Fatally Frosted (23 page)

And that included finding Peg Masterson’s murderer.

As I got out the money to pay for our meal, I said, “If you’re up for it, I’ve got an idea of what we can do next.”

“I’m ready,” she said.

“Don’t you even want to know what I have in mind?”

Grace shook her head. “If you like the plan, that’s good enough for me.”

“Okay, here’s what I had in mind. I want to take another run at Marge, and I need your help,” I said. “I think between the two of us, we can break her down and find out the truth about what happened between her and Peg.”

Grace looked up from her plate and asked, “Suzanne, do you honestly believe that Marge could have had anything to do with killing her? We’ve both known her forever; she’s not a murderer.”

“I realize it’s hard to think of her that way, but honestly, how do we know that for sure?” I asked. “What’s a murderer look like? Maybe Marge thought she had a good reason to want Peg dead.”

Grace took another sip of her iced tea. “I just can’t believe it.”

“Do you like Burt better as a suspect? We’ve known him our whole lives, too. How about Peg’s niece, Heather? Do you think she looks like a killer? Honestly, I can’t see anybody killing Peg, but the woman didn’t poison herself, did she? I know this is a hard concept to believe, but a killer’s out there somewhere in April Springs, and I need to find whoever did it. There are too many folks who are going to believe that donut left my shop already poisoned, and I can’t have that.”

“I get it, believe me, I do,” she said. “You’re right. I guess I feel a little squeamish digging around in other people’s lives like this.”

“We’ve done it before,” I said.

“I know, but it didn’t seem as real to me, for some reason.”

I shrugged. “That’s because this is the first time we’ve done it where we know the suspects so well. If you want to back out, I understand completely.”

Grace frowned as she pushed her fork around on her empty plate. “No, I said I’d help you, and I meant it. Let’s go tackle Marge and see if we can break her.”

“Hang on a second,” I said as I put my hand on hers. “I’m not trying to ruin anybody’s life. I’m just looking for the truth.”

“And you honestly don’t believe we’re going to do some harm when we’re looking for it?”

I stood. “I guess there’s bound to be collateral damage, isn’t there?”

“Funny, the way you put it sounds a lot nicer than ruining innocent lives.”

We headed to Marge’s in silence, each left to our own thoughts. As Grace drove, I looked out the window, studying our small town, wondering how a community that looked so peaceful and idyllic could harbor so many secrets. As a child, I’d felt safe growing up in April Springs, leading a gentle existence filled with fireflies and long, summer days, but as I’d grown older, I’d come to realize that there were secrets everywhere, jealousies, anger, and pain lying just below the surface. And sometimes they managed to work their way to the surface, contaminating whatever they touched. I still loved my town, and its collection of odd birds, but that didn’t mean I was blind to its flaws.

“What do you two want?” Marge was obviously pretty unhappy to see me, and I wasn’t sure I could blame her. We hadn’t exactly left things on good terms the last time we’d spoken.

She wouldn’t even open the door when she saw it was me, staying behind the latched screen door that separated us instead. It wasn’t a solid barrier by any stretch of the imagination, but the symbolism of the closed door wasn’t lost on me.

“We just want to chat,” I said.

“Like last time? I think not.”

“I’m sorry if I was rude before,” I said. “I’ll be on my best behavior this time. I promise.”

Grace added, “If she gets out of line, I’ll rein her back in.” She had her charm turned up to its highest level, but it was clear Marge wasn’t buying it.

I repeated my request, “May we come in?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Are you here alone?” I asked.

“Burt is at the hardware store, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said. “He told me not to speak with you again without him present.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“I’m not talking about it,” she said adamantly.

“Then at least you can listen. We know what Peg was up to with the finances for her charities, and we found out that was the real reason you two fought. It had nothing to do with your fathers.”

Marge’s eyes narrowed. “Who have you been talking to?”

“I keep my sources confidential,” I said. “That way, you can be sure that whatever you tell me won’t get spread around town either.”

Marge didn’t look pleased with us at all. “There’s no need to tell me; it had to be Janice Deal. Whatever she told you, she’s lying.”

I was stumped as to how to handle that when Grace said, “Don’t worry, I’m sure the audits from the past ten years will clear everything up.”

