Black and Blueberry Die (A Fresh-Baked Mystery Book 11) Read online

  Phyllis was watching Bobby run ahead in the field and didn’t pay much attention to what Carolyn was saying, but she replied, “Paul’s is a salon, not a spa. I don’t think they do massages or waxing. But I didn’t ask, so I don’t know for sure.”

  “Well, people are too concerned about appearances, that’s all I’m saying.”

  “You can never be too concerned about your appearance,” Eve argued. “If you don’t care anymore, then what’s the point of going on?”

  “You care about other things,” Carolyn said.

  “You and I are just separated by an unimaginable gulf of opinion, dear.”

  “Did we come to pick berries or talk?”

  Phyllis hefted the straw bushel basket Eve’s friend had provided. Each of them had one. “We’re here to pick berries,” she said. “I have a pie to make, after all.”

  Sam called, “Don’t eat too many of ’em, Bobby. Your stomach won’t thank you later.”

  “And those berries haven’t even been washed!” Phyllis exclaimed as she hurried toward her grandson. “There’s no telling what might be on them.”

  Bobby looked up at her, his already berry-stained lips stretched in a grin, and she knew she was probably fighting a losing battle.

  Chapter 21

  After church the next morning and Sunday dinner of slow cook honey sesame chicken served on rice, Phyllis spent part of the afternoon preparing her black and blueberry pie and getting it in the oven to bake. Her mother never would have done that, she reflected. A devoutly religious Southern Baptist, Phyllis’s mother would have considered that work, and you weren’t supposed to work on the Sabbath. Preparing dinner didn’t count, because of course you had to feed your family regardless of what day of the week it was. Phyllis didn’t consider baking to be work, though, so she didn’t think there was anything particularly sinful about popping a pie into the oven.

  “That’s done,” she said as she came into the living room. Eve wasn’t there, so Phyllis supposed she was upstairs in her room, possibly working on her next book. Carolyn sat in a comfortable chair by the window, her knitting in her lap as the pair of needles worked adroitly in her fingers. Bobby was at the computer while Sam sat beside him, phone in hand.

  “What are you two doing?” Phyllis asked them.

  “Playin’ World of Warcraft,” Sam said. “Bobby just chopped off an ogre’s head with his battle ax.”

  Phyllis drew in a deep breath and leaned forward. “What?”

  Bobby turned his head to look up at her and pointed at the screen. “I just caught a fish!” he said.

  “It’s a bass fishin’ game,” Sam said with a grin. “I’m sorry. The look on your face was worth it, though.”

  “And what are you doing?” Phyllis asked ominously.

  “Me? I’m playin’ World of Warcraft.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  He turned the screen around so she could see it.

  “Well, maybe you are,” Phyllis said. “I wouldn’t know. Anyway, there are too many monsters in real life to spend your time fighting make-believe ones.”

  “Yeah...but sometimes you can beat the make-believe ones.”

  Phyllis wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she just left Sam and Bobby to their games and sat down on the sofa to read the newspaper. Not many people had the actual print edition delivered anymore, but she still subscribed to the Sunday paper even though, like a lot of things in this modern world, it was a mere shadow of what it had once been. She didn’t like the idea of getting all her news from the Internet.

  Besides, there was something comforting about sitting back, putting your feet up, setting the paper in your lap, and then going through it section by section, reading the whole thing from front to back. She remembered her father doing that every Sunday afternoon for years and years. Church, dinner, the newspaper, and then a baseball game on TV, if one was on. Late in the afternoon, there was a locally broadcast program of gospel music, and her father would whistle along beautifully...

  Phyllis felt a pang inside for those by-gone days. More and more lately, her thoughts had been turning back, back, to simpler times, and the waves of melancholy that washed over at those moments could be almost overwhelming.

  She swallowed hard. Better to concentrate on the here and now, she told herself. She opened the newspaper...

  And the first words to catch her eye were Attempted Murder.

