Murder by the Slice (26 page)

She might not be so worried about Shannon’s memory, Phyllis thought, if she knew that Shannon had been trying to get Russ to have an affair with her.

Something else was nudging at Phyllis’s brain. She said, “You were collecting the money during the carnival and locking it up in the cash box, weren’t you, Marie?”

“That’s right,” Marie said with a nod. “What about it?”

“It’s just that Shannon’s daughter heard her say something about the cash box not long before … well, before what happened. That’s why the sheriff thought that maybe Shannon caught the thief in the act. But why would she have been going into the office if you were the one responsible for collecting the money?”

“Oh, it wasn’t really that formal,” Marie said. “Maybe somebody at the ticket booth or the concession stand thought they were getting too much cash on hand and gave some of it to Shannon to deal with. Or maybe she just wanted to check and see how we were doing. She was the president, after all. There wouldn’t have been anything unusual about her doing a quick count of the take.”

Phyllis nodded, feeling a little disappointed. She had thought there might be something unusual about Shannon’s involvement with the cash box that would point in the direction of the murderer. But instead, it was just business as usual. Shannon had had every right to go to the office and check on the money.

“I heard that Mr. Oakley, the custodian, was a criminal,” Irene said. “Wasn’t he arrested here at the school?”

“Yeah, but they let him go,” Abby said. “They must not have had any real evidence against him.”

Marie said excitedly, “Wait a minute. I just thought of something. If whoever took the money killed Shannon, then maybe if we could find the murderer we might be able to get at least some of that money back!”

The other board members stared at her. Kristina said, “Are you saying that
we
should investigate the murder? We’re not detectives.”

“Phyllis is.” Marie pointed at her.

“Hold on,” Phyllis began.

“Carolyn told me how you solved that murder at the Peach Festival last summer,” Marie went on. “And your son’s a deputy sheriff. You could tell us how to go about investigating a crime.”

Phyllis looked over at Carolyn, who shrugged and said, “I know there was nothing in the paper about your involvement with solving those other cases, but I didn’t see what harm there would be in mentioning it. After all, you saved
me
from being arrested. I was grateful.”

It was too late to worry about such things now. The damage was already done. But it could get worse, Phyllis realized. The sheriff really
would
be unhappy if a whole group of PTO moms started poking their noses into an active murder investigation.

Better if only one amateur detective did that, she thought wryly—or two if you counted Sam Fletcher.

“Look, I’m sure the sheriff’s department will find the killer,” Phyllis said, “and maybe when they do, if the same person was responsible for stealing the cash box, maybe you’ll get some of the money back. But in the meantime, you don’t need to get involved with the case.”

Lindsey said, “We’re already involved. I was
arrested,
for God’s sake. And the sheriff probably still suspects me. If we’re taking a vote, I say we try to find the real killer.”

“We’re not taking a vote,” Marie said quickly.

Thinking rapidly, Phyllis said, “How about this? Let’s go over everything that happened Saturday afternoon and see if we can come up with anything that we haven’t thought of so far. If we do, I can pass along the information to my son.”

That brought nods and mutters of agreement from the assembled women. Phyllis went on, “Let’s start by all of you figuring out the last time you saw Shannon that afternoon, what she was doing, and whether or not anyone was with her.”

“That’s easy,” Lindsey said. “I saw her about thirty minutes before I … I found her body. That’s when I argued with her. But after that I was so upset I spent the next half hour just wandering around the school, trying to get over being mad.” She sighed. “I don’t like being mad. I’d rather get along with people.”

“What brought you back to the end of the hall where you found Shannon?” Phyllis asked.

“Actually, I was looking for her. I wanted to apologize, and that was the last place I’d seen her.”

“Did you tell that to the deputies?”

Lindsey shook her head. “Not really. I … I didn’t want to tell them that I’d been arguing with Shannon. I was afraid they would think … what they wound up thinking anyway.” Her forehead creased in a frown. “I wish I knew who it was that told them about seeing me with her. I didn’t think anybody was around just then except a little girl who came wandering out of the boy’s bathroom down there.”

“The boy’s bathroom?” Abby said.

