Wedding Cake Killer: A Fresh-Baked Mystery Page 6

  Of course, it wasn’t the same with Eve. That was just a friend leaving, Phyllis told herself. But Eve had become part of her family, just as Carolyn and Sam had. And now, as the taillights of Roy’s car turned the corner and disappeared, Phyllis knew nothing would ever be the same.

  Sam must have sensed what she was feeling. He put his arm around her shoulders and said, “Come on, I’ll help you clean up those dishes. And if I remember right, there was one more piece of pie left. If nobody else wants it . . .”

  Phyllis laughed. “It’s all yours,” she said.

  Chapter 8

  It was amazing how quickly things settled back into a routine. A different one than before, to be sure, but still a routine. People needed that, Phyllis thought.

  She spoke to Eve almost every day on the phone. A few days after the newlyweds returned from their honeymoon, Phyllis, Sam, and Carolyn went out to the bed-and-breakfast to see where they were living now. They brought along some of Eve’s belongings from the house that she wanted with her, and Sam drove Eve’s car, which had been parked at Phyllis’s house since before the wedding.

  The place was every bit as charming as Roy had made it sound. In January, the scenery wasn’t as nice as it would be in the spring, summer, and fall, but it was still a picturesque landscape with wooded hills rolling away and then dropping into the valley of the Brazos River.

  “It’s lovely,” Phyllis told Eve as they all stood on the house’s front porch, looking down toward the river.

  Sam rested his hands on the porch’s railing, which was made from rustic cedar posts, and nodded. “Yeah, a fella could get used to this view,” he said.

  “And it really is peaceful here,” Carolyn admitted.

  “Yes, it’s so beautiful and serene that we’ve had trouble working up the enthusiasm for getting out and looking for a place of our own,” Eve said with a smile. “It’s been easier just to sit back and enjoy this place.”

  “Well, that’s all right . . . for a while,” Phyllis said.

  “Oh, I’m sure we’ll find a house soon,” Roy said. “It’s just a matter of time.”

  A car turned off the farm-to-market road that ran between the hills and started up the long gravel drive toward the house. As it approached, the door went up on the much newer two-car garage that was attached to the old farmhouse.

  “Those are the owners, Pete and Jan Delaney,” Eve said. “Very nice people.”

  Instead of closing the garage door after the car had pulled in, the woman who got out walked around to the front of the house instead and gave them a friendly smile as she said, “Hi, folks. Eve, are these your friends?”

  “That’s right. Jan, this is Phyllis Newsom, Carolyn Wilbarger, and Sam Fletcher.”

  The woman came up the steps to the porch and shook hands with all of them. “Jan Delaney,” she said. “I’m so glad to meet you. Eve has talked a lot about all of you.”

  Jan was in her mid-forties, Phyllis guessed, a very attractive woman with short chestnut hair. She wore jeans and an open flannel shirt over a sweatshirt. She had a down-to-earth air about her that probably came from living in the country. Phyllis had seen that attitude in her own parents, both of whom had been raised on farms.

  The man who followed Jan from the car was a little shorter and stockier, with graying dark hair and an open, friendly face. Jan held out a hand toward him and said, “This is my husband, Pete.”

  “Nice to meet you folks,” Pete Delaney said with a nod. He didn’t seem to be as outgoing as his wife, but he was certainly pleasant enough. Phyllis found herself liking both of them right away.

  Pete went on, “I’ll get those groceries taken in and put up, Jan.”

  “Let me give you a hand,” Sam volunteered.

  “I’d be glad to help, too,” Roy added.

  Pete shook his head. “Oh, no, I wouldn’t want to bother you folks.”

  “No bother,” Sam insisted. “Come on.”

  Pete smiled and said, “In that case . . .”

  The three men went to the garage, leaving the women on the porch.

  “You have a lovely home here,” Phyllis said to Jan.

  “Thank you. As soon as I saw the place, I knew I had to have it. There’s something about it that affects nearly everybody the same way. They want to stay for a while.” Jan laughed. “But Pete and I decided to stay forever. We’d had enough of moving around.” She paused. “Pete was a colonel in the army before he retired. We lived all over the world. I guess that made me always want a place of my own, a place where I could just stay and stay and never have to pack up and move again.”

