The Candy Cane Cupcake Killer (13 page)

“You put together a pretty strong case for somebody wanting Loomis dead,” he admitted. “Several somebodies, actually. But since he
wasn't
the victim . . .”

Sam said, “All the police have against Nate is a possible
motive, just like those other folks have possible motives to kill Loomis. All it would have taken was for the killer's aim to be off a little bit.”

“Is there any chance you could bring this up with Detective Largo?” Phyllis asked.

Mike said, “She'd think I was meddling in her case—a case where I don't have any jurisdiction. And she'd be right. I don't know how kindly she'd take it.” He leaned back in his chair at the kitchen table. “But if I could approach it just right, like we were just shooting the breeze and talking about how a case sometimes looks like it's about one thing but turns out to be about something entirely different . . . Well, maybe. I might be able to plant a seed. But it'd be up to her whether she wanted to follow it up.”

“Of course,” Phyllis said. “If there's anything you can do to help, we'd appreciate it.”

“Sure.” Mike grinned down at the few crumbs left on the saucer in front of him, all that was left of two of the cupcakes. He grew more serious as he went on. “Just be careful. You've been pretty lucky in the past.”

Carolyn said, “I don't think luck had anything to do with Phyllis solving all those crimes.”

“Solving them, no, probably not,” Mike said. “Surviving the confrontations with those killers . . . Well, that's another story.”

B
efore Mike left, he promised to call a friend of his on the Weatherford force who worked patrol and ask him to swing by the house a few times during the evening. If Felicity Prosper tried to come back, the police presence might scare her off again.

Phyllis went upstairs to her bedroom to work on the column for
A Taste of Texas
on her laptop. Even though she hadn't made the baklava macarons yet, she wanted to get a rough draft of the recipe written. That way if the cookies were good—and she certainly hoped they would be—she would have some of the work done already.

Her door was open, so Sam looked in later to say good night. He reported, “No sign of that van out front. Looks like Miss Prosper gave up.”

“Gave up for today, maybe,” Phyllis said. “It wouldn't surprise me if she was back tomorrow, though.”

“Well, no. Me neither.” Sam leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb. “How's the column writin' comin' along?”

“All right, I suppose. I'm still not sure I'm cut out to be a writer. There are too many words in the world to choose from!”

Sam grinned and said, “You'll do fine. Not to change the subject, but I thought I might go see Gene Coyle in the morning and talk to him about gettin' a load of dirt or gravel or some such.”

“And maybe get an idea of whether he'd be capable of shooting someone if he were angry enough?”

“That's the plan,” Sam said.

“Be careful. If he really is a murderer, he might not take kindly to someone poking around in his business.”

“Yeah, well, I could say the same to you,” Sam pointed out. “I've got a feelin' you'll be doin' some diggin' of your own. You know I'm always willin' to go with you.”

“I know,” Phyllis said. “We'll wait and see.”

Sam nodded and said, “All right. Good night, then.”

“Good night, Sam,” she said fondly. He was a good man, and she knew she was lucky to have him for a friend.

•   •   •

The next morning over breakfast, which consisted of excellent sausage egg muffins made by Carolyn, Phyllis told Sam she was going to be working on the macarons for a while.

“You go see Gene Coyle, and we'll investigate another angle this afternoon,” she said.

“Sounds like a plan,” he told her.

After getting dressed, he went out to feed Buck, and
looked up at the sky while the Dalmatian was eating. Clouds had moved in during the night, and the air was chillier. A front had come through. Sam didn't keep up with the weather as closely as he once had, but he wasn't surprised by this change. Christmas was less than three weeks away, so it was time for some cold weather.

Buck had already eaten his canned food and was crunching on his dry food now. Sam filled the water bowl and told the dog, “You'll probably need to stay inside tonight, but you ought to be all right out here today. If the wind gets too brisk, you can curl up in your doghouse.”

Buck looked up as if he understood. Sometimes Sam thought his dog was smarter than a lot of people he knew, himself included, more often than not.

He put on his sheepskin-lined denim jacket and looked out the picture window in the living room. The curb in front of the house was still empty, with no sign of the van belonging to the TV crew.

