The Candy Cane Cupcake Killer Page 17

  “He’d been shot,” Felicity said. “Murdered.”

  Loomis sighed and said, “Yes. It was . . . an utterly shocking discovery.”

  He was solemn again now, trying to look properly sympathetic.

  “You’re aware that the police have made an arrest in the case?”

  “Yes, I heard. It’s unbelievable that Barney’s own son-in-law would do such a thing.”

  Loomis’s voice had a tone of finality about it, as if he expected that to conclude the interview, but Felicity pressed on without hesitation.

  “This is just the latest example of trouble in your life, isn’t it, Commissioner Loomis?” she asked briskly.

  Loomis’s forehead creased in a surprised frown as he said, “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean that your own life has been in turmoil recently, even before you were involved in a murder.”

  “Wait a minute. I’m not involved in Mr. McCrory’s murder. I just happened to be there. I could have been hurt, too, when that team bolted!”

  As if he hadn’t said anything, Felicity went on. “At the moment, you’re defending yourself in three ugly legal disputes, isn’t that correct? You’re being sued by your own business partners, who say that you’ve stripped the company coffers of funds and run it into the ground. Your wife has initiated divorce proceedings against you and vowed to take everything you have. And your former mistress has threatened to file a sexual-harassment suit against you, charging that she was pressured into having an affair with you.”

  The words came out of Felicity’s mouth a mile a minute, and she needed to talk fast to get them all out, because Loomis’s face was turning a bright red, and it looked like he was going to explode at any second.

  When Felicity finally had to pause to draw a breath, Loomis roared, “How dare you! Get off this property right now! You have no right to come here and spew this vile filth, these ugly rumors that have no basis in fact—”

  He had to stop short because he was shaking so hard and gasping for air. Phyllis suddenly had the awful thought that he might have a stroke or a heart attack right there in front of them, judging by the way he looked. If Felicity thought the same thing, she would probably just consider it a bonus, a dramatic climax to an act of journalistic ambush.

  “All these things are a matter of public record, Commissioner,” Felicity said. “You can’t deny that your life has been in an uproar. With all this going on, you might think that murder was a welcome diversion from your own woes. In fact, given all the hatred directed at you recently, would you say that you’re lucky no one has taken a shot at you?”

  There it is, Phyllis thought.

  Felicity had gotten to the point, and, in doing so, she had worked Loomis up into such a state that he shouted, “None of those idiots would have the guts to come after me like that! Not unless it was that bitch of a wife of mine. She’s twice the man that Ridgely and Hedgepeth are!”

  “What about Jaycee Fallon?”

  “She’s a simpering little imbecile. She’s got no case. She’s the one who came after me—”

  He stopped short as he realized he was saying things he shouldn’t, especially on camera. He turned toward Nick and made a slashing motion across his throat.

  “Stop that,” he snapped. “Turn that camera off.”

  Loomis took a step forward, and Nick began to back away with the camera still on his shoulder, still shooting.

  “Commissioner Loomis, are you threatening my cameraman?” Felicity demanded. Phyllis had heard that before. “As a public official, you should be familiar with the concept of a free press.”

  “Just get out of here, all of you,” Loomis said in a low, menacing tone.

  “I believe this property belongs to the county, which means it’s public property. You can’t force us to leave.”

  Loomis still looked like he wanted to attack Nick, but he got himself under control with a visible effort, turned toward the building, and stalked toward the door, saying over his shoulder, “I’m going to call the sheriff!”

  The door slammed closed behind him, so violently that it shook in its frame.

  Felicity made her own throat-cutting gesture to Nick with one elegantly manicured finger and said, “Let’s go.”

  The four of them went back to the van and climbed in. While Nick was starting the engine, four men came around the corner of the building. Phyllis figured they were county road workers, and from the way they started toward the van, she thought that Loomis must have summoned them. He might have even decided to tell them to try to take the camera away.

