Stilettos & Scoundrels (32 page)

“
Cooper
, can I ask you a question? One that is silly.”

“Sure, Pres
.
”

“I know you remember that night so many years ago. I thought we really connected. Well, as much as teenagers can. I thought you liked me.”

“I did like you. Why?”

“Well, that Monday at school
,
you acted like I didn’t exist. I went to talk to you and you completely blew me off.”

“Oh, Presley. Is that what you think I did?”
He gave me
a slight squeeze.

“Well
,
isn’t it? What do you call ignoring me in the halls and not replying to the notes I sent you? I know it sounds so juvenile now, and honestly, it doesn’t matter why. I’m just curious after all these years.”

“Ok
ay
, ok
ay
,”
Cooper
said laughing.

“Stop laughing,”
I
leaned back and punched him in the arm.
“I know this is stupid and petty, but I just want to know. I need closure,” I said with a smile.

“I don’t mean to laugh
;
it just sounds so funny to hear you talk about passing notes.
But
you’re right. I guess to you it looked that way
,
and I can’t blame you
, but I was just
scared of you rejecting me. I figured there was no way you would ever want people to know we were friends
,
so I wanted to spare you that.”

“Should
n’t
that have been my decision? And really
,
after how well we got along that night and everything we talked about
,
I don’t see how you would think that.”

“I’m sorry, Presley. But I was a kid, a stupid kid.”

“Was?”

“Ha!”

“You owe me you know. For all the mental anguish you caused me.

“Oh, I’m sure you have suffered greatly.”

“Maybe I have.
Maybe I have had many sleepless nights over the last ten years wondering why you rejected me. How do you know I haven’t had years of therapy to deal with this trauma?
”

Cooper looked at me as if to say
yeah right
.
“Well, I’m sorry. Forgive me?”

“Hmmm…I don’t know.”

“What will it take?”

“What do you have?”

“This.”
Cooper then leaned over and kissed me
.

I decided this was definitely worth all my mental anguish. It was just causing anguish of a different kind. But this kind was welcome.

I
came out of Home Depot squintin
g in the sunlight, thinking I
could finally go home.
I
was exhausted after spending all
morning running errands for my
mother.
After g
ett
ing up at the crack of dawn, I
was tired and dirty. Aft
er the events of last night, I had been guilted into doing my
mother’s bidding.
My mother
had been furious at Brian for withholding the fact he had a girlfriend
.
In fact, I thought my
mother
was more upset over it than I
was. S
ue
also held
me
responsible for the broken window.
I
had
called Dirt earlier to try to smooth things over and to see if he had any leads on who could have broken the window or killed the Senator for that matter, and
learned that
he was no closer to figuring out who had done either one. However, he still wasn’t happy with
me,
and
I
didn’
t know if he would have told me
anything
if he did know
it. My
dad boarded up the window
, and my
mother
, I figured,
spent all her free time on the phone with her friends, reliving the drama and complaining about
me. I
thought
I
should get points for giving
my
mother something
concrete
to complain about.

As I walked out to my
car,
I thought maybe I
would make a quick run back to talk with Betty. The gossip
I
heard while in Katy’s salon yesterday made
me
think of a few more questions to ask
the town baker
, and
I
felt
I
deserved a muffin. A girl had to keep up her strength, and the cranberry walnut muffins Betty said they would
be making today were calling my
name.
I
also had to make time to go talk to
the FBI; Dirt had reminded me that I
had to do that today. Since the police station was right down from Betty’s
,
it would be a crime not to stop in for a muffin.

It seemed like more and more people didn’t look favorably upon the Senator, if you listened to gossip and read between some of the lines, which didn’t necessarily make
my
job
of
find
ing
the murderer any easier. Not knowing what
I
was doing didn’t help either. This was almost getting to be like the proverbial needle in the haystack.
My
cell phone rang somewhere deep in
my
purse and both
my
hands were full.
I
started to juggle
my
mother’s packages, trying to get a hand free.
I
knew
I
should have
used
a cart.
I
didn’t want to miss the call in case it was important. After grabbing on to every other item
in my purse first
,
I located the phone, just as
the ringing stopped.
Damn it.
I
looked at the caller ID and saw
that the call had been from
Trevor.
T
his was a call
I
didn’t mind missing. He’d already left
me
a few messages to check on
my
progress, or lack thereof. When
we
had talked after the murder occurred, he had been excited about having such an exclusive scoop, an
d he hadn’t stopped hounding me
since. To be honest
,
I
was stuck on how to write this article and
on choosing
the angle
to
take.
I
also wanted to solve this thing
because it would be a much better story. Trevor hounding me was stressing me
out.

