Ice Cream Murder (7 page)

“And do you think that would constitute motive?” Lexy asked while she cleared the dinner dishes and then broke out the pie.

Jack shrugged. “Hard to say. Where did Nans get this information, anyway? Is it reliable? And, for God’s sake, please tell me she’s not going to try to infiltrate the gambling ring.”

Lexy grimaced as she sat down with her pie. “That’s what I’m afraid of. An old friend that knows Winston told her and he seems to be pretty reliable. But you know how Nans is. She’s apt to do something crazy, so I’m trying to get the information she needs before that happens.”

“Smart idea.” Jack pointed to the pie with his fork. “This is great pie.”

“Thanks. You don’t happen to have any contacts that could verify if Winston owed money, do you?” Lexy ventured.

Jack rubbed his hand through his short-cropped dark hair. “Lexy, you know I can’t use police contacts for that stuff … even if I did have one, which unfortunately, I don’t.”

Lexy scooped up a forkful of whipped topping from her piece of pie and swirled it around in her mouth. “I don’t suppose you have any idea where I could find out …”

Jack shrugged. “I’m surprised Nans or one of the ladies doesn’t have a contact. Heck, didn’t Ruth date a gangster? Maybe they could ask one of Helen’s old contacts at the paper. They usually have shady informants. Or maybe someone at the retirement center—thugs have grandmas, too, you know.”

Lexy chuckled. “Let’s hope she can dig someone up. You know how she is—she won’t rest until she finds out.”

Jack nodded and then stood up and took the dishes to the sink. Lexy bent down toward Sprinkles who had been patiently watching every bite that had gone into her mouth. She held out a tiny piece of pie crust.

“You want a treat?”

Sprinkles thumped her tail on the floor before gently taking the piece from Lexy and swallowing it in one gulp.

“So, are you ready to tackle some more packing?” Jack put the last dish in the dishwasher.

Lexy’s eyes slid to the back door—the one she used to use to cut through the back yards to Jack’s. “I guess we could finish up packing the rest of the kitchen cabinets.”

“Yeah, I want to get those boxes to Goodwill this weekend.” Jack led the way through the back door into Lexy’s backyard, taking the shortcut through the missing board in the fence into his backyard.
 

“I guess we’ll have to fix that fence before we list the house for sale,” Jack said.

Lexy’s heart tugged as she remembered the excitement of slipping through that hole in the fence on those early nights when she and Jack had first started dating. She had to admit, it had been pretty convenient to have her boyfriend right in the backyard. They’d been able to visit each other easily, and if one forgot their toothbrush … well … it was only a short walk to get it.
 

But now they were married and she got to have Jack at her house every night.
 

As she followed Jack to his kitchen door, a familiar beige car driving down the street caught her eye and she stopped in her tracks.

“Something wrong?” Jack stood at the backdoor with the key in his hand.

“No.” Lexy kept her eye on the beige car. It drove down Jack’s street, then around the corner, then took a left onto Lexy’s street.
 

Could it be coincidence that she had seen the car three times and now it was in her own neighborhood?
 

Lexy didn’t think so.

Jack pushed the door open and started into the kitchen. Lexy held back, peeking throughout the bushes and neighbors’ backyards, watching the car’s progress. It stopped two houses down from hers on the opposite side of the street.

Almost as if it were staking out her house.

Lexy had a pretty good idea who was behind the wheel … and then she realized how she could kill two birds with one stone.

***

Lexy peeked into the kitchen. Jack stood at an open cabinet, digging out some coffee mugs. Cardboard boxes lay strewn on the floor. Old newspapers were stacked on the counters.
 

“I forgot my gloves at my house.” Lexy wore latex food service gloves while packing to keep from getting all the newsprint on her hands. “I’ll be back in a second.”

“Okay,” Jack shot over his shoulder as he started wrapping the mugs in newspaper.

Lexy tiptoed around to the front of Jack’s house, then walked four houses down to the Murphy’s. She turned into their yard, sneaking along the tree line and into the Sullivan’s backyard. Hopefully neither the Murphy’s nor the Sullivan’s would look out the window and see her skulking around. The last thing she needed was for someone to call the cops on her.
 

