by Tegan Maher
“I know why you didn’t tell him,” she said. “You like him. And I know if the roles were reversed, I’d be hesitant too. But it’s not like he isn’t going to believe you, and I promise not to go throwin’ around vases and howling like some ghoul.” Her eyes twinkled. “Mainly, most of the good vases are mine. If I ever feel the need to go in a snit and throw things, it’ll be your stuff.”
I rolled my eyes. “Gee, thanks. But let’s try to avoid that if at all possible.”
“I’ll do my level best. I wasn’t a screamer or a thrower in life, so I doubt the urge is gonna become uncontrollable any time soon. Unless you insist on paintin’ the great room that hideous shade of purple you’ve been talkin’ about. That may be worth a good hissy.”
“That’s only for an accent wall,” I said, scowling at her. “If you’d just let me do it, you’d love it. If you still hate it, we can always change it.”
She puckered her lips. “I’ll think about it. But anyway, don’t worry about Scout. I’ll even wear matching shoes. And maybe put on a dress.”
Now she felt like she had to get dressed up. That made me feel even worse. “You don’t have to do that. Wear what’s comfortable.” I paused. “Well, maybe matching boots wouldn’t be a bad thing.”
She smiled. “Deal.”
I looked toward the lodge, then brushed my hands off. “No time like the present, then,” I said. She shook her head. No, let it sit for now. There’ll be another chance, and you have things to do.” She gave a pointed glance toward the tangled mess of bushes in front of me. “Getting that whipped into shape is more important to me that makin’ new friends. I want them to be tip-top before guests start arriving. Then other people can enjoy this space as much as I did ... and will.”
I gave a quick nod and dove back in, pulling what she said was junk and pruning what she said was good. By the time I was done, I was gonna be a rose expert, but if what we’d gotten done so far was any indication, it was gonna be worth it.
Chapter Eleven
WORK HAD BEEN BUSY but uneventful the night before, but Don had asked if I could do a double the next day. He had some old school buddies in from out of town and wanted to take them out on the boat. I’d agreed because I wanted to sock as much cash as possible away before the guys showed up at the lodge. I was going to have to cook at least one meal a day and sometimes two, so I wasn’t going to be able to work as much at the bar as I had been. Plus, Don had gotten used to having the nights off when I worked, and I hated that I was going to be taking that away from him again.
Since I hadn’t gotten home until almost four that morning and had to be back at nine, I felt like my eyes were full of sand when I climbed out of bed. Even though I’d crashed hard almost as soon as my head hit the pillow, you could only get so much rest in four hours. I was exhausted before I even stepped foot out of the house.
It was weird driving to work so early. On the bright side, it would be early enough after I got off work that I could make a desperately needed run to the grocery store, then I’d have my entire evening to look forward to. Don had called in the other bartender to cover my original evening shift, so Dee and I were going to barbecue and have Annie, Nikki, and Scout over. I was really looking forward to it.
When I got to the bar, I clicked the TV on and found a music channel. I’d always enjoyed listening to the news, but lately, it was all gloom and doom and war and backbiting. I missed the days when they reported some about happy things like little old ladies turning a hundred or somebody doing a good deed for their community. While I prepped the kitchen, I wondered if he had a big lunch crowd. We’d been busy for a month or so because Dee hadn’t been able to run the diner on a full schedule, but now that she was open, people had a place to go for a good solid sit-down lunch rather than just bar food. Not that we didn’t serve the best wings in town, but it wasn’t exactly a place to go on your lunch break.
Since I’d barely taken the time to pull on clothes before I’d left the house, I took a few minutes to put on my face before anybody came in. I used my little hand-held mirror to apply some concealer, blush, a little mascara, and some lip gloss before I busied myself scrubbing counters, wiping out sinks, dusting shelves, and wiping out glasses. At around ten in the morning, I got my first customer.
A heavy-set woman in her fifties walked in. Her salt-and-pepper hair looked freshly styled and was wrapped in an elegant up-do, and her nails were done beautifully French-manicured, so I immediately wondered if she worked at the salon.
