“Suspect?” He laughed. “Suspect in what?”

  “Gossip,” Aunt Maxi said and jerked Loretta’s sleeve. “Let’s go grab a coffee.”

  Aunt Maxi knew Patrick so well that she knew if he even heard I was sticking my nose into another murder investigation, he just might lose it or I just might lose him.

  “Listen, I’ve been thinking about the idea of the roastery, and I think we can do it. I called Tamara. She said that it just might work out, and I’m going to meet her this afternoon. I called Emily, and she can too.” He stopped talking and gave me a shifty look. “What’s wrong?”

  It didn’t take Patrick long to look around the coffee shop and then at Aunt Maxi before he knew something was up.

  “There are a lot of people here that aren’t normally here at this time.” He pointed at Loretta and Aunt Maxi. “I thought they had rehearsal.”

  The door of the coffee shop swung open like the curtain was rising on opening night before Gretchen Cannon walked in, the fur coat draped over her forearm. She handed it off to Sydney.

  “You simply have to get this cleaned.” She stomped back with me in her sight and used a very loud outside voice, putting all eyes on her. “Now that Sydney has looked at the script, she’s going to. . .” Gretchen hesitated and made the sign of the cross, the first inclination the woman even believed in the big guy in the sky. She dabbed her eyes with the handkerchief and stumbled over her words. “I just can’t. I can’t. Simply can’t.” She motioned at Sydney.

  “She simply can’t believe Alan is gone.” Sydney held the fur out over the counter for me to take.

  “Gone? Y’all ran him off already?” Patrick laughed and looked around to see our reactions. “What? Y’all act like someone died.”

  “And I thought southern men were supposed to be gentleman,” Gretchen scoffed and marched toward the door.

  “Here.” Sydney thrust the big fur coat at me and then took off after Gretchen.

  “What was that?” Patrick stood there with a dumbfounded look on his face.

  “Alan is dead,” I whispered over the counter with the darn coat in one hand. I picked up one of the maple glazed long johns and practically stuffed the entire thing in my mouth.

  “You literally ate that in one bite, which tells me you are stressed. Kitchen. Now.” He pointed to the kitchen and took off in that direction.

  “What am I going to do with this fur coat?” I asked Bunny.

  “Perry Zella is right over there. Maybe his laundromat can clean it.” She made a very good suggestion.

  Perry and the mystery group were discussing Alan with Mark when I walked up.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt, Perry, but do you think you could clean this fur for me? Coffee was spilled on it, and I believe they need it for the play.” I tried to look around the darn thing for the coffee stain but couldn’t find it.

  “No problem. I can have it ready tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Great. That’s great news.” I pointed to the coat rack next to the front door. “I’ll put it over there so you can grab it on your way out.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon,” he told me and went back to his group while I headed back to the kitchen.

  “Let me guess.” Patrick didn’t leave me any space to explain about Alan before he started in on me. He began the usual lecture I got when he didn’t approve of me doing a little snooping around. “You think he was murdered. The whiteboard gave it away.”

  “In Roxy’s defense…” Loretta Bebe had pushed her way into the kitchen and the conversation. “If Alan’s death is ruled a homicide, I will be a suspect, Patrick. I don’t do well in jail.” She gnawed her lip. “Not that I’ve ever been in prison, but I don’t do well under high stress. I start breaking out in hives.” She started to scratch.

  “Who does she think she’s fooling?” Aunt Maxi had also joined us. “Unfortunately, there’s no tanning bed in prison, so she’s worried we’ll all find out she’s been lying all these years,” Aunt Maxi said in a hushed tone while Loretta did her best to convince Patrick she needed my expertise in the law field.

  “Thank you, ladies, but I think I’ll talk to Patrick alone.” I gestured for them to leave us alone and turned around to face him when they were safely out of earshot. “We aren’t sure if he was murdered or not.”

  “How did he die?” Patrick asked.

