Murder Has a Sweet Tooth - By Miranda Bliss Page 0,63
washing machine. She was wringing her hands and there were tears running down her cheeks. I
stepped into my pants and pulled my top over my head. Barefoot—I had no idea what had happened to my black flats—I walked out of the storage room.
“Does this have anything to do with the missing Girl Scout cookie money?” I asked.
I think she actually might have laughed if she wasn’t so totally miserable. Beth shook her head. “The cookie money . . . I mean, it’s incredibly embarrassing to have to admit you misplaced five hundred dollars. I can’t let Michael find out. He’d be so upset and embarrassed. I mean, especially with the new promotion and him being in charge of millions of dollars at the company. If word went around that I couldn’t even keep five hundred dollars straight . . .” She shivered at the thought. “This whole thing about the cookie money is the straw that broke that camel’s back, Annie. I’m so stressed, so worried. But the cookie money, it’s nothing compared to—” She paused and looked up at the ceiling.
And I knew I had to nudge her, just a little, or she’d get stuck in her uncertainty. I took a step nearer. “When I asked about Edward leaving early this evening, you looked a little upset.”
Beth chewed on her lower lip.
“If there’s something you know—”
Her sob stopped me. Beth brushed both her hands over her cheeks. She sniffled. “I can’t even believe I’m thinking what I’m thinking. I mean, I’ve known Vickie and Edward since forever and it’s really crazy and I shouldn’t let my imagination get carried away like this. But I can’t help it. I mean, I just started thinking and I think—”
“What?”
She hesitated. I stepped even closer. “Look, I know it’s a little crazy to think of me as a private detective. Sometimes even I have a hard time thinking of myself as a private detective. I don’t look like a private detective. I don’t always act like a private detective. In fact, I’m not a full-time private detective. But I’ve investigated enough cases to know there are things people see and things people think . . . and sometimes, when you consider what you saw and what you think, you’re pretty sure you’re imagining things, that you’re just nuts. But then sometimes, when you talk it out with somebody, you realize it’s not so nuts after all. What you’re thinking, Beth, it might be way off base. But it might lead us to something that makes more sense. Or it might be right. I know that’s sometimes hard to accept. But if you are right, don’t you owe it to Vickie to try and find the truth? No matter what?”
Beth nodded. Her nose was red. She rubbed it and blubbered, “When you asked about Edward . . . I don’t know, it just made me think, that’s all. You see, when I left the sauna and came back inside, Edward’s wineglass was on the table, but he was nowhere in sight. I asked Michael where he was and he said that Edward had stepped outside to smoke a cigar.” She made a face. “Vickie hated those cigars, but he’s never even tried to quit. I thought . . .” She shrugged. “Well, of course I didn’t think anything of it. Until Celia brought you into the house.”
It didn’t take a detective to see where this was going. “You think . . . Edward?”
“He’s a good friend of Celia and Scott’s. He’s been around here enough to know that the sauna’s been acting funny and maybe that means he knows how to make it do whatever it did to get so hot so fast. If he knew you were inside and if he knew where the lock was . . . well, really, that wouldn’t be all that hard because the lock was right there on that big rock outside the door of the sauna and anybody could have seen it.” Her voice was as watery as her eyes. “I don’t know how, but he know why you’ve been hanging around, Annie. He must know you’ve been asking questions. You know, about Vickie’s murder.”
I followed my own advice and talked out as much as I could of what I thought Beth was thinking, just to see where it would take me. “You think Edward knows I’m a PI. And that he knows I want to find out who killed Vickie. And that he tried to