Murder Close to Home (8 page)

Jade found out where Amelia had gone to breakfast the morning of her death and Orla agreed to meet us there for lunch. The café was a beautiful small place with room enough for one table inside. There was plenty of seating in the fenced-off area outside, under a canopy. Lights were strung underneath it and I could imagine how much prettier it would be at night.

“Orla!” I waved her to our table.

Taking a seat, she smiled apologetically at Jade. “Sorry for not talking to you earlier. It wasn’t you, it was the place. I didn’t want to say anything in a room full of gossips. Anything I said could have spread faster than wildfire. Not that it won’t, but at least you’ll have a better chance of hearing what I’m saying in the light of day instead of over the loud music.”

I opened my mouth to say that we wouldn’t spread gossip as Orla nodded to the people sitting nearby. “It’s not you ladies who would spread it, it’s everyone else listening in. It happens all the time in a small town, as you know.”

We ordered our breakfasts and sipped coffee and orange juice. We chatted about the party for a while before getting into the events of Orla’s breakfast with Amelia.

“I came here with Amelia for a relaxing morning,” Orla said. “We watched people walking their dogs go by and chatted with the waitress about her upcoming wedding.”

Our food arrived and I spread syrup on my waffles. “Vivienne Cho says she saw you arguing with Marty in front of the salon.”

“She saw that? The salon windows are big. Yeah, I was leaving from my haircut when Marty showed up, accusing me of stealing Amelia’s suitcase,” said Orla. “Amelia had this suitcase that she kept as a security blanket, if you will. She hid some cash in it, enough to escape and live on for a little while, if she needed to. After her divorce, she wanted access to a quick way out without worrying about banks and such.”

“Makes sense,” I said.

“Amelia had given me the suitcase to repair the secret lining last week. She had tested it to make sure it would rip open and because she’d ripped it open, the lining needed to be stitched back up. I fixed it for her and had the suitcase in my car to return it after my haircut. That’s when Marty showed up out of nowhere and started arguing with me, telling me that she needed the suitcase and it was better to be safe than sorry, and stuff like that. Now, this suitcase is rather well known. Amelia made no effort to hide it because she figured that if everyone knew about its existence, then they would also know that stealing it would be a betrayal of her trust.” Orla pressed her fingers together. “She trusted people too much. Even after Marty, Amelia believed in people unrealistically.”

I looked at Jade. “Let’s go check out her apartment. We may not be able to get in, but we can look around. Maybe we’ll find a spare key under the welcome mat.”

“Or we can ask Taryn,” Jade suggested. “I’m sure she’d let us in.”

“She’s gone,” said Orla. “Getting her hair done for the day. She wasn’t sure how to wear a rose in her hair without putting it into a bun and wanted to commemorate Amelia, so she’s getting Vivienne to do it for her. She didn’t want to wear the same hairstyle two days in a row for some reason.”

As we walked onto the apartment complex grounds, I said to Jade, “I wish there was a way to get inside and see if the suitcase is still there.”

“If I was going to kill Amelia, I would definitely take the suitcase,” Jade said. “I agree with you on that. Not that I would want to kill anybody.”

Tyler was walking past us, wearing a baseball hat on backwards and sunglasses. He halted. “Did you say you want to get inside Amelia’s apartment?”

“For investigative purposes,” I said. “Not to, like, take anything.”

“I can get you in.” Tyler tossed his keys in one hand.

“You have a key?” Jade asked.

“Yeah, we swapped keys a while back. I kept misplacing my keys and having to find Taryn to get into my place. Amelia came up with the idea of us having each other’s key. That way, if I locked myself out, she could let me in. She thought that my holding on to her key would give me a better sense of responsibility because I wouldn’t want to lose her key. Since we made that arrangement, I’ve been careful because I didn’t want to let her down. I haven’t lost my keys once.”

Tyler let us in and we found the closet with the suitcase with no problem. It was in Amelia’s bedroom. I flicked the light switch to the room, Jade rolled the mirrored sliding closet door open, and the suitcase was sitting right inside.

“Good. No one took it,” I said.

“Orla would have to check to see if anything’s missing,” said Jade. “Although it should be pretty obvious unless they took the time to sew it up again.”

I opened the suitcase and nothing appeared out of place or torn. There was an envelope in it which I opened and pulled out a short, handwritten letter.

Dear Lucky Recipient,

I don’t know how you got your hands on this. Maybe I gave it to you and forgot to personalize this letter. Maybe you stole this from me, thanks to my big mouth. I know I told too many people about it. Either way, do something good with the money. Help people who can’t help themselves. Give yourself a vacation. Do something that makes you happy.

Best Wishes,

Amelia Lamb

“That’s nice of her,” I remarked.

Tyler peered over my shoulder at the letter. “That sounds like her. She liked people.”

“Who would have a reason to be upset with her?” I muttered. With my suicide idea thrown out, I was back to the beginning. I couldn’t believe Taryn would have killed Amelia, and Orla was much too concerned about Amelia’s wellbeing to have hurt her. Ellen had to concentrate on Marty, and Marty was off in his head, but I had to believe Ellen’s earlier statement that he was mostly harmless.

