Taken In (11 page)

Despite the fact that they’d be closing in less than five minutes, the string of bells attached to CupKatery’s front door jingled again and again as customer after customer came in to pick up a ten-pack, a twenty-pack, a thirty-pack, or even just a single, solitary cupcake. The people themselves came in all shapes and sizes, with most, if not all, on their way home from a long day of work.

No one lingered over the choices the way Tori and her friends had done. No, this last flurry of shoppers knew exactly what they wanted and wasted no time in their pursuit.

“Why, I still can’t get over people payin’ two bucks for a cupcake they can swallow whole,” Margaret Louise said across the empty box still sitting on the table in front of them. “I reckon I could make a dozen full-sized cupcakes for not much more ’n that.”

Flavor by flavor the cupcakes disappeared from the case as the second hand of the shop’s clock closed in on five o’clock and Tori found her mental prayer for a moment or two of the shopkeeper’s time growing louder and louder in her head.

Finally, at one minute to five, the break she’d been waiting for presented itself along with a raised eyebrow directed at their table. “We’ll be closing in just a moment.” The young girl behind the counter flicked her dark ponytail back over her shoulder. “Is there anything else I can get you before I shut down the register for the evening?”

Tori approached the counter and the girl, whose name tag identified her as Gretchen, with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation. She wanted nothing more than the woman in the picture to be the key to Dixie’s troubles, yet at the same time, she knew that would only mean worry and heartache for the smiling people standing around her in the photograph.

Still, Dixie was her top priority, and in order to get her released, Tori and the gang had to deliver John’s true murderer to the police station’s doorstep.

“I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about that picture.” With a slight rise of her chin, Tori guided the girl’s gaze to the black lacquered frame that hung slightly off center on the back wall. “In particular about the woman in the middle.”

“You mean Doug’s mom?”

Tori took in the handsome, well-built man just beyond the young girl’s outstretched finger and nodded. “If that woman in the center is his mom, then yes, I mean Doug’s mom.” She took a moment to study the rest of the photograph, which included a young woman with similar features to Doug and a tall blond man holding a baby Tori guessed to be about two years old. “What can you tell me about her? Is she Kate?”

Gretchen disappeared into what Tori assumed was the shop’s kitchen and returned seconds later with a wet dishrag in her hand. Slapping it onto the counter, she began to clean off the fingerprints that had accumulated on the shiny silver surface over the past few hours, her words coming in starts and stops as she made her way through an invisible checklist of closing rituals. “There is no Kate in CupKatery. Everyone thinks there is, but there’s not. It’s just a cute name that sounds a lot better than CupDougery, you know?”

“Oh? This is Doug’s shop?”

“Technically, it’s half Doug’s and half Diane’s, but CupDougDiery isn’t a whole lot better.”

Again, Tori’s gaze traveled back to the picture she’d been studying off and on since Charles first made the connection between John and the woman in the center. “Oh, I get it. Their mom picked a neutral name so as not to favor one sibling over the other, right?”

Gretchen shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve not really given it any thought.”

“So what can you tell me about her?”

Flipping the dishrag over, Gretchen transitioned her efforts to the now empty glass case save for three tie-dyed cupcakes that still remained. “You mean their mom, Clara?”

Tori nodded.

“You mean beside the fact she’s dead?”

Charles’s gasp just over her left shoulder provided the audio track for the one she tried to stifle between her teeth. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

The girl shrugged. “I didn’t know her all that well. Doug is really the one who we see in here all the time or, at least, the one we used to see in here all the time. The last few weeks he’s been pretty hit or miss. Jillian . . . she’s the assistant manager . . . says Doug is really having a hard time with his mom’s death.”

“It was recent then?”

“Two weeks ago.”

Tori cast about for her next question and was grateful when Margaret Louise provided it with ease. “Bless her heart, had she been sick?”

“I think so but I don’t really know for sure. I
do
know she’d been sad the last few times I saw her.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Tori said, regrouping. “Had something happened?”

“Something? No. Someone? Yes.” Then, stopping just long enough to toss the rag into the kitchen, Gretchen opened up the back of the case, pulled out the tray of tie-dyed cupcakes, tossed them into the wastebasket in the corner, and then began stacking each of the empty trays atop her opposite arm. “Seems the guys my age aren’t the only unfeeling jerks.”

Splaying her hand to hold off the empathy she could sense oozing from Charles’s pores, Tori dialed her voice down a notch in order to keep the girl talking. “Please tell me some man didn’t kill Clara . . .”

“Nah, I’m pretty sure she’d been sick. But she was a real go-getter. You know, one of those live-life-to-the-fullest types. She was always traveling here, there, and everywhere, trying new places and new things. Doug was always getting calls from her about where she was and what she was doing, and he was always telling her to be careful.” The girl reached inside the case for the last empty tray and chuckled as much to herself as Tori. “I always found it funny that he—as the kid—was telling her—the mom—to be careful. Total role reversal from the way things are in my house, I’ll tell you. But he adored her, and I do mean
adored
her.”

