‘Do you mean to say you saw—’
The phone in Mrs Higgins’ purse started ringing like an old-fashioned telephone. She reached in to answer it. ‘Hello?’ She smothered the phone with her palm. ‘You’ll have to excuse me,’ she said. ‘I really must take this.’
Mrs Higgins turned her back on me and settled down on the corner loveseat. Markie showed me the door.
The freight elevator was still marked off limits with crime-scene tape so I rode the passenger elevator down to the ground floor. Mrs Higgins had dropped a bombshell and, though I was properly shell-shocked, there was nothing I could do about it now.
I’d have to find Johnny and wring the truth out of him. Had he been at the Entronque building this morning? If so, why hadn’t he said so? Maybe he saw something. Something that could help Clive.
Yikes. Maybe he did something! But why?
I spotted the woman Ben had identified as Reva sitting alone at a round pine table out front of a small café called Magic Beans beside the roadrunner fountain. The smell of coffee hung in the air. I angled over. ‘Hi, I’m Maggie Miller. You’re Reva, right? Work for Markie’s Masterpieces?’
She snatched a tube of raspberry lip gloss from her open purse atop the small table and applied it generously to her full lips. ‘That’s right.’ Reva seemed nervous as she looked me up and down. ‘I saw you upstairs.’ She popped the top back on her lip gloss and tossed it into the bowels of her purse. ‘And earlier today, with the police.’
‘I’m helping them with their investigation into Lisa Willoughby’s death.’
Her brows shot up and her eyes twinkled with obvious amusement. ‘In a Maggie’s Beignet Café polo?’
I stopped a frown on its way to blossoming. The blush I couldn’t hide. This woman was perceptive and smart. I hated her already. ‘I’m sort of undercover.’
Her brown eyes flickered. She didn’t look like she was buying what I was selling but she moved her purse aside and waved for me to take a seat. I sat quickly before she changed her mind. Her pale complexion highlighted a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Definitely not a sun worshipper. I pegged her as fortyish. I didn’t see a wedding band. Not that that meant anything. Maybe working with cake all day she didn’t want to take a chance on her ring ending up the prize in somebody’s forkful.
‘So what are you really doing here?’
I decided on the blunt approach – after all, she’d started it. ‘A friend of mine has been accused of being involved in Lisa’s death.’
Reva nodded. ‘Clive.’ She batted her empty coffee cup from hand to hand across the tabletop. ‘Some cop was up earlier. He said they suspected foul play.’
‘I don’t think Clive did it,’ I replied. Even less after that bombshell Mrs Higgins had dropped. I really needed to talk to Johnny. ‘Did you see or hear anything unusual this morning?’
Reva shook her head and stole a look at her watch. ‘Not really. Everybody was running around, trying to get the day’s orders out. Ben was baking sheet cake. Markie was being Markie …’
‘Markie?’ I interrupted. ‘Markie wasn’t in the bakery this morning. He came in later. After Lisa’s body was found.’
Reva was adamant. ‘You must be mistaken. He was here.’
Was I mistaken or had Markie lied to me? If so, why? A woman had been murdered and she was one of his employees. That sounded like two very good reasons to lie.
‘Can I join the party?’
I turned.
Brad Smith, looking relaxed and easy on the eyes in his usual blue jeans and plain white T-shirt stood behind my shoulder. Brad’s a reporter for the Table Rock Reader, the town’s local newspaper. ‘Hi, Maggie.’ His hand shot across my shoulder. ‘Reva Reynolds of Markie’s Masterpieces, correct?’
She smiled at him. She hadn’t smiled at me once.
Brad looked a lot like my dead ex-husband. Maybe that’s why I was so leery of him. He’d asked me out once or twice but so far I was keeping my distance.
‘That’s me,’ she replied. Eyelashes went flutter-flutter.
Good grief.
‘I’m Brad Smith, with the Table Rock Reader.’
Brad deftly snatched a chair from the empty table beside us. He twisted it around backwards and straddled it, leaning his arms across the arched chairback. A notebook hung open in his left hand. His right hand held a pencil.
‘Do you mind?’ I said.
Brad smiled broadly. ‘Not at all.’
I glowered.
He scooted the chair up until it touched the table. ‘I wanted to ask you some questions about the murder of Lisa Willoughby.’ His electric-blue eyes cast their evil spell.
Reva came alive like somebody had thrown the switch to her central nervous system. I swear she grew two inches taller. ‘Oh,’ her hands flew to her cheeks, ‘it was awful. One minute poor Lisa was alive …’ She shook her head. ‘The next thing I know the police are telling us she’s been murdered!’ Her eyes bugged out like ping pong balls and she fanned herself with her right hand.
‘So you first heard about the murder from the police?’
Reva nodded quickly. ‘That’s right. I was upstairs in the cake shop. Two officers came in and told us.’
Brad scratched something in his notebook. Probably remembered to add bananas to his grocery list. The big monkey. He turned to me. ‘Dinner later?’
‘In your dreams.’
He grinned a big ape grin. ‘How did you know?’
I blushed.
He turned his interrogation back to Reva. ‘Did you know Ms Willoughby well?’
Reva chewed at her lower lip. ‘As well as anybody in the shop, I suppose. Except for Ben.’ She chuckled.
