“You’re wasting your time with Leanna,” Maggie said. “I’m telling you, Marcus is a far better suspect.”
“Maybe so, but everything was closed this weekend for the festival. As the head of the town council, Leanna would have had access to Town Hall. Marcus wouldn’t,” Tansy said. “Back me up, Juni.”
“You both have a point,” I said. I’d learned long ago to not pick sides where my sisters were concerned. “That’s why I think we should talk to both of them.” I turned to the barista station and started making a drink. “Might as well come bearing gifts,” I said.
A few minutes later, we were ushered into Leanna’s office. It was across the hall from where I’d found Mayor Bob. I didn’t know if Leanna was trying to be sensitive by not moving into the mayor’s larger office so soon or if it was still an active crime scene. Either way, I applauded her choice to stay put.
Leanna’s office was warm and welcoming. The walls were covered in framed photos. There were pictures of Leanna crossing the finish line at a race, of her and her wife in a hot-air balloon, Leanna astride a lovely bay horse, and a big black Great Dane holding a stuffed animal in his enormous mouth. Her desk was neatly ordered with stacks of color-coded folders sorted into wire baskets.
“Ladies, what can I do for you this morning?” she greeted us, sounding chipper.
I held out the cup. “I thought you might could use a little pick-me-up. I noticed your coffee vending machine was out of service the other day.”
Leanna smiled but didn’t reach for the cup. “I’m trying to cut down on sugar.”
An empty candy bar wrapper on her desk told a different story, but I didn’t point that out. Instead, I sat the cup in front of her. “It’s a good thing I brought tea instead of coffee, then. It’s a hot, dark green tea sweetened with local organic honey. I call it My Heart Will Go Oolong.”
“In that case, thanks.” she reached for the tea but didn’t take a sip. “Why don’t y’all take a seat?”
“How’s the mayor business treating you?” Tansy asked as we sat.
“To be completely honest, it’s not nearly as hard as I thought it would be,” Leanna admitted.
“Oh? How so?” I asked.
“Mayor Bob always acted like he was busy twenty-four seven. Any time I needed something, he was swamped, and if I tried to get time on his calendar, he couldn’t squeeze me in.” She spun her laptop around so it faced us. “I finally have access to his schedule. Does this look busy to you?”
I squinted at the screen. Large chunks of time were blocked off, but there were few notes to indicate why. He had a pedicure scheduled on Thursday mornings and a standing four-hour golf game on Monday afternoons. “If he wasn’t taking meetings, and he wasn’t working, what was he doing?” I asked.
Leanna shrugged. “I don’t have the faintest. The man’s been in office over a decade, and the biggest impact he’s had on Cedar River is getting those generic candy machines in government buildings and school break rooms. Seriously, what’s a ‘Sneekers Bar?’” She shook her head, crumpled up the wrapper, and tossed it toward her trash can, which was close to overflowing. The candy wrapper bounced off and landed on the ground instead.
“I thought you were cutting down on sugar,” Tansy said, gesturing at the wrapper.
“I said I was trying,” she said as she bent over to pick it up. “I didn’t have time for breakfast this morning. Plus, it has peanuts. Peanuts are healthy, and I was craving chocolate. So I decided to treat myself.”
“Actually, I’m more interested in your trash can,” I said, changing the focus. We weren’t going to get any information out of her by judging her snacks. “When’s the last time it was emptied?”
“Seriously, if Mayor Bob wasn’t doing anything, and they don’t even empty the trash cans at Town Hall, where are my taxes going?” Tansy asked.
“Normally the janitor comes through on Wednesdays and Saturdays, but with most everything closed on Saturday, and then, well, you know, his death and all, I guess they didn’t get around to it,” Leanna said.
Mayor Bob’s trash can hadn’t been full on Saturday morning. Did he not spend much time in his office? I tried to remember if there’d been anything in the can. A crumpled-up piece of white paper. A wadded up generic salt and vinegar chip bag. A few sugar-free amaretto-flavored coffee creamer cups. A single-use water bottle with the label peeled off. I probably wouldn’t have noticed his trash can at all if not for that water bottle. I remember being annoyed that he hadn’t recycled it.
It looked like Leanna was telling the truth. She worked harder than Mayor Bob had, or at least spent more time in the office than he did, if their trash cans were any indication. “It’s got to sting,” I blurted out without thinking.
“What?” Leanna asked, looking confused.
“You did all the hard work while the mayor didn’t do much, but took all the credit.”
Leanna smiled and shook her head. “Why do you think I ran for town council instead of for mayor? The town council is where the real power’s at in Cedar River.”
“Yeah, but the mayor was working on Saturday morning and you weren’t,” Tansy pointed out.
“Actually, I stopped by the office to check my email.”
“So you were here?” I asked. Tansy nudged the side of my foot, and I could practically hear her thinking that she’d told me so. “Couldn’t you have checked your email on your phone?”
“It was on the way.”
“Did you see anyone else while you were here?” Tansy asked.