  “I don’t think we should waste any time getting out of here,” she said.

  “You think I’m scared of those bruisers?” Felicity said. “I’m not scared of them. Are you, Nick?”

  As taciturn as ever, Nick just grunted.

  “I’m a little nervous,” Josh admitted.

  “You would be,” Felicity scoffed. But Phyllis thought she was starting to look a little worried, too, as Nick leisurely put the van in reverse and backed around to leave. The four men were only about twenty yards away when Nick gave the van some gas and headed for the gate. The road workers stopped and glared after them.

  Felicity turned halfway around in the front passenger’s seat and grinned at Phyllis.

  “What did you think of that?” she asked. “Pretty good job of rattling his cage, wasn’t it?”

  “He was rattled, all right,” Phyllis said, “but I’m not sure we found out anything helpful.”

  “What are you talking about? He practically pointed the finger at his wife. He said if anybody tried to kill him, it’d be her. What do we know about her?”

  “You mean other than the fact that she’s divorcing Loomis?”

  Felicity rolled her eyes and said, “Josh, I need background. Fast!”

  “You bet,” Josh said as he took out his phone and started punching buttons. Phyllis tended to forget that people could get on the Internet just as easily on their phones as they could on a computer. She’d been carrying the same cell phone for years, and all it would do was make calls and take pictures.

  By the time they were halfway back to Weatherford, Josh said, “Okay, Mrs. Loomis is the former Serita Lopez. Born in Corpus Christi. She and Loomis met while they were students at the University of Texas in Austin. He was a business major; she was premed. Looks like she dropped out to support him and never went back.”

  “So she gave up being a doctor for him, and then he cheated on her with some bimbo who works for him,” Felicity said. “Sounds like a motive for murder to me.”

  “And she has a concealed-carry license,” Josh added. “So she’s used to handling guns.”

  Phyllis said, “How did you find that out?”

  “Oh, I just hacked into the state database,” Josh said, as if it were the easiest thing in the world.

  “Won’t that get you in trouble?”

  “If it does, Inside Beat will foot the bill for his lawyers,” Felicity said. “Journalism knows no price.”

  Reporting on the sleazy antics of rich, pretty people who were famous for no other reason than being famous didn’t really strike Phyllis as journalism, but she wasn’t going to argue. Not while Felicity and the others were trying to help her clear Nate’s name by finding Barney McCrory’s murderer.

  “I can’t get into the ATF database to find out if Mr. or Mrs. Loomis has a rifle registered to them,” Josh said. “After all the uproar about data leaks over the past few years, they’ve gotten harder to crack. And with all the surveillance they’ve got going on, if I try, they’ll track it right back to me.”

  “Mr. D’Angelo might be able to find out,” Phyllis said. “He has a friend who works for the ATF.”

  “The guy better be careful. He’ll get hauled off to some NSA black site and never be heard from again.”


  Phyllis wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but it couldn’t be anything good.

  Felicity said, “See what you can find on Loomis’s business partners, Ridgely and Hedgepeth.”

  “I’ve looked them up already—,” Phyllis began.

  “Let Josh take a crack at it, okay? He’s got to be good for something, and this is it.”

  As Felicity turned to face forward again, Josh gave Phyllis a weak smile, as if to tell her he didn’t care about the things Felicity said. Phyllis thought he did, though. She had seen the way Josh looked at the reporter when Felicity wasn’t paying any attention to him. He had a crush on her, probably because of both her beauty and the fact that she was on-air talent. To a lowly intern fresh out of college, Felicity was close to TV royalty.

  At the moment, however, Josh was concentrating on his research, and after a few minutes he said, “Here’s something.” He held the phone out so Phyllis could see the screen. “The guy on the left is Phil Hedgepeth.”

  “Oh, dear Lord,” Phyllis said as she looked at a newspaper photo of two men in hunting garb, standing next to the carcass of a bear. “They killed that poor animal?”

