Fillet of Murder (17 page)

“I can only imagine,” Talia said, a shiver running through her.

“They started pulling me toward this junky car that was parked on the street. I was sure I was going to be taken somewhere and raped . . . and God only knows what else. I tried screaming for help, but the ringleader—this creep named Wally—put his ugly hand over my nose and mouth so I couldn't breathe.”

Talia tucked her hands under her arms. “Wasn't anyone around to witness this, or to help?”

Jill paused and shook her head. “No, no one. I was starting to see spots, when all of a sudden, they just . . . let go.”
Her blue eyes were alight. “Like a bold knight from a fairy tale, there was Phil, wielding a baseball bat. Before I could blink, two of the scumbags were writhing on the ground. Phil had whacked them in their family jewels.” She laughed, but without mirth. “The third coward took off so fast I could almost see his dust. Oh, Talia, if you could have seen Phil. He was like a Norse god. When he turned to ask if I was okay, my legs slid out from under me, and I collapsed against that crappy old car. His eyes so were full of worship—he held out his hand and pulled me to my feet. I realized, then, that he adored me.”

“He was your hero,” Talia said.

“Yes, and I know it sounds nuts but Phil's always been my hero, in spite of his faults. And believe me, they were numerous.” Her laugh flitted through the tea shop.

Yeah, no kidding. “Did those jerks get arrested?”

Slowly, Jill shook her head. “No,” she said. “One of them had a father with some half-baked connections, so it all got swept under the rug. I didn't care—I was too ashamed for anyone to know.”

“But you didn't do anything wrong!”

“I know. It's the old dilemma, isn't it?” Jill stood abruptly. She went over to a shelf where a celery-colored teapot with a hummingbird-shaped spout sat with its lid slightly askew. With her slender fingers she straightened the lid, then moved the pot back a smidge.

“Sorry. That was driving me insane,” she said, dropping back into her chair.

“Jill, is that why you carry a gun, because of that assault?”

“Exactly. And believe me, if anyone ever tries to hurt Carly or me, I will use it.” She aimed a finger at Talia and pulled an imaginary trigger.

Talia shivered under her flared jacket. “So you knew Phil since high school.”

Jill nodded. “We stayed close through the end of his senior year, then he got a scholarship to Springfield College. After that, we saw each other mostly on weekends. But after I graduated high school, my folks moved to Wrensdale. Even though it wasn't that much farther away, it changed everything.”

As distance often does
, Talia thought. She remembered vowing to stay close to many of her high school buds, only to find that time—and maturity—had sent them scattering like spent dandelions. Thank heaven for Rachel, her loyal and lasting friend. She couldn't imagine their friendship ever fading, even if they lived a thousand miles from each other.

“I couldn't afford college right away,” Jill said, “but I landed a clerical job at Gerry's accounting firm.” She laughed and shook her head. “One glance and he was hooked. As was I. Gerry was so charming, so classy, so . . .”

Rich? Talia almost blurted.

“. . . well, so sophisticated,” Jill finished. She fingered the jeweled heart again. “Even more amazing—he was divorced and available. Before I knew it, we were engaged.”

“How did Phil take the news?”

“Like you'd imagine. First he flew into a rage, then he stopped speaking to me altogether. By that time, I didn't care. In my own way, I'd outgrown him.”

Talia shifted her purse from her shoulder to her lap. “How much did Gerry know about Phil?”

Jill blinked. “Almost nothing. After I married Gerry, I lost track of Phil for a long stretch. Then I had Carly, and honestly, nothing else really mattered to me. It wasn't until
she started first grade that Gerry encouraged me to start a business. He sensed I was getting bored, and he was right.”

“When did Phil pop back into your life?”

Jill glanced at the wall clock—a rose-encrusted teapot with thorns for hands. “About three years ago. He'd been checking me out on the Internet, and one day he just showed up here.”

“Were you happy to see him?”

Jill hesitated, then a smile crept across her face. “The second I realized who he was, I went all melty. He was my first love, you know? Anyway, he was working for an insurance company in one of the Boston 'burbs, but he hated it. When he found out the lighting store was up for sale, he saw the opportunity to get close to me again. Weirdly enough, he grew to love that business. He had a sense of aesthetics that surprised even me.”

Talia propped her chin on her fist. “Did you want him to be that close?”

“I didn't know what I wanted. He wasn't the same Phil anymore. He'd grown jaded and hard. Full of himself.” She looked away, her eyes filling. “But he still owned a piece of my heart, and with Gerry gone so much I was horribly lonely. It felt so good to be with Phil again. His womanizing didn't matter to me—I blamed myself for that. Anyway, we started having the occasional tryst at the—”

“Wait a minute.” Talia held up a hand. “Why was Phil's womanizing your fault?”