  She almost didn’t read the story, thinking that she didn’t need any more ugliness to occupy her thoughts right now. Something drew her on, though, so she continued reading. According to the story, someone had broken into the home of wealthy Fort Worth businessman Hugh Chilton on Saturday night and shot both Chilton and his wife Desiree. Mrs. Chilton’s wounds were not life-threatening, but her husband was in critical condition and not expected to survive. According to a police department spokesman, Hugh Chilton had probably saved his wife’s life because he had managed to get his hands on a pistol he owned and had fired a shot at the gunman, striking him and forcing him to flee, before succumbing to his own injuries. The apparent motive for the attack had been robbery. Mrs. Chilton was still hospitalized but was expected to be released soon.

  Phyllis didn’t realize how long she had been sitting there unmoving, staring at the newspaper, until Carolyn said, “Phyllis? Are you all right?”

  Phyllis gave a little start, lowered the paper, and said, “Yes, I’m fine. I must have dozed off a little.”

  “Yeah, it’s gettin’ to be that time of day,” Sam said. “Might try to get a nap myself, once I get done battlin’ these orcs. How’s the fishin’ comin’ along, Bobby?”

  “I’ve caught a bunch of ’em!” the little boy said.

  Phyllis turned the page. The pie was starting to smell good. They would sample it later, after it came out of the oven and had a chance to cool a little. The lazy Sunday would continue. For a change, no one had asked her if she had just solved Roxanne Jackson’s murder.

  But she had.

  ••●••

  The black and blueberry pie, everyone agreed, was delicious. Sweet enough without being too sweet, and bursting with fresh fruit flavor from the blackberries they had picked the day before mixed with some nice blueberries she’d found at a farmer’s market.. A scoop of vanilla ice cream on it led Bobby to proclaim it the best thing he had ever eaten.

  “You probably shouldn’t mention that around your mother,” Phyllis told him, “but I do appreciate it.”

  A little later, Mike called from California with good news. The doctors had determined that Sarah’s mother had suffered a mild heart attack, but she was in stable condition and no real danger.

  “Sarah’s going to be staying out here for a while, but I’ll fly back Tuesday,” Mike went on.

  “Stay as long as you need to,” Phyllis told him. “We’re taking good care of Bobby, and I think he’s having a fine time.”

  “You don’t know how much it means to us that we can depend on you like this, Mom.”

  “I’m happy to have him here,” Phyllis said.

  “What about Danny’s case?”

  Phyllis hesitated. She didn’t want to get his hopes up in case her theory turned out to be completely wrong. She didn’t think it would, but there was still a matter of proof.

  “Maybe I’ll have some news by the time you get back,” she said.

  “I hope so. That would wrap things up nicely.”

  Wouldn’t it, though, Phyllis thought.

  There was no more talk of murder in the house that evening. Everyone seemed to have forgotten about the case...which was just the way Phyllis wanted it for now.

  ••●••

  She didn’t tell Sam that she had figured it out until after he got back from taking Bobby to school Monday morning.

  “You mean you know who killed Roxanne?” he asked her, his shaggy eyebrows lifting in surprise.

  “I have a pretty good idea. I can see almost the entire thing now. I just need to clarify o
ne more point.” She sighed. “And it’s something I should have asked about a long time ago. The key was right there from the start, but I just didn’t see it.”

  “You gonna tell me what it is?”

  “I want to wait until I’m absolutely sure,” she said. “And I’ll have to explain everything to Mr. D’Angelo, too, so maybe it would be better just to cover everything at once.”

  “So what’s our next move?”

  “We’re going to jail,” Phyllis said.

  She called D’Angelo’s office and asked him if he could get her in to see Danny.

  “The sooner the better,” she added.

  “Holy Toledo!” the lawyer exclaimed. “You’ve figured it out!”

  Ah, there it was. Phyllis smiled slightly as she said, “I think so. I need to talk to Danny, though.”

  “I’ll call you just as soon as I’ve got it set up.”

  By now Carolyn and Eve had figured out what was going on. Eve said, “I knew I could count on you, dear. You never let me down.”

