The Candy Cane Cupcake Killer (20 page)

Phyllis didn't respond to that. She knew there was no point.

The road veered to the right, where another county road dead-ended into the one they were on. The gate in the high chain-link fence around the commissioner's headquarters was actually on this smaller road. It was open, so Nick turned in and drove across a large, gravel-covered open area toward the metal building where the office was located.

The sheds and storage buildings were to the right and behind the office. The big piles of sand and gravel Phyllis had mentioned were to the left, scattered across the big lot. At one of them, a tractor with a front-end loader attached to it was scooping up gravel and depositing it in the back end of a dump truck.

A couple of pickups with county seals on the doors were parked in front of the office, along with a dark SUV with the letters
AAA
painted on its door, plus some other writing she couldn't make out. Phyllis wasn't sure what AAA was doing here, but someone could've been having vehicle trouble. A man came out of the office, got into the SUV, and drove off while Nick was parking the TV crew's van.

Another man followed the first one out of the building and started toward one of the pickups. Phyllis recognized him immediately as Clay Loomis.

“That's him,” she said quickly. They had caught a break, finding Loomis here, and now they needed to take advantage of it.

“Stay out of the way,” Felicity snapped as she opened her
door. Sure-footed in her high heels, even on the gravel parking lot, she approached Loomis, with Nick hurrying to catch up with her.

Loomis paused with his hand on the handle of the driver's door and smiled as Felicity came toward him. Most men would smile if they saw a young woman who looked like Felicity, especially one obviously bent on talking to them, Phyllis thought. She and Josh got out of the van and followed.

Phyllis carried a clipboard she had found in the van and kept her head down. Loomis might have seen her and Sam talking to McCrory on the night of the parade, so it was possible he could recognize her. She didn't think that was very likely, but she wanted to blend into the background as best as she could for now, and minimize the chances of that happening.

“Mr. Loomis,” Felicity said. “Felicity Prosper from
Inside Beat
. I'm sure you've seen our program.”

“As a matter of fact, I have,” Loomis replied. He wore jeans, a sheepskin jacket, and expensive snakeskin boots. “What can I do for you, Ms. Prosper?”

“I'd like to ask you some questions,” Felicity said, “about the night Barney McCrory was murdered right in front of your eyes.”

L
oomis's smile disappeared and was replaced by a solemn expression.

“A terrible, terrible tragedy,” he said. “I can't tell you how upset I still am about the whole incident.”

“You were playing the part of Santa Claus in the annual Christmas parade on the evening of the murder, is that correct?”

“Yes, I was giving the, ah, real Saint Nick a hand that night,” Loomis replied with a half chortle, and shifted emotional gears again without missing a beat. “Filling in for him, you might say, since the old fellow can't be everywhere at once. Now can he, kiddies?”

Loomis smiled into the camera as he said that. Felicity said, “We don't have a lot of children who believe in Santa among our viewers, Mr. Loomis. We specialize in the truth.”

Phyllis saw Josh wince at that. She understood the feeling. What was the point in alienating viewers who might have
small children in the room? Josh was thinking like a producer, going after the biggest audience possible, Phyllis realized. It could be he was smarter than she had given him credit for at first, when he was toppling off a bicycle in the middle of the street.

“Maybe you can fix it in editing,” Phyllis whispered to him. He rolled his eyes and nodded, safely behind Felicity, where she couldn't see him.

Felicity was still talking to Loomis, saying, “Tell me what it felt like when you realized that a man had been violently killed just a few feet away from you.”

Loomis still didn't show the least bit of hesitation about answering Felicity's questions—a combination of his politician's thirst for publicity and the natural male urge to keep a pretty girl happy, Phyllis thought. The commissioner spread his hands and said, “Well, at first I didn't even know what was happening, of course. I wasn't aware that my good friend Barney had been shot.”

Phyllis made a mental note to ask Allyson and Nate if McCrory and Loomis really
had
been friends. She hadn't gotten any sense of that so far in the investigation.

“All I knew,” Loomis went on, “was that the horses pulling the carriage had stampeded, and we were careening along the street much faster than was safe. I kept shouting for people to get out of our way, and then I tried to see if I could climb up
to the driver's seat to get the team under control. I knew I had to keep a cool head in order to prevent a greater disaster.”

That was certainly an interesting version of what had happened. Phyllis didn't recall the incident quite that way. To the best of her memory, Loomis had been screaming his head off and clutching those teenage elves as if to shield himself with their bodies.

