April was still dazed, so rather than have her perform her initial list of tasks, I agreed to talk to Marjorie and deliver the cake to Trooper Bob. April needed a few moments to recover.
The entire drive to Marjorie’s home, I thought about what April had said. I couldn’t believe she was a suspect, but sooner or later Trooper Bob was going to figure out that Leroy was lying. When he did, he was bound to go back to April as his number one suspect. I intended to find the real killer and get Leroy out of jail. I needed Leroy. Not just because he was my master baker. Leroy was my friend. No. That’s not right either. Leroy was my family. He was more like a brother. Family was a strange concept for me. Prior to moving to New Bison, I hadn’t given it much thought. My mom was dead, so it was just the Admiral and me. Since moving here, my blood relations hadn’t changed, but the people I loved, the ones who I would give a kidney to, or fight to the bitter end to protect, had grown significantly larger. That list included both Leroy and April. That meant I needed to solve this murder quickly.
I pulled in front of Garrett Kelley’s house. The front of the house had an abandoned air that I didn’t remember from the last time I was here. I sat and stared at the house, trying to put my finger on what was different. The only thing I noticed was that the windows and doors were closed. Today was bright and sunny. Most of the houses had their curtains open, if not their windows and doors. Even the ones with central air-conditioning boxes on the sides of their houses and didn’t need a fresh breeze from Lake Michigan opened their curtains.
Maybe Marjorie doesn’t like sunlight. I carried the lemon meringue pie up the porch steps and rang the bell.
I waited and was just about to ring again when I heard a loud thump inside. I tapped on the window. “Marjorie? Are you okay?”
A few moments later, the door opened. Garrett Kelley’s house wasn’t the only thing that wasn’t open and welcoming. Marjorie’s face was anything but inviting. “Yes?”
I felt my left brow rise. I forced it down and the corners of my lips up. “Hi, Marjorie. I’m Maddy Montgomery. I was here yesterday with—”
“I know who you are.”
“Great . . . well, when I was here before with Miss Hannah, she mentioned bringing you a sweet potato pie. She—”
“Is that what that is?”
“Ah . . . no, she wasn’t feeling well and wasn’t able to—”
“What is that?”
Maybe if you’d let me finish a sentence, I could tell you. “She felt bad about not getting here and remembered that you really liked lemon meringue pie, so I—”
“Ugh. I hate lemon meringue pie.” She backed up and started to close the door, but I’d had enough of her bad manners. I stuck my foot in the door and scooched my body in so she couldn’t shut me out. Geez, if someone takes the trouble to bake you a pie, the least you can do is say thank you and take it. You’d think I was trying to give her a fire-breathing, poisonous reptile. Her behavior wasn’t just rude . . . it was bizarre.
“How odd. Mrs. Portman remembered you as being exceptionally fond of lemon meringue pie.”
“Doesn’t she have dementia? She must be mistaking me for someone else. I’m really busy, so if you’ll excuse me, I—”
“Mrs. Portman does have dementia, but when it comes to food, her memory is as sharp as a meat cleaver.” I paused to watch her reaction. She was jittery, and her gaze darted around the street as though she were afraid to be seen talking to me. “Perhaps we should take this conversation inside. The neighbors can be exceptionally nosy in a small town.” I didn’t wait for a response. I used my knee to widen the opening and pushed my way inside.
Once I was inside, I stopped and waited.
She closed the door and glared. “Why are you here?”
Why am I here? I’m here to get information. Marjorie’s behavior was extreme. Ideas tumbled around in my brain like a clothes dryer. Eventually, a thought came to mind, and I blurted it out before I had time to think. “I’m here to find out who you really are.”
Marjorie’s brave facade slid to the ground, and I found myself staring into the eyes of a terrified stranger.
“Oh God. I knew this would never work. I knew it wouldn’t work. I knew it.” She glanced around the room as though she were looking for someplace to hide.
“Why don’t we sit down and talk. Maybe I can help.”
“Help?” She laughed. “No one can help me.”
“Do you want me to call the police?”
She went white as a sheet, and her knees buckled.
I placed the pie on a console near the door and caught her before she collapsed. I put my arm around her back and guided her to the kitchen. Once there, I put her in a chair and pushed her head down between her knees. At first, I wasn’t sure what to do for someone who looked about to pass out, but then I remembered what April had done to Candy and Michael had done to me. It couldn’t hurt.
I waited a few seconds, and she didn’t seem worse, so I got a glass from the cabinet and filled it with water. I wasn’t sure if I should splash it in her face, but I decided to just see if she would drink it. “Here, drink this.”
She took the water, but her hands were shaking so badly, she couldn’t lift the glass to her mouth. I held the glass and helped her drink like I would have done for a small child. After a few moments, she pulled away.
She sat at the table, shaking like a leaf.
I pulled out the chair where I’d sat during my last visit. “Okay, do you want to tell me who you really are and what you’re doing here?”
She wrung her hands. “My name’s Carla . . . Carla Lattimore.”
“Okay, Carla. I guess it’s safe to say you were never married to Paul Rivers.”
“Never even saw the man.”
