A Dash of Peach Read online

  “I wouldn't tell Bob Connor that,” Michelle said, “because Bob Connor, it appears, played everyone. And he’ll be back for you if he thinks otherwise.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Momma Peach agreed. “So go on and run. I'm sure Bob Connor will catch up to you sooner or later. But before you take off out of here like a skunk on fire, tell me, why did you call Detective Chan and report Betty Walker's murder?”

  Felicia stared at Momma Peach like the breath had been knocked out of her gut. There was no way she was going to outsmart the woman. Momma Peach possessed a mind that was special and brilliant – a mind that would always be one step ahead of her. Felicia said lamely, “I don't know what you're talking about.” But she hung her head down and didn’t make a move, as if finally broken by the events of the day.

  “Well,” Michelle said as she walked up to Felicia, “until we can untangle this knot, I'm placing you under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder, Felicia Garland. I believe your intention was to kill Mr. Graystone, and I believe you made the poison that was placed in the peach pie he ate, but I don't believe you placed the poison in the pie. Not only did we find not a single shred of DNA or fiber evidence linked to you in that motel room, but there’s one more thing. You see, you wear a very distinct perfume. The smell of your perfume was nowhere in the motel room Mr. Graystone was found dead in.”

  Momma Peach shook her head at Felicia. “Such a shame,” she told her in a sad voice. “You're so young and pretty, but so ugly on the inside. Such a shame.” Momma Peach walked away without looking at any more of the fancy homes. The homes were ugly to her now.

  Chapter Seven

  Bob Connor welcomed Momma Peach into his office and closed the door. “It's good to see you again,” he said in a pleasant voice that was, as before, backed with a steely chill.

  “Did you get a chance to look over my information?” Momma Peach asked and settled herself down in a chair. “Love those mints,” she told Bob. “May I?”

  “Of course,” Bob said with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. He watched Momma Peach retrieve a mint from the crystal candy dish as he walked behind his desk and sat down. “I'm not certain what information Mr. Garland was looking at,” he told Momma Peach, as his voice changed from friendly to professional, “but you're in the clear. There are no records indicating that the interest rate on your loan was assigned in error.”

  “Now, isn't that neat,” Momma Peach smiled. She popped the peppermint into her mouth. “Well, now,” she said and settled back in her chair, “I guess you and me got other business to talk about, then.”

  “Do we?” Bob said. He leaned back in his chair. He studied Momma Peach with curious and cautious eyes. “Do you want to talk about making a different type of loan?” His face was perfectly neutral, as if he knew perfectly well she was here to interfere in his business, but he was going to wait until she made a fuss before his poker face moved an inch.

  “Nope, not a loan,” Momma Peach said and bit the peppermint in her mouth in half, “I want to talk turkey...with a turkey.” Momma Peach stopped smiling. “What do you know about a dead man in a motel room?” she asked.

  “A dead man in a motel room?” Bob asked in polite confusion. “I'm not sure I know what you mean.”

  “I promise you Felicia Garland does,” Momma Peach said. She looked him in the eyes without blinking. “And right now, that lost soul is down at the police station in handcuffs because she couldn't figure out how to make the lies coming from her mouth work right.”

  “I see,” Bob said. He slowly folded his arms together across his chest. “Felicia Garland and I have a personal history,” he said in a clear voice. “I'm her half-brother. Did you know that?”

  Momma Peach stared across the desk and all she could see was the vicious cobra snake dancing back and forth in front of her eyes. “Yep,” she said. “But that would be mighty hard to prove in a court of law, seeing how your momma's medical records have been wiped clean of you.”

  “True,” Bob said and sighed. “I was an unwanted child. I'm not bitter, mind you. My mother did what she thought was best for her life.” Bob eased a smile onto his face that might have looked half-pleasant from a distance. Up close, it was crooked in more ways than one. “I was adopted by a decent family. I was treated fairly and attended a nice college. I have nothing to complain about. It could have been worse.”

  “Mr. Graystone is dead. I say that's pretty bad.” Momma Peach braced her mind for a mental battle. “Strange how you arrive in town and suddenly your half-sister’s daddy is found poisoned. Strange how a certain Mark Thompson confessed to me that you paid him to keep his mouth shut, too. Detective Chan is out in the lobby and she's mighty interested in speaking to you.”