Leanna shook her head. “Nope. Bob’s door was closed, but his light was on. I heard voices inside.”
“Whose voices?” I asked.
Leanna tapped one finger on her lips as she thought. “You know what? I’m not sure. I heard Mayor Bob, but he could have been on the phone, or even talking to himself now that I think about it.”
“Have you told the cops this?” Tansy asked.
“They’re stopping by in a bit to get my statement. I’ll make sure to mention it,” Leanna said. “Tansy, now that there’s an open seat, you should really think about running for the town council. You could make a positive impact on Cedar River. Unless, of course, you’re not interested in public service.”
Tansy bristled at that. “Of course I’m interested in public service.”
Leanna nodded smugly. “I’m looking forward to seeing your name on the ballot for the special election.”
“Oh, you’ll see it all right,” Tansy replied. Then she stood. “I’m sure we’ve taken up enough of your time this morning. Juni, let’s go.”
I followed her out into the hall, closing the door behind us. “We didn’t get to ask her any hard questions.”
“Yeah, but we learned plenty. She didn’t think Mayor Bob was doing his job. She’s only acting mayor, but she’s planning to run for mayor in the special election. Why else would there be an open seat on the council? All that baloney about the town council having all the power…” Tansy scoffed. “I’ll bet now that she’s acting mayor, they’ll have no power at all. That’s why she wants me to run, so she could boss me around.”
“Wow, you got a lot more out of that conversation than I did,” I admitted.
Tansy shook her head. “Were you even in the same meeting as I was? She practically bragged that she’s been chomping at the bit to sit in the mayor’s chair, and now she’s got everything she wants. Motive, anyone? Plus, she confessed to being in the office the morning he was murdered. Who goes into work on a Saturday morning just to check email? Sounds like opportunity to me.”
“We’ve all stopped by Sip & Spin when it was closed for one reason or another,” I pointed out. “She admitted that she was here at the same time as Bob. But she said his light was on and the door was closed. His lights are automatic. Which means he was still alive when she left.”
“Unless she was lying,” Tansy said. “She wouldn’t be the first person to bump off a political rival.”
I shook my head. “She said she had more power as chair of the town council than as the mayor.”
“Again, we only have her word to go on for that,” Tansy pointed out.
We weren’t getting anywhere. My sister had already made up her mind that Leanna was guilty, which meant this was a waste of time. “We should…” I started to suggest, as we headed back through the lobby, but halted in mid-thought when I saw Beau and Jayden coming up the front steps. “Quick.” I grabbed Tansy’s arm and hauled her toward the back door. “Let’s go out this way.”
“What on earth?” she complained, but followed me anyway, not that I gave her much of a choice. We hurried out the back door, which was slightly ajar. There was a sign on it warning that an alarm would sound, but luckily it stayed silent. The door clanged shut behind us.
“Do you think they saw us?” I asked when we were clear.
“You let the door close!” called out a man’s voice.
I turned to see Pete Digby, the security guard. He was standing near the dumpsters smoking a cigarette. I looked back at the closed door. It was a smooth exit-only door with no handle on the outside. At my feet was a brick that Pete had likely used to prop it open.
“Sorry,” I told him.
“Guess I’ll have to walk all the way back around,” he grumbled. “Who are you running from, anyway?”
“Running from? Nobody,” I fibbed.
“Liar. I distinctly heard you ask your sister if they saw you.”
“Do you spend a lot of time back here?” I asked him, evading his question. Admitting I was running from the cops would have sounded suspicious when, honestly, I was just avoiding Beau. If he knew that Tansy and I were here to interrogate Leanna Lydell-Waite, he’d be upset with me.
“You have no idea how boring my job is,” he said.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” I glanced at my sister. Something had been worrying me. Whoever had killed Mayor Bob had managed to slip into and out of Town Hall without anyone noticing. That was literally the only reason I’d been willing to consider Leanna a suspect in the first place—she had full access to the building. Then again, so did Pete. But if Pete was as lax of a guard as I thought he was, a herd of elephants could have marched in here and back out again without him noticing.
The front door hadn’t been locked when I’d come by on Saturday morning, even though Cedar River Town Hall was officially closed because of the festival. And Pete had been off in the bathroom getting paper towels to clean up the Slurpee he’d spilled. I’d managed to walk right in without being challenged. How hard would it have been for someone else to do it, especially if they were trying to be sneaky?
“Did you see anyone else on Saturday morning? Other than me?” I asked him.
“Nope. If that’s all, my break’s almost up,” he said, grounding out his cigarette.
“Wait a sec,” Tansy said, taking a step toward the dumpster. “What’s that?” She pointed to the edge of an oversize picture frame sticking out of the open top.
Pete shrugged. “Looks like a picture frame.”
Tansy gave him an exasperated look. “Can you pull it out for me?”
“I’m security. You’ll want to talk to janitorial about that.” He turned and strode away.
“Real helpful,” she said. I nodded in agreement. “Give me a boost?”
