A Chili Death: A Classic Diner Mystery (22 page)

“Thanks for trying.  I couldn’t get much out of his employees, which isn’t really all that big a surprise.  I just wish there was some way we could nail down his driving alibi.”

“We could see when the oil was changed the last time in his car,” I said.  “If it was recent enough, the mileage on it now might tell us something.”

“That’s a great idea,” Moose said.  He threw me the keys to his truck as he said, “Drive around the block a few times, and make sure that Bob sees you take off.”

“How am I supposed to do that, spin your tires on the pavement?”

Moose physically winced at the thought.  “There’s no reason to do anything crazy, Victoria.  Blowing the horn should work fine.”

I couldn’t believe he was even letting me behind the wheel.  It must be important, whatever he was about to do.  “Where are you going to be while I’m your decoy?”

“I’m going to sneak back in and see if I can get to those records.”

“You’re taking an awful chance, aren’t you?” I asked my grandfather.

“Go big or go home,” he said as he ducked behind a car and headed back toward the shop.

I got into his truck and had to move the seat up so I could even drive it.  After starting it up, I honked at nothing in particular, but a woman on the road in front of me must have taken offense because she honked right back, and even added a hand gesture of her own.  My, my, what was happening to our friendly little town?  First murder, and now this, rudeness on the highway?  I forgot it almost instantly and drove Moose’s truck around for at least ten minutes.  As I drove, it began to rain, just a shower at first, but then it began to pick up in its intensity.  On my third lap, I found my grandfather, soaking wet from the rain, waiting for me by the stop sign in front of the shop.

“Slide over,” he said as he opened the driver’s side door.

“Let me at least park first,” I said.

“I can handle it from here,” he answered, and I had no choice but to move into the passenger seat.  I hadn’t had the opportunity to move the bench seat back to its original position, and Moose’s chest was against the steering wheel, but it was his own fault.

“Did you have any trouble?” he asked me as he wiped a hand through his hair.

“I should be asking you the same question.  Were you able to find anything out?”

He nodded, but pursed his lips as he did so.  “I didn’t even have to look it up.  Wayne, his head mechanic, was there, and he told me that Bob’s car was due for an oil change last week, but that he hadn’t gotten around to it.  They don’t keep logs of mileage, so it was a dead-end.”

“Sorry about that,” I said, deflated that we hadn’t been able to prove anything one way or the other.”

“Don’t be glum about it,” Moose said.  “You thought of the idea, which was more than I was able to do.  It was a great plan.  You can’t help it that it didn’t work out.  Now, on to Cynthia’s.”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” I asked my grandfather as he drove to the hair salon.

“Murder is bad for everybody’s business,” he said, trying not to sound so happy about it.

“I know that it is, but digging into this isn’t the worst thing you’ve ever had to do in your life, is it?”

“I do like the puzzle aspects of it,” Moose admitted.  “It will feel good if we can catch the killer and bring whoever it is to justice.”

“Except we’re calling the sheriff first thing when we figure it out, remember?”

“I’m not likely to forget it,” he said.  “Just because one of our witnesses turned out to be a bust doesn’t mean that the other one has to.” 

“I saw something interesting in Bob’s office,” I said, mostly just to be making conversation.

Moose was deep in thought.  He glanced over at me and asked, “Yeah?  What was that?”

“Bob’s bill of sale was back on his wall.  He said someone from the cleaning crew knocked the frame off the wall, and they didn’t bring it back until they could get the glass replaced.  That’s one loose end tied up.”

I wasn’t even certain that he even heard me when Moose glanced over at me and said, “Victoria, you’re about due for a new hairstyle, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m happy just the way it is,” I said, subconsciously pulling at my ponytail.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to freshen your look up some?”

“Moose, I know what you’re getting at, and you can just forget it.  I’m not letting Cynthia touch my hair, especially not now.”

“Why now in particular?” Moose asked as he pulled up in her parking lot.

