Sugar Coated Sins (19 page)

“Thanks,” I said.
 
I’d promised Trish that I’d look for Hilda, which
I had, but after learning about her most recent behavior, it was time to call
my husband or, more accurately, the sheriff.

“Jake, Hilda’s on the run again.”

“What?” he asked me.

“I’m standing in her front yard
right now, and her neighbor told me that she drove over here, packed up her
car, and then sped away.
 
It doesn’t look
good.”

“I just spent half the morning
with her,” Jake said.
 
“This is
bad.”
 
He paused a moment, and then he
asked, “Why would you look for Hilda at her place this time of day?”

“Trish came to the donut shop and
asked me to find her.
 
I gave myself ten
minutes to look, and then I promised myself that I would call you.
 
In my defense, it’s only been seven minutes
since I started searching.”

“Let’s just hope those seven
minutes don’t turn out to be crucial.
 
Suzanne, you should have called me the moment you knew that Hilda was
running again.”

“But that’s exactly what I did,” I
said, trying to keep my temper in check.
 
I don’t know.
 
Maybe I was being a
little defensive about the way I’d acted, but his tone of voice didn’t go over
too well with me, husband or not.
 
“I
didn’t realize that she was really running until I got the neighbor’s
eyewitness account.
 
She could have just
gone home to rest, for all I knew.”

“I’m sorry,” he said after a brief
pause.
 
“I didn’t mean to jump down your
throat.”

“Apology accepted.
 
I hope you find her.”

“Oh, we will.”

After we hung up, I wondered what
I could do next.
 
Jake had resources I
couldn’t even dream of to use in finding Hilda, so I wasn’t even going to
look.
 
It amazed me how little I really
knew about this woman, though she’d been in my life for more years than I could
count.
 
It was all superficial knowledge,
though.
 
If Grace or Emma happened to
have vanished, I had half a dozen places that I might look, but I was at a loss
for Hilda.
 
Maybe Trish might know more
than she’d told me.
 
Anyway, I had
something that I had to tell her, so I might as well get it over with.
 
I didn’t feel bad about calling Jake, but
Trish needed to know that her head cook was now a fugitive on the run and that
it was now a certainty and not just idle speculation.

I never got the chance to tell
her, though, at least not right away.
 
As
I got out of my Jeep after finding a parking space at the Boxcar, who did I see
coming out but one of my other suspects, Lisa Port Smith.

Chapter
22

“Hey, Lisa.
 
Do you have a second?” I asked her, cutting
her off before she could get to her car.

“Sorry, but I’m late for a
conference call as it is, Suzanne.”

“This is important,” I said.

Lisa frowned for a moment.
 
“Make it quick, then.
 
What is it about?”

So much for being cordial.
 
“Did you know that your brother was trying to
get someone at the Register of Deeds’s office to bury a deed in order to outbid
another buyer on some land?”

She frowned for a moment before
speaking.
 
“When did this happen?”

“Just before he died.
 
Do you know anything about that?”

“How could I?
 
My brother often went out of his way to keep
me from knowing what he was up to.
 
Is
that who really killed him, the other buyer?”

I wasn’t about to tell her that my
mother had been the one he’d been vying with for the property.
 
“No, I just wanted to know if you knew what
he was up to.”

“Between the women he was dating and
his shady dealings, I’m starting to wonder why someone didn’t poison him
sooner.”
 
Lisa must have immediately
realized how that had sounded the moment it left her lips, so she immediately
tried to backtrack.
 
“Suzanne, my brother
and I had issues going back to childhood.
 
I loved him, but I didn’t always like him, do you know what I mean?
 
No, probably not.
 
You are an only child, aren’t you?”

Technically I wasn’t, but that was
something very few people knew about me.
 
It was easy for most folks in town to forget that Momma had a daughter
before me, Elizabeth Anne.
 
She’d
survived three days after being born, and I’d often wondered what my life would
have been like with a big sister.
 
Sure,
I had Grace, and to a certain extent, Trish, but I would have loved to have a
sibling to share things with, memories of life that went beyond our parents’
existences.
 
When Momma was gone, a day I
dreaded with all my heart, who would be left to remember our lives together?
 
