The Candy Cane Cupcake Killer Page 10

  Of course, she had never dreamed that catching killers would turn out to be her retirement hobby, but life took some odd twists, no doubt about that.

  The doorbell hadn’t rung for a while, Phyllis realized. Neither had the phone. Phyllis hoped that meant Felicity Prosper had given up and gone away. She didn’t really expect that to be the case, but it would be nice if it turned out to be true.

  Almost as soon as that thought went through Phyllis’s mind, the sound of the doorbell filled the house again. She gave a mental groan. She had jinxed it.

  “Just ignore her,” she said. “I won’t have that woman in my house.”

  After a minute of persistent ringing, the doorbell fell silent again. Then Phyllis’s cell phone rang.

  That was a surprise. Felicity had been calling the landline all day, leading Phyllis to suspect that was the only number the reporter had. When she slipped the phone out of her pocket and looked at the number, she recognized it as the cell phone belonging to her son, Mike.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Mom, why aren’t you answering the door?” Mike asked. “You’re here, aren’t you? The lights are on.”

  Phyllis came quickly to her feet and said, “Yes, we’re here. Hang on just a minute.”

  She hurried up the hall to the front door, flipped on the porch light, and looked out the narrow side window. Sure enough, Mike stood there in his deputy’s uniform with a look of concern on his face.

  Phyllis opened the door and told him, “Come on in. I’m sorry you had to stand out there. We, ah, haven’t been answering the door today.”

  “Why not?” he asked as he stepped into the foyer.

  Phyllis looked past him and saw that the TV van was gone from the curb again.

  Mike noticed that. He was naturally observant and his job had made him even more so. He said, “Does not answering the door have anything to do with the van that drove off as soon as I pulled into the driveway?”

  “It does,” Phyllis said as she closed the front door. “The sight of your patrol car must have scared them off. Although they were probably getting pretty tired and hungry, too, after being out there most of the day.”

  “Who?”

  Sam, Carolyn, and Eve had followed Phyllis from the kitchen. It was Sam who answered Mike’s question by saying, “TV vultures. A gal reporter and some fellas from one of those tabloid shows.”

  Mike frowned.

  “They were trying to interview you about the McCrory case?” he asked.

  “That’s right,” Phyllis said, heaving a disgusted sigh. “The woman referred to me as Texas’s Elderly Angel of Death.”

  Mike still wore a concerned frown, but the corners of his mouth twitched a little.

  “Oh, go ahead and laugh!” Phyllis told him. “It’s completely ridiculous.”

  Mike allowed himself to smile, but he didn’t actually laugh. He said, “Yeah, it is sort of ridiculous. You know what those shows are like, though. They go way over the top about everything. They’re just trying to get bigger ratings.”

  “Well, come on in and sit down. We were just finishing up supper. I think there’s one piece of quiche left.”

  “No, that’s all right, I can’t stay. Maybe if you’ve got any of those famous cupcakes left, though, I could take one with me.”

  “You mean the candy cane cupcakes? How do you know about them?”

  “Isabel mentioned them. I think Chief Whitmire must have told her about them. He said something about sitting around and eating cupcakes in the interrogation room. That’s not something that happens every day.”

  “I see,” Phyllis said. She had wondered before if she ought to worry about Mike’s friendship with Isabel Largo, who was a detective on the Weatherford police force. There didn’t seem to be anything between them except the camaraderie of fellow law-enforcement officers, although they worked for different agencies. But Isabel was a young, attractive single mother, and Mike was a healthy young man . . .

  A healthy young man who seemed to be quite happily married to his wife, Sarah, the mother of their son, Phyllis’s grandson, Bobby. Phyllis told herself not to be so suspicious. She needed to save that for ferreting out murderers.

  That thought prompted her to ask, “Is Detective Largo handling the McCrory case now?”

  “It’s still the chief’s case officially, but he’s got her covering some of the bases.” Mike looked over at Sam and said, “I’m sorry about your friend.”

