Hot Cider and a Murder Read online

  “No, but they bite and I’m completely against being bitten,” he said and took another sip of his coffee.

  “There is that,” I said. “So what do you know that’s new?”

  “We can’t find anything else with any traces of the poison from the items we gathered from the party. Of course, something could have been missed. But nobody else got sick so we’re assuming the poison was just in this one cup that only Daphne drank from.”

  “I do remember seeing Daphne carrying around a Styrofoam cup,” I said. “So that means the killer gave her the cup. She probably wouldn’t have taken it from them unless she knew them well.”

  “I have somebody I want you to speak to,” he said and looked over his shoulder. “Daphne’s brother Mark. When I spoke to him he seemed evasive.”

  “Mark? I wondered about him losing that job to Daphne,” I said thoughtfully. “But I’ve talked to him a couple of times, and he does appear to be grieving his sister.”

  He nodded. “Some people are good actors. And it may have been just general nervousness and not evasiveness when I spoke to him. Some people get that way when talking to the police.”

  Agatha returned with a large latte and set it in front of me. “Thank you, Agatha, you’re a saint.” I picked it up, inhaled the scent of wonderful pumpkin-flavored coffee, and then took a deep drink.

  Agatha chuckled. “I don’t know if I’ve ever been called a saint before,” she said and laughed again. “But I’ll take it. Thank you.”

  “Well, people should be calling you a saint more often,” I said.

  “I was trying to pry information out of your man about Daphne’s murder, but he sure is tight-lipped,” she explained to me. “Are you going to be as tight-lipped as he is? Or are you going to spill what you know?”

  I glanced at Cade, who just grinned and shrugged. “I guess it all depends on what you want to know,” I said.

  “Well, darling, I want to know if we know who killed her? Whoever it is needs to be hung high. Is hanging a thing anymore?”

  Cade chuckled. “No, hanging isn’t a thing anymore.”

  “Poor Daphne,” I said and took another sip of my coffee. “What a terrible thing to have happened. Maybe we should see if the state will reinstate hanging once the killer is caught?”

  “Do you want to know something?” Agatha asked, leaning in and speaking quietly. “I saw Daphne with another man when she was supposed to be dating Jack Farrell. I never understood it. Jack is such a handsome man, and he always seems so nice. But I didn’t want to upset anyone, so I never said anything to him.”

  “Do you know who she was with? Had you seen him before?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “He looked vaguely familiar, but I don’t know who he was. My friend and I were in a restaurant in Boise when I saw them. As the evening wore on, Daphne had a bit too much to drink, and when they left, she was staggering and laughing loudly. It seemed that everyone in the restaurant was staring.”

  I looked at Cade, who was considering this. “It seems Daphne had a habit of running around with different men.”

  “Makes you sad for what this world is coming to when people behave that way,” Agatha said thoughtfully. “I hate to sound like an old woman, but back in my day, people didn’t run around like that.” She laughed. “I guess that does make me sound like an old woman, doesn’t it? Just a judgmental old thing.”

  “I think everyone wishes for simpler times now and then,” I said and put my hand over hers. Agatha was a dear friend, and I didn’t blame her for what she was thinking.

  “The other thing I heard was that Daphne and her brother Mark fought a lot,” Agatha said without looking at either of us. “I hate to say terrible things about that family because they’ve always been so good to me and everyone I know.”

  “What do you know about it?” I asked. “Anything specific?” I glanced at Cade again.

  Agatha kept her eyes on her hands in front of her. “It’s silly, really. But Mark had a tantrum one day at the lodge, saying that his parents favored Daphne over him. It would’ve been laughable if he had been a youngster at the time, but it was last year when it happened, and he was far too old to behave that way. I tell you, Rainey, it was like he was a spoiled nine-year-old.” On the last part she looked up at me, her eyebrows furrowed.

