Beyond and Back. Of course! I blinked double time, surprised that Zach had come up with something substantial. Beyond and Back, a charming consignment shop, had just opened last summer. I hadn’t even thought about the store when Sean mentioned calling around to local pawnshops. I made a mental note to try to get hold of him and tell him where Chuck had purchased the ring. Maybe one of the clerks would remember the woman’s name.
“A terrific store,” Franklin was going on. He looked across the table at me. “Do you remember all those wonderful items we found there for our last event?” I nodded and offered dear, sweet Franklin a smile. Last summer, Franklin and I were in charge of planning a gala for a local television celebrity and budding author. We’d created the most beautiful table decorations from repurposed items purchased at Beyond and Back. The event didn’t go quite as planned, something I’m afraid Franklin blamed himself for . . . but that was a whole other story. “Such good deals,” Franklin added, his voice tinged with regret as he reminisced.
Zach pointed his finger and clucked his tongue. “Righto, Franklin. But getting back to our current murder.” He emphasized the current with a solicitous glance my way. “The bartender told me that Chuck was going on about how he and this girl had split up, she’d returned the ring, but now she’d seen the light and was begging for him to come back. He was getting ready to meet up with her.”
“Did the bartender know the name of the woman Chuck was talking about?” I eagerly asked.
Zach rolled his eyes and sighed. “Well, duh. Isn’t it obvious that he was talking about Lynn? But just to make sure, I stopped by Beyond and Back this morning and had a little chat with the owner. He’d only sold one engagement ring lately and he remembered the couple—well, not their names, but what they looked like. And yes, I asked about a sales receipt, but they paid cash.”
My heart fell as my hopes for a solid lead were dashed. Still, maybe Sean would have more luck ferreting information from Beyond and Back’s owners.
“But here’s the big clincher,” Zach was saying. He paused for drama. “The woman had brown hair.”
The room went silent. Finally Bentley asked, “That’s the clincher?” She glanced around the room with an incredulous look. “Both Lila and I have brown hair.”
“Half the women in town have brown hair,” Vicky added, patting her own silky white mane.
Zach blinked a couple of extra times. “Well, when you put it all together, it’s obvious the killer was Lynn.” He held up his hand and used his fingers to tick off the points. “The brown hair; Lynn has brown hair. The bartender said they’d broken up; Lynn and Chuck are divorced, right? And . . . well, I guess that’s it.” He quickly put down his hand, glancing around sheepishly.
“It couldn’t have been Lynn with Chuck at Beyond and Back picking out the ring. She hasn’t been back to the area for several years,” I pointed out.
“That’s what she wants you to think,” Zach said. “You only have her word for that. And, really, how well do you know Lynn?”
He had a point. I really didn’t know Lynn all that well. Still, there were a lot of holes in his theory. And Sean thought I easily jumped to conclusions.
Bentley had moved to the whiteboard and readjusted her glasses, and was making a few notes. “I don’t agree with your assessment, Zach. But you have made a few valid points and revealed a few facts about Chuck that we didn’t know before. First of all, he was in a relationship of some sort. Perhaps engaged or not.” She wrote the word girlfriend on the board and followed it with a giant question mark. “And I believe this mysterious woman may hold the key to this entire case,” she said. “We need to find her.”
“I may have met her,” I admitted. All eyes turned to me, curious and expectant. I explained about the funeral and the woman I’d met in the restroom. “I didn’t get her name, but I saw her drive away,” I finished. “She had a sedan with mismatched paint, gray on the front passenger side, like she’d been in a wreck and hadn’t had time to have the car repainted.”
“Did you tail her?” Zach wanted to know.
I shook my head. “No, I didn’t. And I have no idea how to find her again.”
The room grew silent as everyone contemplated this new information. No one seemed to have anything to add. Of course, I knew of a couple of other things, like the fact that the ring was found on Chuck’s body and that it was the same ring displayed in the missing photo from Makayla’s café, the very same photo that had been stolen, but I wasn’t sure if Sean would want me to divulge that type of information yet.