‘Oh?’ Brad scooched nearer.
Reva fluttered her eyelashes. ‘Ben and Lisa went out a few times. Nothing serious.’ She paused before adding, ‘Lisa was like that.’
Scribble, scribble.
Had he forgotten he was out of tomatoes, too?
I felt like a proverbial third wheel. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling.
‘So Ben and Lisa were a couple?’ I interjected. ‘Did they break up?’ Did Ben not take the breakup well? I’d seen him mangle that fondant upstairs. The guy had very strong hands. He could easily have given Lisa a shove that would have sent her soaring and then plunging to her death.
Before Reva could answer, Brad asked, ‘What do you know about the lawsuit between Ms Willoughby and The Hitching Post?’
‘What?’ I spluttered. What on earth was the man babbling about?
Brad twisted his head toward me. ‘Didn’t you know? Lisa Willoughby was taking Johnny Wolfe and Clive Rothschild to court. Something to do with her former employment at The Hitching Post – unfair termination and slander.’
I pulled myself together. An unfair termination suit? Slander? ‘Of course I knew. I’m no idiot.’ What an idiot I was! Why didn’t I know this? Why hadn’t I figured it out? Put two and two together and come up with trouble times two: Clive and Johnny. They’d been holding out on me, the weasels.
‘Great, because I’d like to interview Johnny. I was hoping you could set it up for me.’
‘I’d love to,’ I said through gritted teeth with a plastered-on smile.
‘I’ve got to cover a zoning commission meeting after we’re done here but I’d like to get his take on this story. Maybe later this evening?’
‘Wonderful,’ I lied.
Brad turned to Reva. ‘Think there’s any way you can get me an interview with Markie?’ He gave her five dollars’ worth of charm. ‘He shot me down on the phone.’
Reva’s tongue made tsk-tsking noises even as she shook her head. ‘Sorry, Markie’s in a mood, you know? Even for Markie. What with the murder and the lost cake and all.’
Brad nodded. He patted Reva’s hand. ‘I understand.’
Reva smiled. ‘How about tomorrow? I know I can get him to talk to you then.’ Yeah, right, I thought.
Brad agreed.
I fumed. I could feel my innards heating up like a steam engine train firebox. I’d read somewhere that the flue gas temperatures in a firebox could reach as high as a thousand degrees Fahrenheit. That’s why they contained a safety valve called a fusible plug, to prevent catastrophic firebox failure. I feared my own fusible plug was in danger of being exceeded. I looked at my tummy and considered the possible explosion and its ramifications. It wasn’t a pretty thought. I’d eaten Ethiopian food.
Reva pulled out her cellphone and checked the time again. ‘Sorry, break time’s over. Markie’s going to throw a hissy if I don’t get back to work.’ She stood and grabbed her purse. Brad stood too. Very gallant of him.
Rummaging around a moment, she came up with a pale blue business card that she handed to Brad. ‘Here’s my number,’ she said with a smile, ‘if you want to talk some more later.’ Brad took the card with thanks. Reva ran a hand through her locks and headed for the elevator.
‘If you want to talk some more later,’ I mimicked wickedly under my breath. The woman hadn’t answered my question about Ben and Lisa. My fingers thrummed the tabletop. Nor had she offered me a business card.
‘What’s that?’ Brad loomed over me.
‘Nothing,’ I practically spat. ‘I mean, about dinner. Later. That would be great.’
‘It would?’ Brad eyed me suspiciously.
‘What?’ I said. ‘A girl’s got to eat, doesn’t she?’
‘Yeah, it’s just that I didn’t really think you’d say yes.’ Brad looked downright flustered. Good, it served the normally unflappable reporter right. I’d taken him by surprise. Like I said, he’d asked me out a time or two in the past and I’d always turned him down flat. I knew trouble when I saw it. And I was looking right at it.
I pushed back my chair. ‘So, what do you say? Pick me up around seven?’ I fluttered my eyelashes the way I’d seen Reva do it. I felt like an idiot. ‘Why don’t we meet at Hanging Louie’s?’
‘OK, see you then.’ Brad shoved his notebook in his back pocket and walked off.
I noted the time spinning away on a stylized rust-colored coyote clock above the elevator. Perfect. Hanging Louie’s is a bar slash restaurant located about midway between Sedona and Table Rock. Legend says the joint was erected on the spot where Louis ‘Louie’ Dumbrowski met the hangman’s noose back in 1885 or so – at least, that’s what the engraved wood sign at the entrance would have one believe. I believed. Hanging Louie’s featured Southwest cuisine with an intergalactic flair, like the mesquite smoked UFO burger. This is Arizona. We Arizonans have a unique perspective on things.
I’d have just enough time to get back to the café to close it down for the day, head home, shower, change and then leave again. Plenty of time for me to be long gone before Brad got tired of waiting for me at Hanging Louie’s and decided to come looking for me at home. And wait for me he would. I wanted Brad Smith the reporter out of the way while I went tracking down Johnny Wolfe. If I hadn’t made the date with Brad to distract him he might have beaten me to the punch, with or without my help. As much as it pained me to say it, the guy was good at his job.
Maybe I was fighting dirty. But Brad was a news reporter. Fighting dirty was probably the only kind of fighting he knew and respected.