Jill's eyes blazed like blue fire. “Don't you get it? Phil changed because of
me
. Because
I
broke his heart all those years ago.”

Talia was beginning to feel like someone had stuck her brain in the deep fryer and left it on High. “No, Jill.
Whatever Phil became had nothing to do with you. Whatever bad choices he made were his own.”

Jill buried her face in her hands and shook her head.

“Jill,” Talia said gently, “I'm sorry to ask you to relive this, but I'm trying to help Bea. The police think she killed Phil and I know she didn't. I think Kendra's involved somehow. When did—” Her cell phone chose that moment to ring. Talia excused herself to check the caller. When she didn't recognize the number, she shoved the phone back in her purse and continued. “When did Kendra enter the picture?”

Jill folded her hands. “He met her one weekend at a charity gig at the Red Lion in Stockbridge. Gerry was away on business that weekend, and Mom and I had taken Carly to Disney World. I found out about it when I got back.”

Talia shook her head. “I can't see the attraction, other than the obvious.”

“That's because you don't know Kendra,” Jill pointed out. “She likes her possessions wrapped in pretty packages, even if the contents are a bit spoiled. And when she sets her sights on someone, she doesn't stop until she's wrapped her coils around him and embedded her fangs firmly into his neck.”

“I get the picture,” Talia said. Had Kendra done the same to Aaron's dad? “Did she know about you?”

Jill laughed. “She found out soon enough. The marriage barely lasted ten months. In that short time, unfortunately, she managed to get control of a half interest in the lighting shop. Phil was smart, but Kendra was smarter—and more cunning.”

“What
does
Kendra do, by the way?” Talia asked.

Jill narrowed her eyes, and Talia thought she spied a hint of envy. “She started by opening a couple of chic boutiques
for women—the kind that cater to the upper crust. She did so well that she started to invest in other types of shops. Each time she did, their sales soared. It kills me to admit it, but Kendra is one of the savviest businesswomen I've ever known.”

And now she's building a new empire—a spa to die for. Did Turnbull die for it?

“So tell me,” Talia said. “Did Kendra dump Phil? Or was it vice versa?”

“You were right the first time—Kendra dumped him. See, here's the thing. As much of a witch as she is, she's a loyal witch. When she realized Phil was a cheater, she shed him faster than she shed one of her many skins. Finding ways to hurt him became her new pastime. A woman scorned, and all that.”

It was all starting to make a crazy kind of sense to Talia. Jill's attachment to Phil. His obsession with vetoing the comic book store. The odd piece that still didn't fit was Kendra. Not that she wasn't Talia's number one suspect. She definitely was. But why kill Phil? Was she so desperate for the life insurance money that she would take that big a risk?

There was so much more Talia wanted to ask, not the least of which was whether or not Jill had gone to the police with her story. Jill's prints were all over Turnbull's office. Surely the investigators had discovered that by now. And the bracelet—did the police find it? Wouldn't that have Jill's prints, too?

Talia settled for one last question. “Jill, did Carly ever own a pair of orange plaid boots?”

Jill stared at her. “That is probably the strangest question I've ever been asked. The answer is,
are you kidding me
?
Do I look like the kind of woman who'd dress her child in orange plaid boots?”

At that, Talia had to laugh. “I guess not.” She pictured Carly wearing plush suede boots lined with fleece, the kind that would keep her feet toasty warm and look charmingly stylish as well.

But the little girl in that photo wouldn't leave Talia's head. Talia didn't know why, but she felt sure the child with the orange plaid boots was somehow connected to the killer.

After leaving the tea shop, Talia hurried over the cobblestone plaza in the direction of the town lot. Bea would've popped out a batch of kittens if she knew Talia had made the trek to her car, short as it was, by herself.

The lot, illuminated by sodium lights in each of the four corners, was empty save for her turquoise Fiat and three sedans that were parked adjacent to one another. Talia's feet picked up speed as she drew closer to her car. She'd no sooner opened her door when her cell rang again. She jumped inside, locked the doors, and dug the phone out of her purse. “Hello,” she said, slightly out of breath.

“Ms. Sunday?”

For a moment Talia was baffled. Then she remembered—it was the name she'd given to the woman at Always You. “Yes, this is Ms. Sunday.”

“Oh, good.” The young voice sounded relieved. “I got
your number from the caller ID on the phone at the spa. This is Marya . . . I mean, Misty. From Always You?”

Talia sat up straighter, her mental antennae on high alert. “Yes, Misty.”

“Um, there's something I wanted to tell you before. You know, when you asked about Kendra LaPlante?”

“Oh yes, of course,” Talia said, trying to keep her tone even. “Did you find her cosmetics bag?”

