Murder by the Slice (21 page)

“The burglary or the murder?”

“Either. Both.”

Sam took a deep breath and blew it out as he parked the pickup at the curb in front of the house. “The fella I knew at Poolville was always quiet but friendly, always got along with everybody, worked hard, and never caused a lick of trouble. I know people say those are the ones you got to watch out for. But no, I don’t believe it. Gary Oakley’s not a killer. Then again, I wouldn’t have said he was a professional burglar, either, and for several years that’s exactly what he was. So I don’t know, Phyllis. I want to believe he’s innocent. I really do. But I just don’t know.”

Phyllis could see how conflicted he was. Sam Fletcher was a straightforward sort of man who believed what he believed and had the strength of his convictions. It was unusual for him to be torn this way between his head and his heart.

“We need to talk about this again,” she finally said. “There are some things you should know about—things that the sheriff isn’t aware of.”

Sam glanced sharply over at her. With a frown, he said, “Phyllis, have you been detectin’ again? You know how Mike feels about that—”

“Hold your horses. I just happened to see something that I haven’t told anyone about yet.”

“Does it have any bearin’ on the case?”

“It might. Or it might not. I’m not trying to be mysterious, truly I’m not. I just don’t know yet.”

“So tell me about it. You know I’ll keep quiet if that’s what you want.”

She believed him. He had helped her look into those other murders, and she trusted him to keep her confidences. And if she was going to go ahead with her plans, she would likely need his help again.

Before she could say anything else, though, the front door of the house opened and Eve stepped out onto the porch. Phyllis thought she had seen the curtains in the living room flick aside a little as they pulled up, and she had no trouble believing that Eve had been watching and waiting for their return.
Sam’s
return, rather. Eve wouldn’t care that much about Phyllis’s comings and goings.

As Eve came down the still-damp walk toward the pickup, Phyllis glanced over at Sam and said, “We’ll talk more about it later, all right?”

He nodded. “Don’t forget. If there’s any way I can help Gary, I want to do it.”

Phyllis wasn’t as interested in clearing Gary Oakley’s name as she was in simply finding out the truth about the murder of Shannon Dunston. But she didn’t tell Sam that. If they worked together, they might be able to accomplish both goals.

“You two have been sitting out here for a long time,” Eve said with a hard-edged smile as Phyllis opened the pickup door. “What exactly are you doing, necking? And in the middle of the day, at that?”

“Nope, just talkin’,” Sam said as he got out of the truck. “Back in the days when I still did a little smoochin’ now and then, I generally preferred a chilly night and a roarin’ fire in the fireplace.”

“Why, that sounds absolutely delightful, dear,” Eve said as she took his arm and practically tugged him toward the house. “My, that’s a cold wind blowing, isn’t it? And I happen to know that there’s a big stack of firewood out back by the storage shed… .”

Sam tossed a helpless grin over his shoulder at Phyllis, who stood there at the curb for a moment before she closed the pickup door with maybe just a little more force than was absolutely necessary.

Chapter 20

After lunch, Phyllis went upstairs to her bedroom, got the cordless phone from its stand on the bedside table, and sat down in an armchair next to one of the windows. As she gathered her thoughts, she looked out at the branches of a tree that grew next to the house. They waved back and forth in the wind, almost like someone waving good-bye.

Then she took a deep breath and called Information to get the number of the Lockheed plant over in Fort Worth. She hated to call Information anymore, since the telephone company charged for that service now, but she couldn’t think of any other way to get the number she needed. It wasn’t until she was finished and had written down the number that she remembered she might have been able to look up the information on the Internet. She supposed that option just didn’t occur to her as naturally as it would to younger people.

She punched in the numbers and listened to the phone ringing on the other end for a moment before a woman answered. Phyllis said, “I need to speak to Russ Tyler, please.” She had wondered if he might go by Russell at work, but since she had no idea, she went with what she knew.

“What department, please?”

Phyllis was ready for the question, having paid attention that morning while Marie was talking about her husband. “Engineering.”

“Which engineering department?”

Phyllis’s hand tightened on the phone. Maybe she wasn’t as prepared as she had thought she was. Then she recalled something else Marie had said and took a guess. “Structural,” she said.

