The Busy Woman's Guide to Murder (11 page)

“Don’t need to pay on Sunday,” Kristee countered. From her expression she thought that was a bad idea. You might assume a business person would have encouraged anything that made life easier for customers, such as free parking.

“How are you, Kristee?” I realized I was dreading the answer. Kristee could often have a tale of woe that was entirely of her own making. As long as I’d been coming there, it was always something.

As usual, Kristee had a bit of icing sugar in her short, dark hair. She often dyed it blond or red, but her natural dark hair suited her. She was as plump as one of her hand-dipped chocolates and was quite pretty when she wasn’t in a sour mood.

“Worse than usual,” she said. “I imagine you are too.”

“What?”

“Well, you know. Bad enough it’s April, usually a good month for me, with ice cream sales going up, but now with this bad weather, people are staying home in droves. Also Serena Redding’s back in the area and you know what that means.”

I was surprised to hear Kristee echo Mona’s comments. “I know what it used to mean. But surely people like Serena don’t have power over any of us anymore,” I said.

She dismissed that with a shrug.

“If they ever did,” I added.

Kristee shot me a venomous glance. I turned and checked the window. I guess Jack had caught a bit of that glance. He recoiled and appeared to trip over his own feet.

I reminded myself to stand firm and remember the fudge. I thought reinforcements would be good. “Excuse me a minute.” I opened the door and told Jack to put the dogs in the car and join me. I was undeterred by the pathetic expression on his face.

As he dragged himself through the door, I said, “We were just discussing Serena’s return and whether or not she could still have power over any of us.”

Jack said, “Did she have all that much power?”

Kristee said, “Guys have no idea about the kind of control she had over everyone. I’m speaking as a fat girl who still bears the scars.”

Of course, that would have been something else I hadn’t paid attention to. “Did they make your life miserable too?”

Kristee curled her upper lip. “You mean all the pig remarks? The snorting whenever I tried to take a bite of my lunch. The bacon jokes. The snapping sounds that were supposed to be my waistband popping. I hated every minute I was in that school. Those pig jokes? They were just the warm-up.”

I thought I saw a shake in her hand.

I shook my head. “Too rough to talk about.”

Kristee curled her lip. “How would you know, Little Miss Perfect?”

“You’re right. I guess I was kind of oblivious. I feel bad that I didn’t pay attention to what they were doing.”

“Huh. They didn’t give you any grief. You were always just right, mincing about.”

Mincing? “I don’t believe I minced.”

“Trust me. You were always a little—”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, Kristee,” I said.

“Yeah, well. Too little. Too late.”

“That reminds me, do you remember the first victim, Bethann Reynolds?”

“Sure. She had a hard time too. But she’s another person like me who got tired of being bullied and decided to fight back. She took her former employer to court and won a major settlement for harassment. It was actually a school board too. When other people don’t help us, we can do it ourselves.” She flashed me a guilt-inducing look.

“Is that a new kind of fudge?” Jack said, leaning in toward the display cabinet. “It doesn’t seem familiar.”

Her face lit up. She was quite appealing when she was talking about candy. It was everything else in the world that was the problem. “Triple chocolate truffles,” she said with pride. “Dark, semisweet, and white chocolate. I found a new way to make them complement each other.”

“Wow,” Jack said.

Kristee would have been through hell for sure. I cut her a bit of slack and let the mincing remark go. I supposed there were many things worse than mincing. Being fat at St. Jude’s, for instance. That must have been torture. She was right. My remarks
were
too little and too late.

Didn’t matter much apparently, because Jack and Kristee had put together a box of the new triple chocolate truffles and I added two gift boxes of black-and-white fudge to the order. And a regular box for us. After all.

I thought that Kristee had mellowed a bit by the time the amount was rung up on the register, but that turned out to be premature. “When I saw the photo of the woman who was killed in the hit-and-run Friday night, I thought it was Serena. I was celebrating right up until I found out that it was someone else. What a letdown. I guess whoever aimed for her didn’t do her homework well.”

Mona’s face flashed through my mind.

Jack sputtered. “Come on, Kristee, that was a tragedy to have a person killed that way. She never did anything to you.”

“Yeah, yeah, tragic for Bethann. But not if it had been Serena. If she’d been killed a hundred different painful ways, it wouldn’t be nearly enough payback for the harm she did to people. I would have done it myself if I’d had the chance. That all? I have some white chocolate bark with dried sweetened cranberries on special this weekend. Going fast.”

“Sounds good,” Jack said. “And we’d like a bag of dog biscuits too. The bone-shaped ones.”

I said nothing. I just kept wondering if the victim had been mistaken for Serena and if someone I’d known at St. Jude’s had taken the opportunity to target their murderous rage at the wrong person. Someone like Mona, for instance.

Kristee finished the transaction and said with an evil grin, “But at least they got Tiffanee. That felt good.”

