by James, Emily
“We need to talk to her.”
“I never had to call her outside of work.” Eve started the car and pulled away from Anthony’s house, where we’d been sitting for far too long. “Mr. Green should still have her contact information, though. I can try the forgotten items story one more time and say she left something behind.”
* * *
As I was closing up my truck the next day, my phone rang, and the picture I’d taken of Janie shooting Dan with a garden hose flashed onto my screen. The voice on the other end when I answered definitely wasn’t Dan’s.
“They’re here!” Janie squealed in my ear. “Auntie Claire says you can come over and show us how they work.”
“You’re supposed to ask her if she wants to come over,” Claire said in the background. “It’s not polite to tell a grown-up what to do.”
Even as she lectured Janie on manners, I could hear an undertone of excitement in Claire’s voice too. She tried not to show it, but she seemed interested in my business.
The they had to be my Russian piping tips. They’d been trending all over social media just after I bought my truck, but I hadn’t had the money or the mailing address to order some. I couldn’t even open a PO box since the post office required identification.
About a month ago, Janie asked me to show her how some of my different piping tips worked, which resulted in us both eating way too many cupcakes, but also in me mentioning the Russian piping tips in passing. Janie begged me to buy some and send them to her house, so she could be there when I opened them and tried them out.
It gave me the perfect solution to how to order a set without telling them I didn’t have my own mailing address.
The new piping tips had arrived in perfect timing. If they looked as good in real life as online, they’d make prepping for this weekend’s rescheduled sandcastle competition much easier.
I had a test batch of chocolate zucchini cupcakes in my fridge that would be perfect for testing out the tips. All we’d need was the buttercream. “Set out some unsalted butter. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
By the time Dan walked in the door, we’d covered the cupcakes I’d already made in multi-colored daisies, roses, and tulips thanks to the Russian piping tips and had another batch of vanilla cupcakes fresh from the oven because we were having too much fun to stop. Claire was almost more awed by putting two colors of icing into a single piping bag, squeezing, and having a fully formed flower come out than Janie was. Her first couple of attempts had been a bit of a disaster, but she hadn’t given up.
Claire was bent over the last cupcake, her tongue peeking out between her teeth when Dan walked in.
Her head shot up. “You’re home early.”
One side of Dan’s mouth lifted, and he made a show of looking at his watch. “Nope. Right when I thought I’d be.”
The piping bag drooped in Claire’s hand. She practically tossed it at me. “I haven’t even started supper yet, and we can’t just eat cupcakes.” She plucked Janie off the counter where she’d been perched and set her on the floor. “Go wash the icing off your face.”
“Don’t show Daddy the cupcakes until I’m back,” Janie said, and at Claire’s glare added, “Please.”
Dan looked around the kitchen. We’d hauled my heavy stand mixer in from my truck because I insisted it made the best buttercream, and the counter and island were dusted with the icing sugar that clouded out of the mixer when Janie turned it on too high, too fast. We had a lot of clean-up before we could even think about supper.
“Why don’t I fire up the grill,” he said, “and we’ll have burgers.” He glanced over his shoulder in the direction Janie had gone, then looked back at me. “While we have a minute, I wanted to warn you that an officer might be coming to talk to you about the dead body found at the sandcastle competition.”
The fact that he felt he had to specify which dead body spoke to how we’d met. “A Detective Strobel came to my truck this week. He basically gave me the don’t-leave-town talk.”
No need to tell him that Eve also came to my truck and asked me not to tell the detective what I knew. Dan was as suspicious as I was, though for different reasons. If I told him about Eve, he’d think she was guilty.
Dan looked longingly at the kitchen chairs as if he’d like to sit but instead he moved to the freezer and pulled out a box of frozen burgers. “You’re on his persons of interest list.”
Dan said it so casually, like it shouldn’t make me want to instantly skip town. I watched his profile while he separated burgers with a butter knife.
Maybe casual wasn’t the right way to describe his tone. Confident fit better. Unlike last time I’d been too close to a murder victim, he didn’t suspect me. In fact, he knew I wouldn’t have killed someone.
I sank down into the nearest chair. He had confidence in me.
He gave me that smile that crinkled his eyes a little at the corners. “It’s mainly because the body was found so near your truck, and there weren’t any drag marks or vehicle tracks onto the sand.”
I’d forgotten that detail. The area where Anthony’s body had been buried had been smoothed out and cordoned off for the integrity of the competition. When I first opened my truck’s flap in the morning, the sand was pristine. The first footprints on it were from the team who’d been assigned to the area. Whoever killed Anthony must have smoothed the sand after burying him. “That sounds like it would make Detective Strobel suspect me even more. I should have heard or seen something. Especially if the killer took the time to return the sand to its original condition afterward.”
Dan didn’t ask me why I hadn’t heard anything. He simply nodded. My chest suddenly felt too small to hold my heart, like when the Grinch’s heart grew from being two sizes too small.
“I can’t give you any real details, but I’ll let you know if we need to think about hiring you a lawyer. Right now, Strobel has someone he thinks is a much more likely suspect. He thinks he’ll be making an arrest soon.”
