Pies and Prejudice (24 page)

Ella Mae wiped down counters, loaded the dishwasher, and mopped the floor. She thought of nothing but ridding the room of every trace of flour or speck of dough.

She still had a four-foot square to finish when two policemen strode through the swing doors.

“Watch it!” Ella Mae held out a hand to prevent them from taking another step across her clean floors.

At first, Officer Hardy looked contrite. Like a little boy scolded by his mother, he did a little hop backward until the swinging door, still in motion, slammed against his hip. He frowned, embarrassed, and began to pummel Ella Mae with questions.

She couldn’t take in everything he said, especially with the noises from the front room sweeping into the kitchen. Radios crackled, chairs were pushed around with protesting squeaks, and authoritative voices issued commands. Hardy’s inquiries rose above this din and then his partner, Officer Wells, the man who’d interviewed her during her most recent visit to the police station, added his voice to the cacophony.

Ella Mae heard the words “murder” and “Annie Beaufort.” She glanced at the gleaming countertops and scrubbed worktable and tried to focus, but time had switched gears again. Now it was moving too quickly, like floodwaters rushing through a narrow canyon. She suddenly remembered a lesson on measures of time from her high school science class. The world was spinning inside her head faster than a millisecond. Maybe even a microsecond: one millionth of a second.

She couldn’t grasp a single coherent thought or lucid word. Everything was a blur.

“Hey!” Hardy shouted and gently shook her shoulders. “Snap out of it!”

Jerked back to the present, Ella Mae sighed wearily and said, “I know this looks bad, but I’d never hurt Annie. She actually came here today to help me.” Gesturing at the pies on the cooling racks, Ella Mae pleaded for the policemen to believe her. “Someone came into the shop while I was back here taking these pies out of the oven. By the time I got them all onto the racks and returned to the front room…Annie…Her face was…submerged. I tried to save her. I
tried
!”

“We’ll talk more down at the station,” Wells said without a trace of emotion.

Defeated, Ella Mae nodded. “Can we go out the back door?”

Hardy cocked his head. “You afraid people will see you? Everyone knows this is your shop. They’ll put two and two together soon enough.”

Imagining the crowd that had already gathered in the wake of the ambulance and fire engine, Ella Mae shrugged. “I know all about Havenwood’s gossip chain. A dozen insane rumors will be spread about me before suppertime. There’s nothing I can do about that right now. It’s just…I don’t want to see where she’d been sitting. Annie. I want to remember her as she was before this happened. Like when I saw her on horseback at Respite Ranch. She was so full of life. I don’t think she wasted a minute of it.”

There it was,
she thought.
That theme of time again.

Had Annie known that hers was about to run out? Had she turned and recognized her killer? Had she seen a sinister reflection in the nearest display case or had she been betrayed by someone she’d viewed as a friend?

“Let’s go,” Hardy commanded and took Ella Mae by the elbow.

Flanked by the two officers, Ella Mae walked past the Dumpster, across the rear parking lot, and around the corner. The officers were unable to load Ella Mae into their sedan, however, for Hugh was planted in the middle of the sidewalk, arms folded over his chest, legs spread in a defensive stance. He was deliberately blocking their path.

Sunlight cascaded through the waxy leaves of the magnolia tree above Hugh’s head, streaking his molasses brown hair with caramel. But his eyes were dark, like a body of water reflecting a bank of thunderclouds. “Is she under arrest?”

“Not yet, Dylan,” Wells replied easily, clearly on familiar terms with the firefighter.

Hugh didn’t move. “Be sure to listen to the recording of the nine-one-one call. She did everything she could to resuscitate Ms. Beaufort.”

Hardy nodded. “Will do. Are you heading over to the kennel? My boys might need to stay a few extra hours.” He began to steer Ella Mae around Hugh. Though he handled her gently and Ella Mae didn’t feel the slightest bit mistreated, a quiet anger surfaced in Hugh’s eyes.

“Treat her well,” Hugh cautioned.