“Yes, but she wasn’t more than four or five.” Lindsey couldn’t help but smile. “She was so cute in her little Elmo shirt. She must have just gone in the wrong bathroom.”

Carolyn nodded. “When they’re that young, it’s a common mistake.”

Phyllis looked around the table. “What about the rest of you? When was the last time you saw Shannon?”

“It must have been before that,” Holly said. “Irene and I were working at the concession stand. Do you remember seeing her in that last half hour or so, Irene?”

“No, but she could have come through the cafeteria, I suppose,” Irene said. “We were busy, so I might not have noticed her.”

“Carolyn and I didn’t see her, either,” Phyllis pointed out. “That means there were four of us in the cafeteria, and none of us saw Shannon there toward the end of the carnival. Not only that, but her ex-husband came through looking for her, and he didn’t find her in there, either. So I’d say there’s a pretty good chance she was somewhere else in the school during that time.”

“I was working at the face-painting booth,” Kristina said. “I don’t recall seeing her except during the early part of the afternoon.”

Abby said, “Same here. I was helping keep the kids in line while they were waiting to get in the bounce house. I remember seeing Shannon… .” She shrugged. “But I couldn’t tell you when.”

“My friend Eve saw her outside with her son,” Phyllis recalled. “That must have been around the time of her argument with you, Lindsey, either right before or right after. Do all of you know Shannon’s son by sight?”

“Kirk is hard to miss,” Abby said dryly, “what with the tattoos and piercings and all.”

“I saw him at the carnival,” Kristina put in. “He was walking around with a friend of his.”

Phyllis thought of something else. “Shannon was married twice. Did she ever talk about her first husband? Does he still live around here?”

“Goodness, no,” Marie said. “Roy moved away years ago. I think Shannon said one time that he lives in Oklahoma now.”

“So he wouldn’t have been at the carnival?”

Marie frowned. “I can’t think of any reason why he would have been. He didn’t hang around much even when his son was still a kid, and Kirk’s a grown man now. I don’t think Shannon saw anything of him for years except the child-support checks, and those stopped coming when Kirk turned eighteen.”

So they could just about cross off that angle, Phyllis thought. Even if Shannon’s first husband had been nursing a grudge against her for years, it was highly unlikely he would have driven down from Oklahoma to murder her at a school carnival.

“So we don’t really know where Shannon was or what she was doing during the last half hour or so of her life,” Phyllis summed up. She turned to Lindsey. “One other thing. Did the two of you argue about anything in particular, or was it just because of the way she always treated you?”

“I guess it had been building up for a long time,” Lindsey said, “but what really made me lose it was when she tore into me again about those posters. She said we weren’t doing as well as she had expected, and it was all my fault because the posters didn’t get put up in the stores in time to advertise the carnival properly.”

Phyllis felt her pulse speed up a little as Lindsey spoke. Something important was in those words, and Phyllis’s brain quickly isolated it.

“Shannon said that the carnival wasn’t doing as well as she had expected?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“She had to be talking about the money, didn’t she?” Phyllis asked.

Marie said, “How else could anybody judge whether or not the event was a success? It was a fund-raiser, after all.”

“So when Shannon said that, she had to have a pretty good idea how much money had been taken in,” Phyllis said. “That means she’d already checked the cash box.”

Carolyn and the board members nodded as they saw Phyllis’s point. “If she checked the cash box
before
the argument she had with Lindsey,” Carolyn said, “that means she didn’t walk into the office and catch somebody stealing it.”

“Well, we can’t
know
that,” Phyllis said. “But it makes sense. If Shannon had already looked in the box and done a quick count of the money, it’s not very likely she would have gone right back there after arguing with Lindsey.”

“But how does assuming that help us figure out who killed her?” Marie asked. “All it does is take away a possible motive.”

Phyllis said, “Every motive that can be eliminated helps. Sooner or later there’ll only be one left. And with any luck, that one motive will point straight to the killer.”

A shudder went through Lindsey. “I hate that we’re sitting around discussing motives and murder. Why do people have to kill other people, anyway?”

“Unless you’re talking about someone who’s psychotic, there’s always a reason,” Phyllis said. “It’s probably not a good reason, but it seems like one to the killer.”

