Bernadette nudged her mother, who still hadn’t served herself any food. Ninang June sighed and spooned small portions of everything alongside a heaping plate of rice. She separated the pieces of liver from the chicken, brought the spoon slowly to her mouth, and chewed hesitantly. Once she swallowed, she admitted, “This tastes better than I remember. Thank you for your hospitality, Rosie. And . . . I’m sorry.”
The table let out a collective sigh and we all turned to our meals, eating and chattering as usual. Once we’d all cleaned our plates (several times), Joy helped my aunt clear the table and they brought out the usual bowls of halo-halo. Desserts in front of us, it was time to get down to business.
Ninang April pulled out a small spiral notepad and flipped through the pages until she got to the one she wanted. “OK, so we’ve checked up on all the past contestants that are still in Shady Palms. The only ones that seem to have a connection to the current pageant are Mary Ann Randall, Helen Kowalski,”—it took me a minute to realize that was the name of the second-in-command of the PTA Squad, mother to Sharon Randall’s best friend, Leslie—“and Barbara Jennings. However, they all have alibis at that time, and, with the exception of Barbara, their daughters have all made it to the final round.”
Ninang April paused to turn the page and Ninang Mae jumped in. “We tried to find out more about the contestant who was obsessed with Rob, but she seems to have left town. It’s also possible she married and changed her name, but we haven’t been able to track her the way we did with some of the other contestants, so it’s unlikely. We also looked into some of his rumored affairs, but the only one that seemed to have any blowback recently was the Weinmans. Sources close to them say that they saw the divorce coming a mile away and Rob just gave them a reason to make it official. Mrs. Weinman is using this as an opportunity to pursue her graduate degree and is perfectly happy. Seems the Rob affair was a onetime thing. Oskar Weinman had his pride hurt, and that’s about it. From what we hear, he’s busy trying to get in good with that woman who owns the Honeybee Salon.”
I was ready to jump in with my info at that point, but the aunties weren’t done yet. “Mayor Gunderson and William Acevedo are in the clear. Both wives said that all four of them were together having dinner at the Acevedo household, and a third party can confirm that.” Ninang April flipped another page. “Rob’s will reading was yesterday. From what we’ve heard, Beth and his sister got almost nothing. The majority of his wealth went into the Thompson Family Company.”
Bernadette leaned forward. “So does that mean both of them have motive? Or does it clear them? They could’ve killed him because they were mad he wasn’t giving them any money. Or maybe he died so one of them could become the head of the company.”
Ninang June shook her head. “They would’ve had to know the contents of the will ahead of time. The Thompson family lawyer said no one else had seen the contents before the reading.”
“How do you know that?” Lola Flor asked.
Ninang June shrugged. “I know people.”
Lola Flor bristled at that response, so I cut in before another argument could break out. “Were any of you able to find out if Beth really is the new head of the company, or is it being passed down to Valerie?”
“The board voted the same day as the will reading. Beth is officially the leader of the company. They didn’t think Valerie had the head for business or vision for the company that Beth has.”
Ouch, that had to hurt. Bad enough that her family had kept her out of the company most of her adult life, but to have the entire board agree with that decision when you were the only blood-related Thompson left? I made a note to reach out to Valerie soon. She’d displayed a level of vulnerability that I hadn’t expected that day at the cafe, and I figured I should check in on her. As long as I wasn’t alone with her or Sana, it would be a good opportunity for more sleuthing and bonding.
“I guess that means Beth and Valerie are in the clear. It’s unlikely that either woman would’ve killed him over the will if they didn’t know what was in it, right?” Bernadette asked.
Ninang June said, “Really? I thought the opposite. If they didn’t know what was in the will, wouldn’t it be natural to assume they’d get money or power? If they knew he wasn’t leaving them anything, wouldn’t they have just let him live? What would be the point of killing him?”
“They could’ve killed him for other reasons though. We need to look at the four L’s of motives: Love, Lust, Loathing, and Loot,” Ninang Mae said.
“Where did you hear that?” I asked.
“I wanted to know the main motivations for murder, so I Googled it and that’s what it said. It was really very helpful,” my godmother said, as if that were a perfectly normal thing to Google. Good on her for doing her own research, I guess. Just hoped she didn’t end up on some FBI watch list. Something told me “amateur sleuthing” wouldn’t go over all that well if she had to explain her search history.
“I researched it, too, and found a fascinating article that said men and women kill for different reasons. Although men tend to commit the most murders for a wide variety of motives, the main two reasons were concealment and jealousy. For women, it was love or personal gain,” Ninang April said, reading off a page from her notebook.
Which still fit all our remaining suspects. Mr. Weinman could’ve killed Rob out of jealousy. Valerie and Beth for personal gain. And we had to figure in that there were unknown suspects that we hadn’t been able to connect to the case yet. So in other words . . . we were right back where we started.
The restaurant phone rang and Tita Rosie got up to answer it. The rest of us sat quietly, plowing our way through our bowls of shaved ice, which Joy silently replenished whenever we ran low. She was always quiet, but at least had shown interest in our previous conversations. Today, she seemed subdued, her actions a little stiff as if she ran on autopilot. Maybe she was just stressed over the pageant, but I made a note to talk to her later, just in case.
The tinkling of our door chimes cut through the silence, and we all turned toward the door to see Tita Rosie and Detective Park coming to join us. The set of his shoulders and grim expression on his face told me this wasn’t a social visit.
“Is everything OK, Detective? Nobody . . . I mean, there hasn’t been any . . .” I fumbled over my words as I tried to find out whether he was here to arrest Bernadette or if somebody else was dead.