by Sandra Balzo
He looked taken aback. ‘Ten minutes? To shop?’
Jacqueline, who was already picking through the racks, just turned and stared, a Nicole Miller hanging off her arm.
‘I know,’ I said, ruefully. ‘The concept boggles the mind. I should probably go.’ I started to leave before they had a chance to stop me.
Then I saw a dress. Sleek black, with a high neck and long sleeves. It looked unassuming – except for the cut-outs that bared each shoulder.
Bruce saw me pause. ‘It’s your size,’ he said.
He just didn’t play fair.
The world was conspiring against my meeting Sarah on time.
First, the stop at Bruce Paul’s – admittedly, my own fault. On the way home, I encountered an unexpected traffic jam on Brookhill Road. Likely a soccer game at the high school or a dance recital at Tiny Tots.
Then, when I arrived home, I found Pavlik waiting in the driveway.
Now this was what I call a ‘good problem’. Good, because he looked exceptionally handsome and because I wanted to pry some information from him. And a problem, because I was too short on time to take full advantage in either of these ways.
I gave Pavlik a quick kiss and resisted snuggling deep into his buttery leather jacket. It took me about three seconds to decide not to chastise him for telling Kate about the arson and not telling me.
‘Listen, I’m a little pressed for time,’ I said, smiling apologetically up into his face. Pavlik was a good six inches taller than me, so I spent a lot of time looking up at him, though not necessarily at the angle I wanted to.
‘Janalee asked me to take over the banquet,’ I continued, ‘and that means I have to be dressed and out of here in less than an hour.’
‘Not a problem,’ Pavlik said. ‘I just wanted to stop by and see how you are.’
‘I’m fine,’ I said, worried all over again. ‘Why? Is there a reason I shouldn’t be fine?’ Or that I should be hiring a lawyer?
Pavlik grinned, seeming to read my mind. ‘And, I also thought I should tell you that no one genuinely suspects you of arson. It apparently just makes good convention fodder.’
‘Pretty much anything does,’ I said. I noticed he didn’t say I wasn’t suspected of murder. I decided not to bring up the subject.
Instead, I led him up the walk to the front door. ‘Do you have anybody in mind for the arson?’
I thought it was unlikely that Levitt – even if he had killed LaRoche – also had burned down the coffeehouse. First of all, it was Janalee’s Place. Anyone who had a personal grudge against LaRoche would have taken out a HotWired store, not Janalee’s.
But second, and more importantly, LaRoche’s speech apparently was what set Levitt off in the first place. Why would he commit arson before LaRoche had given him reason to?
Besides, burning down a building pollutes the air. It just wasn’t Levitt’s style. I thought he’d be more likely to introduce termites, and let nature take its course over a decade or so. But then I wouldn’t have thought beaning LaRoche in the head was the man’s style, either. Go figure.
I tuned back into what Pavlik was saying just in time to hear him say, ‘. . . some leads, but I’m letting the arson squad handle that.’
‘Great,’ I said as I turned the key in the door. Inside, I could hear the frantic scuffling of Frank’s toenails as he dashed across the polished wood floor. I waited for the thud before I pushed the door open and peeked in.
Frank was sitting back on his haunches looking dazed. Or at least I imagined he looked dazed under all that hair.
‘See?’ I said, turning back to Pavlik, ‘I’ve learned that if I wait a second or two before opening the door, I can avoid being catapulted back into the yard by the sheer force of him running into it.’
‘Good thinking,’ Pavlik said, following me in. He knelt down to push the hair out of Frank’s eyes. ‘You have trained her well,’ he said to the dog. Frank tried to lick him. He missed.
‘I have something I need to tell you about,’ I said to Pavlik. I was holding up the covered hanger from BPG so the bottom of the dress didn’t pick up dust-bunnies of dog hair. ‘But I really need to shower and dress first. Could you do me a huge favor and take Frank out and run him around?’
‘Sure,’ Pavlik said to me. To Frank, he said, ‘Where’s your tennis ball go find your ball boy where is it where is it huh? Huh?’
That would take care of the two of them for a good half hour.
