“Okay, Cynthia, out with it!”
I was back where this began, with Cynthia, except this time I barged into her house. She’d meekly let me in, offering me a glass of iced tea and to sit down, but I declined both, choosing to pace instead.
“What do you mean? I’ve told you everything I know!” Her voice was high and plaintive, and I could tell I was scaring her, but I didn’t care.
“No. You’ve been trickle truthing me.”
“Trickle truthing?”
“Yes. That’s where every time I see you, you tell me one more small piece of the truth so that it doesn’t feel like you’re lying, but at the same time you’re keeping the whole truth away from me so as not to incriminate yourself.”
“I swear, I’m not—”
“You’re lying! Again!”
She stood up, too, a bit of her “woe is me” facade falling away while she crossed her arms in front of her. “Alright, Kate. What do you want to know that I haven’t already told you?”
This was raw Cynthia, all pretense gone, her face void of makeup. She’d lost the girly eye flutters, the “Who, little ole me?” attitude. This was smart Cynthia, the one who did the books for her husband’s business and their own family finances and realized, in spite of his best efforts, that money was missing.
“Let’s start from the beginning.”
“When Angie died.”
“No, before then. You and Felyne were arguing in the coffee shop. Everybody heard. What was that about? And I’m warning you, no leaving out any details this time. The police have witness statements.”
“People underestimate me. They always have.”
“That, I believe.”
“I caught on pretty early that Felyne was giving our HOA contracts to companies who did favors for her, but I never said a word about it. Tony makes plenty of money,” she pointed to the Gucci purse next to the couch, “and I thought I had it all. What others do to get ahead is no skin off my nose.”
I had to stop myself from reacting to that. The money Felyne was taking came out of every neighbor’s pocket in the form of higher HOA dues. I wanted to scream that at her, but I also wanted her to continue, so I clenched my fists and stayed silent.
“Then I found out Tony was stealing from me, or, at least, our joint account, and I figured out why. He’d had an affair about two years ago that resulted in a baby. He tried to hide the entire thing from me, but he was paying child support to her on the condition she keep quiet. The money had to come out of somewhere. I was really angry, Kate. I mean, really angry. And I wasn’t just angry about the affair. I do his books! Tony thinks I’m so stupid that not only will I not notice his odd behavior when he was having an affair, he actually thought he could just take money out of our accounts and I wouldn’t notice!
“Ages ago, Felyne and I got drunk together, back when we were still friends, and we were talking about husbands. She said she has a ‘special jelly’ she makes that would take care of anybody we didn’t like. Wouldn’t kill them, just put them in the hospital. Made out of lilies from her backyard. I thought she was joking and didn’t give it another thought”
“Then I met Lars at a party. He’s genuinely nice, and he listened to me. I told him about my dog and doing books and the HOA, and it was like he was hanging on my every word. He made me feel special.”
And he’s years younger than you, very good looking, and hoping to land a cushy HOA contract for his pool maintenance business and looking for a little of that kickback money for himself as well.
“I arranged to meet Felyne at the Rise and Grind where I told her that we were moving the contract from Max Howard’s company to Lars. I put my foot down. Lars would give the HOA a better deal, and I knew she would lose out on the Lakers tickets and whatever cash Max was throwing her way, but that was too bad. I was surprised when she agreed, but then there was a catch.
“Felyne said Angie was breathing down her neck about all these contracts. She already had a meeting set up with our exterminator and was looking into others, including Max Howard, the current pool guy. Felyne told me she’d be happy to award the contract to Lars, but she needed time to get all of the books straight and talk to the different people involved.”
“She wanted to hide her tracks?”
“Exactly. I don’t think she understood, when Angie was elected, just how involved Angie would be, but the reality was that Angie was like a bloodhound, or maybe more like a steamroller, heading straight towards Felyne and all of her cash cows. Felyne told me she wanted me to give Angie her special jelly that Saturday morning, and then she said she’d come over later to make sure they both ate some of it, except, of course, Felyne wouldn’t really eat it.
“I told Felyne I didn’t want to have anything to do with any poison, and she was all on her own with that one, but then she threatened me. She said my name was all over those contracts because I’d co-signed them. She said she’d tell Angie that I was in on the kickbacks, and that I was keeping two sets of books.”
“So she was blackmailing you?”
“Yes, and I swear on Sparky’s life right now to you, Kate, I never took a single penny from the HOA, but if Angie thought I was part of all that, she’d kick me off the board, and Lars would never in a million years get that contract.”
And Cynthia was savvy enough to know if Lars didn’t get the contract, he’d stop dating her.
“Felyne swore up and down that the jelly would only give Angie a stomachache, and that it would be just long enough for her to get her affairs in order so that Angie wouldn’t find any wrongdoing.”
“You agreed to take the jelly to Angie’s house Saturday morning?”
“Yes. I’d also asked her about a forensic accountant, so I could find out just how much money had been transferred to Tony’s new family.” She spit his name out as she said it. I felt slightly bad for Tony, but only slightly. When I’d seen him, I could tell he still loved Cynthia. He must have really regretted the affair and tried to hide it from her for as long as he could.
