The Tainted Taffy, page 15
“Okay,” he muttered. “So we don’t want to spend too much time here. We need to look for somewhere accessible, but out of sight. I agree with you that if someone was to break in here, they would come from the back. The front borders the road.”
“Exactly,” Autumn whispered in quiet agreement. The road was very worrying. She didn’t want to go anywhere near it.
“So, what range does the camera have?”
“I think a few yards?”
He looked around the garden.
"In that tree there would be the best bet. If anyone comes over the fence, then the lens should get them.”
“The tree looks ideal,” she agreed.
The tree was within view of the road, though. Right now, they were behind the house. If they moved over to the tree, past three neatly ranked flower beds, they would be exposed.
“We’ll need to work fast,” Ethan said, clearly also aware of the lines of sight.
“Yes. Fast, but we need to make sure it’s put up correctly, so that it captures the image,” she emphasized.
It was as she said that word ‘capture’ that she saw it.
It was such a brief flicker of movement that she thought at first she’d imagined it. Swinging around to the home’s darkened window, she looked again, trying to make sense of what she had seen- or thought she’d seen.
Was it just her reflection in the glass? It must have been. She must have caught that, picked up by the moonlight, and for a moment, it had looked as if there was somebody walking inside.
She let out a shaky sigh. Really, Autumn, she chastised herself. You’re letting your nerves get the better of you. If you’re going to do this kind of reckless thing, then you need to make sure you have a cool head under pressure.
Ethan clearly did. He was shuffling over to the tree, crouched down, his arms pressed to his sides so that if anyone did glance into the brightly floral garden from the road, all they would see was a shapeless shadow. It was very clever. Pressing her own arms to her sides, Autumn got ready to imitate it. Then, if anyone looked that way, all they would see were two shapeless shadows. Maybe a passerby would believe they were rocks.
If Officer Warring happened to pass by, he might think they were just boulders, with any luck.
But as Ethan edged his way over to the tree, she glanced back to the window, unable to stop herself from double-checking.
When she did, she saw the movement again. Without a doubt.
Shock, at a level she’d never known existed, surged through her. Her heart pounded and her skin tingled, the hair all over her body stood upright and she felt a strange tingling in her head.
There was somebody behind the curtains. In Mr. Sweetly’s house. Creeping around in the dark.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
For a moment, all Autumn could hear was the sound of her own breath whooshing into her lungs.
Then, finally, coherent thought returned.
“Ethan,” she hissed.
He turned slowly, in a way designed not to attract attention.
“What?” he hissed back.
Giving up on channeling a boulder, Autumn gesticulated wildly toward the darkened window.
“There’s somebody in there. In the house.”
Ethan’s eyes widened. She saw the flash of white in the darkness. Then, arms to his side, he crept back toward the cover of the house, looking like a boulder on the move. As soon as he was out of sight of the road, he sped up, racing over to the window and staring inside.
“Jeez,” he said. “Someone’s creeping around. Autumn, this might be it. It might be the killer!”
Her mouth felt dry. Decisive action was needed now. She’d gotten them into this predicament. Now, she needed to work out the way forward. The problem was that she couldn’t think. Standing on the damp, well trimmed grass, her mind felt as if it was spinning its wheels.
“Um, we should, um…”
Then, Ethan’s shout surprised her.
“We should get this guy. Come on!”
“What?” Taken aback, Autumn stumbled as he grabbed her arm, pulling her to the right.
“We have to find out how he got in. We can block him, if we’re fast.”
“Okay. Let’s go fast." Ethan was racing over the grass, and tugging her arm away so that he didn't actually pull her over, she followed. Now, she was getting into it. In fact, she was craving justice. Nothing, and nobody was going to stop her from getting this guy. Her earlier nerves seemed a thing of the past as she sprinted around the house, her feet skidding on the grass. Frantically waving her hands, she caught her balance. Raced on.
There.
“Open window!” She gasped the words, her adrenaline spiking. “Look there. That’s how he got in.”
Already, Ethan was leaping for the sill, flinging the window – open a crack – much wider.
With a shrill squeak, the window complied. Legs flailing, Ethan launched himself through the gap. Autumn didn’t even have time to worry, or to wonder, or to delay. Gripping the sill with her hands, she launched herself up, her feet scrabbling against the wall, her leg swinging over and then landing with a breathless thump on the other side.
They were in a darkened bedroom. The gleams of light shone off the coverlet, which was pale, and were muffled by the carpet, which was dark.
She looked around her frantically, trying to get her bearings. Where were they? And more importantly, where was the skulking figure they had seen?
The answer came a moment later.
Frantic footsteps thudded in the next room. Going away from them, not toward them.
“He’s running!” Ethan shouted.
“Where?” Autumn yelled. Did they have a chance of catching him?
She heard a frantic scrabbling on wood and the sound of metal grinding. Then, the distinctive sound of a door being flung open.
He hadn't gotten in through the front door, but he'd wrenched it open, and that was how he was leaving. Luckily, the opening of the door had slowed him down. It wasn’t slowing them down, as she sprinted behind Ethan.