  “Thanks. We’re gonna get whoever’s responsible.”

  Mike frowned again, looked at Phyllis, and said, “You’re looking into this, Mom? I thought you and Sam were just witnesses.”

  “It’s a little more than that,” Phyllis admitted. “How much has Detective Largo told you about the case?”

  “Not much. Isabel isn’t a strictly by-the-book cop, but she doesn’t bend the rules too far, either. I know what the public knows.” He shrugged. “And maybe a little more, like the lab got some pretty good ballistics results from the bullet that killed Mr. McCrory. If they recover a suspected murder weapon, they shouldn’t have any trouble determining if it matches up with the bullet.”

  “If you’ve got a few minutes, I’ll get those cupcakes out and pour you a cup of coffee, too,” Phyllis suggested.

  “I’ll make the time,” Mike said without hesitation. “I want to hear about this.”

  The five of them sat down around the kitchen table. Over candy cane cupcakes and coffee, Phyllis and Sam recounted everything that had happened so far.

  When they had covered all that she could remember, Phyllis said, “So, you see, Mike, it’s not really like those other times. We’re working for Mr. D’Angelo, so we have a right to investigate the case.”

  “I don’t know,” Mike said slowly. “It seems a little iffy to me. This guy Nate hasn’t been charged with anything yet.”

  “People who think they may fall under suspicion of a crime have a right to hire a lawyer, don’t they?”

  “Sure. But that also makes them look a little more guilty.”

  Carolyn said, “Why should it? People have figured out by now that they have to look out for their own best interests when it comes to the legal system. No one else will.”

  In the past, Mike had taken polite exception to some of Carolyn’s adversarial attitudes about the law. This time he said to Phyllis, “I just don’t want the two of you getting into any trouble.” He shrugged. “Although by now I guess you ought to know what you’re doing. Do you have any suspects of your own?”

  Phyllis and Sam exchanged a glance; then Phyllis said, “We’ve been wondering if Barney McCrory wasn’t really the murderer’s intended target.”

  Mike cocked his head a little to the side and said, “Now, that’s an interesting idea. I didn’t get the impression from Isabel that they were considering anything except a straightforward investigation of McCrory and anybody who might have reason to want him dead. But it was a long rifle shot—several hundred yards. It’s certainly possible the killer could have just missed.” Mike paused. “But who was he aiming at?”

  “Clay Loomis,” Phyllis said.

  Mike’s eyebrows arched in surprise. As an employee of the county, he definitely knew who Loomis was. He said, “Loomis was sitting behind McCrory in the carriage, wasn’t he?”

  “That’s right. At that distance, the killer’s aim wouldn’t have had to be off by very much for him to hit Mr. McCrory instead of Clay Loomis.”

  “Who would want to shoot a county commissioner? They’re a pretty innocuous bunch most of the time.”

  Phyllis explained about the mudslinging election campaign, the divorce petition, and the lawsuit by Loomis’s business partners. Mike began to nod, almost as if against his will.

  “You put together a pretty strong case for somebody wanting Loomis dead,” he admitted. “Several so
mebodies, actually. But since he wasn’t the victim . . .”

  Sam said, “All the police have against Nate is a possible motive, just like those other folks have possible motives to kill Loomis. All it would have taken was for the killer’s aim to be off a little bit.”

  “Is there any chance you could bring this up with Detective Largo?” Phyllis asked.

  Mike said, “She’d think I was meddling in her case—a case where I don’t have any jurisdiction. And she’d be right. I don’t know how kindly she’d take it.” He leaned back in his chair at the kitchen table. “But if I could approach it just right, like we were just shooting the breeze and talking about how a case sometimes looks like it’s about one thing but turns out to be about something entirely different . . . Well, maybe. I might be able to plant a seed. But it’d be up to her whether she wanted to follow it up.”

