Murder for Millions (Sky High Pies Cozy Mysteries Book 7) (16 page)

CHAPTER
36

As I started the car and prepared
for the return drive to Crescent Creek, I called Trent again to give him an
update.

“I think I may have a suspect for
you,” I said. “As well as a motive.”

“For what?” He sounded jittery and
distracted. “I’ve got a bunch of people in my office right now, Katie. Can you
be more specific?”

“Jacob Lowry’s murder,” I said. “I
think he was collateral damage, and the real motive was money. I just talked to
Carter Devane’s housekeeper here in Aspen. She told me that a lunatic came to
see Mr. Devane shortly before the burglary.”

“A lunatic?” Trent said.

“She didn’t get the guy’s name when
he arrived,” I explained. “But she was in the next room a few minutes later when
the man demanded that Carter Devane give him two-hundred thousand dollars.”

“For what?”

“She didn’t hear that part of the
discussion. But I got a description that sounded more than a little familiar
and she also identified someone from a photograph.”

“Okay,” he said. “That gets my
attention. Who is it?”

I told him the name.

“You sure about that?”

“Yes. Based on the housekeeper’s
account, Carter Devane was pretty rattled by the man’s unannounced visit and
his aggressive stance.”

“Did she use those words?”

“What words? ‘Aggressive stance’?”

“Yes,” Trent said. “Did the woman
use those exact words?”

“Not precisely. I’m paraphrasing
what she told me.”

“Well, either way, that’s helpful.
I’m going to ask Tyler or Dina to drive down and interview the woman.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “Anything
new on your end?”

He laughed. “There’s always
something new around here. For instance, we now know that the gun found with
Jacob Lowry belonged to a man named Archie Morris.”

“Who’s he?”

Trent covered the phone and spoke
to someone in his office. When he returned, he asked where we were.

“You just told me that the gun—”

“Okay, right. Archie Morris. Does
that name ring any bells?”

“None whatsoever. Should it?”

“Maybe not for you,” said Trent.
“But Archie lived in Crescent Creek for, like, five or six years when he was
married.”

“And he owned a gun?”

“Several actually. But the one we
found with Jacob Lowry was reported stolen six months before Archie got
divorced and left town.”

“Okay, so who was he married to?”

I heard more voices join the
clatter in the background. Trent’s office was beginning to sound like a flock
of geese: noisy honking, chaotic chirping and not one thing that resembled
normal human conversation.

“What did you say?” Trent asked.

“Archie Morris. Who was he married
to?”

He answered the question and I
smiled; the puzzle was beginning to fall into place.

“Katie?” Trent barked. “Can you
hear me?”

“Yes! Can you hear—”

A jarring metallic squelch
interrupted my question before I heard the people in Trent’s office singing “For
He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” in an off-key warble.

“I’ll have to call you back!” he
shouted. “They’re giving me a—”

The call ended with another
strident squeal before Trent finished his thought. I checked my phone,
wondering why we’d been disconnected. Then I sat and stared at the front of
Carter Devane’s luxurious Aspen retreat. And then I realized what had been
happening in the background on the other end of the line.

“Oh, dagnabit!” I whispered to
myself. “I forgot Trent’s birthday.”

CHAPTER
37

“Katie?” Harper asked through the
pass window. “Can you take a call?”

“Is it my mother again?”

“Not unless she changed her name to
Herman Bright.”

I’d left a message for the insurance
agent the previous afternoon. I wanted to explore a hunch about Ira Pemberton’s
body shop. Since Herman was Ira’s insurance guy, I hoped he might be willing to
either answer a couple of questions or steer me in the right direction.

“Hi, Herman,” I said after picking
up the desk phone in my office. “It’s Kate Reed. Thank you so much for
returning my call.”

“Well, Herman’s always happy to
brighten your day,” he said, using the familiar tagline from the radio spots
for his company. “Is this about your auto policy or the Sky High business
account?”

“Actually, neither. I wanted to ask
you about Ira Pemberton.”

“What about him?”

“Are you still his agent?”

Herman Bright chortled quietly. “As
far as I know,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, I’ve been doing a little
sleuthing around town,” I explained. “Just helping the Crescent Creek PD in an
unofficial capacity to solve the murder and arson that—”

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Herman
said, “but I already talked to Tyler Armstrong and Dina Kincaid about Mr.
Pemberton’s policy.”

