by Nancy Bush
“Doesn’t it?” She fought a last thought toward discretion, looked down for a moment, then shot me an upward glance. There was a neediness in her eyes that made me feel a little guilty. “I probably shouldn’t say this…since you really like Emmett and all…but I was with him before Gigi. We were seriously together, and if it weren’t for all her tricks, we’d still be together.”
“You and Emmett?” I gazed at her in astonishment.
“Oh, don’t worry about it. You couldn’t know. I was kind of hoping when the wedding didn’t come off that he’d…figure it out. You know…that he’d get over her.” She gave a half laugh. “Goldy didn’t think I was good enough, but Gigi, well, she takes the cake. Goldy just hates her. All of a sudden I didn’t look like such a bad choice, you know?”
“I didn’t know,” I murmured.
“Gigi’s smart, though. I’ll give her that. She saw how to get Emmett for herself, and just went for it.”
“You said Emmett was fighting with his mom. Does she work here, too?”
“Goldy’s just here a lot.” She seemed to realize she’d said far more than she should have. “Still want him?” She half laughed. “You can have him.”
She didn’t mean a word of it. I pretended to be having trouble absorbing everything. “I can’t believe you stayed on after everything,” I said in a tone of admiration. “That must be really hard.”
“Mike Miller, Emmett’s uncle, hired me. That’s how I met Emmett in the first place. It’s not like I’d lose my job just because Emmett and I broke up.”
“But the…memories. That’s gotta be hard.”
“Not really.” More lies.
“It would devastate me.”
Junie-Marie’s mouth twisted. She looked outside, at the rows of colorful cars, but she was tuned into her inner vision. “Gigi came in to buy a convertible. She’d totaled her car and she wanted a Mercedes. Emmett helped her. After that, she came in again, and again. I could tell something was up, but what’re you gonna do? You can’t fight true love,” she said with an edge.
“I’d want to kill her,” I said. “And him, too.”
“Yeah…well…she does have money….”
That was it, I thought. Junie-Marie might lie to herself about Gigi trying to trap Emmett, but the truth was he went for the cash and she knew it, whether she wanted to still believe in her prince or not.
“I couldn’t compete with that,” she admitted. “But I stayed on. I needed a job and this is a good one. I’m sure it bothers her,” she added a bit meanly.
Well, until Emmett quit, maybe.
My sales buddy came back inside and saw me standing at Junie-Marie’s desk. He stopped short, unsure if I still needed help or not. I rapped my knuckles on the counter and said, “Thanks so much,” then scooted toward the back hallway. Junie-Marie looked at me in surprise. “Looking for the loo,” I said and hurried away.
I found David Popparockskill’s office on my first try. Right past the water fountain. D. POPPAROCKSKILL was etched in a gold nameplate that was held tightly in a slot on the open door. I peered inside. My luck was holding, as he was seated at the desk: a gray-haired man in a gray suit and a gray-and-blue-striped tie. He seemed somewhat shrunken, like the chair was too big for him, and his gaze was out a small back window toward the parking lot beyond, though I suspected he, too, was seeing something in his inner vision.
He looked startled when I rapped on the doorjamb.
“David Popparockskill?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I strode across to him, hand extended. “Jane Kelly. I’m the private investigator who called you. I’m looking into Roland Hatchmere’s death.”
My direct approach caused him to rear back slightly in his chair. I shook his hand, which was dry and limp, and seated myself in one of the two dark blue club chairs in front of his desk, crossing my legs. I should have worn a skirt, I thought. I might have gotten further as his gaze was on my legs, which were tucked demurely away inside my black pants.
“I thought I made it clear in my message that we have nothing to say to you,” he said huffily.
“I understand. I’m just following up. This shouldn’t take long.”
“I don’t see how we can help you.”
“Can you give me a timeline? When you and your wife arrived at the wedding? When guests started leaving? That kind of thing?”
“Give me one good reason why I should tell you anything, Ms. Kelly.”
“For Gigi’s sake. And your son’s. Everyone’s looking for some kind of closure so they can move on.”
It sounded good, even to my own ears. I just couldn’t bear to have one more person point out that I was helping Violet, and Violet was the enemy, blah, blah, blah.
He was momentarily stumped on how to get rid of me. But assistance came in the shape of one tall, very wide woman in a loose red dress that showed off way more decolletage than I wanted to see. Her breasts were huge, twin beach balls thrust my way, and there was something about her demeanor that made me realize she was proud of their size. I wondered if I should point out that they were losing both to gravity and in the race with her waistline to finish first.
“Goldy, this is Jane Kelly,” David said quickly, scuttling around his desk. She might be in a dress, but it was clear who wore the pants in the family. “She’s the private detective looking into Roland’s death. The one who called us?”