  “I did pay Mark Thompson to remain silent,” Bob confessed in a casual voice. “But only to protect my half-sister. When I realized that she was planning to kill Mr. Graystone – which you know already, of course – I knew I had to act.”

  “So you did know the man?”

  “Yes,” Bob said and nodded his head. “I had to be careful, mind you.”

  “I understand.”

  “I'm sure you do,” Bob told Momma Peach with a smoothness that made her soul shudder. “I tried to save Mr. Graystone. I arrived at his room far too late, however, on the night he was killed. I found him dead. What could I do?”

  “Call the police.”

  “And be arrested under suspicion for his murder?” Bob asked and shook his head no. “Felicia is a very clever woman. I knew she wanted me to find Mr. Graystone dead.”

  “Why?”

  “To frame me for murder, why else,” Bob told Momma Peach. “You see, she wasn't very happy to see me arrive at her front door. She was even less happy to see me working at the same bank her husband was employed at. Paranoia took hold of her poor mind, I'm afraid, and caused her mental state to fall into a very dark pit.” He almost looked sad as he said it.

  “Felicia claims you threatened to kill her husband unless she began paying you large sums of money.”

  “She's a very clever liar,” Bob told Momma Peach and leaned forward in his chair. “My half-sister is not mentally sound. I have many of our conversations caught on tape that any judge would find very interesting.”

  “Oh?”

  “I assumed Felicia's poor mind would eventually crumble and she would run to the police with a stack of lies,” Bob told Momma Peach. “I had to protect myself.”

  “Will you bring these tapes to the police?”

  “No,” Bob said and leaned back in his chair. “I don’t think that will be necessary. I'm beginning a new life in this community. I have been hired into a position that allows me growth and opportunity.” Bob shook his head. “And I thought I had family here...however, I was deeply wrong.”

  Momma Peach chewed on the peppermint in her mouth. The snake sitting across from her was playing it real smart. “I smelled your cologne in Mr. Graystone's room. You were in his room for quite a while that night.”

  “Of course I was,” Bob said. “I tried to save his life the night he was murdered. I knew if I called the police I would fall into Felicia's devious trap, so I tried to save him. It was the only way to stop her.” Bob planted his hands down onto his desk and leaned forward to look forcefully into Momma Peach's eyes. “She needed me as a scapegoat. And I know why she needed the money, too. You see, her husband, Floyd Garland, owed a considerable amount of money to a certain man who liked to take bets. Mr. Garland, perhaps out of desperation or plain stupidity, began stealing money from the bank to pay off his debt.”

  “Did he?”

  Bob nodded his head. “Yes. But he was taking it directly out of the bank vault – he had access due to his position. The procedures of the bank meant he had a short window of time to replace the money he stole from the vault. Money he didn't have. Unless, of course, he somehow came into a sudden cash flow.”

  “Mr. Graystone's money?”

  “Yes,” Bob said. “Mr
. Graystone's wife left him quite a considerable amount of money. I guess me showing up was bad timing on my part but perfect for Felicia. She figured out a way to save her husband from prison, she just needed a convenient scapegoat to blame for the murder of her father. I was to be that scapegoat. She just didn’t plan on me seeing through her stupid little ruse.”

  “I see,” Momma Peach replied. “Bob Connor,” she said in a careful tone, “wasn't your daddy a hit man for the Mafia?”

  Momma Peach's words reached out across the desk and punched Bob in the face, but he barely showed it. He narrowed his eyes. His lips almost curled into a snarl before he controlled himself. “What about it?” he asked. “Rich DeDonato did his time and now he's dead. He's square with the house.”

  Momma Peach saw a killer peer out of Bob's eyes in that moment. She also saw a man who had slipped for one careless second from his comfortable perch as a banking executive and revealed himself as fluent in Mafia speak. “Rich DeDonato went to prison because Mr. Graystone testified against him. Mr. Graystone also married the woman carrying Rich DeDonato's baby...that baby was you.”