Hardy caught the look and nearly stumbled off the small edge of the sidewalk. The mild-mannered dog lover and civil servant had suddenly transformed into a stone-faced colossus with the clenched jaw. It was obvious to the officer that Hugh felt intensely protective of their suspect, but that was not Hardy’s concern. The only thing he cared about was catching Havenwood’s killer.

Ella Mae felt waves of powerful emotions coursing from Hugh’s body toward hers. She sensed frustration and guilt and a deep, unspoken longing. Their eyes met, and for just a moment, a miniscule fraction of time, she imagined what it would feel like to be held by him.

“I’ll be waiting,” Hugh said, as if he’d read her mind.

As the police cruiser pulled away from the curb and
inched through a knot of curious townsfolk and tourists, Ella Mae closed her eyes and focused on Hugh’s words. She didn’t know whether he’d meant that he’d wait at the station until her interview was over or that he was ready to touch her the moment she extended an invitation. The question was, with her stalled divorce and her involvement in two murders, would she ever be ready to explore the naked want she saw in his eyes?

Wells and Hardy took turns grilling Ella Mae until she nearly burst out in tears. The shock of Annie’s death combined with their relentless and repetitive questions had her at the breaking point. Finally, frustration and exhaustion won out and she ceased to be the courteous, cooperative woman they’d driven to the station.

“I’ve told you all I know!” she shouted two hours into their interview. “Why don’t you track down the people involved in the horse doping? I’ve given you owner’s names, the drug used, and repeated every word of what Annie told me verbatim. What more do you want?”

Neither man answered so Ella Mae continued her rant. “I don’t benefit from Annie’s death. Someone obviously wanted her to keep quiet about the cobra venom.” She put her hands over her eyes, hoping to give them a rest from the sight of the stark room and the sickly glow of fluorescent lights.

Hardy consulted his notes while Wells offered Ella Mae a bottle of water. She drank thirstily, welcoming the sting
of cold water on the back of her throat. The small sensation allowed her a fresh surge of anger. “Are you going to charge me with murder or not? Because I have nothing else to tell you! If you’re going to charge me then go ahead and do it! At least I’ll get to lie down on a cot, even if it’s in a jail cell.”

Wells studied her curiously. “We’re waiting for you to provide us with some tangible evidence, ma’am. So far, you’ve claimed that someone stole a rolling pin from your mother’s house and used it to incapacitate Bradford Knox. A few weeks later, this unknown individual then sneaks into your place of business and suffocates a woman in one of your pies. And yet, you insist that you have no intimate knowledge of either victim. You never met Bradford Knox and you had only a passing acquaintance with Annie Beaufort.”

“That’s the truth, as crazy as it sounds,” Ella Mae insisted.

Leaning forward, Wells jabbed the cover of a file folder sitting on the table with his index finger. “There hasn’t been a murder in Havenwood in decades and now we’ve got two of them. And
your
name shows up again and again in both reports. Why? How do you fit in?”

Sensing this was a rhetorical question, Ella Mae stared at the policeman in hostile silence.

Wells held her gaze. “That’s what I’m trying to work out. What is your connection? What are you keeping from us?”

“Nothing! It’s not my fault that you aren’t doing your job. Instead of wasting time with me, you should be questioning these racehorse owners, digging through Bradford’s financial records, or looking over the names of the companies supplying drugs to his clinic! But what are you doing? Wasting hours with someone with no motive!” Ella Mae reined in her temper with a sigh. “I demand to be allowed to see my attorney. I’m done talking.”

Hardy shot Wells a fleeting look of disapproval.

Ignoring him, Wells shrugged and rose from his seat with agonizing slowness. “I’ll phone Mr. Templeton right away.”

Once he was gone, Hardy fiddled with the label from his
water bottle, peeling it into small strips. He avoided making eye contact with Ella Mae. “We went over Knox’s financial records a dozen times. Both those of the clinic’s and his personal accounts too. Even though Knox took out a heavy loan against the equine center, the folks at the bank told us that he was planning to put on an addition and that the business was growing nicely. Everything adds up and that’s why my partner is unconvinced by your story.”