  While I told him the entire story, I grabbed some Kentucky burgoo from the freezer and part of today’s lunch special since it was pretty near time for the lunch crowd.

  “And you have already declared it a murder even though Spencer hasn’t claimed it to be a murder?” Patrick shook his head.

  “I’m claiming it now.” Spencer walked into the kitchen. “Roxy, I’m going to need your full statement because after we inspected all the ropes and the rope in particular that snapped and gave Alan his fatal blow, it was cut, and the knife was found on the catwalk.”

  Spencer pulled out his phone and showed me a few photos.

  “Geez.” Patrick ran his hands through his hair. “You’re not going to try to solve this. Tell her, Spencer. Tell her to stay out of this one.”

  “I’d like to do that, Patrick, but one problem.” Spencer slid his gaze to me. “You’re our only witness to someone being up there, and I’m afraid if they saw you looking up at them, you could be in danger.”

  That startled me into a wide-eyed expression.

  TWELVE

  I’d like to say Patrick’s attitude turned around after Spencer gave me a time to be at the department to give my statement, but it didn’t. One, he was mad because it was the same time he wanted me to meet with Emily and Tamara. Two, he didn’t want me to be the next victim. He remembered other circumstances when my big nose got me into a situation in which someone had literally set my cabin on fire to keep me from snooping.

  Of course I’d spent twenty minutes trying to convince Patrick I was safe and it was all good. Then he got a text from Walker Peavler, Camey’s husband. They wanted to know if we wanted to come to the Cocoon Hotel for dinner. A little couple’s night.

  It was a no-brainer for me that I wanted to go since I knew I wanted to get the scoop on what Alan and Gretchen had been arguing about so loudly, according to Mark.

  Patrick was going to meet with Tamara without me and afterwards take Pepper home for me.

  Still, I couldn’t wait to get to the sheriff’s department to talk to Gloria Dei, one of the employees of the department. She wasn’t a deputy, just a secretary who knew it all.

  Though it was Bunny’s afternoon to stay before the afternoon gals relieved her, I told her to go on home because there was really no sense in me leaving. When the afternoon staff arrived, it would be time for me to head on over to the department, then come back to meet with the girls about Emily’s see-you-later party.

  The first building on Main Street was the Honey Springs Church. I couldn’t stop the memories of when Patrick and I were teenagers. Both our families made us go to church, but little did they know that we’d slip out the back door before Sunday school started. We weren’t doing anything bad, just acting like two teenagers who liked to spend time down on the shore of Lake Honey Springs. Aunt Maxi said that if I didn’t watch it, I was going to lose my religion on that lake. I didn’t know what she meant at the time.

  Next to the church were the firehouse and the sheriff’s department, where I needed to be. Across the street from that was the Moose Lodge. I pulled in the only free spot that looked to have been cleared from the snow and headed to the front door of the department, but not before grabbing the box of sweet treats and a thermos of coffee.

  I rarely went anywhere without taking some coffee and sweet treats. Especially the department, where the treats not only helped me get information out of Gloria but also out of the deputies. Not like they’d come out and tell me something on purpose, but coffee and treats did make people chat and get them to say things they normally wouldn’t just blurt out.

  “Roxy!” Gloria rushed over to me when I walked in. “I was supposed to get off at three, but I saw on the ledger of the Bogart file you were coming in.” Her eyes drew to my hands. “Are those…?”

  “Treats.” I smiled and handed them to her.

  “Not that I was waiting around for those, but I will have one.” She gestured by nodding for me to follow her over to the small table, where the coffee pot carafe was completely stained around the glass pot where the hours-old coffee had sat without being dumped. “The deputies are great at their jobs, not great at coffee.”

  “That’s why you have me.” I patted her on the back. “So you’ve seen the Alan Bogart file?”

  “Mm-hmm.” Gloria was busy looking into the bag of goodies I’d brought before deciding on one of the cranberry scones with the sparkling hard sugar crystals on top. “Let me tell you, no one was more surprised than Spencer when the forensic team came back with the rope in the evidence bag.”