  “Yeah, on a hunting trip to Canada. The other guy is the guide. Hedgepeth’s the one who brought down the bear.”

  Phil Hedgepeth had a big, proud grin on his face. He held a rifle in front of him.

  “Let me see,” Felicity said from the front seat. She looked at the picture on Josh’s phone and went on. “If Hedgepeth can shoot a grizzly bear, he could shoot a person.”

  “I’m not sure one thing follows the other,” Josh said. “And it’s a brown bear, not a grizzly—”

  “A bear is a bear, okay? I don’t care if it’s freakin’ Yogi or Boo Boo. How about Ridgely?”

  Josh went back to work, but after a few minutes he shook his head and said, “Nothing connecting him with hunting or shooting or anything like that. He doesn’t seem to be an outdoorsman.”

  “That leaves Jaycee Fallon. We already know that the other guy who ran against Loomis—what was his name? Coyle?—we already know he’s a shooter.”

  Several more minutes passed before Josh said, “Nothing on Jaycee Fallon, but I’ve got a Jaycee—spelled the same way—Dobbs in a picture from about fifteen years ago.”

  “Let me see,” Phyllis said.

  Josh turned the phone. Phyllis looked at the picture of half a dozen high school cheerleaders. Jaycee Dobbs, according to the caption, was the head cheerleader at the high school in one of the communities outside Weatherford that had its own school district.

  “Is that the same person?” Josh asked.

  Phyllis cast her mind back to the one photo she had seen of Jaycee Fallon. The hair was the same color, although styled differently, and the faces could be the same as well, taking into account that fifteen years had passed.

  “I think it is,” she said.

  Josh showed the photo to Felicity, who said, “So, she was a cheerleader in high school. That doesn’t mean anything. I was a cheerleader, in high school and college both, and it didn’t turn me into a killer.”

  “No, of course not,” Josh said hastily. “That’s just the only thing I’ve been able to find about her so far.”

  “Well, go back to Loomis’s wife. She’s our best suspect. I want to talk to her. Where does she live?”

  Phyllis said, “If she’s filed for divorce against Loomis, there’s a good chance he had to move out of the family home and she’s still living there. That’s usually the way things work.”

  “Yeah, it is,” Josh agreed. “I’ll see if I can find Loomis’s address.”

  That didn’t seem to take any time at all. A few minutes later, Josh gave Nick an address, then asked Phyllis, “Do you know where that is?”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t recognize that street name.”

  “’S okay,” Nick said. “I got a GPS.”

  Chapter 21

  Clay Loomis’s house was located on Lake Weatherford, northeast of town. Years of prolonged drought, plus the exploding population of the area and the resulting increase in demand for water, meant that the lake was not what it used to be. It stayed at a lower level than it was when Phyllis and Kenny would bring Mike out here as a little boy. Now it was primarily a reservoir and not a recreational destination.

  But there were still areas where the lake and the hills that surrounded it were quite pretty, and the houses in those areas were large and expensive. Clay Loomis’s home was one such house, an oddly cantilevered structure that stuck up out of the trees at eye-catching angles as it sat on a hill overlooking the water.

  A black iron fence surrounded the property, and the gate had a speaker and keypad attached to a pole that stuck out by the driveway. Since none of them knew the code to open the gate, Nick had to punch the call button on the keypad.

  A minute or so later, a woman’s voice asked over the speaker, “Yes?”

  Felicity leaned toward the driver’s side of the van so the camera mounted on the speaker could see her past Nick. She said, “Hi, I’m Felicity Prosper from the TV show Inside Beat—”

  That was as far as she got before a squeal of recognition came from the speaker.

  “Oooh, I know who you are!” the woman exclaimed. “I watch you all the time!”

  Felicity put a dazzling smile on her face as she said, “We’d like to speak to Serita Loomis.”

  “That’s me! That’s me! I’ll open the gate. Come on up. Just follow the driveway and I’ll meet you in front of the house.”