Margaret Louise smiled wide. “Sounds like my son, Jake. He loves me like that, too.”

Gretchen shut the case, repositioned the stack of trays so she was holding them with both hands, and then set them on a wheeled cart against the back wall. “Is your son married?”

Reaching into her cavernous tote bag, Margaret Louise removed her wallet and flipped open the picture section so it hung nearly to the floor. “He is. To Melissa. She’s the apple of his eye just like she is mine. And see these beauties, right here? These are my grandbabies. All eight of ’em.”

Charles clapped his hands and reached for the plastic sleeve. “Girlfriend, you haven’t shown me these yet . . . oh. Oh. Oh! They are sooo precious, every last one of them.”

“I wish Jillian were here right now,” Gretchen said. “She’s convinced the reason Doug hasn’t married yet is because a guy who loves his mother to such an extreme will never think any other woman is good enough.”

“Well, ain’t that just the silliest thing I’ve ever heard.” Margaret Louise waved off the comment then turned her attention and her face-splitting smile in the direction of Charles, who was still gushing over her grandbabies.

Tori, on the other hand, felt the invisible radar on top of her head beginning to ping. “So who was this person that hurt Clara?”

“Some local guy she met over the Internet.” Gretchen shook her head. “Can you imagine a seventy-year-old woman looking for love on the Internet? Seems kinda funny to me, you know?”

“Old people get lonely, too,” Rose interjected from her seat, not more than five feet away. “Having someone to talk to helps that.”

“No, I get that. I just know that for every nice guy one of my friends has met that way, the others have met ten times that many jerks. Something about a computer allows them to portray qualities that just aren’t there in person.”

“So Clara met a jerk, I take it?”

Gretchen got a second dishrag and headed toward the four tables that made up the shop’s limited seating space. “I don’t know the whole story. Just bits and pieces from stuff Jillian said when I asked why Clara looked so sad. Seems she really liked this guy and he gave every impression he liked her, too. But it wasn’t really her so much as her money—and Clara had a lot.”

Tori exchanged glances with a smug Charles, who’d stopped looking at pictures of Margaret Louise’s grandbabies and was focused on the story Gretchen was telling. He placed a dramatic hand over his heart and sighed. “Please, Gretchen, tell me this techno-savvy scam artist didn’t rob her blind . . .”

“He didn’t. Clara figured out what was going on before it was too late. But by then, she’d kind of fallen for him.”

“Oh, the poor dear. She must have been heartbroken.”

Gretchen finished with the tables and headed back toward the counter. “She was. But she was also disappointed in herself for being such a fool. That’s why she was so sad at the end.”

Tori looked back at the picture and the man who draped his arm around Clara with obvious affection and protectiveness, a question forming on her lips almost immediately. “How did Doug take that part?”

“You mean with the guy making her sad?”

At Tori’s nod, Gretchen’s eyes widened. “You’ve been to the Bronx Zoo, right?”

“No.”

“The Central Park Zoo?”

“No. We’re from South Carolina.”

Charles’s hand shot into the air then returned to his hip with flair. “Oh, we are sooo adding the Central Park Zoo to our list of must-do’s while you’re here. The sea lion feeding session at two o’clock simply can’t be”—he snapped his fingers in his favorite triangle formation—“missed.”

She heard Beatrice’s voice, knew her reply included talk of Bobblehead Kenny and pictures, but she kept her focus on Gretchen and the question the girl had yet to answer. “And Doug?” she prompted in an effort to get them back on track.

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re looking at lions, bears, zebras, or sea lions. When one of their babies is being threatened, they go nuts.” Gretchen dropped the dishrag onto the stack of trays and released a loud end-of-the-workday sigh. “Doug was angry that some guy tried to take advantage of his mother and made some noise about tracking him down. Clara, though, wanted it to be over and ordered him to let it go.”

“But it had to eat at him that she was so saddened by what happened with this guy . . .”

“Jillian said it tore him up. Clara was a sweet lady. Always smiling, always happy.” Gretchen took one final look at the picture and then wrapped her fingers around the handle of the wheeled cart. “None of us in the shop knew she was even dying, at her request. She wanted to hear laughter when she came in, not sadness. It’s just too bad that someone who was so positive and so upbeat all the time had to leave this earth feeling sad and foolish because of someone else’s doings.”

Charles raked a hand through his red spiky hair and then wiggled his fingers at Gretchen in farewell. “Don’t you fret too much, sister. Something tells me that Mama Lion had her say and then some.”