Phyllis was passing by in the hall and said, “They're not out there, are they?”

“I don't see 'em. Of course, that doesn't guarantee they're not parked down the street somewhere out of sight, just waitin' to follow us if we go anywhere.”

“Keep an eye out behind you.”

“I will,” he promised. “Maybe it's too cold out there for them today.”

“As short as Miss Prosper likes to wear her skirts, I wouldn't be surprised.”

Sam grinned and said, “Yeah, that could be a mite, ah, chilly on the nether regions.”

Phyllis just sniffed disdainfully as she headed for the kitchen.

Sam had looked up Gene Coyle's business, which was not-so-imaginatively called Gene's Sand and Gravel, and found that it was located on the interstate between Weatherford and Fort Worth, less than a mile west of the old racetrack.

As he drove out there, he changed the station on the radio several times, not in any mood to listen to folks argue about sports or politics, before he settled on a station playing classic country. Since he was by himself, he didn't worry about the fact that his voice sounded like somebody pulling rusty nails from an old two-by-four as he warbled along with the lonesome strains of George Strait's “Amarillo by Morning.”

He didn't notice a van or any other vehicle following him.

Coyle's office was a cinder-block building with a metal roof that sat at the top of one of the rolling hills along the highway. Behind it was a huge gravel pit gouged out of the earth. As Sam parked the pickup in front of the office and got out of it, he saw numerous small mountains of earth and rock scattered around the property. Bulldozers moved here and there, as did tractors with front-end loaders attached to them.

The wind was even colder on this hilltop. Sam was glad to get out of it as he went inside.

He found an office with a counter running across it, a small waiting area in front, and a larger space behind it where a couple of desks sat. Each desk had a computer on it, but there was a pair of old-fashioned filing cabinets against one wall. No matter how much the world tried to go digital and
paperless, it was hard to run a business without generating some printed documents.

The place had a plain, functional look about it. A calendar hung on the wall of the waiting area, along with an advertising poster listing the high school's football schedule for the recently concluded season. Someone had written in the final score for each game with a black marker.

A man in a baseball cap and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up a couple of turns over his brawny, black-haired forearms sat at one of the desks behind the counter, squinting at the monitor at front of him. His big, powerful-looking hand dwarfed the mouse he was using. He didn't look up from the screen. His concentration was so fierce, it seemed like if he broke it he would forget what he was doing.

The woman at the other desk stood up and came to the counter, though. She was a pleasant-looking woman in her forties, wearing jeans and a Western shirt with pearl snaps instead of buttons. Her graying brown hair was short and curly. She smiled and asked Sam, “Can I help you?”

“Yes, ma'am. I think I'm gonna find myself in need of some loads of gravel.”

“Of course. How many?”

Sam pretended to think for a couple of seconds and then said, “I figure we're lookin' at six. Maybe a few more.”

“Well, we can certainly handle that. Do you want me to figure up a price for you?”

“That'd be good, but what I'd really like to do is talk to the boss man.” He nodded toward the man at the other desk. “No offense, I just always like to deal with the top dog.”

He figured a man from his generation could get away with a little political incorrectness.

The woman seemed more amused than offended. She said, “That's not the boss man. That's Lou, one of our drivers.”

Lou grunted but didn't otherwise acknowledge that the conversation was going on.

For a split second Sam worried that the woman on the other side of the counter was Gene Coyle. Then he reminded himself that couldn't be right. The name was spelled wrong for a woman, and, besides, Phyllis had done her research and hadn't said anything about Clay Loomis's opponent in the election being a woman.

“I'll see if Mr. Coyle has a minute,” the woman in the Western shirt went on. She walked over to a door in the office area, opened it without knocking, and went inside. She reappeared a moment later and crooked a finger at Sam.

He went to a swinging gate at the end of the counter and pushed past it. The woman moved out of the doorway and motioned for him to go in.

He stepped into a private office that was considerably fancier than the one outside. The cinder-block walls had dark wood paneling over them, and the floor was covered with carpet instead of tile. An expensive oak gun cabinet with several rifles and shotguns in it sat on the wall to Sam's right. On the wall to his left were mounted the heads of four deer, good-looking bucks with lots of points on their antlers.