I’d shared part of it with Max and now Jake, with
Grace seeing much of it as well, but no one knew everything that I’d
experienced.

“I grew up alone, yes,” I said.

“You’re lucky.
 
I often wished that I’d been an only
child.
 
Having Benjamin as a brother was
a nightmare at times.”

“If things were so bad between
you, then why on earth did you go into business together?” I asked her.

“It wasn’t my idea.
 
Before we inherited the company, it belonged
to our father.
 
Neither one of us was
about to give up our half to the other, so we decided that the only thing we
could do was run it together.”
 
She
paused, reflecting on her life before her brother had been poisoned.
 
“It turned out that in the end, Dad knew what
he was doing.
 
Benjamin and I were
finally starting to connect on some level other than our past.
 
We were two completely different people, but
we were finding a way to make it work, and then someone killed him.”
 
Tears began to track down her cheeks, but she
refused to acknowledge them.
 
“Anyway,
like I said, I’m late.”

After she was gone, I had to wonder
if the emotion that she’d just shown had been for my benefit or if it had been
genuine.
 
I was sure that Lisa and her
brother had had their differences when he’d been alive, and she’d admitted
herself that he made her life harder than it needed to be.
 
But did that mean that she’d killed him?
 
She’d inherited his half of the company, but
it felt as though she was just beginning to realize how much she’d lost with
his death as well.

I was more confused than ever
about her.
 
Nothing she’d told me had done
anything to clear her of murder, but I had to admit that I was beginning to
have second thoughts about considering her as a suspect.
 
Was that why she’d shown me a sudden burst of
emotion—to distract me from her guilt?
 
In the end, I honestly couldn’t be sure one way or the other.
 
All I really knew was that if she’d been
playing me, she’d done a masterful job.
 
And if not, then there was a good chance that she didn’t belong on my
list.

After Lisa drove away, I changed
my mind about talking to Trish about Hilda.
 
I’d have to tell her sooner or later that I’d told Jake about her cook’s
repeating vanishing act, but it didn’t necessarily have to be that
instant.
 
Maybe it was taking the
coward’s way out, avoiding the sure confrontation, but so what?
 
I still had one more suspect I could speak
with first, even without Grace.
 
I should
be safe enough.
 
After all, it was broad
daylight, and the killer, whoever she might turn out to be, preferred poison
over any more direct killing method, so as long as I didn’t eat or drink
anything, I should be fine.

At least that’s what I kept
telling myself as I went off in search of Hillary Mast.

She wasn’t in her office.
 
When I got there, I found the place was dark
inside, and a computer-generated note was taped to the glass.
 
It said, HAVING LUNCH OUTSIDE.
 
BACK IN AN HOUR.

It was an interesting way to word
the note, since it didn’t give a specific time as to when she’d left or when
she’d actually be coming back.
 
I decided
that she was probably on foot, so I left her office and started looking around
outside for her.

It didn’t take long, since she
hadn’t gone that far after all.
 
I found
her having a bag lunch on a bench across the street from the bank.

“Mind if I join you?” I asked
Hillary as I started to sit down beside her.

“I’m having lunch, as you can
plainly see,” she said.

“It looks tasty.
 
It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?”
 
In reality, it was too hot for me.
 
There were times when I thought global
warming wasn’t nearly as severe as climatologists often claimed, but on days
like this, I was a true believer.

“I packed two sandwiches.
 
I suppose you could have the other one.”

“Thanks, but I already ate,” I
said, which was an outright lie, but I meant to follow my vow of not eating or
drinking anything that I hadn’t prepared myself.

“They have the air conditioning
turned on high in the whole building,” she complained after my refusal of her
food.
 
“I have to wear a sweater to work
on the hottest days of the year, so I like to come outside and bake a little
whenever I have the chance.”

“I can see why you like it.”
 
I was about to ask her about Benjamin when
her cellphone rang.
 
Putting her sandwich
aside, she looked at it and said, “I’m sorry.
 
I don’t mean to be rude, but I really have to take this, and it’s going
to take some time.”

“That’s fine,” I said as I
remained sitting.
 
“I’m happy to wait.”

Hillary frowned at me before she
added, “If you don’t mind, it’s actually kind of private.”

“Oh.
 