“I’m sure, but—”

“And I don’t think it would be
prudent for me to discuss the matter with you,” he continued. “Not to be rude
or anything, but it seems like a fairly delicate case and I don’t want to cross
any lines.”

“Nor would I want you to,” I said
when he finished. “I was just wondering if you could answer a couple of
questions.”

“Not if they’re about Mr.
Pemberton’s insurance policy.”

“Maybe you could answer without
exactly answering,” I suggested.

His rolling laugh came over the
line again. “And how would I do that, Miss Reed? Stamp my foot on the ground
once for ‘yes’ and twice for ‘no’?”

“Um…” I tried not to giggle. “That
would be perfect if we were in the same room. But maybe you could…” I paused to
quickly devise a strategy. “How about you say ‘buttercream frosting’ if the
answer is yes? And if it’s no, maybe—”

“For goodness’ sake,” he cut in,
“just ask me. If I’m comfortable, I’ll use the regular words to answer.”

I smiled at the concept. Then I
asked if Ira Pemberton had recently increased the insurance coverage on his
auto body shop.

“No,” Herman Bright said.

I felt instantly deflated; my gut
had told me that the arson was a get-rich-quick scheme cooked up by Ira to
recoup the gambling losses that I’d heard about around town.

“Well, darn,” I said after a
moment. “I thought that was a—”

“
He
didn’t,” Herman interrupted.
“But there’s a chance that someone else did.”

The remark caused my brain to
shudder briefly to a stop. Then it whirred back into action and I asked Herman
if he could reveal the name of the individual that had increased the payout on
Pemberton’s policy.

“She’s his silent partner,” Herman
said. “And his girlfriend.”

As the line hummed with silence, I
heard the singsong refrain from the two young women at Bubble Brite the other
day:
“Marla Soble! Marla Soble! Marla Soble!”

CHAPTER
38

As I pulled into the parking lot at
Crescent Creek Lodge an hour later, I saw someone wheeling a suitcase across
the concrete expanse. It was Velma Lancaster, moving at a rapid clip toward the
last row of cars. The grim expression on her face intensified when I honked to
get her attention.

“Velma?”

She stopped and stared blankly
before recognizing me. Then she shrugged and continued moving in the opposite
direction. I quickly parked the car, grabbed my purse and hurried after her.

“Can we go inside and talk?” I
said. “It’ll only take a few minutes.”

Velma put the last piece of luggage
into her rental car and closed the trunk. “Talk about what?”

“The murder of Jacob Lowry,” I
said. “And the other things that have been going on with Carter Devane as well
as Kevin Hertel and his father.”

A few strands of dark, lustrous
hair slipped from behind one ear. She instinctively reached up and tucked them
back into place. Then she walked around to the driver’s door and slid the key
into the lock.

“It won’t take much time at all,” I
said. “And I think it might help you as much as it will help the police get
Jacob’s killer to confess.”

Although she claimed to be
preparing to leave town, I convinced her to spend a few more minutes going over
the events of the past few days.

“If for nothing else than the
memory of your friend,” I said, clinching the deal with an appeal to her
long-standing connection to Jacob Lowry.

Ten minutes later, after a quick
consultation with Connie Larson, Velma and I were in one of the hotel’s small
offices with the door closed. A lamp on the desk glowed orange and the fluorescent
bulbs overhead had been dimmed to a watery blue. After she sat in a chair near
the desk, I crossed the room, leaned against the filing cabinet and thanked
Velma again for agreeing to talk.

“I don’t mind a few minutes,” she
said. “But I’m driving to Denver tonight, so I’d like to get on the road before
too long.”

“Any chance you could postpone that
until tomorrow?”

The muscles in her jaw tightened.
“Why would I do that?”

“To help the police,” I said.

She scoffed. “Me? What can I do? I
have no idea who killed Jacob.”

I took a moment to consider the
best explanation for the idea that Trent and I had discussed earlier following
my call with Herman Bright. It was a fairly common approach to obtaining a
confession—invite a small group of interested parties to one location for a
seemingly inconsequential purpose, make sure the top suspect is included in the
mix and then bait them with a pointed statement or presentation of evidence. If
things go according to plan, the guilty party will incriminate themselves by
spouting an ill-timed remark, refusing to answer questions or directly
challenging the authorities.

“Well?” Velma said stiffly. “Are we
going to talk or not?”

“Yes, of course. I was just…well,
here’s the thing: between the CCPD’s investigation and a few things that I’ve
uncovered, there’s one individual that Deputy Chief Walsh is most interested
in.”