“What audits?” Marge asked, the same question echoing in my own mind.

“Those fundraisers were set up to generate money for good causes. The police have been informed of Janice’s suspicions, so full audits are naturally the first thing they’re going to do. Any treasurers of committees Peg chaired in the past will be held accountable for their actions.”

That hit the mark dead on as it got Marge flustered. Her hands were shaking as she said, “I wrote the checks she told me to. That was my job.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “A lot of them were made out to P.E.G., weren’t they?”

“She told me it was a business she’d created to get our supplies and materials at cost,” Marge explained.

“And you weren’t suspicious?” I asked, “not even when you found out the company moniker matched Peg’s first name? Come on, Marge, you’re smarter than that. Did she give you a cut of what she was skimming? What happened? Did you want a bigger share? Is that what you two were really fighting about?”

“Suzanne Hart, you shut your mouth!” she yelled at me.

“Is that what happened, Marge? Tell me now, or tell the police later. I noticed that as soon as you got your inheritance, you dropped Peg like a hot cookie sheet. What’s the matter, didn’t you need the money anymore?”

“I didn’t take a dime from her, and I didn’t do anything wrong,” she insisted, her voice starting to break with the intensity of her emotions.

“Then why did you quit being Peg’s vice chairman?”

“Because I knew she was doing something she shouldn’t have been doing,” Marge said, her words tumbling out in a rush.

Grace asked, “If that’s true, why didn’t you tell anybody?”

“Who was I going to tell? Peg ran everything in April Springs, and if I made waves for her, she’d kill my reputation around town. I confronted her with my suspicions, and she said if I told anyone what I’d
uncovered, she’d place the blame squarely on me. After all, it was my signature on all of those checks. She never signed one, just stamped it
FOR DEPOSIT ONLY
, then put it into another account. Peg claimed she had two sets of records, one that told the story she wanted the world to see, and another one laying all the blame on me.”

It appeared that Peg lied about her finances in more places than the fake ledger she’d been filling out since her divorce. Knowing what she’d written in the log I’d found, it didn’t surprise me that there were at least two sets of books for every charity she ran.

“If that’s true,” I asked, “then why on earth did you agree to have your kitchen featured on the tour?”

“I didn’t want to! She blackmailed me into doing it,” Marge said, the tears starting to track down her cheeks. “I had no choice.”

I was about to press her further when Burt pulled up in his truck. As he rushed toward us, he asked, “What’s going on here?”

“We’re just talking,” I said.

One look at Marge was all he needed. “You’d both better leave.”

Grace and I stood our ground.

I gestured to Marge and said, “Not unless she tells us to go.”

Marge looked from us to Burt, and then back again. “You’d better leave,” she said softly.

Burt looked at us triumphantly.

I wasn’t about to let him have his moment of victory.
“That’s fine, we were finished here anyway. We got all we needed. Let’s go, Grace.”

We were nearly back at her car when Burt approached us. There was a look of anger on his face that I’d never seen before. “I need to talk to you.”

“Make up your mind,” I said as I opened Grace’s car door. “First you want us to leave, and now you’re ordering us to stay.”

“What did she tell you?” he asked, his voice barely more than a low growl.

“Ask her yourself,” I said as Grace started the car.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Burt said.

“How are you going to stop us? Are you going to throw yourself in front of the car? Don’t tempt us, Burt.”

He shook his head. “Suzanne, what’s gotten into you? This doesn’t concern you, and yet you keep butting in where you don’t belong.”

I put a hand on Grace’s arm. “Hang on a second.” Then I turned to Burt and said, “It concerned me the second someone poisoned one of my donuts. That makes it my business. And, you know what? There’s probably no one in town with more access to rat poison than a man who runs a hardware store.” As I stared at him, I said without thinking, “I just realized that your hair color is close to matching the person I saw at the crime scene right before Peg was murdered.” It was true; it could have easily been Burt I’d seen hiding near the courtyard of Marge’s home.

His eyes flared as I said it. “You’re out of line. Leave us alone.”

“You should worry about me coming after you next, not Marge.”

“Is that a threat, Suzanne?”

“No, sir. It’s more like a promise.”