Of course.”
 
I pointed to my Jeep.
 
“I’ll be
over there when you’re finished with your call.
 
Just give me a wave, okay?”

Hillary clearly wasn’t expecting
me to linger, but that was just too bad.
 
When I had an opportunity to speak with one of my suspects, I wasn’t
about to let it pass me by.
 
I decided to
go back and wait by my Jeep.
 
I not only
had the box of Benjamin’s things from Gabby, but I also had the photos that Ray
Blake had supplied me.
 
Ignoring the box
for a moment, I pulled out the five photos and gave them a much closer look
than I’d been able to before.

Ray could have used any of three
shots for the paper.
 
They were similar
enough that I couldn’t really see much difference in them.
 
After studying them all closely, I made out
several faces I recognized.
 
Ones
involved in our case included Jan, Hillary, and, to my surprise, Gabby
Williams, too.
 
She had a badge on that
said VISITOR, and I wondered why she hadn’t mentioned being there earlier.
 
Lisa Port Smith was there as well, but I
wasn’t all that surprised to find her in the photograph, since she’d already
told me that she and Benjamin had sponsored the capsule.
 
Moving those to the bottom of the pile, I
studied the last two shots.
 
One was
close to the other three, but Jan had moved at just the wrong time in one of
them, and her face was nothing but a blur.
 
The last one had clearly been the final photo taken; I could tell by the
hands of the clock behind the group.
 
As
folks gathered up their things, I noticed that Hillary was clutching a sheath
of papers rather tightly against her chest.
 
As I studied the photo more closely, I could make out a children’s
drawing facing outward.
 
It was Emma’s
long-lost artwork!
 
It had to be.
 
But since they’d already sealed the capsule
in the earlier shots, that meant that Hillary had held out the drawing in order
to add something else herself.

Like a confession!

Chapter
23

I took out my cellphone to call
Jake when I saw Hillary waving in my direction.
 
As I walked toward her waiting for my husband to pick up his phone, I
kept saying under my breath, “Pick up.
 
Pick up.
 
Pick up.”

He didn’t pick up.

Most likely at that moment he was
in hot pursuit of an innocent woman, and I had the real killer right there with
me!
 
What was I going to do about it,
though?
 
I couldn’t exactly make a
citizen’s arrest and haul her over to the station myself.
 
I wasn’t that foolish.
 
I knew that she’d used poison on Benjamin,
and then she’d tried to dose Jake and me as well, but that didn’t mean she
didn’t have some other tricks up her sleeve.
 
What I could do was follow her and make sure that she didn’t hurt anyone
else before I could tell Jake about my discovery.

I did my best to smile at her as I
rejoined her, even though I was fairly positive that she was a stone-cold
killer.
 
“Sorry that took so long,”
Hillary said.

“I understand completely.”

The head of the board of elections
glanced at her watch.
 
“Suzanne, I hate
to do this to you, but I’m going to be late if I don’t head in right now.
 
Perhaps we could talk later.”

“Why not?” I asked, walking with
her back toward her office.
 
When we got
to my Jeep, I got inside, and after saying goodbye, I drove around the block
once so she’d think I was really gone if she happened to be watching for
me.
 
As I drove, I hung up and dialed
Jake’s number again.
 
This time it went
to voicemail after a dozen rings.
 
When
he asked for my message, I told him briefly what I’d found and what I planned
to do.
 
In the message, I did my best to
reassure him that I would try not to take any unnecessary chances, but we both
had to know that our definitions of the word “unnecessary” were different.

When I got back to the front of
the town clock, I spotted Hillary slipping behind the bank building.
 
She’d lied to me.
 
I didn’t know why I was so surprised.
 
Parking my Jeep quickly, I followed her on
foot.
 
As I turned the corner, I got
there just in time to see her slip inside the loft apartment access door.
 
Did she have a key, or had she used Betty to
gain access?
 
If it was the latter, I had
to warn my mother’s friend that she might be in danger.
 
When I got to the door, I fully expected it
to be locked, but to my surprise, it opened easily to the touch.
 
Someone had taken a piece of duct tape and
put it over the locking mechanism.
 
From
the outside, it looked as though it worked perfectly, even though it had been
doctored to stay unlocked.
 