“Because there’s no money trail,” Ella Mae said and then threw out her arms in exasperation. “It’s not like I’ve got a safe deposit box stuffed with cash, so why focus all your energy on me?”

Hardy collected the scraps from the label and stuffed them inside the empty bottle. “Shoot, you didn’t even have a bank account until your mother and aunts bid on the pie shop property. I hear you’re in a rush to establish residency so you can file for divorce six months from now.”

“Exactly! I told you that I’m living on the generosity of my family and the money I brought with me from New York.” She sighed. “Look, I know Loralyn had an alibi, but isn’t it possible she had an accomplice?”

Tossing the bottle into the garbage can in the corner Hardy said, “Such as?”

“Knox’s daughter, Ashleigh. I was told she’s always in need of money. Or his son, Chandler.” Ella Mae felt a prick of guilt over mentioning him. “He wanted to be a partner in the practice long before Knox was killed.”

Hardy dismissed her theories. “We spoke with Ashleigh. She’s a greedy one, mind you, but why would she bump off her daddy when he was writing her checks? And Chandler admitted that despite hoping for the partnership years ago, he realized that he wasn’t ready and came to respect his father’s decision to wait.”

Ella Mae reached over and grabbed Hardy’s hand. “Just look for a cobra venom supplier in Knox’s records. Please. I saw an invoice on the office manager’s desk for twenty
grand.” She told him of the bill and the Post-it note bearing a question mark that she’d seen on Peggy’s desk.

“And you can’t remember the name of the company?”

Ella Mae’s shoulders dropped in defeat. “No. It was Greek or Latin. A single word. That’s all I can remember. Trust me, I wish I could rattle it off for you. But one of the thoroughbred owners, Mr. Malone, told me that Bradford had been supplying him with a magic potion. I don’t know much about racetrack regulations, but I’d bet that ‘potion’ is illegal.”

“I’ll look into it. In the meantime, try to stay out of trouble.” Hardy pulled his hand free as the door to the room opened and August burst inside, red-faced and out of breath.

“My client is to be released immediately. I am most disappointed in this department, Officer Hardy.” August filled the threshold like a man twice his height and beckoned for Ella Mae to join him. She was so glad to see the rotund attorney that she flung her arms around him. “There, there,” he soothed, giving her a fatherly pat on the back. “Come along, my dear, I’m taking you home.”

The moment Ella Mae entered the guest cottage, Reba flew at her, enfolding her in an embrace of strawberries and love.

After thanking August by calling him the finest gentleman in all of Havenwood, Reba politely shooed him away. “I should have been there!” she cried when he was gone. “It’s my job to protect you.”

Ella Mae took note of the gleaming countertops and spied a bucket and mop resting near the sink. She was too wrung out to console Reba. “You’ve been cleaning?”

Reba pulled a licorice twist from the package in her pocket, examined it, and then wound it around her finger. “I tidy up when I’m at my wit’s end. You know that.”

“This is not your fault, Reba. Someone came in and—”

“Shot Annie in the neck with enough tranquilizer to fell an elephant and then stuck her face into your pie.”

Gaping, Ella Mae sank into the nearest chair. “How do you know that?”

“August. He and the ME are good buddies. It’ll all be in the official report. Those jackass cops are gonna realize that Annie got a dose of the kind of tranquilizer used on big four-legged creatures, like, say,
horses
, and then they might finally start sniffin’ around the right places.”

The mention of “sniffing around” had Ella Mae searching for her dog. “Where’s Chewy?”

“Sound asleep in your mama’s sunroom.” Reba filled up the teakettle. “Your mama said he’s been out of sorts ever since you left this mornin’. It was like he was trying to warn her that somethin’ was about to happen.” She put the kettle on to boil and then began opening and closing cupboards, pulling out cups, the sugar bowl, and a jar of honey. “But your mama thought he was actin’ unsettled because of tonight’s new moon.”