Murder by Meringue (Sky High Pies Cozy Mysteries Book 25) Read online

  “How could I possibly?” I asked, fighting the urge to laugh. “It’s going to be very, very, very soon, right?”

  CHAPTER 21

  I spotted Rita McGuire as soon as I walked into Pepper & Roni’s Pizzeria later that afternoon. She was standing beside a table talking to Skip Hargrove, a part-time driver for the Crescent Creek Cab Company. As I approached, he jumped from the chair and brushed the seat with one hand.

  “I got it warmed up for you, Katie,” he said. “I’m heading out the door.”

  “That’s okay,” I replied. “I’m actually not here to eat.”

  “Did you have a carryout order?” Rita said as Skip waved farewell and left the restaurant.

  “Detective Kincaid wanted me to ask you a couple of questions about Amelia Felton,” I told her. “I’m consulting on the inquiry into her death, just to help out with a few interviews and some legwork. Can we talk for a minute?”

  Rita’s smile vanished. “I’ve been sick since I heard the news. Such a horrible thing.”

  “It’s incredibly tragic,” I agreed. “Only thirty-five and in the prime of her life.”

  “If that was even Amelia’s real age.” Her mouth wriggled into a watery grin. “Who told you she was thirty-five?”

  “She’s the same age as my sister,” I said. “They went to school together.”

  “If you say so,” Rita replied.

  I smiled. “So you thought that she’d lied about how old she was?”

  “Oh, c’mon now,” Rita said. “You’re a smart woman, Katie. And you know people all over town. You must’ve heard the dish about Amelia. There were days when that woman lied and fudged the facts about everything.”

  “I hate to sound naïve,” I said, “but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She quickly glanced around the restaurant. A mother and father were seated in a booth near the front with three young pizza lovers. Two other tables were occupied by diners enjoying their food. And a lone beer drinker sat hunched over the bar at the far end of the room.

  “Let’s go over there,” Rita said, nodding toward an alcove used to store glasses, silverware and tablecloths. “It’ll be a little more private.”

  As soon as we were away from the dining area, I told her that everything we discussed would be confidential. “Whatever you can share with us about Amelia could be helpful in understanding her state of mind in the months before her death,” I said. “Since you and she worked together at Ballard, Kellogg & Culpepper, you may have heard or observed things that other folks might not be aware of.”

  Rita frowned. “What does her state of mind have to do with anything? I thought Amelia was the casualty here, not the criminal.”

  “It’s really standard procedure,” I said. “The police always want to know as much as possible about the victim because that can sometimes help identify the perpetrator.”

  She tightened her gaze. “Okay, so…would that include some financial difficulties that she was having in the past few months?”

  I nodded. “Very much so.”

  Rita sighed; a long, soft hiss that matched the dejected glint in her eyes. “I feel really weird talking about her. I mean, the poor girl is dead. And if it’s true that there’s a serial stalker out there…”

  “You’ve heard the rumors?” I asked.

  “Everybody has, Katie. It’s all over town. There’s a hit list with forty-odd names on it.”

  Her hands had started trembling slightly, so I reached out and put one of mine on her arm. “Rita? Look at me.”

  Her eyes shifted to meet my gaze.

  “The rumors are simply conjecture and fear,” I said. “I won’t pretend that we’ve had two very bad things happen this week in town, but there’s no need for unjustified concern.”

  “Does that mean you don’t believe the stories?” she whispered.

  “About a hit list with forty names?” I said. “No, I don’t believe that’s true. But like I was saying, we’ve had two incidents this week that definitely appear to be linked. And what I’m trying to do now is gather information about Amelia and Ken Ballard so I can pass it along to Detective Kincaid.”

  She took a breath. “Okay, so what do you want to know?”

  “Did her financial difficulties start during the time that you and Amelia worked together at Ken Ballard’s CPA firm?”

