02 - Double Shot Page 21

  “She’s right.” Kevin watched her skirt around Mr. Leather and Chains.

  “We all found out about the gun at some point or other,” Bobby agreed, as did the old ladies. And Spencer.

  Utterly exasperated, I stepped up to the table. All of these people knew about the stupid gun. I shot in the five and six. All of them. The seven fell. I scanned the rest of the room. Henry knew, too, as did Elsa, and her daughter.

  Oh, for Lord’s sake, the Drunken Dancer probably knew about it. And she had probably informed Mr. Leather and Chains!

  I pocketed the eight and nine balls with far more gusto than necessary and reached up to collect the cash on top of the overhead light.

  Avis led the applause as several large bills changed hands. A few of those bills were being placed into my hand when Henry wandered over from the dance floor.

  I braced myself for a stern lecture on the evils of gambling to make my irksome evening complete, but Henry didn’t seem all that concerned.

  He told Bobby that Karen was looking for a new dance partner, and dear Mr. Decker forgot all about helping yours truly catch the killer. Instead he grabbed his hat from Ethel and bounded out to join Karen, almost knocking Spencer Erring over in the process.

  But Spencer was distracted by something across the room. In fact, I doubt he even noticed the game had finished or that the music had changed, since he was so busy staring off in Candy’s direction.

  What was it with this guy and younger women? The railbirds were lining up to collect their winnings from him, and I joined the queue.

  I pretended not to notice his interest in Candy. “I do believe this is Heidi Perkins and the Pink Flamingos,” I told him. “Karen loves their stuff.”

  As if to prove my point, she and Bobby were attempting to get a line dance underway. But they had to work around the lone Drunken Dancer, who was stumbling about in the middle of the floor.

  Spencer continued staring at the bar, uninterested in the dancers. I checked again and realized he was not focused on Candy after all. He was watching Melissa.

  “The Pink Flamingos,” I repeated.

  He heard me that time. “Is this really necessary?” he asked.

  “Apparently. The crowd here really likes country and western music.”

  “You know what I mean, Tessie,” he scolded. “All these questions about Angela?”

  I patted his well-shaped forearm and promised I would pick on someone else for a change of pace, as one of the semi-regulars asked me for a match.

  “One game,” I insisted. “Then it’s someone else’s turn.”

  While she racked, I looked around the table. It was someone else’s turn. But who to pick on next?

  Wilson popped into my head. Hadn’t he insisted days ago that I should stop worrying about everyone’s love life and instead concentrate on what actually happened on the nights of the murders?

  I decided it was worth a try and appealed to the group. “Maybe if we all—you all—think about what exactly happened in here last week we can get somewhere. Did anything unusual happen around the time of the murders?”

  “Two people got killed,” someone called out and got a few chuckles.

  I ignored the sarcasm and ran some balls.

  Avis Sage spoke up. “The Fox was real drunk the night he died, Tessie. That was unusual.” He frowned. “But we already talked about that.”

  “Everyone knew Angela had been killed by then, correct?”

  “That’s right,” Henry agreed. “The cops had just been in here, questioning us all.”

  He held up his Bible, but somehow the gesture seemed a lot less threatening than on previous occasions. “Those who love their life lose it,” he told me.

  The quote was probably a bit out of context, but I was pretty sure it was accurate, especially when Avis mentioned that the Gospel of St. John was one of his dear mother’s favorites.

  “Fritz played real well that last night.” Doreen tried to get us back on track. “I remember because I was betting on him.”

  “Nothing unusual there,” Kevin mumbled.

  “I lost a ton of money to him.” Spencer had finally stopped studying the bar.

  “Nothing unusual there,” Kevin repeated.

  I turned to Mr. Sage. “I am surprised Fritz was playing so well if he was drunk. I can’t sink anything if I’ve had too much.”

  “Me neither, Tessie. The old man hadn’t seen the Fox that drunk since way back.”

  “Not since he got Lester Quinn killed,” Henry added. He again held up his Bible, and said something about a two-edged sword.

  “It was a gun,” someone mumbled.

