Pushed to the Limit (an Emma Cassidy Mystery Book 2) (20 page)

Frowning at her phone, Emma contemplated
ignoring Faye’s summons and curling up in bed again, but she knew she wouldn’t
be able to get another wink of sleep, and Faye would call again if she didn’t
show up. Groaning, she flung back the covers and padded to the bathroom.

A quarter of an hour later, she was pulling
up in Faye’s driveway, having raced through a shower before throwing on whatever
clothes came to hand. She hadn’t had time to slap on any makeup, but she was
too tired to care.

Faye was ready in a practical gabardine skirt
and floral print shirt. The moonboot gave strength to her healing ankle so the
crutches were more for balance than support. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks a
healthy color as she navigated her way into the passenger seat with Emma’s help.
It seemed the violent murder that had happened so close to her hadn’t affected
her sleep one bit. In fact, she appeared quite energized.

As Emma drove them to Marietta, Faye filled
her in on the goings on next door. The police and various technicians had been
at Tom’s house for several hours collecting evidence, though how they could
discern evidence from Tom’s normal grubbiness was beyond Faye. The chief had
asked Faye several questions about her neighbor and had said he would need to
interview her again later today. Other neighbors had gathered, drawn by the
commotion, and Faye had clearly enjoyed regaling them with everything she knew
about Tom. And possibly some creative embellishments of her own, Emma thought
to herself.

“Lorraine has disappeared with that dead
beat man she can’t seem to get rid of.” Faye sniffed in disapproval. “Run off
to some hippie retreat. She’s making a huge mistake. And to top it all, she
refused to come back even when I’d told her what had happened! Unbelievable.
Instead, Helen came over and insisted on spending the night.” Faye huffed with
exasperation. “Helen and I have never got on, but of course she wants to curry
favor since her worthless son vandalized my house.” She paused for a moment
before turning widened eyes at Emma. “Now you’ve got me thinking.
Helen
might have pushed me down the stairs. Helen might have killed Tom. And she was
in my house all night.” She pressed a hand to her throat. “She could have
killed me while I slept!”

“I doubt Helen is a murderer,” Emma said
hastily even though she did question why Helen would’ve wanted to spend the
night at Faye’s. Was it merely duty to her cousin-in-law seeing that Lorraine was
away? Or was her son Jason involved in something again?

They reached Marietta, a little town whose
main purpose was to service the Shamrock Lake campus of Tait University. On a Sunday
morning the main street was mostly quiet, with students probably sleeping in,
recovering from a late Saturday night. Faye directed Emma to a small pancake
parlor in the centre of the main shopping strip, where Emma found a parking
spot right outside the brick building with its pink-and-white striped awning.

Inside, a few middle-aged and elderly
couples occupied the booths, quietly eating their Sunday morning pancakes,
waffles, and bacon. Faye nudged Emma’s arm and gestured with her head toward
the tall, voluptuous brunette behind the counter who was handing orders to the
cook. The waitress wore a pink-and-white uniform and her hair was pulled back
into a ponytail, but she was definitely the same woman that Emma had seen in
Faye’s photographs.

They walked up and hitched themselves onto
stools at the counter. The curvaceous waitress turned to them and flicked a
couple of menus at them.

“Morning.” Her eyes were at half-mast as if
weighed down by her fake lashes, and her lips barely moved as she spoke. Seemingly
unaware of Faye and Emma’s curious stares, she hauled out pen and notepad and
waited apathetically.

Faye poked her elbow into Emma’s side
again. Emma grimaced. Why was she supposed to ask the hard questions when it had
been Faye’s idea to come here?

Emma cleared her throat. “I’ll have the
blueberry pancakes and a coffee, please.”

She felt Faye’s frown upon her but kept her
face averted.

“I’ll just have a coffee,” Faye said
abruptly. When the waitress had sauntered off, she leaned toward Emma. “Why are
you ordering pancakes and coffee?” she hissed.

Emma lifted her shoulders. “I’m hungry.
Besides, I can hardly start firing questions at her from the get-go.”

“I would’ve thought you deal with difficult
people every day.”

Oh yeah? If I knew how to do that, I’d
be sleeping in instead of hanging out in a pancake parlor.
She squashed the retort as the waitress returned to them and poured
out two coffees.

“Hi, it’s Carmel, right?” Emma said,
putting on what she hoped was a bright and friendly tone.

“Yeah, that’s me.” The waitress warily eyed
her, her torpor lifting slightly. “Do I know you?”

“Uh, not really. We—” she gestured at Faye
to include her “—know Kenneth Bischoff from Greenville.”

The change in Carmel was remarkable. Her
listlessness vanished. Her face screwed up, and her shoulders began to shake.
“I—I— Why are you hounding me?” The words blubbered out of her trembling lips.
“Ken’s already broken my heart. Wh-what more do you people want from m-me?” Her
eyes reddened, and tears spilled down her cheeks. She spun around and ran
through the swing doors that led to the kitchen.

Emma exchanged blank looks with Faye.
Everyone else in the parlor was gaping at them, forks frozen in midair.
Sighing, Emma hopped off her stool and followed after the waitress. As she’d
assumed, the swing doors led into a hot kitchen where a cook with a hairnet was
flipping pancakes.