  “I’d like to get a look at that rope.” I wasn’t so subtle.

  “I knew you were going to say that, and I can’t get over how you are the only witness.” She took a bite and glanced around the department. “Spencer had to go back to the theater for a second because I’d heard there was another piece of evidence they wanted him to see on the catwalk, so I’m going to go tell the deputies there’s a few goodies out here, which might take me a few minutes.”

  I followed her eyes as they shifted from me to the yellow file on her desk.

  “Gotcha.” I winked and smiled, since this was how she and I danced around her not showing me the file but telling me it was on the desk.

  Granted, I could get a hard talking-to if I got caught looking through the file, but if I got caught taking photos of anything in there, then that’d be a whole other story.

  Which I did. I had taken out my cell phone and took a photo of the file’s photo of the severed rope. Even though it might have appeared to be just a cut rope, the way the fibers were cut would be able to tell a real forensic team exactly what type of tool was used to cut it. The murder weapon was definitely the sandbag, but the tool used to cut the cord would probably lead us to Alan’s killer.

  There wasn’t a whole lot in there that blew my mind or that I didn’t expect to see in an initial autopsy report Kevin had performed. Alan Bogart’s death had been caused by a broken neck. Kevin had ruled it instantaneous, which gave me a little bit of relief since Alan didn’t even see it coming. For that, I was grateful.

  In the file there appeared to be next of kin, and it was marked that they’d been contacted. I couldn’t get to the dictation of the conversation, since the sounds of chatter and feet were coming back down the hall.

  “Roxy, glad to see you got here on time.” Spencer was with the group. “I was a little surprised when Gloria told me you were here and alone with the file.” He grabbed the file from Gloria’s desk. “Not that I’m accusing you of looking at it, but I’m not putting it past you either.”

  “Spencer,” I said with a gasp. “Me? Unethical? I’m just sitting here twiddling my thumbs.”

  “Roxanne Bloom, twiddling her thumbs when there’s been a murder.” He scoffed. “Y’all hear that?” His questions were met by a few nods along with some laughs from the deputies, who’d already started to munch on some goodies and make themselves a cup of coffee.

  “Ha, ha.” The sarcasm was in my tone.

  “I actually asked you down here to talk about exactly that. Follow me.” He waved the file at me to come with him.

  There was a nice long silent pause between us. Another technique I learned in law school. So many times people talked through awkward silences or pauses, but if you could just beat the silence and not give in, the other person would start talking. I didn’t want to add anything to my conversation with Spencer at all. He was the law, and anything I said could be held up in court. I was on an answer-only basis with him at this point in the investigation.

  He took me into an interrogation room I’d been in before. I sat down in the chair before he even asked me to and watched him get all the equipment together.

  “I’m glad Crissy is going to be okay.” He set up the microphone and recorder before he planted himself in the chair.

  “Me too,” I said and watched him open the file, take out his little notebook, and click his pen.

  “State your name, occupation, date of birth, and why you were at the theater.” He knew he didn’t need to tell me why we were here. It was the official statement he needed for the investigation now that Alan’s death was ruled a homicide.

  I told him the story of how someone’s movement caught my eye when I was helping Aunt Maxi up to her feet where I’d knocked her out of the way, followed up by my noticing someone going through the door. Then Spencer turned off the tape recorder.

  Interesting.

  “You’re our only witness.” He said it again, but his tone was different from when he’d first mentioned this at the coffee shop. “I didn’t want to talk about it in front of Patrick because I know how touchy he is when you get a little too involved. But it’s been brought to my attention that none of these people get along.”

  He pulled a piece of paper out of the file I’d not been able to flip to.

  “I also know they’ve all been to the coffee shop.” He pointed at the photos of all the suspects I had in my mind. “I talked with Alan’s production crew. All of them have worked with Alan for a long time, and they all know how he works. According to them, they know exactly how he likes everything set up, and when they were putting up the overhead lights for the production, there weren’t any sandbags up on the catwalk or overhead. I’ve been trying to get in touch with Butch Turner to get a copy of the last inspection, since Loretta Bebe kept saying it had passed.”

