When Magic Is Murder (Sky High Pies Cozy Mysteries Book 4) (8 page)

CHAPTER
16

After talking with Eli Odom, I got
back in my car in the Bier Haus parking lot and dialed Dina’s number at the
station. When it went to voicemail, I tried her cell.

“I saw your name on my desk phone,”
she said, still sounding worn-out and grumpy. “But my heel got caught on the…”
She sighed heavily. “Sorry, Katie. You don’t need the nitty-gritty of my shoe
snafu. I just couldn’t grab the phone in time.”

“I can call later if you’re busy.”

She sighed. “I doubt if things will
be any calmer then,” she said. “What’s going on?

“I was wondering if you’ve talked
with Whitney Morgenson.”

“About what?” she said. “The fight
in the bar or the body in the gazebo?”

“How about all of the above?”

She found the energy to snicker.
“Thanks, Katie. I needed a little break from the monotony of watching
surveillance videos from the Lodge.”

“Did you find anything useful yet?”

“I learned that Ralph Gordon is a
litterbug,” she said. “And a sudden gust of wind showed me that his wife
doesn’t always wear panties.”

I winced at the thought of Maureen
Gordon’s roomy caboose on display for the world to see.

“And it also revealed that she has
a tattoo on her left cheek,” Dina added. “Want to know what it is?”

“Not really,” I said.

“Neither did I,” she groused. “But
it’s a unicorn.” She paused for a second. “Or a seahorse. I couldn’t exactly
tell and the zoom feature made it too blurry.”

“Well, those are all truly
interesting little factoids,” I joked. “But I was referring to things that
might help ID the man in the gazebo.”

“I haven’t seen anything helpful
yet,” Dina reported. “But there are many hours of mind-numbing footage to watch
before I call it quits.”

“In that case, I won’t keep you
long. After my conversation with Connie and Shane Scott earlier, I was
wondering if you thought Whitney Morgenson might be—”

“A bimbo?”

I stifled a laugh. “Involved in
John Doe’s death,” I continued. “She was with him the night he got into it with
Shane and Jasper.”

“And she was with her husband on
the afternoon that Mr. Doe died.”

“Is that confirmed?” I asked.

“Done and done,” said Dina. “Tucker
Morgenson is getting ready to make a large donation to the city of Crescent
Creek for a new park. He and his bride were with two members of the city
council yesterday from noon until five in the afternoon.”

“Which means Whitney has an alibi,”
I said.

“Yes, indeed! She has an alibi, a
very wealthy husband and one of the strangest marriages I’ve ever heard about.”

“Does her husband know that she’s
cheating on him?”

“Yes,” Dina said. “And she knows
that he’s got a girlfriend in Miami.”

I didn’t say anything in response
to the news.

“And that means Tucker and Whitney
Morgenson are two peas in a pod,” Dina added. “A very, very,
very
strange pod.”

CHAPTER
17

Zack and I were in my kitchen
making dinner for one of our cherished date nights while I told him about my
visit to see Eli Odom. I was fixing a garden salad, he was chopping tomatoes
for Manicotti a la Granny Hutton and there were six Oatmeal Cranberry Bars with
Honey-Maple Glaze in a plastic container on the counter. We also had a bottle
of merlot and an old James Bond movie on DVD. When I explained that John Doe
was in the dark about Whitney Morgenson’s marital status, Zack put down the
knife and spun around.

“You’ve
got
to be joking!”
he exclaimed in disbelief. “The guy didn’t know she was married?”

“Apparently not,” I answered. “I
guess she takes off her wedding ring whenever she goes out on the prowl.”

Zack muttered a few more zingers
before asking if I liked Eli Odom.

I smiled. “Besides being the most
powerfully-built bartender I’d ever seen,” I answered, “Eli reminded me of
Stallone. If, that is, Stallone had a beard, sleeve tattoos and a witty sense
of humor.”

“How do you know Sly isn’t witty?”

“Point taken,” I said, pinching the
tip of Zack’s nose between my thumb and forefinger. “And Eli actually had some
very interesting things to say about Whitney Morgenson.”

“The blonde with the big—”

I tweaked his nose again. “Yes,
that’s her. Some people put their money in stocks and bonds; Whitney funnels it
into silicone pillows and tummy tucks.”

“It looks like she’s getting a good
return on her investment,” Zack said. “I saw her climb out of a Maserati the
other night.”

“Uh-huh. But her name isn’t on the
title; that little beauty belongs to her husband.”

“Well, I figured as much,” he said.
“But still…what the husband has, the wife can enjoy.”

“I suppose so. That sort of
high-dollar lifestyle is completely foreign to me. I’m more the old-fashioned
kind of girl. I like the innocence of courtship, the intrigue of romance…”

Zack took my hand. “And the pleasure
of driving a vintage Ford Taurus,” he said playfully, “with a dented hood and
an EAT MOR CHIKIN bumper sticker.”

