Hickory Smoked Homicide (25 page)

Loren looked crestfallen. “Sorry, Cherry,” he mumbled. Pepper was already leaving the room for the direction of Cherry’s bathroom.

“It’s okay,” said Cherry. “But don’t do it again.” And she watched as Loren meekly left.

She rolled her eyes as the door closed. “Okay, now that that’s all over with, what the heck am I going to do about my cheese dip?”

It was decided that everyone had filled up on the cold snacks and wine and didn’t even have a spot left, everyone assured Cherry, for any cheese dip. Particularly, thought Lulu, cheese dip that sat in a cup of water. It was time to play Bunko. Lulu was glad that even Pepper seemed able to relax and enjoy the game.

When the game was over and Evelyn was declared the winner (although it seemed a little unfair that wealthy Evelyn would take home the fifty-dollar kitty), everyone talked for a few minutes before the party started breaking up.

Cherry, Lulu noticed, had indulged in a few glasses of wine as the evening progressed. Lulu guessed that she was entitled, and she sure wasn’t driving anywhere, since she was already at home. Another thing she noticed was that wine seemed to eliminate any filters that Cherry had, as far as what came out of her mouth.

Pepper was getting ready to leave when Cherry suddenly stopped her. “Hey! Can you help Lulu and me clean up?” Pepper looked surprised, and Cherry said in a low voice, “I only ask close friends and neighbors, so really, it’s an honor!”

Pepper looked longingly at the door but agreed to stay. She started busily picking up wine and water glasses and bringing them into the kitchen.

The kitchen, thought Lulu, looked a little like a crime scene itself. She wasn’t sure why every bowl and spoon Cherry owned had been conscripted into the Great Cheese Dip Disaster, but they all seemed to be out on the counter in varying degrees of mess. Maybe Cherry had planned it that way, since they’d needed a cleanup as an excuse to keep Pepper there. Or maybe not, thought Lulu, looking at how frazzled Cherry appeared and how cheese dip seemed to be on every bowl and spoon that was pulled out.

They’d been doing some washing up for a few minutes when Cherry said, “Pepper, I don’t really know how to ask this, and I sure wouldn’t invite someone I thought was a
murderer
to my house for Bunko, but where were you exactly on the night of Lulu’s fund-raiser? Because there’s some debate about that. And thanks for staying to clean up.”

Lulu held her breath at Cherry’s rambling question. Pepper froze up for a second before jerking around to look at Cherry and Lulu. Her face was pale. “Cherry, I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

Cherry batted at the air with a hand. “Sure you do, Pepper. Where
were
you? Because I’m hearing that folks noticed you weren’t around. And there was some talk that Dee Dee was meeting up with people in the parking deck. So . . . were you away from the fund-raiser? If not, were you just spending a whole bunch of time in the restroom?”

Pepper pressed her hands against her eyes as if she was blocking out some unwelcome images. “Both,” she finally said quietly, and Lulu released her pent-up breath. “It was both. Yes, I was away from the party for a little bit. And yes, I was also in the restroom for more than the usual time. That’s because I was positively sick to my stomach by what happened that night.”

Lulu and Cherry drew closer to Pepper, all ears.

Pepper sank down onto a kitchen stool. “It was that awful Dee Dee. I’m not sorry a whit that she’s dead because she was a really horrible person. Nobody is going to be crying any tears at her funeral.” She looked over at Lulu. “Except I guess you’ll miss shopping at her store, right, Lulu?”

Pepper gave a sigh and leaned her head back, looking at the ceiling. “I was a fool to even come to your fund-raiser, Lulu. I’d read about it in the paper and took it into my head to go. I knew Loren was going to be there, of course, considering his total obsession with anything to do with Tristan. And Steffi had to do with Tristan, but not much.” She gave a short laugh.

“I apologize for not coming to your party in the right spirit, Lulu. I wasn’t there to raise money to help Steffi, although I guess I did that, since I was sure eating and drinking there. But I wasn’t in the giving state of mind—I was actually royally ticked that night.”

Cherry drunkenly veered off topic. “What the heck got into Loren tonight, by the way? And what’s with that huge dog that you installed in your backyard?”

Pepper sighed. “Brutus? Well, he’s there for protection. A single girl’s got to look out for herself, and I seem to be becoming a single girl again. Loren was bent out of shape because I’d changed the locks on the doors, and he wanted to sneak in there and get some stuff out. And I guess he wanted to get back at me for messing up his evening at Aunt Pat’s.”

