A Baked Ham (23 page)

“That’s fine,” I said.
 
“What do you want to know?”

“Who got copies of this note?”

“Fred Hitchings, Marcus Jackson, Garret
Wilkes, and Amanda Lark.”

“Not Sandra Hall?” he asked.

“Why, should we have included her
on our list?”
 
I knew that it was a
direct question, but I couldn’t help myself.

“You’re talking and I’m
listening, remember?”

“Got it.
 
We thought Marcus was a more likely suspect,
given what we found out about him earlier, and we couldn’t very well leave them
both notes.
 
They would have compared
them straight away, wouldn’t they?”

“Most likely.
 
What did you uncover about Marcus?”

“He claimed that he was in Sandra’s
dressing room when Benny was murdered, but Fred Hitchings said he was there at
the exact same time, and neither one of them saw the other.
 
That means that one of them
has
to be lying.”

“Are you telling me that they
both
came forward and shared their
alibis with you and Moose?
 
I find that
hard to believe.”

“I’m telling you the truth,” I
said, raising my voice a little more than I meant to.
 
A few folks looked over in our direction, but
they quickly feigned disinterest when I made eye contact with each and every
one of them.

“Take it easy,” Sheriff Croft
said.
 
“I’m not accusing you of
anything.
 
As it turns out, they told me
the same thing.
 
Do you have a feeling
about which one of them might have been lying to you?”

“I keep going back and forth,” I said.
 
“It’s tough proving where you weren’t, isn’t
it?”

“That’s why I make the big
bucks,” he said with the hint of a grin.
 
Evidently he’d decided to forgive me and let me off the hook, which was
a very good thing.
 
I knew that Moose and
I operated on the fringe without any authority to do so, and the sheriff could
shut us down any time that he pleased.
 
“What else do you know?”

“That it’s a boat full of rats on
a sinking ship,” I said.
 
“There’s not a
soul on our list who didn’t try to throw another one under the bus at the
earliest opportunity.
 
We’ve been
spinning our wheels, so Moose and I decided that what this case needed was a
little pot stirring.”

“Thus the notes,” the sheriff
said as he nodded.
 
“This is a dangerous
game you’re playing with your life, here.”

“Sheriff, I’m well aware that
it’s no game.
 
We still have five
suspects on our list, and not much to help us go on from here.
 
Now, I’ve been as cooperative as I could be.
 
Would you mind telling me if we’re off-base
at all with our list of suspects?”

“You’ve got the majority of them
there.
 
That’s good work, Victoria.
 
Both you and Moose should be proud of
yourselves.”

“Thanks.
 
Are we leaving someone out, or do we have too
many names on our list?
 
You’d be doing
us a huge favor if you’d share with us just a little.”

He looked as though he were about
to talk, and then the sheriff suddenly pointed to the pass-through window.
 
“Is that my breakfast?”

“I’ll check,” I said.
 
Sure enough, Mom had finished his meal in
record time.
 
I grabbed the plate, then
the coffee pot, and I slid the food in front of him.
 
As soon as I did that, I topped off his
coffee, but I left my alone.
 
“There you
go,” I said.
 
“Enjoy.”

“Thank you,” he said, and then
the sheriff lost himself in my mother’s breakfast offering.
 
I knew that a great many breakfast chains and
frozen food manufacturers struggled to find the perfect recipe for their
cinnamon waffle sticks, but they were never as good as my mother’s were.
 
The sheriff poured a little maple syrup on
his plate, added a touch of brown sugar, and then he dragged the first stick
through the mixture.
 
I wished that Mom
could see the smile on his face when he took that first bite.
 
A smile exploded as he chewed, and I decided
to respect the food and leave him alone, at least while he was eating.

I topped his coffee off once
more, but for the most part, I left the man alone in peace to eat his
breakfast.
 
I doubted that he had a great
deal of time to himself most parts of the day, and I just couldn’t bring myself
to push him for more information while he was eating.

The sheriff took a ten dollar
bill out of his pocket and slid it under his plate as he stood.
 
“Tell your mother that she hasn’t lost her
touch.”

“I will, but she already knows
that,” I said with a grin.
 
“Hang on.
 
I’ll get your change.”

“The rest is for you,” he said
with a smile.

“For the service, or for leaving
you alone?” I asked.

“Let’s just say both reasons are
equally valid,” he said with a grin.

“Thanks, but as much as I
appreciate the thought, I don’t take tips here, since I run the place.
 
Let me get you your change.”

“Any chance that I could get a
coffee to go while you’re at it?” he asked.

“You bet,” I said.
 
I rang up his bill, and then grabbed a lidded
cup and filled it up with fresh coffee.
 
“There
you go.”

As he took his change and the
coffee, I said, “I’m really sorry about holding out on you before.
 
That was over the line.”

“I’m not blaming you a bit,
though I never would have approved of you doing it if you’d asked me about it
first,” he said.
 
“For what it’s worth,
it wasn’t a bad idea.”

“Do you think it’s going to
work?”

“Well, nobody’s taken off
yet.
 
I can’t afford the manpower to
watch all of my suspects around the clock, but I’ll be curious to see how they
act today.
 
