

She threw back her head and
laughed. “I’m afraid it’s a little late for that, Inspector Clouseau.”

“Ah, I loved those movies when I
was little. Peter Sellers was
so
brilliant!”

“We won’t be able to use this,
Katie,” she said. “Even if we get a match to the prints on the plastic
container found with the cicutoxin.”

“I know. But maybe if you check
these three things and get a match on one, you can bring the person in for
questioning. Then you could get another set of their prints while they’re in
the police station.”

She considered the suggestion
before asking if my approach had involved anything unlawful.

“Well, the undergarments I was
wearing at the time didn’t match,” I said. “The bra was MONDAY and the panties
were—”

“Stop!” She grabbed the Sky High
baked goods and three plastic bags. “It’s way too early in the morning!” She
made a face: scrunched lips, creased forehead, horrified eyes. Then she said,
“I’ll talk to you after the lab processes these things.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” I said.
“If my hunch is right, those fingerprints could help narrow the list of
suspects.”

Dina stopped and spun around. “Suspects?
As in more than one?”

I shrugged. “Sometimes it takes one
bad seed,” I said. “And sometimes it takes a village.”

CHAPTER
28

Julia and I were cleaning the Sky
High kitchen that afternoon around three-thirty when someone knocked on the
backdoor.

“I thought all of the deliveries
had arrived,” Julia muttered, barely glancing up from the sink.

“I’m pretty sure that they did,” I
said, leaving my sponge and rubber gloves on the counter near the waffle irons.
“Unless that’s Bruce. He said he might come by again if there was time.”

But it wasn’t Bruce Cavanaugh with
the extra box of plastic wrap we’d discussed. Instead, it was Ron Blinder, the
guy that Lacy Orvane had dated for a couple of years before suddenly dumping
him for a wealthy married man. He looked pale and dog-tired, with dark circles
under his eyes and a halo of scruffy hair jutting from beneath a
paint-spattered ball cap. Ron was a year older, but we were both in debate
during high school. I remembered him as a confident, brassy firebrand, not the
timid, stooped phantom at the door.

After he stepped inside, I gave him
a big hug. “Hey, stranger. How are you?”

His answer was a barely visible
nod. “I could’ve called, Kate. But I…” He smiled at Julia when she turned
around to greet him. “Hey, Julia. How’s it going?”

“Okay, Ronnie. How are you getting
along?”

“You know how it goes.”

Neither of us did, but we both
grinned and nodded anyway. Although their relationship had ended, it was common
knowledge around Crescent Creek that Ron was still deeply in love with Lacy.
She’d shattered his heart and self-esteem by leaving him for the mysterious Mr.
X. In a town so small, it was miraculous that Lacy and her married beau had
been able to avoid detection for so long. Of course, the fact that she had decided
not to reveal his identity to any of her close friends also demonstrated the
level of secrecy that Lacy could maintain.

“What can we help you with?” I
asked after the brief silence threatened to expand into something awkward.

“I need to…” He reached into his
pocket, came out with a scrap of paper and briefly studied a list written in
dark ink. “I’d like to send something to Lacy’s parents. Maybe a coffee cake
they can serve to all of the people coming for the funeral. Do you think that
would be okay?”

When he looked up, I answered with
a silent nod. The question demonstrated that he’d decided on a thoughtful
gesture, but wasn’t exactly sure how to fulfill it.

“I mean,” Ron continued, “my sister
said people usually take casseroles or some other kind of one-dish meal, but…”
His shoulders sagged. “Well, I don’t really cook, so I thought about coming by
here to get something they might appreciate.”

“A coffee cake would be very nice,”
I said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Do you want to take one from up front?”

He shook his head. “I don’t really
want to go by the house, Katie,” he said as a solitary tear rolled down his
right cheek. “It’s just been really hard, you know? Losing Lacy in such a…such
a horrible way.”

Julia came over and surrounded him
with her slender arms. “I’m so sorry, Ronnie. I know how much…” She didn’t
finish the remark; there was no need to. Instead, she stood with him for a
moment while I grabbed an order pad from the pass window.

“Okay, so one coffee cake.” I
watched as Julia stepped back and brushed his cheek. “Maybe cinnamon streusel?”

He nodded. “Sure, whatever you
think.”

“That’s one of our most popular,” I
said. “We can deliver it to Lacy’s mom and dad later this afternoon.”

“That would be awesome,” he said,
reaching for his wallet.

“No need for that.” I touched his
shoulder again. “We know how much she meant to you, Ron. Let us do this for
you, okay?”

He blinked and the tears began to
flow freely. “She was the love of my life, Katie. I’ve never felt like that…”
He wiped at his eyes with the cuff of one sleeve. “Jeez, I’m sorry. I promised
myself that I wouldn’t cry.”

“You’re okay,” Julia said quietly.
“It’s best to let the grief out.”

He sighed and swallowed hard. “I
guess so.”

“I
know
so,” Julia said.
“Just let it happen. And don’t
ever
apologize to anybody about showing
your true emotions.”