Lulu tried to navigate the conversation back to the fund-raiser. “Going back to the benefit, honey, I can’t blame you for being royally ticked. Of course you were wanting to make the man uncomfortable. Besides, I don’t think anybody really even knew what you were doing, anyway. You probably looked real ominous, didn’t you, dear?”

Pepper nodded her head. “That’s right. I could have really made a scene, but I wasn’t looking to totally destroy the evening—I was just thinking I would make Loren nervous until he left. Then maybe I’d pick a fight with him on the way over to the parking deck.”

“But while you were there, Dee Dee came over and talked to you,” prompted Lulu, trying to shepherd the conversation away from Loren a little.

Pepper now looked purely spiteful. “Yes, she did. Witch. She said that she had something with her that I
might
be interested in seeing. She handed me a note that said to meet her at the second floor of the parking deck at eight o’clock.”

Lulu’s stomach churned a little with excitement—or maybe with the cheese dip she’d eaten out of pity for Cherry. “So you slipped away from the restaurant around eight o’clock.”

“Yes,” said Pepper, “but after she spoke to me, I started really paying attention to everybody else that she talked to. I figured if she was trying this on me, then she’s probably trying it on everybody she spent time with that night.”

“Who else did Dee Dee talk to?” asked Lulu after she took a deep breath.

“Well, she tried to talk to Sara, for one. But don’t worry, Lulu—Sara just shook her head at Dee Dee like she didn’t have the time to bother with her.”

“Who else?” asked Cherry breathlessly.

“Oh. Well, every one of the people who had been at Tristan’s party. I guess I was the very first one. She talked to Steffi, Pansy, Colleen, Loren, and Sara.”

“So you went out to meet her at the assigned time,” prompted Lulu.

“Yes. And I saw Steffi outside, smoking,” said Pepper.

Oh, thought Lulu. So that’s probably where Steffi was during that pocket of time where Loren wasn’t sure where she was. Lulu hadn’t realized that Steffi smoked—she sure didn’t see her do it while she was working at Aunt Pat’s. Stress did funny things to people, though.

“I’m sure that Steffi probably told the cops that she saw me leave and come back. Because she was
still
smoking when I came back to the restaurant a little later.” Pepper sighed heavily. “Maybe all that fund-raising money will end up going to lung-cancer treatments. What a shame that would be.”

Lulu said, “What happened during your meeting with Dee Dee?”

“Nothing.” Pepper held her hands out in a beseeching way. “Nothing happened. Because when I walked up to Dee Dee’s car, I saw her lying on the ground—dead.”

Chapter 20

Cherry and Lulu gaped at Pepper now. “So she was dead before you even got to talk to her,” repeated Cherry in a breathless voice. “Gee whiz!”

Gee whiz? Cherry must really be tipsy to be pulling those kinds of phrases out. “So you didn’t see or hear anything or anyone?” asked Lulu. “No pounding footsteps running from the scene? No suspicious-looking people lurking around?”

“No, although it wouldn’t have been a suspicious-looking person who did it, would it? It would be someone we know—and I guess the same person who murdered Tristan. But, you know, any of the people who Dee Dee talked to could have slipped out of the restaurant to kill her. Nobody was keeping track of anyone’s going or coming. We were all moving around a lot. I might’ve kept track of Dee Dee . . . for a while. But then she obviously left to go to her car. Once she left, I really wasn’t watching anyone except for Loren. And keeping half an eye on the time because I wanted to go out there and ask Dee Dee what she was playing at, trying to blackmail me.” Pepper was looking annoyed again, just thinking about it. “I did notice that kind of slick-looking guy, Steffi’s boyfriend, come back after I got out of the restroom. At that point, I was sitting out on the screen porch, so I noticed him coming back into the restaurant. He’d arrived at the fund-raiser the same time I did—so I thought it was a little weird that he would leave and come back. ”

Lulu said, “But that would have been after Dee Dee was already dead, right?”

“Sure. But he must have seen her body if he was out at his car. He and I parked right next to each other and walked over to Aunt Pat’s at the same time that night. Nobody could have missed seeing Dee Dee’s body spread out on the ground like that.”

“Wonder why he didn’t say anything?” asked Lulu.