“Just a moment.”

Phyllis tried not to heave a sigh of relief into the phone.

More than a moment went by. It was several minutes before she heard a click and then a man’s voice said, “Department One-eighty-four.”

Phyllis hadn’t heard Russ’s voice all that many times, but she didn’t think he was the man who had answered the phone. She said, “Russ Tyler, please.”

“Hang on.” This time, instead of the clicking noises that told her the call was being transferred, she heard a clunk as the phone was physically set down on something. The man’s voice, more distant now, said, “Hey, Russ, phone.”

Even more distant, Russ asked, “Who is it?”

“I dunno, some woman.”

Footsteps approached the phone. It was picked up, and Russ said, “Marie?”

Phyllis said, “No, Mr. Tyler, it’s Phyllis Newsom. We met at the school carnival the other day.”

“Oh, yeah, Mrs. Newsom, hi.” Russ sounded distracted, which came as no surprise since he was at work. But he didn’t sound the least bit wary. He went on, “Listen, if this is something about school, you should call Marie, because she handles all that stuff—”

“It’s not about school, Mr. Tyler,” Phyllis broke in. She took a quick breath and plunged ahead before she lost her nerve. “It’s about your lunch date in Fort Worth last week with Shannon Dunston.”

Except for the sound of a sharply drawn breath, there was silence on the other end of the connection. Finally, Russ said, “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t believe I ever had lunch with Shannon Dunston, and certainly not last week.”

“It was at an Applebee’s in southwest Fort Worth, not far from Hulen Mall,” Phyllis said. She told him the exact date, having looked it up beforehand. “I know what I saw. If either of you used a credit card to pay for lunch that day, I’m sure the authorities can subpoena those records to prove that you were there—”

“You told?” Now Russ sounded like he wanted to groan in dismay.

“Not yet,” Phyllis admitted. “I wanted to ask you about it first.”

“I can’t talk to you now. I’m at work.”

“You’d better talk to me soon,” Phyllis said. “There have been developments in the case you don’t know about.” She felt bad about taking such a hard line with him, but it had to be done.

“I’ll call you back in a few minutes. Give me your number.”

Phyllis did so. She supposed Russ wrote it down, because he said, “I’ll get right back to you.”

“I’ll be here,” she told him. She pushed the button on the phone to break the connection, and then sat there holding the instrument in her lap. She felt a little shaky inside. Confrontation had never bothered her all that much; you couldn’t be a teacher without learning pretty quickly how to stand your ground. But she didn’t have much experience at confronting a possible murderer.

When the phone rang, the caller ID screen on it lit up and identified the incoming call as originating from a cellular phone. Russ had probably left Lockheed and gone out to his car to return her call. Phyllis answered, saying, “Hello?”

“What do you want?” Russ Tyler asked in a harsh voice, without any greeting. Before Phyllis could say anything, he went on, “Or rather, how much do you want?”

The question took Phyllis by surprise. “What are you talking about?”

“You want me to pay you to keep you from going to the cops, right?”

“What?” Phyllis was aghast. “You think I called you to
blackmail
you?”

“Why else?”

“To find out the truth,” she said. “I like your wife, and before I go to the police and tell them you might have been having an affair with Shannon Dunston, I wanted to find out what you had to say about it. Once the sheriff’s department knows about this, your wife
will f
ind out. You can count on that.”

“All right, all right.” Russ heaved a sigh. “Let me think a minute… . We need to get together and talk about this.”

Phyllis had been expecting that. She said, “If you killed Shannon to cover up your affair with her, you can’t expect me to just meet you somewhere, Mr. Tyler.”

“Listen, I didn’t kill Shannon and I wasn’t having an affair with her, okay?” Russ’s voice held an edge of exasperation and near-hysteria. “Just don’t go running off to the sheriff until we’ve talked about this. I’ll meet you someplace public, in broad daylight. There’s a Waffle House down the road from here. How about that?”

Phyllis thought about it, then said, “That’s fine. I’ll be bringing someone with me.”

“Somebody
else
knows about this?”

“You don’t have to worry about him. He’s trustworthy.”

“To you, maybe. What about for me?”

“You don’t really have much choice in the matter,” Phyllis pointed out.