“Hey, no customers here,” he said
half-heartedly but made no attempt to stop Emma as she scooted through the
kitchen and made for the only door she could see. Stepping out, she found
herself in a rear alley that ran along the back of the storefronts. A few yards
away stood the waitress, fumbling in her apron pocket for a cigarette and
lighter.

“I’m sorry about all that,” Emma said as
she tentatively approached.

Carmel didn’t say a thing as she lit up a
cigarette. Her eyes were still red-rimmed and her hands were a little unsteady,
but she appeared to have gotten over the worst of her outburst.

“Did that bloodless wife of his send you
over?” Carmel asked bitterly between deep sucks of her cigarette. “Are you
checking up that Ken and I aren’t meeting on the sly? You don’t have to worry.
Ken won’t be back. He knows which side his bread is buttered on.”

“So Kenneth has ended the…uh, the
friendship?”

“The affair, you mean.” Carmel’s lips
pulled down at the corners. “Yep. As soon as the wife threatened to divorce
him. She might look all sweet and daffy, but underneath the fluff she’s as hard
as nails.”

Emma wasn’t sure if that assessment of Ellen
Bischoff was entirely accurate, but a strange sense of sympathy for the jilted
waitress welled up in her. She hadn’t expected to feel sorry for a married
woman having an affair with a married man, but Carmel seemed genuinely cut up
about the end of the relationship. And Emma knew how break ups could hurt.

“I’m sorry,” she said, knowing how
inadequate the words were.

Carmel puffed faster on her cigarette as if
the smoke and nicotine could drown her sorrows. “I didn’t just do it because he
was rich, you know. Oh, I enjoyed the champagne and the hotel rooms and the
jewelry, don’t get me wrong. But I liked being with him, too. He could be so
smart and charming and clever.” She sighed, her eyes growing dewy with memory.

Emma suppressed a shudder. In her wildest
dreams she couldn’t imagine herself being charmed by a snake like Kenneth
Bischoff, but everyone had different tastes. Look at Ellen—the woman was
besotted enough to want to keep her adulterous husband despite knowing that
he’d lied and cheated on her.

“But you know what gets my goat?” Carmel
asked rhetorically. “The way he broke up with me. We’d made plans to meet last
Saturday afternoon at the Tall Trees Motel. Then, an hour before, he wanted to
cancel on me, but I persuaded him not to. When I got there, he had champagne
and oysters waiting for me. He even gave me a beautiful diamond bracelet.”
Lifting her arm, she rattled the sparkling bracelet on her wrist. “We had a
wonderful time. But then, when we were dressed and ready to leave, he said his
wife knew about me and was going to divorce him if he didn’t stop. And then he
told me this was the last time we could meet, he would always remember me, and
he hoped I’d always think fondly of him. He kissed me on the hand and then he
just…just left.”

She tossed away the cigarette butt and
ground it out with her shoe. Her eyes glittered with a mixture of tears and
anger. “That dirty rat fink. He let me believe everything was fine and dandy,
but all the while he knew it was the last time.”

Yes, that was very callous of Bischoff. But
something else had caught Emma’s attention.

“So this happened last Saturday afternoon?”
she asked, trying to keep her tone neutral. “What time did you meet him?”

“One o’clock.” Carmel glanced sideways at
her. “Why do you want to know?”

“Uh, just trying to fix Kenneth’s
whereabouts that day.” So Carmel and Bischoff had argued behind the hardware
store at noon, as witnessed by Rhonda, and then met again an hour later, at
about the same time that Faye had tumbled down her stairs.

“We were at the motel until four.” Carmel
lifted her chin defiantly. “I haven’t seen him since, and he won’t return my
calls. You can tell that to his wife if she’s still suspicious. Ken broke up
with me last Saturday afternoon. I guess he loves his wife’s money more than he
loved me.” Her chin wobbled before she pulled out another cigarette and lit up.

“Can I ask one more question?” Emma waited
until Carmel shrugged before asking, “Do you know if Kenneth owns a gun?”

“A gun?” The waitress wrinkled her brow.
“No, I doubt it. Weasel words is more his style. Lying is easier than a gun.” She
scowled at the bracelet on her wrist. “Now I don’t even know if these are real
diamonds or just cheap rhinestones.”

“Once again, I’m sorry.”

So it seemed she didn’t have to worry about
Bischoff having a gun, Emma thought. She murmured her thanks to Carmel, then
turned and left the waitress peering at her bracelet. She returned to the
pancake parlor where Faye was calmly eating the blueberry pancakes that Emma
had ordered.

“Come on, we’re leaving,” Emma said,
digging into her bag for her wallet.

With a laden fork midway to her mouth, Faye
looked like she was about to argue, but something in Emma’s expression must
have warned her off. She lowered the fork, dusted her hands, and reached for
her crutches. Emma tucked a twenty dollar bill under the plate and exited the
pancake parlor with Faye hobbling beside her.