  “I can imagine,” Carolyn said.

  Pete Delaney hadn’t really seemed like the military type to Phyllis, but she knew that appearances could be deceiving.

  “It’s nice of you to let Eve and Roy stay here like this,” she said.

  “Oh, we were happy to give them a good rate and have them move in for a while. At this time of year we don’t do much business except on the weekends, and we’re hardly ever full even then. It’s no problem having full-time guests.”

  “I don’t know how long we’ll be here,” Eve said. “You’ve made it so pleasant, I’m not sure we’ll ever want to leave!”

  Jan laughed. “Then we’re doing our job, aren’t we? I hope that even after you and Roy find a home of your own, you’ll come back to see us every now and then.”

  “We certainly intend to,” Eve said with an emphatic nod.

  The rest of the visit passed pleasantly. Phyllis, Sam, and Carolyn headed home well before dark, and as Phyllis drove her Lincoln along the country roads toward Weatherford, Carolyn said, “Well, she does seem happy, I suppose.”

  In the backseat, Sam chuckled. “As happy as any newlywed is, I’d say.”

  “You mean the glow hasn’t worn off,” Phyllis said with a smile.

  “That’s right,” Sam agreed.

  “Oh, it will,” Carolyn said. “It always does sooner or later; we all know that.”

  Carolyn was in the passenger seat in front while Sam sat in the back, turned sideways a little to accommodate his long legs. Phyllis glanced in the rearview mirror and caught Sam’s eyes for a second. Carolyn’s comment had been edged with bitterness, and Phyllis understood why her friend felt that way.

  But Phyllis knew that at least in some cases, Carolyn was wrong. The glow of the love she’d felt for Kenny had never gone out. It might have waned some over the years, and every now and then it even flickered a bit as the stresses of everyday life took their inevitable toll. But at other times it burned brightly, and it had never, ever gone out. Phyllis knew that Sam felt the same way about his late wife. Her long struggle with cancer had only made them grow closer, and her eventual death had been a loss from which he would never fully recover. Phyllis felt the same way about Kenny.

  But then Sam had moved into the house because Dolly Williamson didn’t think he ought to be living alone, and the friendship that had grown up between him and Phyllis had been very good for both of them. There were broken places in both of them that would never heal, but the pain of those breaks had faded because now they had each other to lean on. The glow that was between them was different, but it was warming and sustaining, and Phyllis had come to realize that it would never go out, either. Carolyn was wrong. It wasn’t the same for everyone.

  Phyllis knew that when she met Sam’s eyes and knew as well that he felt the same way.

  And that put a little smile on her face, all the way back home.

  * * *

  Several more days passed. The weather turned cold again as a front came through, but it didn’t bring any snow or ice with it. The temperature was low enough to make Phyllis’s bones ache a little, even though it was warm enough in the house.

  She was sitting in the living room knitting when she glanced up through the picture window and saw a cruiser from the Parker County Sheriff’s Department stop at the curb in front of the house. She enjoyed knitting, needlework, and othe
r crafts like that, but she lacked the patience to stick with any of it for too long at a time, so she was glad to set the needles and yarn aside for a while. She stood up as she watched her son, Mike, get out of the car and come across the yard toward the porch.

  Clouds of steam formed in front of Mike’s face as his breath fogged up in the frigid air. He was carrying his hat instead of wearing it, and Phyllis’s mothering instincts kicked in. She would have to tell him that in cold weather like this, he ought to wear his hat whenever he wasn’t in the car, even if he just got out for a minute. A lot of body heat escaped through the top of the head, after all, and she didn’t want him to get chilled. She thought she remembered reading somewhere that that wasn’t really true, that the top of the head didn’t lose warmth any faster than any other part of the body did, but that was what she’d been taught and what she’d believed for years, and she wasn’t going to change now. Anyway, any scientist who didn’t think that a child ought to wear a hat when it was cold was a quack, as far as she was concerned.