"What can I get for you?" I asked, setting aside the towel and the glass I’d been cleaning.
"A whiskey sour, please." She dropped her purse on the bar as she plopped herself onto a bar stool.
"Rough day?" I asked as I mixed her drink.
"More like a rough week," she said. "So are you new here? I come in almost every day and I've never seen you here before."
"I've been here for a couple of months now, but I usually just work the evenings. My name is Toni." I stuck out my hand.
"Nice to meet you, Toni." She accepted my hand, limply shaking it before releasing it. "The name is Beatrice."
I wondered if it was the same Beatrice who had been dating Frank. It was a small town. How many Beatrices could there be? I set her drink in front of her on top of a napkin. "Well, I certainly hope your week improves. Are you hungry?"
She shook her head and took a sip of her drink before setting it back on the napkin. "I suppose it can't get any worse. You figure I find out my boyfriend’s been cheating on me with some money-grubbing bimbo, after he gets murdered by god-knows-who. Then his son—the boy I’ve practically raised—confronts me and accuses me of taking money from the feed store." She rolled her eyes. "Well, not taking money from the store exactly, but rather sweet-talking his father into giving me too much of the store's money. It seems the books aren’t balancing and some of the records are missing. Says there are some sales he knows he made that aren’t logged into the books. Big sales. So he figures his daddy was skimmin’ off the cash rather than addin’ the sales to the ledger." She took another sip of her drink and shook her head. "If you ask me, Frank probably blew it on that trollop or used it to buy more damned man-toys." She snorted. “Tell me, who on earth needs three—count ‘em three!—boats?”
I wiped the counter as I listened. "So you know for a fact he was cheating?" I felt a little guilty using my job as a bartender/therapist to get info out of her, but we were talking about Jeremy’s freedom. All things go in love and murder.
She blew out a breath. “Pretty sure. A woman knows. I borrowed his phone because my battery was dead, and she texted him while I was using it. When he heard the notification go off, he snatched it out of my hand so fast all I got to see was Helen pop up on the screen.” She took another sip as she nodded her head and sneered. "Yep. Now I know why he’d been spending so much time at the cabin."
"That's awful." I really didn’t know what else to say. I’d been cheated on, and it was a horrible feeling. Even though this woman was a potential murder suspect, I still felt bad for her.
She shrugged. "I guess in the end he got his."
That set off a little alarm bell, but then again, it wasn’t out of line for her to feel that way.
“Does his son really think you’re the reason there’s money missing?”
She shook her head, a wry half-smile on his face. “Not in his heart, I don’t think. Or if he does, he doesn’t hold it against me.” Disgust crossed her face. “My guess, though, is that he’ll come to the same conclusion I did—his daddy was spendin’ it on whatsherface. That would explain why he was skimmin’ it off the profits before it hit the books—he didn’t want Scott to find out about it. Or maybe he gambled it away. He went on jags where he spent a crap ton of money on horse races. I don’t know where it went, but it didn’t come to me.” She heaved a sigh. “Scott’ll come around. He’s just feelin’ too many emotions to deal with right now. Grief, fear, guilt, and underneath it all, there’s no doub
t some relief, too.”
Wow. That was a boatload of emotions.
"So who do you think killed him?" I asked.
She drummed her well-manicured fingers on the bar. "I know some people are thinkin’ it could be Scott since he stood to inherit everything, or even because he found out his daddy was cheatin’ on me. They figure he could have confronted him and it got out of hand. Despite Scott bowin’ up on me a little about the money, he’s like my son and has always been protective. Or it could have been Helen. Maybe he’d made her promises then backed out on 'em. He may have been cheatin’ on me, but in the end, he wasn’t gonna give me up for somebody like her. It could have even been her husband too, I suppose. But my money’s on that Jeremy kid."