I’ll try to keep an eye on
you, but I can’t make any promises about that, either.”

The sheriff was almost out the
door when he paused and looked back at me.
 
In a soft voice, he said, “I got the note from Garret Wilkes.
 
He told me to find out who did this, and when
I did, to drive a stake through their hearts.
 
He doesn’t scare easy, that one.”

“Do you think that makes him
innocent?” I asked.

“I don’t know that anyone could
ever call him that, but no, I don’t think he murdered Benny.”

That was certainly news.
 
“Why not?”

“He was being shadowed all night
when the murder took place by a girl from the high school newspaper.
 
She was doing a feature on him about what it
was like to direct a play, and she never left his side.”

Why hadn’t Moose and I heard
about this?
 
I couldn’t possibly think of
a reason that Garret would want to hide it from us.
 
Why hadn’t he told us?
 
“Are you sure about that?
 
Every second is hard to account for,” I said.

“She can do it.
 
The girl not only took meticulous notes, but
she recorded the entire time she was shadowing him.
 
It makes for some fascinating viewing,
especially when Garret threw Amanda Lark out of the theater.”

“Is she still on your list as
well?” I asked.
 
I still felt the sting
from missing such an important alibi from one of our main suspects, but then
again, my grandfather and I didn’t have the authority to
make
anyone talk to us.
 
It
was a wonder we got anything out of anybody at all.

“I really can’t say,” the sheriff
said.

“Does that mean that you don’t
know?” I asked.

He grinned.
 
“No, it just means that I can’t say.
 
Thanks again for breakfast.”

“You’re welcome.
 
Thank you for the information.”

“Isn’t cooperation a grand
thing?” he asked with a smile.
 
“Keep me
posted, Victoria.”

“I’d ask you to do the same, but
I don’t have much hope in that happening,” I said.

“Whoever said that you wouldn’t
have made a good detective?”

My, but he was in a good
mood.
 
Perhaps he was closer to finding
the killer than my grandfather and I were.
 
It shouldn’t surprise me.
 
Sheriff
Croft had a great many more resources than we had, and more training as well.

Still, I would love to be the one
who finally cracked the murder case.

I was reaching for Helen Murphy’s
bill when I noticed the sad expression on her face.
 
“Is something wrong, Mrs. Murphy?”

“As a matter of fact, there is.”

“Was your breakfast
unsatisfactory?”

“No, of course not,” she
said.
 
“Your mother’s a fine cook,
Victoria, and she always has been.
 
The
problem is I can’t believe that my favorite actor is dead.”

I hadn’t watched television or
read a newspaper lately, and I wondered who Hollywood had lost.
 
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said.

“Mr. Booth was a real treasure,”
she said, and I realized that she’d been talking about Benny.
 
I had a difficult time believing that he’d
been anyone’s favorite, but it just showed that you could never tell when it
came to taste.
 
“You wouldn’t happen to
want an extra pair of tickets, would you?
 
I just can’t bring myself to go to the theater tonight.”

“I’d love them,” I said.
 
I’d been hoping to see the last performance,
but I hadn’t held out much hope in acquiring tickets.
 
Since Benny’s murder, tickets to the play’s
final show had become the scarcest thing around Jasper Fork in years.
 

I reached for my purse, tucked
under the register.
 
“How much do I owe
you?”

“I couldn’t take a penny for
them,” she said.
 
“It wouldn’t be right
profiting off such a tragic event.”

“Really, I couldn’t take them for
free,” I said.
 
“Tell you what.
 
At least let me buy breakfast for you, even
though I’m cheating you, and we both know it.”

“That would be lovely,” Mrs.
Murphy said as she handed the tickets over.
 
“It’s good to know that they’ll go to a good home.
 
I hope you enjoy the show tonight, Victoria.”

“I’m happy to get the
opportunity,” I said.
 

The opportunity to see two of my
suspects in action again was priceless.
 
I tucked the tickets into my purse, and then I focused on my other
diners.

I had a long time to go before
the show tonight, and hopefully, I’d have a little more luck in the meantime
eliminating one or two of the suspects still on my list.

Chapter 14

“Hi, Amanda.
 
Fancy seeing you here,” I said as one of my
remaining four suspects walked into The Charming Moose.

“I’ve been hearing a lot about
the place, so I thought I’d see what all of the fuss was about.”

“Well, sit wherever you’d like,”
I said.
 
“I’ll be right with you.”

 
I put on my best smile, and it clearly puzzled her a little.
 

She ordered black coffee and dry
toast, and I felt guilty about charging her for such meager fare.
 

As I presented the bill a few
minutes later, I asked, “Are you sure that I can’t get you anything a little
more substantial?”

“No, this is all I need,” she
said as she fumbled in her purse for money.
 
Her handbag fell to the floor, and it just about emptied itself right in
front of me.
 
I leaned down to help
Amanda collect her things when I saw the note we’d left her last night tucked
among her things.
 
She’d gone out of her
way to make sure that I saw it.
 
I
decided to ignore it, just to see how she’d handle it.

After everything was gathered up
and restored to her purse, including the note Moose and I had left her the
night before, Amanda looked extremely agitated when I failed to react to it.