“Can I get anyone anything to drink?” I asked. I was still shaken from finding a fire truck parked out front of Sip & Spin and seeing firefighters swarming around the shop, but no one was hurt and there was no damage, so no harm, no foul, right? Besides, I was raised to believe that any crisis could be solved with good manners and refreshments. “I make a killer coffee.”
“I’ll take one. Something manly,” J.T. requested.
“Then you’re in luck. The special of the day is Espresso Yourself,” I replied as I started prepping his drink. It was a simple shot of espresso in a tiny mug. “Unless you would prefer something more manly. Like a bucket of fish guts and rusty nails maybe?”
“Espresso is fine,” he said. He grinned at me as he hopped up to sit on the counter. I was used to his teasing and knew he was just trying to break the tension. It worked.
“Elroy?” I asked.
He was leaning against the doorway that led to the supply closet and, beyond that, the back door. “Fish guts and rusty nails sounds fine for me, but can you add some of that pumpkin spice stuff to it?”
“It’s March,” I pointed out. “You’ve got six whole months until pumpkin spice anything is in stock. Maybe seven.”
“But fish guts are in season?” he asked.
“Fish guts are always in season, but we’re all out of rusty nails. And buckets. However, I think you might like a Cappuccino Take Me Away.” I started his drink. I layered the espresso, steamed milk, and foamed milk carefully, marveling once again at how quickly I’d managed to master our menu. “Maggie?”
“Tea?” she requested.
“One Excuse Me While I Kiss the Chai coming up.” It was another drink that would have had me scratching my head a few weeks ago, but now it was second nature to whip up a dark tea infused with spices and blend it with steamed milk. I topped it with foam and a dash of cinnamon. I even managed a shape in the foam that might have been a flower. If I squinted.
I thought back to the conversation with Tansy this morning about us drinking too much caffeine. I wasn’t sure that I agreed with her, but my nerves were already frayed enough without the addition of a stimulant. I refilled my water bottle instead of pouring myself more coffee.
After passing out drinks, I said, “Thanks for coming to our rescue earlier, but you two know Maggie and I are perfectly capable of not incriminating ourselves to the cops, right? Not that there is anything incriminating we can say, considering we didn’t call in the false alarm. It was probably just a prank, like Maggie suggested.”
“Even so, until this mess with Calvin is settled, maybe you two don’t need to go locking yourselves in bathrooms with any cops without your lawyer present,” J.T. suggested pointedly.
“For the record, your downstairs bath is tiny, J.T. I don’t think the three of us would have fit,” I replied.
“What were you two talking about, anyways?” he asked.
“If you must know, Beau got it in his head that Calvin ran off because he was involved in Monica Mayhew’s death. He let that slip to me in the hopes that I would go looking for Calvin and lead him right to him. What he wasn’t counting on was that while I was looking for my uncle, I’d end up picking up a bunch of clues about who actually killed Monica.”
“You what?” J.T. asked, jumping down off the counter.
Ignoring his interruption, I continued, “That’s what Beau was so upset about last night at dinner. He wants me to back off. Apparently, someone else had the same idea, and called the fire department to intimidate us. If I had to guess, they were sending a message about playing with fire or some such nonsense.”
“Far be it from me to ever agree with Beauregard Russell, but for the record, he’s right this one time, Juni. You don’t need to be running around playing detective. You could get hurt, or worse. You weren’t even at the shop when they called in the threat. My wife was. You could have gotten Maggie hurt. Do you understand that?”
But Maggie hadn’t gotten hurt. If she had, I would have felt more guilty than anyone could imagine, especially since I was the one scheduled to be in the record shop, not my sister.
“Excuse me,” Maggie interjected. “For the record, I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself. And second off, nothing happened. It was a little scary, maybe, when the fire department showed up and yes, I was worried about the shop, but what part of false alarm do you not understand? Besides, Juni wasn’t acting alone. I was helping. Tansy, too. Calvin’s our uncle, and Sip & Spin is all of our business. You don’t think me and my sisters are gonna sit on our hands while someone threatens it, do you?”
“Mags, you’ve got to be kidding me. I would expect this kind of behavior coming from Juni, but you’re in on it, too?” her husband asked. He really seemed shocked.