  “That’s odd.” Cade looked only mildly interested in the conversation, and I considered kicking him under the table to make sure he was paying attention to what Agatha was saying.

  “I do know that the Richardses are good people,” Agatha said. “And I hope no one’s going to blame anything on anyone in that family.” She looked pointedly at Cade.

  “My job is to find the killer, regardless of who it is,” Cade spoke up. “Any information is helpful, and we’ll keep it in the strictest confidence.” He looked at me.

  Agatha nodded. “Of course, Detective. Now then, can I get you a refill on your pumpkin spice latte?” she asked him.

  He looked embarrassed for a moment, then handed her his cup. “Thank you, Agatha.”

  “So, are you into silly froufrou drinks now?” I asked him. Cade usually drank his coffee plain or with just a little sugar and cream.

  “Don’t ever call pumpkin spice latte a silly froufrou drink,” he said in a mock-stern tone.

  I laughed. “All right then. Pumpkin spice lattes. Coffee of men.”

  He tried to look at me with a straight face but ended up grinning. “We need to go out again soon. Very soon.”

  “You don’t have to ask me twice,” I said softly. “Whenever you can get a little time away from this case, I’m ready.”

  “How about Friday night? Wherever you want to go.”

  “Friday is my very favorite night of the whole week,” I said. “I’ll be ready.”

  We sat and gazed at one another, waiting for Agatha to come back with his refill. I could do this for hours without getting tired of it.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Do you know what I saw today?” My mother asked.

  “Not exactly, but I might be able to guess,” I said into the phone. I knew Gina’s ad for her new flower shop had run in the evening paper the day before. I was pretty sure that’s what Mom was talking about, but I didn’t want to volunteer it if she hadn’t seen it yet.

  “An ad in your newspaper advertising a new business being opened up,” she said, breathing heavily into the phone.

  My eyes went to George Cooper at the desk across from mine. I was at the newspaper trying to write an article on Thanksgiving traditions. “I have never owned this newspaper,” I said into the phone and turned away from George.

  “Well, when is the new flower shop supposed to open up? I bet you know that, don’t you?” Her tone was accusatory, and I wasn’t sure why.

  “Mom, I do know when it’s going to open, but it’s not like I had anything to do with it. It’s going to open the first of November,” I whispered into the phone. I knew she was upset about it, but I wasn’t sure it was my place to fill her in.

  “Just as I suspected. Gina Richards is trying to horn in on my business for the holidays,” she said.

  “Mom, you knew at some point that someone would open up another flower shop, didn’t you? You have nothing to worry about. People have been coming to you for years. Even when Celia Markson’s shop was still around, people came to you because they know that you offer a quality product and you do beautiful work,” I assured her. It was the truth. My mother could take a handful of weeds and artfully arrange them in a glass vase and make them beautiful.

  She sighed. “It seems like my own daughter would have let me know when a competitive business was going to open up.”

  “Mom, I’m sorry. I thought you were going to speak to Gina anyway, and I thought she would bring it up to you. And Mom, I’ve got to go. I’ve got an article that I’ve got to get done before my deadline.”

  “Okay, fine,” she said. “You go on and write your article for that traitor newspaper. But you
remember who your real friends are.”

  I sighed. “I love you, Mom,” I said and hung up the phone. Mom had a flair for the dramatic.

  When I turned around in my seat, George was looking at me. I smiled and shrugged.

  “So has that detective you’re dating found that girl’s killer yet?” he asked casually. George looked to be in his late forties with curly blond hair and a thick mustache. He had mostly kept to himself since I had begun working here, with just a grunt of hello now and then. I didn’t know much about him.

  “Not yet, but I’m sure the police will get it sorted out any day now.”

  He nodded. “You know, her boyfriend Jack Farrell tried to sell me some pictures.”

  I stared at him. “What do you mean ‘pictures’? What kind of pictures?”

  “Compromising pictures. He owns a photography business, you know, and I guess she let him take some pictures.”

