The Girl and the Clock Tower Murder: Pandemonium Cozy Mystery #2

Chapter 23

Detective Teresa Sawyer sat back in her chair and eyed Mahogany, Evelina, Tony, Euryale, and Blair sitting on the opposite side of the police interview table. "Let me get this straight. Matt Hader had a passageway dug under Pandemonium from the house he shared with Lilac Delldini before they divorced to the clock tower so he wouldn't have to remember his key?"

After Tony called the Detective, she arrived with backup and had Lilac and Cam taken to the hospital under police supervision. She then brought Mahogany and friends to the station to take their statements.

Mahogany nodded. "Matt always forgot it, so after he and Lilac divorced, he started hiding a key in the teapot outside the tower." They hadn't mentioned that Matt created the tunnel through magical means, not elbow grease and brute force. The Detective's hyper-literal mind wasn't ready for such things.

One of the Detective's eyebrows cocked so high on her forehead it threatened to disappear into her hairline. "OK," she said, dragging out the word. "Is it just me, or does digging a tunnel under a town seem like overkill for chronic forgetfulness?"

"Welcome to Pandemonium," Mahogany said, offering a smirk that the Detective bated off Mahogany's face with a well-placed glare.

"Then Lilac murdered Matt because she felt he hadn't fought for her and let her go off with RW, who is a complete cad," Evelina said.

Tony leaned around Mahogany to address Evelina. "I think cad is putting a fun spin on it. RW was abusive, exploiting Lilac's talents in clothing design to make a profit."

"Lilac's dream was to open a plant nursery," Mahogany said. "The whole thing is gothically tragic."

Sawyer shook her head as if trying to dispel this ostentatious tale from her head. "Where does Cam come into all of this?"

"Lilac lured him in to help him murder Matt and set up RW," Mahogany said, picking at her frayed cuticles.

"Were they romantically involved?" Sawyer said, taking notes.

"I'm not sure, but I get the impression that Cam thought their relationship was more than Lilac did," Mahogany said. The image of Cam standing over Lilac's body, the shovel resting on his shoulder, popped into her mind. There had been a deep emotion in his eyes that Mahogany didn't think Lilac was capable of returning.

"And how did you all figure this out?" The Detective swiped her pin in the air at the other side of the table.

"I noticed that Lilac's hair kept changing length, which is odd when it goes from long to short to long again. I figured out that she was wearing wigs. Then in her garage were all of those dress forms. It would be easy for her to take one and set it up on the couch, place a wig on it, and turn on her television. The partygoers playing drunk croquet across the street would never notice the figure they saw in the window wasn't a real person." Mahogany peered at Sawyer, making sure she was following along.

The Detective blinked at Mahogany and nodded for her to continue.

"When she had everything set up," Mahogany continued, "Lilac used the tunnel to get into the clock tower while Cam distracted Matt, hit him over the head, and then strangled him with one of the wrenches used for maintenance on the clock."

"Who hit him over the head?" Sawyer asked, scribbling in her notebook.

"Cam hit him," Evelina said. "Lilac's too short to hit Matt over the head like that. She would have had to stand on his desk."

"And Lilac strangled him," Mahogany finished. She hooked a thumb at Tony. "Tony speculated early on that Matt was strangled by a woman since he was most likely incapacitated from the blow to the head when it happened."