Lexie Starr Cozy Mysteries Boxed Set Page 24

  Stone looked at me in amazement and nodded. Then he reached into the back seat and picked up a red K.C. Chiefs ball cap belonging to Tony, and put on a pair of sporty, wrap-around, sunglasses lying on the dash. Stone never wore a hat, and I had to admit just the addition of a ball cap and glasses made him difficult to recognize. The cap hid his attractive silver hair and made him look a bit goofy.

  I suppose it was no more than fifteen to twenty minutes later when Stone returned to the car, although it seemed much longer. I'd almost dozed off when I heard Stone's key in the door. He hopped in the car and flung the ball cap to the back seat. He kept the sunglasses on as he shifted the car into reverse. He was unusually animated and expectant. I knew he was becoming more and more intrigued with our sleuthing mission. I was, too. It was more involved than I would've guessed at the beginning.

  "What did you find out?" I asked, anxious to share in his excitement.

  "Well, it appears that Boris has a gambling problem, and some significant unpaid gambling debts. I was standing behind a concrete pillar when Boris walked out of the men's restroom. A large, muscular guy who looked as if he could easily bend crowbars in half with his bare hands immediately approached him. Neither one had a clue I was standing behind the pillar and could hear their entire conversation. The big, burly guy asked Boris if he had 'the money,' and Boris told him he didn't, but he would have it within the week. Then the guy told him if he didn't have the money his boss was owed by Saturday, Boris could look forward to having his face rearranged."

  "Oh, my! I take it this big, muscular guy is a loan shark?"

  "Well, he's a goon for the loan shark, anyway. Boris promised to have the money because he had an inside tip on a bet he was about to make. He said Willie's White Lightning was a shoe-in. The goon didn't look too impressed, but Boris was so emphatic about it, I was almost tempted to bet a hundred bucks on Willie's White Lightning, myself. After the goon walked away, Boris made a call on his cell phone and practically hissed when he spoke into it. 'Where are those damn birds? I need the money, now!' I heard him say into the phone."

  "Damn birds?" I asked.

  "That's what he said. Damn birds. I'm sure of it. Then Boris told Shorty, the caller, he'd be in his room at the inn at six o'clock this evening awaiting a call, and if Shorty didn't come through with some positive news about the birds, his ass was going to be grass."

  "And Boris would be the lawnmower, no doubt?"

  "No doubt."

  "I wonder who this Shorty guy is and what Boris meant by the 'damn birds.' What can birds have to do with anything?" I asked.

  "No way to tell."

  "Maybe there is, Stone. If we can somehow get Boris's cell phone, we can check his log of outgoing calls. See what phone number he called at about one o'clock today and call it ourselves to see who answers. Or, if that doesn't work, we might be able to do a cross-check on the computer to see who the phone number belongs to."

  "Good idea, Lexie," Stone said. I smiled as he cleared his throat and continued, "For someone who used to be opposed to the very idea of owning a cell phone, you seem to be quite familiar with the things now."

  "I've learned they really are very handy and useful, if not downright critical at times. I love my new Nokia phone," I admitted. "I don't know how we all got by without them for so long."

  "Me either. I still need to look for a different phone carrier, though. One that gets a stronger signal here in Rockdale than my current carrier. The service I used in Myrtle Beach doesn't seem to fare well here in the Midwest. It seems like I'm on analog roam most of the time."

  "I'll bet that gets expensive in a hurry."

  "Uh-huh, it sure does. Hey, are you hungry? While the investigators are at the inn taking the last couple of statements, we could stop and get some lunch at the Corner Cafe," Stone suggested.

  "Yes, let's do. I'm starving. I was served a full breakfast at the hospital, but I didn't recognize anything on my tray, so I hesitated to eat any of it. I drank the coffee, of course—"

  "Of course."

  "—and ate one slice of cold, soggy toast."

  * * *

  When we finished eating our bowls of vegetable-beef soup with crackers, we left the cafe and climbed back into Tony's car. Stone started the engine in order to turn on the heater, and then dialed the inn on his cell phone. After numerous rings, Cornelius Walker finally answered the phone.

  "Hello, Cornelius, is Crystal there?" Stone asked.

