Sugar Coated Sins (4 page)

Chapter
5

“Hey, do you have a second?” I
asked as Grace answered her door.
 
My
best friend had a job that didn’t require her to be in the field all the time,
and she took advantage of it.
 
Supervising the women under her in the cosmetics company allowed her a
freedom that few folks experienced in their daily work lives.

“I’m all yours.
 
What’s up?” Grace asked.
 
She was just the opposite of me, slim where I
was curvy, blonde where I was brunette, stylish while I was comfortable with my
appearance.
 
On the outside, we appeared
to be as different as night and day, but inside, where it counted, we were
sisters from different mothers.

“Did you mean what you said about
not getting involved with murder cases again?” I asked her.
 
Grace had been my longtime helper when it
came to my amateur sleuthing, but a close call had made her withdraw her assistance.
 
After sitting on the sidelines, though, she’d
decided that she missed it too much after all, and she’d asked me to include
her again.

“I’m ready to go whenever you
are,” she said, and then she frowned.
 
“Who exactly was murdered?”

“Do you remember Benjamin Port?” I
asked her.

Grace bit her lower lip for a
moment before she spoke.
 
“I think
so.
 
He died like twenty years ago,
didn’t he?
 
Anyway, I thought it was from
food poisoning.”

“It was fifteen years, and there’s
reason to suspect that it was another kind of poison that killed him.”

After we went inside, I brought
her up to date on what had been happening.

When I was finished, Grace said,
“Pardon me for saying so, but it doesn’t exactly feel as though you’re in the
middle of this yourself.”

“Not yet, but can you imagine
Gabby giving Jake a straight answer about anything, especially her past love
life?” I asked her.

“I doubt that she’d talk about it
to anyone but you, myself included.
 
For
some odd reason, she seems to really like you, Suzanne.”

“If she treats me the way that she
does because she likes me, I’d hate to see how she behaves around someone she
doesn’t care for.”

“I’m sure that it’s an entirely
unpleasant experience.
 
I’m curious about
something.
 
Not that I mind you coming
by, but if there’s nothing for you to do right now, why include me?”

“Things have a way of changing
quickly, Grace, and I needed to know if you meant what you said about helping
me again.”

“I meant it,” she said.

“What’s Stephen going to say when he
finds out that you’re digging into someone’s murder again?”

“He doesn’t get veto power over my
behavior, even if he is in law enforcement,” she said with a grin.
 
“At least no more than Jake does over yours.”

“Okay, you’ve got a point, but I’d
never openly defy Jake if he had his heart set on something.”

“Even if you thought he was
wrong?” Grace asked me.

“Even then.”

“What if it happened?” Grace
pushed me, softening her relentlessness with a slight grin.

“Then I’d make it my sole purpose
in life to convince him that he was wrong,” I answered with a smile of my own.

“That’s what I’m talking about. By
the way, if you’re not going to bring it up, then I’m going to have to do it
myself.
 
What’s in the box?” she asked
me.

“Just some dessert from Napoli’s,”
I said nonchalantly.

“What did you get?
 
Is it tiramisu?”
 
Grace loved the Italian dessert, and if I’d
been thinking, I would have brought some back for her.

“Sorry, no.
 
It’s something new that Anita wanted me to
test, some kind of caramel fudge pie.”

“That sounds interesting,” she
said as her gaze stayed on the box.

“Would you like to try it with
me?” I asked her, not able to restrain myself any longer.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

I was more than happy to share the
treat with her, and even more pleased to have such a good friend in my
life.
 
Most of the rest of my old school
friends had drifted away into their own lives, but I was thrilled that Grace
was still solidly a part of mine.

“Should I get two plates, or are
we going to eat it right out of the box?” she asked.

“Let’s compromise.
 
Grab two forks, and we’ll try to act as
civilized as we can manage.”

She laughed.
 
“I’m getting a knife, too.
 
Before either one of us takes a first bite,
I’m cutting it right down the middle.”