“Angie wrote the accountant’s name down on a yellow sticky for me, but I didn’t want Tony finding something like that in my pocket or anything, so I just took a photo of it. He doesn’t have the code for my phone anymore.”
The pieces were coming together. Angie had hired Peter Barlow to look into the HOA’s finances. She wrote his name on that yellow sticky, but Cynthia didn’t take it, and Beatrice was Angie’s next appointment. Angie must have realized at the last minute that it was still on the counter, so she flipped it over so that Beatrice couldn’t read it. At some point, Stormy ran across the counter and got the sticky part stuck to her foot, and then she licked it off under the chair in Angie’s office.
“You brought the jelly to Angie?”
Cynthia stared at her feet in humiliation. “I did,” she said quietly. “I’m not proud of it. As a matter of fact, I even played it down, said it probably wasn’t that good anyway.”
“You do know Felyne was just setting you up, right? Making it so that only your and Angie’s fingerprints were on that jelly?”
Cynthia nodded. “Yeah, but I showed her! I wiped my own fingerprints off that jar after I set it down, when Angie wasn’t looking. No evidence! Not that it did me any good.”
Cynthia fell into her big armchair, completely deflated. “Did I tell you Lars left me?” Her voice was low, almost a whisper. “He said this neighborhood is a shit show, and he didn’t want to have anything to do with it, or with me.” She let out a long, long sigh. “I’m just an old fool.”
I ran my hand through my hair as I considered her and then sat down on the couch across from her.
“You’re no fool, Cyn.” As a matter of fact, this was a version of Cynthia I liked. Genuine, reflective, and insightful.
“I just have a couple more questions. Did you know Beatrice or any of the others were going over to Angie’s after you that Saturday?”
“No. Just Felyne, and that bitch would throw me under the bus so hard, I figured I’d be up for Murder 1 before the day was out. That’s why I was so panicked.”
I leaned back in the overstuffed chair, tapping my fingers on the armrest. Something Cynthia had said caught my attention.
“Wait! You said you co-signed those contracts. Who else signed them?”
“All of our HOA contracts require two signatures, so it’s usually me and Beatrice that sign them.”
Beatrice. Again!
“Do you think Beatrice knew about Felyne’s extra income scam?”
“Of course. Felyne mostly managed it, but Bea enjoyed some of the perks. I never asked for any details, though. Didn’t want to know. Why do you think Bea was so mad when Angie beat her in the election?”
“And you didn’t feel a need to talk to the police about any of this?”
“You’re kidding me, right? If I pointed the finger at Bea, she’d turn it right around and point it right back at me, and she’d get Felyne in on it. Nothing personal, Kate, but the police in general don’t have a great track record of arresting the right person all the time, and if two mean girls decided to pin Angie’s murder on me, I’m pretty sure I’d be heading to jail.”
Cynthia had a point. This whole thing was so convoluted, just the fact that she delivered poisoned jelly to Angie might have been enough to put her away. She was lucky they found the poisonous plants in Felyne’s yard, or it probably would be her sitting in jail right now
“Cynthia, do you know who killed Angie?”
“I’ve given it a lot of thought, but, no. I suspected both Felyne and Beatrice at some point. I could see either of them accidentally hitting Angie on the head and running, but after Nick was murdered, I just don’t think so. I mean, do you really see Beatrice plunging a knife into a sleeping man’s chest?”
Yeah, I could picture that.
“But I’ll tell you one thing. That man, the exterminator? He had a nasty streak a mile wide.”
I narrowed my eyebrows. “Tell me about that.”
“He always seems so pleasant, you know, kind of nerdy. But then one time I had to run to his office to drop off a check. I was just running in and out real quick, but as I got close to the building, I overheard him around the corner, talking on the phone. His exact words were, “I’m telling you, if we have this issue again, I’m going to kill you.”
I stared at Cynthia. “Those were his exact words?”
“Yup.” She was quite certain.
“What did you do?”
“My heart was beating a million times a minute. He got off the phone quickly and went inside. I waited about five minutes and then ran in, dropped the check with a quick wave, and ran right back out of there!”
“Hmmm. What about Max Howard, Pool Guy? Could he be our killer?”
Cynthia shrugged. “I wouldn’t put it past him. Either one of those guys could have been afraid Angie would go to the police with her suspicions and put them out of business permanently.”
“Okay, thanks, Hon. You’ve been a lot of help this afternoon.”
I stood up to go.
“Kate…”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t know how all of this turned into such a huge mess. I volunteered for the HOA board because they needed people. It’s usually hard to get volunteers, you know?”
I nodded in agreement. I certainly would never want the job.
“And I happen to be good at books. I’ve always been good at numbers. When it became clear what Felyne was up to, I thought about going to Beatrice, but I realized the two of them were, um… chummy, so I decided to shut up and just do my job. Compared to the overall budget, the bits that Felyne and Beatrice were taking were extremely small, and I thought more harm would come of saying something than if we just let them have their fun. When Angela was elected, though, everything spiraled out of control. I guess what I’m saying is that I’m super sorry. I should have told you everything from the beginning.”
Yes, you should have!
“I get it, Cyn. Better late than never, right?”
“I guess.”
I left Cynthia sitting in her chair, petting Sparky, gazing with unseeing eyes out the window.
She certainly had a lot to think about.