I was handing out white plates with ornate yellow and red borders, which Mars’s Aunt Faye had brought back from Hong Kong, when Hannah brushed by me and whispered, “I’m calling Zack about the stolen gifts in Tyler’s car.”
The time had come, I supposed. She scuttled off to make her call, and I tried hard not to stare at Tyler lest I alert him. Poor Shawna. Dumped by Beau, thrown in jail, and now her new crush, Tyler, would be arrested for stealing the gifts and, worse, maybe for murder.
Shawna shed her shoes. “I am half frozen.” She peeled wet socks off her feet. “Did you bring me socks and shoes?”
Laci winced. “Your feet are two sizes larger than mine, and you know it.”
“How did you get so wet?” asked George.
“Not all the sidewalks are clean. I guess I stepped in snow,” muttered Shawna.
Guilt saddled me. I hadn’t cleaned my sidewalks the way I should have.
“Man, this floor is cold. I want to go home and get clothes! Socks and shoes and my fuzzy slippers!” Shawna groaned.
Tyler stood. “I’ll take you. We can go right now. You’ll feel much better once you have your own stuff.”
George moaned. “Let’s not start that again.”
We had to keep him and his SUV here until Zack arrived.
Laci jumped up and barred the door. A futile move, really, but quite dramatic. “You’re not going anywhere. We just engaged in a wild-goose chase. How can you be so immature? Don’t you understand what’s at stake here?”
“Like you would wear the same outfit for days on end, Miss Clothes Horse?” Shawna mimicked Laci’s voice and mannerisms perfectly, as though she’d been doing it for years. “Oh! I must go to the mall and buy new clothes.” Then Shawna reverted to yelling. “I was in jail! All I want is go to my apartment and get a few things.”
“In the first place, I have never been a clothes horse.” Laci had regained her composure and spoke with the calm sensibility that she used when reasoning with Jen. “You’re talking about things I did when I was a teenager. However, you appear to be overlooking the fact that I hadn’t been arrested for murder, I wasn’t out on bail, and neither the cops nor a bail bondsman cared what I did or where I went.” She returned to her seat at the table. “Make a list. I’ll drive over to your place and pick up what you need.”
It seemed reasonable to me, but Shawna screamed, “So you can snoop in my apartment? I think not.”
“Would you rather George went?”
Shawna didn’t respond. It seemed to me that she didn’t have a lot of choices.
Hannah returned to the table and appeared comfortable with her deception about calling Zack. She smiled and joked about sisters who fight.
To drag out lunch and keep Tyler around, instead of offering Christmas cookies for dessert, I promised my company warm chocolate chip cookies from my stash in the freezer.
I heated the oven and cut the frozen dough into slices, which I quartered and placed on a baking tray. Once they’d been eaten, I would have to rely on Shawna’s allure to keep Tyler around until Zack arrived.
I needn’t have worried. About the time Tyler bit into his second cookie, he and Shawna had started grinning at each other, and from the little chuckles they tried to hide, I had a feeling a game of footsie had commenced under the table.
To keep myself from pacing, I washed dishes, spending most of the time looking out the window toward the street. When Hannah jumped up and ran to the front door, I breathed easier. She intercepted Zack before he knocked, and after a mushy kiss that made me miss Wolf, she escorted him in the direction of Tyler’s SUV.
George dried dishes beside me, but he didn’t miss Zack and Hannah strolling arm in arm away from my house. He nudged me with his elbow at the same time that Laci said, “Is that Zack?”
What seemed like an eternity of horrified silence followed until I blurted out, “He’s Hannah’s date for New Year’s Eve.” Never mind that he was hours early. To distract everyone from Zack’s presence, I asked, “Tyler, did your dad find a date for tonight?”
Tyler turned his head toward me and blinked. “Dad? He doesn’t date.”
“My mom has been trying to match him up with someone,” I explained.
“She won’t have much luck. Women have chased him since Mom died but he likes being the single guy without any ‘entanglements,’ as he calls them.”
I didn’t think I should be the one to break the news that his father had a change of heart. Plus, Hannah and Zack hurried toward my house wearing grim expressions. I braced myself for the confrontation between Zack and Tyler.