Jack and I said, “What?” at the same time.

Kristee said, “They got Tiffanee.”

I felt a chill. “You mean that was Tiffanee who was hit last night? I didn’t think the name had—”

“A cop told me this morning, just after I opened. They know these things and this guy has a weakness for fudge. It was her, all right. Bang, you’re dead. Now other people tell me that Princess T had been walking around Woodbridge all these years pretending to be a decent person, with her yoga and her sandals and all that BS. I can see through that. I remember the kinds of things she said and did to me. I remember the gloating look on her face. I hope she suffered before she died. I am not going to pretend to be shocked or upset. I hope she saw the face of the person who hit her and I hope she knew why.”

Jack and I were very quiet as we walked back to the Miata. Back at the car, the little dogs jumped with joy trying to get at the bag of dog biscuits as soon we got in. I was still too shocked to enjoy the moment. So was Jack.

I realized I was shivering.

“Makes you think,” Jack said. “Do you want my jacket?”

“No, thanks. I don’t want you freezing. Makes you think what?” I said as I finally pulled out onto the road.

He said, “I didn’t know Kristee had such a hard time at St. Jude’s.”

“I didn’t either, but it sounds awful.”

“Exactly. How many other lives have been blighted by Serena and her friends?”

“So you’re saying how many people might have wanted to kill Tiffanee?”

“Yes. And is that the end of it?”

The car swerved a bit. I couldn’t wait to get home. Something told me I wouldn’t get an answer from Mona.

If Jack and I were late in finding out about Tiffanee, WINY was not. Todd Tyrell embraced his inner snowman as he stood on the site of the second hit-and-run. He barely managed to keep the joy out of his voice. “Tiffanee Dupont,” he intoned, “was a popular yoga teacher in Woodbridge. Tonight her friends and students are mourning the loss of this beautiful woman and generous spirit.”

Tiffanee’s image flashed across the screen. I wouldn’t have recognized her. She was serene and elegant with her glowing skin and close-cropped dark hair. The waist-length hair I remembered was ancient history, but people would kill to have a neck like that.

I suppose I must have snorted because Jack turned to me in surprise.

“Sorry. I guess I was just remembering that this generous spirit told my first date that I had something contagious. That knowledge is tempering my grief and outrage.”

“People change. Look at Haley. And this Tiffanee obviously had too.”

“Might have,” I sniffed. Todd Tyrell was busy sticking the mic under the noses of Tiffanee’s students, friends, and neighbors. They all seemed shocked and some couldn’t stop crying.

“They can’t all be faking it,” Jack said.

I thought back to Tiffanee, prowling the halls of St. Jude’s, her glossy waist-length hair swaying behind her like a wall of silk. Of the three bullies, she was the one with the most memorable face and body. Princess T. She had a dancer’s moves even then, despite the platform shoes and the skirt that was never regulation length, the one that got her sent home by the principal more than once. Now she was dead at thirty-one. And some people were grieving apparently.

Jack said, “What’s wrong?”

“You know, something strange. Pepper must have known Bethann’s name. She knew that Bethann also had a hard time with these bullies, yet she never mentioned it. Even when I talked to her on Saturday night.”

“That’s because she doesn’t want you to get involved, Charlotte. And she’s right. Don’t go snooping.”

I ignored that, and tried Mona’s number for the fourth time as Todd rehashed the item on Bethann Reynolds, a quiet preschool teacher who’d lived with her mother near the corner of Amsterdam Avenue. Todd had tracked down some of her colleagues and captured their shock and tears too. He intoned deeply, “How ironic that two weeks after Bethann Reynolds succeeded in a harassment suit against her former employers, she should come to such a tragic end.”

No answer from Mona.

What the hell was going on? I worried about it all evening even when I did my preparations for the morning: coffee, table set, To Do list, clothing laid out. The works. Jack didn’t worry about a thing. He didn’t prepare for the morning and he has never had a To Do list.

Usually Monday morning is my favorite time of the workweek. Seriously. I don’t tell everyone that, as some people get annoyed by the idea. But I love to see a fresh, clean week stretching ahead, full of possibility and promise, with objectives and tasks laid out clearly. Jack likes to say that I lose people the minute I start blabbing (his word) about objectives and tasks, even if they can handle “the Monday thing.” Don’t shove it down their throats, he usually adds.

Whatever. I was at my desk by seven thirty. The dogs had been walked and fed and were back for their early-morning nap. My week was shaping up. I had five items on my To Do list for that day. My big priority was the workshop that evening. I’d called it Taking the Nightmare out of Your Mornings. Of course the handouts were all prepared and ready to distribute. My materials were packed and ready to go. I’d practiced my presentation and left plenty of time to run through it one last time before I gave it. I finished up by giving Sweet Marie a bath and a nail trim to get her ready for her first therapy-dog visit the next morning. This was not appreciated, but you can’t have it all. Truffle made himself scarce.