  “She wasn’t doing it for you,” Carolyn said. “She was trying to help Danny Jackson. The only way it has any connection with you is it might generate more interest in your book.”

  “And the sequels,” Eve said.

  “You mean you’re doing more of them?”

  “Why not, as long as people like to read them?”

  Carolyn walked off, muttering about how she would never understand it.

  Phyllis’s cell phone rang. It was Jimmy D’Angelo, and the lawyer said, “How soon can you be ready to go?”

  “Right away,” Phyllis told him.

  “Good. I’ll swing by there in a few minutes and pick up you and Sam. We can take my car.”

  Phyllis had assumed she and Sam would drive over to Fort Worth in his pickup, but if D’Angelo wanted to pick them up, she supposed that was all right.

  “We’ll be ready,” she said.

  D’Angelo pulled up at the curb a few minutes later in a big black Cadillac. “Looks like a gangster’s car,” Sam said quietly to Phyllis as they went out the walk toward the Caddy. “I always figured Jimmy must’a been mobbed up at one time. That’s probably why he left the East Coast.”

  “You have a very vivid imagination, don’t you?”

  “Sometimes.” Sam grinned. “But sometimes I’m right, too. And hey, everybody’s got secrets. Maybe we’ll find out Jimmy’s, one of these days.”

  They got in the car, Phyllis in front, Sam in the back so he could stretch his long legs across the floorboard.

  “All right, spill,” D’Angelo said as he pulled away from the curb.

  “After I’ve talked to Danny,” Phyllis replied.

  “She wouldn’t tell me, either,” Sam put in. “Sometimes she’ll talk about what she’s thinkin’, and sometimes she won’t explain until she’s got the whole thing nailed down.”

  D’Angelo said, “I’m highly skilled at cross-examination, you know.”

  “Doesn’t matter. If Phyllis doesn’t want to talk, you won’t get a thing out of her.”

  D’Angelo sighed. “Well, then, I suppose I’ll have to be patient.”

  “Honestly,” Phyllis said, “you’re both making me feel like I’m being mean. I just want to make sure I have everything straight in my head so I won’t waste everyone’s time with something crazy.”

  The big Cadillac was fast and nearly silent. D’Angelo didn’t waste any time getting to Fort Worth. It took a while to navigate the red tape of getting in to see Danny, though, once they reached the jail.

  Finally, Phyllis and D’Angelo were sitting across from him in one of the spartanly furnished visitors’ rooms. The bruises and scrapes Danny had had on his face the last time were healing up.

  “You haven’t had any more trouble?” D’Angelo asked.

  “No, they’ve kept me segregated a lot of the time,” Danny said. “You know what happens tomorrow, though. I get shipped off to Huntsville.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” D’Angelo leaned his head toward Phyllis. “Mrs. Newsom has something to ask you. Me, I don’t know what it is, but I’m anxious to find out.”

  Danny’s expression had been dull and dispirited when he came into the room, but now he looked more animated as he turned to Phyllis and asked, “What is it, Mrs. Newsom?”

  “When Mike came to see you,” Phyllis said, “you told him that you and Roxanne were planning to take a second honeymoon. Is that right?”

  “Well, yeah,” Danny said, frowning slightly. “We talked about it. Roxanne brought it up, and I told her we couldn’t afford it, but she said she’d been saving up and she thought we could. I was kind of surprised by that. I thought maybe she’d got a raise at the salon or something, although that Gibbs woman is so cheap you wouldn’t think that was possible. I said if we had some extra money, we ought to use it to pay off some of our debt, but Roxanne said not to worry about that, she was going to take care of it.”

  Phyllis nodded and said, “But she never really explained where all that extra money was going to come from?”

  “No, and I didn’t press her on it. She seemed happy. We’d had a pretty rough time of it, so if she was feeling good about things, I didn’t want to ruin that.”

  Phyllis leaned back and rested her hands on the metal table. “Thank you, Danny.”

  “That’s it?” Danny looked both confused and disappointed.

  Phyllis considered, then said, “One more thing. Did you know that Roxanne and Brian Flynn went to high school together?”