  Phyllis opened the wooden door and watched Mike through the glass of the storm door. He didn’t look particularly cold . . . but he did look worried and upset about something, she realized.

  As soon as that thought went through Phyllis’s head, fear for Bobby gripped her. She loved her grandson dearly. Hard on the heels of that came concern for Sarah. She was the best daughter-in-law any woman could ever want.

  But if something was wrong with Sarah or Bobby, Mike would have looked even more upset, Phyllis decided. This was something else. Something bad, no doubt, but not the worst.

  Phyllis opened the storm door as Mike came up the porch steps. “Come in here out of the cold,” she told him.

  He summoned up a slight smile. “Hi, Mom.” He was a handsome, broad-shouldered man, especially impressive in his uniform. “Are Sam and Carolyn here?”

  “Sam’s out in the garage, and I believe Carolyn’s upstairs,” Phyllis said as she closed the door behind him. The fact that Mike had asked about them reinforced her feeling that something was wrong. “What is it?”

  “I want to talk to all three of you,” he said. “I’ll go get Sam.”

  “I’ll call Carolyn,” Phyllis said. “But can’t you tell me what’s wrong?”

  Mike shook his head. “It’ll be better if I can sit down with all of you.”

  So it was nothing to do with the family, Phyllis thought, but her heart was hammering harder than usual anyway as she went part of the way up the stairs and called to Carolyn. Maybe she was wrong, she told herself. Maybe the bad news was personal and it was so bad Mike wanted to have Sam and Carolyn there so they could support her when he told her.

  But nothing could be that bad as long as Mike and Sarah and Bobby were okay, she thought. It had to be about somebody else . . .

  Eve.

  Phyllis’s breath seemed to freeze in her throat, just as surely as water would freeze outside on a frigid day like today. Something had happened to Eve.

  They had been wrong all along to trust Roy.

  That was a terrible thing to think, she scolded herself. She had no idea what was wrong, but it wasn’t right to jump to such horrible conclusions.

  Carolyn appeared at the top of the stairs and started down. “What is it?” she asked.

  “Mike’s here, and he wants to tell us something.”

  Carolyn frowned. “Mike? Is he here as a deputy or your son?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s good either way.”

  By the time they reached the bottom of the stairs, Mike and Sam were starting up the hall from the kitchen. Mike had gone out that way to fetch Sam.

  “What’s going on here, Mike?” Carolyn demanded.

  “Let’s go in the living room and sit down,” Mike said. “Then I’ll tell you all I know, Mrs. Wilbarger.”

  “This is pretty bad, isn’t it?” Sam asked.

  “It’s not good,” Mike admitted.

  “And it’s something about Eve,” Phyllis said. Her voice sounded strained to her ears.

  “Let’s just sit down,” Mike said as he herded them into the living room.

  Everyone sat, but no one relaxed. Phyllis said, “All right, you’ve frightened us enough, Mike. Tell us what’s wrong.”

  “One of our cars answered a 911 call an hour or so ago,” Mike said. “There was a call for an ambulance, too. Something had happened at a place out in the country, a little bed-and-breakfast—”

  “I knew it,” Carolyn said. She put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, my God. Eve—”

  “Eve’s fine, as far as we know,” Mike said. He took a deep breath. “It’s Roy. When the responding units got there, he was dead.”

  “Lord,” Sam said. “Heart attack?”

  Mike shook his head. “I’m afraid not. He’d been murdered.”

  Chapter 9

  Phyllis sat back, stunned—although a part of her brain wondered why she would be surprised. Hadn’t murder seemed to follow her around for the past several years? It was as if some cosmic switch had been flipped, and after leading a nice, normal existence for more than six decades, suddenly she was cursed to find herself dealing with violent, unexpected death on a regular basis.

  That grim thought occupied her for only a fraction of a second. Then she asked the questions that were really uppermost in her mind.

  “Where is Eve? Does she know?”

  Mike took another deep breath, and Phyllis steeled herself for another answer she didn’t think she was going to like.

  “We don’t know where Eve is,” he said.