“Wait a sec, what do you mean you expect this behavior from me?” I asked. “I’m not some kind of juvenile delinquent running around causing trouble. I’m a grown woman trying to take care of her family and her business.”
“No offense, Juni, but if you are all grown-up, maybe it’s time you start acting like it,” J.T. said. He took off his cowboy hat and set it on the counter, then ran a hand through his hair to get it to lie down evenly. “This isn’t a game. A woman was murdered. No one’s heard from your uncle in almost a week. And what if the next time the fire department shows up, it isn’t a prank?” He shook his head. “None of us want that.”
“You sound like Beau,” I said, but then my voice trailed off as I stared at his hat. I hadn’t paid much attention to it before. It was black with a silver band around it. Expensive, I’d wager. It was new, but I’d seen it before—in the videotape surveillance from the night of the party. From the night of the murder. The person who’d come in the back door that night had been wearing that exact same hat.
Sure, it might have been a coincidence, except cowboy hats were almost as unique as fingerprints. Even identical police-issue hats over time conformed to the heads of their wearers. Rims curled up. Bands shifted. They faded with exposure to the sun or stayed vibrant for those with desk jobs.
J.T. had seen the surveillance video. He’d reviewed it with me. He’d set the camera up in the first place. Come to think of it, he’d been involved every step of the way. He had to have recognized his hat when he watched the video, but he hadn’t said a word.
“Are you listening to me?” J.T. asked.
I nodded dutifully but kept my face trained on his hat. I was afraid if I looked at him, he would see everything I was thinking as clear as day on my expression. Like Samuel said, I needed to work on my poker face.
Samuel had said something else that stuck with me. Someone was in communication with Calvin. Someone was advising him to lie low. Someone knew exactly where he kept a stash of money. Someone knew their way around his house and went so far as to grab his cell phone and his meds while he was taking the cash.
Someone in the family.
“You know where he is, don’t you?” I blurted out without thinking.
“Who?” J.T. asked.
“Don’t play coy with me. You know where Calvin is. You know how to reach him.”
J.T. shook his head. “I most certainly do not. As an officer of the court, if I know where a fugitive is hiding I’m bound to turn him over to the authorities. Even if he’s my wife’s favorite uncle.”
There was the pitter-patter sound of Daffy’s claws on the steps as he descended the stairs from the loft and hopped up on the counter. “Daffy,” Maggie said, scooping him up and hugging him to her chest. “I was so worried about you with all the commotion.” As usual, the cat had made himself scarce the second strangers showed up. I worried that one of these days he’d get tired of guests intruding on his space all the time and he’d leave us to find someplace quieter.
And that’s when it hit me. In the surveillance video, Daffy had calmly groomed himself as someone walked right past him and in through the shop’s back door. If it had been a stranger, the cat would have disappeared before the man had come into view, but Daffy knew J.T. Why hadn’t I put two and two together earlier? The cat’s behavior, along with the notable hat, convinced me that it had been J.T. on the video that night.
“Why did you miss the Sip & Spin grand opening?” I asked him, my suspicions growing. If he wouldn’t fess up that it was him on the video, what else was he hiding?
“I was working late,” he said.
“Were you? I mean, come on, J.T. Everybody knows ‘working late’ is code for having an affair. Are you seeing someone? You better not be cheating on my sister, or I’ll kill you.”
“Of course not! I would never,” he said emphatically.
“Juni, that’s enough. I think I would know if my husband was cheating on me,” Maggie said, moving to his side. He put his arm around my sister’s shoulders.
“Where were you, really, the night of the party? Who were you with?” I didn’t want to hurt Maggie, but I had a sinking feeling that J.T. was hiding something. I paused a beat as I thought about the implications. “Were you with Monica Mayhew that night?”
“I most certainly was not!” J.T. said. Ignoring me, he turned to Maggie. “I swear to you, I was working. I was at the office, by myself, until two, maybe three o’clock Saturday morning. I did not and would never betray my marriage vows.”
My sister nodded. “I believe you, honey.”
“But he was at the party, and I can prove it,” I said. “J.T. was caught on video that night. In that hat.” I pointed at the hat on the counter. I marched around the counter, queued up the video, and then swiveled the monitor where everyone else could see it. “Look. You can’t see his face, but that’s his hat. See that shiny silver band? And look at Daffy! He’d run away if that was a stranger.”
