Arsenic and Old Cake (32 page)

I wanted to hang around and wait for Sullivan, but maybe that wasn’t such a good idea after all. Hyacinth might not be a murderer, but she was still a force to be reckoned with. I decided to be smart and take her advice.

Thirty-three

I left Hyacinth glowering after me and hurried back to the Mercedes I’d recklessly left parked on the street. I sat there for a few minutes, trying to make myself inconspicuous—as inconspicuous as a woman in a Mercedes could be in that neighborhood—and thinking about what Hyacinth had just told me, reconciling it with what I already knew. And I came to the obvious conclusion: if Hyacinth hadn’t put the poison in Dontae’s pudding, maybe Primrose had. Or Lula Belle.

They both had the means and the opportunity. And Pastor Rod had told me that Primrose was intensely protective of the people she loved. How far would she go to protect them? Hyacinth was fierce but Primrose was unsettled, and I found that far more frightening.

I thought about calling Gabriel to bring him up to speed, but there was still the awkwardness of our last morning here at the Love Nest between us, and I wasn’t sure how to get past it. Deciding that avoidance was the most sensible course of action—at least for today—I looked around for a police presence, hoping to spot Sullivan somewhere.

No such luck.

I really had stirred the pot this time. If Hyacinth told the others about our conversation, the killer would probably get nervous. I wasn’t brave enough or foolish enough to walk back inside and incur her wrath. Nor did I want to confront any of the others alone. Right now, I had a whole lot of nothing. Even if I was right, Sullivan couldn’t do anything based on what I merely thought might have happened. I needed to find physical evidence that would actually help him make a case. Like maybe an empty bottle of poison with Primrose’s fingerprints on it.

While I tried to figure out what to do, Primrose herself rounded the back of the inn and onto the driveway, carrying a bulging white trash bag. Immediately, I sank down in my seat and hoped she wouldn’t spot me. Primrose walked slowly, hauling the garbage toward a hulking metal Dumpster a little way beyond the garage. It seemed to take her forever, but she finally got there. She put the trash bag down and paused for a moment to catch her breath. Then, with a guilty glance around, she lifted the lid a few inches with one hand and pushed the bag inside with the other.

I didn’t know what was in that bag, but the furtive way she’d acted convinced me it contained something important. I stayed where I was until she went back inside the inn, then I got out of the car and moved stealthily up the driveway. My heart was pounding, and my senses were ultra-alert. Every sound felt ominous, every shadow threatening.

Was garbage considered private property? Or did it become public property once it was thrown into the trash receptacle? I was pretty sure it was safe for me to check, but could I base such an important decision on reruns of
Monk
? It was a risk, but I didn’t have time to do the research.

My own breath sounded like thunder in my ears. I skirted along the fence, past the locked gate to the garden, and finally reached the Dumpster. Working as quietly as possible, I lifted its giant metal lid. The hinges groaned and squealed, and my heart worked like a jackhammer inside my chest.

Once I had the lid open, I stood on tiptoe to look inside. The bag Primrose had just tossed lay among at least ten other identical bags, several of which had split open. Wet garbage, coffee grounds, fruit peelings, and eggshells covered almost everything in sight, making it impossible to tell which bag had been added most recently.

I frowned at the mess in front of me for way too long. I was out in the open, exposed to anyone who might glance out one of the inn’s windows. Like, oh say, the killer. Watching me look for evidence.

I needed to do something. Fast!

Holding my breath, I stepped up onto a piece of metal and leaned into the container, snatching the first bag my hand brushed against. I clutched it as if it contained the Hope Diamond, and scurried from the Dumpster, heading for the garage several feet away.

The bag chunked against my leg as I walked, and the sound of tin cans and glass banging together sounded so loud to me I was sure someone would come to see what all the noise was. Finally, as I leaned against the garage’s rear exterior wall, out of the inn’s line of vision, I put the bag on the ground.

And stared at it.

Now what?

Wet coffee grounds dripped from the side of the bag like grains of damp sand. As a particularly large blob plopped onto the ground, I realized that maybe I hadn’t thoroughly thought through this move. I couldn’t hide out in the garden and paw through the rubbish without being caught. I couldn’t very well haul the trash bag all the way back to my car. And what if this wasn’t even the right bag? Running back and forth between the Dumpster and the garage half a dozen times hauling trash to and fro just wasn’t going to work.