“What’s so important about a picture frame?” I asked. “You’ve got better picture frames than that at home.”
“I doubt it,” she said, grabbing the edge of the dumpster to pull herself up. “Remember when I was into antiquing a while back?”
I nodded. Tansy dabbled in a lot of things. Last week, it was photography. Before that, it was glass blowing. She never stuck with anything for long. She couldn’t find a hobby that held her interest for more than a few weeks. Frankly, it made me nervous. If my sister got bored and decided she no longer wanted to run a record shop, I wasn’t sure what Maggie and I would do, especially since Tansy was the biggest musicophile of the three of us.
“Believe it or not, a lot of time when you see a painting in a garage sale or a thrift store, the frame is worth more than the art.” She tugged on the frame. “Especially if it’s a large one like this.” She pulled it free and lifted it out of the dumpster, handing it to me so she could climb down.
“And you think this frame is worth something?” I asked. I was trying to take an interest in my sister’s hobbies, I really was, but it smelled awful by the dumpsters, and the frame I was holding was gooey on one side. I leaned it against the dumpster so I could take a step back.
Tansy was right. It was a nice frame. It had a distinct antique look to it. Most frames that size would be around a canvas, but this one had a backing to it like it had held a photograph. I picked at a flake of torn yellowed paper around the edge. “Whatever was in here was old,” I said.
“That’s usually the case with these old frames,” Tansy said.
I leaned in and adjusted my glasses to get a better look. I could make out ‘Town of Cedar River, Texas. 1955.’ “It’s the missing map!” I exclaimed.
“Huh?”
“Esméralda Martín-Brown told me at the hole-digging contest she’d heard that Mayor Bob’s map was missing.”
“I don’t see a map,” my sister pointed out.
“Someone tore it out, but I think maybe it used to be in that frame.”
“That’s quite a stretch,” she said.
“Maybe,” I agreed. “But I have an odd feeling about this. Leanna works right across the hall, she might recognize the frame.”
“I hate to say this, Juni—” my sister started.
“Yeah, I know,” I said, not letting her finish her sentence. I pulled out my phone and called Beau. “You still at Town Hall?” I asked when he picked up.
“How do you … never mind. What’s up?”
“Can you come around back, by the dumpster?”
“Be right there,” he said.
A minute later, the back door popped open. Beau put on his broad-brimmed cowboy hat to shade his eyes before scootching the brick over to prop the door open. “Tansy. Junebug. What do y’all got there?”
“I think it might be the map that’s missing from Mayor Bob’s office,” I said, gesturing toward it. “Well, not the map, exactly. The map’s frame.”
“Uh-huh,” he said noncomittally. He came closer and squatted in front of the frame. He paid close attention to the torn corner, where the name of our town was legible, just like I had done. He took a close-up picture with his phone before standing and addressing us again. “You found it sitting here just like this?”
“It was in the dumpster,” Tansy said.
“Uh-huh,” he said again.
“It was right on top,” she said.
“Oh. It was right on top,” Beau repeated. “And what were you two doing back here?”
“Visiting with Leanna Lydell-Waite,” Tansy said. “Wanted to drop by and congratulate her on being acting mayor.”
“And bring her a hot tea,” I added.
“Tansy Jessup, you and Leanna Lydell-Waite have been at each other’s throats since you were six months old,” he said with authority even though Tansy was several years older than him, and there was no way he could have possibly known that from first-hand experience.
“That was a long time ago,” she said with a fake smile.
“Yup. Ancient history. Try again. We all know that you can hold a grudge,” he said.
“He’s got a point,” I told her with a nod. She was still mad at Beau for breaking up with me six years ago. He was the last person in town to believe that she and Leanna had let bygones be bygones.
“Let me guess. Your baby sister dragged you out here so she could sniff around Mayor Bob’s office, looking for any clues she might have missed the other day. Y’all saw me coming and thought you’d nip out the back, only to recognize the picture frame in the dumpster.” He shook his head. “At least you called me after you found it.”
“That’s not what happened,” I said.
“Not even close,” Tansy added.
Beau held up one hand. “Honestly, I don’t care. Which one of you touched it?”
Tansy said, “Both of us.”
“Of course you did,” he muttered.
“So this is the missing map?” I asked. “Or at least some of it? Does that mean it’s a clue?”
Beau sighed. “Can you please get it through your head that I can’t divulge any details from an active murder investigation? Especially if your sister is a suspect?”
“I didn’t kill anyone!” Tansy sputtered.
“I know that!” Beau said, matching her tone. “But you’re making it awful hard to focus on finding the actual killer when you’re tromping all over my crime scene. You get that, right?”
“You know I’m innocent?” Tansy asked in a quieter voice.
Beau rolled his eyes skyward. “If you had a single murderous bone in your entire body, I would not be alive today. You would have killed me the second I hurt your baby sister. And I would have let you. So yes, I know you’re innocent. Now will you two please step out of the way so I can do my job?”