  “Oh, my God,” Carolyn said, her voice cracking from the strain she was under. “She’s been kidnapped! The murderer kidnapped her!”

  “There’s no evidence of that,” Mike said with a shake of his head. “In fact, right now . . . right now I guess you’d say she’s considered a person of interest.”

  “A suspect, you mean,” Sam said.

  “That’s crazy!” Phyllis burst out.

  Mike lifted both hands and patted at the air. “No, that’s not it, exactly. I wouldn’t say that she’s a suspect. She’s just somebody that we want to talk to.”

  “Have you issued an arrest warrant for her?” Carolyn asked, and her words were jagged with anger now. “I know how quick you people are to arrest people who are innocent!”

  That “you people” comment wasn’t fair to Mike, Phyllis thought, but she could understand why Carolyn felt that way. Several years earlier, Carolyn herself had been suspected of murder, and she had never forgiven the authorities for that.

  To get Carolyn off that track, Phyllis asked, “What about the people who own the bed-and-breakfast, Jan and Pete Delaney? Have they been questioned?”

  Mike nodded. “Jan Delaney was the one who found the body.”

  A little shudder went through Phyllis at the way Mike said the body instead of using Roy’s name. But that was his training, she supposed. Roy’s death was a murder case now, and that’s how he had to regard it. He had put aside any personal feelings he might have.

  “I suppose Mrs. Delaney and her husband have both been questioned by now, and any other people who were in the house at the time,” Mike went on. “I don’t know that for sure. I haven’t been on the scene. When I heard that a unit was going to be sent here, I asked for the job. I don’t think Sheriff Haney much wanted to give it to me, but I guess he decided it would be all right.”

  “Wait a minute,” Sam said. “You came here lookin’ for Eve, didn’t you?”

  “I knew it!” Carolyn said. “You’re going to arrest her!”

  Phyllis could tell that Mike was getting annoyed. She said, “Eve’s not here.”

  Mike nodded. “I know that. I could tell by the way you reacted, so I didn’t figure there was any point in even asking. I’d already found out what I needed to know. But now I have to tell you . . . if you see her or hear from her, you need to tell her to come to the sheriff’s department and ask to speak to the investigators in ch
arge of the case.”

  “Turn herself in, you mean,” Carolyn said.

  “Look, Mrs. Wilbarger, this isn’t any easier for me than it is for you.”

  Normally Phyllis might have said something to Mike about speaking to Carolyn in that tone of voice, but she understood why he was upset. Eve had been one of his English teachers in high school, and since she had moved in here, she’d become almost like a member of the family. To him this was like having one of his aunts suspected of murder.

  “What else can you tell us?” she asked.

  He looked even more uncomfortable as he said, “That’s it. Just tell Mrs. Turner . . . I mean, Mrs. Porter . . . to come talk to us if you see her.”

  “You sounded mighty sure it was murder,” Sam said. “How’d Roy die?”

  Mike shook his head. “I can’t go into any details.”

  “You can’t go into them, or you don’t know them?” Phyllis asked.

  Mike made a face and said, “Look, Mom, the sheriff had a talk with me before he agreed to let me come over and see if Eve was here. The district attorney doesn’t like the fact that the sheriff’s department has shared information with you in the past. DA Sullivan doesn’t know that information came from me, but it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?”

  “So Sheriff Haney’s walkin’ on eggshells when it comes to Phyllis, just like Chief of Police Whitmire does,” Sam said as he frowned. “What Sullivan doesn’t like is that Phyllis has solved those murders that the cops couldn’t.”

  “The district attorney feels that everything should go through proper channels.”

  “The district attorney’s got a big ol’ stick up his—”

  “Sam,” Phyllis said. “Let’s not make things any more difficult for Mike than they have to be.”

  “Thanks, Mom. I appreciate that.”

  “So, do you have an APB or a BOLO or whatever you call it out on Eve?” Carolyn asked.

  “Descriptions of her and her car have been broadcast,” Mike acknowledged.

  “Is it possible that she’s come to any harm?” Phyllis asked. “Could whoever killed Roy have kidnapped her?”