  "Yes, I'm sure she is. I just saw her a while ago," Cornelius said. From the passenger seat I could plainly hear his nasal voice over the phone. "I'm not sure where the delectable young angel in an apron is at the moment, however. Would you like me to go find her for you? Tracking down beautiful women is my forte."

  "No, no, that's fine, Cornelius," Stone said, laughing at Cornelius's remark. "Do you know if Boris Dack has returned to the inn yet? He had expected to return around eleven."

  "I think he's just arriving now, as a matter of fact. I see a blue car pulling up the drive. It looks like his Chrysler Concorde. Do you want me to go outside and bring him to the phone?"

  "No, that's not necessary. We'll be back to the inn shortly, anyway. Oh, but Cornelius, you could do me a favor. I need you to tell Crystal we're going to be stopping at the store to get some chicken, rice, and zucchini for tonight. Lexie will help Crystal fry the chicken. Crystal expressed a concern this morning about what she was going to prepare and serve for supper."

  "Okay, fried chicken does sound good. I'll tell her as soon as I see her again," Cornelius said.

  "Are you sure you won't get side-tracked and forget?"

  "I'll remember. I promise. I do have a pornographic memory, you know."

  Chapter 8

  Detective Wyatt Johnston was sitting at the kitchen table when we arrived at the inn. He'd helped himself to a cup of coffee while chatting with Crystal as she cleaned up the lunchtime dishes. She'd just finished serving a simple mid-day meal of sandwiches and fruit salad. The leftovers from the meal were spread out on the table in front of the officer. Detective Johnston was eyeing the food in anticipation, like a buzzard bearing down on road kill.

  He gave me a questioning look as he motioned toward the platter of leftover sandwiches. "May I?" he asked, as I unloaded the groceries from the paper sacks and placed them on the marble counter for Crystal to stash away in the pantry.

  "Sure, help yourself, Detective. Whatever you or the other officers don't eat will go to waste. Stone and I stopped for lunch on the way home, and everyone else has already eaten, as well. Help yourself to some fruit salad, too."

  I wasn't surprised when he ignored the last offer. Detective Johnston didn't strike me as a fruit salad type of guy. I was amazed seconds later, when the detective selected a turkey and tomato sandwich and then devoured nearly half of it in one bite.

  After the officer had polished off the rest of the sandwich with two more bites, he sorted through the remaining leftovers for another. This time he chose a ham and cheese. While he ate the second sandwich, Stone pitched the bag of trash down the basement stairs. He didn't mention to the detective how he'd obtained the bag or where it had come from. I'm sure if Wyatt Johnston was aware of anything other than the sandwich he was inhaling, he only assumed it was trash originating at the inn. After Johnston finished eating a third and last sandwich and had wiped his hands on the legs of his slacks, Stone asked, "What's up, Wyatt?"

  "Right now, Ron and Orion have the black light set up upstairs, testing your guests' hands for gunshot residue. I just came from up there, and they were down to the last couple of guests. No sign of the residue has been found yet, by the way. Assuming none is found on the last two guests, the Poffenbargers, we'll probably release all of them to return to their homes tomorrow morning. Not that we're formally holding them here to begin with. I'm sure you'll both be glad to see them all leave, though."

  "Is there any particular reason for the gunshot residue testing?" Stone asked. "Are there new develo
pments indicating one of our guests is responsible for the shooting?"

  "Not really," Wyatt said. "The residue test is just a formality, and probably all for naught, anyway." Wyatt continued talking, although neither Stone nor I had reacted or responded to his remark about being glad to see the guests leave. "The sergeant is across town right now, arresting a man named Randall on first-degree murder charges."

  "Randall?" I asked. The name was not familiar to me.

  "Yeah, Peter Randall. They've got him on probable cause, I guess. According to Sergeant O'Brien, there's a history of bad blood between Prescott and Randall. Randall used to be Prescott's personal stockbroker and financial advisor. Some investments Randall recommended a few months ago went south and caused a big fracas between the two men. Prescott lost a ton of money and filed a lawsuit against Randall on fraudulent practices."

  "Didn't Randall have an alibi for his whereabouts Sunday night and early Monday morning?" Stone asked.