“Would you like a possible murderer waving a pair of sharp cutting shears around your throat?” I asked.

“That’s a good point,” he conceded.  “I just thought it might put her at ease if you were in the chair.”

“You can do it yourself, it you’re that keen on it.  She does men’s hair, too, you know.”

He laughed.  “Not even if it helped us solve this case.  Lester Davenport might not have as steady a hand as he once did, but my barber does just fine by me.”

I personally thought he was crazy.  Since Lester had hit eighty, I had a hunch that his hands weren’t as steady as they’d once been, but it was my grandfather’s decision.

“So, we go in and start quizzing her again right off the bat,” I said.

“Unless you’ve got a better plan,” he answered.

“I’m sorry to say that I don’t,” I replied as we got out of his pickup and headed for the front door.  The rain had let up for the moment, but from the darkening skies, it didn’t appear that would be the case for very long.

“Cynthia, do you have a second?” I asked her as Moose and I walked into the hair salon.  No one else was there, and I was happy that my grandfather and I were the only visitors. 

“I’m really busy,” she said as she flitted about straightening magazines and making sure that everything was just so.

“This won’t take long,” Moose said.  “It’s about Howard Lance.”

She accidently knocked a few magazines off one of the tables at the sound of the murder victim’s name, and as she hurried to pick them up, she said, “You know what?  I’m sick of talking about that man.  I’ve told you both all that I can.  Why don’t you go bother Bob Chastain?  He can’t find his receipt, either.  It was hanging on the wall before, and now it’s gone.  He had just as much reason to want to see something happen to that man as I did.”

“We just left him there.  As a matter of fact, it turns out that his receipt was just misplaced all along,” I said.  “Now it’s your turn.”  I tried to add my friendliest smile so she wouldn’t feel so intimidated by the barrage of questions.  It was too bad I hadn’t made Moose stay out in his truck for this interview, too.  He could be threatening without meaning to when he failed to smile, and there was no sign of his trademark grin at the moment.

Cynthia shook her head, and then swiped at her cheek for a moment.  “Fine, I’ll talk.  Just let me turn off something in the back.  I don’t want to set the place on fire.”

I nodded, hoping that she’d keep the door open, but apparently she didn’t want an audience.  As we waited for her, Moose asked, “Did she seem particularly jumpy to you, too?”

“She’s always been a bit flighty, you know that,” I said.

“I realize that, but there’s something more to it than that.  I think if we put just a little more pressure on her, she’s going to crack.”

“Do you honestly want her to have a breakdown because of us?” I asked my grandfather.

“I didn’t mean it that way, Victoria, but I do believe that she’s about to confess.”

I looked at Moose to see if he could possibly be joking, but he was deadly serious.  “Do you really think she did it?”

“Why else would she be acting so guilty?  She called you at the diner for information about the case, didn’t she?”

I admitted as much, and Moose continued, “So, don’t you think it’s more than a little suspicious that she won’t talk to us now?  What’s changed between now and then?  Is her guilty conscience finally catching up with her, or is she afraid that we are hot on her trail?”

“Lower your voice, Moose,” I said.  “We don’t want her to hear us.”

“She closed the door.  How’s she going to do that?”  Moose looked at the door she’d exited through, and then asked, “What’s keeping her?  Surely she’s had time to turn off whatever was on back there.”

Moose put a hand on the door, but I tried to stop him.  “What is she going to think if we just barge in without even knocking?”

He smiled at me, knocked once, and then opened the door.  “We did no such thing.  See?  I just knocked.”

I was about to apologize to Cynthia when I noticed that the back door to the building itself was standing wide open, and her car was gone.

“Where did she go?” I asked Moose, but he was already on his phone. 

“Sheriff?  It’s Moose.  Cynthia Wilson is on the run.  What?  Victoria and I dropped by the salon to ask her a few questions, and she dodged out the back when we started pressing her.”  There was a pause, and then Moose said, “I want to go, too.  Okay, that’s fine.  She’ll understand.  Bye.”