Crossing from the Sullivan’s backyard to their front, Lexy came out onto her own street, one house down from the beige car.

She ducked behind a rhododendron bush, then peered around it, ignoring the furry black and yellow bees that buzzed her. The driver of the car didn’t notice her. He sat slouched in the driver’s seat holding a pair of binoculars to his face. The binoculars were trained on Lexy’s house.

She scurried across the street, ducked behind an azalea, then crab walked up to the passenger side of the car keeping her head below the windows, so the driver wouldn’t be alerted to her approach.

When she reached the door, she grabbed the handle, then whipped the door open as fast as she could.

“Just what do you think you are doing!” she yelled. A startled Norman Shea whipped his head around to face her, his eyes bulging behind the coke bottle glasses.

“What … I … well …,” he stammered.

“You
do
realize my husband is a police detective.” Lexy stood up, then bent down to look in the car at him. “I could have him arrest you
and
tell your mother about the toilet incident.”

Norman blinked, then straightened in his seat. “The public deserves to know the truth.”

“Yeah, but unfortunately, you’re on the wrong trail.” Lexy slipped into the passenger seat to Norman’s obvious dismay. “However, I think I can help you get the truth and a juicy exclusive, too.”

Norman eyed her suspiciously. “You’re just trying to throw me off track.”

“No. Listen. I’ve been looking into this with my grandmother.”

Norman scrunched up his face. “Your grandmother?”

“Yes, perhaps you’ve heard of
The Ladies Detective Club
?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s my grandma and her friends. They’re pretty good. They even help the police sometimes. Anyway, we’ve stumbled onto something much more interesting than a caterer serving the wrong ice cream.”

That got his interest. “Really?”

“Yep. It seems Regis’ death might not have just been an accident.”

Norman’s eyes got wider. “What do you mean?”

“His son, Winston, has some serious gambling debts. He needed money bad.”
 

“But he already has lots of money.”

“Not
this
much money. Even though he makes a big salary, Regis wasn’t overly generous with the Bank’s family fortune. The kind of debt Winston had is the kind that gets you maimed or killed. We’re thinking maybe he couldn’t wait for the old man to die and tried to help things along.”

Norman speared her with a skeptical look. “How do you know this?”

“Let’s just say we have our sources. But they need to be verified and that’s where you come in.”

“I do?”

“Sure, you must have some sources down at the paper that have street knowledge.”

“Well, we do have some unsavory characters that I suppose I could tap into.”

“Great, all you need to do is find out if Winston owed someone money and if he was being threatened.”
 

“And then?”

“We’ll do the rest to try to prove he killed Regis. And you’ll get the exclusive on the story. No one else knows about this.”
 

Norman chewed his bottom lip. “So, if I help you, you won’t tell any other reporters and you’ll keep me in the loop?”

Lexy nodded. “Yep.”

“And you won’t tell my mom about the toilets.”

“Nope.”

Lexy’s stomach churned as Norman made up his mind. He tilted his head, then looked out the window and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel.
 

Finally, he shot out his hand toward Lexy for a handshake.
 

“Okay. Deal.”

Chapter Nine

The next afternoon, Lexy sat at one of the cafe tables in her bakery, her hands wrapped around a mug of dark roast coffee. Across from her, Nans, Ruth, Ida and Helen munched on pastries. Outside, summer had arrived. The trees were in full bloom, flowers lined the river banks and birds hopped about on the sidewalk hoping for departing bakery customers to throw a few crumbs.
 

“These scones are delightful.” Ida pinched off a piece of scone that contained a plump, juicy raspberry. “Are these the raspberries you got from the Farmer’s Market?”

“Yes, they held up wonderfully and add a nice tart flavor, don’t you think?” Lexy replied.
 

“They’re great,” Helen chimed in. “That Farmer’s Market was nice … I sure hope Larry doesn’t end up getting screwed in Regis’ will.”

“I think he’ll be fine. He didn’t seem to care much about money,” Ida replied.