The happy bubble in my chest popped. Eve. It had to be Eve. I couldn’t tell her what Dan told me without violating his confidence, but as soon as I had a minute, I’d text her to suggest she get the contact information for the woman who quit ASAP.
Claire finished wiping down the counter and tossed the cloth into the sink. “You’re not working the case?”
“Can’t. I have a personal relationship with Isabel, so it’s a conflict of interest.” He held the plate full of burgers up in my direction. “One or two?”
I could barely squeak out that I’d take one. I knew Dan meant that he was my friend and not that he and I were anything more. I couldn’t be anything more with anyone. I was still married to Jarrod, and I didn’t have a way out of our marriage without giving away my location. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be romantically involved with anyone again.
But belonging to someone in even a platonic way…I hadn’t had that in so long. I hadn’t realized the gaping hole I’d been carrying around inside until Dan’s words filled a little corner of it.
He publicly claimed me as a friend. Not just to me. He’d called me a friend privately months ago. Now he’d told his superiors and co-workers that I was his friend. I was someone to him.
I couldn’t lose that. Not for anything.
If for no other reason than that I couldn’t allow Detective Strobel to jeopardize what I had by eventually making Dan doubt me, I needed to figure out who’d really killed Anthony Rigman.
8
I’d made too many cupcakes this time. I knew it before ten in the morning.
The crowd at the rescheduled sandcastle-building competition was two-thirds of what it’d been shaping up to be the first time. The competitors had also dropped by half. Many of them had probably come from out of town and couldn’t travel back for a second weekend. That could explain the smaller crowd too. Some of the missing spectators were likely friends or family of the competitors who’d dropped out.
Since the competition had b
een rescheduled, a lot of people probably didn’t even realize it was on this weekend. Or they’d shown up the last time after everything had closed down and didn’t want to be tricked into a similar situation again.
Whatever the reasons, this wasn’t going to be nearly as good a day financially as I’d hoped for. If I wasn’t able to sell everything I’d made, I’d have to reduce the price and sell them as day-olds or turn them into cake pops. Neither was ideal. The best return on investment always came from fresh sales.
As much as I needed the mobility and independence of running my business out of a food truck rather than a store front, at times like this, I wished I could set down roots with my business too. I wouldn’t be nearly as dependent on events and weather and all the other factors I faced if I had a physical location where people could always find me.
A waving arm in my peripheral vision caught my attention. I handed cupcakes to the last two customers who were lined up and turned in the direction of the gesticulating. Eve strode toward my truck, her sandals snapping on the wooden boardwalk, a floppy hat and sunglasses protecting her from the sun. Apparently having the Rigman in Rigman & Associates turn up dead at the sandcastle competition hadn’t stopped the company from making use of the booth they’d reserved.
“Why aren’t you wearing sunglasses?” Eve said as soon as she was close enough for me to hear her. “You’re going to get premature squint wrinkles.”
I’d never heard of such a thing as premature squint wrinkles before. In fact, I’d never thought about sunglasses as a way to protect my appearance. They’d always been about improving my ability to see. “My pair broke, and I haven’t replaced them yet. I wanted to save up for something a bit better than the dollar store pair I had.”
And, truth be told, I’d spent what I planned to spend on sunglasses on the Russian piping tips. Eve didn’t need to know that. She didn’t need to know that I had to make decisions like that.
Eve lifted up on her tiptoes so that more of her showed over the top of my truck’s order window. “You won’t believe who was assigned to work the booth with me this weekend.”
For a breath, I thought she was going to say Anthony and that no one had been assigned to replace him. Except she was smiling like it was a good thing, so that couldn’t be the case. Eve might be conflicted about Anthony’s death, but she wasn’t heartless to the loss of a human life. I had a feeling that once she wasn’t a suspect anymore, grief would hit her harder than it was now. As twisted as it was, there was a part of me that would mourn Jarrod if he died. Or, at least, I’d mourn the man I’d wanted him to be.
“Who?” I asked, since it was clear that’s what she was waiting for.
“The woman whose voice I recognized on that message on Anthony’s machine. Mr. Green hired her back. He thought we’d been a person short now that Anthony’s” –her voice stuttered as if she’d realized that the best word to finish the sentence was dead– “gone.”
If she’d agreed to come back to work for Rigman & Associates that quickly, it added fuel to our theory that Anthony might have been the reason she quit in the first place. Now that she’d been re-hired, she had a double motive for wanting Anthony dead. Because she’d quit rather than being fired, the police probably weren’t investigating her either.
Eve bounced twice. “When I went to Mr. Green to get her phone number, he said she’d be here today. I didn’t even have to give him our excuse of needing to return some of her stuff.”
“Did she call to get her job back after the news that Anthony died or did your other boss call her?”
Who initiated the re-hire could be important. If she called to get her job back, we’d have the start of a motive, especially given how angry she sounded on the message.