“What was that all about?” I asked, even though I had a creeping suspicion that I already knew.  “Sheriff Croft is swinging by here to pick me up so we can chase her down,” he admitted. 

“What about me?” I asked.

“He’ll only let one of us go with him,” Moose said.  “I’m sorry, Victoria.”

“That’s fine.  Just be careful.”  I knew there was no use trying to argue with him about it.  It was clear that my grandfather had already made up his mind.

I walked out onto the porch with him as the rain intensified.  If my grandfather noticed it, he didn’t comment.  Moose handed me the keys to his truck for the second time that day, a record as far as I knew.  “Don’t speed on the way home.”

“Don’t worry.  Your truck’s in good hands with me.  I’ll try not to wreck it.”

He winced a little, but he didn’t reply to my comment.  The sheriff was there in less than two minutes, and as Moose ran to the squad car through the rain, I waved to the sheriff, but either he didn’t see me, or he chose not to respond.

After they were both gone, I wondered what I should do about the hair salon.  If I left it as it was, I was afraid that someone might walk in and start taking things, though I wasn’t exactly sure that there was anything of real value there.  I finally decided to turn off the lights, flip the OPEN sign to CLOSED, and push the lock button as I walked out.  It wasn’t the same as dead-bolting the door, but I didn’t have a key, and at least this would discourage an honest thief.  I tried to wrap my head around the idea that Cynthia was the killer.  True, she’d been jumpy about Howard Lance from the start, but that didn’t necessarily make her a murderer.  Why had she run, though?  Most likely Moose was right, and he and the sheriff were in hot pursuit.  There was nothing for me to do but drive back to the diner and see if I could lend a hand there.

As I drove back to The Charming Moose, the rain really picked up, coming down in sheets as I tried to see the road ahead of me.  I’d taken a shortcut to get there, cutting past a few empty lots that were heavily wooded along the way.  That was one of the things I loved about Jasper Fork.  Though it was a bustling community with plenty of businesses and residences, a part of it was still untamed.

The rain was getting worse by the second, with lightning flashes quickly followed by peals of thunder, and I wasn’t that familiar with Moose’s truck.  I decided that the best thing to do was pull over and wait it out.  No one was expecting me anywhere, so it wasn’t as though anybody would have reason to be worried about me.  I looked for the emergency flashers on Moose’s truck, but it was so old that apparently it didn’t have any.  Putting the park lights on instead, I shut off the engine and listened to the rain as it hammered down on the roof and the hood of the truck.  It was so loud, I could barely hear myself think.  How long was this downpour going to last?  As I sat there watching it come down in sheets, I thought about Cynthia, and suddenly I had a hunch that Moose and the sheriff were wrong.  Sure, she had motive, there was no doubt about that, but then so did Bob Chastain.  While Cynthia was in full panic mode, Bob had been unusually blasé about the whole thing.  The trouble was, I had a hard time believing that either one of them had the coldhearted ability to hit a man from behind and kill him while he was bending over to tie a shoe.  When I considered the nature of the crime, I wondered how someone could follow Howard Lance into our diner, and then our freezer, while Greg and I had been eating less than twenty feet away.  It seemed less and less likely that Cynthia could ever do that, no matter what her motivation might be.

But Bob could.  I realized at that moment that I’d discounted something important worth considering.  It wasn’t just the opportunity to commit a crime.  It was also the disposition.  If Howard Lance had been poisoned, I would have had no trouble believing that Cynthia might have done it, but this was a death blow delivered while the victim’s back had been turned.  How hard did you have to hit someone to kill him?  And how about that framed receipt that had ‘suddenly’ reappeared on his wall?  Was his story about the cleaner true, or had Bob recovered the document from his victim, and displayed it proudly as a trophy of what he’d done?

As I began to think more about Bob, I realized something that had been staring openly at me for quite some time.