“Luckily, someone else stopped the horses,” Loomis said. Phyllis shifted slightly, keeping Nick's burly shape between her and the politician. She didn't want Loomis's memory jogged enough that he would recognize her. “That was when I had the chance to check on my old friend and saw that he'd been injured.”

“He'd been shot,” Felicity said. “Murdered.”

Loomis sighed and said, “Yes. It was . . . an utterly shocking discovery.”

He was solemn again now, trying to look properly sympathetic.

“You're aware that the police have made an arrest in the case?”

“Yes, I heard. It's unbelievable that Barney's own son-in-law would do such a thing.”

Loomis's voice had a tone of finality about it, as if he expected that to conclude the interview, but Felicity pressed on without hesitation.

“This is just the latest example of trouble in your life, isn't it, Commissioner Loomis?” she asked briskly.

Loomis's forehead creased in a surprised frown as he said, “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that your own life has been in turmoil recently, even before you were involved in a murder.”

“Wait a minute. I'm not involved in Mr. McCrory's murder. I just happened to be there. I could have been hurt, too, when that team bolted!”

As if he hadn't said anything, Felicity went on. “At the moment, you're defending yourself in three ugly legal disputes, isn't that correct? You're being sued by your own business partners, who say that you've stripped the company coffers of funds and run it into the ground. Your wife has initiated divorce proceedings against you and vowed to take everything you have. And your former mistress has threatened to file a sexual-harassment suit against you, charging that she was pressured into having an affair with you.”

The words came out of Felicity's mouth a mile a minute, and she needed to talk fast to get them all out, because Loomis's face was turning a bright red, and it looked like he was going to explode at any second.

When Felicity finally had to pause to draw a breath, Loomis roared, “How dare you! Get off this property right now! You have no right to come here and spew this vile filth, these ugly rumors that have no basis in fact—”

He had to stop short because he was shaking so hard and gasping for air. Phyllis suddenly had the awful thought that he might have a stroke or a heart attack right there in front of them, judging by the way he looked. If Felicity thought the same thing, she would probably just consider it a bonus, a dramatic climax to an act of journalistic ambush.

“All these things are a matter of public record, Commissioner,” Felicity said. “You can't deny that your life has been in
an uproar. With all this going on, you might think that murder was a welcome diversion from your own woes. In fact, given all the hatred directed at you recently, would you say that you're lucky no one has taken a shot at
you
?”

There it is, Phyllis thought.

Felicity had gotten to the point, and, in doing so, she had worked Loomis up into such a state that he shouted, “None of those idiots would have the guts to come after me like that! Not unless it was that bitch of a wife of mine. She's twice the man that Ridgely and Hedgepeth are!”

“What about Jaycee Fallon?”

“She's a simpering little imbecile. She's got no case. She's the one who came after me—”

He stopped short as he realized he was saying things he shouldn't, especially on camera. He turned toward Nick and made a slashing motion across his throat.

“Stop that,” he snapped. “Turn that camera off.”

Loomis took a step forward, and Nick began to back away with the camera still on his shoulder, still shooting.

“Commissioner Loomis, are you threatening my cameraman?” Felicity demanded. Phyllis had heard
that
before. “As a public official, you should be familiar with the concept of a free press.”

“Just get out of here, all of you,” Loomis said in a low, menacing tone.

“I believe this property belongs to the county, which means it's public property. You can't force us to leave.”

Loomis still looked like he wanted to attack Nick, but he got himself under control with a visible effort, turned toward
the building, and stalked toward the door, saying over his shoulder, “I'm going to call the sheriff!”

The door slammed closed behind him, so violently that it shook in its frame.

Felicity made her own throat-cutting gesture to Nick with one elegantly manicured finger and said, “Let's go.”

The four of them went back to the van and climbed in. While Nick was starting the engine, four men came around the corner of the building. Phyllis figured they were county road workers, and from the way they started toward the van, she thought that Loomis must have summoned them. He might have even decided to tell them to try to take the camera away.

“I don't think we should waste any time getting out of here,” she said.

“You think I'm scared of those bruisers?” Felicity said. “I'm not scared of them. Are you, Nick?”

As taciturn as ever, Nick just grunted.

“I'm a little nervous,” Josh admitted.

