The Candy Cane Cupcake Killer by Livia J. Washburn Page B

on something for me. I got this e-mail from him just before Nate and Allyson got here.”
    He unfolded the paper, which was a printout of an e-mail, and slid it in front of Phyllis and Sam. Phyllis leaned forward to read it, her frown deepening.
    â€œThis doesn’t really prove anything,” Sam said.
    â€œIt’s a gun registration,” D’Angelo said, even though both of them could see that for themselves. “It proves that Nate Hollingsworth owns a high-powered hunting rifle . . . just the sort of thing you’d use if you wanted to put a scope on it and shoot somebody several blocks away.”
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    Sam had a disheartened look on his face as he and Phyllis left the lawyer’s office a short time later.
    â€œThis doesn’t mean Nate’s guilty, you know,” she told him.“There are probably hundreds of people in the county who own hunting rifles like that one. Maybe thousands.”
    â€œYeah, but why didn’t he come clean about it?” Sam said. “He knows something like that could be important. He should know, anyway.”
    â€œI imagine he’s scared. With everything else already weighing against him the way it is, he might think that if he admitted owning such a rifle, it would be the last nail in his coffin.”
    â€œYeah, but if D’Angelo knows about it, you can bet the cops do, too. Isn’t it better to be prepared for something like that that they could use against you?”
    Phyllis couldn’t argue with that logic. Sam was right. Nate should have told D’Angelo about the rifle.
    â€œI wonder where it is now,” she said as they walked toward the spot on the square where she had left the Lincoln.
    â€œWell, let’s say Nate used it last night to shoot Barney. I don’t believe that for a second, mind you, but let’s just say that. What would he do with it afterward?”
    â€œHe couldn’t carry it out of the building,” Phyllis said. “There were too many people around for that. Someone would have noticed. It might have even caused an uproar, someone walking around in a crowd like that, carrying a rifle.”
    â€œSo he would’ve had to leave it in his office, or at least somewhere in the building.”
    â€œChief Whitmire probably wouldn’t have been able to geta search warrant until this morning,” Phyllis said. “That would have given Nate time to go back last night, after the parade and tree lighting were canceled and everyone was gone, to get the rifle and dispose of it somehow.”
    Sam shook his head and said, “I sure don’t like talkin’ like this. I know we’re just speculatin’, but somehow it feels like we’re bein’ disloyal to Nate.”
    Phyllis didn’t feel any particular loyalty to Nate Hollingsworth, other than the fact that Sam liked and trusted him, but she knew what he meant. She had felt the same way whenever one of her friends was suspected of murder. She didn’t like to even consider the possibility that they might be guilty.
    â€œRight now, let’s devote our efforts to that other theory,” she suggested.
    â€œThat the killer really meant to shoot somebody else?” Sam nodded. “I like that idea.”
    Before they had a chance to discuss it more, however, they came in sight of Phyllis’s car.
    And waiting beside it, microphone in hand, was Felicity Prosper.
    Phyllis stopped short. She felt the impulse to turn around and go the other way, but it was too late. Felicity had seen them and started striding toward them, moving fast for someone wearing high heels. Josh Green and the other man—Nick, Phyllis recalled—trailed her. Nick, a stocky, red-haired man, had the video camera perched on his shoulder.
    â€œMrs. Newsom,” Felicity said. “If I could just have a word with you?”
    â€œThe young fella ratted us out,” Sam said