“Don’t you trust me to share with
you equally?” I asked her with a grin.

“No more than you trust me,” she
answered with a smile of her own.

The pie was every bit as good as
I’d expected, and after we’d finished it, I gave Anita a call and gave her our
five-star reviews.

Once that was accomplished, Grace
and I moved out onto the porch.

“I wonder how many calories I just
consumed.”

“I don’t know, but it’s half the
amount I would have had if you hadn’t shared it with me.
 
Thanks for saving me from eating the entire
thing by myself.”

“You’re welcome.
 
Any time you need me, I’m happy to help.”

“Well, I might have to call you
later.
 
Anita gave slices to Phillip and
Jake, too.”

“It’s a sacrifice, but one that
I’m willing to make,” she replied with a grin.
 
Grace was about to say something else when my cellphone rang.

It was Jake.

This should be good.

Chapter
6

“Hey, Suzanne.
 
It’s me. Do you have a second?”

It was very important not to
gloat, no matter how much I might want to.
 
I’d been expecting him to call, so at least I’d been able to prepare
myself.
 
“Sure thing.
 
What’s up?”

“You were right about Gabby
Williams,” Jake said with resignation heavy in his voice.
 
“She shut me down after the first
question.
 
Do you feel like taking a run
at her yourself?”

“I’d be happy to try, but I can’t
guarantee that she’ll cooperate with me, either.”

Jake laughed a little, something
that must have been hard to do given his recent failure.
 
“There’s no need to soothe my ego.
 
You made the point a long time ago that there
were things you could do that I couldn’t, and I’d be a fool not to take
advantage of every resource that I had.”

“I’ll talk to her,” I said.
 
“As a matter of fact, I’ll head over there
right now.”

He hesitated a moment, and then
Jake asked, “Are you bringing Grace with you?”

“Hang on a second.”
 
I covered up the phone, and then I asked
Grace, “Are you okay with me talking to Gabby alone?”

“Are you kidding?
 
Am I okay with it?
 
I absolutely encourage it,” she said.

I uncovered the phone.
 
“It’s just going to be me, but if I need
Grace’s help with anything else, she’s agreed to lend a hand.
 
Are you good with that?”

“I’m fine with it myself, but the
real question is how is Stephen Grant going to feel?”

“What do you say we leave that up
to the two of them to work out for themselves?”

“That sounds good to me,” Jake
answered.
 
“Call me when you get finished
with Gabby.”

“Will do.
 
Is there anything in particular you’d like me
to try to find out?”

Jake paused a moment for thought
before he spoke.
 
“No, I trust your
instincts.
 
Just find out what you can
about Benjamin Port, who might want him dead, and anything she might know about
the time capsule when it was buried under the clock.
 
I’ll leave the way you get the information
completely up to you.”

“You’re not asking for much, are
you?” I asked with a slight chuckle.

“I’ve got faith in you,
Suzanne.
 
If anyone can do it, you can,”
he replied.

I hung up and turned to
Grace.
 
“Well, it looks like we’re in the
game.”

“Good luck with Gabby,” she
said.
 
“Keep me posted, too, okay?”

“You bet.
 
I’m glad you’re back on the team.”

“So am I,” Grace said.

I left her on the porch and headed
toward ReNEWed on foot.
 
It wasn’t that
far from Grace’s place, and besides, I wanted time to formulate exactly how I was
going to tackle her.
 
The direct approach
clearly hadn’t worked for Jake, so I needed to come up with something new.

By the time I walked into her
gently used clothing shop, I still hadn’t managed to come up with a solid plan.

It appeared that I’d be winging it
yet again after all.

“I was wondering when I’d see
you,” Gabby said smugly after I walked into her shop.
 
There were no customers shopping at the
moment, and I wondered how she managed to make her rent every month, but she
always found a way not just to survive but even to thrive.
 
I would much rather have been able to play it
cool and detached with my questioning, but Jake had already stolen that
opportunity from me.
 