I
was about six feet away from
my
car when
I
noticed someone standing by it. Again?
I
was going to have to start park
ing where people couldn’t see me
. Or maybe this was a good excuse to get a new car. This was getting ridiculous. However, this time it wasn’t
Cooper waiting to chew me
out
; I
was briefly disappointed.
I wouldn’t have minded seeing him again after yesterday. Just thinking about it made me flush.
Instead, it was Helen Daniels waiting for
me
. That was a shocker
.
H
ow in the world did Helen know
I
was there
?
Iwas surprised Helen even knew where Home Depot was. I
wasn’t sure if
I
should be relieved or worried. Something told
me
this wasn’t a social call to see how
I was enjoying my
day
or
a visit to invite me
to the next Junior League meet
ing at the bingo hall. Maybe I
coul
d distract Helen by engaging me in conversation about our
favorite bag designer, Louis Vuitton. What was the proper protocol for addressing a new widow
you had spied k
issing some other guy
?

“Hi, Helen,”
I
said. “I’m so sorry for your loss.” The look on Helen’s face
told me
she wasn’t buying the sincere routine. Helen looked more
angry
than
grief-stricken, n
ot what one would expect from someone whose husband
had been
killed two days ago. She was still dressed to the nines and had awesome taste in accessories.
Were those Manolos?
I
would kill to be able to afford those shoes. Okay, bad choice of words
, but I
would. What was a small prison sentence for awesome shoes?

“Who the hell do you think you are, snooping around my
business?” Helen snapped at me
, hands on hips,
with
looks that could kill on their own. With all this anger
,
maybe she did kill Tom. This sure wasn’t a friendly visit. Good thing that wasn’t what
I
was expecting. Helen didn’t look nearly as attractive as usual with her face all scrunched up in anger, and she had quite a loud screech. Helen took another step closer to
me
, wagging her fin
ger in my
face and shaking with anger. “You need to stay away from me and stop sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong!”

I
took a step back involuntarily.
She
was a little scary all mad like that.
I
was
n’t easily intimidated, but if I
had been, Helen might scare me
.
“Helen, I am just trying to find out who killed your husband. Don’t you want to know who did this? Don’t you want justice?”
I
tried
to
reason with her, but Helen wasn’t biting. Did
n’t
she care, or
did she have
something to hide
?
There had to be a reason she was acting like this.

“Does it matter? Does any of that matter? It won’t bring him back, nothing will. He’ll still be dead no matter what you do. You
r
snooping into my personal affairs isn’t going to bring him back. All you are going to do is spread more rumors, like there isn’t enough of that going on already in this Podunk town!” Helen started crying. Even though
I
knew there was something Helen was hiding,
I
really didn’t think her deep dark secret was killing her husband. Despite what kind of relationship they may have had, she seemed genuinely distraught
, a quality I wouldn’t expect in a
cold-blooded killer. She may have been having an affair, and after meeting the Senator,
I
certainly couldn’t blame her, but her actions told
me
there were still feelings there. She just didn’t seem the cold-blooded killer type.
Plus, murderers didn’t usually dress this well, did they?
I
had never read an Ann Rule book where the bad guy was highly accessorized.

“It was bad enough I had to worry about what that asshole was doing to my reputation when he was alive. Now that he’s dead, I want to be left alone.”

Okay, so maybe
I
was wrong about feelings still being there. There were feelings all right, just maybe not the warm and fuzzy type.

“So, help me figure this out, Helen. Let’s stop the gossipmongers. Who could have killed him? Who might have wanted to see him dead? Did he have a lot of enemies?”

“Like I could even count the people he pissed off on a daily basis. He was in politics, he was always pissing people off,” Helen relayed bitterly. “Besides, like I said, he was an asshole. I would have killed him myself long ago if I had thought I could get away with it.”

Sheesh, tell me how you really feel, Helen
,
I thought to my
self.
You might want to be a little more careful who you tell that thought to.
Helen noticed my
expression.

“Please…I wouldn’t have actually killed him. It’s a figure of speech.”