A Killer Cake (13 page)

“I understand,” I said. “After we say good
bye to your mother, we’ll be on our way.”

Asher wasn’t having any of that, though.
“I’ll be sure to convey your message.”

Moose looked at me, and I could see the
question in his eyes without him having to say a word. He wanted to
know if we should push back and stay, or allow ourselves to be
ushered out.

After a moment of thought, I shook my head
slightly. There was no use getting on this man’s bad side.

As Asher walked us out the door, I said, “I
look forward to seeing you again soon. You really should come back
by the diner sometime.”

“How can I go back if I’ve never been there
before?” he asked, and then closed the door between us.

“That was one of the slickest bum’s rushes
I’ve ever been given,” Moose said. “I’ve got a hunch that the son
is quite a bit more formidable than the mother. That particular
apple didn’t fall far from the tree, did it?”

“I’m not so sure that Asher’s the one running
things. I had a hunch that Sylvia was playing us all along,” I
said. “If you ask me, she could be more devious than her son.”

“Maybe so, but either way, we’re going to
have a hard time cracking those two nuts.”

I nodded in agreement as I said, “At least we
finally got to speak with two of our suspects.”

“Sure, but next time, I want to tackle them
alone,” Moose replied.

“You’re not doing anything without me,” I
answered firmly.

“I didn’t mean by myself,” Moose said. “I
meant separately. We should really try to split them up if we’re
going to do any good. We might be able to trap Sylvia if she’s
still trying to sell her ‘grieving widow’ act, and if it’s just
Asher, he might just be too clever for his own good.”

“Okay, that all sounds good,” I said. “I just
hope we figure out how to do it. Did you notice that I put the
emphasis on we?”

Moose laughed a little as we got into his
truck. “You don’t have anything to worry about. I wouldn’t do
anything without you, Victoria, and you know it.”

“Well, it doesn’t hurt to remind you now and
then,” I said with a smile of my own.

“Got it,” Moose said as he started the
engine. “Where should we go now?”

“Since we’re in Molly’s Corners, why don’t we
go ahead and try to see James Manchester again,” I said. “Do you
think there’s a chance he’ll agree to see us?”

“I’ve got an idea that might help accomplish
that,” Moose said.

“Care to share it with me?”

“Let me play with it while we drive, and I’ll
let you know if it’s any good when we get there,” my grandfather
answered. I didn’t know if he was being coy, or if he really hadn’t
fully formulated his idea yet. Either way, I decided to respect his
request, and we were mostly silent on the drive to James
Manchester’s office.

When we got there, Moose parked the truck,
but I turned to him before he could get out on his side. “Okay, I
was patient, but that’s about all gone. What’s our plan?”

“I think a mysterious hint that we know more
than we actually do is our best bet,” Moose said. “If we leave
things vague but menacing, we might just earn ourselves a direct
audience with the man.”

“This ought to be good,” I said. “It’s your
turn to take the lead, and to be honest with you, I’m looking
forward to seeing it. Good luck.”

He grinned at me as he tapped his temple.
“With this brain, who needs luck?”

“Us, maybe?” I asked, and then I couldn’t
keep my laugh contained.

He just grinned, and then my grandfather
said, “Doubt me if you will, but just watch the master at
work.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” I said as I
followed Moose inside. The office was nice enough, but there was
nothing that shouted this man was one of affluence. In fact, it was
all rather common, from the generic paintings on the wall to the
slightly used furniture. Was it all some kind of smokescreen, or
did James Manchester have less assets than we’d all been led to
believe?

There was an older woman sitting at the
receptionist’s desk, and there was nothing flashy about her.

“May I help you?” she asked.

“We need to speak with your boss,” Moose
said.

“In regard to?” she asked gently.

“Murder,” Moose said succinctly. I waited for
him to embellish his statement, but he simply stood there looking
down at her, as though he had some kind of right or authority to be
there.

She finally realized that he was finished
talking. The receptionist picked up her phone, whispered something
into it, and then said vaguely, “Have a seat, please.”