I rolled my eyes. “What can I say?
My dad likes Chick-fil-A. And I like that old sedan. It’s got over a hundred thousand
miles, but it keeps on rolling down the highway.”

Zack laughed and the warm, familiar
sound brought a mile-wide smile to my face.

“I do have a question for you,” he
said when the laughter faded.

“Yes, I love you,” I said, using
the phrase that we’d only recently begun saying aloud.

He came closer, swallowed me in a
bear hug and we shared a passionate kiss until the tomatoes and garlic started
bubbling loudly on the stove.

“Oh, shoot!” Zack quickly reached
for the pan. “I don’t want that to burn!”

While he tended to the marinara
sauce, I finished chopping vegetables and romaine for the salad. Then I
refilled his wine glass and leaned against the counter to watch him work.

“That smells pretty amazing,” I
said as he added a bit of chianti to the pan. “How’d you learn to cook?”

He grinned. “My mother
and
father, actually. They both love spending time together in the kitchen. I think
it’s how they’ve stayed together for so many years. Even when they’re
disagreeing about something, all the tension just melts away when they gather
around a bubbling pot of whatever they’re in the mood for.”

We sipped our wine for a few
minutes as the sauce simmered and fragranced the air with a perfect blend of
garlic, onion and fresh herbs. After a few minutes, I remembered that Zack had
something he wanted to ask me. When I reminded him, his face shifted from
cheery and relaxed to somewhat somber.

“Oh, wow,” I said. “If I knew it
was going to kill the mood, I wouldn’t have brought it up.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “My mood’s
still fine. I just…well, I wanted to know if you were going to get involved in
the dead guy at the Lodge thing.”

I’d expected the question. When we
first met, Zack already knew that I’d worked as a PI in Chicago. And it wasn’t
a secret that I still enjoyed solving a whodunit, although they were usually
the plots of the classic detective novels I read at night in bed.

“Connie asked me to look into it,”
I said. “Because of a family matter.”

Zack nodded. “You mean Jasper?”

“Yes, he wasn’t the one that
actually found the body in the gazebo, but he…” I didn’t want to divulge what I
knew about Jasper’s criminal record, so I paused to think of another way to end
the sentence. “Let’s just say that Jasper is a little anxious about the
police,” I finished. “And it isn’t anything we need to talk about on date
night.”

“Is the entire subject off limits?”
Zack asked. “Or just Jasper’s conviction for felony assault on a cop?”

My breath caught in my throat.
“Wow! That’s a surprise! How’d you know?”

“I overheard a couple of guys
talking in the newsroom at the
Gazette
. I mean, everybody in town knows
that a body was found at the Lodge. And one of the reporters keeps a police
scanner on his desk.”

“Then I guess it’s common knowledge
by now, huh?”

Zack shook his head. “I wouldn’t go
that far, Katie. But I think there’s a rumor circulating.”

“About Jasper?”

“Afraid so,” he said. “Which is
actually part of the reason I wanted to know if you were going into amateur
sleuth mode again.”

I smiled at the way he’d phrased
it, but didn’t say anything.

“Oh, I know that look,” Zack said.
“What’s up?”

“Nothing’s up,” I answered,
brushing one hand down his cheek. “Tell me more about why you were curious
about my…” I paused, smiling sheepishly. “…how did you put it? My ‘amateur
sleuth mode’?”

His face went red. “Oh, that’s it!”
he blurted. “You’re offended that I—”

“No, I’m not offended,” I
interjected. “But I am getting pretty hungry! Let’s move along with your famous
Manicotti a la Granny Hutton, okay?”

He chuckled again, gave me a quick
kiss and went back to work on dinner.

“So?” I asked, pulling one of the
kitchen stools closer. “Why did you ask me about Jasper?”

“Because of the rumors,” he
answered. “I know Dina’s a great detective. And everybody else in the department
will do what they can to help solve this thing. But I don’t want people falsely
accusing Connie’s cousin.”

“Are you sure he’s innocent?”

“I’ve known the guy for a while
now,” Zack said. “He made a pretty big mistake in the past, but I just don’t…”
He leaned down to check the flame on the burner under the pot of water. “Here’s
the bottom line, okay? I know you know your stuff. I’ve listened to your
brother and sister brag about how well you did as a PI in Chicago. And I know
you’ll do everything you can—legally and without getting in Dina’s business—to
help uncover the truth about whatever happened in the gazebo.”

When he finished, I put down my
wine and leaned in for another hug.

“Have I told you lately that I love
you?” I murmured into his chest.

“Yeah,” he said. “But I’m okay
hearing it again.”

CHAPTER
18

The text from Dina Kincaid later
that night was short and sweet:
call me asap, pls!
It arrived while I
was in the kitchen doing dishes. After finishing the task and drying my hands,
I went into the living room, plopped on the sofa and dialed her number. She
answered on the first ring, so I figured it was something important.

“How are you, Detective Kincaid?”