  With a low rumbling sound, the two halves of the gate began to swing back. When they were far enough apart, Nick eased the van through the opening and followed the asphalt driveway as it wound uphill through the trees.

  “She didn’t even ask you what you wanted to talk to her about,” Phyllis said to Felicity.

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s TV. And she’s going to be on it.”

  The driveway leveled out and turned into a circle drive in front of the house. Serita Loomis stood just outside the front door, wearing pastel blue sweats. Her long dark hair was pulled into a ponytail that dangled far down her back. She was a petite woman, and even in the casual getup she was very attractive.

  She hurried down a short flagstone walk to greet the visitors as they got out of the van.

  “I can’t believe it,” she said. “Felicity Prosper at my house. I’ve always thought that you should be the lead anchor instead of Spencer, you know.”

  “From your mouth to the executive producer’s ear,” Felicity said with a smile.

  “But what are you doing here? Why do you want to talk to me?”

  “Actually, it’s about your husband—”

  Serita’s gushing attitude disappeared in an instant. She said, “That lying, cheating, no-good—Wait a minute. Are you here to do an exposé about him? Are you doing a story on corrupt small-town politicians? Because Clay is the poster boy for that, let me tell you!”

  “Maybe we could go inside and talk,” Felicity suggested.

  “Yeah, sure. I wish I’d known you were coming. I could have fixed the place up. I could have fixed myself up!”

  “Oh, I’m sure that’s not necessary,” Felicity said. “You look gorgeous.”

  “Oh, I do not! But it’s so nice of you to say. Come on in, Ms. Prosper—you and your assistants.”

  “Call me Felicity.”

  “Can I? That’s so . . . I mean, I just can’t believe it! You’re actually here!”

  As they followed Serita into the house, Phyllis thought about what Josh had found out about her. This woman had been in the premed program? She had planned to become a doctor? And now she was prattling on with excitement because a reporter from a tabloid TV show had come to talk to her? Being all . . . What was the term Sam might have used? Being all fan-girl-y over a minor TV personality?

/>   Clearly, years of being married to Clay Loomis had changed Serita.

  The house was as eccentric on the inside as it was on the outside. The Loomises had probably hired some trendy decorator who was more concerned about feng shui than about comfort. But the sofa that Phyllis and Josh sat on wasn’t too bad. Felicity and Serita perched on angular chairs that looked like they’d be easy to fall off of. Nick stayed on his feet, with the camera in its usual position on his shoulder.

  One wall of the room where they sat was mostly glass. In summer, the view down over the lake would probably be spectacular, but right now, with the trees bare because of the season, it was a little bleak.

  Phyllis looked around the room for a Christmas tree or other decorations but didn’t see any. Either Serita hadn’t gotten around to putting them up yet, or else she wasn’t much on celebrating the holiday. It seemed like fewer and fewer people really cared about Christmas nowadays.

  “All right,” Serita said as she leaned forward eagerly. “What do you want to know about Clay?”

  “The two of you are getting a divorce, is that correct?” Felicity asked.

  “That’s right.” Serita didn’t appear to wonder how Felicity had found out about that. “He cheated on me.”

  “With a woman who works at his company, isn’t that right?”

  “Jaycee.” Contempt dripped from Serita’s voice as she said the name. Her lip curled in a sneer. “A little blond piece of trailer trash.” Serita shook her head. “But she doesn’t work at the company anymore. She quit when she found out what a scumbag Clay really is. And she probably realized that with all the trouble he has going on, he’s not going to be able to afford to be the sort of sugar daddy she was looking for.”

  Phyllis hadn’t heard anybody use the term sugar daddy in a long time. She was especially surprised to hear it from someone as young as Serita. Of course, Serita couldn’t be as young as she appeared, considering when she and Clay Loomis had been in college. There was a good chance she’d had some work done over the years to preserve her youth.