The Pumpkin Muffin Murder (16 page)

“I can’t argue with that,” Phyllis said. “We all just want the truth to come out.”

Whitmire clasped his hands together in front of him. “You baked pumpkin muffins for the contest at the festival?”

“That’s right,” Phyllis said as she nodded. “But I brought them with me to the park this morning. They were in closed containers, and they were all accounted for.”

“You can prove that?”

Phyllis realized suddenly that she and the others had eaten some of those very muffins when they got back to the house, so she no longer had the physical evidence that she was telling the truth. But she said, “You saw them for yourself, Chief, and so did a lot of other people. They were still sitting right there on the table when Logan’s body was found. No one had gotten into them, or into any of the contest entries.”

Whitmire nodded. “Yeah, you’re right about that. We have pictures of the table, too, although they’re not detailed enough to tell us whether any of the muffins were missing from those containers. But I think we can stipulate that there weren’t.”

“I think so, too,” Phyllis said.

“Which leads to my next question: Have you ever made muffins like that before, Mrs. Newsom?”

Phyllis wasn’t surprised at the turn the conversation was taking. “As a matter of fact, I have,” she said. “I wouldn’t enter any recipe in a contest without trying it out first, usually several times.”

“I didn’t think so. What happened to those other muffins?”

“We ate them. Except . . . I believe there are still a couple left from the last batch I made before the ones for the contest.”

“And where are they?”

“At my house.”

“No one’s eaten any of them except you and the other folks who live there? Mrs. Wilbarger, Mrs. Turner, and Mr. Fletcher, if I remember right.”

Phyllis nodded. “That’s right. And my grandson Bobby. He’s staying with me right now.”

“Mike’s little boy.” Whitmire’s grim expression was relieved momentarily by a smile. “Cute kid. Where’s Mike?”

“He and Sarah are visiting Sarah’s family in California. Her father is in bad health.”

“Sorry to hear that. How come Bobby didn’t go with them?”

“He came down with an ear infection earlier this week and the doctor said he shouldn’t fly.”

“Well, that’s a shame. Sorry to hear about that, too. How’s he doing?”

“I believe he’s just about over it.” Phyllis didn’t doubt that the chief’s expressions of sympathy were sincere. She knew Ralph Whitmire was a decent man. He could be pretty dogged in his devotion to duty, but that was a good thing, after all.

“I’m glad to hear it. It looked like he was enjoying the festival today.” Whitmire moved some papers around on his desk. Phyllis didn’t think there was any reason for what he did, other than to signify that the interview was getting back to an official basis. “Now, you’re sure nobody got any of the muffins from that earlier batch except the people in your house?”

Phyllis realized that she was at a crossroads. She could either lie and risk it coming out later on that Dana had taken one of the muffins with her, which would make things look even worse for both of them, or she could tell the truth, which is what all her instincts urged her to do anyway when she was talking to the police.

She made up her mind and said, “Actually, Dana Powell had one yesterday evening when she stopped by the house.”

Whitmire’s bushy eyebrows rose. “Mrs. Powell was at your house yesterday evening?”

“That’s right.”

“Why?” Whitmire added quickly, “You realize you don’t have to answer that, Mrs. Newsom. You haven’t been charged with anything. You’re within your rights not to talk to me at all.”

“I know that. Mrs. Powell came by my house after school to see if I still had her keys.”

“Her keys?”

“Earlier in the day, Mrs. Wilbarger and I stopped by the school to pick up the scarecrows that Mrs. Powell had in the back of her SUV. She gave us her keys so we could get the scarecrows; then I took them back to the school office. That’s what Mrs. Powell asked me to do.”

“Then why did she think you might still have them?”

“Because I left them with the school secretary, Katherine Felton, and then later Katherine couldn’t find them and wasn’t sure whether I’d given them to her or not.”

“So Mrs. Powell’s keys were missing.” Whitmire picked up a pencil and made a note on a piece of paper. “Do you know if she ever found them?”

“No, I’m afraid I don’t. The question didn’t come up the next time I saw her, which was this morning.”

Whitmire nodded. “So she ate one of the muffins at your house. I don’t suppose she took any of them with her when she left?”

“As a matter of fact, I wrapped one up in a paper towel and gave it to her. I knew she was on her way to the park to help set everything up for the festival, and she hadn’t had any supper yet.”

Whitmire frowned across the desk. “She took one of your muffins with her, and then this morning what’s left of a pumpkin muffin shows up in the mouth of her dead husband.”

Phyllis said, “When you put it like that, Chief, you make it sound . . . well . . .”

“Suspicious?”

“Think about it,” Phyllis said. “Logan was still alive when Dana left the park. You have eyewitness testimony to confirm that. Even if she gave him the muffin that I gave her, and he ate it, there wouldn’t have been traces of it in his mouth this morning.”

Whitmire leaned back in his chair. “You do have a knack for putting together evidence and testimony to build up a chain of events, don’t you, Mrs. Newsom? I can see how you’ve been able to help out with those other cases.” Before Phyllis could say anything, he went on, “But what if . . . what if Dana Powell came back to the park last night, while her husband was still there but everyone else was gone? They had argued earlier. Maybe she gave him the muffin and told him it was a peace offering. He started to eat it, but she’d poisoned it and he died before he could finish.”

“She wouldn’t do that,” Phyllis insisted.

“But it could have happened that way.” Whitmire was just as adamant.

“So you’re suggesting that Dana Powell, who can’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds soaking wet, undressed her dead husband, put that scarecrow’s clothes on him, dragged a heavy bale of hay down to the cabin and into the dogtrot, and lifted his body onto it?” Phyllis shook her head in disbelief. “Even if she could do that, why would she?”