  “Yes,” Rita said. “She ran up a ton of credit card debt, mostly on clothes and things for her house, like living room furniture and a new dining room set. Then her brother borrowed a whole lot of money. And then she got fired from the firm, so…I mean, you can imagine the pressure, right?”

  “I think that anyone could,” I said. “Do you know how Amelia handled the stress?”

  “She wrote bad checks,” Rita answered. “And before she left the company, she misappropriated about five thousand dollars.”

  “Well, that’s a nice chunk of change,” I said. “How’d she embezzle it?”

  “Transferred half of it from the company’s satellite account in Grand Cayman to her brother,” Rita said. “I mean, can you believe how stupid that was? She left a trail that anybody could’ve followed.”

  “What did she do with the rest of the money?” I asked.

  “Paid a couple of bills,” Rita said. “When we were still working together, creditors called all the time. They even talked to Ken at one point, which made Amelia completely blind with rage. Ken’s voice had a way of, uh, carrying pretty far, if you know what I mean.”

  “Oh, so he had words with Amelia and some other people in the office heard?”

  She smiled. “Not some other people,” she said. “All of the other people. I swear the guy has two volumes when he talks: mumble and megaphone.”

  “Is that why Amelia left the company?” I asked.

  Rita laughed. “She didn’t leave the company. Ken fired her. He was going to tell the police if she didn’t repay the money by this coming Friday. They had a long conversation on her last day. Ken agreed to give her a grace period to come up with the five thousand dollars. If she paid it back by the deadline, everything would be forgiven. But if she missed the cutoff and didn’t reimburse the company, Ken would make a beeline for the police headquarters.”

  “Well, that’s an interesting twist,” I said.

  “Which part?” asked Rita.

  “Pretty much the whole thing,” I replied. “I don’t believe that Dina Kincaid has heard anything about Amelia’s alleged embezzlement or Ken Ballard’s secret agreement with her.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Do you think that’s connected to what happened to her?”

  “I don’t know for certain,” I said, “but I’d be willing to guess that there’s a link of some type between the missing five grand and Amelia’s death.”

  CHAPTER 22

  By four o’clock that afternoon, Julia was nearly finished cleaning the walk-in cooler. I’d offered to help, but she had encouraged me to tackle the remaining two special orders for the day: a dozen double chocolate scones for Dr. Schultz’s staff meeting; and, a three-layer carrot cake for an office retirement party at Penny Fleming’s mortgage company.

  I was so focused on shredding carrots that I didn’t hear the phone ring in the dining room. I didn’t know there was a call until Harper shouted my name through the pass window at the top of her lungs.

  “Katie!” she screamed. “Call for you!”

  “Thanks, Harp,” I said. “Why are you yelling?”

  She smirked. “Because that was the fifth time that I called your name,” she said.

  “Your mother wants to talk to you.”

  “Why didn’t she call my cell?” I asked, reaching down to pat my apron pocket.

  “She did,” Harper said as I felt around for the absent phone.

  “Okay, thanks,” I said. “I must’ve left it in the office.”

  “Well, get ready for the whirling dervish,” Harper added. “Your mother’s in quite a state at the moment.”

&nbs
p; My stomach twisted. It had been a while since one of my mother’s infamous rants. But as I left the kitchen and went behind the counter in the dining room, I took a deep breath and murmured The Serenity Prayer before picking up the phone.

  “Well, there you are!” she said. “I’ve been waiting for a good two minutes and twenty-eight seconds!”

  “Not that anyone’s counting,” I said.

  She growled. “Don’t push it, missy. I’m right on the razor’s edge this afternoon. I had a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day.”

  “Isn’t that a children’s book?” I asked, hoping to keep the mood light.

  But the growl on the other end of the line told me there was only darkness ahead.

  “What happened?” I asked my mother. “Is dad okay?”

  “That old-timer?” she said. “For once in my life, he’s not the issue.”

  “Then what’s going on?”

  “I saw Madame Nina at Costco today,” she said.