Her belief that I
would be following up on his visit cut my options drastically, but I couldn’t
let that fact keep me from at least trying to get some information from her.

“Believe me, I told Jake that you
wouldn’t want to talk about it,” I said, deciding on a new ploy at the last
second.
 
“He insisted that he could get
everything there was to know out of you, but I insisted that you’d take your
secrets about Benjamin Port to the grave with you.”

“Does that mean that you’re not
going to question me yourself?” Gabby asked, clearly a little disappointed by
my reaction.

“No, ma’am.
 
That’s really the only reason that I came by,
to tell you that you don’t have to say a word to anyone about it.
 
As far as I’m concerned, what’s in the past
can stay buried there, just like the time capsule was supposed to have.”

I was clearly frustrating her,
which was the exact plan that I’d just formulated on the fly.
 
Gabby liked being the center of attention,
the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral, and I was robbing
her of her chance to hold her superior knowledge over the rest of us.
 
Now it was time for my finishing touch.
 
This was the real gamble in my
experiment.
 
If I left, or at least
pretended to go, then Gabby would have to stop me in order to give me exactly
what I wanted.
 
If she called my bluff,
though, I was about to make things much harder on Jake than I needed to.

“I can’t make any promises, but
I’ll do my best to make sure that no one bothers you about your past,” I
said.
 
“Have a good day, Gabby.”

My hand was on the front doorknob
before she spoke.
 
“Hold up for one second.
 
I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to talk to you,
Suzanne.
 
After all, you’re one of my
dearest friends in the world, and I know that you won’t abuse the privilege.”

“Are you sure?” I asked as I
turned back to face her, doing everything in my power to conceal the smile that
wanted to burst forward.
 
“I don’t want
you to think that I’m trying to take advantage of our friendship.”
 
If she could play on our so-called
relationship, then so could I.

“I’m positive.
 
Now let me think.
 
It was a long time ago, you know.
 
Fifteen years seems like a lifetime in the
past when I reflect on it.”

“Anything you can add to what
we’ve already learned will be a big help,” I said, trying my best to give her
the impression that Jake and I knew more than we did.

She looked a little miffed when
she realized that she might not be the star after all, but there was a reason
I’d put it that way.
 
If Gabby was under
the impression that she was our only source, she might be tempted to dole out
her knowledge in small doses, and Jake needed to have as much information about
the case gathered as quickly as he could manage it.

“The fact of the matter is that
Ben and I were close,” Gabby said.
 
“I
believe that if we’d been given enough time, he might have even asked me to
marry him someday.”

“Really.
 
I hadn’t realized that.”

“Oh, yes.
 
We were quite a pair.
 
Not that there weren’t obstacles in our way,
of course.”

“Like what?”
 
I knew from past experience that it was
important to leave my questions as open-ended as possible to allow Gabby room
to expand.

“Well, for one thing, there was my
main rival for his affection,” she said, the look of pure distaste on her face
quite evident.

“Benjamin was seeing someone
else?” I asked.

“Hardly.
 
Clearly she’d built it up in her mind to be
something that it wasn’t, but she was persistent, and she was also extremely
aggressive.”

“Who are we talking about here?” I
asked her.

“Hilda Fremont,” she said
succinctly.

I knew only one Hilda, and though
she was about the right age, I couldn’t imagine her being Gabby’s rival for
someone’s love.
 
“You’re talking about
Hilda from the Boxcar?”
 
I was certain
that I’d heard her last name before, but she had been simply “Hilda” for me for
so long that I’d practically forgotten that she even had a last name.

“None other.
 
She was jealous of what I had, and she still
holds a grudge to this day that Ben preferred me over her.”

“Hilda, the cook.
 
Are you sure that we’re talking about the
same woman?”
 
I was having a hard time
wrapping my head around this particular tidbit of information, and I was having
a particularly difficult time seeing Hilda as the jealous, angry woman Gabby
was describing.

“Yes, of course she’s the
cook.
 
Suzanne, don’t be dense.
 
