by Harper Lin
“I just feel so bad for his kids. I know how it feels to get that call and—” I couldn’t stop the sob that came out, or any of the ones after that. Matt just pulled me into his arms and held me until my tears slowed.
“You okay?” he asked.
I nodded. “I think so.”
He rubbed my leg. “It’s hard.”
I nodded again and took a deep, slow breath. “I think you’re probably right about my mom. That her death is what’s really bothering me.”
“So, no more murder talk?”
I smiled. “No more murder talk.”
“Good.” He patted my leg again before he stood up. “And how about no more coffee? At least for a little while?”
I looked sadly at my cappuccino as he picked it up and moved it away from me. “Can I just finish that one?”
“Franny.”
“I don’t want it to go to waste!”
Matt lifted the cup to his lips and tipped it back, downing the whole thing in a few seconds. I would have been pleased about him drinking something more adventurous than an americano if it hadn’t been my cup of coffee.
“There you go,” he said, setting the cup down on the table. “Problem solved. Now go get dressed, and let’s take Latte for a walk before you have to go to work.”
Reluctantly, I got up and headed up the stairs to get dressed. A walk would be good for me and my highly caffeinated, sleep-deprived self.
And it was. Matt and I got all the exercise we’d missed out on driving to the restaurant the night before. Latte in tow, we walked across town, wandering up and down the same streets we used to roam as children. We headed up Main Street, passing my café. I tried to duck in for a cup of coffee, but Matt wouldn’t let me, so I just waved at my employees from the window.
My right-hand woman, Sammy, and one of my part-time teenage employees were working. I almost went in to check on them, but Matt stopped me again, probably wisely recognizing that it would be an opportunity for me to get a cup of coffee. In fact, they probably would have handed me one without me even asking.
Instead, we went down to the beach. Matt and I took turns hurling Latte’s tennis ball for him. As it became increasingly drool soaked, I let Matt take some extra turns. My gloves were apparently in my other coat, and between the cold breeze coming in off the water and the already-cold temperatures, my hands were just too cold to keep exposing them to the drool.
While Latte kept Matt busy, I wandered down the beach. Ever since I was a kid, I’d known that winter was the best time to pick up sea glass. I wasn’t sure if it was because there were fewer people on the beach overall or if there was something about the weather that made it come to shore in greater amounts, but it was by far the best time of year for it. By the time Matt had worn Latte out, my pockets were full of the smooth frosted pieces of blue and green and white glass.
We walked back to my house, where I deposited my pocketfuls of glass in one of the jars that made up the collection of sea glass that had been started by my grandmother, continued by my mother, and was now kept up by me.
“You want some lunch?” Matt asked.
“Sure. What are you making?” I asked, knowing that he had no intention of cooking anything.
“Does ordering pizza count?”
“Is that what you want?”
“Sure,” he said. “Or we could go somewhere.”
I glanced at the time. If we left now, we’d be able to eat and make it back in time for me to go to work at the café. I flopped down on the couch with my coat still on since there didn’t seem to be a point in taking it off. “Where do you want to go?”
Matt probably answered, but I didn’t hear it. I didn’t hear anything until Latte whined next to my ear. “Shh, Mommy’s sleeping!” Matt whispered.
I opened my mouth to protest that I wasn’t asleep, but before I could, I noticed that it was already getting darker outside and there was a blanket lying across me. “How long was I asleep?”
“Few hours,” Matt said.
“A few hours?” I repeated as I struggled to sit up. I didn’t even remember lying down. Did I actually do it, or was I so deeply asleep that I didn’t notice Matt doing it? I hadn’t even realized I was that tired. The only thing keeping me awake really must have been all that coffee I’d had. Coffee! I had almost completely slept through my shift at work. “I need to get to the café! I’m late!”
“Sit down.” Matt chuckled.
“I can’t! I was supposed to be at the café hours ago!” I threw the blanket off me.
“Relax, Franny! I called Sammy and let her know that you had a rough night and wouldn’t be in. She was very understanding. She heard about Pablo.”
Knowing Sammy, she would have been understanding no matter what the circumstances. “But she can’t work open to close! It’s not fair to her.”
“She said she was going to call Rhonda to come in and work the afternoon shift.”
“Was Rhonda even available?” Rhonda, my other competent adult employee, had two teenage boys and a possibly unhealthy shopping habit she scheduled her work time around. Saturday afternoon was a prime time for her to either be at a high school basketball game or up in Boston at Neiman Marcus or some other high-end department store.
“I told her to call if she needed you.”
“You know she wouldn’t do that. She’d work forty-eight hours straight before she called me to come in if she knew I didn’t sleep last night.”
Matt shrugged. “What do you want for dinner?”
“Matty! Don’t change the subject.”
“If you want to go into the café for the last”—he looked at his watch—“hour and a half it’s open, it’s fine by me. But I still want to know what you want for dinner.”
I dug my phone out of my pocket to call the café and realized I’d been sleeping so hard I hadn’t even noticed three texts come in. Two from Sammy and one from Rhonda. Collectively, they told me not to worry, they had everything under control, Rhonda was coming in and would work until close. Apparently, she’d been at a basketball parents’ meeting that she was only too happy to skip out on. “I guess you’re right,” I said to Matt.