“That really does resemble your hat, J.T.,” Maggie said quietly.
“Not you, too,” J.T. said. He jabbed a finger at the screen. “That’s not me. I was at the office all night.”
“Then why didn’t you pick up the phone when I called you?” Maggie asked, her voice small and unsure.
“I told you. I was working. The ringer was off. I didn’t notice that I had a missed call from you until it was much too late to call you back.” He seemed shaken.
“How convenient that you have all the answers,” I said, torn between anger and disappointment. J.T. was like a brother to me, and I was having a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that he might be a bad guy. “You set up the cameras, J.T. Don’t you think it’s a little too coincidental that two of the cameras inside were covered and one wasn’t working? You knew the angles. You knew exactly how to hide your face, and then helped me adjust the camera to get a better view of the alley after the fact.” I rewound the video and froze the frame. “And you can’t argue that that’s your hat.”
“Yeah, it looks like my hat,” J.T. admitted, nodding vigorously. “A lot of people have hats like that. Heck, even Elroy has one just like it, don’t you? A client gave us those as a thank-you gift. I think he got them at a shop over in Salado. Or was it Cameron?” He looked over at Elroy, who was white as a sheet.
Tall, lanky, narrow-shouldered Elroy.
Elroy with the fancy black cowboy hat with the shiny silver band.
Well, shucks.
I had accused the wrong lawyer.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, taking a step away from the others, completely ashamed of myself for suspecting J.T. in the first place. “You’re right. I was totally out of line. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Oh, we’re gonna need more than an apology,” Maggie said. I didn’t think I’ve ever seen her so furious at me before, not even when I accidentally ruined her entire My Little Pony collection when I was four years old. Who would have guessed they would melt in the microwave? “What’s wrong with you, Juni? You can’t go around accusing people like that, especially your own brother-in-law.”
“I’m sorry, Maggie, J.T. You’ve got every reason to be mad at me.”
“Mad? I’m not mad at you, Juniper,” my sister said in a flat voice. “I’m disappointed.”
Ouch. That hurt.
I reached for my phone as I took another step back. “But hear me out. Someone came in late to the party, sneaking in the back door wearing that hat or one just like it, within minutes of Monica coming in the front entrance. And someone convinced Calvin to lie low against his best interests, because that deflected all the attention off him. That same someone must be a person that Uncle Calvin trusts an awful lot. Someone in the family maybe.” I turned to face Elroy. “Or the family’s lawyer.”
J.T. and Maggie both swiveled to look at him, too. “Tell me you have no idea what she’s talking about, buddy,” J.T. said.
Elroy shook his head, but there was a sheen of sweat on his hairline. “Of course not!” he stammered.
J.T. wasn’t convinced. “You would never advise a client to skirt the law? Because we both know it wouldn’t be the first time. You’d never step out on Mina? Need I remind you about Jasmine? And Shelly? For Pete’s sake, you hit on Monica Mayhew.”
“I did not,” Elroy said, but there was a hitch in his voice and a bead of sweat formed on his upper lip.
“That’s not what she said when she quit, partner. Said you made her feel uncomfortable. Always commenting on her clothes, or standing just a little too close when you talked. Asking her to work late when it wasn’t necessary. Inviting her to dinner.”
“I did no such thing,” Elroy insisted, shaking his head. “She was trying to set me up for a big payday, but she was barking up the wrong tree. Every penny I have went to buying out my father-in-law so you and I could have our names, and our names alone, on the letterhead, and I still owe the old man. Can’t get blood from a stone, J.T.”
“I can’t help but wonder what Juan would do to you if he found out that you were stepping out on his daughter,” J.T. mused. “Your debt to him wouldn’t be your biggest problem. I imagine you’d do just about anything to keep that secret.”
“That was you in Calvin’s house Monday evening,” I said. “My uncle went into hiding because you told him to, but he needed his phone and his meds. He trusted you to bring them to him. He told you where the hide-a-key was. He told you where to find the cash. Did you even bring it to him, or did you keep it for yourself?”
