Лейганн Доббс - A Whisker In The Dark

“Would you like another?” Millie asked.

Paula nodded and Millie topped the glass off.

“It must’ve been dreadful for you, dear, seeing your brother like that,” Millie said.

Paula nodded, the glass still to her lips.

“Funny that you were right at the beginning of that trail last night, though. I don’t think a lot of people were down there digging for treasure, so what made you think that would be a good place to dig?” I asked.

“I didn’t. I went there because it was out of the way. I didn’t want to be disturbed, that’s why I chose that particular bench,” Paula said.

“But it seems odd that you would’ve seen Flora down there. I mean, like we said, it was out of the way and I don’t even think she was digging for treasure. Are you sure it was her?” Millie asked. “I mean, she is kind of old to be traipsing around out there at night.”

Paula put the glass down and wrung her hands together. “I know. That’s what the sheriff said. I got the impression he thinks I made that up, but I swear I didn’t kill Bob, and I’m sure it was the maid I saw.”

“But you did have a fight with Bob earlier, didn’t you?” I asked.

Paula’s eyes narrowed. “What makes you say that?”

“Oh, somebody else mentioned it. I think it was something about your cheese sculptures not being up to par.”

Paula sniffed. “Sure, we fought about that, but that was nothing new. Bob was always fighting with us about one thing or another, and that’s no reason to kill him. I really was on that bench asleep, honest.”

“So Flora woke you up when she came by then? Was she carrying a shovel?” I’d looked at the back of Bob’s head and was pretty sure that he’d been hit with a shovel, but I hadn’t seen any blood on the shovel at the crime scene. I glanced out the window in time to see Johnnie collecting the shovels from the shed. Looked like I was right then.

Paula closed her eyes as if trying to remember. “You know, I’m not sure if she had a shovel, but I saw her clear as day coming down that path. She didn’t notice me because I was on the ground out of the line of sight.”

I jumped on the inconsistency in Paula’s description. “Well, if you were lying on the ground asleep like you said you were, then how could you see Flora coming down the path? You must’ve been awake to see her.”

She squinted again and sipped her mimosa. “Right. Something else woke me up because I did see Flora, but after I was jolted awake by something.”

“Some thing or some one ?” Millie asked.

Paula took a deep breath. “I guess it was someone. Someone stepped on my hand. I didn’t see who it was, though. I was fast asleep on the ground, my face pressed to the grass, and then all of a sudden, there was this big shooting pain in my hand.” She made a face and winced, grabbing her hand. “I woke up right away, but the person had already gone by. All I remember seeing is a black Ferragamo tag on the back of their shoes, then when I turned back to try to pull myself up, I saw the maid coming down the path.”

“Ferragamo shoes?” Millie raised her brows. “Those are very expensive shoes. Not everyone wears those.”

“Yeah, and what kind of a moron would wear them digging in the dirt?” my mother asked.

Paula’s eyes widened as if she had made a sudden realization. “I know one moron who would. My brother, Earl.”

I went to the kitchen to wash out the empty mimosa pitcher while Mom and Millie ran off to find Seth so they could tell him about the Ferragamo shoes.

If Paula was telling the truth and she really was asleep at the time, I was sure she hadn’t been simply napping. She’d been passed out drunk, which made her an incredibly unreliable witness. I still wasn’t convinced that she wasn’t making the whole thing up so she could frame someone because she was the real killer. Maybe she figured she could throw the investigation off track by implicating both Flora and Earl.

On my way back to the parlor I passed the front sitting room and saw poor Doris in there looking as if she’d lost her best friend. My heart squeezed. The woman’s son had just been murdered and it was possible that one of her other kids did it.

I slipped into the sitting room. “Can I bring you something? Maybe some tea? I have some fresh snickerdoodle cookies.”

So what if I didn’t mention that Millie had baked them at her house? Did it really matter where they’d come from? If Doris thought I had nicely baked cookies for her and gave me a good review on Yelp because of it, Millie wouldn’t mind my little lapse.

Doris turned red-rimmed eyes to me, then glanced in the direction of the kitchen, her nose twitching. “Are they burning?”

I straightened my back. See what happened when you were nice? People mocked you.

“No.” I wasn’t baking anything so of course nothing was burning.

She sighed and slumped in the chair. “It’s just so awful, that Sheriff interrogating us. It’s preposterous to think one of us would have murdered Bob.”

“Do you know anyone who would have wanted to murder him?” I wasn’t pumping the grieving mother for information, just trying to take her mind off things. But if she happened to have some information about who might have wanted Bob dead, all the better.

Doris pressed her lips together. “Hopefully not his own brother or sisters, though there has been a lot of fighting and animosity lately. You see, Bob could be a bit of a troublemaker. Never quite got along with the rest of the family.”

I raised my brows. Maybe Bob had done something to his brother or sisters and they had a long festering animosity toward him. “Really? What kind of trouble?”

Doris shrugged. “You know, the usual things. Not pulling his weight. Wanting to surf and ski instead of working. Marrying that awful woman.”

I frowned. Bob hadn’t brought a wife to the guesthouse. “He was married?”

“Yep. They were getting a divorce. Good riddance to her, I say.”

“Is it an amicable divorce?” My hopes rose. Maybe the person who had killed Bob was his soon-to-be ex-wife.

Doris wiggled her hand back and forth in a seesaw motion. “So-so. I guess it’s fairly friendly, as divorces go.”

I inched forward to the edge of my chair. “You don’t think the ex-wife could have killed him, do you?”

“I wish. It would take the heat off my other children. I can tell that the sheriff suspects them.” Doris looked thoughtful, as if she was coming to terms with the possibility that one of her children had killed Bob. “But she’s out of the country. I told the sheriff all about her. He’s going to double-check, but, honestly, I wouldn’t think she’d have it in her.”

“What about somebody else from his past? If he was a troublemaker, maybe he rubbed someone the wrong way.”

“Bob rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, but I have no idea who he would have angered so much that they’d come here to kill him. I don’t think he knows anyone from Oyster Cove and most of the people he associates with are losers who wouldn’t travel so far to do him in.” Doris shook her head. “It’s just such bad timing with the family tensions being high because the business is doing so badly.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“I suppose I’ll have to arrange a funeral. If only the cheese-sculpting business was doing better we could do something more lavish, but I guess now it will have to be something simple,” Doris said.

I patted her hand for comfort. “Simple is better, sometimes.”

Doris nodded. “They’re not bad children, you know. Even though they each have their little quirks. I blame my husband for making them so lazy and selfish. He wanted them to have it easier than we did and didn’t want them to work as hard. Barney and I started the business from scratch, you know.”