Goldy gave me an assessing look, her mouth turning up slightly, forming a funny, little U. Her hair was a rather well-cut pageboy, her nails manicured a matching bloodred to her dress. The blue of her eyes was glacial.
“Are you good at interpreting clues, Ms. Kelly?” she asked, still smiling.
“Well…” I said cautiously, wondering where this was going. “I try my best.”
“Maybe your best isn’t good enough.” Her chiding tone said I was missing something big. I waited, figuring she was dying to make her point and this windup was just foreplay to the main event. She came through with flying colors. “We told you we didn’t have anything to say to you, but you didn’t pay any attention. Perhaps you would do better in some other profession.” She practically tsk, tsk, tsked with her tongue.
We stared each other down. I had a sudden blast of insight on why Emmett might have quit his job. Good old Uncle Mike, and David and Goliath, and Junie-Marie…Emmett might have chosen Gigi for her family money, but there might be other reasons as well, like that he saw her as a means to leave the familial minefield of Miller-Kennedy Mercedes. Even Goldy, who didn’t have a job here, appeared to haunt the dealership like a nagging ghost.
“You know, Dave and I were just talking,” I said chattily, throwing “Dave” a conspiratorial wink. “He already told me you had nothing to offer. So I guess we’re good.”
Goldy’s head turned as if it were on a ratchet. She fixed her husband with a blank look that I guessed would become a laser beam of evil intent as soon as I was out of range. Okay, it was kind of mean of me to throw David to the wolves like that. I had a feeling she’d be making his life a living hell for a very long time. But they just kind of pissed me off, y’know?
After that neither of them had anything to say to me, which I guess I kind of asked for. Maybe Roland didn’t like them for the reason that they were, well, unlikable. The funny thing was, David was probably right: they had nothing to tell me. I would be much better off interviewing Emmett again, if I wanted to know anything further about the Popparockskills.
I nearly ran over Junie-Marie on my way out as she was coming down the hall toward David’s office while I was zooming in her direction. She looked stricken that I’d been talking to dearest Emmett’s parents. “Our secret,” I mouthed to her on the way out.
She gazed after me in consternation.
I got to meet Uncle Mike on my way out. We did one of those little dances in the doorway where both of us moved one way, then the other. He took the opportunity to thrust out his hand and introduce himself as Mike Miller in a
booming voice. “You looking for a car, you came to the right place!”
I murmured something to escape by. I could see the shape of Emmett’s head in his, and the eyes were the same. Mike had a few extra pounds on him, but he looked more like his nephew than David did. I saw that if Goldy shed some weight, Emmett would resemble her more closely, too. He took after the Millers, which might be a good thing.
My cell phone rang on my way to the car. “Jane Kelly,” I said, feeling oddly empowered. It had been a day of fighting snotty power trippers.
“Is now a good time to talk?” Deenie asked in a martyred tone.
“Now’s a perfect time,” I told her, looking forward to crossing her name off my list. “I’m putting together a timeline. If you could give me what events you attended, when you arrived, when you left…just any information about the wedding and the wedding week…I’ll add it to what everyone else said. Maybe something will come to light.”
“Shit,” Deenie breathed. “He’s beeping in. I’m going to have to call you back.” And she was gone.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I called Gigi on the way home, realizing I didn’t have a number for Emmett. She answered reluctantly. Whereas I’d lied my ass off with Junie-Marie, I hit Gigi with the point of my call before she could think of a reason to hang up on me. “I spoke with Dr. Daniel Wu, who said Roland was angry that you’d cleaned out one of your accounts to invest in some investment opportunity that Emmett suggested.”
She inhaled sharply. “Daddy was way over that! He knew it was a good investment!”
“What was the investment?”
“It’s none of your business.” When I didn’t bite, she said, “Fine. It’s a golf shop. You know, that sells golf stuff? Clubs and clothes and things. That’s why Emmett quit his job. He’s going to work there. It’s just kind of getting off the ground, so it’s going to be a while, but Daddy knew it was a great deal.”
I thought of the failure rate of most small businesses and wondered. But at least it sounded like the truth. “Where is this golf shop?”
“On the other side of the river. Near Willamette Crest. Emmett’s a member there,” she said with a touch of pride.
“Okay.”
“Okay? That’s all you’ve got to say?”
“Okay, Gigi.”
“You know, it really hurts my feelings that Daniel could talk about me that way. He’s like an uncle to me. My daddy’s gone and that’s what he tells you? He’s lucky Daddy allowed him into a partnership at all!”
Since Roland needed a licensed plastic surgeon to get his clinics off the ground, I felt this was a serious stretching of the truth. I didn’t say it, though. My good angel seemed to have control of my tongue for the moment.