  "No. At least not one that could be corroborated by anyone. He said he went to the old movie theatre downtown, the one that plays old classics at midnight every night for two bucks a ticket. It's right across the street from Randall's house, as a matter of fact. His photo was shown to all the employees at the theatre, and not one of them recognized Randall or remembered him being there Sunday night. They showed the movie, Oh, God!, that night, and when asked who played the part of God, Randall stated he couldn't recall."

  "He sat through the whole movie and couldn't remember that George Burns played God?" Stone asked.

  "That's just it. He said he stayed until the movie theatre closed just after two A.M., and yet he couldn't come up with John Denver's name, either. He told the detectives he slept through most of the movie. Yeah, right. Sure he did!"

  "Hmm, sounds suspicious, doesn't it?" Stone said, with a shake of his head. "But, it's doesn't exactly make him a murderer. Is that all the investigators have to go on? It seems a little weak to me. I've fallen asleep in movie theatres on numerous occasions, myself. Haven't you?"

  "Yeah, once or twice, I guess," the detective said. "For now, that's all they have on the guy, but they feel like they've got the right man pinned as Prescott's killer. Now they'll work to build a case around Peter Randall."

  I had doubts that Peter Randall was the killer, and obviously Stone did as well. I knew the Rockdale Police Department had limited resources and was not often called upon to investigate a homicide, but the idea of throwing a dart at a wall full of balloons, blindfolded, and building a case around whatever random name was behind a broken balloon, did not sit well with me. It seemed like incredibly lazy detective work. There had to be a lot of innocent people rotting away in prison cells for that very reason. In this instance, there were too many people with motives to kill Horatio Prescott—motives just as strong and compelling as Peter Randall's—and the police should be expanding the circle of suspects and running down all sorts of clues and leads. Each guest at the inn should be closely evaluated, for it seemed to me each had a reason to dislike the victim as much as Peter Randall disliked him.

  I knew I'd sat through many movies that, later on, I couldn't have made one intelligent comment about. And I had slept through Tom Hanks's movie Castaway not once, but twice, in the same week. Some people, like me, were just not movie aficionados and didn't know one actor from another. It would never have occurred to me that something so insignificant could cause a person to find himself in front of a jury, possibly facing the death penalty for a murder he hadn't committed.

  "What about the footprints in the snow? The prints they found seem to come from someone inside the inn, and there was no sign of intruders or a forced entry. Has the investigating team cleared all the guests here at the inn?" I asked Wyatt Johnston.

  "I don't think they ever really did much scrutinizing of the Historical Society members, other than the customary fingerprinting, gunshot residue checking, and routine questioning. I do know they considered the footprints as non sequitur material, of no particular significance to the investigation," Wyatt said.

  "I'm not sure I agree, but they're the experts. I'm just a library assistant. Anything else new?"

  "Umm, well, let's see. I did hear Veronica was notified about the death of her father. She's flying into town this afternoon. It's rumored she's considering the idea of hiring a P.I. on her own. Some hotshot private eye she knows from Camdenton, down around the Lake of the Ozarks. Veronica doesn't put much faith in my department's ability to solve the murder case, I guess."

  I wasn't sure I did either, and I couldn't blame Veronica for bringing in her own private investigator. In her shoes, I would have done the same thing. There didn't seem to be an overabundance of effort on the part of the Rockdale Police Department. They were efficient and knowledgeable, but seemed a bit lackluster in their objective of making sure that justice was served—almost as if any suspect would suffice, regardless of his guilt or innocence.

  "One thing's clear," the detective said. "There's no evidence the victim put up any kind of resistance. So chances are he either knew his assailant or he was taken completely by surprise." Or possibly both, I thought.

  * * *

  While I was cutting up the whole fryers we'd purchased, Stone came into the kitchen to check on me. He didn't want me overdoing it, as he'd repeated on several occasions. I finished whacking the chicken up into pieces and reached into the fridge for the zucchini to clean and slice. Stone took the bag from me and handed it over to Crystal, who'd just entered the room and indicated she wanted to prepare the produce. "I can handle it, Lexie. You rest," she said, taking the knife and bag of zucchini squash from Stone.