I was standing there chewing a thumbnail and considering my options when I heard the scuff of shoe leather on pavement and my heart stopped beating completely. An instant later, my pulse exploded, making the previous jackhammer rhythm seem cool, calm, and collected in comparison.

A shadow fell across my hiding place. Frantic, I looked around for someplace to hide, but there was literally nowhere for me to go. A crumbling fence enclosed two sides of the area where I now cowered behind the garage, and the garage itself backed onto the third. That left only the direction the noise was coming from.

The shadow grew longer, and then I found myself looking up at a doughboy from World War I, his wool service coat buttoned up to the neck, his riding-style breeches bloused at the hip and laced below the knee. He wore a wool cap and leather boots—and he seemed almost surprised to see me crouching there with my back against the garage.

“Mrs. Broussard? What are you doing? I thought you and your husband had checked out of the Love Nest.”

I laughed, embarrassed by my reaction, and stood slowly. I brushed dirt and coffee grounds from my hands onto the seat of my jeans. “We did. I . . . uh . . . left something in our room.”

Grey Washington—or whoever he was this afternoon—ran a look over me and then moved on down to the trash bag. “And you think you’ll find it in there?”

Another nervous laugh bubbled up to my lips. “Funny story—” I moved away from the trash bag as if distance might keep me safe. “Primrose thought it was garbage, but it was actually some important work papers.”

“Why didn’t you just ask her for it?”

That was a good question. “I got here too late,” I improvised. “She’d already thrown it out.”

I don’t think Grey believed me. Imagine. It was such a great story. “Did you find . . . whatever it was?”

I glanced down at my empty hands and shook my head. “Not yet. But I haven’t had a chance to look in the bag yet.” Maybe I’d get lucky and find some generic documents I could claim as my own.

Grey tilted his head and looked again at the trash bag. “Do you need some help?”

“No. Thanks. You’re all dressed up. I wouldn’t want you to ruin your uniform.” I kept my tone chatty and friendly as I bent over the bag. The smell of something rotten wafted up to greet me, and I barely contained my gag reflex. “Are you on your way to the library?”

Grey glanced down at his uniform as if he’d forgotten he was wearing it. “Yes. At least I was.”

“Well, then, don’t let me keep you.”

“Mrs. Broussard—” His voice sounded strange, and a look of regret tugged at his face. “I really wish you hadn’t come back.”

And for the first time I started getting a bad feeling about being out there alone with him.

“Oh?” I chirped. “Why?” I was still trying for friendly and chatty, but I’m pretty sure I sounded like a wind-up toy. If ever there was an inappropriate moment for my cell phone to ring, this was it. So, naturally, that’s exactly what it did.

Grey’s eyes narrowed, his hand moved, and before I could blink I was looking down the barrel of a handgun. It was the only thing about him that wasn’t in costume, though I’m pretty sure it was vintage. I guessed it to have been a popular model of handgun back in the seventies. The kind of gun someone might use if he wanted to steal a hot load of eight-track players.

Sweat rolled down my spine. “Grey?”

“Take out your phone,” he ordered.

I did what he said, keeping one hand in the air and using two fingers to pull the phone from my pocket. I tried to glance at the screen, but Grey yanked the phone from my hand and smashed it beneath his boot before I could see who was calling.

My spirits sank.

“What are you really doing here, Mrs. Broussard?”

The gun and his display of temper convinced me this wasn’t a good time to come clean about my true identity, so I just shrugged, as if I wasn’t bothered by the gun he’d pulled on me or how he’d destroyed my cell phone. “I told you. I’m looking for something my husband and I left behind when we checked out.”

“I don’t believe you. What are you really looking for?”

The way I saw it, I had two choices: tell the truth, or lie through my teeth. Lying didn’t seem to be working all that well, but I wasn’t convinced the truth would serve me any better. How would he react if I told him I was looking for proof that Primrose had killed Dontae? Especially since I was now sure that evidence didn’t exist?