Climbing the
stairs carefully, I kept looking for Hillary, but I couldn’t see her anywhere
above me.
 
When I got to the landing
where both doors stood, I tried Betty’s lightly, only to find it locked.
 
When I tried the other door, though, it gently
eased open.
 
I wasn’t sure how Hillary
had gained access to the loft apartment before, but she was using it now.
 
I peeled the tape away as well and stuck it
into the pocket of my jeans as I walked in.

The place was extremely dark
inside.
 
I slipped in quietly, hoping
that my entrance had gone undetected.
 
I
felt as though I had a chance when I heard noises coming from the bedroom
area.
 
Massive blackout curtains hung
from floor to ceiling, letting in almost no light at all.
 
The only sliver showing was coming from the
bedroom, where Hillary was evidently tearing the place up in search of
something.
 
I’d taken half a dozen steps
inside when I realized that I’d seen everything I’d needed to.
 
Evidently Benjamin had hidden something in
the loft apartment at one point, and Hillary thought that it still might be
there.
 
As I headed back to the door, I
heard the floor creak behind me, and as I looked up, the light from the bedroom
suddenly illuminated the main living space and me as well!

“Suzanne, what are you doing
here?” Hillary snapped out at me.

“I came to see Betty,” I said,
lying as quickly as I could come up with something to say.
 
“I saw the door here was ajar, so naturally I
came in to see what was going on.”

She studied me with a narrow
look.
 
“Really.”

“Really,” I said, echoing her
statement.
 
“Anyway, question asked and
answered.
 
I’ll see you later.”

I was almost to the door when she
said, “Stop right there.”

“What is it?”

I turned to face her instead of
bolting out the door.
 
I knew that I
should have run away, but I couldn’t seem to manage it.
 
It wasn’t even fear that kept me rooted in
place.
 
I didn’t know what I was
experiencing, but I knew that I never wanted to feel that way again.

“You know, don’t you?” she asked
me coldly.

“Know what?”

“What I did,” she said with
resignation as she pulled a knife from behind her back.

“I don’t know what you’re talking
about,” I said, finally getting my nerve back as I edged toward the door and
freedom.

“I said stop!”

The way she said it, I knew that
the odds were good that she could get to me before I made it out the door.

“What are you talking about?” I
asked, trying my best to keep my voice light and breezy.
 
There might be a way to talk myself out of
this situation yet.

“You forgot to ask me what I was doing
up here,” she said as she started toward me.

What could I use to defend
myself?
 
I looked around desperately, and
all I could see within reach that I might be able to use as a weapon was a thin
designer wooden floor lamp.
 
It had been
built for its style, not for its ability to fend off an attacker, but I was
going to use it that way if I had to.

“What
are
you doing here?” I asked as I waited for her to get close
enough so that I could grab the lamp and swing it at her.

“Benjamin kept a journal of some
sort,” she said flatly.
 
“Nobody ever
found it, but if they happen to stumble across it, I’m in serious trouble.”

“Gabby had his appointment book,
if that’s what you’re talking about,” I said, trying to draw her closer, “but
I’ve got the most recent page now.”
 
Maybe that would buy me some time.

“I’m not talking about his date
book,” she said.
 
“I’m referring to his
notes on what he did every day.
 
It was
like some kind of compulsion with him.”

“What could he have possibly had
on you that was bad enough for you to kill him?” I asked as she took another
step forward.
 
Two more paces and I’d
have to take my chances and make my move.
 
Why had I peeled off that duct tape?
 
If I hadn’t, I’d be able to pull that door open without fiddling with
the lock.
 
As it was, my chances were
narrowing by the second.

“I buried a deed book for him so
he could buy some property he desperately wanted,” she said.
 
“He approached Jan first, but when she had a
change of heart, I was more than happy to do it.
 
A thousand dollars was a lot of money to me
back then.
 
I just didn’t realize that
he’d use what I’d done against me.
 
After
I hid the deed book, he told me that from then on, everything I did for him was
going to be for free, or he’d expose me for what I’d done.
 
I had nothing but that job, Suzanne.
 
I couldn’t let that happen.
 
I knew that Benjamin had to die.
 
