Caroline wasn’t home when I returned. I took a hot shower but my nerves still jangled as I tried to push away the memory of Angelica’s crumpled body. I changed into my one pair of jeans and a purple Will Work for Ice Cream T-shirt, then jogged to Udderly. It was just before nine o’clock and no one was there yet. I took three scoops of ice cream—one vanilla, one chocolate, one mint chocolate chip—doused them with Buzzy’s secret recipe hot fudge sauce, squirted whipped cream on top, considered the mound of cream and added more, then topped that with three maraschino cherries.
Desperate measures were called for. I rummaged in a cabinet until I found a bag of potato chips. I grabbed a handful and crumbled them over the whipped cream then sat on the stoop outside the back door, hoping no one would talk to me. When stressed, nothing beats a hot fudge sundae topped with potato chips. It wouldn’t be long before Detective Voelker showed up and he wouldn’t be happy that I’d ghosted him. Was that against the law? Ghosting a police officer?
There are no hot fudge sundaes in jail. I shoveled in a bite, savoring the fudge, cherries, whipped cream, and salty crunch of the chips.
Caroline and Willow emerged from the Brightwoods’ house across the lane, talking intently, their faces flushed with excitement.
Caroline spotted me and they rushed over. “Riley, have you heard? They found Angelica!”
“Such good news!” Willow was practically dancing with excitement.
Caroline’s eyes fell on my sundae and her brow wrinkled. “Riley, I haven’t seen you eat one of those since you flunked the chemistry final senior year.”
I shoveled in another bite, then set the bowl down. “It’s great news.” I licked a bit of hot fudge from my finger. “I’m the one who found Angelica.”
Willow’s eyes widened. “Where? How is she?”
We went into the shop’s kitchen and I filled them in on everything that had happened—Caroline listening so intently she barely blinked, Willow gasping, her joy playing out across her face. We turned on the small television on the counter and listened for more details as we started prep work.
Willow wrapped her arms around me. “You’re a hero, Riley.”
There was a soft knock at the screen door. Detective Voelker’s broad shoulders filled the door frame. “Miss Rhodes, may I have a word?”
No surprise. Detective Voelker asked me and Caroline to accompany him to the police station. Once there, Caroline went into the interview room first while I waited on an exquisitely uncomfortable plastic bench. After a half hour, Caroline and Detective Voelker emerged from the interrogation room. He bent at the waist and swept his arm down the hallway toward me, a gesture that made me think of a country dance in a Jane Austen TV adaptation. Caroline’s lips curved in a smile. How could she look so relaxed coming out of an interrogation?
“Ms. Rhodes?” Voelker straightened and gave a curt nod toward the interrogation room. As I brushed past Caroline, I whispered, “Did you tell him about your scarf?”
“What?” Caroline blinked. “Of course I mentioned it. Shouldn’t I?”
I winced and thought, Not if you don’t want to be arrested. I said, “Of course.” She’d just saved me from perjury. I hadn’t been sure I’d mention that the scarf on Mike’s body was hers unless the police asked. I didn’t want to do or say anything that would incriminate Caroline.
The police department secretary nodded to us from her desk, a phone receiver up to her ear. She wasn’t talking and I was certain there wasn’t anyone on the other end of that line. She was listening to us using a time-honored eavesdropping technique. The nameplate on her desk read “Teresa O’Malley,” but I didn’t need it. Tillie O’Malley was known as the loosest lips in Penniman and the most flamboyant dresser. Her loose cascade of black curls were highlighted with streaks of blue and corralled by a wide banana yellow head band that matched the fabric in her tropical fruit–print top. Cat eye glasses in the same yellow and fire-engine red lipstick finished her ensemble.
Caroline squeezed my arm and turned to the detective. “Riley’s a hero! She saved Angelica!”
Detective Voelker’s expression didn’t change. “This way, please, Ms. Rhodes.”