I thought about each of them once more and it dawned on me: the suitcase was still here, which meant it was very likely that the killer was still here, unless they didn’t need the money to make a quick getaway.

It had to be someone with little extra money, or for who making a getaway wasn’t as simple as packing and leaving because whoever it was had other people in their household to take care of.

As I closed the closet door, a small bottle caught my attention. It had been dropped haphazardly on the floor, clearly out of place. The label indicated that it was snake venom.

The killer had been here.

They’d come to take the suitcase and had been interrupted, so they’d had to leave empty-handed. “Tyler, remind me who came by Amelia’s apartment the day she died.”

“Taryn, and the creepy guy. I think the guy was her ex-husband. Oh, yeah, and Ellen was here too. I remember because I was leaving to meet some friends when she walked past me. She seemed to be in a hurry.”

With my suspicions confirmed, I called Corey. “Jade, can you find out where Marty is?” I asked as the phone rang. “He’s in trouble.”

Jade and I burst into The Parrot Tree, out of breath and frantic. Okay, I was the only one out of breath. Maybe I should take up running.

The people in the closest booths looked at us strangely, but most of the patrons hadn’t noticed our arrival. There was an area of small tables in the center that wasn’t there at night, when they were pushed to the side to make room for entertainment.

Jade pointed to Marty, who was at a small table by himself. He was about to take a sip of his drink. “There he is.”

“Marty, STOP!” I yelled, running up to him.

Marty looked at us, confused. “You’re from the house.”

I swiped the glass from his hands. “You can’t eat or drink anything until we’ve checked it for poison.”

He stood up, knocking over his chair. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

“Fine, drink it.” I offered it to him. “You’ll die.”

Marty wavered. “I guess it can’t hurt to be on the safe side.”

“No, it can’t be. Isn’t that right, Ellen?” I turned to Ellen Parks, who was eating in a booth across from Marty.

Ellen’s face was the picture of innocence. “What do you mean?”

The Parrot Tree went silent. Everyone was watching us, waiting to see what would happen next. It felt like a dinner theater show.

“Ellen’s the ideal friend,” I said to the crowd. “She’s there for you when you’re down, she’s there when you want to have a good time, and she was unintentionally there for her friend’s ex-husband. Ellen and Amelia look alike, enough so that, for Marty, all he had to do was squint and he could imagine that Ellen was Amelia. Ellen told me herself that she was the chance that Marty wanted. Ellen had the perfect family that he could fit himself into, if Ellen was willing to marry him. But she wasn’t interested, and she made it clear to him that he was to have nothing to do with her and her kids.”

“It was a lost opportunity,” said Marty, shaking his head.

Ellen glared at him. “It was creepy. People don’t do that.”

“Amelia knew about this,” I continued. “She didn’t do anything about it, though. Some friend, huh? After everything Ellen had done for Amelia over the years, Amelia wouldn’t stop her ex from stalking her. The resentment began to build. When Ellen learned that Marty was taking photos from a distance after she’d filed the restraining order, she got angry. How could Amelia let this keep happening? Ellen didn’t want her kids afraid of their own shadows. She wanted them to grow up normally, without someone following their every move.”

“Wouldn’t anyone?” asked Ellen. She took a bite of her salad.

I tilted my head. “By the way, Ellen, why are you here? The last time I checked, the retraining order was still in place.”

Ellen jabbed her fork in Marty’s direction. “You should be asking him that.”

Allen came by with a refill for Ellen’s iced tea. “Marty was here first, actually.” He spoke his next words louder, so that everyone could hear. “You asked for that specific booth.”

Ellen froze. “That’s not what I — you can’t prove that.”

I pressed on with my story. “You decided to kill Amelia so Marty would give up on his dreams. You thought that with Amelia out of the picture, he would finally face reality. Of course, that decision was made easier with the knowledge of a certain suitcase in Amelia’s closet. After Amelia divorced Marty, she kept a stash of cash in that suitcase in case she needed to escape a bad situation. It was comforting for her, but it was a source of jealousy for you. You’d been living paycheck to paycheck for years during nursing school. When you landed a steady job, you had your kids, and they took the extra money you could have been saving for a better life.”

“My kids are my everything. Don’t blame this on them,” said Ellen furiously.

“I’m not. I’m simply stating the facts. You didn’t kill Amelia for the money. It was just an added bonus. You could take your kids and leave town, never to return, with Amelia’s savings. Unfortunately for you, there were several people who knew about the suitcase. Marty saw you the night of Amelia’s death. He saw you going into her apartment after she died. What were you going in there for?”

“I knew she was up to no good,” said Marty excitedly. “I knew her schedule. She wasn’t supposed to be at Amelia’s. I snuck into the apartment and I found her nosing in the closet, gripping the suitcase like it was a life vest. I said to myself,
Why would she be taking that? That’s Amelia’s.
This was before I learned about Amelia’s death. I wasn’t at The Parrot Tree that night because Ellen was there and I wasn’t supposed to be near her.”