Minnie seemed truly baffled. “What whiskey?”
“From the speakeasy,” I explained.
Rage sparked in Yolanda’s eyes. “Nobody should have touched that whiskey!”
“You know about the speakeasy?” I asked with surprise.
The light glinted off something on the sleeve of Yolanda’s black shirt.
I drew in a sharp breath. “Gold leaf.” I raised my eyes to meet her angry brown ones. “It was you, Yolanda. You killed Freddie.”
Minnie cried out as Yolanda lunged for my neck.
Chapter
Fifty-Four
A blur of charcoal gray flashed in front of me.
I expected to feel Yolanda’s hands close around my throat, but suddenly, somehow, she was on the floor.
Wyatt knelt next to her, pinning her arms behind her back.
“Stop accusing us!” Yolanda yelled as Detective Callahan darted around the sculpture that partially hid the alcove from the rest of the room.
There was a great hullabaloo as Wyatt and Callahan got Yolanda to her feet and Minnie sobbed. A man I’d never seen before, but who seemed to be with Detective Callahan, quickly cleared away the crowd that was squeezing in toward the alcove to see what was happening. A plainclothes police officer most likely, I thought.
When things quieted down, we quickly brought Callahan up to speed.
“I’m so sorry,” Minnie said through a sob after I’d finished.
A cloud of emotion flitted across Yolanda’s stormy eyes, and her shoulders slumped. Then her eyes hardened again as she spoke to the detective. “I didn’t mean to kill Freddie.”
We all stared at her in shock, and Minnie let out a strangled noise of despair.
“Was it because of the whiskey?” I asked. “You wanted the money it would bring in a sale to the right buyer?”
Yolanda scowled at me. “I don’t care about money. I care about the speakeasy. My grandfather’s the one who ran it back in the twenties.”
“But, except for the missing bottles, the place looks like it hasn’t been touched in decades,” Jemma pointed out.
“And that’s how I wanted it to stay!” Yolanda tried to wrestle her arm from Callahan’s grip without success. “I didn’t want anyone to know about it. I didn’t want anything to change. It’s my grandfather’s speakeasy. Sometimes I go in there to feel close to him again.”
Minnie cried harder, and Yolanda’s tough exterior cracked again, just for a split second.
“How did you realize that Freddie knew about the speakeasy?” Theo asked in a rush, as if afraid she’d run out of time to get her questions answered. “Did you see him sneaking in there?”
“I didn’t catch him in the act, but I was in his apartment, trying to sell him some Grub Tubz,” Yolanda explained. “I saw the trophy on a shelf.”
“The one that converts to a cocktail shaker,” I said. I shot a quick glance at Callahan, worried he’d wonder how I knew about the trophy, but he remained focused on Yolanda as she spoke again.
“I knew he’d stolen it from the speakeasy. And then I saw the bottle of whiskey. None of it was his to take!”
“We can finish this conversation down at the station,” the detective said.
Minnie reached a hand out to Yolanda, but Callahan hauled her away, telling her she was under arrest for Freddie’s murder.
Jemma put an arm around Minnie, who had her face in her hands.