In actuality, it took me about forty minutes to shower, dress and put on my make-up. No matter, when I looked out the window, they were still playing ball in the yard.
Time to separate man from best friend. I stepped out on to the porch.
Pavlik and Frank stopped dead.
Hey, I said to myself, I may not be a twenty-four-year-old dental floozy, but I clean up well.
That was my last lucid thought before Frank launched himself at me. Frank, in his white and gray fur coat, me in my black dress. This couldn’t end well.
Turning, I made for the door, but Frank’s big paws were already pounding up the porch steps. I felt the fetid breath of decaying beef bones and putrid pig ears hot against the back of my legs . . .
Then – thud, whump, WHOOSH.
I turned. Pavlik was flat on his back on the grass at the bottom of the steps, Frank on top of him, all four legs waving in the air like hairy flagpoles. I wasn’t sure if the ‘whoosh’ had been Frank getting the wind knocked out of him or Pavlik. Neither of them looked good.
‘Are you OK?’ I called down, picking off a dog hair that had somehow migrated to my dress anyway.
‘Mmmmph,’ Pavlik said, trying to spit out a hank of Frank’s fur.
I started down the steps.
‘Stay!’ Pavlik commanded.
I obeyed.
The sheriff had hold of Frank’s collar and was trying to shimmy out from under the dog. The dog, for his part, appeared to like it.
‘I think you’re turning him on.’
‘He’s on his back, for God’s sake,’ Pavlik said irritably.
‘You’ve never heard of doggy-style?’
Pavlik gave me the eye. Or he would have given me the eye, if Frank hadn’t chosen just that moment to throw his head back in apparent ecstasy and pop Pavlik in the mouth.
I started forward.
‘Sit.’
I sat. On the porch swing. I was hoping we were going to get to ‘lay’ pretty soon. I only had another fifteen minutes.
But, alas, Pavlik managed to squeeze out from under Frank. Frank rolled over and went to sleep.
‘Wham, bam, thank you, Sheriff,’ I contributed from my seat on the porch.
Pavlik brushed himself off. ‘You had to wear black.’
I stood up and did a turn. ‘You don’t like?’
He came up the steps. ‘I like very much.’
He ran his fingers over my bare shoulders. ‘I only wish there was time for me to show you how much I like it.’ He leaned in, his breath – smelling of neither dog bones or pig ears – hot against my neck. ‘And you.’
Sarah could wait. The banquet could wait. The whole world could wait. I pulled his lips down to mine. Pavlik’s hands dropped down to encircle my waist.
‘You have to go, you know,’ he murmured in my hair.
‘I know,’ I murmured back. ‘Damn, damn, damn.’
‘Want a rain check?’
‘Then I’ll have one, and you’ll have one,’ I pointed out.
‘God knows what could happen when two rain checks collide.’
‘I think I have a pretty good idea.’ I ran my index finger along his jaw line to his lips. ‘And if you can do that –’ I nodded toward Frank, who was now snoring – ‘to a sheepdog named Frank, I can’t wait to see what you can do to me.’
‘I’ll make it worth your while, I promise,’ he said, his blue eyes going dark. Dangerous man, this one.
I sighed. ‘I really do have to go now, though.’
Unfortunately,
he listened to me. Where are those men who drag you off to their caves, making you miss your coffee banquet, when you need them?
I stepped inside the house to get my evening bag, and then surveyed Frank. ‘What am I going to do with him?’
‘I’ll wake him up after you’re gone,’ Pavlik volunteered, ‘and put him in the house.’
‘You are the best.’ I gave him a quick kiss. ‘Will you feed and water him, too? And turn on the nightlight?’
‘You are high maintenance, lady. And the Tramp –’ he chin-gestured to Frank – ‘even more so.’
‘Believe me,’ I said, starting down the steps, ‘I don’t even begin to compare.’
I stopped when I got to the bottom. ‘Oh, my God, I completely forgot.’
‘What?’ Pavlik seemed to be paying more attention to my retreating butt than what I was saying.