“Well, that’s a lot easier said
than done.”

“Because you’re a guy?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I guess so. And
because we weren’t together anymore. I’m afraid people will think it’s…I don’t
know, strange for me to grieve after what Lacy did. But my heart is broken,
just plain broken in two.”

I looked at Julia. She was on the
verge of tears, biting her lower lip and taking deep, slow breaths.

“Love is love,” I said. “You guys
may not be together, but you’ll always feel a special affection for her.”

He smiled, nodded and swept away a
few more tears. “I will,” he said. “Always.”

“Do you want to go sit in my office
for a bit?” I asked. “I can bring you a cup of coffee or—”

“No, Katie. But thank you. I need to
get back to work. I told them I was just running over to do this and it
wouldn’t take more than a half hour.”

“Sure thing, Ron. And don’t worry
about the coffee cake for Lacy’s folks. We’ll get that over before five this
afternoon. Do you want to write a card to go with it?”

He shook his head. “Just tell them
it’s from one of her friends. I don’t know how they’d react if they knew it was
from me.”

The answer surprised me, but I
didn’t want to pursue it with him. He was grieving; there was no need to deepen
the pain by satisfying my own curiosity.

“You know the crazy thing about all
of this?” Ron said.

Julia smiled, but didn’t speak. She
was still nibbling on her lip to keep from crying.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Lacy called me the night before
last,” he told us. “She’d accepted a new job with a bank in Omaha. I guess the
manager there is someone she knows from college. She said it was going to be a
brand-new start, a way to get out from under all the gossip and mistakes she’d
made lately. It was a totally spontaneous decision, but she thought it was the
best thing for her.”

“She didn’t say a word when I saw
her the other day at the bank,” I said.

“She was keeping it secret,” he
explained. “She wanted to try one last thing with her…” He gulped and took a
moment to steady himself. “…with the guy she’d been seeing,” he continued. “But
I don’t really know much more than that. I mean, she said that she’d called me
because something bad was going on and she always liked the way I helped calm
her down so she could figure things out.”

Julia made a little sound. When I
looked over, she’d gone back to the sink. Her shoulders were hunched and she
shuddered slightly as she fought to keep from crying. She and Lacy had been
close friends for years. The unexpected visit from Lacy’s ex-boyfriend was an
emotional curve ball she hadn’t anticipated.

“You know what, Ron?” I said,
feeling my eyes dampen.

He smiled.

“Lacy was lucky to have you in her
life.”

“I hope so,” he said quietly. “I’m
glad we had a chance to talk one last time. It was nice; she actually made me
laugh a bunch.”

“That’s sweet.”

“Yeah, we had fun when times were
good,” he said. “I’m going to miss her a lot.”

“We all will,” Julia said, still
focused on scrubbing the same sauté pan she’d been washing for the past few
minutes. “At least, there’ll be one more star shining above at night.”

“Yeah, I’d agree with that,” Ron
said. “I just wish the last few weeks of her life had been less difficult.”

“What do you mean?” I asked,
falling into PI mode again. “Was something going on?”

He frowned. “Yeah, too much. The
fellow she’d been seeing was giving her a real hard time because Lacy wanted
him to leave his wife.”

“After a few weeks?” Julia asked,
dropping the sponge and spinning around.

Ron heaved a sigh. “It had been
going on a lot longer than that, Jules. And for the first month or so, the jerk
was actually cheating on his wife with Lacy
and
another woman here in
town. He eventually stopped seeing the other gal, but wouldn’t get a divorce to
be with Lacy. The guy’s a real piece of work.”

“Oh, Ronnie,” Julia said. “I had no
idea.”

“It’s okay. I’ve made peace with it
all. Lacy was a great gal, but she was complicated. She made mistakes. And she
told lies. But, no matter what she did or didn’t do, nobody deserves to be
treated the way he treated her or…” More tears tumbled down his face. “Or…to be
poisoned like that.”

I waited before asking him one
final question. He thought for a few seconds and then repeated it rhetorically.

“What else was going on in her
life?” he said. “Well, there was the married guy. And somebody at the bank was
giving her a hard time about nearly everything she did. And there were problems
at the community theater.”

“What kind of problems?”

“I suppose you’d call it jealousy,”
he answered. “Lacy had a big part in their last production and one of the other
women didn’t think she deserved the role.”

“Seriously? It’s community theater,
not Broadway.”

He smiled. “That’s what Lacy always
said! But I guess some of those community theater people take all that stuff
very,
very
seriously.”

“Do you know who the other woman
from the theater was?” I asked.

“No,” he replied. “But she works at
that furniture store, the one there by the bowling alley.”

“Portia Pearson’s store?” asked
Julia.

“That’s the one,” Ron said. “But
Lacy never told me the name, so…maybe it’s Portia. Or it could be someone
else.”

Julia looked at me. “Well, if it
wasn’t Portia,” she said. “There’s only one other someone else, right?”