  I shook my head and returned to topic. “Why was Fritz drinking like that?” I asked no one in particular.

  “Silly.” That was Ethel. “He was upset about Angela. He kept muttering her name every time he made a good shot.”

  “Everyone was upset that night,” Kevin added. He took off his glasses, but forgot all about cleaning them.

  Doreen patted his knee. “Must be Fritz was drowning his sorrows. Angela was a real loss, wasn’t she?”

  “He got so wasted he ended up under the pool table.” Henry was much less sympathetic. “He rolled around like an idiot until Melissa finally dragged him out.”

  “No one else was helping him,” Melissa said. She had finally rejoined us.

  “And he kept on playing?” I was incredulous. “Even after he almost passed out?”

  “No,” Avis corrected me. “He took a break then, and gave the old man the table.”

  “What did Fritz do?”

  Spencer pointed to the huge window overlooking the waterfalls. “He propped himself over there and let Avis play.”

  “But he wasn’t paying any attention.” Doreen elbowed her friend. “Remember, Ethel? He wasn’t even betting anymore. He just stood there like a zombie once Melissa got him back on his feet.”

  “No one else would help him,” Melissa repeated.

  Since I had wisely spotted her the six, my opponent won the game, and I finally got a break from playing. Mr. Sage started a match with her, and I stepped back to the window. Perhaps if I stood in the exact spot Fritz had the night he died, the identity of the killer would come to me in a fit of inspiration.

  Speak to me, Fritz.

  ***

  But the ghost of Fritz Lupo failed me. Unless Karen and Candy were having a lot more luck than I, we would be forced to admit defeat to Wilson. The prospect was altogether disheartening and worthy of some serious pouting.

  I lost track of time, and my mind actually wandered to the pressing issues facing Trey Barineau, Sarina Blyss, and even Winnie Dickerson. Was everyone really going to converge at the Blyss household? I smiled at the thought of the altogether evil Agnes finally getting her just due.

  “Play one last game with me before you go, Miss Tessie?” The voice of Avis Sage harkened me back to reality. He winked at me. “For old times’ sake.”

  Excuse me?

  I studied the Wiseman, but Avis offered his usual benevolent smile. Clearly, he was only referring to the past week. I yawned and stretched, and revived myself for my final game at the Wade On Inn.

  Sometime during Avis’s first turn it occurred to me to ask what Fritz had been drinking the night he was killed, since almost everyone at the Wade On Inn drank beer only.

  “It would take a lot of beer to get that drunk,” I observed.

  “Well then,” Melissa deduced, “he must have had a lot of beer.”

  “Nothing harder?” I persisted and waited for Avis to shoot.

  But Mr. Sage had frozen in position aiming for the three. I waited patiently and let him take his sweet time. Lord knows the old man must have been as tired as I.

  Eventually he called me over. “Look at this odd angle, Tessie,” he said and actually yanked me down to where he was bent over the table. “Fritz didn’t drink anything,” he whispered in my ear. “It’s tricky, isn’t it?” he spoke up for the rest of the crowd
to hear.

  We exchanged a meaningful look and bent our heads over the table again. “But, Avis,” I, too, spoke softly. “Everyone’s been insisting he was drunk as a skunk. Even you.”

  Avis stared at me. “He wasn’t drinking anything that night.” He was still whispering, but I heard him loud and clear.

  I leaned closer. “Then he wasn’t drunk?”

  “No, Jessie. I don’t think he was.” The poor guy looked like he might start crying, but instead he stalwartly made an effort at the three ball.

  Jessie?

  I closed my eyes and prayed for strength. But the stupid railbirds were demanding a faster game. I opened my eyes, bent over, and made a haphazard shot at the stupid three. I missed magnificently, and Mr. Sage took over the table and ever so slowly started pocketing the balls. Slowly. Very, very slowly.

  I decided to worry about the Jessie comment some other time, and concentrated on the more pressing issue. Fritz Lupo had been sober the night he was killed. He was only pretending to be drunk. But why?

  So he would have an excuse to crawl around under the table in search of his gun, of course. And, of course, he didn’t find it.