After we took up positions by the office
door, I looked at Moose and nearly asked him if this was the sum
total of his grand plan when he caught my eye and shook his head
slightly. Okay, we were going to play this silent and
mysterious.

I could do that.

Nine minutes later, I was ready to tell Moose
that it had been a nice try, but he really needed to come up with
something else, but I held my tongue. I knew that my grandfather
had a great deal less patience than I did as a general rule, and if
he could take it, then so could I.

Four minutes after that, I was beginning to
have my doubts when the receptionist picked the telephone up again
unbidden, whispered something else into it, and then hung up,
offering us a quick frown as she did so.

Thirty seconds later, James Manchester came
out through the door.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said, though
for one second, I’d caught a hint of surprise in his glance. “Come
right back.”

We followed him through the dividing door
into the heart of the office. This had been decorated more recently
than the outer space, with a substantially larger budget. Fine
leather chairs were nestled on a lovely and expensive rug, and the
desk was mahogany. After we were all seated, Manchester said, “I’m
surprised to see you both this far away from the diner. Delores
tells me that you were quite melodramatic when you first came in.
You gave her more excitement than she’s had in years.”

“There wasn’t anything special about what we
said,” Moose replied. “It was true, though. We’re here to talk to
you about murder.”

“Don’t be a fool, Moose. I didn’t kill Roy
Thompson. Why would I?”

“Come on, we heard you threaten him
ourselves,” I said.

“If you recall, I didn’t see him yesterday in
his office. It turns out that was
after
the man was already
dead, or did you choose to blank that part out?” Manchester asked.
“Think about it. If I’d been the one who poisoned him, wouldn’t
I
know that he wouldn’t be in his office when I barged in
there?”

“It could have all been a clever ruse to
throw the police off your trail,” I said.

James Manchester chuckled at that. “Trust me,
I’m not that clever.”

“You
were
at the celebration earlier
in the day, though, weren’t you?” I asked.

“Maybe I stopped and looked around on my way
to Roy’s office,” he admitted. “I checked out the food, a few of
the craft tables, and listened to the band. I didn’t see Roy,
though, or your cake either, for that matter.”

“How could you have missed it?” I asked. “We
had it set up on the square.”

“Who knows? Maybe I did see it, but if I did,
it never registered with me. Surely you have more than that to come
in here accusing me of murder.”

“Who was accusing you of anything?” Moose
asked quietly. “We said we wanted to discuss murder with you, not
accuse you of it.”

“Delores must have misunderstood,” Manchester
said.

“You have to admit that you were pretty upset
when we saw you yesterday, James,” Moose said.

“That? I was just blowing off a little steam.
Roy and I did a few deals together in the past, but this was the
first one that lost me money. I was going to yell at him a little,
he’d shrug it off, and then we’d move onto our next deal. You can’t
worry about every penny when you’re investing as much as I do.”

“It still can’t be easy losing some of it,”
Moose said. “I know that I feel the pinch every time one of my
stocks goes down.”

“If you can’t afford to lose it, you
shouldn’t be gambling with it,” he said expansively. The telephone
rang at that moment, and Manchester picked it up and held a
whispered conversation. After a few moments, he hung up and grinned
at us. “Apparently the first string is here.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Sorry, I tend to use sports analogies when I
talk. Sheriff Croft is here to ask me a few questions. I’d offer
you the chance to go out the back way, but we don’t have one.”

I doubted that it was true, but I wasn’t
about to call him on it. “We’re fine seeing him. The sheriff knows
exactly what we’re doing,” I said.

“Then this shouldn’t be a problem for
anyone.”

I stood, and Moose followed. “Not at all,” my
grandfather said.

Sheriff Croft’s eyebrows shot up for a moment
when he saw us in James Manchester’s office, but he didn’t say
anything at first.

“Sheriff,” Moose said as he waved two fingers
at the man.

“Would you two mind hanging around outside
for a few minutes?” the sheriff asked. “I shouldn’t be long, and
there’s something I’d like to discuss with you.”