Dina skipped right over the
friendly greeting. “Did you know Bitsy Sanger has a sister?” she asked,
sounding short of breath. “And did you know the sister lives in Hawaii?”

“I did not,” I said. “How lucky for
her, right?”

“I know. Besides uncovering those
little details, I found out there’s no way that was her coffee cup by the
gazebo. She’s been on Maui for the past week, spending her days on the beach
and her nights at one luau after the next. I finally got her on the phone about
an hour ago.”

“Like I said, how lucky can you
get?”

Dina laughed. “You’re right, but
you know what? Bitsy deserves a two-week vacation to Hawaii. I think it’s the
first time she’s been away since everything that happened with the divorce and
custody battle.”

I wasn’t in Crescent Creek when
Bitsy Sanger’s marriage ended, but I heard about it from my sister. Bitsy and I
were childhood friends, so Olivia kept me in the loop with weekly updates. It
was a contentious split; plenty of mudslinging, slurs and snarling lawyers that
ended with Bitsy getting the two kids and Aaron moving to Colorado Springs.

“Did you hear that she’s dating
someone new?” I asked.

“Amanda said something about seeing
her at dinner not too long ago,” Dina said. “Good-looking guy with impeccable
table manners.”

“Those are both nice to find,” I
said.

“Especially if they come in the
same package,” she quipped. “Like you’ve got with Zack.”

“I thank my lucky stars every night
before I go to sleep.”

“You deserve it,” she said sweetly.
“You both do.”

“Thanks, that’s nice of you to
say.”

“It’s the truth, Katie. I mean,
when we were kids, I know we didn’t get along so well. But it’s nice to be
adults now. It’s like my mom always says, ‘With age comes wisdom.’”

“I like that one. I’ll have to
remember it the next time somebody moans about their birthday.”

We laughed together briefly before
Dina went back to the reason for the call.

“Anyway, since Bitsy Sanger is out
of town, that pretty much gives her a solid alibi for the situation at the
Lodge.”

“You mean the murder?”

“Or accidental death. It’s really too
soon to make a conclusive call. Yes, John Doe was deceased. And yes, he’d
suffered a blow to the head. But it would seem that was from falling and
hitting the bench. The ME said that wasn’t enough to kill him.”

“And that means there’s a chance
that his death was caused by something else,” I said.

“Possibly,” Dina agreed. “But the
autopsy didn’t reveal any other visible wounds or injuries. We’re waiting for
toxicology and the rest now, so I’m focusing on witness interviews and trying
to ID the victim through other means for the time being.”

“Did you have a chance to talk to
Annie Dunkin’s sister?”

“Yes, I stopped at Annie’s this
evening,” Dina explained. “Thanks for sending that text after you got the scoop
from Reverend Tuttle. It turns out that Bethany Dunkin, also known as Bitsy,
met the victim at a party in Boulder a few weeks ago. As you might expect, he
flirted with her and tried to get her number. But Bitsy’s seeing someone, so
she declined the overture.”

“Did she tell you his name?” I
asked.

“I wish,” Dina said. “She’d only
met him once. She thought it might be Alan or something similar.”

“According to Dean Oxford, they
looked pretty chummy outside the coffee shop.”

“I know; Dean told me as much when
I stopped by Uncommon Grounds to see him. He said that Bitsy Dunkin and the man
in the tux got into her Range Rover together.”

“What was that all about?”

“Bitsy said his car had crapped out
and he needed a ride to Crescent Creek Lodge. She also told me that she gave
her soy latte to John Doe when he got out of the car.”

“Mighty darn chummy,” I said. “For
two people that only met once.”

“That’s Bethany; gregarious and
ready to lend a hand to one and all.”

“Sounds a little
too
ready,”
I said. “Considering that she didn’t even know the guy.”

“But she knows karate,” Dina said.
“She’s a black belt. I’d say the girl can definitely take care of herself if
someone gets handsy.”

I didn’t want to debate the wisdom
of Bethany offering a ride to a man she didn’t really know, so I asked Dina if
they’d found the victim’s car.

“Not yet,” she answered. “Although
I did get a look at Bethany’s Range Rover. It was parked in front of her
sister’s place, so I peeked in the windows. It was neat and tidy, much like the
woman herself.”

“Speaking of which,” I said. “Did
she tell you what they talked about on the drive to the Lodge?”

“His current romantic
entanglements.”

“Do tell,” I said.

“It was pretty tawdry,” Dina said
with a stern tone. “The guy sounds like a regular Don Juan.”

“A different girl in every port?”

Dina chuckled. “And rough waters
between destinations. From what Bitsy Dunkin reported, our victim was quite the
Casanova; two different women in Crescent Creek have been vying for his
affections.”

“Sounds like he was one busy guy.”

She laughed again. “Yeah, very
busy. Until he wasn’t.”

“Well, love can be a dangerous
game.”

“We both know that’s true,” Dina
sighed. “But time wounds all heels, so I guess our John Doe learned his lesson
the hard way.”