“How’d you get mixed up in this?”
“I was a grifter in Chicago. A friend of mine, Brad Ellison, said he knew a way I could make a lot of money—”
“Wait, Brad Ellison, the Realtor?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. Anyway, Brad had seen a picture of Marjorie, and he thought I looked enough like her that I could pass myself off as her and help them get some property. Brad said Paul Rivers’s current wife was dumb as a box of rocks. She’d either roll over and accept that Rivers hadn’t divorced his first wife, or they could give her a few thousand dollars and she’d just take it and blow out of town. Anyway, Brad introduced me to Clayton Davenport. And Clayton told me all I had to do was stay here in this house and keep my mouth shut.”
My mind raced. Brad Ellison planned this entire farce before he died. How was this even possible? “And you did it?”
“Of course I did it. He was going to pay me fifty thousand dollars. I would have done anything for that kind of money.”
“Fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money. All you had to do was come to town and pretend to be Marjorie Rivers? So, what happened? Did Clayton want you to do more so you killed him?”
She stood up. “Oh no you don’t. You’re not going to pin that murder on me.”
“If you didn’t kill him, then who did?”
Marjorie . . . I mean Carla, shrugged. “I have no idea. Davenport told me to come to this house and stay here. I wasn’t to talk to anyone unless he was here.” She paced. “When he was murdered, I started to run, but I thought that might make me look guilty and then the cops would arrest me for the murder. I’ve got a record, and I lied about who I was, so they wouldn’t believe anything else I said. But then I got a note telling me to stay put. Lay low. And I’d still get my money.”
It took me a few moments to grasp what she was saying. “You got a note? From who?”
“No idea.”
“Do you still have it?”
She reached in her pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper with a few typewritten comments.
Lay Low. Stay Put and you’ll still collect your 50k.
“Where’s the envelope? Did it come in the mail?”
She shook her head. “No envelope. Someone shoved it under my door. I found it when I woke up.”
“You must have some idea who sent it. It had to be someone who knew you weren’t really Marjorie. It had to be someone who knew about this plan. Someone who was in on the scheme. Did Clayton or Brad talk about someone else?”
“No.”
I didn’t want to scare her, but it was time for a little tough love. “Brad Ellison and Clayton Davenport were in this scheme together, but both of them are dead. Someone else has to be involved. Someone else knows that you’re not Marjorie Rivers. Someone knows enough about this entire plot to have killed Sybil Castleton and to slip that note under your door. Now, you need to think.”
Carla’s eyes widened. She paced in the small kitchen. “I don’t know. I don’t know. They didn’t talk about stuff to me. I wasn’t part of their inner circle.”
She sounded sincere. The Admiral would say it was time to regroup. I thought for a few moments. “What was Sybil Castleton’s role in this whole thing?”
Carla stopped pacing. “Clayton wanted her to get back at you.”
“Me? Why me? He didn’t even know me. Did he?”
She shrugged and continued pacing. “I don’t know.”
“You’re lying. Look, either you level with me and tell me the truth, or I pick up my phone and call Trooper Bob.”
Her eyes darted, and she looked like a frightened rabbit ready to run. I could almost see the wheels spinning as she weighed the likelihood of getting away. She must have realized she’d never get away fast enough. I was pretty speedy with a cell phone and slipped it out of my pocket and held it so she could see the screen showed 9-1-1. All I needed to do was press Send. “You won’t make it to the end of the driveway before the police arrive.”
She flopped down in her chair, and her shoulders lowered about a half inch. “Fine.”
“Why did Clayton want to get back at me? And how did he plan to do it?”
“Look”—she turned toward me—“like I said, I wasn’t part of his inner circle, but I know he blamed you and someone named Octavia for filling April’s head with feminist nonsense. Octavia was dead, so that just left you.”
“How was he going to get me?”
“He watched your social media feeds and thought the best way to get to you was through your dog.”
My heart skipped a beat, and I gasped. “Baby? How?”
“He bought an English mastiff that has some kind of genetic heart problem. Once your dog bred with her, then the defect would pass to the puppies. Then, he could claim that your dog caused the birth defect that the puppies would inherit. He paid a vet who was going to swear that your dog was the problem.”
“Sounds farfetched.”
“He wanted to destroy everything you cared about. He was going to ruin your bakery and paid a fortune for the Belgian pastry chef to come to town. Then he was going to take your house and everything you owned. He knew about your great-aunt’s will and if you left town before one year was up, then you’d lose everything. So he just needed to get you out of town.”
Clayton Davenport was definitely thorough. If he wasn’t already dead, I might have killed him. That man was evil. It was bad enough that he wanted to hurt me, but he was using innocent animals like pawns in a chess game without thinking about the poor puppies who would be born with a heart condition simply to get back at Aunt Octavia and me. Attacking me was one thing. Attacking my dog brought out feelings of rage on an entirely different level. Whoever killed Clayton Davenport did the world a favor. I wouldn’t lose a minute of sleep if his killer was never brought to justice, were it not for the fact that my friends’ freedom was in jeopardy.
I growled. “Tell me everything you know from the beginning.”