“Same reason I didn’t, I guess! He didn’t want to be a suspect. I’m guessing that he probably hasn’t got a spotless record—he might look like a logical suspect to a cop.”

“Do you have any idea what Dee Dee wanted to talk to you about?” asked Lulu.

“Sure I do. I saw that painting lying next to her on the floor of the parking deck. She wanted to talk to me about Tristan’s messed-up portrait,” said Pepper coolly.

“You’re the one who destroyed it?” asked Lulu.

“Yes. The night of Tristan’s party. And I’m sorry because I know that Sara spent a long time painting it. I promise that I didn’t have a single thought in my head about Sara or the time it took, or the picture as art. All I thought was that I couldn’t stand that woman. She told the Women’s League that I wasn’t good enough to join—she blackballed me. But somehow, my husband, who doesn’t make enough money for her to consider letting me in her club, is having an affair with her. Tristan comes into the picture and wrecks my marriage; then, on top of it all, she’s still insulting Loren and me for not being good enough for anything.”

Lulu said quietly, “So when you saw the opportunity at the party to ruin Tristan’s portrait, you took it.”

“I did. I think I was possessed, Lulu. I’d followed Loren’s car over to Tristan’s, not knowing that she was having a party. Of
course
, I didn’t know she was having a party! She wasn’t likely going to invite Loren or me, seeing as how she looked down on us as dirt.”

“But seeing the cars there didn’t stop Loren. He was desperate to see Tristan, who wasn’t returning his calls or answering the door when he rang the bell.”

“Yes,” said Pepper, rolling her eyes. “Loren was being an idiot.”

“Seeing the cars at Tristan’s didn’t stop you, either. You went inside and talked to Tristan—but she didn’t want anything to do with Loren anymore.”

“Which almost made things worse,” said Pepper thoughtfully. “He was disposable to her. And
I
was disposable. She was done with him. Yes, it made me even more furious than I already was. So when I saw the portrait, it had been put off to the side—sort of near the back of the house.”

Lulu nodded. Tristan had grabbed it from the auctioneer and was probably trying to hide it in her bedroom where no one could see it when Sara had come up to talk with her about it.

“So I whipped my lipstick out of my purse and scribbled all over the canvas. Even that wasn’t good enough for me. Like any good southern girl, I carry a pocketknife—my daddy gave it to me when I was a girl. I took it out and slashed that portrait to pieces.”

“Dee Dee somehow ended up with the portrait,” said Lulu. “She must have seen you mess with it and decided that it would be the perfect thing to hold over you. . . . At the time she probably thought you’d fork over a few bucks to keep her quiet about it.”

“Yeah. But then she really hit pay dirt when Tristan was murdered. I guess she thought that the police would love to know that I had vandalized Tristan’s portrait. They probably would have jumped to the conclusion that I was also the one who killed her. Dee Dee was planning on blackmailing me, I’m sure.” She shrugged. “And now the cops are going to find out it was me who messed up the portrait anyway, I guess. Since I used my lipstick, there’s bound to be DNA all over the painting.” Lulu raised her eyebrows in surprise, and Pepper shrugged again. “I watch all those crime shows on TV.”

“I guess it would have been easy enough for Dee Dee to swipe the portrait,” said Lulu. “Everyone was leaving with big canvasses, anyway.”

Pepper said, “Or maybe someone
else
took it. Maybe Dee Dee had a picture of the damage. Or, who knows, maybe she even took a picture with her cell phone of me when I’d originally vandalized it.”

“And so, maybe the person who murdered Tristan actually took it to plant near the body to point suspicion at you,” said Lulu thoughtfully.

“If I’d had any sense, I’d have swiped that portrait and stuck it in my car. But seeing Dee Dee like that with the picture next to her made me sick—literally. I rushed back to the restaurant and straight into the restroom.” Pepper looked a little green at the memory.

This made Lulu think. Why would the killer have gone to the parking deck at his or her assigned time to meet with Dee Dee? If Pepper had the first meeting and Dee Dee was already dead for
that
one, then the murderer would have known there was no point in going out there. Maybe they should be looking for the person who
didn’t
leave after Pepper returned to Aunt Pat’s.

“What a mess I’m in,” said Pepper with disgust. “My husband is hounding me. My marriage is in ruins. And now I’m probably the main suspect in a murder investigation. Life just doesn’t get any better.”