Loose Lips (23 page)

She shrugged. “Everyone knows, and you were
talking about your window display. Then you offered to go to the
kiosk.”

“You asked me to. Or Phoebe did.” I
certainly didn’t volunteer. “Besides what does that matter?”

“You don’t really blend with the
WIL
ers. Phoebe and I thought you might be spying on
us.”

I had told Betty I wouldn’t blend. I
couldn’t wait to tell her how wrong she’d been. Fishing for more, I
asked, “I don’t?”

Laura looked at me. “Well, maybe you do.
You’re just younger than most of us.”

That was nowhere as satisfying as I’d
hoped.

“And less prissy.”

That was better. I beamed. I couldn’t help
but share the compliment. “You’re not prissy either.”

She glanced down at her cheese shirt of the
day. “I guess not.”

Suddenly, I got the feeling she thought
prissy
was a good thing. She’d obviously been hanging
around with Phyllis and Kristi too much.

“Anyway, I didn’t call the police on
you.”

“Did you put the pills in my car?”

“No! I told you, I don’t remember what
happened to the bottle after I gave some to Missy. It was empty. So
I don’t think I would have given it back to Phyllis.” She frowned.
“I probably dropped them.” A look of horror flitted across her
face. “The police could have found them.”

“The police
did
find them.”

“Oh, yeah, but not there. They don’t know
that we gave them to Missy.” Her relief was quickly followed by
suspicion. “Do they?”

I hesitated. The police didn’t, because
Gregor had told me to admit nothing, but I’d seen enough cop shows
to know that admitting I hadn’t told the police might make me a
killer’s target—to insure that I didn’t reveal the information
later.

Someone rapping on the locked front door
saved me from answering.

Laura looked at her watch. “Damn. It’s
twenty after.” She gave me one last assessing look before going to
open the door.

o0o

After the enlightening chat with Laura, I
went back to Dusty Deals. Betty was helping a customer, but she’d
opened one of the two remaining Deere boxes while I was gone.
Deciding that was as good of a use of my time as anything else, I
went about unpacking more newspaper wrapped glassware. Halfway
through the box, I gave up on finding anything of Ruby’s, shoved
that box to the side and opened the last one.

This one hadn’t been taped shut, at least
not for a while. Instead, the tops were tucked inside each other to
hold the box closed.

This box looked more promising, at least at
the top. The first item I unwrapped was the perfume decanter. The
next was a woman’s watch, the kind that would hang on a chain.

After saying goodbye to the customer, Betty
joined me at the box. “What did Laura say?”

“She didn’t do it.”

Betty gave me a “don’t be stupid” look.

I ran my thumb over the watch’s engraving
and tilted my head to the side. “I believe her.”

“That she didn’t call or that she didn’t put
the bottle in your Jeep?”

“Both.”

With a shake of her head, Betty apparently
decided to let that go. At least for a while. I knew she’d come
back to it. Lucky me, she had other topics to discuss. “What about
the website? You didn’t tell me how Rachel liked what I’d
done.”

“She loved it.”

Betty smiled.

“But.... She said it didn’t go with their
new upscale image.”

“Upscale? Do those paper cups have a china
lining now?”

Pretty much my reaction too. I lifted a
shoulder.

She muttered to herself for a while and then
asked, “Does she want her money back?”

“She didn’t mention it.”

More muttering. Then, “What about the rest
of the payment?”

“I don’t know,” I squeaked.

That earned me a scowl. I hid by diving
deeper into the box and pulling out an armful of paper–wrapped
bundles.

“Lucy?”

I sighed, thinking Betty wasn’t going to let
me off the hook about the payment. Then she said my name again and
pointed.

“What is stuck on your head?”

“I...” As I turned, something brushed
against my face. Something soft and wispy and... I screamed and
slapped at my face. A strand of black dropped onto the box.

Not a spider web.
Whew
.

Then I looked, really looked, at what had
been clinging to my face.

