Reap What You Sew (28 page)

Utter silence was followed by a burst of laughter from Todd. “She wasn’t Pooky and Warren let her stay, anyway?”

She grinned. “You met her, didn’t you?”

“Indeed I did. And she is certainly one to remember… much to Anita’s chagrin.”

Margot concurred. “Do you remember the moment she first realized Pooky… or, rather, fake Pooky showed up? I thought Anita’s brains were going to explode right out of the top of her head, she was so angry.”

“She became double focused from that moment on,” Glenda mused while chasing the last few crumbs of coffee cake around the plate with her finger. “Find and fire the person who let her nemesis in despite strict orders to the contrary, and find a way to make Pooky disappear from Warren’s thoughts once and for all.”

“Instead, Anita took a bite of the poisonous apple and took us all out of our misery.” Margot blew a burst of air through pursed lips, watched stray strands of her red hair drift back onto her forehead, undaunted. “Oh, and put us all out of a job in the process.”

“Temporarily,” Todd cautioned.

“Can you imagine the stink Anita the Great would have caused if
I’d
have been the one to overlook her EpiPen?” Glenda made a slashing motion near her throat. “She’d have had my head.”

“EpiPen?” Tori echoed.

Glenda shrugged. “Yeah, it’s this thing she was supposed to use if she accidentally ingested something with nuts. It could have saved her life if she’d just opened the damn drawer she made sure everyone on set knew about.”

“Anita even had a spare cell phone in that same drawer for the sole purpose of calling an ambulance if something went wrong.” Margot slumped in her chair, closing her eyes as her head drifted backward. “It was Glenda’s job to make sure it had a full charge before she left every evening.”

“And what does she do after all of that?” Glenda’s voice jumped an octave as she hit the top of the table with her hand. “She takes a bite of a brownie filled with nuts and never even tries to save herself. It figures, doesn’t it?”

Todd grabbed his empty cup and slid off his stool. “Just be glad it happened before she was able to fire the two of you.”

Chapter 25

She was just steps away from returning to the library when she stopped short, snippets of the past ninety minutes looping through her thoughts. Glenda was right. Why wouldn’t Anita have grabbed her medicine when she realized there were nuts in the brownie? Why wouldn’t she have attempted to use her phone?

It made no sense.

Reaching into her purse, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed a familiar number, her feet retracing their way back to the sidewalk before Dixie even answered the phone.

“Sweet Briar Public Library. This is Dixie, how may I help you?”

She turned right and headed toward the town square and the municipal building that bordered its southern side. “Dixie, it’s me. Look, I know I said I’d be back shortly and that it’s been much longer than that, but something has come up. Can you handle things there for just a little while longer?”

“I’ve been handling things at this library since before you were born, Victoria,” Dixie reminded in true Dixie Dunn style.

Rolling her eyes skyward, she couldn’t help but smile. She’d walked right into that one… .

“I figured you could but thought I should check in and ask, anyway.” She glanced over her shoulder to gage the traffic, crossing the street at an unnecessarily fast clip. “Dixie? Can I ask you one more question?”

“Of course.”

“If you were in a life-or-death situation that wasn’t of your own doing, can you think of any reason you wouldn’t try to save yourself?”

“No.”

The answer, though short, verified what she herself had been thinking. Something about Anita’s actions—or lack thereof—the night she was murdered simply didn’t add up.

“Thanks, Dixie. I’ll see you soon.”

A pause was followed by a semimuted Dixie Dunn. “Does this have something to do with that actress?”

“Yes, it does.”

“Then don’t worry about getting back here. Take care of whatever you need to do to put that smile back on Margaret Louise’s face. Seeing her so stressed just isn’t right.”

“I know, Dixie. I don’t like it, either.” She turned with the sidewalk then crossed the road once again, Sweet Briar Town Hall looming larger than life in front of her eyes. “But I’ll figure this out. Somehow, someway.”

Snapping the phone closed, she tossed it in her purse and took a slow, deep breath. She’d had more than her share of unexpected visits from Police Chief Robert Dallas—the kind of visits that had been met with clammy hands and a churning stomach. In those instances, the only thing that had kept her sane was knowing that he’d leave, eventually.

Yet there she was at that exact moment, about to walk into his official lair and willingly subject herself to whatever questions he might hurl her way just so she could ask one.

She was slowly but surely going nuts. There was no other explanation.

With a second, deeper breath, she made her way into the lobby of the municipal building and turned toward the opening marked Sweet Briar Police Department.

A rather bored-looking woman in her mid-to late fifties looked up from her sentry behind a waist-high wall. “Can I help you?”

“Is Chief Dallas in?”

The woman’s eyebrows dipped. “Who’s asking?”

“Victoria Sinclair.”

Eyes dropped as a calendar was consulted. “He’s not expecting you.”

Inhaling sharply, she willed her voice to remain steady. “If you just tell him I’m here to speak with him, I’m quite sure he’ll see me.”

“Does he know you?”

She laughed, the sound echoing around the windowless room. “He’s been to my house many, many times.”

Eyebrows shot upward as Tori received a second and far more thorough inspection of everything above the wall. “Oh?”

Horrified by the thoughts she realized were running through the woman’s head, she rushed to explain. “We’ve, um, worked together on a few cases.”

A beat or two of hesitation was followed by the press of a button. “Chief? There’s a woman out here to see you. Says her name is Victoria Sinclair.”

“Send her in.”

The dispatcher removed her finger from the intercom button and rose from her chair, pointing toward a door to her left. “Right over here, ma’am.”

She stepped through the doorway into the station’s command center and followed the woman down one hallway and then a second, the sound of her heels muted against the carpet. When they reached their destination, the dispatcher simply spun on her rubber-soled shoes and returned to her post without so much as a word or a nod.