Directly in front of him was a large desk. A man rose behind it and extended his hand.

“Gene Coyle,” the man said. “Pleased to meet you.”

Coyle wasn't what Sam expected. He was a head shorter than Sam, a wiry little fella who carried himself with an attitude that was bound to be described by most people as feisty. He wore a Coyle Sand and Gravel gimme cap, and looked at Sam through rimless, wire-framed glasses. He had a good grip, though, Sam found when he shook hands with the man.

Without thinking, Sam said, “Sam Fletcher.” He wasn't used to introducing himself as anybody else. He hoped Coyle wouldn't connect his name with Phyllis and remember that the two of them had been involved in investigating several murders in the past.

Of course, it probably won't matter if Coyle isn't actually a killer, Sam reminded himself.

Coyle didn't show any reaction to the name, just waved Sam into the chair in front of the desk and said, “I hear you need some gravel.”

“Yeah, I'm puttin' in some culverts on a piece of property I own outside of town. Gotta put in some roads so I can break it up and sell it in smaller lots.”

Coyle nodded and said, “If you're building roads, you'll need more than half a dozen loads.”

“Yeah, I know. I'm just startin' with the culverts. I figure the whole project'll take a while.”

“How big is the property?”

“Fourteen acres,” Sam said. He had worked out some of this in his head on the way out here and was coming up with
the rest of it on the fly. “Thought I'd break it into twenty lots for houses. Those'll be pretty good-sized lots this day and age.”

“That's true,” Coyle agreed. “The housing market's not great right now, though.”

“It is what it is,” Sam drawled. “I don't see it gettin' a lot better anytime soon, and I hate to see property just sittin' there. You know what I mean?”

That put a thin-lipped smile on Coyle's face. He said, “Yeah, I do. You're a go-getter like me, aren't you, Sam? You need to be accomplishing something all the time, even if the circumstances aren't the best for it.”

“That's about the size of it.”

“You're going to need, oh, forty or fifty loads before you're through.” Coyle pulled a calculator over to himself, turned it on, and pushed some buttons on it. “I can give it to you for, let's see, a hundred and seventy-five a load. That's eighty-seven fifty . . . call it eighty-five hundred. How does that sound?”

“Pretty good,” Sam said. “Pretty good. You don't mind if I mull it over a little, do you? I wasn't figurin' on linin' up the whole project at once.”

Coyle leaned back and waved a hand. “Sure,” he said. “I can't guarantee how long that price will be good, though. This business is pretty volatile.”

Sam wasn't sure why the price of sand and gravel ought to fluctuate that much, but he wasn't an expert on the subject, either.

“I'll get back to you pretty quick,” he promised, even though he had no intention of doing so. He looked around at the gun cabinet and the mounted heads and said, “You look like you're quite a hunter.”

A proud smile immediately lit up Coyle's face. He said, “I like to think so. Not a one of those bucks is less than ten points, and I've bagged a bunch of 'em almost that good. I've got a lease over in the Palo Pinto Mountains. You hunt?”

“Not as much as I used to. These bones of mine are gettin' too old to be trampin' around in the cold and the damp.”

“I love it. There's nothing like it. Man pitting himself against nature.”

It seemed to Sam that man had an unfair advantage most of the time, but he didn't say that. Instead he told Coyle, “You must be a pretty good shot.”

“See that twelve-pointer?” Coyle pointed at one of the mounted heads. “I knocked that son of a gun down from five hundred yards.”

Sam let out a low whistle of admiration.

“That's some pretty good shootin',” he said.

“I've got a good eye, if I do say so myself.”

“Well, I'm mighty glad I came in here today, Gene. I can call you Gene?”

Coyle nodded.

“I've got a feelin' you and me are gonna hit it off,” Sam went on. “Makes me even gladder I voted for you in that election. It's just a damn shame you didn't win.”

Coyle's narrow face darkened with anger. He made a slashing motion with his hand and said, “Ah, I should've known better than to ever get mixed up in politics! They're all a bunch of crooks, if you ask me.”