  Stone held my hand and led me from the kitchen down to the basement to show me a few of the things he'd discovered in the trash bag he'd confiscated from D&P's dumpster. Most of the bag's contents had been through a shredder, but a few pieces of paper had been wadded up and thrown away intact, as if someone was in a hurry to dispose of them. Stone was just beginning to sort through those papers. "Check this one out," he said, handing me a sheet of paper after he smoothed it out with his hand.

  I glanced at the official-looking document, scanning it hurriedly. It was a consent form, written on D&P Enterprise's letterhead. It allowed only representatives of the Arnold Accounting Firm to have access to D&P Enterprise's account information. At the bottom of the form there was the phone number of the accounting firm, and the signatures of both Horatio Prescott and Boris Dack.

  "Hmm, I wonder."

  "You wonder what?" Stone asked.

  "Don't know if anything will come of it, but I have an idea."

  "I was afraid you might," Stone said after a long drawn-out sigh.

  "Relax. Nothing dangerous is involved."

  I unclipped my cell phone from my waistband and called the phone number on the paper while Stone watched me with a curious expression. I had no idea what I was going to say, so decided to play it by ear.

  "Arnold Accounting." I heard the female voice of a young woman, sounding quite bored.

  "Hello. This is Wilma from Rockdale Bank and Trust. I need to speak to the accountant in charge of the D&P Enterprise account," I said.

  "I don't know who'd that be," the young woman replied. I could almost see her filing her nails as she spoke into the phone. "Let me forward you to the owner, Mary. Please hold."

  I listened to elevator music for several minutes before Mary came on the line. "This is Mary Arnold, may I help you?"

  "Um, yes, Ms. Arnold. This is Wilma from Rockdale Bank and Trust. I need to speak to the person in charge of the D&P Enterprise account."

  "Actually, D&P's a large contract and there are several accountants assigned to their account. We've just heard from one of our other clients that Mr. Prescott has died. Do you know if that's true?"

  "Yes, ma'am, I'm afraid it is. Mr. Prescott suffered an unfortunate and untimely death early yesterday morning. All of us here at the bank are very saddened by the news. That's what has precipitated thi
s call, as a matter of fact. Because of Mr. Prescott's sudden death, we've been notified there will be a thorough investigation into his finances, and the finances of his business. Have you personally been involved in the D&P Enterprises account at all, Mary? Have you, by any chance, dealt with anyone here at Rockdale Bank and Trust on D&P's account?"

  "No, not personally. I'm ashamed to admit I've never even been inside your bank. But, although I've never met him in person, there have been a couple of instances where I've spoken on the phone with Mr. Myers, the president of your bank, on behalf of D&P Enterprises. Mr. Myers's son, Chad, just happens to be one of my son's best friends," Ms. Arnold said.

  "Chad's a good kid, isn't he?" I asked, as if I'd known Mr. Myers's son since the day he was born.

  "Uh, yeah, he's a good kid," she answered, with a touch of amusement in her voice. "Anyway, I assign accounts to my employees and am seldom personally involved beyond that. Could I forward you to one of the accountants who handles the contract?" Mary Arnold asked.

  I'd found out what I needed to know. "No, that's okay. Mainly we just wanted to inform you one of the partners of the company had passed."

  "Thank you," Mary said, with a touch of sadness in her voice.

  "No, thank you," I said softly.

  * * *

  After telling him I'd be back to the inn in less than an hour, I left Stone, who was still sorting through the trash. I changed into a dressier outfit, put on a coat, and drove my Jeep to the Rockdale Bank and Trust. I parked in one of the customer parking spots, dabbed a little ChapStick on my dry lips, and strolled into the bank.

  Inside, I told one of the tellers I needed to speak with Mr. Myers, the bank's president. She asked me to have a seat and informed me Mr. Myers would be with me in a few minutes. I sat and sifted through issues of Money and Business Week magazines for about ten minutes before I was called back into Mr. Myers's office.

  "Good afternoon, Mr. Myers. I've spoken with you several times on the phone but have never had the privilege of meeting you in person," I said cordially. "I'm Mary Arnold of Arnold Accounting. You know, Chad's friend's mother."