Zack opened the door to the kitchen and held it for Hannah, who entered saying, “It’s cold out there. How about some hot lattes, Soph?”
Okay, so they were going to take the casual approach. Did Zack intend to play the good guy and weasel the truth out of Tyler? I put rich Dallmayr House Blend coffee on to brew, fumbling a bit because I was antsy about Tyler’s imminent arrest.
Hannah brushed by me. “You won’t believe this.”
I followed her into the foyer, where she hung coats in the closet.
“Everything is gone. The back of Tyler’s car is completely empty.”
THIRTY-FOUR
From “THE GOOD LIFE” :
Dear Sophie,
I thought our storage problems were over when we built a shed in the backyard. Now I’m afraid to go in there because of the mice and squirrels. How do we keep them out of the birdseed?
—Musaphobic on Snake River
Dear Musaphobic,
Eliminate anything mice like to eat. Try not to store garden seeds, birdseed, dog food, or anything edible in the shed. If you must store those items, put them inside old-fashioned metal trash cans and weigh down the lids. Mice will eat through plastic. Most importantly, seal all holes, no matter how small, and make sure the doors shut tightly.
—Sophie
“Tyler must have been on to us.” I closed the closet door and leaned against it.
Hannah grimaced. “Zack wants to play it cool and see what he can find out.”
“Find out?” I hissed in a whisper. “They obviously pulled that stunt to get away from us and unload the stolen goods. Think they took everything to Shawna’s place?”
“Or back to Bonnie’s.”
“That can’t be.
We
were there.”
“They might have waited for us to leave. Remember, we picked up Chinese and paid a visit to Emma.”
“Did you tell Zack about Emma?”
The corners of Hannah’s mouth twitched down. “Technically Bonnie’s murder isn’t Zack’s case. It’s your boyfriend who is looking for them.”
“Would you stop calling him that? Someone is likely to believe you.” I could understand why she wanted to justify not turning in Emma and Dasher. Of course, we didn’t know if Kenner had put out a warrant for them. Maybe they weren’t wanted at all. On the other hand, what if there was another murder and I was wrong about the suspects? If Emma and Dasher were the killers, it would be our fault for not revealing their whereabouts. “What if we’re dead wrong and they kill someone else?”
“What are you whispering about?” George emerged from the kitchen and Hannah caught him up to speed. “I wish Wolf were back. He’s always so sensible about these things.”
“Look,” said Hannah, “the killer was after Ginger. All we have to do is let her know that the killer might still be around. That way she can watch out.”
George’s eyes turned up to the ceiling when he growled, “I think she knows
that
!”
Laci bustled out of the kitchen. “Well! This is about the rudest thing I’ve seen in a long time.” She made no effort to whisper. “We have company, you know. George, I think we’ll have to put off going to the movies.”
We traipsed into the kitchen like scolded children. I poured milk into a pot to warm it, but my mind was on Emma. It wasn’t fair of me to exclude her from our list of suspects just because I felt sorry for her. Then again, someone had changed the wrapping paper. Didn’t that clear Emma?
I whipped cream, then mixed heady vanilla and a generous amount of decadent Bailey’s Irish Cream into the milk, and poured it into the coffee Laci had already poured into mugs. A dollop of rich whipped cream topped each latte, and Laci followed behind me tapping a sprinkle of nutmeg on the billowing white cream.
We carried the mugs to the table and handed them out. I nestled in the window seat, cupping a mug of latte in my hands. How could I draw Tyler into giving us information? As casually as I could, I said, “Tyler, it must have been great seeing your brother again.”
“Yeah, it was.”
Argh
. He wasn’t the talkative type—at least not to me. I tried again. “Did you have a chance to spend time with Dasher while he was here?” That might have been too much. He flicked an annoyed glance my way.
Shawna preened. “He was too worried about me. Tyler called me in jail every night except last night. He went to a rock concert with Emma and Dasher. That’s why he didn’t know I’d been released.”
The change in Zack’s expression was barely noticeable. His eyes gave him away, though, when he studied Tyler. Zack must have known that Forrest claimed Dasher and Emma had left the area the day before.
I heaved a huge breath of relief. A cop now knew that they were still around. Hannah and I didn’t have to turn them in after all. Giddiness overcame me and I joined in the silly banter around the table.