Her ex-boyfriend blasted through the open doorway, veering hard left. Whoever this was, he wasn’t risking the road. He was swerving around the side of the house, going out the way they’d come in. He was heading to the fence. Who was he? He was also dressed all in black, making it three out of three. And he was hurtling for the fence like a man possessed.
Whoever he was, he didn’t want them to catch him. That was clear.
“Damn it. This is way too heavy.”
With a clatter, Ethan dropped his tool box outside Mr. Sweetly’s back fence, and pursued the running man empty handed, but with a renewed burst of speed.
With Ethan pounding ahead, Autumn reached the fence and ducked through it, twisting her ankle as she landed. This trail was uneven, with deep ruts and high tussocks of grass, hillocks and molehills and dips in the ground.
Ethan was racing on, and she’d never catch up with him. Or so she thought, until, with a yell, he stumbled, lurching sideways, and for a moment she thought he was going to fall. But he picked himself up as she passed him. Now she was in front. There was nothing, not even Ethan, separating her from this suspect. Except, of course, a rapidly widening band of darkness.
But then, he tripped up.
One minute he was running like the wind. And the next, it was like a wheelbarrow of heavy black sacks overturned in front of Autumn.
She rushed up. That had been a nasty tumble.
“Are you okay?”
Not the usual first words to speak to a suspected criminal, she knew, but that had been a crashing fall – inevitable at that speed, over such rough ground, in the dark.
She was so winded that she could barely gasp the words out. And he was so breathless that for a while he lay there, puffing and groaning.
Then, Ethan rushed up, activating his phone’s flashlight.
“Hey, you,” he said, leaning forward with his hands on his knees, recovering from the speedy dash.
“I don’t know if I’m okay,” the man managed to get out. He looked at Autumn pleadingly. His face looked harsh white in the spotlight that Ethan was now shining directly into his eyes.
“Hey, man,” he uttered a hoarse protest. “Don’t do that!” He flung up a defensive hand.
“What were you doing in Mr. Sweetly’s house?” Ethan challenged him. Reaching out a hand, he grabbed the man’s ankle. Clever move, Autumn thought. That would stop him from scrambling to his feet and running away.
He didn’t look like he wanted to run anywhere. His face was half in shadow from his hand, but looking closely at him, Autumn saw that he was a chubby man of about forty years old. He had on a dress shirt, with a couple of collar buttons undone, smart work pants, and his shoes were relatively shiny, if you looked past the recent coating of dust and grass.
A gold wedding ring glinted off his finger as he adjusted his hand.
“Please could you stop shining that thing directly at me?” he asked again.
Ethan had now gotten back his breath, enough to start interrogating him, at any rate.
“What were you doing in Mr. Sweetly’s house?”
“You don’t understand,” the man protested.
“I know I don’t understand. That’s why I’m asking,” Ethan retorted.
“Oh, you think you’re so clever? Stop being sarcastic.”
“Is sarcasm the biggest issue right now?” Ethan thundered.
“Okay.” Autumn scrambled to her feet. If this conflict escalated, there was a chance they wouldn’t get the truth at all. “Can everyone please calm down? Ethan, be kind. Shine the light on – on his chest. Not his face.”
Grudgingly, Ethan lowered the beam.
“Now, if you could please tell us your name?” That seemed like a sensible starting point.
“I’m Boris Gresham."
“And I’m Autumn Ray,” she said. “This is –”
“I’m just somebody helping out, Ethan said quickly, transferring his glare from Boris Gersham to Autumn and back again.
"Okay." At least she and Boris were on first-name terms. “Boris, we couldn’t help noticing you were in this house, in the dark, snooping around. We should really call the police.”
Under no circumstances could she possibly call the police until she was sure he was the killer. She’d get into more trouble than him. But the threat was effective. He turned pale.
“No, please don’t do that?”
“Why not?” Ethan rumbled.
The man eased himself into a more comfortable position, sitting up, bending his legs and wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. Ethan let go of his ankle and sat on the grass himself. While keeping poised for action, Autumn allowed herself to lean on her hand.
“Because I wasn’t supposed to be there, but my reason was innocent.”
“You just broke into a man’s house and you’re calling it innocent?” Ethan pushed.
“Don’t attack me,” Boris retaliated.
“Please,” Autumn said. “Let’s keep this calm. If people hear a fight, somebody might call the police. I’m sure that Boris just needs some time to get the words out. You’re going to tell us, aren’t you?”
He was between a rock and a hard place now. Ethan was being nasty, Autumn was being nice, and both of them were pressuring him to explain himself. Autumn didn’t see that there was a way out of this for him, and he clearly felt the same. He sighed.
“It’s all my wife’s fault,” he said. Then, hastily, he added, “I didn’t mean it that way. Not her fault. I was joking about that. We joke that way, her and I. We really adore each other.”
Autumn thought the words seemed sincere, but she was still battling to understand the progression of logic.
“You see, my wife loves to bake,” Boris explained. “She’s a really passionate baker. She makes cakes, sweets, you name it. And she recently started making fudge. She always wanted to know the secret ingredient in the peppermint fudge that Harold Sweetly made.”