  I blinked at the six ball Avis was aiming for. By the time Melissa had dragged him to his feet, Fritz Lupo knew it was his gun that had killed Angela.

  When Avis pocketed the six, the crowd got excited, and the railbirds insisted on a short break to up the various antes. While the spectators were speculating, I placed another fifty on top of the light.

  “For old times’ sake, Mr. Sage?”

  He winked and put his own bill up there. “For Leon,” he said, and I let out a sob before I could stop myself.

  Chapter 30

  Avis missed the seven, and with his blatant mention of my father, I am sure I missed a few heartbeats. But I stepped up to the table and pushed my intuition into high gear. That’s what the Wiseman was trying to jolt me into doing.

  That night, when Fritz Lupo was acting the fool and rolling around on the floor, he had figured out who murdered Angela. Avis had faith that I could figure it out, too.

  Speak to me, Fritz, I again pleaded to his ghost.

  What a shocker, I missed the seven. While Avis tried again, I searched the crowd. Who, Fritz? Who hated Angela enough to kill her?

  I sighed out loud. We had already established that lots of people had some sort of motive. When Avis missed the eight ball, I sighed even more and went back to the game.

  But then something else occurred to me. Fritz must have trusted this person enough to confront him, or her, with the truth. I know pool hustlers, and they have a healthy sense of self-preservation. Fritz did not expect whoever he accused of murder to kill him also. He judged that wrong.

  The railbirds were their usual impatient selves, but I ignored them and considered each of the regulars. Certainly he had not suspected Avis. And certainly not Doreen or Ethel. I focused on the bar. Neither of the Quinns made sense either. Elsa or her daughter may have held some sort of vague grudge against Fritz about Lester’s death, but neither had any reason to kill Angela. And as I had been insisting for days, this was all about Angela.

  The music changed, and some shifts on the dance floor captured my attention. Henry wished Avis luck in beating me and stepped out to dance with Karen as Bobby returned to the table.

  Bobby Decker. In his warped mind Angela’s bookkeeping was thwarting his dude ranch dreams. Bobby had found the bodies, and he knew about the gun. But would Fritz feel safe accusing Bobby of murder? Bobby was a big guy. When he grinned at me for no good reason, I saw that chipped tooth.

  “The game, Tessie!” That was Ethel.

  I bent over and sunk the eight ball, took cursory aim at the nine and missed. Avis stepped forward amid much commotion as even more last minute bets were negotiated.

  I held up a hand when a few people asked me to up my own wagers, and paid attention elsewhere. Out on the dance floor Henry Jack was helping the Drunken Dancer to her feet.

  I considered Henry for a split second before dismissing him. He might have disapproved of Angela, but he loved Elsa Quinn far more than he admired Pastor Muckenfuss, or his warped prejudices. Angela was helping Elsa get out of a financial hole. Henry would not have killed her.

  “It’s Isabelle Eakes.” I jumped ten feet in the air and turned to see Spencer Erring and his dimples. “If you ask me, the Cornhuskers are even worse than the Pink Flamingos.”

  “Eakes?” I squeaked.

  “Yeah, you know, Tessie? And the Cornhuskers?”

  “Oh. Oh yeah.” I shared a chuckle with Spencer and pondered him as a possibility.

  Maybe he had worried that Angela would tell his wife about their affair. Or maybe he was angry she had dumped him and moved on with her life.

  Doreen poked him with her cane and he good-naturedly agreed to up their wager by a hundred dollars. I relaxed my shoulders and dismissed Spencer. Whatever Kevin Cooper had been implying, Spencer was too careless to be the killer. And murder must take at least a little bit of planning, no?

  The crowd gasped, and I looked over to see that Avis had missed the nine. I whimpered slightly, stepped around Spencer, and assessed my chances for the nine ball.

  I bent down and made a serious attempt at aiming. But let’s face it—I was a bit preoccupied. I took my time to chalk up again. And what about Kevin Cooper? I turned and blew on my stick and studied the would-be librarian, who was busy making another five dollar bet on me. This time with Bobby.

  Why had I chosen to confide in Kevin all week long? Because I trusted him, one writer to another. Angela had trusted him, too, even if my mother found him fishy.

