Pies & Peril (18 page)

She drank the rest of the luscious chocolate, made a bit saltier from the tears dripping into it. The jackhammer hangover had settled down to an annoying rattle. Thoughts were zipping around in her brain at the nearly normal frenetic pace.
Chocolate really was a super food.

Alex scratched the stubble on his chin and yawned. He yelped when she slapped his knee.
"I could still be right! Lucy's friend was running around downtown last night yelling about her pregnancy. Anybody within twenty feet heard it, but Lucy went bonkers when she realized I'd heard, too. Not to mention she didn't look impressed when Carla told her off for getting in my face. Carla said pregnancy hormones are wicked. Most likely Lucy didn't send the notes, but me figuring out that the new widower is her baby daddy flipped her out. It's possible we were just victims of pregnant mama road rage last night."

"
I hope you're right," he mumbled as he yawned again. "Why don't we go back to sleep? Shepler said he'd let us know if he found out anything, but I doubt he'll call at 5 a.m."

Amy poked the
on
button on the coffee maker and sighed. It was the third pot of coffee. The dry ingredients for the second batch of muffins were already measured into the mixing bowl, and Shepler still hadn't arrived. She had called him at 8 a.m. to suggest checking on the whereabouts of Lucy and Kevin during the road rage incident. If he waited much longer she would need to figure out what to do with the extra baked goods. She had planned on sending them back to the police station with Shepler, if he delivered his findings in person. If he just called with a quick update, the deal was off. No lemon cheesecake muffins for the good detective and his cohorts.

She grabbed the kitchen
shears out of the knife block and snipped the corner off a five-pound bag of sugar. The glass storage canister needed to be refilled. She lifted the bag, and a white stream of sweet, little granules arced into the container. A soft thump was greeted by a flurry of yippy barks from Pogo, who was outside sniffing for squirrels in the backyard. Sugar scattered everywhere when Amy slammed the half-empty bag back onto the counter. Not another rock.

"
What was that?" Alex called from his office at the back of the house.

She turned and spotted the culprit. A car door. Not another boulder message delivery.
"It's Shepler. He's coming to the side door. Can you let him in? I spilled sugar all over."

Alex jogged through the kitchen as Amy wet a dishcloth. There were worse things than spilled sugar, but it sure was a sticky pain in the
butt to clean up. The detective snuffled a bit when he walked into the kitchen. "Smells wonderful in here."

Amy plowed a drift of sugar into her hand with the cloth.
"Lemon cheesecake muffins and fresh coffee. Would you like some while we chat? That is, if you don't mind being a guinea pig. It's a new recipe I'm working on."

"
After trying the banana bread you made, I have to say I am more than willing to be a taste tester for your recipes."

"
Wonderful. The muffins came out of the oven a little bit ago, so Alex and I haven't had any yet." She pulled a platter off the baker's rack. "We can all have breakfast and discuss what you've found out."

Shepler nodded. Had his expression changed to a grimmer version of a smile?
"Sounds great."

She was happy to see Alex settle onto one of the high stools at the counter side of the island instead of in the breakfast nook. Shepler perched next to him. No stools left. That meant she was free to move around the kitchen, to burn off over-caffeinated nervous energy, while they all talked. Getting stuck in the middle of the U-shaped bench would
've left her feeling trapped and anxious.

Shepler took a deep breath and tossed his cell phone on the marble countertop while Amy placed a plate and coffee mug in front of him. He glared at the device like he was afraid it would come to life and eat his muffin. Amy
put a golden, crumb-topped muffin on his plate and was pouring coffee when he blurted out, "It wasn't Lucy or Kevin driving the pickup last night."

That wasn
't what she wanted to hear. Amy set the metal insulated coffee carafe down in front of Alex. He'd have to pour his own, unless he wanted to wear it. Her hands were shaking like it was twenty degrees below zero in the kitchen. "How can you be sure?"

"
I started by checking their vehicle registrations. Neither one has a pickup…"

"
But…" Amy interrupted. Shepler held up his pointer finger to stop her.

He continued.
"But that doesn't mean they couldn't have borrowed one from a friend. So I pulled security tapes from the event. After that rash of break-ins downtown a few years ago, the city put in cameras to help keep an eye on everything. Both Kevin and Lucy are on several tapes when the truck was trying to run you and Carla into the river. Sorry."

