Fudge Brownies & Murder (21 page)

"We're just doing a little decorating." Her mother clamped her arm over the top of the newest tote bag that she had taken charge of moving, thwarting any view Carla may have had of the contents as she passed by. "A few things that will go with the painting I'm working on."

"The nursery isn't that big. There isn't enough room for all of the stuff you just hauled in." She pushed open the bathroom door and flipped on the light. "I think it's time I see the nursery. You guys aren't exactly instilling trust by keeping me out. The room is for
my
baby and its mommy wants to see it."

She caught a glimpse of them staring wide-eyed at each other as she shut the bathroom door. It felt so good to get up and move around without any worries. Carla took a deep breath. And then another. When was the last time she'd been able to do that? She turned around and looked at her reflection in the full-length mirror attached to the back of the door. The baby connected with a solid jab to remind her of why she was really in the room.

When Carla returned to the couch, Amy and her mother were sitting in adjacent easy chairs examining several squares of fabric. "I want to get you an upholstered rocker for the nursery," her mother said as she held up two of the squares. Amy followed suit and held up the two that had been on her lap. "Which fabric do you like best?"

She shook her head. All of the samples were subtle and modern, her style, but she couldn't concentrate on making a selection. "I…I don't know. Leave them on the table, and I'll think about it."

"Are you okay?" her mother asked as she arranged the fabric squares along the edge of the dark wood table. "Did your water break in there?"

"No, nothing that serious." She rubbed the top of her belly. A tiny foot pressed into her palm. "But the baby has definitely dropped."

Amy's eyes bugged out. "What does that mean? Is it dangerous?"

Carla laughed. Her clueless about pregnancy best friend had unintentionally lightened the moment. "No. It just means its head is starting to descend into the birth canal. The baby is getting ready to make its appearance, probably within four weeks."

Amy drummed her fingers on her knee. "Your due date is before then."

Bruce looked up from his laptop. "Whoa."

"Are you scared?" her mother asked. "Because everybody is at this point, believe me."

"Of the birth?" She shook her head. "No. About whether I can cope with motherhood…yes."

Amy took a deep breath of the incense-scented air. It was a special blend that Rori always burned, meant for calming frayed nerves and stressed bodies. Amy had a stash of the herbal incense cones at home, but she could only burn them when she was alone because they made Alex sneeze. It had definitely been a stressful week between sneaking supplies for the baby shower past Carla while she channeled her husband and grilled them about what was in the bags and boxes to worrying over what the birth would be like. Amy had promised to help and provide moral support, but she didn't do well with blood. Carla said that aspect was unavoidable in a birth. Ugh. The experience could tip her one way or the other as she tightrope walked the fence between having or not having a child herself.

When Amy told Shepler about what happened at Shantelle's apartment, he agreed to have another officer check Harlan out. There had been a string of unsolved thefts in the area over the past month. Someone was breaking in to vacant rental properties and under-construction homes, stealing everything from appliances to power tools. If the scary fake brainiac was thrown in jail because he was committing the thefts, Shantelle would be safe. Listening to the heavily-tattooed woman's life story as she went through the admission process at the shelter had tugged at Amy's heart. It was no wonder why her life was a smoking-hot mess. Parentless by the time she was ten, courtesy of both horrible role-model parents being sent to prison.

So the drop-in yoga class would be the perfect antidote to the serenity destroying things invading Amy's life. There were three other women already in the classroom when she walked in. As she slipped off her shoes and stowed them in one of the storage cubes, the sounds of a heated argument slipped through the open doorway. Nervous looks bounced back and forth between the other women. Amy tugged on the bottom hem of her T-shirt. Whatever was happening didn't sound good.

"I need to go fill up my water bottle," Amy said as she grabbed the glass bottle out of her tote bag. Luckily it was encased in an insulating sleeve, so no one could see it was already full of water. The women, clustered together in the far corner, looked at her as if she was insane to leave the safety of the wood-floored studio. She slowly opened the door, stepped outside, and shut it behind herself.

In the hallway, the words of the argument were clearer. One voice she recognized as Rori's. The other sounded familiar, but Amy couldn't quite place it.