  “You’re beating around the bush.” I could tell he was circling around to get to why I was really here. “Just cut to the chase.”

  “Fine.” He sucked in a deep breath and looked cautiously at me, as if he were trying to assess whether to ask me something or tell me what he wanted to tell me. “I wanted to see if you could get any information out of these people at the coffee shop or just keep your ear to the ground. I was going to put someone on you since I’m worried that the killer saw you, but if we don’t come out and publicly say we have a witness, then I think you’ll be safe. Besides, I don’t think you’d let me put someone on you, and I know if I told you Loretta Bebe was in fact a suspect, you’d end up helping her in some shape or form.” His shoulders relaxed as he got the words out. “So I might’s well use you to my advantage and get a report on what you hear so we can get this thing solved.”

  “Spencer Shepard.” A big grin crossed my lips. “You do think I’m pretty good at solving crimes.”

  “Now, now. Don’t be thinking you’re getting a gun or badge,” he joked. “Honestly, it’s not looking great for Loretta. Especially since we have two witnesses who she told if she’d known he was going to change the script, she’d rather he’d crawled in a hole and died. They also mentioned some sort of verbal fight between the two.” Spencer took out his phone and laid it on the table. “And without internet, we’ve got to go back to good ol’ foot-and-mouth investigation.”

  “The internet is still out?” That was more shocking than Loretta being a suspect.

  “Yep.” He shook his head. “We rely on emails, cross-references, and even looking up phone numbers to call over agencies when we get a homicide. Those things are only found on the internet in this day and age. Really making it much harder and take longer to get to even the slightest bit of information needed for a murder investigation.”

  Spencer was right. We’d gotten so used to having technology at our fingertips and instant gratification that it took something like a big snowstorm that knocked out the internet to really get us back on our toes.

  “Luckily for you”—I pointed at him—“I’ve never had the amazing technology you’ve had to figure out a couple of your investigations and had to rely on the sleuthing I know.” I tapped my nose. “Being nosy, asking questions, and kinda doing things not on the up and up.”

  “Those are things I don’t want to know, but I do want to know if you hear anything.” He closed the file. “And are you sure you don’t want someone in plain clothes to be hanging around in case the killer tries to come after you?”

  I tilted my head to the side, with my jaw relaxed and an eyebrow tugged up.

  “Just had to make sure.” He and I both stood up at the same time. “Who do you think did it?”

  This was such a turning point in our relationship, and I was very excited about it. Given that he knew I was a lawyer, he knew I would be smart.

  “I’m a little on the cautious side with Mark Redding.”

  Spencer flipped the file back open.

  “He’s the reviewer with the Times.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Spencer nodded. “I’ve got a call into the Times so I can get information on him from his boss. I can’t even get things like background checks with the internet down. Warrants. Nothing.”

  “He’s a talker. He’s really gotten invested in Perry Zella’s mystery club. I’ll see what I can get out of Perry when I drop by there tomorrow to get Gretchen Cannon’s fur coat,” I said in a fancy tone of voice. I ran my hand down my front like I had on a fur coat.

  “Don’t be getting yourself into any situation that can harm you,” Spencer warned.

  “Don’t worry. I love my life and am not ready for it to end.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket and waved it over my shoulder on my way back down the hall. “I’ll call you.”

  THIRTEEN

  Now that I had clearance from Spencer to stick my nose in places where it didn’t need to be stuck, I was actually excited about getting the meeting with the girls over with and going to the Cocoon Hotel, where I would meet up with Patrick, Camey, and Walker for supper.

  All my suspects were staying at the Cocoon, and someone had to have overheard something. The only problem I was going to have was Patrick. I’d rather face any killer than face Patrick. He’d have a conniption for sure if he knew Spencer had even asked me to snoop.

 

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