“Well, no. We didn't find anything like that. But there's something else. Something I couldn't talk about while I was at the spa.”

Talia felt her heartbeat do a little tap dance. “What is it, Misty?”

“Um, remember I told you Ms. LaPlante had a full body massage? At seven forty-five?”

“Why, yes, I think you did say something like that.”

“Well, um, I'm really good friends with the masseuse—the woman who always does her massage? She told me something the next day that was kind of strange.” Misty paused. “So, okay, here's the thing. My friend had no sooner started Ms. LaPlante's massage when Ms. LaPlante jumped off the table. She claimed she had severe intestinal cramps and had to go to the bathroom.”

“Oh dear. That must've been quite embarrassing—for both of them.”

“I guess,” Misty said. “But here's the weird thing. Ms. LaPlante never came back to finish her massage. She just . . . disappeared for almost an hour.”

Talia struggled to keep her voice calm, but a tiny voice inside her was leaping to some lofty conclusions. “I see. Well, she must have been in some distress. Did anyone . . . go to the bathroom to see if she needed help?”

“That's just it,” Misty said. “After about ten minutes my friend went to check on her. She couldn't find her anywhere in the south wing—not in the bathroom or in the dressing area.”

Because she went to the lighting shop to murder Turnbull.

“Misty, you said she had a mani-pedi scheduled at eight forty-five. Did she show up for that?”

“Yeah, she did. Like nothing ever happened. She never said a word about bailing on her massage. Or about feeling sick.”

“I guess she was embarrassed,” Talia offered. Or she didn't care to share with anyone that she'd just murdered her ex.

“And get this,” Misty went on. “When my friend opened her tip envelope on Thursday—all of our customers leave tips privately that way—she said Ms. LaPlante gave her
double
her regular tip. Double!”

Of course. To keep her from blabbing about Kendra's disappearing act.

“At first she thought Ms. LaPlante was just being nice because of the way she'd ditched her massage.” Misty snorted. “Like that would ever happen. Ms. LaPlante is the
least
nice person I know.”

“She can be difficult,” Talia said mildly.

“Anyway, when the police found out that man who was murdered was Kendra's ex, they came here and started asking a lot of questions. They wanted to confirm Ms. LaPlante's alibi for Wednesday evening.”

Talia jerked up so fast in her seat her knee hit the steering wheel. Squelching an expletive, she said, “The police were there? Did your friend tell them what happened?”

“No.” Misty sighed. “She was afraid she'd get fired. Ms. LaPlante is our best customer. Every week she spends a fortune at the spa. The owner—our boss—kisses her behind, if you catch my meaning,” Misty added with disgust.

“Misty, that's no reason to lie to the police. Murder is a serious crime!”

“She didn't lie,” Misty protested. “She just . . . kept some stuff to herself.”

This was big. This was huge. Talia was more convinced than ever that Kendra had murdered Turnbull.

Then Misty dropped a stink bomb on her.

“Ms. Sunday, I'm taking a majorly huge risk telling you all this. The way things are these days I can't afford to lose my job, and neither can my friend. If you repeat what I said, I'll deny it to the ends of the Earth.”

Talia felt her jaw drop. “
What?
You've got to be— Is your friend there with you? Can I talk to her?”

“That's none of your business, and she's not talking to anyone.” Misty was getting snippy now, and defensive. Talia wanted to reach through the phone and shake the girl.

In the next instant, Talia chided herself. Any second now, Misty could hang up and leave her with nothing. She remembered what her nana always said.
Put a smile in your voice—it shows
.

“Misty.” Talia stretched her lips into a grin. “If you didn't want me to tell this to anyone, why did you call me?”

After a pause, Misty said, “I figured anyone sneaky enough to pretend she worked for Ms. LaPlante to wheedle information out of me ought to be able to figure out how to tip off the cops.
Without
getting me and my friend in trouble.”

“I—” Talia began, but Misty was gone. The girl had hung up.

Oh Lord, now what? On top of everything else, she was freezing. She hadn't even started her car. She turned on the engine and flipped on the heat as high as it would go.

Ever since she'd found Turnbull's body Thursday morning, her mind had been on overload. Too many secrets, too many lies—all tumbling through her head like a load of mismatched socks in the dryer.

Maybe it was time to sort. To see which ones matched up to the truth and which ones needed to be chucked.

Something Jill said a few nights ago had stuck in her head like a bookmark.
Anyone with even a quarter of a brain could figure out Phil's code.
Talia punched in Rachel's speed-dial number on her phone.

“What up, pixie pie?”

Talia laughed. Sometimes Rachel was too funny. “If I treat you to pup-dogs from Deeno's, are you up for a little snooping?”