“Yeah, yeah. All right, that’s fine.”

“Tell me where to find this place.”

Russ gave her directions. Phyllis knew the Waffle House wouldn’t be difficult to find. “I can be there in about an hour,” she said.

“That’s fine.” He paused. “Are you sure you don’t just want money?”

“The truth, Mr. Tyler,” Phyllis said again. “Just the truth.”

* * *

When she went downstairs, she found Sam, Eve, and Carolyn in the living room. She said, “Sam, can I speak to you for a minute?”

“More secrets, dear?” Eve said.

“I don’t recall having any secrets concerning Sam,” Phyllis said, even though that was fudging the truth a bit. She was about to share a big secret with him.

Sam stood up and came over to join her. “What is it, Phyllis?” he asked quietly.

“Let’s go out to the kitchen,” she suggested.

Eve said, “See? It
is
a secret.”

Phyllis swallowed her exasperation and forced a smile. She didn’t trust herself to speak, though, as she led Sam into the kitchen.

“If this really is private, maybe we’d better go outside,” Sam said in a half whisper as he nodded toward the hallway leading to the living room. Phyllis understood what he meant. Eve might be lurking out there in an attempt to eavesdrop.

“I just need to know if you’d be willing to take a drive over to Fort Worth with me this afternoon.”

“This have anything to do with what we were talkin’ about earlier?”

“It has everything to do with it,” Phyllis said with a nod.

“Then sure, I’ll go with you. I don’t have any plans for the afternoon. But maybe along the way, you can tell me what this is all about.”

“I will,” Phyllis promised.

“When do we need to leave?”

Mentally, Phyllis estimated the time it would take to reach the Waffle House where she had agreed to meet with Russ. “In about fifteen or twenty minutes, if that’s all right?”

He nodded. “I’ll be ready.” With a smile, he added, “What’ll we tell Eve?”

Phyllis felt another flash of irritation. “I know that Eve considers everything about you to be her business, but that’s not really the way it is, is it?”

Sam looked a little surprised by the intensity of her reaction. He shook his head and said, “Nope, it’s not. Reckon we just won’t worry about that.”

“Fine with me.” Phyllis knew she shouldn’t let Eve’s flirtatious, possessive nature get under her skin like that, but sometimes she just couldn’t help it.

With the temperature outside dropping, she went upstairs to get a jacket, as well as her purse. By the time she came down again, Sam was waiting for her in the kitchen. “Want to take your car or my pickup?” he asked.

“This is my errand,” she said. “We’ll burn my gas.”

“Okay.” He opened the door into the garage for her.

Phyllis got behind the wheel of the Lincoln as Sam settled into the passenger seat. The car was big enough so that there was room for his long legs. She backed out, drove past the courthouse, and headed east on the old Fort Worth highway, the same route they had followed in Sam’s pickup that morning. As they passed the sheriff’s department and jail, Phyllis glanced in the direction of the complex, wondering briefly if Gary Oakley was still in custody. She felt sure they would still be holding him for questioning. They could hang on to him for quite a while before they had to either charge him or release him.

Sam didn’t say much until the old road merged with the interstate east of town. Then, as Phyllis accelerated onto the bigger highway, he said, “Maybe you’d better go ahead and tell me what’s up. Where are we goin’?”

“To meet Russ Tyler. I called him earlier this afternoon and set it up.”

“Marie’s husband?”

“That’s right.”

Sam guessed, “This has somethin’ to do with what you mentioned earlier, about how you saw somethin’ that might be connected to the murder?”

“I saw Russ Tyler with Shannon Dunston in Fort Worth last week. They looked very friendly, if you know what I mean.”

Sam listened intently as Phyllis filled him in on the details of what she had seen. When she was finished, he said, “If Tyler was foolin’ around with Mrs. Dunston, that might give him a motive for killin’ her. Maybe he wanted to break it off, and she threatened to tell his wife about it.”

Phyllis nodded. “Yes, that’s the first thing I thought of. But there could have been any number of reasons for a lovers’ quarrel that ended badly.”

Sam grunted. “
Real
badly. But here’s somethin’ you might not have thought of. Marie might’ve known about the affair already.”