“He sure doesn’t spend it the way Winston does.” Helen lifted the string of her tea bag, bobbing the bag up and down in her cup. “I was able to do some … err …
creative
investigation and it seems Winston and his wife have expensive tastes. Sure, he makes a lot at his vice president position in the company, but they spend more than his salary.”

“So, if he did have a gambling problem, he’d be desperate for any money Regis left him,” Nans said.

Ruth glanced around the shop, then leaned in, lowering her voice, even though they were alone. “Speaking of which, Shirley got a peek at the will. It turns out Winston is going to make out like a bandit … even better than Larry and Olivia.”
 

Lexy made a face. “Really? That hardly seems fair.”

“I know,” Ruth continued. “You see, most of the family money is in the form of
Banks Development
stock and Winston got a lot of stock—more than his brother and sister. I believe that was so he could retain the controlling interest in the company. Regis stipulated his direct issue be in control, so if any of them die within five years of Regis’ death, their stock is split between the surviving siblings. Of course, there was some cash money, too, and they each got equal amounts of that right away.”

“How much cash money?” Nans asked.

“One million each.” Ruth’s eyes sparkled.

“Well, that’s enough to give any one of them motive to kill,” Ida said.

“Maybe.” Nans sipped her tea. “But the only one with an
immediate
need for the money was Winston. The others could have waited until Regis passed naturally.”

“We aren’t sure Winston had an immediate need, yet.” Lexy glanced at her phone sitting on the table in front of her.
Where was Norman?
He was supposed to text her with whatever information he had dug up on Winston.

“I’m a bit worried, Lexy. How reliable
is
Norman?” Nans asked, as if reading her mind.

“He said he has some contacts from the paper that can get the information. That seems credible, doesn’t it? I mean the paper would have reliable resources because they wouldn’t want to print anything if they didn’t have a pretty good idea it was true.”

“Yes, the paper always did have some unsavory people they used for information, even in my day,” Helen said. “But their information was usually spot on.”

“Okay,” Nans cuts in. “Say our theory is true and Winston did need the money. How can we prove he switched the ice cream?”

“Well, he
was
sitting next to him,” Ida offered.

“It would have been easy to just slide his ice cream over and pull Regis’s back in front of him, but we need something more concrete.” Nans turned to Lexy. “Does that place have video cameras or anything?”

Lexy pressed her lips together. The lodge had been built decades ago. She doubted they had any type of surveillance. No one had mentioned it when she’d been there. “I doubt it.”

“Too bad. If we had a video or pictures showing Winston switching the bowls, that would be just the proof we need!”

Pictures.
 

Lexy remembered someone from the Banks’ family had hired a photographer to capture the event. “Wait a minute! What about the photographer?”

“That’s right!” Nans snapped her fingers. “We need to get those pictures. Do you know who the photographer was?”

“No, but I could call Anna. I think she might know. She’s been pretty frantic about all this harming her business and I wanna fill her in on the latest developments anyway.”

“Good,” Nans said. “What about eyewitnesses? It’s a long shot there would be any pictures of the switch, so the next step would be to find someone who saw it happen.”

“You served the head table, Lexy. Did you see anything?” Ruth asked.

Lexy took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
 

Had she seen anything?
 

She wracked her memory, but all she could remember was stressing over putting the right ice creams down and getting everyone served in time.

“No I was so busy serving, I wasn’t watching the table. I was getting the evil eye from Regis’ assistant. She was very stringent about the timing and we were running late.”

“We’ll have to talk to people that were there, find out who might have seen something. I didn’t know most of them. Did you guys recognize anyone you know that we could ask?” Ida placed a scone in the middle of an unfolded napkin and then carefully tucked the edges around to cover it before shoving it into her purse.
 

“I didn’t know anyone.”

“Me, either.”

“Didn’t recognize a soul.”

“That’s going to make it difficult,” Nans said. “People might not want to talk to strangers.”

“I’m sure no one was watching the table that closely, anyway.” Lexy got up to refill her coffee. “If someone saw the switch, wouldn’t they have said something by now?”