"
So much for my hormone theory," Amy muttered as she took a big bite of muffin. They needed a little bit more lemon juice, to offset the intense creaminess of the filling.

"
Hormone theory?" Shepler raised his eyebrows as he stirred sugar into his coffee.

"
Pregnancy hormone triggered road rage resulting from me overhearing that Lucy was pregnant." She stopped and stared into her coffee mug. Memories of everything from 9 p.m. until she climbed into bed around 1 a.m. were a bit fuzzy. "I thought I told you last night that she was pregnant."

"
You did, and Carla backed it up. So you figured she had some sort of psychotic break because of hormones and tried to kill you?"

She put her hands on her hips and asked,
"Do you have any better ideas?"

"
At this point, not really." He folded the crumb covered cupcake wrapper into a precise triangle. "There's something else. Kevin and Lucy finally have a concrete alibi for the time of Mandy Jo's murder."

"
They didn't have one before?" Alex asked.

Shepler shook his head.
"Both of them said they were at their homes alone, so no way to confirm it. Now that the cat is out of the bag about Lucy's pregnancy they decided to fess up to what they were really doing when the murder occurred…having sex in Kevin's office."

Amy wrinkled her nose. Ewww. Hopefully Shepler wouldn
't go into the gory details. It was too early for kinky sex descriptions. "How is that any more believable than being home alone?"

"
The cleaning lady walked in on them, and she confirmed the time. She uses a digital time card app on her phone to keep track of her billable hours."

"
That's pretty messed up… having sex with your mistress while your wife is being murdered." Alex refilled his coffee mug. "Could they have hired someone to kill Mandy Jo?"

"
I can't find any evidence of that, besides, after the tell-all Q & A session this morning, I don't think either had any reason to want her dead. Mandy Jo had filed for an annulment a week before she was killed."

"
She was vindictive," Amy wagged her finger at Shepler. "Kevin was probably afraid she'd run him into bankruptcy trying to make alimony payments."

Shepler and Alex shook their heads simultaneously. What next? Were they going to start singing in a boy band together so they could capitalize on the synchronized moves?

"What?"

"
You don't get alimony from an annulment," Alex said.

Shepler nodded.
"He's right. Kevin wanted to have children, and Mandy Jo didn't. Something about being afraid they would take after her family. Apparently they fought about it constantly. She decided to basically cancel out the marriage so he could find somebody else to have children with. Seems like a pretty compassionate thing to do, considering how combative she was."

"
That was a very nice thing to do. Very uncharacteristic for her, taking the easy route that would cause the least amount of pain and trouble. I bet she didn't know Lucy was pregnant, though. Any woman would be pissed if her husband got somebody else pregnant while he was still married to her. He could've at least waited until the ink dried on the annulment papers to impregnate his secretary."

Shepler shrugged.
"I agree with everything you said. I have no idea what he was thinking, but he wasn't pondering the murder of his wife."

Two of her three primary suspects were cleared and strolling down the lane with a baby carriage. That left Elliot.
"You know, Elliot wasn't happy when I refused to chat with him last night. The slime ball actually wanted me to somehow get one of Mandy Jo's contest-winning recipes so he could sell the pies at his bakery and then give me a tiny bit of the profits to help pay for the memorial. He has been acting very shady lately."

Shepler ran his hand over his buzz cut, caramel colored hair.
"I tracked down Maxson on the security tapes, too, because you've been suspicious of him. He was downtown at the time of the incident and doesn't own a pickup, either."

"
That doesn't mean he couldn't have hired somebody to chase us, just like he could've hired someone to set the fire behind The Breakfast Spot." Raised eyebrows all around from the boys. Nothing like double questioning looks to wither a woman's self-confidence. "What? I could be right."

"
Or you could be scared and grasping at straws to explain what has been happening. I have been checking into Maxson. Unless he has some secret bank account that actually has money in it somewhere, I really doubt he's magically found the cash to pay a hit man to do his dirty work."