Eve shrugged. “But you should come with me to ask her. You’re better at all this cloak-and-dagger stuff than I am. She thinks I’m getting cupcakes right now.” Eve handed me enough cash for two cupcakes. “I can tell her I brought you back to meet her because I’m hoping you’ll cater our summer barbecue, and I want Harper’s help in backing you as a replacement to Mr. Green. The caterer we’ve always hired recently quit, so she’ll believe it.”
Eve gave me the whole pitch without seeming to need to breathe. I was continually awed at how many words she managed to pack into a single sentence.
I glanced outside my truck. No one appeared to be heading my way. Most people had set up their umbrellas and beach chairs in the spectator areas next to their favored competitors. Any “lunch rush” wouldn’t happen for at least another thirty minutes.
I scribbled back at 11:00 on a piece of paper and stuck it to the side of my truck’s ordering window. “Lead the way.”
Harper was leaning back in her chair at the booth when we arrived, looking like she wished she could either put her feet up on the table or take a nap. Their booth was more deserted than my truck at present. Honestly, I wasn’t sure why an insurance company would even want space at an event like this unless it was for name recognition. No one wanted to discuss insurance policies at the beach. It was like the mayor who’d been here the first weekend. I doubted anyone changed their mind about whom to vote for because they gave them a calendar or free miniature chocolate bar.
She looked up as we approached, probably alerted by the sound of Eve’s clapping shoes. “Did you get me the weirdest kind she had?”
Her gaze landed on me, and her expression shifted slightly—wider eyes and a blush creeping over her caramel-colored cheeks. She obviously thought I was a potential customer, and her statement would be viewed as unprofessional.
I held out my hand quickly. “I’m Isabel. I run How Sweet It Is Cupcake Truck.”
“And she’s a friend of mine.” Eve took the chair next to Harper, and handed her one of the cupcakes. “Peanut butter and jelly. Trust me, it’s amazing.”
My brain couldn’t quite wrap itself around the fact that Eve had called me a friend. We barely knew each other. Then again, maybe that was part of the act. She didn’t want Harper to know that we’d been thrown into a strange acquaintance thanks to Anthony’s murder. Or maybe I simply made friends more slowly than was normal.
“I want to convince Mr. Green to hire Isabel to cater the annual barbecue.” Eve gave a smile whose wattage rivaled the sun. “I need to bring you over to my side, so I have an ally.”
Harper took a bite of the PB&J cupcake, and her eyes rolled back in her head. “You’ve got one. I didn’t think they were going to still have the barbecue, though. Not since someone rid the world of Anthony.” Her gaze snapped up to Eve as if she just realized that she’d implied that it was a good thing Eve’s boyfriend was dead. “I didn’t mean…” She heaved a sigh. “Actually I did mean it. We’ll all be better off without him, including you.”
She called Anthony a few choice words to emphasize her point.
If Harper had killed Anthony, she wasn’t exactly being subtle about her dislike for him. If it were me, I’d be trying to act like I hadn’t hated him. Though her openness could be the best way to hide. No one would suspect a murderer to be so open about their dislike out of fear of shining a spotlight on themselves.
“The barbecue’s still on,” Eve said, but her voice was two sizes too small for her body.
“Good.” Harper stuffed the rest of the cupcake into her mouth and gave a happy little moan. “We shouldn’t be punished because someone finally refused to put up with him anymore.”
Jarrod used to tell me stories about his interrogation of suspects. He liked to say that if you gave a suspect enough verbal rope, they’d hang themselves. I leaned a hip against their booth, trying to look casual. “You sound like you didn’t like him.”
Harper rolled her eyes again, but this time the move signaled the opposite of what it had before. “The man was a sexist and a racist. He wanted me to wear short skirts and low cut blouses because he thought the male customers wouldn’t ask too many questions if I flashed them a little skin, but he wouldn’t let me wear my hair d
own.”
Harper had her hair pulled back into a ponytail, but the part that hung loose out of the hair tie had beautiful, voluminous corkscrew curls.
My throat tightened. I knew what it was like to have someone else control my appearance, but I didn’t know what it must be like to have someone attack my appearance in a way that they wouldn’t if I was a different race. Sometimes it was hard enough being a woman in this world, let alone a woman of color where people would judge her for both her gender and her skin tone without knowing anything else about her.
Eve looked a little like she’d been slapped. “I wear my hair down all the time.”
Harper’s lips softened slightly around the corners. She must have thought that everyone at the office knew how Anthony was treating her and just hadn’t been willing to stand up to him. Given what I knew of Eve’s relationship with Anthony, she might not have been brave enough to stand up to him, but at least she hadn’t known.
“He said my hair was ‘too messy’.” Harper put the last two words in air quotes. “And I needed to either have it straightened or wear it back.” She shook her head in a way that said this wasn’t the first time she’d experienced a micro-aggression, but that it never stopped hurting, and she couldn’t quite understand it no matter how often it happened. “I only quit because of the environment he created, and then he made sure I couldn’t find another job.”
“He refused to give you a reference?” Eve asked before I could gather my thoughts.
Her voice had the tone of someone whose whole worldview had been shattered. With all she knew of Anthony, with how he’d treated her, she could still be surprised that he’d do what he’d done to Harper.