He let me walk ahead of him into the interview room, closed the door, and indicated a seat at a table. I took my seat and started to grip the arms of my chair but instead shifted my posture, straightening my back and leaving my hands loose and relaxed in my lap. Look innocent, I thought. You are innocent. There was something about this cop that made me feel guilty, probably that beard and sweep of almost biblical hair that made me think of the figures painted in the Sistine Chapel.
Voelker took the seat across from me.
“Will Angelica be all right?” I asked.
He scrubbed the back of his head. Without his aviator sunglasses, I could see his gray blue eyes, the color of the ocean in winter. “We have no information yet.”
Ah, the stone wall. “But she’s alive,” I prompted.
He waited a couple of beats, cleared his throat. “Ms. Rhodes, walk me though this morning. You went jogging and decided to run down to an abandoned farmhouse on private property because…”
When you put it that way it did sound bad. I took a deep breath. “We used to go skating there years ago. All the kids in Penniman did. I guess you’re not from Penniman?”
He kept his look level.
“Okay.” I cleared my throat. “I was thinking about Angelica, what she might’ve done the night of Mike’s murder. It’s a straight shot from Farm Lane to Woods Road. I thought she might have missed that hairpin turn in the road.”
“How long had you known Miss Miguel?”
“I met her for the first time Friday, at Buzzy Spooner’s funeral.”
He made notes and shifted in his seat. “Did you have a relationship with Mike Spooner?”
“Mike?” I scoffed. “No. He’s my best friend’s brother. I was his pesky little sister’s friend. And after he left for college he never really came back to the farm much at all.” A relationship? Was he developing some theory that I’d killed Mike? Maybe in a jealous rage?
Then why would I want to help Angelica? I could’ve left her in that crashed car. I almost said that out loud. If I were jealous I’d want her dead and gone too. Seriously, was he fishing for some kind of soap-opera resolution? Or, I considered, maybe he was keeping an open mind, unlike that reporter who had Angelica killing Mike and running off—though it sure looked that way.
Voelker ran his hand along his jaw. Despite the touch of gray at his temples, his deliberate pace made me think that perhaps he was new to being a detective. He flicked through his notebook. “After you found Mike Spooner’s body, how long were you in the guest house before you called the police?”
I blinked. “A few minutes. I had to find the phone. I didn’t have my cell with me.” Did they have a witness who saw me go into the Love Nest? Did they think I’d spent too much time in there? You were poking around, Riley.
Was I a suspect? I swallowed hard, then remembered the wine bottle and the money jar.
“When I was in the house, there was something about the wine bottle that was odd. But I don’t know what … and the money jar from Udderly was missing. Have you found it?”
Voelker’s stony look said Who’s interviewing whom? “We’ll do the investigating, Ms. Rhodes.”
After I read and signed my statements—including the one from the morning of Mike’s murder, which I’d completely forgotten that I was supposed to do—Detective Voelker had a uniformed police officer drop me and Caroline back at Buzzy’s house. We rode in silence except for a quick call to make sure everything was fine at Udderly.
Once we were in the kitchen, Caroline asked, “How did it go?” I still felt unsettled by the interview, but Caroline was relaxed and calm.
No sense adding to her problems. “Not fun.”
“Remember you’re coming with me to the accountant and lawyer today?” Caroline said as she picked up Sprinkles and gave her a nuzzle.
I’d forgotten. “Of course. But I’d better change.”
“I’ll heat up some of that quiche Pru made,” Caroline said.
I ran to my bedroom and tossed on the black travel dress I’d worn to Buzzy’s funeral. I was officially out of clean clothes. All I had in the boxes Paulette had packed were cardigan sweaters and pants that no longer fit. I had thought I’d go to the funeral, then be back home in Virginia in a few days, writing up my next blog. Instead I was in Penniman, Connecticut, where I’d agreed to manage an ice cream shop, one person had been injured and might die, and one had most certainly been murdered.
I recalled a proverb I’d heard from a rug merchant in Morocco: “Man plans, God laughs.”