  “I was unaware,” Bob said through gritted teeth, though Momma Peach could see the lie seeping through his every pore. “Perhaps I should hire a lawyer to conduct a very thorough search of my family records.”

  Momma Peach shook her head. “Rich DeDonato is dead,” she said in a calm voice. “Better to talk to folk when they're breathing. But I'm sure you did talk to Rich DeDonato while he had air in his lungs. At least that's what the visitation records at the prison he was rotting in showed.”

  There was a thin, strained silence in Bob Connor’s office. His eyes never left Momma Peach’s for a second.

  “Get out.”

  “You visited Rich DeDonato many times,” Momma Peach continued. “Warden at the prison claims Rich was running inside work for some low-down, good-for-nothing Mafia family and you were the middle man. Nothing like a son working with his daddy and his daddy’s old friends, is there. Really bonds them together.”

  “Get out!” Bob said and struck his desk with one white-knuckled fist.

  Momma Peach smiled. “Before Rich DeDonato died he made you promise to kill Mr. Graystone in revenge, and to kill Felicia, the daughter your mother kept after she gave you up. At least,” Momma Peach widened her smile, “that's what Rich DeDonato's cellmate claims he read in one of the letters Rich wrote you.”

  “Back down, woman,” Bob hissed in a low breath.

  Momma Peach stopped smiling. She leaned forward in her chair and went eye to eye with him. “You threatened my babies you filthy piece of sewer scum. No one threatens my babies, do you hear me? Now you listen real close because I ain't gonna repeat myself twice: I'm going to send your sorry butt to prison where you will die just like your daddy.”

  “Is that so?” Bob asked and slowly began to reach for the top drawer of the desk.

  Momma Peach knew in an instant. She jumped to her feet and smacked Bob upside the head with her pocketbook before he could retrieve the gun that was surely hiding in that drawer. Bob's head snapped to the right and then popped forward toward the desk as he absorbed the blow, stunned. “This is personal,” she said in a voice that would have made a grizzly bear run in fear. “But let’s work it out. If you have the guts, meet me at the motel tonight at midnight. I'll be waiting.”

  Bob rubbed his face and shook his head to clear his sight. “You're dead,” he whispered. “And don't think for a second I'll let those pretty little girls working in your lousy bakery escape.”

  “Tonight...midnight,” Momma Peach promised Bob and spit the remains of the peppermint in her mouth on the floor at his feet in disdain. “By the way, I know you killed Betty Walker. Betty Walker saw who killed Mr. Graystone. A letter was found hidden in her suitcase.” Momma Peach looked at Bob with disgust. “She stated that you were in the room when she arrived with the towels. She saw you pick a small lid up off the floor. You didn't see her because she hid behind the ice machine and waited until you left before she entered the room. That's when she found Mr. Graystone dead.”

  Bob stood up. “The words of a dead woman will not hold up in court,” he promised Momma Peach and pointed at the office door. “And I'm not playing your games, woman. I'll deal with you on my own time.”

  “If you don't show up at the motel tonight at midnight,” Momma Peach said and walked over to the office door, “the tape recorder I have in my pocketbook will go public.”

  She could see his jaw tighten from across the room. He made as if to step toward her and she neatly opened the office door so that anyone in the hallway outside would be able to hear everything. “Midnight, then,” he promised Momma Peach, his eyes flickering to the open hallway and the threat of discovery lurking beyond if any employee happened to walk past at the wrong second.

  “Come alone. Felicia will be there,” Momma Peach told Bob in a pleasant voice. Then she continued in an undertone, “But before I leave, tell me, how did you get Mr. Graystone to eat my famous peach pie? What really happened in that awful room? Tell me or I'll take my tape recorder right down to the police station quicker than you can blink, boy.”

  Bob’s eyes flicked over to his desk drawer one more time and she spoke again, before he could move. “Quicker than you can grab that gun and chase me, either. Don’t think I can’t outrun you, snake.”

