Candy Cane Murder (Hannah Swensen #9.5)(60)

I’d whiled away the rest of the day mindlessly watching sitcom reruns, getting up only to run out for some Chinese takeout. Okay, so I ran out for some Ben & Jerry’s, too—to reward myself for surviving a whole hour and forty-six and a half minutes (but who’s counting?) with Angel.

Now, after a restless night dreaming I was being chased down the Santa Monica Pier by a giant nacho, I lay in bed, gazing up at the ceiling. I thought about bailing out on L.A.

Girlfriends and leaving Angel to another mentor, preferably one who’d spent some time as a prison warden.

But then I remembered how vulnerable she’d looked gasping at her inhaler, and I knew I had to give her another chance.

Somehow, I vowed, prying myself out of bed, I had to make our relationship work.

I’d just sloshed some Hearty Halibut Guts into a bowl for 208

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Prozac and was standing at the kitchen counter, breakfasting on a cold egg roll, when the phone rang.

Seymour Fiedler came on the line, sounding light years more cheerful than the last time we’d spoken.

“Good news, Jaine. I just talked with my lawyer, and I may be off the hook for Garth Janken’s death.”

“That’s great, Seymour.”

“Now the cops think it was premeditated murder. In fact, they just brought somebody in for questioning. A guy named Willard Cox. Apparently they found some incriminating evidence linking him to Garth’s death.”

“What evidence?”

“I have no idea. All I know is they’re questioning him.”

“Do you want me to continue my investigation?”

“You may as well. Just in case they change their minds.”

I hung up with an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Some of it was probably indigestion from that egg roll. But mainly, I was concerned about Willard. Something in my gut told me he was innocent.

I know he hated Garth, but there’s a big difference between wishing somebody were no longer around to bother you, and actually trying to kill him. Besides, if Willard were really the killer, would he have been so openly vitriolic about Garth?

No, my gut was telling me that the cops had brought in the wrong suspect for questioning.

But what, I wondered, was the incriminating evidence they’d found?

I decided to pay a little visit to Ethel Cox and find out.

I made my way past the frolicking reindeer on the Coxes’s front lawn and rang the bell.

Ethel came to the door, still in her nightgown. A far cry from the happy hausfrau I’d met the other day, her gray curls had lost their bounce and her once rosy cheeks were drained of color.

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“Ethel,” I asked, in what had to be one of the Top Ten World’s Most Rhetorical Questions, “are you okay?”

“Willard’s gone!” she cried, her eyes wide with fear. “The police took him away for questioning!”

“Try not to worry, Ethel. They’ll probably release him in a few hours. Let me come in and make you some tea.”

She nodded numbly and allowed me to lead her down the hallway to her kitchen.

Minutes later, we were seated across from each other with steaming cups of tea, laced with lemon and plenty of sugar.

The warmth from the tea seemed to calm her a bit.

“Oh, Ms. Austen,” she said, taking a grateful sip. “It’s just awful. The police found a Fiedler on the Roof cap in Willard’s toolbox out in the garage. They think he was the one who loosened those shingles on Garth’s roof.”

So that was the evidence Seymour had been talking about.

“I don’t know how it could’ve gotten there,” she said, bewildered.

Clearly this woman didn’t have a suspicious bone in her body.

“Somebody may have put it there, Ethel. To frame Willard for Garth’s murder.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Did any of the neighbors have access to the garage?”

“Actually, they all did. There’s a little door on the side of the garage we never lock. In case the gardener wants to get in.

“To think,” she said, the color rushing back to her cheeks, “that some awful person would try to blame Garth’s death on Willard. Who would do such a terrible thing?”

The first person who sprang to my mind was my lead suspect, Libby Brecker. Hadn’t she said she’d been watching the roofers work? What if she’d seen one of them leave his cap behind? How easy to snatch it up, disguise herself as a roofer, and clamber up the roof to set Garth’s deathtrap. And how 210

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easy to slip over when the Coxes were away and plant the cap in Willard’s toolbox.

My musings were interrupted by the shrill ring of a phone.

“Oh, dear!” Ethel said, jumping up. “Maybe that’s Willard!”

She hurried out of the room, her granny gown billowing behind her.

I sat there, stirring my tea, wondering whether Libby Brecker was indeed Garth’s killer and/or whether Ethel had any brownies left over from the other day.

I know. I’m impossible, thinking about food at a time like this. I bet Sherlock Holmes never sat around wondering if Dr. Watson had any brownies in his kitchen.

I was in the midst of giving myself a stern lecture when Ethel came bursting through the door.