"Stay away from my boyfriend," yelled the unidentified woman.

Amy took a few steps closer to the partially open door of Rori's office at the end of the hall. "As far as I know, Thad has his own free will," Rori responded at a volume she never used in a yoga class. "He can have a relationship with whomever he wants."

"I've been dating him for three months. He's mine!"

The decibel level of the indignant screech stopped Amy in front of the hot yoga room. She rested her hand on the door's glass. It was as hot as the argument that she wasn't sure if it would be wise to interrupt. It seemed to be getting out of hand. Would it move beyond just words? She never thought serene Rori could get so angry, but there were two sides to every pancake. One side could look perfect while the other had craters and scorch marks.

"Men aren't necklaces. They aren't a possession," was Rori's reasoning. It was a very good point. Hard to argue with. Amy took a couple more steps closer to the office door.

But the other woman decided to take on the task of disputing the pretty solid bit of wisdom. "He's
mine!
If you care about your life, you had better stay away from him."

The door flew open. Amy realized why the threatening voice sounded so familiar. Candi Edwards marched out of the room. Anger flared in her brown eyes when her gaze locked onto Amy, who was only a few feet away. Her dark curls rippled and swirled as she stomped out of the office. Amy imagined her hair was a kinetic energy-powered weapon…
killed by a lethal zap of static electricity
.

"Get out of my way!" she screamed as she shoved Amy's shoulder. Air whooshed out of her lungs as her back slammed into the wall. Not exactly a lightning bolt, but it still hurt.

Rori rushed into the hallway. Her face was mottled with red speckles. She glared at Candi's back and yelled, "I'll call the police if you step foot into my studio again!" Her expression softened as she placed her hand on Amy's forearm. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. What was that about?"

"A man. According to her, we share the same boyfriend. According to him, he broke up with her weeks ago."

Amy took a deep breath. A bolt of pain zinged through her abused shoulder. She would need to do some extra stretches to work out that brand new muscle kink. But for the moment, there were other things that needed to be addressed. Amy pointed at the empty office and asked, "Can I talk to you in private for a minute?"

Rori nodded and led the way into the small room. She stepped to the side then closed the door behind Amy. There were papers scattered all over the room. On the floor in the corner, a small bouquet of daisies was scattered on the wood floor, surrounded by a pool of water and shimmering broken glass. So the fight did take a physical turn. Rori nudged one of the stray forms toward her desk with the toe of her tennis shoe. "What's up?"

"You two were fighting about Thad who works at Anderson's Pharmacy?"

She froze for a few seconds with her foot paused above another paper on the floor. Then she nodded. "Yes."

"I hate to tell you this, but I was in my husband's office building on Saturday. While I was waiting for him to get his work done, I was looking out the second floor window at the street below." She swallowed. Her throat was as dry as a piece of burnt toast. What she was going to say next wouldn't be easy for Rori to digest. "I saw Thad get out of Candi's car and kiss her good-bye. I'm sorry."

Rori mule kicked the front panel of the wood desk. The hit boomed like a thunderclap through the tiny room. "No reason for you to be sorry. Just another bad relationship choice for me. I have a long history of hooking up with the wrong guys." She drummed her fingernails on the top of the battered desk as she turned to look at the shattered vase. "Thank you for letting me know what you saw. That clarifies quite a few things."

"I wish I could say I'm glad to help, but I'm not in this case."

Amy slipped out of the office to let the yoga teacher compose herself. The romantic encounter she had observed linked together, not in a good way, some of the relationship puzzle pieces for Rori. Amy rubbed her abused shoulder as she slowly walked back toward the classroom. If only she could find the missing link in Esther Mae's murder. Shepler only believed cold hard facts. Intuition and gut feelings didn't have much stake in his analytical, murder-solving world, but it did in hers. She couldn't shake the feeling that some part of the love triangle fit perfectly into the unsolved homicide case.

An hour later, Amy walked along Main Street. Rori had done an amazing job of pulling herself together after the ferocious spat and taught a wonderfully relaxing yoga class. Amy's shoulder didn't hurt at all anymore thanks to a few creative cat-cow stretch variations. Now it was time for a treat. A big mug of herbal tea to be consumed, preferably, by the fireplace at Riverbend Café. Coffee was her favorite beverage, but tea just seemed more appropriate after a meditative, relaxing workout.