  There was a faint fizzing noise on the line. For a brief moment, I prayed that the call had dropped. But then the high-pitched voice returned with more of the terrible, horrible, no good very bad tale of woe.

  “She was dressed in black pants and a white blouse,” my mother announced. “Still looking very striking, but also looking a great deal like the people that give out the free samples of food and cookies and juice drinks.”

  “Oh, I get it,” I said. “Madame Nina moonlights at Costco?”

  My mother huffed again. “There’s no moonlighting about it,” she said. “It’s the woman’s full-time job. That’s why she was never available to meet for a reading until after eight o’clock at night.”

  “Okay, so what’s the—”

  “Hold on there!” my mother blurted. “I’m not saying there’s anything shameful about that job. I worked for several years as a cashier when your father and I first got married. But Madame Nina lied to my face about so many things, including the fact that she was a full-time psychic with a degree in spiritual counseling from The University of Inner Awareness.”

  “What else?” I asked.

  “Do you mean what else did she study in school?”

  “No, mother,” I said. “What else did Madame Nina lie about?”

  “Well, for starters, her name isn’t Nina,” she said. “It’s Brenda Lou Stubbs. And she’s not from New Orleans like she claimed. Her family’s from South Dakota. She’s not a real psychic, but she took a bunch of acting classes at Sunny Shores Community College after she moved to Florida a couple of years ago.”

  When my mother finished summarizing Madame Nina’s life story, I asked if the so-called telepathic traveler had voluntarily admitted to fraudulently impersonating a soothsayer.

  “Golly, no!” My mother’s voice crackled with a curious mix of amusement and indignation. “When I spotted Madame Nina giving out free samples of yogurt, I zipped right up to the front of the store, to where the customer service folks are by the exit. My friend’s daughter works there, and I happened to see her when your father and I were wandering up and down the aisles in search of the green tea bags that they used to sell in bulk.”

  I glanced at the clock. I only had a few minutes to package Dr. Schultz’s scones for delivery, so I gently asked my mother if we could fast forward through the extraneous details.

  “The what details?” she asked.

  “Extraneous,” I said. “Like, irrelevant or superfluous.”

  She huffed loudly into the phone. “I’ll tell you this, dear. There’s nothing irrelevant or superfabulous about someone pulling the wool over your mother’s eyes. Madame Nina took our hard-earned money—part of our retirement, if you think about it—and she lied to me about who she was and her ability to communicate with the spiritual realm.”

  “You don’t think she can do that now?” I asked.

  “Communicate with the other side?” my mother said curtly. “Hell, no! The only people that Madame Nina talks to are the senior citizens trying to make a full meal out of all those itsy-bitsy free samples at Costco.”

  “So what’s next?” I asked.

  “Your father told me not to threaten a law suit, but I’m seriously considering it.”

  “Fraud?”

  “Elder abuse!” she cried. “I’m a senior citizen now, okay? And what that woman did, besides take our money, was, and I’m quoting now from a legal journal that I found online, ‘a single or repeated act, or lack of appropriate action, occurring within any relationship where there is an expectation of trust, which causes harm or distress to an older person.’ Doesn’t that sound like what Madame Nina did?”

  “Well, I can hear the distress in your voice,” I said.

  My mother cursed under her breath. “That’s not simply distress, Katie. It’s rage! It’s bitterness! And it’s the power and might of my local state representative, who I will contact first thing in the morning.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that you’re going to sleep on it,” I said as static sizzled on the line.

  “Don’t kid yourself, sweetie,” she replied. “There will be very little sleep in our humble home this evening. I’m going to be posting all over the internet! Facebook, Snapgram, Instachat. This shall not stand!”

  “You sound like Winston Churchill,” I said. “Confident, courageous and—”

  “What was that about Churchill?” she snapped. “Did you say that I’m as round as him?”

  “No, mother! I said that you sound like him. Our connection isn’t very good, so it maybe didn’t come across like that.”