  My heart started pounding in my chest. How does a boyfriend take compromising pictures of his girlfriend and then offer to sell them to a reporter? “Why would he do something like that?”

  “He wanted to embarrass the Richardses. He thought he could get the girl back by blackmailing her with the pictures, but when she laughed at him, he came to me, hoping I would buy them from him.”

  “And did you see the pictures?” I asked him.

  He nodded. “I saw them. Sure, they were kind of compromising, but I’ve seen worse. But it’s not like I was going to put something like that in the newspaper. The guy had to be out of his mind.”

  It didn’t make sense. “Right. I mean, under what circumstances would he think you would put them in the local paper?”

  He nodded. “The younger brother, Mark, wanted to run for mayor. Jack thought he could embarrass the entire family if she refused to go out with him again.”

  “So if she agreed to go out with him, he wouldn’t sell you the pictures?”

  He nodded. “That’s exactly it. He said he had other pictures even more compromising, and he was just showing me a couple to whet my appetite.” He chuckled. “I thought the guy was crazy.”

  I felt sick to my stomach. Was Jack really that depraved to think that he could blackmail Daphne into getting back together with him? What kind of relationship would that be? And what kind of person would want a relationship like that? It made me wonder if that kind of person would kill another person when he didn’t get what he wanted. I thought the answer to that question was yes.

  “It does sound crazy,” I agreed with him.

  “You know what else? I heard a rumor around town that Alex Stedman had sexually harassed her.”

  “That rumor does seem to be going around town,” I agreed. I wasn’t going to give him any more information than he already knew.

  “I also heard Alex Stedman paid her ten grand to keep her from taking him to court over it.” He sat back in his chair and twirled a pencil between his fingers.

  “Who did you hear that from?” I asked him. Not that it mattered. Too many people already knew about it.

  He chuckled again. “Gina Richards. She didn’t keep it a secret. That family has issues.”

  Gina needed to learn to keep her mouth shut. Was she so angry and bitter toward Daphne that she ran her mouth all over town? It appeared that was the case and it irritated me.

  “You know, Daphne’s parents, Lana and Bryan, are really nice people. I’ve known them most of my life. I just feel really bad that their daughter died, and that their daughter-in-law is spreading rumors around town,” I said. I felt like I had to stick up for them in their time of trouble.

  “I agree with you on that. I don’t think you’d ever meet nicer people than Bryan and Lana. But here’s the thing,” he said, leaning forward over the desk. “Alex Stedman never had the money to pay her off. I did an article on his new business when he first opened it, and he told me he was running it on a shoestring. He said he barely had the starting capital for just the bare bones operations.”

  “What do you mean he didn’t have the money? Going into any business is expensive,” I said. “He had to have money.” I wondered if Alex had told him the truth, or had his business turned itself around in the time that he had it open?

  “You bet it costs a lot of money,” he said. “But we hung out for a while and talked, and he told me he had to get a loan for startup capital and the payments were eating him alive. He worried he wouldn’t be in business long.”

  “That’s been a few years ago. Don’t you think he’s made enough money now so that he’s better off financially?”

  He smiled. “That’s the hope of most businesses. That once they get going, they’ll bring in enough capital to make it, but I saw where he filed for personal bankruptcy back in June.”

  I was stunned. If Alex filed for bankruptcy back in June, how could he have paid Daphne the ten thousand dollars? Or was the reason he had to file for bankruptcy because he had paid Daphne the money? Things weren’t adding up.

  “Bankruptcies are public, aren’t they?” I asked him.

  He nodded. “The newspaper holds an account where we can view that information.”

  Gina had said that Daphne had put the money down on a new BMW. I had seen the BMW parked at the lodge, and if Daphne was unemployed, how did she pay for the car?

  “I’m sure Cade will get to the bottom of this thing soon,” I said slowly. I smiled at him to cover for the fact that my head was spinning with what he had told me.