“You would be,” Felicity scoffed. But Phyllis thought she was starting to look a little worried, too, as Nick leisurely put the van in reverse and backed around to leave. The four men were only about twenty yards away when Nick gave the van some gas and headed for the gate. The road workers stopped and glared after them.

Felicity turned halfway around in the front passenger's seat and grinned at Phyllis.

“What did you think of that?” she asked. “Pretty good job of rattling his cage, wasn't it?”

“He was rattled, all right,” Phyllis said, “but I'm not sure we found out anything helpful.”

“What are you talking about? He practically pointed the finger at his wife. He said if anybody tried to kill him, it'd be her. What do we know about her?”

“You mean other than the fact that she's divorcing Loomis?”

Felicity rolled her eyes and said, “Josh, I need background. Fast!”

“You bet,” Josh said as he took out his phone and started punching buttons. Phyllis tended to forget that people could get on the Internet just as easily on their phones as they could on a computer. She'd been carrying the same cell phone for years, and all it would do was make calls and take pictures.

By the time they were halfway back to Weatherford, Josh said, “Okay, Mrs. Loomis is the former Serita Lopez. Born in Corpus Christi. She and Loomis met while they were students at the University of Texas in Austin. He was a business major; she was premed. Looks like she dropped out to support him and never went back.”

“So she gave up being a doctor for him, and then he cheated on her with some bimbo who works for him,” Felicity said. “Sounds like a motive for murder to me.”

“And she has a concealed-carry license,” Josh added. “So she's used to handling guns.”

Phyllis said, “How did you find that out?”

“Oh, I just hacked into the state database,” Josh said, as if it were the easiest thing in the world.

“Won't that get you in trouble?”

“If it does,
Inside Beat
will foot the bill for his lawyers,” Felicity said. “Journalism knows no price.”

Reporting on the sleazy antics of rich, pretty people who were famous for no other reason than being famous didn't really strike Phyllis as journalism, but she wasn't going to argue. Not while Felicity and the others were trying to help her clear Nate's name by finding Barney McCrory's murderer.

“I can't get into the ATF database to find out if Mr. or Mrs. Loomis has a rifle registered to them,” Josh said. “After all the uproar about data leaks over the past few years, they've gotten harder to crack. And with all the surveillance they've got going on, if I try, they'll track it right back to me.”

“Mr. D'Angelo might be able to find out,” Phyllis said. “He has a friend who works for the ATF.”

“The guy better be careful. He'll get hauled off to some NSA black site and never be heard from again.”

Phyllis wasn't quite sure what that meant, but it couldn't be anything good.

Felicity said, “See what you can find on Loomis's business partners, Ridgely and Hedgepeth.”

“I've looked them up already—,” Phyllis began.

“Let Josh take a crack at it, okay? He's got to be good for something, and this is it.”

As Felicity turned to face forward again, Josh gave Phyllis a weak smile, as if to tell her he didn't care about the things Felicity said. Phyllis thought he did, though. She had seen the way Josh looked at the reporter when Felicity wasn't paying any attention to him. He had a crush on her, probably because of both her beauty and the fact that she was on-air talent. To a
lowly intern fresh out of college, Felicity was close to TV royalty.

At the moment, however, Josh was concentrating on his research, and after a few minutes he said, “Here's something.” He held the phone out so Phyllis could see the screen. “The guy on the left is Phil Hedgepeth.”

“Oh, dear Lord,” Phyllis said as she looked at a newspaper photo of two men in hunting garb, standing next to the carcass of a bear. “They killed that poor animal?”

“Yeah, on a hunting trip to Canada. The other guy is the guide. Hedgepeth's the one who brought down the bear.”

Phil Hedgepeth had a big, proud grin on his face. He held a rifle in front of him.

“Let me see,” Felicity said from the front seat. She looked at the picture on Josh's phone and went on. “If Hedgepeth can shoot a grizzly bear, he could shoot a person.”

“I'm not sure one thing follows the other,” Josh said. “And it's a brown bear, not a grizzly—”

“A bear is a bear, okay? I don't care if it's freakin' Yogi or Boo Boo. How about Ridgely?”

Josh went back to work, but after a few minutes he shook his head and said, “Nothing connecting him with hunting or shooting or anything like that. He doesn't seem to be an outdoorsman.”

“That leaves Jaycee Fallon. We already know that the other guy who ran against Loomis—what was his name? Coyle?—we already know he's a shooter.”