It wasn’t until he was taking his last
breath, twitching and shuddering and making all kinds of vile movements and
ugly expressions, that he told me about the journal, hidden somewhere in the
loft where no one would ever find it.
 
After he was dead, I figured it would stay hidden forever, but when my
confession was discovered, I knew that I had to start looking for it in
earnest.”

“Why write the confession in the
first place?” I asked her.
 
I was
genuinely interested in her reply.

“What harm could it do?
 
That capsule wasn’t supposed to be opened
until we were all long gone.”

“I’m not buying it.
 
You had to have been feeling at least some
remorse, at least when you wrote it.”

Hillary looked as though she were
holding back her tears.
 
“The truth is
that I’d hoped that seeing him die would give me some kind of closure, but it
was horrible.
 
In novels and even movies,
they make poisoning look so quick and relatively painless.
 
It’s not like that in real life.
 
I started having nightmares, so I thought if
I wrote that note, it would give me some peace.”

“And did it?” I asked.
 
She was one step away now.

“Yes, after awhile, I managed to
convince myself that none of it had happened at all.”

“The chicken was never poisoned,
was it?”

“No. I brought him a pie later
that day, just like the one I dropped off at your house.
 
His was doused with something a lot more
lethal, though.
 
The chicken gave me the
idea, but it was the baked treat that ended up killing him.”

“Why give Jake and me a pie soaked
with ipecac?” I asked her.
 
“Were we
really getting that close?”

“If certainly felt as though you
were at the time.
 
I figured that if I
made you both sick, you’d give up.”

“That just shows that you don’t
know either one of us at all,” I said.

It was time.
 
Reaching around behind me, I grabbed the lamp
and swung it at her head before she could lash out at me with the knife.

Unfortunately, I missed.

Hillary laughed at me, and I swung
again.

This time I hit her shoulder,
sending the knife clattering to the floor.

She wasn’t laughing that time.

I started to go for the knife, but
she got to it first.
 
When she stood up,
her back was to the door now, so that means of escape was gone.
 
There was only one thing that I could think
of doing, so I bolted past her and scurried up the metal-runged ladder to the
roof.
 
Maybe if I could get up there, I’d
be able to shout for help.
 
The blade
sliced through the air below me, catching my tennis shoe but missing my
foot.
 
That had been close.
 
If the skylight access was locked, I’d be
dead before I got it open.

After a hint of resistance, it
opened, and I hurried out onto the roof.

I knew that I didn’t have much
time before Hillary followed me up.

I searched around for some kind of
weapon to use against her, but there was nothing there but a flat tarred and
graveled roof.

I was suddenly out of options.

There was just one thing left for
me to do.
 
Racing for the side of the
roof, I leaned over and began to shout for help from someone below.

No one saw me at first, but when I
screamed again, a man passing by looked up.

“Help!
 
Fire!”
 
There weren’t any flames, but I guessed that I’d have more luck yelling
out that there was a fire than if I’d said that someone was up there trying to
kill me.

Then I heard footsteps on the
gravel behind me, much too close for comfort.

As I turned, I saw Hillary running
at me full steam, the knife extended toward me like a knight’s lance.
 
All reason and logic were gone from her
eyes.
 
She was in some kind of killing
frenzy, and I knew that if I didn’t do something, and fast, I’d be dead in the
next instant.

At the last possible moment, I
threw myself down at her feet.

Wrapping my arms around her legs,
I tried my best to trip her at the last second.

Unfortunately, I succeeded too
well.

I’d meant to throw her off balance
and make her drop the knife, not send her plummeting over the edge of the
building.

Still, I remembered the boxes
piled below.

Maybe they’d cushion her fall
enough to save her life.
 
Even though
she’d just tried to kill me, I didn’t want her to die, certainly not by my
hand.

Hillary hit the boxes, just as I’d
hoped, but as I watched her, holding my breath as I waited for her to stand and
run away, she didn’t move.

I raced down the ladder, through
the apartment, and down the stairs as fast as I could manage without killing
myself.

When I got around front, I saw
Jake, and I collapsed in his arms.

“Is she okay?” I asked him.

My husband just shook his head,
and then he took me in his arms.
 
“The
knife went into her chest.
 
There’s
nothing anybody can do for her now.”