Cut, Crop & Die (25 page)

She laughed quietly. “That’s one way to put it.” Her eyes drooped with fatigue. The excitement of the evening was over. The adrenaline rush caused by finding the fake Fido had worn off; exhaustion hit us both simultaneously.

“I appreciate how you acted about Gracie. Letting her come here. I know you don’t like dogs—”

“Pardon?” Sheila tilted her head. “I don’t like dogs? What non sense.”

“But you’ve never warmed to Gracie.” I faced my mother-in-law, thinking how she made the best of what God had given her. She was not a naturally beautiful woman. Her nose was too big, her eyes too narrowly set, and her mouth too thin. However, no one who ever met Sheila described her as anything but attractive, a testament to her careful grooming.

She sank down into a chair and shook her head at me. “I happen to love dogs. Before you met George, I had a darling bichon frise we brought over from England. You couldn’t get them here at the time. Scooter and I went everywhere together. He slept with me, sat at my feet as I ate, walked right at my heels. Then the vet found a cancerous tumor on his lungs. It broke my heart to hear him cough and gasp for air. Seeing him suffer was too much to bear. I held him in my arms while the vet put him to sleep. I vowed I couldn’t go through that again. I cried for months.”

“Oh, Sheila, I’m so sorry! How awful for you.”

She nodded. “It’s odd timing for this conversation. Rabbi Sarah and I talked about Scooter just the other day. She encouraged me to get another dog, a rescue animal. The rabbi says God gave man dominion over animals, but animals have dominion over our hearts. So it all evens out.” This last sentence was given extra emphasis by a wave of her slender hand.

I was sitting on her sofa with my head on my hand, thinking. Her revelation surprised me. I didn’t know she was a dog lover. I’d known Sheila for nearly thirteen years. Our relationship was an iceberg. Ten percent sat above the water, but the majority was still unknown and unexplored at deeper depths. Just as she didn’t know me, I knew very little about her. Tonight I’d seen a tantalizing hint of the woman other people so admired.

Almost on cue, Gracie walked from me to her. Stopping beside the older woman, my dog initiated a low, slow wag of her tail. Sheila and Gracie were face to face. Gracie lowered her big head, pressing her muzzle into the open hand lying in Sheila’s lap. At first, my mother-in-law pulled away, but Gracie persisted, lifting her nose and sniffing Sheila’s face gently in that probing way dogs have. To my surprise, Sheila raised both hands and began to massage the base of Gracie’s velvety ears, eliciting a low moan of pleasure from my dog.

“I’ve never been around a dog this big. Scooter was portable. He was my baby. Wherever I was, he was happy to be. Losing him, well, it was quite difficult. Of course, it broke my heart to lose Harry and George, but people are different. With people, even those you love, there are irritations. Bothers. Misunderstandings. But Scooter was purebred love. In his doggy mind, I hung the moon and made the sun rise each morning. He woke up each and every day eager to spend every moment of it with me.”

Her voice was full of emotion. Gracie leaned in to give Sheila a long, gentle lick on the cheek.

“Good night, Sheila,” I said a bit later from the top of her dramatic staircase. With one hand on Gracie’s collar, I paused outside a second floor guest room. “Thank you again. For the most part, this was like being a princess in a fairy tale.” I gave a small snort. “Except my prince charming was a liar.” I had trouble thinking of Detweiler as that, but he was, wasn’t he?

She lingered with her hand on her doorknob. Through the opening, I could make out the small sofa in her bedroom suite, and a large enamel vase filled with fresh flowers on the low mahogany table nearby. “It’s too bad about that young man. I can certainly see why you found him attractive.”

Gracie and I entered the guest room in tandem. Once the lock clicked softly behind me, all the starch went out of my panties. Finally, I had no reason to act strong. I collapsed onto the big bed, burrowed my head into the pillows, and began to cry. All the pent-up emotion of the evening flowed out of me. Egging it on was the raw, angry, pain of disappointment.

Despair swallowed me and sucked me down into darkness.

Gracie’s cold nose nudged along my legs where they dangled off the bedspread. She snuffled her way up and down my bare skin, whining softly. I kept my hands over my face and cried and cried. It felt as if my life was spinning in an out-of-control centrifuge, and without the pressure of my fingers to my skin, small parts of me would break off and fly away.

Lord knew, I’d been trying to hold it all together for most of the evening. Now I abandoned myself to well-deserved misery.

“Dang him,” I pounded the bedspread. “How could he?” Worried that vestiges of makeup would stain Sheila’s bedclothes, I went to the bathroom for tissues. I perched on the closed toilet seat, trying to calm myself down. I’d graduated from crying to sobbing and now hiccupping. My diaphragm spasmed repeatedly, making weird huck-huck-huck noises. Gracie’s anxiety about my welfare brought her over to investigate.

That was a mistake. The marble bathroom floor was slick.

Her paws went in four different directions out from under her. Her eyes hula-hooped in panic. I grabbed her collar. She skated around, moving her feet in a cartoonish “woop-woop-woop” of continual motion as she worked to stay upright. I gripped her collar, but her backside slipped down and out. Keeping a hand on her neck, I moved behind her, jacking up her back end. The front end started sinking. I instinctively jerked up on her collar. That had me choking her, so I let go quickly. I put both hands around her neck and lifted. Her head came up but her legs splayed, and her rear end traveled in the opposite direction. Dropping to the floor, I positioned my arms like shelf brackets under her torso. Now she could stand, but she couldn’t move. And I couldn’t maintain my Atlas-like position. She was far too heavy.