“Of course I gave it to him! I’m not some kind of petty thief. Yes, I know how to contact your uncle, okay? Fine. You caught me. I was protecting him. You know how cops can get. I wasn’t about to let them beat a confession out of him. He’s going to show up to stand trial. I guarantee it. But I was looking out for a client, and a friend. Nothing more.” Elroy had stopped sweating and was starting to look pretty pleased with himself.
I guess all that practice of lying for a living came in handy outside of the courtroom, too.
“So you admit that you were in the intruder in Calvin’s house,” I said. “You were the one that assaulted me.”
“I didn’t realize it was you until it was too late. Honestly, I thought you were an intruder. So yes, in my haste to get out of the house, I nudged you out of the way.” He was getting more smug by the second. “I didn’t mean to push you so hard. I’m so relieved that you weren’t hurt.”
“Seriously?” I gestured at my own body. I was half his size. “You were, what, threatened by me?”
“It was dark,” he growled.
“Was it really? Because you were in the bedroom, with the shades open. From my point of view, you were nothing but a shadow. But you, with your back to the windows, could probably make out the writing on my T-shirt,” I said.
“It was dark,” he repeated. “I was nervous. I panicked.”
“Just like you panicked and killed Monica Mayhew?” Maggie asked. All her anger was now directed at Elroy, but when this was all over she and I would have a serious talk about me accusing her husband. I wasn’t looking forward to that.
“I wasn’t even at the record store grand opening,” Elroy said. He pointed at the still-frozen computer screen. “Does that look like my hat? Maybe. It’s not the only hat like that in the entire world. Two of us in this room own one just like it. But Juni has a point about Daffy. That stray is jumpier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs around anyone other than you girls. He wouldn’t let me get that close to him without disappearing.”
Hearing his name, Daffy jumped out of Maggie’s arms and pranced along the counter. He leapt gracefully down to the floor and begun to weave himself in figure eights around Elroy’s legs, purring loudly.
“I don’t know about you, but looks like that cat’s pretty comfy with you from where I’m standing,” J.T. pointed out.
Elroy poked at Daffy with his boot. The cat hissed and scampered off toward the back of the shop.
“You might have snuck in the back door, but you didn’t go out that way. What do you want to bet there’s video footage of you leaving out the front door sometime between ten forty-five and midnight?” I asked. “That’s enough to prove you were at the party at the same time as Monica.”
“I swear, I didn’t do anything wrong,” Elroy insisted.
“You’re married,” I said. “Sounds like you’ve cheated on your wife before. You harassed Monica at work, and she quit, but you lied and told us y’all let her go.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s all hearsay, anyway,” he said, smugly.
Ignoring his defense, I continued, “What happened Friday night? I saw your wife at the grand opening, but not you. I figured you were at work with J.T., but he said he was alone. And I believe my brother-in-law.”
“Oh, now you believe me,” J.T. muttered.
I cringed. It was going to take a long time for me to live that one down. I hoped J.T.—and my middle sister—would find a way to forgive me, or family dinners were going to be awkward for a while. “You told Mina you had to work late, didn’t you? But really you had a date. Then what? You couldn’t take her out to a fancy dinner, not in a town like Cedar River. That would set tongues wagging. Calvin took a date to United Steaks and it became immediate gossip fodder. But you don’t have much time. Your wife is at the grand opening party, which buys you a couple of hours, tops. Hardly enough time to get to Austin, eat dinner, and get back before Mina comes home. You ordered takeout, didn’t you? Bet that impressed your date.”
Then it hit me. Friday had been dead quiet according to the Roadrunners driver who had brought my grilled-cheese sandwich for lunch yesterday, but Monica was working the night of the party. She’d been wearing their standard uniform and carrying a Roadrunners bag when she died. She had probably handed out flyers for the grand opening I’d paid Roadrunners to distribute with their deliveries, so she would have known about the party. “Monica was your delivery driver, wasn’t she? What did she do? Embarrass you in front of your girlfriend?”
“That ungrateful girl threatened to rat me out to Mina,” Elroy said, his voice raised as the dam finally broke. “She was gonna tell my wife, all right? If she had proof I was cheating on her, Mina would have divorced me in a heartbeat. Juan would have bankrupted me. You ever heard of self-defense? Stand your ground? Monica Mayhew was going to ruin me. She threatened to destroy my life. I made sure she couldn’t.”