  “I’m sure he will. But you might put a bug in his ear about these things. In my opinion, either Alex Stedman or Jack Farrell could have killed Daphne, and I’d hate to see them get away with murder.”

  “No one’s going to get away with murder,” I assured him. “And I agree, if these things are true, it does make you wonder if either Jack or Alex could have been responsible for Daphne’s murder.”

  I turned back to my computer and stared at the article I had begun earlier. My mind turned with this new information, and I found myself unable to concentrate on the article. What had Daphne gotten herself into? It made me sick to think of the twisted web that surrounded her life. I shook off the thoughts and tried to focus on the article I was writing. Thanksgiving would be here before we knew it, and I was getting excited just thinking about it. But Daphne’s murder weighed heavily on my mind. It felt like we needed one more piece of the puzzle to get this thing sorted out and put a killer behind bars.

  Chapter Twenty

  I stood in front of the collage of pictures that Jack Farrell had taken of Daphne. They were arranged on a small table and displayed in carved wood frames. The more I looked at them, the more I thought it was almost a shrine to Daphne. It made me wonder how long this little collection had been on display in Jack’s shop. It hadn’t been long after Daphne died that I had stopped in to speak to him the first time, and I had only seen the photos on the wall. Had he set up the arrangement after killing Daphne? I shook myself. I was jumping to conclusions, but the fact that he had tried to get money for pictures of Daphne infuriated me.

  Jack was busy with a customer, coming out of his studio with a young mother and her toddler daughter in tow. When he saw me, he looked surprised for a moment, then he smiled and nodded while continuing to speak to the mother. I wondered if she knew that the man taking pictures of her daughter might be a murderer.

  I looked around the shop and saw a new photo that I was sure hadn’t been there when I was in last. Daphne was leaning against a tree, hands in her jean pockets and a smile on her face. Was I imagining things? Or did I just not remember seeing this picture the last time I was here?

  Jack finished up his business with the woman and she left the shop.

  “Hello, Rainey. How are you today?” he asked, extending a hand to me.

  I turned around and smiled, extending my own hand to shake his. “I’m great,” I said. “How are you today, Jack?”

  “I’m doing great,” he said with a smile. Jack was handsome with his ginger hair and blue ey
es. “Are you ready to take that author photo? I was wondering when you’d be back in.”

  “I still need to do that, don’t I?” I said, and then I looked at that picture on the wall. “Tell me, Jack, was this picture here when I came in a couple of weeks ago?”

  He looked at it and then turned back to me. “No, I found it on a roll of film I developed and thought how nice Daphne looked in it. I decided to blow it up and frame it and put it on my wall to remember her by.”

  “Film? Do many photographers use film these days?” Cade had told me that Jack had a fondness for film and creating sepia-tone photographs, but I wanted to see what he had to say about it.

  He chuckled. “Not many, but some of us still do. I have a fondness for actual film. As a matter fact, I probably took the last photography class in high school that was ever offered in the country.” He chuckled. “I’m joking, of course. But it seems like it was; it’s been a few years since I was in high school. I learned to develop my own film old-school. I just enjoy the process so much.”

  “Really? I can see where that would almost be a lost art form, what with all the computer programs that can create different effects. It makes it so easy to edit photos these days, doesn’t it?”

  He nodded. “Yes, it sure does make it easy. But I still enjoy using real film from time to time. Daphne and I went out near the river, and I took probably fifty or sixty pictures of her that day. I wish I’d kept them all, but I had tossed a lot of them when they didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped. Then I found a roll that I hadn’t completely taken all the pictures on and this one was on it.”

  I nodded. “Is it hard to get the equipment and chemicals that you need to develop film?”

  “You can get it on the internet. Lots of people think it’s time to do away with darkrooms and just go completely digital, but I love the medium. It’s so hands on.”

  “I didn’t realize you could still buy the film and chemicals.”