“Go on?” Autumn encouraged. This seemed like a strange reason to murder someone. But at least it was a reason.
"He would never give her the recipe, of course. Top secret, you know. He was quite nasty about it. He didn’t just refuse to give her the recipe. He actually had her in tears. It was so wrong. She was a loyal customer who used to buy from him every week without fail. She even used to give him a basket of soap and cologne at Christmas time.”
“Really?” Autumn leaned forward, concerned. Nastiness to a loyal customer was unacceptable.
“He was insulting and mean to her. He said that nobody is going to get anything from him anymore, that he’s been way too soft. That he was clamping down. He bragged that he was even stopping payments to his own relatives, never mind strangers who walked in and expected him to give away his secrets. And that she was a nothing in his world, and probably a poor baker, and that he’d rather choke on his coffee than eat her fudge.”
“So…?” Autumn encouraged. This was going to be the hard part. She felt conflicted. On the one hand, she was disturbed to realize how much sympathy she had for this murderer. But on the other hand – well, murder was always wrong.
"I'd do anything for my wife. So when I heard Harold had passed away, I decided I was going to break into his house and see if I could find those recipes for myself," Boris said. "I wanted the peppermint fudge one most of all, but there were a couple of others that I was going to take if I could find them."
His face was set and determined.
“Hang on.” Autumn had spotted a flaw in this version of events. He’d left out the middle bit altogether. “What happened to – to killing him?” she said.
Boris stared at her blankly. “What are you talking about?” he asked.
Autumn felt a pang of concern.
“Well, didn’t you – didn’t you?”
“Oh." Realization lit up Boris's eyes. "You think I killed him? No, of course I wouldn't do that. Why would I kill anyone? I was never going to buy sweets from him again, but as for killing him? That's a bit extreme. No, it was only when I heard he was dead that I decided to bravely source the recipe I needed.”
Narrowing her eyes, Autumn decided to test this version.
“Where were you yesterday morning?” she asked.
“Where I always was on a Friday morning. I was with a client. I work for an accounting firm, and we do the books for a supermarket chain on the mainland. Friday’s a very hard working day for me. We started at eight, and worked through until six. Then I had to go back today and finish up a few things. That’s why I’m still in my work clothes.”
Autumn felt shocked. Shocked, but not disbelieving. The version made sense. He’d opportunistically come to get the recipe after learning about the death.
She was going to ask if he could prove it, but he got there first.
“Look,” he said. Out of his pocket, he took a cellphone. Opening it, he scrolled through.
“There’s my e-ticket for the ferry. There and back, yesterday. Look at the time stamps,” he said triumphantly.
Autumn looked, and Ethan looked. She couldn’t see a thing wrong with those time stamps. They were correct, and they backed up his version.
He scrambled to his feet.
"Did you get the recipe?" Autumn suddenly asked him, wondering what the outcome of this nighttime raid had been.
He shook his head. “I didn’t. It must be hidden. But it doesn’t matter. At least I tried to be her knight in shining armor.”
Scrambling up, he wished them good night, and then turned and headed away, limping slightly.
Autumn watched him go. Now that her adrenaline had ebbed, she was deflated and demoralized. This had seemed like such a strong lead. And now, she was back where she started – precisely nowhere. The intruder hadn’t been the killer. And she guessed Ethan wouldn’t agree to going back and repositioning the nanny cam in hope of finding someone else. That ship had sailed. Most probably, Mr. Sweetly had kept the recipes somewhere else in any case, since Boris hadn’t found them.
“I’d better get home.” Ethan got to his feet with a sigh, brushing grass from his knees. Then he helped Autumn up. “You want to go past the bar for a drink?”
“I’m okay, thanks. I appreciate your help, though.”
Ethan had been a tower of strength. But that didn’t mean she wanted to go to the bar with him. It wouldn’t be the right thing to do. Dating him was a road she didn’t want to go back down. They were too different. They argued too intensely and he brought out a stubborn streak in her that she’d never even known she had. Probably, she did the same for him. Relationships were about harmony, not constant abrasion.
“I owe you,” she said.
“You’ll get the invoice.”
As he strode away, Autumn tried to cheer herself up by thinking of the bottle of red wine in her refrigerator, and the quarter piece of the delicious cheese, feta and asparagus quiche that Jasmine had made. With a tasty, rich filling and the perfect crunch on the crust, it was a culinary triumph. She was going to dig into that, she decided, turning for home. Maybe with some mixed rocket leaves and balsamic reduction on the side. A comforting, quick dinner after a tough night.
She still didn’t know who the killer was.
Harold had been an angry man. Now that she knew more about his real character, she personally thought his anger stemmed from selfishness. He knew he treated others unfairly and that people didn’t really like or trust him once they knew him well. But for some reason, this only made him more eager to upset people and do them wrong. One of them must have retaliated.
A shiver went through her as she considered the possibility that he, or she, might never be found. What would that do to the tourist trade of Magnolia Bay – and to her own beloved guesthouse?
There had to be a way of saving this, Autumn decided.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