She nodded as she thought about that for a minute. “Yeah. Jeremy was the only one who ever actually became violent with Frank, and with Jeremy’s history with the family, it makes sense he could probably turn that rage into murder.”
“It’s a bit of a leap to go from assaulting someone to killing them. I don’t think the two necessarily go hand-in-hand.” I shrugged. “And from what I’ve heard, Jeremy today is nothing like young Jeremy. I mean, he was working for Frank.”
Beatrice gave a derisive laugh. “People don’t change that much, honey.”
Beatrice was pretty eager to point her well-manicured finger at Jeremy, who was less appealing as a suspect to me than Helen or Scott. So I had to wonder if Beatrice didn't share all that she knew about her cheating boyfriend with Scott, hoping he would take care of Frank for her. A good way to get revenge and keep your hands clean, then just sit back and throw suspicion on the guy who was a troubled youth and actually got caught assaulting Frank.
"So did you see Frank?" I asked. "You know, before he died?"
“Why would I? After what he did?” She frowned and shook her head. "No. I just got back from my sister’s in Colorado. I needed some distance and perspective, you know?”
I couldn’t say I blamed her. That was something I could totally relate to, having come here from Florida to find some distance and perspective myself.
I nodded as I wiped down the counter. She had definitely been involved with a total pig, even if he was good looking and amiable on the surface. And other than having a massive basket of sour grapes, I really couldn’t tie her in as a suspect to Frank’s murder though, and she had an air-tight alibi.
“Besides, he was out fishin’ all day with a bunch of guys,” she said. “So I couldn’t have seen him even if I’d wanted to.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Two of ‘em came in the bar the day I found him. They didn’t seem to like him much, though. Could it have been them?”
She lifted a shoulder as she chased down the cherry I’d dropped in her drink. “Maybe. It’s not like those boys actually liked him. They liked Scott and they liked the boat, so they tolerated Frank. He was hard on Scott, and by extension, his friends.”
“So I gathered,” I said, thinking back to the lack of remorse Dave, in particular, had expressed. “Dave didn’t seem too broken up over his passing.”
She snorted. “I doubt he did. Frank fired him from the store not too long ago, right when he needed the money the worst. The motor had just blown on his truck. That was Dave’s first trip out on the boat with them since then. I was surprised when I found out he was going because those two butted heads more often than two billy goats.”
I shook my head. If I hadn’t heard the guys say they’d left together, Dave would have gone straight to the top of my list. Even so, he could have doubled back—his buddy had said they’d left Frank there by himself to clean up, but he didn’t say whether or not they’d stayed together or gone their separate ways.
It was one more detail to add to the growing list of things to consider.
Chapter Twelve
DON WALKED IN AT THREE forty-five to relieve me. “I figured since you closed last night and then doubled back to open for me this morning, the least I could do was show up a little early and let you go home. The guys all had things to do with the wives today, so my afternoon was wide open anyway.”
I undid my apron and hung it behind the bar. I was so giddy thinking about the barbecue that I was sure the smile splitting my face right now looked absolutely ridiculous. “Thanks,” I said as I grabbed my purse and walked toward the door.
“Same time tomorrow?” Don asked. “I had a really good time with my buddies today and was hoping to do it again if you don’t mind.”
I stopped with my hand on the door and looked at Don. He was smiling and relaxed and had just a tinge of sunburn. “Sure,” I replied, smiling. “No problem at all.”
“Okay. I’ll have Annie come in to relieve you at about five. She has to work for Dee at the café until about four, so that should give her enough time to change and get here to start the evening shift. I can’t remember the last time I actually had a full day off without closing the place down, so I think I’m going to take full advantage of having both you and her around.”
“Sounds good,” I said as I opened the door and stepped out into the bright afternoon sunlight.
“Stay out of trouble,” he called after me.
I waved and double-timed it to my car. I wanted to be gone in case he changed his mind and decided to start his little mini-vacation today instead of tomorrow. For the first time in a long time, I had plans with friends and needed to get to the lodge in time to help with dinner.