  “Felicia and I worked out a plan,” Bob said quietly, straining to look past her into the hallway in case someone was about to walk in. “It's true. I did show up and demand money from her. I hated her. I hated Graystone for ratting out my old man. I hated my mother for giving me up. My old man rotted in prison while they lived the good life. My old man wanted revenge, but the FBI hid Graystone and my mother.” Bob pointed at Momma Peach and spoke in a fierce whisper. “You stand there acting as if I'm a rat, woman, while the real rats are running loose everywhere.”

  “Your daddy was a killer.” She said this in a natural tone, as if she were inquiring about the weather. Anyone walking past would have nothing to suspect.

  “My old man didn’t kill anyone who didn’t deserve it. He killed the worst mankind had to offer this world. The losers he whacked were nothing but guys who beat their wives, stole, killed, drank, ran drugs and guns, the works. Then it was their misfortune to get mixed up in the wrong family. My old man did society a favor.” Bob’s eyes gleamed for a moment with long-suppressed fury. “When Felicia wrote him a letter, she spilled the truth about my mother throwing me into the wind and that’s when he got back into the game, from behind bars. My old man worked hard to find me. I was living in Brooklyn at the time.”

  “So Rich DeDonato found you, then what?”

  Bob sat back down in his chair. “I went to the prison he was rotting in and paid him a visit. From there, things just sorta...went forward.” Behind his quiet demeanor she could see the life of crime he had slowly but steadily hid behind the façade of his respectable work at the bank.

  “But it wasn't until after Felicia's mother died that you were able to find Mr. Graystone?”

  “The sap left the protection of the FBI,” Bob said with disdain, but he still spoke in an undertone. “He got his hands on some serious cash after his wife died, ditched the FBI, and ran right back to his old stomping grounds in Atlantic City.”

  “Did you kill your momma?”

  Bob shook his head no. “My mother was killed by a drunk driver, fair and square, no foul play on anyone's part...that was just really lucky for Graystone.” Bob nearly spit. “Graystone was spotted in the casinos by a friend of mine. His wallet was picked and brought to me. I didn't want him dead, not then.” Bob let out an angry breath. “I found Felicia's address in the rat's wallet and devised a little plan.”

  “So Felicia was the bait for your trap?”

  “I targeted Felicia in order to draw Graystone to this little town in order to kill two rats with one stone.”

  “Felicia created the poison that killed Mr. Graystone, di
dn't she?”

  “She's a very clever girl.”

  “But you were the one who forced Mr. Graystone to eat my peach pie. How?” Momma Peach asked.

  “It's like I said,” Bob grinned, “Graystone was a rat, but he wasn't stupid. He was working with Felicia, too, they were out to kill me. He knew I was out to kill him, too. So on the night he died I gave him a choice: eat the pie and die peaceful or die eating a bullet. No games, no theatrics, just two simple choices.” Bob lost his grin. “Graystone had to die. He was planning to gun me down and blame it on Felicia! Of course, Felicia was unaware that her old man was playing her like a fiddle.”

  “Oh boy,” Momma Peach said and wiped her forehead with her left hand, “the games people play. Families are supposed to love each other.”

  “Where was that love when my mother gave me up? In the Mafia, we were loyal the way my blood family had never been.” Despite Bob’s quiet voice, his face was twisted with vitriol. “So what if Felicia had her own agenda? I had mine. Graystone had his. I wanted revenge. Felicia wanted to protect her husband. And Graystone wanted money by blackmailing Felicia and Floyd for my death.”

  “Such a twisted little mess right here in my little town,” Momma Peach said and shook her head. “Okay, now tell me about Betty Walker.”

  “The woman had to die,” Bob Connor informed Momma Peach nonchalantly. “She was alley trash that could have cost me my freedom. I didn't realize she saw me until I talked with Mark Thompson. I realized that she must have seen me in the room searching for the cap to the bottle of poison I dropped. The cap had my fingerprints on it.”

  “I smelled your cologne in the room. But,” Momma Peach pulled out a secret weapon. “I smelled a second cologne in the room, too. I wonder who that cologne belongs to? Maybe the person who called Detective Chan to report Betty Walker's death?” Momma Peach pointed at Bob's nose. “Snorting those drugs really messes with your sense of smell, doesn't it? You didn't notice the smell of cologne in the room when you returned back to fetch the cap, did you?”