And in the back of her mind a feeling stirred, a vague sense that around this table today, something important had been said, something that perhaps wouldn’t solve the mystery by itself, but that could point her in the right direction.

Whatever the thing was, though, it proved elusive. She couldn’t grasp it.

But she knew it was there now, and she swore to herself that she wouldn’t give up until she had captured it.

Chapter 25

Mike came by Phyllis’s house late in the afternoon, on his way home after his shift was over. He came in wearing his uniform jacket, because the temperature was even chillier today than it had been the previous day after the cold front blew through.

“I hear that you helped interrogate Lindsey Gonzales,” Phyllis said to him as they sat down in the living room with Sam, Carolyn, and Eve.

Mike raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “That was the sheriff’s idea, not mine,” he said. “He did just about all the talking, too. Except for when that lawyer lady was talking.”

“Lindsey’s lawyer?”

“Yeah. An attorney who’s new in town, named Juliette Yorke. With an E. She got under Sheriff Haney’s skin pretty good. He thought Mrs. Gonzales was about to confess, and all he got was a statement denying any involvement in the murder.”

“But he didn’t have any real evidence against her, just someone saying that they saw her arguing with Shannon.”

Mike grunted. “Word of that got around, eh?”

Carolyn said, “We saw Lindsey at the school this afternoon, along with the other members of the PTO board.”

Mike glanced at Phyllis and asked, “What was that about?”

“It was a special meeting to decide what to do about the money that was lost when the cash box was stolen. Marie Tyler asked Carolyn and me to attend, even though we’re not members. Consultants, she called us.”

“She’s scared she’s not going to be able to hold everything together, if you ask me,” Carolyn said.

“And Mrs. Gonzales came to the meeting?” Mike asked with a frown. “She seemed pretty shaken up this morning. I’m a little surprised she was there.”

“Wouldn’t you be shaken up if you were accused of a murder?” Phyllis said.

“She wasn’t actually
accused
… .”

“You said yourself the sheriff was convinced she was guilty. I’m sure Lindsey knew that.”

“Yeah, he didn’t make any big secret of it,” Mike agreed. “Anyway, with nothing but that witness statement to go on, we had to release her. It’s not like the witness actually saw her kill Ms. Dunston or anything.”

“Who was the witness?”

Mike shook his head. “I couldn’t reveal the person’s identity … but to tell you the truth, I don’t actually know. I’m sure it’s in one of the reports, but I’ve been so busy with other things all day I never saw it.”

“The reason I asked was that Lindsey didn’t see anyone else in that area except a little girl, and I don’t think Sheriff Haney would put much weight behind a statement given by a kindergartner.”

“Well, somebody must’ve been there, whether Mrs. Gonzales saw them or not.”

“You said you’d been busy all day,” Phyllis said. “Doing what?”

Mike hesitated, then said, “Background checks.”

Carolyn asked, “On who?”

“All the other members of the PTO board. Both of Ms. Dunston’s ex-husbands. The rest of the faculty and staff of the school.” Mike flexed the fingers of his right hand. “I’ve been on the computer so much I’m gonna get carpal tunnel.”

“Find out anything interestin’?” Sam asked.

“Just that the PTO board is a pretty clean-living bunch. A couple of them have gotten speeding tickets, but that’s the closest any of them have ever come to being in trouble with the law.”

“What about Shannon’s ex-husbands?” Phyllis asked.

“Joel Dunston you know about,” Mike said. “He’s a wellrespected doctor, has a good practice here in town, and is on the staff at Campbell Memorial. Ms. Dunston’s first husband, Roy Warren, lives in Tulsa and owns a concrete business there. Builds septic tanks, mostly. He’s remarried and has another family up there.”

“Has he ever been in trouble?”

Mike shook his head. “His record’s clean. I called the Tulsa PD and asked them to check on him. He was home with his wife and kids all weekend except when he was playing golf in a pro-am tournament with a couple of hundred people around all the time. If you’re thinking he could have snuck down here to kill Ms. Dunston over some old grudge, you can forget about that possibility.”