It didn’t take me long to get to the Sheriff’s office. I parked in front of the office and climbed out of my SUV, admiring the graceful building with its tall columns and sweeping staircase, then jogged up the steps and into the office. Linda was sitting behind the main counter, her red hair bobbing up and down as she nodded, deep in conversation on the phone. I wondered how much time she actually spent working versus gossiping.
Linda glanced up at me and smiled, raising a finger to let me know she’d be with me in a moment. “Uh-huh. Well, I gotta go, dearie. Somebody just walked in.” She nodded as she listened, chewing her gum like a cow chews its cud. “Ok. See you then. Toodles.” She pushed a button and walked over to the counter. “Toni,” she said, smiling. She looked around before leaning in closer to me. “Find any more dead bodies?” she whispered.
I shook my head. “Sorry to disappoint, but not today. I’m trying to keep it to one a month.”
She laughed and waved a dismissive hand. “That’s okay. I’m pretty sure the sheriff would prefer that, too. So what can I do for you then?” she asked, still chomping away on her gum.
I smiled as I leaned against the counter. “I was wondering if I could talk to the sheriff for a minute or two?”
Linda glanced at his office. I followed her gaze and could see him going through a stack of papers. She turned her attention back to me. “What for? Maybe I can help.”
I kept my smile in place but sighed inwardly. “I’m afraid only the sheriff can help me with this but I appreciate the offer.”
Linda sighed as she hit a buzzer that opened up a door leading around the counter and to the offices. “Come on back,” she said.
“Thanks,” I replied as I walked around and over to the sheriff’s office. I knocked before opening the door and walking in. “Am I disturbing you?”
Gabe shook his head as he piled all his papers up and shoved them aside, closing a couple of the folders that he’d been perusing so that the contents weren’t visible. He forgot the names were on the labels, though, and I frowned when I saw one of them was Jeremy’s. The other was labeled as Frank’s. “What can I do for you, Toni?”
I shut the door behind me and walked to one of the chairs in front of his desk, sitting down on the front edge of it and placing my purse at my feet. “I just wanted to stop by and give you some information on the case.”
The sheriff frowned. “Frank’s case?”
I nodded.
He sat back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “I figured when I started looking at Jeremy that you were
n’t going to leave this alone.”
I sighed. He certainly wasn’t going to make this easy. “I don’t mean to step on your toes. I know you’re doing what you can, but I also know people may not be as forthcoming with you as they would their local bartender. Or hairdresser.”
He shrugged. “Maybe not, but I do have Linda and she has a solid handle on the comings and goings of most of Mercy. It requires some serious filtering, but I hear most of it.” He cringed. “As a matter of fact, sometimes I hear too much.”
“I have no doubt,” I said. I could only imagine the unwanted tidbits he picked up about the private lives of his citizens. “But Janie had plans to go to Atlanta to the mall. If she did, they weren’t together, at least not for the whole day. They’d had an argument because he thought she knew about his dad’s affair and kept it from him. Also, what about the woman he was having an affair with? Helen? Nikki overheard her on the phone making dinner plans, and she doesn’t think Helen was talking to her husband.”
He looked almost bored. “I already talked to Helen. She was having dinner with friends, which checks out. And I have no reason to believe Janie was lying about being with Scott. She says she went early and was back by that evening. She and Scott spent the evening watching a movie at her place. Is that all?”
I shook my head. As far as I was concerned, watching a movie at her place didn’t amount to much. She could have lied, but I didn’t figure I was going to budge him on that one so I moved on. “No. What about Dave? He had an ax to grind with Frank, yet he went fishing with them that day anyway. Don’t you think that’s weird?”
Gabe released his hands and leaned forward with a frustrated sigh. “You’re not telling me anything I didn’t already know. That’s all circumstantial, and Dave buried the hatchet with Frank. It was a misunderstanding. He was going to start back at the store the next day, seein’ as how Frank had just fired Jeremy for punchin’ him in the mouth.”