  “Of course,” Phyllis said. “If there’s anything you can do to help, we’d appreciate it.”

  “Sure.” Mike grinned down at the few crumbs left on the saucer in front of him, all that was left of two of the cupcakes. He grew more serious as he went on. “Just be careful. You’ve been pretty lucky in the past.”

  Carolyn said, “I don’t think luck had anything to do with Phyllis solving all those crimes.”

  “Solving them, no, probably not,” Mike said. “Surviving the confrontations with those killers . . . Well, that’s another story.”

  Chapter 13

  Before Mike left, he promised to call a friend of his on the Weatherford force who worked patrol and ask him to swing by the house a few times during the evening. If Felicity Prosper tried to come back, the police presence might scare her off again.

  Phyllis went upstairs to her bedroom to work on the column for A Taste of Texas on her laptop. Even though she hadn’t made the baklava macarons yet, she wanted to get a rough draft of the recipe written. That way if the cookies were good—and she certainly hoped they would be—she would have some of the work done already.

  Her door was open, so Sam looked in later to say good night. He reported, “No sign of that van out front. Looks like Miss Prosper gave up.”

  “Gave up for today, maybe,” Phyllis said. “It wouldn’t surprise me if she was back tomorrow, though.”

  “Well, no. Me neither.” Sam leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb. “How’s the column writin’ comin’ along?”

  “All right, I suppose. I’m still not sure I’m cut out to be a writer. There are too many words in the world to choose from!”

  Sam grinned and said, “You’ll do fine. Not to change the subject, but I thought I might go see Gene Coyle in the morning and talk to him about gettin’ a load of dirt or gravel or some such.”

  “And maybe get an idea of whether he’d be capable of shooting someone if he were angry enough?”

  “That’s the plan,” Sam said.

  “Be careful. If he really is a murderer, he might not take kindly to someone poking around in his business.”

  “Yeah, well, I could say the same to you,” Sam pointed out. “I’ve got a feelin’ you’ll be doin’ some diggin’ of your own. You know I’m always willin’ to go with you.”

  “I know,” Phyllis said. “We’ll wait and see.”

  Sam nodded and said, “All right. Good night, then.”

  “Good night, Sam,” she said fondly. He was a good man, and she knew she was lucky to have him for a friend.

  • • •

  The next morning over breakfast, which consisted of excellent sausage egg muffins made by Carolyn, Phyllis told Sam she was going to be working on the macarons for a while.

  “You go see Gene Coyle, and we’ll investigate another angle this afternoon,” she said.

  “Sounds like a plan,” he told her.

  After getting dressed, he went out to feed Buck, and looked up at the sky while the Dalmatian was eating. Clouds had moved in during the night, and the air was chillier. A front had come through. Sam didn’t keep up with the weather as closely as he once had, but he wasn’t surprised by this change. Christmas was less than three weeks away, so it was time for some cold weather.

  Buck had already eaten his canned food and was crunching on his dry food now. Sam filled the water bowl and told the dog, “You’ll probably need to stay inside tonight, but you ought to be all right out here today. If the wind gets too brisk, you can curl up in your doghouse.”

  Buck looked up as if he understood. Sometimes Sam thought his dog was smarter than a lot of people he knew, himself included, more often than not.

  He put on his sheepskin-lined denim jacket and looked out the picture window in the living room. The curb in front of the house was still empty, with no sign of the van belonging to the TV crew.

  Phyllis was passing by in the hall and said, “They’re not out there, are they?”

  “I don’t see ’em. Of course, that doesn’t guarantee they’re not parked down the street somewhere out of sight, just waitin’ to follow us if we go anywhere.”

  “Keep an eye out behind you.”

  “I will,” he promised. “Maybe it’s too cold out there for them today.”

  “As short as Miss Prosper likes to wear her skirts, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  Sam grinned and said, “Yeah, that could be a mite, ah, chilly on the nether regions.”