He grinned. “So, what do you want for dinner?”
Chapter Seven
The next few days went by mostly in a blur. I worked at the café, took Latte on walks, spent time with Matt, and repeated the pattern again the next day. I tried not to think about Pablo too much, but it was hard. For one thing, he’d died right in front of me. And for another, it was all anybody in town was talking about.
At least three times a day, I heard someone talking about it in the café. The worst were the people who knew or had heard that I was there when it happened. Some of them were kind and sympathetic, but some of them were just looking for gossip. I learned to identify those people and excuse myself quickly when they showed up.
It was actually something like when my mother died—some people wanted to express their sympathies, some people thought it was just another hot topic of conversation, but regardless of their intent, I heard about it constantly.
It was a sad time, and I’ll admit that those few days, I teared up more than a few times thinking about Pablo or my mother, but it was nothing like that first morning. I told myself it had just been the freshness of it all in my mind combined with lack of sleep and my heavy infusion of caffeine. And to Matt’s relief, the subject of murder didn’t come up again. In fact, it barely even crossed my mind.
Pablo’s funeral was scheduled for Tuesday morning at Saint Catherine’s Catholic Church. Cape Bay being the small town that it was, virtually every business shut down so that their employees could attend. They weren’t losing any money by closing though—there wouldn’t be any customers during the funeral. Pablo was well loved in the community, and everyone wanted to go so they could pay their respects.
Matt took the morning off work so we could go together. I was glad he was there. It would have been too sad being there on my own. I
knew it was a little odd that I was so emotional about the death of a man I barely knew and only in a sort of business relationship, but it was really because Pablo had been so much fun to be around. Every time I saw him, he was bubbling over with happiness. He greeted everyone warmly and, I was sure, made the world a better place just by his very joyful existence. It was sad to think about that joy no longer being in the world.
We showed up to the funeral a good forty-five minutes early but, even so, ended up wedging ourselves into what seemed to be the last two seats in the church’s sanctuary. Sure enough, within a minute or so, a man stepped up to the microphone at the podium and announced that there were no more seats but they were setting up television monitors for people to watch the service from other places in the church.
That wasn’t good enough for a few people who were determined to get the “good” seats at the front—the ones that were reserved for the family at this and every funeral. That didn’t stop them though. Some had the decency to turn away as soon as the ushers approached them, but others were more determined. One woman even had the audacity to sit down after she was told not to. Somehow, after several minutes, they managed to convince her to vacate her seat. Probably it was the appearance of a particularly large, hulking man and the implied threat of bodily removal.
After quite a long time, long after I’d read through the order of service for the fifth time, chitchatted quietly with Matt, and gotten far more than my daily dose of people watching, Pablo’s family was ushered in and led up to the seats that were waiting for them.
A bearded man who looked so much like Pablo I knew he had to be his brother led the way. A teenage boy who had to be Alberto, Pablo’s son, followed behind him. His jaw was tight, and he stared straight ahead, but it was obvious that he was fighting the urge to cry. I recognized the girl next to him even though her hair and makeup were a far cry from what they were in her quinceañera pictures. Adriana. She sobbed openly as she clung to her brother, whose arm around her looked like the only thing keeping her from sinking into a heap on the floor. He half-carried her as they made their way up the center aisle.
Behind them was a woman I guessed to be their mother. She looked sad but nowhere near as grief-stricken as her children. Behind her were several more people. Some of them I’d never seen before, but I recognized a good bit more of them from the restaurant. I wasn’t sure if they were blood family or friends as close as family, but I didn’t really care. Friends made just as good of family as blood relations. Sometimes better. That woman who’d had to be escorted out of their seats might have cared, but her opinion wasn’t one that mattered.
The service began. It was a full Catholic mass, conducted in both Spanish and English, complete with a sermon by the priest. I sniffled my way through the whole thing, using up all the tissues I’d brought with me. When the eulogies started and the tears kept flowing, I was glad to have Matt hand me a little pack of tissues he’d stashed in his suit jacket pocket. The man really knew me.
Pablo’s brother spoke, mostly in Spanish but with a few scattered phrases in English for the sake of the rest of us. I didn’t understand most of it, but it was periodically punctuated by sobs coming from the front row that were loud enough to break through the near-constant sound of sniffles in the rest of the room. Every time, my heart broke for Adriana. Fifteen was too young to lose a parent. Any age felt like it, really, but fifteen was especially bad.
The next speaker was a man who had met Pablo shortly after Pablo arrived in the United States from Mexico. The two had become fast friends and had tried to teach each other their native languages. By the man’s own admission, Pablo was a much better student than he was, actually learning English, where Pablo’s friend only managed to learn bits and pieces of Spanish. His eulogy was heartfelt and moving, funny in places and tear inducing in others. And he closed with a few sentences in Spanish that made me cry yet again.