“Desperation gives people more strength than you might think they have,” the chief said. “And killers sometimes do things that make sense to them but not to anybody else. Anyway . . . maybe she had help.”

“Help?” Phyllis repeated with a confused frown. “What do you mean?”

Whitmire shrugged. “Logan Powell was supposedly cheating on his wife. Maybe she was fooling around on him, too. Maybe that’s why she killed him, so she could be with a boyfriend.”

“No,” Phyllis said. “I don’t believe it.”

“You know her well enough to completely rule out the possibility that she could have been having an affair?”

“Well . . . no. I don’t suppose I do. But I don’t believe it.”

Whitmire grunted. “I don’t deal in opinion. I’m just concerned about facts.”

“It sounds to me like you’re dealing more in speculation. No one has said anything to you about Dana having an affair, have they?”

Whitmire frowned but didn’t answer, which was an answer in itself, Phyllis thought. He toyed with the pencil on his desk and said, “I’ll need a copy of your recipe for those muffins, so we can check the ingredients against the substance found in Powell’s mouth. I’m pretty sure that’s what it was, though.”

“The recipe’s not going to confirm anything,” Phyllis pointed out. “There’s nothing unusual in the muffins. Just common ingredients, including canned pumpkins and chopped pecans.”

“Well, we’ll check it anyway. You can drop the recipe off anytime, or just e-mail it to Detective Largo, if you want.” Whitmire took one of his business cards from a holder on the desk, turned it over, and wrote on the back before sliding it across to Phyllis. “There’s her e-mail address.”

Phyllis picked up the card and put it away in her purse. “Where is Detective Largo? I halfway expected her to be here.”

“She’s still at the hospital, questioning Mrs. Powell.”

“After all this time? Isn’t that overdoing it?”

“We’re just trying to get to the bottom of this,” Whitmire said. “But no bright lights or rubber hoses; you have my word on that.”

“Do you know what Dana’s condition is?”

“From what I’ve heard, she’s all right. She just fainted from the stress. I think they’re gonna keep her overnight for observation, though.”

“Fainting from stress,” Phyllis said. “Doesn’t that sound like something an innocent woman would do after seeing her husband’s dead body?”

“I imagine trying to get away with murder is pretty stressful, too,” Whitmire said.

S
am was waiting for Phyllis when she got back to the lobby. As she came in, he stood up quickly from the metal chair where he’d been sitting.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Of course I am. You weren’t really worried that I’d be interrogated, were you?”

“Not really, but I’m glad to see you anyway. What’d the chief want?”

Phyllis glanced at the officer on duty at the desk, then said, “We’ll talk about it in the pickup.”

Once they were back in the vehicle, she asked Sam whether he would mind driving back down by the park to see how the festival was going. He agreed readily and turned the pickup in that direction.

“I reckon we can even go back in if you want,” he said as he held up his hand to indicate the duck figure stamped onto the back of it. “This is supposed to be so folks can go in and out after they drop off their canned goods. You’d think that with it bein’ nearly Thanksgiving, though, they would’ve made it look like a turkey instead of a duck.”

“I suppose they didn’t think of it. Anyway, the lake is known for the ducks that live there. And it’s not necessary for us to go back into the festival. I’m just curious to see how the attendance is holding up. I imagine that by now the news about Logan’s death has gotten around town.”

A few minutes later they reached the road that led to the park’s north entrance. Phyllis was surprised to see that cars were parked along both sides of the road, even farther away from the park than they had been earlier.

“Doesn’t look like what happened has hurt attendance,” Sam said. “Fact is, I’d say it’s more crowded now than it was this mornin’.”

Phyllis nodded as they drove past. “Morbid curiosity, I suppose. People have heard about Logan and want to see where his body was found.”

“They’ll have to come up with a bag of canned goods to do it,” Sam pointed out. “So that’s something positive to come outta the whole mess, anyway.”

“I suppose so,” Phyllis said with a sigh.

“We headin’ home now?”

“Yes, I don’t think there’s anything else I need to see here.”

When Sam got back to the house, a blue SUV was parked at the curb where he usually left his pickup. He pulled into the driveway instead and said, “Looks like you got company. You know who that SUV belongs to?”

Phyllis shook her head. “No, I don’t.”

She didn’t wait for Sam to come around and open her door for her. She opened it herself and got out of the pickup. The visitor didn’t necessarily have to have something to do with Logan’s death, but considering the way these things usually went, Phyllis would be surprised if that didn’t turn out to be the case.

Sure enough, when she and Sam went inside, they found Carolyn and Eve sitting in the living room with Barbara Loomis, Jenna Grantham, Taryn Marshall, and Kendra Neville. The women had cups of coffee.

“Hello,” Phyllis said.

Barbara Loomis put her cup back on its saucer on the coffee table in front of her and said, “I’m sorry we barged in on you like this, Phyllis. We just wanted to find out if you knew how Dana’s doing. She’s not home, and they wouldn’t tell us at the hospital if she’s still there.”

Phyllis looked at the concerned expressions on the faces of the women. Of course they were worried about their friend. They had a right to be, considering everything that had happened.

“Carolyn told us you’d gone to the police station,” Jenna added. “Did they tell you anything about Dana?”

“She’s still at the hospital,” Phyllis said. “According to Chief Whitmire, the doctor wants to keep her there overnight for observation. However, he didn’t seem to think there was any real reason to worry. She just fainted from the stress.”

Kendra said, “Yes, but he’s a policeman, not a doctor.”

“And he’s the one who had poor Dana arrested,” Taryn put in. “I don’t trust him.”

“It was the doctor’s opinion that Dana’s not in any danger from the fainting, not the chief’s,” Phyllis explained. “And she hasn’t actually been arrested.”