  “Well, he was fat! And he had—”

  I held the phone away from my ear for a few seconds. When I returned to the tirade, she was going on about a new pair of pumps from Shoe Carnival.

  “They were on the rack for my size,” she was saying, “but it’s pretty clear that some numbskull had mislabeled the box.”

  “Did you think about returning them?” I asked.

  “Oh, heavens no! Do you know how many compliments I’ve had wearing these shoes? A woman at church said they make my legs look as good as one of those super models.”

  “That’s nice, mom,” I said. “I’ve always told you how great you look.”

  She grumbled again. “But you’re my daughter,” she said. “You’re practically required by law to say those things.”

  CHAPTER 23

  A heavyset guy wearing a bright yellow QuikFlash Couriers windbreaker over a checked shirt and paint-spattered jeans stood outside the entrance to the local delivery service when I pulled up in front around four that afternoon. I recognized his face, but couldn’t remember his name. He was around forty or so, with tousled dark hair, a narrow face and a belly that proclaimed his love of beer and his disdain for exercise. As I turned off the engine and grabbed my purse, I noticed that he was gazing at something on the ground near the entrance to the building.

  “Isn’t it sad?” he asked when I joined him on the sidewalk. “Some jerk vandalized the memorial for Amelia Felton.”

  I looked down at the pavement. There was a modest array of votive candles, floral bouquets and two small stuffed animals. Someone had used spray paint to write RIP AMELIA on the concrete. But someone else had added a much less schmaltzy sentiment directly beside it: GOOD RIDDANCE, WITCH. I noticed that the W was a different color than the rest, as if the artist had decided the original B was a little too racy for downtown Crescent Creek.

  “Well, that’s a shame,” I said. “Who would be so callous?”

  The man snorted. “Mimi Ballard,” he said. “I saw her out here about an hour ago.”

  I held out my hand. “I’m Kate Reed,” I said. “I know that you’ve been in for breakfast at Sky High, but I don’t believe that we’ve met.”

  “And I believe that you’re correct,” he said. “I’m Ward Murphy. My wife and I bought the tow service from Larry Kline a couple of months back. I’ve also been working a few hours for the delivery service to make ends meet and get out of her
hair a little bit every day.”

  “Oh, that’s right!” I felt my cheeks redden. “Isn’t Antoinette your wife’s name?”

  Ward nodded. “Annie’s my one and only,” he said with a proud smile.

  “Well, now that my brain’s working again,” I said, “I remember that Harper introduced us on one of your first visits.”

  He laughed. “She did, but you guys were crazy busy that morning. We said hello while you were carrying about fifty platters of pancakes.”

  “That’s right. We had two unexpected sightseeing buses stop that day.”

  “What brings you out this afternoon?” he asked. “I always imagined that you and Julia hunkered down to bake until all hours of the night once you stopped serving lunch.”

  “I came by to see Francine Hutton,” I said.

  “You just missed all the fireworks,” Ward said, tipping his head toward the QuikFlash entrance. “Wanda was about ready to call the cops, but the woman running dispatch was able to quell the ruckus.”

  I smiled. “What happened? Was it a disgruntled customer or employee?”

  “Neither,” he said. “It was Hugh Felton. His sister’s the one that was poisoned the other day.”

  “What was he upset about?” I asked. “I mean, obviously he’s upset about his sister, but what was he doing here?”

  “It’s like they say,” Ward replied. “Money makes the world go around. Hugh was mad that they wouldn’t give him the balance from his sister’s employee health savings account. I guess he’d been down to the bank, making all kinds of demands and threats, but the teller and manager both told him that their hands were tied. The money would be dispersed according to Amelia’s last will and testament.”

  “Did you see the whole thing?” I asked.

  “Hmmm, probably the last ten minutes or so.” His mouth twitched from side to side. “I was on the phone when I heard something hit the window there by the door.” He bobbed his head toward the glass. “I think maybe it was a plastic wastebasket or something because it didn’t do any damage.”