“That’s not self-defense, you idiot,” J.T. growled at his partner. “That’s murder.”
Elroy shrugged, recovering himself. “Not the way I see it. And not the way a jury’s gonna see it, either. Monica was a tease and a liar. After all we did for her, she was trying to ruin my marriage, and my business. I was defending myself, plain and simple. Did things get out of hand after she lured me into the supply closet at your party? Sure. And I regret that. I really do. Her hitting her head on the shelf was an accident, plain and simple. If anything, y’all need to be looking at making your supply closet safer. Maybe add some padding to the sharp corners or locking the door, before you have a lawsuit on your hands.”
“Seriously?” J.T. asked, advancing on Elroy. “That’s the way you’re gonna play it?”
Elroy threw up his hands in an exaggerated sign of resignation that seemed as fake as he was. “It is what it is, buddy. Have me arrested if you think it’ll do any good, but I’m the only one who knows where Calvin is. If anything happens to me, he’ll disappear permanently. You’ve got nothing. I’ll get off scot-free. You’ll default on the bail when Calvin doesn’t show up and lose the record store. Then Rodger Mayhew is gonna sue the pants off you for creating the unsafe environment that killed his daughter.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Oh yeah? Now you’ve got it all figured out? A minute ago, you thought your own brother-in-law was involved with Monica’s death. But yeah, let’s all hear what little Juniper Jessup has to say.”
“Me?” I pointed to myself. “Nah, you don’t gotta worry about me.” I advanced toward him and picked up my phone from where I’d left it on the other side of the coffee station, nearest to Elroy. “Hey, Mina, did you get any of that?” I asked.
His wife’s voice floated out of the speakerphone. “I think I heard enough.”
“You little…” Elroy lunged at me, but J.T. snagged him by the collar. Elroy might have had several inches on my brother-in-law, but J.T. was all muscle. Elroy gagged, reaching for his throat.
I snagged the coffeepot, full of hot, black drip coffee, and held on to it just in case I needed a weapon. Elroy might have gotten the better of me in the dark hallway of Calvin’s house, but he wasn’t going to get the jump on me again, with or without J.T. holding him back. “Gee, seems like Mina knows everything now, anyway.”
J.T. let go of Elroy, who smoothed his shirt, buying time to get his temper under control. When he spoke again, he was as calm and commanding as he’d ever been in a courtroom. “You can’t prove anything. None of you can. Tell the cops any story you want. It’s all he-said, she-said. Who do you think the judge is gonna believe? You? Or me? You grew up in Cedar River, Juni, but you might as well be a tourist these days. I’m an upstanding member of this community.”
“You are,” Maggie said. She pointed up at the camera mounted over the cash register. “And I think a confession from an upstanding member of the community such as yourself will convince any jury.”
There was a bang on the front door. We all turned to see Beau pounding on the door. I put down the coffeepot and hurried to the front entrance, unlocking it to let in the detective. He surveyed the room. “What’s going on here?” He held up his phone and read the text message I’d sent when no one was watching: “911 get down to S&S. Got the killer. Got proof.”
“It was Elroy.”
“Elroy McGibbons?” Beau asked.
“The same,” I said, bobbing my head.
“That explains why the false fire alarm was traced back to the courthouse,” Beau said contemplatively.
“That son of a…” J.T.’s face turned red. “He must have called it in while I was in the restroom.” He shook his head. “My own partner. And I never suspected a thing.”
“None of us did,” Beau said. “Any idea where I can find Elroy now?”
“He’s right here…” I turned around. J.T. and Maggie were still by the checkout counter. The hallway was empty. Elroy was gone.
“He couldn’t have gotten far,” I said.
“You’re right about that,” a woman’s voice said.
Elroy stumbled back into the shop. His right arm was twisted up behind his back. Behind him was Jayden Holt. She was half his size, yet handled him easily. “I caught this one slipping out the back,” she said. “Figured we might want to have a word with him.”
“You figured right,” I said, flashing a wide grin at her. “Congratulations, Officer Holt. You just caught yourself a murderer.”