A stocking. A black fishnet stocking.

Betty reached for it. “Was it Ruby’s?”

I slapped her hand away before she could
touch it.

A stocking and not a Christmas one. In my
shop.

o0o

Thirty minutes later, I was still staring at
the box and the stocking that lay on top of it like a cobra waiting
to strike.

Betty was still there too. She’d turned our
signs to closed though, locked the door, and pulled up a stool so
she could sit beside me as we stared at the stocking.

I’d already filled her in that, according to
Rachel, just such a stocking is what had landed Joe in jail.

“How did it get in the box?” she asked. “Do
you think it’s the mate... to the one Joe had?

“I don’t know.”

We stared at it a bit longer.

“I should call Peter.”

Betty squinched up her face. “Should
you?”

“Yes, definitely... don’t you think?”

“I don’t know, but think about it... could
this be why Klein came here that day? Was this what he was looking
for?”

My eyes widened. She was right. She had to
be. So if I called and said I had it, what would the police think?
That I was a good citizen? Or that I’d figured out that they were
on to me and was trying to cover my tracks by claiming I’d just
found it?

We stared at the stocking a bit more.

“Bag it,” Betty declared.

“What?”

“Bag it. That’s what the police would
do.”

“But then they’d know I’d seen it.”

“True. Leave it then. Put the stuff you took
out back in and fold the top back up. Then there’s no proof you
even knew it was there.”

But that would mean not using the lady’s
watch that I’d been caressing for the past hour.

Betty held out her hand. With a reluctant
sigh, I dropped the watch onto her palm.

After it and everything else was back in the
box, I asked, “Now what?”

“Now we figure out what that stocking was
doing in the box.”

With the two Deere boxes shoved as far out
of sight as I could get them, Betty and I began working out how the
stocking had gotten into the box and what it meant.

“Maybe it isn’t related to the murder at
all,” I offered.

Betty gave me scolding stare.

Okay, considering that Klein and Peter had
come to my shop looking for something right after the boxes had
been delivered, and that the murder weapon that had been found at
Joe’s was also a fishnet stocking, this idea was farfetched at
best.

Joe
. The boxes had come to him
first
and
he’d been found with the other stocking.

Betty and I shared a look. We were both
obviously on the same track.

“Joe wouldn’t have tried to frame you,” she
stated, confident.

“No... but what if the stocking the police
found didn’t come from the dumpster at all. What if someone was
working on framing
me
?”

We both looked at the box. We both knew who
it had come from.
Darrell
.

o0o

After some deliberation, Betty and I decided
to confront Darrell ourselves. Our reasons for this were many.
First, I’d accused Darrell of murder once before and not come out
looking all that well. And this time, I couldn’t even make that
accusation. I’d be stuck with a claim of him trying to frame me.
Something that I suspected would barely warrant a call from the
police, but would almost surely land me back at the cold table of
the interrogation room.

“And we don’t know that he put the stockings
in there,” Betty added, not all that helpfully.

“Who else could have?”

She grimaced. “The box has been sitting here
for awhile, and Joe did deliver it.”

Joe again. I really wished that I had access
to him. I would love to have heard his side of the stocking
story.

But he was still safely locked away from
me.

Betty was right though. The world’s access,
or at least anyone who had entered my shop in the past few days
access, to the box was another reason not to yell “Darrell” to the
police once again. Not without evidence.

It was late enough, so we closed up the shop
and the three of us, Betty, Kiska, and me, went to find
Darrell.

“Do you think he killed Missy?” Betty
asked.

I stumbled a bit. I’d thought him capable of
murder before. “According to Laura, he was sleeping with her.”

“With Missy?”

I considered that. “A Cutie. It could have
been Missy. And there was...”

Sensing gossip, Betty turned in her seat to
face me.

I told her about the “toy” that Cindy and I
had found at the mansion.

“Ooooh. Maybe it was an accident then.”

I hadn’t thought of that, but she was right.
If Darrell was into things “off the grid” then maybe things went
just a little too far.