Tori really wasn’t all that surprised at the dark circles, droopy lids, and incessant yawning that demanded room service’s encore visit to Suite 451 that morning. She’d heard Rose’s labored pacing as she’d tossed and turned throughout the night. She’d heard Debbie moving around the living room straightening things that didn’t need to be straightened. And she’d even heard Leona—who missed her nightly beauty sleep for no one—mumbling to Paris off and on as the darkness outside her window slowly surrendered to a new day.

They’d all tried to shelve the current crisis long enough to enjoy dinner and a quiet evening, but every time Dixie had come up in conversation, even on the fringes, the mood had soured.

One of them was hurting.

One of them was scared.

One of them was being railroaded for a crime she didn’t commit.

And if nothing else about the Sweet Briar Ladies Society Sewing Circle was true, the fact that they stuck together like family was.

Sure, they fought. What family didn’t?

Sure, they made mistakes and hurt one another’s feelings on occasion. What family didn’t? But when push came to shove, they had one another’s backs.

“We’ve got to figure this out and we’ve got to figure this out faster than we are now,” Rose said as she shifted her tired body just enough to allow Beatrice a spot on the floral love seat. “I couldn’t sleep last night thinking about Dixie in that cell surrounded by people who really
have
committed crimes.”

Heads nodded to Rose’s left and right.

“Every time I’d slip off to sleep, I’d have me a different nightmare,” Margaret Louise shared between yawns. “One had Dixie cryin’ nonstop in some room I could never find, and the other was a sewin’ meetin’ back home . . . without Dixie bein’ at it.”

Beatrice offered her usual dash of optimism despite her own ashen complexion. “Maybe Dixie had something else to do that night.”

“No, she was in jail. For good.” All eyes in the room turned to Leona in accusing fashion. “What? I had the same dream.”

“She did. I heard her tellin’ Paris ’bout it ’round three a.m.”

Debbie stared down into her still-steaming mug of coffee and released an exhausted sigh. “Rose is right. We’ve got to figure this out. Now.”

Oh, how Tori wished it could be that easy. That they could just point the police in the direction of some random passerby on the street and have her be the killer. But sadly, it didn’t work that way, regardless of how much they all wished otherwise.

“I say we make one of them lists we’re always makin’ when we’re tryin’ to figure out somethin’ like this, Victoria.” Margaret Louise swiped a notepad from the old-fashioned rolltop desk in the corner and settled with it, and a pen, on the edge of the floral ottoman at Rose’s feet. “Now, let’s see . . . we’ve got Doug—that’s who I’m thinkin’ is our main suspect, the never-home Caroline Trotter, and the one who found my sister to be annoyin’.”

“I said we need to figure this out faster, Margaret Louise,” Rose groused. “You start filling the list with people who find your sister annoying and it will take years.”

Leona opened her mouth to retort but closed it as Tori rushed to head off the ensuing battle. “Margaret Louise? You’re really leaning towards Doug?”

“So am I.” Debbie set her mug on the end table to her right then pulled her dark blonde hair into a ponytail. “I think he had motive to want to do it and the kind of strength to make the push count.”

Margaret Louise put two tally marks next to Doug’s name on the notepad. “Someone hurtin’ your mama like that right b’fore she went off to Jesus is just the kind of thing that could make a good boy snap.”

Debbie nodded.

“Perhaps. But my money is on that Caroline Trotter woman.” Leona pointed at the pad and waited for her sister to place a tally next to her guess, stroking her opposite hand down Paris’s back as she did. “We must remember, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

Rose cleared her throat then shifted awkwardly from side to side atop her sofa cushion. “As much as I hate to say these words, I have to agree with Leona.”

Waving off Debbie’s slight gasp and Beatrice’s wide eyes, Rose continued. “No woman wants to be hornswoggled. Particularly—I imagine—if they’re from money.”

Margaret Louise paused mid–tally mark and glanced up from the notepad. “We haven’t met her yet. There’s no way of knowin’ she has money ’til we do.”

Tori pushed off the armrest she’d claimed beside Rose and wandered around the room, her friends’ opinions and theories looping their way through her thoughts. “I’m not an expert on New York City by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m thinking that apartment building she’s living in isn’t cheap.”

“Neither was that scarf she left behind at Charles’s bookstore.”

Rose pinned Leona with a stare. “I thought you said that scarf was gaudy.”

“Trust me, old goat, the wealthy might buy well, but they’re not immune to your kind of taste.”

“
My
kind of taste?” Rose pointed at Paris’s jewel-studded collar. “I’m not the one who dresses my rabbit like a garden-variety hooker.”

Debbie’s second gasp was drowned out by Leona’s red-faced sputtering. “Take—take that back, Rose! Take it back right now!”

“I think Paris looks beautiful,” Beatrice whispered in a rare show of side-taking.