“Kenneth Bischoff was with Carmel last
Saturday afternoon,” Emma said once they were back on the road to Greenville.
“He couldn’t possibly have pushed you down the stairs.”

“And you believe Carmel? She isn’t lying
for him?”

Emma thought back on Carmel’s red eyes,
shaking hands, and bitter voice. Only an extremely accomplished actress could
fake that, and Carmel was no actress. She was an unhappy, chain-smoking
waitress who’d been unceremoniously dumped by her lover.

“I believe her. Kenneth Bischoff is a
scumbag, but I don’t think he’s a murderer.”

“How do we know the
person who pushed me is the same person who killed Tom?” Faye asked as they
neared her house. “Tom Kovacs was a very strange man. He arrived here only a
few years ago. Who knows what he was up to before that? He could have been a
drug smuggler or a thief. Maybe someone from his past found out where he lived
and killed him out of revenge for something.”

Emma opened her mouth to refute Faye’s
argument, but then found she couldn’t. “You lived next door to him all these
years,” she said. “You never found out anything personal about him? Like
family?”

Faye sighed. “When he first moved in I
tried talking to him. I like to know who’s living next door to me. But he never
wanted to chat. Always bolted straight into his house as soon as he caught
sight of me. Very annoying. I think he let his yard go to pieces on purpose to
block me out. And then that dog barks whenever I go near the property, so he
can avoid me even more.”

“What about visitors? Did he get any?”

“None that I noticed. Sometimes someone
from the council would turn up if I reminded them often enough.” Faye
half-rolled her eyes. “But they’d usually send that Greg Foster, and he’s too
much of a softie to make Tom toe the line.”

“So, no personal callers ever?” It seemed
sad that someone had lived in such isolation, whether by choice or not.

Faye shook her head. “Not that I can recall.
Of course, every few months or so there’d be a couple of teenagers who dared
each other to sneak into Tom’s yard. I think they must have done it the other
night because I heard him yelling at them to clear off and his silly mutt was
barking his head off again.”

Emma started at the news. “When did this
happen?”

“A few nights before last Saturday. I can’t
exactly remember.”

“You should tell the chief when you go for
your interview.”

“Okay, but I doubt it’d be much help. I
don’t know who it was.”

“Still, it might be important.”

Faye worked her lips for a while. “It
wouldn’t surprise me if it was Jason Wylie. That boy is running out of control.
His parents should have shipped him off to military school years ago. Then he
wouldn’t be such a troublemaker now.”

Not Jason Wylie again
. “I’m sure Jason wouldn’t do something like that,” Emma said with
more optimism than conviction.

“I see you’ve developed a blind spot where
that young man is concerned.” Faye sniffed. “I suppose he reminds you of
yourself when you were a teenager.”

Time to change the subject, Emma thought,
gritting her teeth. “Do you remember the yard sale last week?” she briskly
asked.

“Yes,” Faye asked after a pause. “What
about it?”

“You bought a whole lot of items from my
stall and handed me the money, but I never got the chance to check what you’d
bought. Did you happen to buy a kitchen knife?”

“Certainly not.” Faye’s cheeks reddened. “I
know why you’re asking, and I resent the implication that I somehow provided the
murder weapon.”

“Faye, I’m not accusing you of anything. I
just want to track down who bought the knife.”

“It could’ve been anyone. They might even
have stolen it while you weren’t looking.” Faye shook her head sadly at Emma.
“I hate to say this, but you weren’t very good at manning that stall. You didn’t
take charge. You let people walk all over you.”

Once more Emma clenched her teeth. If she
spent any more time in Faye’s company, she’d have to visit the dentist soon.

“You might not even have sold the knife,”
Faye continued. “You might have brought it home with you after the yard sale.”

Why was Faye echoing Jackie’s sentiments?
“Are you saying
I
could have killed Tom? Why on earth would I do that?”

Cocking her head, Faye aimed a curiously
sly look at Emma. “Well, the last thing I remember after I fell down those
stairs was you standing over me.”

“I was checking if you still had a pulse,”
Emma exclaimed, dismayed at how guilty Faye could make her feel. “Honestly, why
would I push you down the stairs?”

“Because I warned Debbie Scheel about your
failed business in New York, which you neglected to disclose, and because of
that you lost an important client. I was only doing my duty, but you can be rather
hot tempered at times.”

By now Emma’s cheeks was aching from her clamped
jaw. “If I’m so hot tempered,” she ground out, “then I’m surprised you trusted
me to feed your parrot and watch over your house. In fact, I’m surprised that
you willing got into this car with me if I could be such a danger to you.”

Faye drummed her fingers against her crutches.
If she was nervous, she didn’t betray it by so much as a flicker of her
eyelids.

“I’m not accusing you of anything,” she
said quite calmly. “I’m just pointing out how certain events can be construed
to make the most innocent person look guilty. You might be hot tempered, and
God knows your poor parents had to put up with a lot, but I don’t think you
pushed me down the stairs. After all, Pepper seems to tolerate you, and he
wouldn’t if you meant harm to me. He’s very prescient, you know.”

Against that piece of weird animal logic,
Emma had no answer, and the rest of the journey continued in blessed silence.