She smiled. “I know how these
things go, remember? My husband and I have an investigative agency in Sacramento.”

“I remember,” I said. “And, since
you brought it up, how would handle this situation? Do you have any thoughts
about who might be responsible for your friend’s death?”

“No idea,” she said. “I’ve been so
busy trying to figure out who was attempting to blackmail Carter that Jacob’s
death left me…” Her voice splintered and she dropped her chin to her chest.
“…it left me completely reeling, to be honest. I’ve known him since we were
five.”

I sat quietly, watching her chest
heave and her fingers tighten into rigid knots in her lap. A few moments
passed; tension and grief filled the room like fog rolling in from the sea.
When Velma finally spoke, her voice was a faint murmur.

“I didn’t kill Jacob,” she said,
glaring at me through tear-filled eyes. “And I don’t know who did.”

I held her gaze, waiting for the
right moment to deliver the news. She cried softly, burying her face in her
hands with the resignation of someone left simultaneously bereft and exhausted.
The oscillating fan on the bookcase near the door whirred and cycled, sweeping
left to right in an endless ballet of motion and muted sound.

“I’m so…sorry,” Velma whispered as
she lowered her hands and the last few tears toppled down her cheeks. “I
never
cry.” Her mouth curved into an anxious grin. “I mean, I’m usually the one
comforting someone else when they’re blubbering away and making a scene.”

“You’re fine,” I said gently.
“You’ve been dealing with a lot of emotion these past few days.”

Her eyes fluttered. “The past twenty
years is more like it,” she began. “Living with the shame and sadness of what I
did to my parents back when I was younger. I made
so
many mistakes when
I was a teenager, Kate. I did horrible things…terrible, awful, cruel things to
my mother and father. I made up a lie and…” She stopped as the tears resumed.
“…and I told the world,” she continued. “I told the whole frickin’ world that
my father had cheated on my mother and she did the same thing out of spite.”

Her pain was palpable; the sharp,
jagged edges of the shame and disgrace cutting through the words of her
faltering confession.

“Velma?”

She flinched at the sound of her
name.

“Yeah?”

I offered a smile. “Can you try to
put that aside for just a minute or two?”

Her chin lifted slowly. “What do
you mean?”

“Don’t focus on the past right
now,” I suggested. “Because we need your help to settle something very much in
the present.”

She pulled in a long, slow breath.
“You do?”

I nodded.

“But who are you…” She exhaled
slowly; the creases in her forehead began to relax. “You said ‘we’ need me to
do something. Who are you talking about?”

“Deputy Chief Walsh,” I said. “And
the two detectives working to solve Jacob Lowry’s murder.”

She pressed her hands together at
the mention of her friend’s name, bracing herself for whatever was to follow. I
watched as her eyes traced invisible circles on the floor; the apprehensive and
restless distillation of the turmoil in her mind.

“Would you be willing to talk to them
one more time?” I asked finally.

Her gaze stopped, held briefly and
then came up to my face. “But I don’t know how I can help,” she said. “I wasn’t
there when Jacob was killed.”

“But I believe you know the person
that was.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I do?”

“Yes. And I’m being sincere when I
say that you can help. I’m pretty sure there’s a way to get the killer to
implicate himself.”

“How?”

“By engaging him in conversation.”

She frowned. “With me?”

“Yes. And with Trent Walsh and the
CCPD detectives.”

“But I’ve already talked to them.
And I told you, too; I wasn’t at my father’s body shop when Jacob died. I was
at the hotel.”

“Your innocence isn’t being
challenged,” I said. “There are witnesses from the Lodge along with security
camera footage. You have a solid alibi.”

“Then why…” She sighed and got up
from the chair. “Why do you think I can help?”

“Because it’s easier for some
people to come clean about what they’ve done when a familiar face is in the
room.”

She peered at me in disbelief.
“You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then who is it?” she asked. “Who
do you think killed Jacob?”

When I told her the name of the
prime suspect, one hand went to her mouth and the other to her chest. She asked
me to explain the rationale for the accusation, but I told her to wait until
later that night when everyone had gathered at the Crescent Creek Lodge.

“Can’t you tell me
anything
?”
she pleaded. “Not even one little speck that might explain why he’d do
something so needless?”

“Greed,” I told Velma. “Jacob Lowry
was murdered because he came between the killer and the promise of ten million
dollars.”