*  *  *

The paper towel was ripped and covered in greasy grime. Amy tossed it into the waste basket to commune with its spent compadres. The microwave in the break room of Alex's office was the fourth cleaning task she had tackled. Apparently the cleaning service didn't worry about the inside of kitchen appliances. Either the workers weren't cooks, or they applied the "don't look, don't worry" philosophy to their professional cleaning chores. Her husband was still busy, holed up in a conference room with several employees, trying to figure out some kind of complicated business conundrum. He had insisted she come into the office with him since he only had a few minutes of work to do and didn't want her to be alone at home. Two hours later the kitchenette was sparkling clean, and she was bored out of her mind.

Calling and waking Carla up from her pre-work nap had been a bad idea. How was she to know Carla had left her phone on by accident? She usually turned it off when she needed to sleep. So it was either time to
tackle the unisex bathroom or figure out something else to do. There weren't any baking supplies or even a proper oven in the kitchenette. Not a cook's kitchen. It was strictly a heat-and-eat set up. She peeked into the bathroom. Luckily it appeared to be cleaner than the break room, so onto Boredom Busting Plan C.

She grabbed her purse out of its
hiding spot in Alex's desk drawer and sauntered down the hallway. A brief stop at the conference room, and she should be free from hover hubby. It made her heart flutter that he loved her so much, but dragging her out of the high-end security system protected kitchen at home to hang out at his business was too much. Listening to the office chatter, instead of working on perfecting the lemon levels in the cheesecake muffin recipe, was not working for her. Some fresh air would do her good. Apparently the office manager liked synthetic lavender scented air fresheners.

Amy quietly knocked on the conference room door then opened it and stuck her head into the room.
"I'm going to go shopping for a bit. See you in an hour or so," she called to her stunned-into-silence husband. Before he could compose himself and exile her to his office she backed out of the room. The door clicked shut, and she sprinted through the cubicle maze to the front door. Freedom! The hot and humid air of August had never felt so good.

The shopping and eating mecca of downtown Kellerton was only a block away. She made a note to reward Alex for choosing the office space near downtown, instead of the other option in an industrial park beside the freeway. Amy glanced behind her, to make sure neither hubby nor crazed killer were following, and walked around the corner onto Main Street. There was a substantial sprinkling of people wandering along the sidewalk, so surely she would be safe from attack, unless the killer
was a sniper. She studied the rooftops across the street for a few seconds and then picked up her pace from ambling to brisk.

The Cookbook Nook was a few shops ahead. If heaven was a bookstore, her personal nirvana was The Cookbook Nook. Not a single auto repair or vampire book could be found on the shelves. Just cookbooks. Glorious, fascinating cookbooks.

She emerged from the cramped, little store half an hour later. Only two rather thin cookbooks were wrapped in red gingham checked tissue paper inside the Kraft paper bag she carried. Of course, she had drooled over more books, but the diminutive purchases had been a tactical choice. The longer she could comfortably carry her shopping bags, the more she could avoid returning to her most likely irked husband. If he called her cell phone, she would answer, but she wasn't returning in less than an hour unless forced to do so.

The window of Peach Fuzz Baby Boutique was filled with candy-colored, cherub-sized couture dresses. Amy stopped in front of the display. She had been so wrong about Kevin and Lucy
. Their affair didn't make them angels, but they had been cleared of the murder. So, Amy had upset a pregnant woman. Repeatedly. For no good reason. That was some bad karma she would like to reverse. She could send the couple a basket full of baby stuff, to make amends to the universe. The last thing she needed was a bad juju smackdown in the middle of a cooking competition. She grabbed the door handle then let it go. Twelve hours was probably a bit too early to look for forgiveness after convincing the police to haul them in for questioning. She would let them chill out a bit, like until after the barely visible baby bump was born.

So
…what else could she do, besides worrying about getting picked off by an assassin? A latte and scone sounded good. She decided to start walking toward Riverbend Coffee and see what other shops looked interesting along the way. During the stroll she unconsciously dog-tracked diagonally toward eye-catching window displays. One, filled with bits of lace and satin strategically positioned on well-endowed mannequins, made her stop in her tracks. She took a step back to read the sign above the door. Whispers Intimate Apparel. Skimpy lingerie could be useful as an apology for skipping out of Alex's mind-numbing protective custody.