I pointed to my watch. “We’ve been most
careful with the time.”

He shook his head. “That’s not it.
Something’s come up, and I thought you should know about it. I
won’t be long.”

Moose and I left, and as we walked out of the
office, I suddenly turned and found Delores watching us carefully.
She looked away the second that she realized I’d seen her, but it
was too late. Evidently, we’d sparked some interest from the woman.
Or was she just doing her employer’s bidding by keeping a close eye
on us?

“What do you think he wants with us?” Moose
asked once we were out by the truck. “That was clever how you got
that dig about the time into your response without giving anything
away.”

“I’ve been known to be crafty when the
occasion called for it,” I said. “As to what he has to say, I don’t
have any more idea than you do.”

“Then there’s not much we can do but wait for
him out here, is there? It seems like that’s all we’re good for
lately,” Moose said.

At least the sheriff was as good as his word.
Twelve minutes later, he came out the front door of the office, and
based on the expression on his face, the interview hadn’t gone
exactly as he’d hoped that it would.

That didn’t bode well for my grandfather and
me.

Chapter 10

“I’m guessing that didn’t go as well as you’d
hoped it would,” my grandfather said before I could get a word out
on my own. “Manchester thinks he’s above all of this, doesn’t he?
He treated us like we were some kind of joke.”

“That man can talk five minutes and not say a
thing,” the sheriff said as he leaned forward over the truck-bed,
planting his elbows on the frame of it. I’d seen it done a thousand
times. A great many men from the South never spoke face to face.
They all seemed more comfortable leaning against some part of a
pickup truck, their eyes rarely making contact. “Every time I’ve
tried to pin him down about an alibi, he manages to say a whole lot
of words that don’t add up to much.”

“Well, if it helps,” I said, “we saw him in
Roy’s office not long after he was poisoned. He was extremely upset
with the man. I guess he could have been acting, but if he was, if
fooled me. He admitted that he walked around the fair a little
before he got to Roy’s office, but he claimed that he didn’t see
Roy, or the cake, for that matter.”

“Thanks, I appreciate that,” Sheriff Croft
said. “That was more than I managed to get out of him. He mostly
just talked me around in circles.”

“I’m guessing that’s how he treats his
business partners, too,” Moose said. “Can you imagine him in a room
with Roy Thompson? That’s about as odd a couple as you’ll ever want
to see.”

“I’ve got information that they did three
deals together, but it’s kind of odd,” the sheriff said.

“What’s so odd about it?” I asked.

“The first two deals they made together
generated a good amount of income for Manchester, doubling his
investment both times. The third deal, the latest one that just
blew up on him, cost him all that he’d earned plus every dime he’d
invested before, and another ten grand of fresh money thrown into
the mix.”

“Do you think Roy Thompson might have set him
up?” Moose asked.

The sheriff shrugged. “I don’t have any proof
one way or the other, but if I had to guess, I’m willing to bet
that old James in there got his clock cleaned by a professional. It
appeared that he was under the impression that he was the shark in
the deal, but I’ve got a hunch that he was wrong.”

“I thought James Manchester was rich,” I
said. “He could afford to lose that kind of capital, couldn’t
he?”

“I don’t think affording it had anything to
do with it,” the sheriff said. “You’ve met James Manchester, so you
must have an idea of what he’s like, and from what you told me, you
saw him pretty steamed yesterday in Roy Thompson’s office. Did he
seem like a man who would take losing
anything
with a
whistle and a smile?”

“Not a chance,” Moose said. “Is that why you
wanted us to hang around, to talk about James Manchester?”

“No,” the sheriff said with the hint of a
smile. “Part of it was just out of pure meanness. I wanted you both
to cool your heels a little while I did a little
investigating.”

I shrugged. “But just a part of it,
right?”

“Just a part. There’s been a development I
thought you both might like to know about.”

That got my attention. Since when was the
sheriff so interested in actively sharing information with us?
“We’re happy to get any help you feel like giving us,” I said.