She slowed her pace and peeked through the front window of Whisper's Intimate Apparel. Rayshelle's pumpkin-orange hair glowed like a beacon in the dimly lit back of the store. Amy decided to see how she was doing. Friday had been a monster of a bad day for the lingerie clerk.

The giant jingle bell on the door sounded merry, but Rayshelle's expression was anything but happy when she turned to look at Amy after she stepped inside the store. This time, Amy didn't even bother to pretend she was interested in any of the strip club-chic garments. She wove between the circular racks until she was close to Rayshelle. "How are you doing? It looks like you're feeling better."

"I am, but I am going to make somebody pay for doing that to me."

"You're positive you were drugged and didn't just eat something bad then end up with food poisoning?"

"Hell no. I ate something with weed in it. The problem is I'd had three meals before I got sick, so I'm not sure what it was in or who gave it to me." She smacked the top of a display rack with her fist. "But I have a few ideas."

Secretly feeding a person food laced with drugs wasn't much different than switching prescriptions. Since Rayshelle and Esther Mae were related, could they both be targets of the same person? "Wow. That's a pretty…slimy thing to do. Who do you think would've done that?"

Rayshelle sprawled in one of the black pleather chairs arranged outside the dressing rooms. The furniture protested being used by making a rude sound. "Uncle Buck…Sarah…my sister."

Amy perched on the edge of the seat of the chair next to her. "Who's Sarah?"

"The other woman LeighAnne hired."

"Why do you think she would want to harm you?"

"I can't think of any." Rayshelle's knee bounced up and down as she tapped the floor with her red glitter zebra-print combat boots. "It's just that she shared some cake she had made with me when we were eating lunch in the booth."

"Fair enough. How about the others?"

"Uncle Buck hates me—always has. The old coot's probably gone crazy and decided to mess with me to entertain himself. As far as Shantelle goes, I wouldn't put anything past her, especially now that she's hooked up with Harlan. He takes the prize for the worst boyfriend that I've ever known her to have. I'm sure he would think what happened to me was hilarious."

Amy had tried to avoid Harlan as much as possible, but she had no reason to doubt Rayshelle's speculation on why he could've given her pot brownies, or whatever the cannabis culinary culprit was. Yet something was a little off about going with him for most likely suspect. "Shantelle said she had broken up with him when we all got to her apartment. He threatened her, and that's why I took her to the women's shelter…or maybe you don't remember that."

Rayshelle jerked her head backward. There was a loud
thunk
when her skull collided with the chair frame. She squinted at the black painted ceiling tiles. "The relationship may have been off for the moment. I called the shelter to talk to her this morning. She left, told them she'd hit the jackpot and didn't need help anymore."

Pretty much the same thing she'd told her former boss at Buzzy's Tattoos.
What was up with the jackpot references? Was she a dedicated lottery player?
"Did she mean a literal lottery or bingo jackpot?"

"I doubt it. I'd say she and Harlan came up with some new scam to try to make money."

It was turning into a day of tales about bad men and the women who love them. "I took her to the shelter because he tried to hit her. The way she dodged him, it looked like she'd done it before."

"My sister doesn't know what safety is. I'm sure he isn't the first guy to take a swing at her. She gets off on living on the edge, pushing people to their limits just to see what will happen. Don't even get me started on her penchant for bad boys, like serial killer bad. All of the tattoos are just another way for her to disturb people, too. She doesn't care about her own life or anybody else's."

The information was disheartening. Why would Shantelle walk away from the safety of a shelter to go back to a man who disrespects and abuses her? "Do you positively know she's with him?"

"When I was coming to work this morning, I saw her driving his truck. The box was full of high-end stainless steel appliances and some nice furniture." Rayshelle used her fingernail to chip at a dried patch of something—Amy didn't want to know what—on the chair arm. "Harlan wasn't with her, so I don't know what is going on. But I do know the pink camouflage recliner Aunt E bought last year was among the stuff. She had it specially made with big rhinestone tacks on the side of the back."