I called Dwayne next and filled him in on everything that had transpired since I’d spoken to him in the morning. Neither of us brought up Keegan Lendenhal again. I think he was hoping I’d forgotten about going after him myself, and I didn’t feel like having the argument. Beyond that, our conversation was a little awkward. I swear, the more I try to keep things on a friendship level between us, the more screwed up everything feels.
One of these days maybe I’ll just give in. Why fight it? It’s not doing me any good.
We said good-bye and I amused myself by trying out a couple of seduction scenarios in my mind, just for fun. I saw myself entering Dwayne’s cabana and demanding he strip off his clothes and lie down on a bearskin rug. Wait. No. He doesn’t have one of those. Besides, they’re too furry.
Scenario two: I enter Dwayne’s cabana and I strip off my clothes and lie down on…not the sofa. That’s my workstation.
I blanked. There is nowhere to lie down in Dwayne’s cabana unless I wanted to stretch out on the hardwood floor.
Scenario three: we’re at my cottage and we go to the bedroom except…that…it’s not going to be my cottage much longer.
“Shit,” I muttered. What does it say about me that I can’t even project a quality fantasy?
I put a call in to the Crock and asked for Megan Adair. After I was put on hold for an eternity, I hung up in disgust. I tried Sean’s cell a couple more times and finally gave up and drove to the nightclub around ten. Sean’s band was listed on a chalkboard propped against the building, so in that I guess I was lucky. I hoped he was there early.
The same bouncer checked my ID and made me fork over five dollars even though I had a two-hour wait till the band got going. He didn’t intimidate me as much as last time, but then I didn’t mess with him, either. There’s only so much energy allotted for dealing with difficult people in any one day and I was feeling way past tired and cranky. It seemed grossly unfair that Sean was keeping me from my bed.
I went from being irked to worrying he wasn’t around as I entered the urban, metallic scene and settled for a table against the wall. None of the seats near the stage were in use. The stage was dark, in fact. Not the faintest stirring of activity or glint of lighting. So, where was this band?
I looked around for Megan Adair. She wasn’t immediately visible, so I settled for a barmaid whose hair was clipped in a short, mannish cut. She had huge eyes she’d ringed in black and a nose ring large enough to draw my eye and not let go.
“Is the band here?” I asked.
“They don’t come on till midnight,” she said tonelessly.
“I’m actually meeting one of the members. Sean Hatchmere.”
“Don’t know him. You want a drink?”
“How about a mercury?”
She left to fill the order and I was glad to be away from her mesmerizing jewelry. Sheesh. I can think of all kinds of nasty things a body produces inside the nasal cavity that could crust on that ring. I had to stop myself from an all-over body shiver.
I sat around for nearly an hour, nursing my drink, and was about to go ask more questions when Sean himself shuffled across the stage. The guy with the gray ponytail was hot on his heels and started barking orders at him. It was like a play in itself.
“Sean!” I yelled as he disappeared toward the back, but he didn’t seem to hear. After a moment, I called on my last reserves of energy and hopped onto the stage, sauntering after him as if I owned the place. No one stopped me.
I nearly smacked into him when Sean suddenly turned back around one of the black, cardboardy walls in my direction. “Sorry,” he mumbled, trying to scoot around me.
“Sean, it’s me. Jane Kelly. I was here a couple of weeks ago, talking to you about your dad.”
“God,” Sean said, focusing on me with an effort. “You and the police.”
“The police?”
“Why don’t you all just leave us alone? I didn’t want him dead. Gigi’s right. Violet killed him. We didn’t do it!”
He turned on his heel and headed toward the greenroom. I chased after him. His shoulder bumped into a tall stepladder, but he glanced off it as if he didn’t feel pain. I steadied the ladder with my hand, looking up to be sure somebody wasn’t going to fall off and squash me where I stood. When I was convinced it was safe, I followed Sean into the greenroom where he was slopped onto a stool. Like I’d done to the ladder, I put a hand on his shoulder to steady him. I wasn’t convinced he wouldn’t slide to the floor in a pool. “You okay?”
“We didn’t do it. We didn’t fucking kill him,” he mumbled.
“The police talked to you about your father’s death?”
He pulled himself together with an effort and looked accusingly at my hand. I drew it back. “You sent that detective here. I talked to Gigi. We know what you’re doing.”
“You mean Detective Larrabee?”
“Friend of yours?” Sean sneered.
It had been a long day and I’d had all I wanted to take of Sean’s and Gigi’s continued selfishness. “Your father didn’t have time to disinherit both of you, but he was planning on it. Pretty good motive for murder, if you ask me.”
“You told the police that?”
“They obviously figured it out on their own.
That’s what they do.”
“What are you so pissed about?”
“I don’t know. You and Gigi. Neither of you gave a damn about your father. He wanted you to stay clean and you’re obviously on something right now.”
“Just dope.”
“Whatever. You get nearly half your father’s estate and you’re still using. Somebody killed your father and it wasn’t Violet.”