The chief looked up from his desk. “Miss Sinclair. This is certainly a surprise. What can I do for you?”

She entered the man’s office and took the chair he indicated, her hands beginning to tremble ever so slightly. Deep down inside, she knew Robert Dallas was a good man. A little narrow-minded and lazy at times, but a good man. Yet something about being in his office made her nervous. She swallowed in an attempt to buy herself a little time.

He tented his fingers beneath his chin and leaned back. Waiting.

“Why didn’t Anita Belise use her EpiPen? Why didn’t she call for help?”

She hadn’t expected to dive in quite so hard, preferring, instead, to ease herself into such conversations, but now that she had, she realized it wasn’t such a bad idea. The faster she got to the point, the faster she could get out from under the man’s scrutinizing eyes.

“I can’t answer that.”

She mulled the man’s answer even as another question formed in its wake.

“Was the drawer at least
open
?”

The chief sat up straight. “Drawer? What drawer?”

“The one where she kept her EpiPen and her cell phone.”

Reaching over, the chief pressed the intercom button at the base of his phone. “Mildy? Is Carl in?”

Tori scooted forward in her chair and listened. Carl Jasper was the department’s newest officer, the addition of the academy graduate coming at the hands of a council vote in response to the rash of murders that had plagued the town over the past two years.

The dispatcher’s voice filled the office. “He’s right here. I’ll send him in.”

“Thanks, Mildy.” The chief released the button and looked toward the door. Sure enough, less than ten seconds later, the well-toned body of the department’s youngest officer stepped through the opening.

“Chief? You wanted to see me?”

“You went through all of Ms. Belise’s drawers, right?”

Carl shifted from foot to foot. “I think so.”

The chief’s left eyebrow rose. “You
think
so?”

Crimson rose in the junior officer’s face. “I might of gotten distracted with the plate and the brownie. I was trying to make sure I bagged it just the way you said.”

A beat of silence was followed by the sound of the chief’s chair scraping against the linoleum beneath his desk. “Grab your stuff and let’s go. We need to get in the victim’s trailer again.”

Tori jumped to her feet. “Can I come?”

The chief yanked his desk drawer open and pulled out a camera and a notepad. “I can’t allow that, Miss Sinclair. I’m sorry.”

At the flick of his wrist, she led the way into the hallway, her feet traveling the same path she’d followed with Mildy. Only this time, instead of mentally reviewing the questions she wanted to ask the chief, she was devising a plan to get the answers she needed.

Step one of the plan had her turning left as the chief and his officer went straight. There was, after all, more than one way to access the Green.

Step two had her banking on the fact that Stan Kelly would be busy with the chief, therefore leaving her an opportunity to track down one of the crew from that morning.

Step three had her waiting for the inevitable scoop as to what was or wasn’t found in Anita Belise’s trailer.

Her heels resumed their staccato pattern against the sidewalk as she implemented step one. As she rounded the first, and then the second corner of the square, she felt the smile creeping across her face.

Stan Kelly wasn’t at his post.

“Step three, here I come,” she whispered, slipping through the unmanned gate and heading straight for the tent where either Margot or Glenda would surely be found.

She was mere steps from her destination when the flaps of the tent parted and Todd emerged, his walkie-talkie clutched tightly in his left hand.

“Oh, hey.” She waved and stopped, noting the tense set to Todd’s jaw and waging a pretty good mental guess as to why. “Is everything okay?”

Todd released a frustrated sigh. “The cops are back. They’re at the trailer with Kelly, going through everything all over again.”

“Can I come?” she asked.

Shrugging, he motioned forward with his walkie-talkie. “Yeah, sure, I guess. But stay out of the way, okay? I don’t want this to come back and haunt me.”

“Of course.” She marveled at her good luck as she practically ran to keep pace with Todd’s long strides. “Did you know where Anita kept her EpiPen, too?”

“Yeah, I knew. We all knew. But it was Glenda’s job to make sure everything Anita needed was there. If Anita did a random check—as she did all the time—and her cell phone didn’t have a full charge, Glenda would have been out on her ear. No questions asked, no second chances given.”

As the trailer came into view, Todd hurried his pace even more, enabling Tori an opportunity to hover around a grove of trees where Chief Dallas wouldn’t see her so easily yet she could make out some of the sounds coming from Anita’s open door.

Twenty minutes later, Stan emerged from the victim’s trailer along with Carl and the chief. “I want to talk to the girl responsible for maintaining that drawer,” Chief Dallas barked. Glancing over his shoulder at Stan, he jerked his head in the direction of the security trailer. “Track her down and bring her to me. I’ve got some questions that need answering.”

Slowly, Kelly raised his own walkie-talkie to his mouth. “Glenda? Can you meet me in the security trailer, please?”

She waited behind the closest tree until Carl and the chief had disappeared inside Stan’s trailer. When the coast was finally clear, she stepped in front of a rather flustered Todd. “Can I ask what happened in there?”

Todd raked his free hand through his hair and groaned outwardly. “Glenda’s in trouble. Big trouble.”

“Why?”

“The drawer was empty.”

She stared up at Todd, her mind racing to make sense of what she was hearing. “What do you mean, empty?”

“The EpiPen, the cell phone, all of it. Gone.”

“But how?” she stammered.

Dropping his hand from his head to his mouth, he shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t know. I guess whoever killed Anita wanted to make damn sure she died.”

“They think Glenda is responsible?”

Slowly, his shoulders lifted only to drop back down again. “It was her job to make sure everything was there.”

She considered his words, an alternate theory finding its way to her tongue. “But you, yourself, said just about everyone knew where Anita’s supplies were kept, right?”

Todd’s eyes narrowed in on hers. “What’s your point?”