  “What? No, Roxanne went to Brewer. Brian went to Western Hills.”

  “You know that for a fact?”

  “Well, that’s what she told me.”

  “You never saw her yearbook or anything like that?”

  Danny’s frown deepened. “No, she said her folks never bought any of them. They were too cheap for that, she told me.” His hands, with plastic restraints around the wrists, clenched into fists. “Are you saying she lied?”

  “I think maybe there were things about high school she didn’t want to remember—like Brian. What happened first, did you and Brian go into business together, or were you and Roxanne married?”

  “Brian and I opened the shop while Roxanne and I were dating.”

  “So you introduced her to him and they acted like they had never met before.”

  “Yeah, because they hadn’t!” Danny shook his head. “This is nuts. You’re saying Roxanne lied to me. What’s next? Are you gonna say the two of them...that they—”

  “Take it easy, Danny,” D’Angelo said sharply. “If you get mad, the guards will come in and take you back to your cell, and I don’t know if we’re finished here.”

  “Danny, listen to me,” Phyllis said. “There was nothing going on between Roxanne and Brian. I’m positive of that. She had her own reasons for not telling you the truth about where she went to school and knowing him, but there was nothing between them, you can be sure of that.”

  “I don’t know anymore. I don’t know about anything.”

  “You will. This is going to be over soon.”

  He looked and sounded like a little boy again as he said, “You promise?”

  “I promise,” Phyllis said, hoping she could keep it.

  Chapter 22

  Sam stood up from the bench where he was waiting in the jail lobby and asked, “Did you find out what you needed to know?”

  “I did,” Phyllis said as she and D’Angelo walked up, their footsteps echoing a little in the big room. “Roxanne acted like she did at the salon because she expected to get her hands on a considerable amount of money. Pauline Gibbs’ instincts were right. I’m convinced Roxanne was going to quit. Remember how Mike said Danny told him they were going on a second honeymoon?”

  “Yeah, come to think of it, I do.”

  “According to Danny, that windfall was going to pay for the trip and get them out of debt.”

  D’Angelo said, “You’re just getting me more confused. Roxanne was a ha
ir stylist. Where was she gonna get her hands on a bunch of money?”

  “Brian Flynn can tell us that,” Phyllis said. “If he’s at his shop today, and I think he will be.”

  Sam and D’Angelo looked at each other. Sam spread his hands and told the lawyer, “Might as well play along with her.”

  D’Angelo sighed. “Then I guess we’re going to this paint and body shop. I don’t know where it is—”

  “I can tell you how to get there,” Phyllis said.

  A few minutes later, they were on the West Freeway, heading away from downtown. Phyllis used the time to mentally check back over every step of her theory. When she was finished, she knew it made sense and answered all the questions. She thought she knew how to prove it, too.

  She navigated from the passenger seat and soon had D’Angelo approaching the paint and body shop. The doors on both repair bays were up, she saw. Brian had come to work today, just as she expected.

  “Park in front of the office,” she said, pointing. Then a thought occurred to her and she went on, “No, park in front of the bays, at an angle, so that you’re blocking them.”

  “That’s a little rude, isn’t it?” D’Angelo said.

  “There’s a good reason for it.”

  He shrugged beefy shoulders and turned the wheel, angling the car off the road and bringing it to a stop where Phyllis had indicated.

  Brian came out of the left-hand bay carrying one of the rubber mallets he used for beating dings out of fenders. He was moving slowly, and his face was pale and drawn as if he were sick or exhausted.

  He managed to summon up a friendly smile, though, as Phyllis, Sam, and D’Angelo got out of the Caddy. He greeted them by saying, “I was about to tell you that you couldn’t park there, but seeing as it’s you, Mrs. Newsom...” Brian looked at D’Angelo. “Who’s your friend?”

  “This is Mr. D’Angelo, the attorney handling Danny’s appeal,” Phyllis said.

  “Is that right?” Brian switched the mallet from his right hand to his left and extended the right. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir. I hope you’re doing a good job for Danny.”