Snow began to fall again, heavily this time. Laci reached a hand toward her sister. “If you want me to pick up clothes at your apartment, I’d better go now. It’s coming down hard.”
Grudgingly, Shawna wrote out a list of items for Laci. If they found the stolen Christmas Eve gifts in Shawna’s apartment, would George be able to convince Laci to rat on her sister? I doubted it.
George and Laci bundled up and headed out in the mini-blizzard. Although I didn’t want to shovel anything, Mom and Dad would be arriving in a hour or two, and I knew I had to clear the walk. I delayed as long as I could before pulling on a coat and boots. I let Daisy out to play in my fenced backyard while I retrieved the snow shovel. She romped through the snow with genuine joy. Thick snowflakes stuck to her black fur like a winter coat, but she didn’t mind, racing around the yard and burying her nose in the white powder. She accompanied me to the potting shed in the very rear of my property.
I stopped cold. I should have had to clear snow away to open the doors but it had been trampled under the new fluff. I pulled the left half of the double doors open, expecting to find my snow shovel just inside, leaning against the wall. Instead, I nearly fell over a pile of neatly stacked boxes, mostly covered by a blanket.
I whisked the blanket off them. A microwave and a crock pot sat in unopened boxes on top of the pile. Wincing, I used the tip of my forefinger to flip the lid on an open box. Christmas candles in jars. There was no doubt about it—Tyler had moved the contents of his SUV to my potting shed. My blood pressure soared. Shawna must have helped him. They staged that little escape so he could unload the ill-gotten goods.
Furious, I stomped back to my house. How dare they pawn those things off on me? What if Shawna and Tyler denied any knowledge of the stolen items in my potting shed? Would Zack believe me? Surely he would believe Hannah. Or would he be doubtful like that grim Kenner, who thought I made up stories just to see him? The trek across the snow did little to help me cool off.
Daisy looked up at me, wagging her tail. A white strip of snow bridged her nose. “You’re right. I’ve had enough of this pussyfooting around.”
Daisy and I entered through the kitchen door. The lovebird couples had eyes only for each other. This time, I didn’t mince words. I stared straight at Shawna. “I have taken you into my home and this is how you repay me?”
Shawna shrank back in her chair. “I ... I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I think you do. You and Tyler took us on a wild-goose chase. You ran away so we would follow you. Then you doubled back and unloaded the stolen Christmas gifts into my potting shed!”
Tyler’s eyes roamed the room like he sought a hidden exit. “You must be mistaken.”
“I have witnesses that those items were in your car.”
Hannah cocked her head. “I saw them.”
Fixing his gaze on Shawna, Tyler waved his hands in denial. “I didn’t steal anything.”
I went for the jugular. “Then why do you have a mug with Jen’s picture on it?”
Shawna appeared to be on the verge of tears. “You have to tell them. Tell them the truth, just like you told me.”
Tyler grabbed his head with cramped fingers. “All I’m trying to do is save the people I love!”
Save the people he loves?
I jabbed a finger in the air at Shawna. “Did you have anything to do with the missing gifts?”
A slow smile crept over Shawna’s lips. “You love me?”
Oh, brother
. I glanced at Zack. He was the cop—why didn’t he say anything? But he was grinning at them.
“Tyler had to remove the stuff to save Bonnie’s reputation,” said Shawna.
Something in Tyler’s pocket jingled, and I knew that wasn’t quite the truth.
“It was me you saw that night, Sophie.” The jingling stopped, and he scratched Daisy under her chin. “Everything was in such chaos when Bonnie died. I forgot all about the stolen stuff in the shop. She was planning to sell it to some guy. Then when you needed access to the office for the auction, I panicked and loaded it all into my car. I heard Daisy howl and took off, but I didn’t know where to hide it.” He leaned toward Zack. “Shawna had nothing to do with any of this, I swear. She didn’t know about it until she saw my car today.”
“Your keys were never stolen?” I asked.
“No.”
Zack’s forehead creased. “You expect me to believe that Bonnie stole the Christmas presents?”
Tyler hesitated. “I don’t know the extent of her involvement. All I know is that they showed up in the shop and she planned to unload them.”