  Phyllis just sniffed disdainfully as she headed for the kitchen.

  Sam had looked up Gene Coyle’s business, which was not-so-imaginatively called Gene’s Sand and Gravel, and found that it was located on the interstate between Weatherford and Fort Worth, less than a mile west of the old racetrack.

  As he drove out there, he changed the station on the radio several times, not in any mood to listen to folks argue about sports or politics, before he settled on a station playing classic country. Since he was by himself, he didn’t worry about the fact that his voice sounded like somebody pulling rusty nails from an old two-by-four as he warbled along with the lonesome strains of George Strait’s “Amarillo by Morning.”

  He didn’t notice a van or any other vehicle following him.

  Coyle’s office was a cinder-block building with a metal roof that sat at the top of one of the rolling hills along the highway. Behind it was a huge gravel pit gouged out of the earth. As Sam parked the pickup in front of the office and got out of it, he saw numerous small mountains of earth and rock scattered around the property. Bulldozers moved here and there, as did tractors with front-end loaders attached to them.

  The wind was even colder on this hilltop. Sam was glad to get out of it as he went inside.

  He found an office with a counter running across it, a small waiting area in front, and a larger space behind it where a couple of desks sat. Each desk had a computer on it, but there was a pair of old-fashioned filing cabinets against one wall. No matter how much the world tried to go digital and paperless, it was hard to run a business without generating some printed documents.

  The place had a plain, functional look about it. A calendar hung on the wall of the waiting area, along with an advertising poster listing the high school’s football schedule for the recently concluded season. Someone had written in the final score for each game with a black marker.

  A man in a baseball cap and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up a couple of turns over his brawny, black-haired forearms sat at one of the desks behind the counter, squinting at the monitor at front of him. His big, powerful-looking hand dwarfed the mouse he was using. He didn’t look up from the screen. His concentration was so fierce, it seemed like if he broke it he would forget what he was doing.

  The woman at the other desk stood up and came to the counter, though. She was a pleasant-looking woman in her forties, wearing jeans and a Western shirt with pearl snaps instead of buttons. Her graying brown hair was short and curly. She smiled and asked Sam, “Can I help you?”

 
“Yes, ma’am. I think I’m gonna find myself in need of some loads of gravel.”

  “Of course. How many?”

  Sam pretended to think for a couple of seconds and then said, “I figure we’re lookin’ at six. Maybe a few more.”

  “Well, we can certainly handle that. Do you want me to figure up a price for you?”

  “That’d be good, but what I’d really like to do is talk to the boss man.” He nodded toward the man at the other desk. “No offense, I just always like to deal with the top dog.”

  He figured a man from his generation could get away with a little political incorrectness.

  The woman seemed more amused than offended. She said, “That’s not the boss man. That’s Lou, one of our drivers.”

  Lou grunted but didn’t otherwise acknowledge that the conversation was going on.

  For a split second Sam worried that the woman on the other side of the counter was Gene Coyle. Then he reminded himself that couldn’t be right. The name was spelled wrong for a woman, and, besides, Phyllis had done her research and hadn’t said anything about Clay Loomis’s opponent in the election being a woman.

  “I’ll see if Mr. Coyle has a minute,” the woman in the Western shirt went on. She walked over to a door in the office area, opened it without knocking, and went inside. She reappeared a moment later and crooked a finger at Sam.

  He went to a swinging gate at the end of the counter and pushed past it. The woman moved out of the doorway and motioned for him to go in.

  He stepped into a private office that was considerably fancier than the one outside. The cinder-block walls had dark wood paneling over them, and the floor was covered with carpet instead of tile. An expensive oak gun cabinet with several rifles and shotguns in it sat on the wall to Sam’s right. On the wall to his left were mounted the heads of four deer, good-looking bucks with lots of points on their antlers.

  Directly in front of him was a large desk. A man rose behind it and extended his hand.