  I glanced down at the sandals and stifled a groan. Clearly, wimpy Kevin would not have seemed threatening to Fritz, a shark who knew his way around the roughest pool halls in the country. Fritz would have confronted Kevin without a second thought.

  Lord help me, was it Kevin Cooper?

  But why would Kevin kill Angela?

  I had stalled so long even Avis got wary. “You should play,” he told me, and Doreen helped me along by prodding me with her cane.

  I bent down and banked the nine ball off the bottom rail and into the side pocket. And the crowd went wild.

  Amid the ensuing chaos, Spencer picked me up and twirled me around and around. “I needed that win, Tessie,” he kept shouting in my ear. My eyes landed on Melissa Purcell with each passing spin. She must have hated the attention he was giving me, but to her credit, she kept smiling.

  Spencer finally put me down, and scads of other people swarmed around to shake my right hand or put money in my left. Doreen poked me with her cane yet again. I twirled around and she slapped several fifties into my palm. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Kevin gleefully collecting a tidy sum of five-dollar bills.

  With apologies to my mother and her stellar intuition, and to Candy with her own impressive insight into human nature, I simply could not picture Kevin Cooper, smiling down at his twenty-dollar take, as a deranged homicidal maniac.

  So who else or what else was I missing? A couple of the more boisterous spectators were jostling me about and asking how I had managed that last bank shot when it occurred to me. Avis had thought only three people knew about the gun—himself, Fritz, and Melissa.

  Oh, my Lord. What if Fritz had been under the same impression?

  I elbowed my way out of the throng and desperately tried to locate teeny-tiny Avis Sage. There he was, standing across the pool table from me, paying close attention.

  “Melissa,” I mouthed at him and his face dropped.

  ***

  I spun around in search of Melissa. She was close by also, but luckily she was too busy admiring Spencer to notice me, or the horror-stricken look on my face.

  Did Melissa Purcell have cause to kill Angela? Jealousy popped into my head. Wilson considered it too trite a motive, but whether my beau approved or not, Melissa was jealous of Angela. Of her job with Elsa, of her love life, of her pool playing.
/>
  Fritz was even about to take Angela out on the road with him—a fact which Melissa had adamantly denied, since she hated the idea so very much.

  My mother’s voice came back to me. “Melissa likes her little fantasies,” she had said.

  Melissa likely had some visions of Fritz taking her out on the road. Not only had Angela gotten Spencer, she had gotten Fritz, too. Melissa Purcell was mad. Mad enough to murder.

  I experienced a disconcerting sense of déjà vu. Just like the last time I had identified a killer, I was standing at a pool table, and the murderer was within a few feet of me. Like last time, I really, really wished Wilson were there to take charge of the situation. And like last time, he wasn’t.

  But surely I had learned something since last time, when I had almost gotten myself and my poor cat killed by running away? This time I would stand my ground. And more importantly, stay with the crowd.

  The crowd had calmed down, by the way. I took a deep breath and forced myself to do the same. Okay, so I wasn’t exactly the epitome of Zen, but at least I managed to unscrew my cue stick and put it back in its case while I thought about my options.

  I needed some help, but my cell phone was locked in Wilson’s truck. I looked down at Kevin and willed him to read my mind. But he was still admiring that twenty dollars he had won and paid no attention to me. And Avis Sage, all hundred and ten pounds of him, wasn’t exactly built to manhandle Melissa into submission.

  I turned toward the bar. Of course Candy and Karen would help me. But even better would be those undercover cops Wilson had promised me.

  Thank God for Goldilocks! Goldilocks, or Kim, or whatever the heck her name was, would help me.

  That was the ticket. I would nonchalantly mosey over to Goldilocks, identify the killer, and let her take it from there. Very handy.

  But just as I was about to begin my journey, Melissa popped up at my side. This time I really did jump ten feet in the air.

  “Thanks, Tessie,” she said.

  “Excuse me?” I squeaked.

  “I just won ninety dollars on you.” She offered a friendly nudge and pointed to the pool game that was about to begin. “Who you betting on this time?” she asked.