“And he’s been trying to frame you ever
since.”

The calls. “And I had my Jeep parked near
the mansion twice. He could have somehow snuck the pill bottle
inside.”

“How’d he get it?”

“Found it? Maybe Laura dropped it, and
Darrell found it when he went to see Missy.”

It worked. I was definitely convincing
myself that this time Darrell had “dunnit.”

We parked in the alley behind the mansion
and walked the short distance to the house. It was dark.

“Should we break in?” Betty asked.

“For what?”

“To look for clues.”

I shook my head. One potential charge of
breaking and entering in a week was enough for me, especially for
the same address.

“What else can we do?”

Betty’s husband was out of town on a “gig.”
Being left behind always made her antsy. I just hoped it didn’t get
us both arrested.

“Do you think he skipped town?” she asked
next. “You said he wasn’t here when you met Cindy either.”

“If he doesn’t own the mansion...” And Cindy
certainly didn’t seem to think that he did. “Then he must have
another house.”

“Yep, this is probably just his—”

I cut Betty off before she could put
whatever term she was thinking to the Deere mansion. I loved the
place. I didn’t need my thoughts of it sullied any more than they
already had been.

After directing her and Kiska away from the
mansion and back toward my Jeep, I pulled out my phone and did a
quick search. The only address for Darrell that showed up was his
office downtown. I called the number. No answer.

“We could try it,” Betty suggested.

I shook my head. It was after six on a
Sunday. Even if Darrell was inside, the building would be locked up
tight.

Settling in the Jeep, Betty asked, “Any
other ideas?”

Besides going home and thinking about this
tomorrow? No.

Betty’s determined expression told me there
would be no sleep for me. I sighed. “Cindy?” I was beginning to
suspect Cindy knew a lot more about a number of things than I had
considered before.

Plus, she might have cake.

Sadly, Cindy’s bakery was locked up tight
too. No lights. No sign of life.

After a short argument with Betty where I
insisted that no, I was not breaking into the bakery either, I
drove her back to her car, and then Kiska and I drove home.

The night felt like a waste and while I ate
my dinner and tried to focus on the latest “hot” reality singing
contest, I couldn’t keep my mind from drifting back to the stocking
and wondering if was doing the right thing by not calling the
police.

o0o

The next morning, I was still debating my
decision.

I coped with my indecision by eating some
frozen cookie dough and then going back to bed. Two hours later, an
hour after I would have normally been at the shop, I loaded Kiska
into the Jeep with every intention of making the decision in
person.

When we arrived, Betty was in the
office.

Mondays were always slow, but I went in to
make my mea culpas anyway.

Betty waved me off. “No worries. We had one
customer. A
WIL
er. She was looking for Phyllis.” She
expressed her disgust with a grimace. I wasn’t sure if it was for
WIL
or her co–worker.

“Which one?”

“I didn’t get her name, but she was a
Phyllis clone.” Instead of a grimace, this time she shivered. “She
wasn’t here long. And Rachel called. She had some revisions for the
website.” Betty’s expression shifted to joy. “She loves it. Just a
few tweaks. Then she’ll drop off the rest of the payment.”

It had seemed to me that Rachel hadn’t been
all that interested in the website after all, but if she’d told
Betty she was, and if Betty was getting paid and was happy... well,
it was all good on my end.

While she was in a good mood, I announced my
intentions of doing the right thing: telling Peter about the
stocking.

Shaking her head and clucking like a
chicken, she followed me into the store. “No good will come of
it.”

Ignoring her, I looked around for the box.
It was just where we had left it. Kind of. It seemed more visible
than I remembered leaving it last night.

“Did you move it?” I asked.

Betty flicked an imaginary piece of lint off
her shoulder and shrugged.

Fine
. That’s how it was going to
be.

I opened the box and made a stack of
newspaper–wrapped items on the floor.

The stack grew, and then it grew some
more.

“Betty!”