‘I saw some of the video that Jerome, the college student from Brookhills Community, shot at Java Ho. He has tape of an argument between LaRoche and Levitt Fredericks after the barista competition on Friday night.’
Pavlik got out his pad and made a note. ‘Great. We’re starting to put a timeline together. Does the kid know about what time it is?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t see a time stamp or anything on the tape, but it was clearly shot as the vendors were closing down. That should help.’
Pavlik kept the notebook open. ‘Just for the record, where were you Friday night?’
Something in my stomach started doing the limbo. Relax, I told it – you have an alibi. It didn’t seem to care.
I cleared my throat. ‘After the barista competition ended at eight, I said goodbye to everyone, including LaRoche, and went to have drinks with Kate and Jerome.’
Pavlik made a note of that. ‘Until when?’
‘A little after midnight.’
‘Good.’ Pavlik looked up and saw my face. ‘Don’t worry. Just routine.’
‘Yeah, that’s what they say in the movies, too. Just before they slap on the cuffs.’
‘Actually, with the new zip-ties, it’s more slipping than slapping,’ he said. ‘But like I said, don’t worry. The medical examiner thinks LaRoche was killed between ten and midnight.’
I guess when you have ‘liver temps’, or whatever they used to gauge time of death, my ‘Hey! He’s wearing a burgundy tie!’ was a little simplistic.
‘Of course, that’s just an estimate,’ Pavlik continued. ‘I’ll be able to pin it down even better when I get the security tape.’
‘There was a camera in the competition room?’ There went all the sport in catching a killer.
‘Not in the room where LaRoche was found, but I’m told there’s one in the hallway leading to the side door of that room. Once the exhibit hall closed, it would be the best way in.’
‘Of course, that’s the door I used when . . .’ In the nick of time, I heard a groan behind me. Frank was stirring.
‘Got him.’ Pavlik had jumped off the porch and had hold of Frank’s collar. ‘Now, what were you saying?’
‘Nothing important.’ I made a show of checking my watch. ‘I have to run. Bye.’
As I skirted around them to the van, Pavlik dragged a recalcitrant Frank into the house.
Getting into the minivan, I sat for a moment to let my heart settle down.
How had I forgotten that I’d gone back to the competition room to check on the trophies after having drinks with Kate and Jerome?
It had to have been after midnight, because that’s when the bar closed and they chased us out. I even remembered checking my watch. What time was it? Twelve fifteen? I wasn’t sure.
If the time of death was between ten and twelve, though, that meant that LaRoche was already dead when I arrived. Which also meant his body was likely under the table as I straightened the trophies and smoothed down the corner of the tablecloth.
I’d cleaned up after a murderer.
Chapter Seventeen
LaRoche’s body must have been under the table, there were no two ways about it.
It stood to reason that the table had been placed over him where he had fallen. Otherwise, there would have been blood somewhere else in the room, and I certainly hadn’t seen any. There had been the spot that Sarah and I were trying to cover when we moved the table the next morning, but that definitely was not blood. It was something light in color, probably spilled during the competition.
No, I was fairly certain LaRoche was already under the table.
Then there was the other million dollar question: why hadn’t I noticed something was wrong? The murder weapon was sitting in a ring of blood. There was a body under the table, for God’s sake. How could I have missed it all?
The answer was obvious. I’d had three or four glasses of wine in the bar. I was drunk. I didn’t know which was scarier – that I was drunk enough not to notice a dead man, or that I had been drunk enough not to notice a dead man and had driven home.
It was beyond idiocy.
Ashamed of myself, I turned my attention to the road as I drove toward the convention center. Not that I could turn off the thoughts.
Had I moved the trophy that night? I didn’t think so. I would have seen the blood if I had, right? Well, no – not necessarily, given everything else I’d missed. I was fairly certain, though, that ‘Slut in a cup’ had been right in the center of the table and I had simply left it there. That was one good thing, at least.
A sudden thought struck me. What if I had touched the trophy after the killer had wiped it off? Sarah’s flippant suggestion that I’d grabbed it the next morning to hide the fact my prints were already on it, would have seemed right on target. Would the police be able to tell when each set of prints was made? I didn’t know, and I sure didn’t want to ask Pavlik. Thankfully, it was a moot point now.