I turned to Grace and said, “We’re finished here. Let’s go.”

As Grace drove off, I looked back to see what Burt was doing. He’d made no move to rejoin Marge on the front porch. Instead, he stood there in the driveway, watching us until we disappeared from sight.

Grace said, “If I were you, I’d find another place to shop for my hardware from now on.”

I shrugged. “I’d already planned on doing that.” I let out a lungful of air, then added, “That was certainly interesting, wasn’t it?”

“I wonder if Marge realizes yet that she just gave us a great motive for her committing the murder.”

“If she doesn’t know by now, Burt will understand the ramifications as soon as she relays our conversation with her, you can believe that. You want to know something that’s funny?”

Grace said, “Sure, I could always use a good laugh.”

“Not funny that way, funny odd,” I said. “Neither one of them ever mentioned calling the police, no matter how belligerent we got with them.”

“
You
were belligerent. I was sweet,” Grace said.

“Whatever. Don’t you find that strange?”

“No, Marge admitted she had something to hide when she said Peg had threatened her.”

“That’s the thing with secrets. They always have a way of coming up to the surface if you give them enough time.”

Grace asked, “So, who should we talk to now? I wonder if Father Pete’s around. We can take a swing at him, while we’re going after people in April Springs.”

“Believe me, if I thought he had something to do with Peg Masterson’s death, I wouldn’t hesitate.”

My cell phone laughed at me, and I saw my mother was calling. Before I answered it, Grace said, “I thought you were going to change that ringtone to something normal.”

“I was, but I’ve kind of gotten used it.” I opened the phone and said, “Hi, Momma, what’s up?”

She nearly screamed at me, “Suzanne Hart, have you completely lost your mind?”

“Probably. Why do you ask?”

She said, “I just got off the phone with Marge Rankin, and the poor woman was in tears. What did you do to her?”

“I just asked her a few innocent questions,” I said.

I saw Grace’s eyebrows go up at that, and I frowned at her.

A bit mollified, Momma said, “That’s not the way I heard it.”

“Who are you going to believe, Marge or your own daughter?”

She paused way too long for my taste.

I said, “I’m waiting.”

“I’m thinking,” my mother said.

“When you figure it out, give me a call back,” I said as I hung up on her.

Grace said, “Oh, you’re in trouble now.”

“I’m a little too old to be grounded,” I said. “She’s just going to have to deal with it.”

“I admire you. Your mother scares the pants off me. She always has.”

“That’s because you let her,” I said.

“So, all of the drama aside, what do we do next?”

“I’m not exactly sure,” I said. “Let me get back to you on that. In the meantime, why don’t we just drive around until something comes to us?”

Grace kept looking at her watch, and I finally asked, “Is there somewhere you need to be?”

“I’ve kind of got a dinner date, but I can cancel it if you need me.”

I said, “Pull over.”

We were a block from the donut shop, and she did as I asked.

I got out of the car and said, “Have you lost your mind? If you’ve found someone crazy enough to ask you out, you should go.”

“That’s kind of what I was thinking,” she said with a smile.

“Who is it? Anybody I know?”

“No, he lives in Union Square. I’m meeting him at Napoli’s for dinner.”

She knew that was where Jake and I had gone when we’d eaten out on those rare times he was in town. No wonder she hadn’t wanted to say anything to me about her plans.

“Go on, then, get out of here,” I said. “Don’t be late on my account. Have fun, okay?”

“I’ll try. Call me if anything comes up, I mean it.”

“I will,” I promised as I watched her drive away.

At least one of us had a social life. I wondered what Jake was doing for dinner. No doubt he was having takeout at police headquarters as he caught up on any progress Chief Martin had made in his absence. I couldn’t imagine the file being very thick, but then again, I didn’t have a great deal of faith in our fair chief.

As I walked past Two Cows and a Moose, I decided to pop inside. The three stuffed animals the newsstand had been named for were on their shelf of honor above the register, and I saw that they were each decked out in Halloween costumes. Cow had a vampire cape on, Spots was wearing a cowboy outfit, and Moose had on a superhero ensemble. Emily Hargraves had taught me early on that the way to tell the difference between the two cows was the green ribbon tied to Spots’s tail.