Debbie shot a pained look of disapproval in Rose’s direction before reaching across the corner of the end table to pet Paris. “I do, too.”

“That wasn’t nice, Rose,” Margaret Louise agreed. “And you know that.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” Rose stared down at her trembling hands, her voice garbled. “I’m sorry, Leona. That was uncalled for.”

Seconds turned to minutes as Leona worked to control her breathing, the hurt and anger Rose’s words had inspired in her making the silence in the room almost unbearable. But just before Tori could think of something to say to diffuse the situation, Leona stood, walked around the back of the love seat, and gently laid Paris atop the elderly woman’s lap, her own voice choked with a rare burst of emotion. “I’m worried about Dixie, too, you old goat. So is Paris.”

Tori felt the lump forming in the middle of her throat and knew, if she gave in to it, she’d be in trouble. Rose and Leona would have other moments. Dixie was, and needed to remain, the sole focus of their morning powwow. “I’m leaning toward Ms. Steely Eye from the potted plant at the Waldorf.”

Margaret Louise swiped the back of her hand across her cheek then added one mark next to Ms. Steely Eye for Tori and another for the fast-nodding Beatrice on Rose’s right. “Why you sayin’ that, Beatrice?”

“She was in both places. First, at the fancy hotel, then later, on my camera, at the scene of the crime.”

Tori nodded. “That’s my thinking, too.”

“But that could be a coincidence. We don’t know for certain that she was even looking at Dixie and John’s table that morning.” Debbie peeked into her coffee mug but opted not to drink any more. “I mean, I realize New York City is big, but even Charles said he sees familiar faces all the time.”

“Charles lives here. He’s had time to know people, recognize people. We’ve only been here a few days,” Tori said as a counterpoint even though she knew Debbie was right. She of all people knew that just because something seemed a little odd didn’t mean there was anything to it. Then again, she also knew that sometimes there was . . .

“When’s Charles coming by again?” Beatrice asked, glancing at her watch. “Soon, yes?”

On cue, the hotel phone rang and Tori picked it up. “Hello?”

“Good morning, Victoria! Are my ladies well rested and ready to hit the ground running this morning?”

She paused in her answer to take in the faces of each of her friends.

Rose, still embarrassed by her attack on the rabbit now cuddled in her lap, suddenly looked ninety-five instead of nearing eighty-five. The unfamiliar surroundings, coupled with the stress of Dixie’s predicament, were taking a heavy toll on her energy level.

Likewise, Debbie’s normal go-go-go quality exhibited a nervous energy Tori had never seen in the bakery shop owner. No, Debbie had life together twenty-four/seven, juggling her roles as business owner, mother, and wife with an ease that was mind-boggling. Toss in a problem or two along the way, and she was unfazed. Dixie’s situation had changed that.

Beatrice, while the most rested looking of the crew, seemed even more subdued than normal and Tori knew why. Beatrice took solace in peace and quiet. It was as if the young woman needed those key ingredients in order to think, act, and function.

Leona was equal parts quiet and jumpy, like she wanted to bask in the glow of the city, yet had lost the heart to do so the moment Dixie was carted off to jail.

And then there was Margaret Louise—the nurturer, the caregiver—with her hands essentially tied where one of her oldest friends was concerned.

“As ready as we’ll ever be, I guess,” she finally uttered into the phone. Were they exhausted? Without a doubt. Were they ready to go home? Absolutely. But none of that mattered without Dixie by their side. “We even made a list of the suspects we think are most viable.”

“Great minds, Victoria, great minds,” Charles gushed in her ear. “I got out my pastel Sharpies this morning and made one, too. I’ll bring it up now.”

She gave him their room number then moved about the sitting area, encouraging everyone to get their shoes, hats, purses, and whatever else they might need for a day of sleuthing in the Big Apple.

At Charles’s melodic knock, Beatrice let him in, her shy greeting morphing into a frustrated exhale of words. “This bloke was at this con for a long time, right?”

Tori nodded along with everyone else.

“Which means people knew what he was up to, right?”

Again, everyone nodded, with Charles adding a triangular hand snap to Leona’s impatient eye roll. “I smelled a rat my first week on the job when he came in with a second woman in as many days,” Charles boasted. “Vanny did, too.”

“So did his neighbor,” Tori said, recalling the words of the woman standing next to her on John’s street that fateful day. “In fact, to hear her talk, it was only a matter of time before one of the women he was always wronging came back and . . .”

Came back . . .

Came back . . .

“That’s it!” she said before slapping a hand across her mouth out of respect for the guests staying in nearby rooms.

Charles clapped once, twice. “Don’t say it, Victoria. I know exactly what you’re thinking.” He marched back to the door and flung it open, turning back to the Sewing Six with unbridled excitement. “Well? Shall we?”