After the funeral, we walked out to the graveyard behind the church. It was one of those quaint old graveyards scattered throughout New England. Though it wasn’t quite as old as some of the graveyards that were elsewhere in Cape Bay, it still had graves dating back to the late seventeen hundreds that we had to walk past before we got to the new section in the back where Pablo was to be laid to rest.
It was even worse watching Pablo’s family at the burial than it had been at the funeral. Adriana was hunched over in her seat between her mother and brother. Her shoulders shook with her sobs. Albert and their mother each had an arm around her in an attempt to keep her from sliding farther forward and onto the ground, which she almost did at least once that I saw. Either that or she was trying to hurl herself into the open grave in front of her. Either way, it was heartbreakingly sad.
After the funeral, there was a reception scheduled at Fiesta Mexicana. Part of me wanted to go, but part of me never wanted to set foot inside that restaurant again. The memory of Pablo collapsing beside our table was too strong and too recent. And I was afraid his absence would seem too strong—stronger than I could handle without another bout of tears. But I knew I had to go. Matt and I would be missed if we didn’t.
Before we headed to the car, I whispered to Matt that I needed to use the restroom and headed back into the church. On my way back down the hallway, I heard voices coming from around the corner. One of the voices was Bill’s, and he sounded upset. But not tearful upset. Angry upset.
“You can’t tell me it’s a coincidence! They were getting close enough to him that they could slip notes into his apron! He was scared. I saw him. He was scared!”
The other voice spoke more quietly, and I couldn’t make out what it said. Then Bill was talking again. “You can’t tell me it had nothing to do with it. It did. I saw it. It did! And do you know what else? I tell you, it’s why he’s dead. Whoever was leaving those notes killed Pablo.”
Chapter Eight
For a second, I couldn’t move. I didn’t even try to hear what the other man said in response to Bill’s declaration. My pulse pounded in my ears. Pablo had been murdered.
“I can see I’m not going to change your mind. I’ll see you at the restaurant.” It was the other man talking, not Bill. And as he stalked away, I realized he was Pablo’s English-speaking friend who gave one of the eulogies at the funeral.
Before I could even think of what to do, Bill came around the corner, nearly running into me. “Señorita Francesca! Excuse me! I did not see you.”
“Not your fault. I was right in the way.” This was my chance. I knew I had to take it. He knew something, and I had him alone. “Are you okay?” I asked. “I heard raised voices.”
Bill looked uncomfortable and shifted back and forth slightly, wringing his hands. “Yes, everything is fine. Just a misunderstanding.”
I tried to catch his eye. “Are you sure?”
“Sí, Señorita Francesca.”
He obviously wasn’t going to volunteer it. I took a deep breath. At least I knew Bill wasn’t involved if he was trying to expose it. “Did you say that someone killed Pablo?”
He looked spooked for a second. “No, no, you misunderstand. I did not say that anyone killed Pablo.”
“Bill, I heard you.”
“Señorita Francesca, I do not want to cause trouble. I know nothing. It’s just an idea. It is nothing.”
“If someone killed Pablo, or was involved in his death, they need to be brought to justice.”
“I have no proof. No evidence. Like I said, it’s just an idea. It’s nothing. You cannot go to the police with just an idea.”
“No, but you can come to me.” I stood up straighter, trying to look like a competent person who could be trusted to know what to do with information about a potential murder. It wasn’t far from the truth. I’d had the misfortune of being involved with a murder case or two—or six—in the recent past. I’d even been the one to mostly solve them.
Bill looked at me suspiciously. I knew word of my crime-fighting antics had gotten around town, but there
was always a chance that Bill was the one person who hadn’t heard. He appraised me then said slowly, “Señorita Francesca, I do not know the things I am saying. I take one little thing I see or hear and turn it into a whole story. I do not know the truth.”
“But you suspect it. You suspect that Pablo was murdered.”
“It could be.”
“So, tell me why.”
He stood there for a long time, looking at me, my shoes, the wall, wringing his hands the whole time. He took a deep breath. “Pablo was… finding things. Little pieces of paper, little notes. In his apron at work. I don’t know about other places. But I know about the apron.”
I thought of the paper that had slipped from Pablo’s apron onto our table the night Pablo died. Was that one of the papers Bill was talking about? He’d snatched it up too quickly for me to do anything other than glance at it. “What did the notes say?”
“I didn’t see them. Pablo hid them. But I saw one when it fell out of his pocket. It said, ‘We know where you work.’”
“That was all?”
“That was all. I did not see what the others said, but I saw him pull them out of his pockets, and when he did, he looked scared. I saw it. He would find the note, take it out of his pocket, and read it, and he would be scared.”
“How did you know he was scared?” I asked. It was probably a stupid question, but I wanted to know if Pablo had quaked with fear or just looked a little put out.
“When he took them out, his eyes would be big. And he would look around the room like he was looking for somebody. Then he would crumple up the note and put it back in his pocket, but the rest of the day, he would look scared. He’d look around at everybody and jump if he heard a loud noise. And he parked his car right in front of the restaurant. He never did that before. Always, he left the good parking spots for the customers. But these past few weeks, he parked right in front.”