She might not look like much working in the kitchen,
but she knew what she wanted back then, and she went after him.”

This was going to take some
reconciling in my mind.
 
I’d known Hilda
for several years, and I would describe her in many ways, but an aggressive
femme fatale was certainly not one of them.
 
“Were there any other women Benjamin was involved with to your
knowledge?”

Gabby took affront at my
question.
 
“He wasn’t even involved with
Hilda, no matter how much she wished that it were so.”
 
She frowned a moment before she added, “At
least not romantically.”

“If not that way, then how were
they connected?”

“I don’t know,” Gabby said
dismissively.
 
Had she been hoping that
I’d accept her denial of a romantic relationship between her rival and her
boyfriend as fact?
 
If so, she clearly
didn’t know me at all.
 
When I’d pressed
her, she’d had nothing to back it up with, so until I learned otherwise, I was
going to attempt to see if Hilda had been dating Benjamin Port at the same time
that Gabby Williams had.

“Is there anyone else you know who
might have wanted to see him dead?” I asked her.
 
“Ordinarily I wouldn’t ask you that kind of
question, but your input could be really valuable to the investigation.”
 
I’d deemed that it had been time to stroke
her ego a little, but I hoped that I hadn’t gone too far overboard.

“Well, I always wondered about his
sister, Lisa,” Gabby said.

I’d met the woman a few times
socially, but I hadn’t realized that she’d been the murder victim’s
sister.
 
“Do you think she might have had
something to do with his death?”

“I wouldn’t have said so at the
time, but now that I know that Ben’s death was no accident, it makes a kind of
sense.”

“In what way?”

Gabby looked at me as though I
were some kind of fool, which wasn’t all that odd an expression for me to get
from her.
 
“If Ben and I had gotten
married, Lisa wouldn’t have inherited a single dime.”

“Was there a lot to inherit in his
estate?” I asked.
 
Had Benjamin Port been
wealthy when he died?
 
If so, money could
be a strong motive for murder, and following the trail to see who inherited
from his death might be a path that led directly to the killer.

Gabby waved a hand in the
air.
 
“I heard rumors that the family was
quite well off, but I could never get confirmation from a reliable source after
he passed away.”

So that added one more suspect to
the list: the sister.
 
“Is there anyone
else you can think of who might have had a reason to want harm to come to
Benjamin?”

Gabby looked around her deserted
shop before she answered.
 
Lowering her
voice despite the absence of anyone present who might be able to eavesdrop, she
said softly, “You should tell Jake to take a look at Judge Hurley.”

She had to be kidding.
 
I’d known the judge for years, and there was
no way I could see him as a killer.
 
“Why
would the judge want to see Benjamin dead?”

“I wish I could tell you, but I
honestly don’t know.
 
Ben wouldn’t say a
word about it to me.
 
All I can say is
that there was bad blood between the two men until the day Ben died.
 
Jake needs to investigate him if he’s digging
into this.”

“But you can’t think of any reason
yourself.”

“Suzanne, I never claimed to be an
investigator; your husband is supposed to be one, though.
 
You’ve certainly bragged around town enough
about his prowess at detection.
 
He’s going
to have to figure it out for himself.”

“Sorry, I was just hoping for a
little something more that I could pass on to him,” I said.

“Don’t you think I’ve given you
enough?” she asked.
 
“What do you want me
to do, make the arrest myself?”

“No, you’ve been more than
helpful,” I said quickly.
 
Gabby was
getting snippy, so it was time to end the interview.
 
I knew that if I kept pushing her now, she
wouldn’t be of any use to me down the line, and I couldn’t burn that bridge
just yet.
 
“I know that it’s been painful
for you to talk about this, but we all greatly appreciate it.”

“It’s nothing that I ever wanted
to share with anyone else, but I owed it to Ben.
 
Tell your husband something for me, would
you?”

Was I about to get something else
juicy about the murder victim, one last tidbit that might help find his
killer?
 
“Of course.”