But speaking of Pavlik, why hadn’t I just come out and told him I’d literally returned to the scene of the crime, if not my crime.
‘Gosh, I had a party to get to’ was not going to fly with the sheriff once he saw me on the security tape. Thing was, I didn’t want to just blurt it out like that. I’d gotten into too much trouble in my life, saying things without thinking. So I’d thought about it – damn lot of good it did me. I still didn’t know what to do.
Right now I had a banquet to manage. Focus, Maggy.
Parking in the lot outside the convention center, I slid out of the van and approached the door. The faces of the knot of smokers had changed, with the exception of one.
‘It’s time to go in now, Sarah,’ I said gently. A woman with a black apron embroidered with the words ‘Brookhills Convention Center’ threw me a grateful look.
‘I was just waiting for you,’ Sarah protested. ‘You’re late.’
‘I went home to change,’ I said, looking her up and down. ‘I see you didn’t have a chance.’
If Sarah were murdered, no one would be able to determine time of death by her clothes. She wore pretty much the same thing everyday. Trousers, long jacket, sensible shoes. It sounded like Katharine Hepburn, but played more like Groucho Marx.
‘I accessorized.’ She pointed at a pin on her lapel.
I looked closer. ‘It’s your Kingston Realty pin.’
‘It’s my dress Kingston Realty pin.’ She cocked her head and took a good look at me. ‘And speaking of dresses, yours is ripped.’
‘It’s not ripped.’ I threw back my shoulders and stood tall. Mom would be so proud. ‘I’m baring my shoulders.’
‘Better your shoulders than those breasts of yours,’ Sarah observed. ‘Even with your chest thrown out like that you can’t make mountains out of those molehills.’
How did she do that? How could she stand there in her everyday clothes and make me, in my slightly discounted designer dress, feel small. I could feel my chest – what there was of it – cave in and my shoulders round.
‘Just kidding.’ Sarah slapped me on the back. Hard. ‘You look great.’
‘With friends like you . . .’ I st
arted, but who was I kidding? Friends like her were all I had.
The banquet was to be in the Crystal Ballroom, with cocktails in the hall outside of it. The bars were scheduled to open at six thirty, which was fifteen minutes from now, but the hall was already packed.
‘It looks like some people brought their own,’ Sarah said, pointing at a couple in the corner with a six-pack and a pizza.
‘Amazing, but not surprising.’ The pepperoni and mushroom pizza looked awfully good. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. ‘I’m going to see if the bartenders can open early. Can you make sure everything’s ready in the ballroom?’
Sarah nodded and started to walk away.
‘Oh, and be sure to check the microphones,’ I called after her. ‘I’d hate to have LaRoche . . .’ I stopped.
For a second there, I’d forgotten that LaRoche was dead. Now I understood why people referred to the newly dead in present tense, like they were going to walk in the door any second. While the reality might be ‘dead’, the brain’s default position was ‘alive’. Even if you didn’t necessarily like the guy.
Sarah gave me a thumbs-up to show she understood and continued into the hall. I approached the nearest drink station. My bartender friend from the other night was lining up bottles of wine. One red, one white, one pink. ‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Remember me from the other night?’ And the night before that.
‘You’re Pinot Noir or Cab,’ he said, picking up the red. ‘But I’m afraid you’re stuck with Merlot tonight.’
‘That’s fine,’ I said, ‘but I’m going to hold off for now. I’ve been put in charge of this shindig and I’d best keep a clear head.’
He nodded solemnly and set down the bottle. ‘Yeah, I heard what happened. Not surprised, I have to say.’
‘Really?’
‘Nah.’ He had started to pour a bag of ice into the cooler behind the bar and straightened up. ‘Seemed like that guy always was giving someone shit.’
‘Like who?’ I asked curiously. ‘The people who work here?’
‘Pretty much everybody. Me and the other bartenders, Penny, the catering manager, the suppliers, the people trying to set up their booths. See that guy over there?’