I used one hand to push her into a sit. With my other arm supporting her barrel chest, I crawled along, half-dragging and half-pushing her in that seated position until she made a scrambling leap for the carpet and bounded onto the bed. Her exit pulled the props out from under me. I came down on the tile with a loud, “Ooof.”

Something about collapsing on the floor while my dog stared down from a posh four-poster struck me as funny. I looked up at her and giggled. Gracie raised one eyebrow and yawned. Her tail beat the air, and I swear, her floppy lips curled in a self-satisfied grin.

I dragged myself to the side of bed, stripped naked, and tunneled under the covers.

Gracie nuzzled me to say she had to go.

It was half-past six in the morning, and I wanted to sleep longer, but the thought of a Great Dane-sized puddle on Sheila’s carpet was a powerful incentive. I grabbed a housecoat from the closet, padded down the back stairs, and headed to the kitchen for Advil and water before leading Gracie into the backyard. Sheila’s pool shimmered in the lemon-yellow dawn. Emerald green dragonflies buzzed back and forth, making landings to test the tensile strength of water. Pots of pink flowering begonias, red geraniums, and blue lobelia as well as trellises covered with blooming roses turned the pool into an oasis of calm. I rested on a lounge chair and enjoyed the chip-chip-chip back and forth of two flame-red male cardinals staking out their territory. Gracie finished her business and strolled to my side, parking her carcass with a hearty sigh.

I told myself I could think about Detweiler for twenty minutes and no more. After time was up, I planned to get on with my life.

Detective Chad Detweiler and I met the day of George’s murder. He had the unhappy task of telling me my husband died. In the coming months, I convinced him George was the victim of foul play. Another death occurred and Detweiler came to the store to question me. That was the day he met Gracie. I smiled, remembering how his whole demeanor had changed from tough guy cop to the little boy who had long loved Great Danes. Later he brought Anya a big jar of tadpoles from his parents’ farm. When the killer carjacked me, chased me through a state park, and shot me, Detweier was first on the scene, riding along in the ambulance, holding my hand in the emergency room. Since then, he’d become a stable part of my life. Chatting with me about raising Anya. Stopping by the store and our house. Checking whether the killer contacted me.

And finally, he kissed me.

I realized with a jolt I was in love with the man.

I loved his eyes, his body (or what I knew of it), and most of all his devotion to what was right. How could a man with such high morals have misled me? Better yet, why had he? And if he was going to be a cad, well, there’d been plenty of nights I would have gladly taken him into my arms. So why didn’t he take full advantage of my ignorance and trust? Why did he stop with flirtation?

Okay, I told myself, enough. I glanced at my watch. This is a waste of time. That’s over. Move on. Focus on the future. Figuring out who killed Yvonne Gaynor would go a long way toward improving my life.

So, who did it? And why? The gossip supplied by Clancy Whitehead and Serena Jensen pointed to Perry Gaynor. Who else could it have been? Well, there was Rena. Was she tired of sharing Perry with Yvonne? Maybe she thought he’d marry her and dump his mistress? Or maybe she killed Yvonne and framed Perry for the murder. Maybe there was yet another person involved, someone not part of Perry’s love rectangle.

Could Bama have done it? I was still waiting for Bucky to call from Art House. Was Yvonne involved in getting Bama fired? Yvonne seemed to enjoy causing problems for people. Did my co-worker bide her time, knowing their paths would cross again? Bama had access to the food. Heck, she’d done the ordering and worked with the caterer. If they knew each other from before, could Bama have had access to the Epi-Pen?

The Epi-Pen. Fewer people had access to it than to the scones. First of all, the food we served was handled by caterers, our staff, and volunteer helpers. But there was the food the scrapbookers brought along. Still … the syringe could only have been touched by someone with access to Yvonne’s purse. That was a much more specific target. The food could have been tainted to sicken anybody, but the empty Epi-Pen could only affect one person—Yvonne. So whoever touched the pen knew (a) that Yvonne carried it, (b) where she carried it, and (c) how intense her allergic reaction would be.

Something bothered me. Beyond my grasp was an idea. A half-formed thought about Yvonne’s allergies …

“We have to talk about your house. Your neighborhood isn’t safe, Kiki. You’ve already had two break-ins and now this.” Sheila calmly put a thin layer of butter on an English muffin. Gracie and I had joined her in the kitchen.

“I know. You’re right. In another area of town, someone pulling a prank like last night would have been spotted, reported, and hauled in by the police. I’d like to move, honest, but my monthly rental is all I can afford. Especially since I want to be close to Anya’s school and the store.” I balanced scrambled eggs on my fork. My head felt tender, but the water and Advil were keeping a headache at bay. Protein would help. So would the huge glass of tomato juice Linnea placed at my elbow without comment.

Sheila said, “Don’t be silly. When I die my money will go to Anya anyway, so it should help her now. I can contribute to suitable housing for both of you.”

“But I don’t want to be beholden to you. I need to be independent.”

“Is your pride more important than your safety? More to the point: Is your pride more important than Anya’s safety? Don’t be stupid.” She took a bite of her eggs and chewed them thoughtfully. “What are you planning to tell Anya about the detective?”

I took a long drink of the hot herbal tea Linnea gave me. Evidently, she had a whole bag of tricks for coping with hangovers. Maybe that had been another reason Sheila invited me to come home with her. I said, “I’ve thought about that. I guess I should tell her the truth. Otherwise, she’ll wonder if his absence has anything to do with her. Knowing my daughter, she’ll ask me how the evening went. I’ll mention seeing him … and his wife.”