There was a third option:
Run!
But I put my chances of outrunning a bullet right at
no way in hell
.

I wondered if Grey was using new ammunition or old, and if it would make any difference if he decided to pull the trigger. If that was the gun he’d used during the Letterman Industries robbery, there was a chance he didn’t have any ammunition at all. But that wasn’t a risk I was willing to take.

He was waiting for an answer, so I decided to try my luck with option number two: the truth. “I was looking for proof that Primrose put the poison in Dontae’s food.”

“You thought Primrose killed him?” He seemed honestly surprised.

“I did,” I said, mentally adding,
right up until you pulled out that gun.
“I’m confused. Why did you do it? Was it because you found out that Dontae killed Tyrone in the robbery?”

His brows knit in confusion. “Dontae? You think—” He let out a sharp laugh. And that’s when I realized that once again I’d been on the wrong trail. The light dawned as if storm clouds had parted inside my head. “Dontae didn’t kill Tyrone, did he? You did. But why did you kill Dontae now? Why was he a threat to you after all this time?”

“I just wanted to keep things the way they were,” he said. His hand trembled, which meant that he was either emotional or nervous. Either way, I didn’t think it was a good sign. “There was no reason to dig up the past. Everything was copacetic.”

Thirty years living in a bed-and-breakfast? No wife? No family? That didn’t sound copacetic to me, but nobody had asked my opinion. “But Dontae wasn’t responsible for digging up the past,” I pointed out. “So why kill him?”

“Because he was scared,” Grey said. His voice was filled with disgust. “Oh, he put up a good act, but that was Dontae for you.
When things got hairy, he panicked. The very minute Monroe came back, Dontae started imagining cops everywhere. He was even dreaming about going to jail, expecting the worst just like he always did. He came to me one night after Monroe showed up, whining about what he thought might happen. I tried to convince him that everything would be all right, but he wouldn’t listen.”

Well, I did. I listened intently to every word that came out of Grey’s mouth. But I was also trying to figure out a way to save myself. I still couldn’t see a way to slip past him to freedom, and I couldn’t see anything I could use as a weapon either. I decided my only chance was to attract attention so I could get help. Until I could figure out how to do that, I needed to keep Grey talking. If he was thinking about answers to my questions, maybe he wouldn’t be thinking about pulling the trigger.

“Why was Dontae worried about what Monroe would do?” I asked.

Grey dipped his head slightly. “I told you, he always ran scared. A man that size . . . you’d think he could hold his own, but he was afraid of his own shadow. Monroe opened his yap at the warehouse, and Dontae went ballistic. If he hadn’t gone crazy like that, I never would have shot Tyrone.”

His eyes looked a little wild, and the gun shook in his hand. “I did what I had to do in that warehouse. If I hadn’t shot Tyrone, one of us woulda been dead. I protected the rest of ’em. That’s the way it’s always been.”

Yeah. Right up until the moment you poisoned your friend.
“I don’t understand. Why kill Dontae instead of, say, Monroe? I thought Dontae was your friend.”

“I just told you!” Grey shouted. “You’re like everyone else. You’re not
listening
.” He swiped sweat from his eyes and readjusted his aim. “Dontae went crazy after Monroe showed up. Oh, sure. I could have gotten rid of Monroe. That was my plan at first, but Dontae was nuts by then. If I’d taken Monroe out of the way, Dontae would have turned me in. After everything we’d been through together, he got scared and
turned
on me.”

“I am listening,” I assured him as calmly as I could. “I’m just trying to understand. Why poison? Why didn’t you just shoot him?”

Grey’s gaze flickered down to the gun. “I never would have gotten the drop on him.”

“So you put something in his food?”

“I told you. I did what I had to do.”

If you say so.
“Where did you get the poison?”

He looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “What does it matter? It was lying around in the garage. Something Hyacinth used to kill bugs or something.” His gun hand shook a little harder. He waved the pistol around in front of my face, threatening me. “Look, Mrs. Broussard, you’re a nice lady. I don’t want to hurt you. But I don’t have any choice. You understand.”

Um . . . not really.
“But you do have a choice, Grey. Why don’t you just put the gun down? Then we can figure out what to do next.”