“What?” Sean asked him.
“Assuming he didn’t kill anyone.”
“I guess we are,” Libby said, thinking back to her talk with Duncan. She thought he was an arrogant SOB, but he wasn’t a murderer.
“We’re hoping he didn’t kill anyone,” Bernie said.
Sean nodded toward Bernie and Libby. “You should go talk to Duncan now. He’ll be upset and it’s always easier to get someone to talk when they’re in that state.”
“I guess you’re right,” Libby conceded as she saw her carefully constructed workday vanishing.
Sean raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. Bernie stood up.
“We’re on it, Dad. Come on, Libby. Let’s go.” And without even looking to see if her sister was following her, she got up and walked out the door.
“We have two chocolate cakes and seven pies to make,” Libby called after her, feeling a momentary stab of resentment. Sometimes she thought she was the only one who remembered they had
a business to run.
Bernie’s voice floated back up. “The crusts are made. I’ll get Amber to make the filling and put the pies in the oven. She can’t possibly mess them up.”
Libby thought that was an optimistic statement if she’d ever heard one, but she got up and followed Bernie out. This was the last thing she wanted to do, but she really didn’t want to fight with her dad either. And anyway, if they hurried, she might be back in time to take the pies out of the oven.
Chapter 14
Bernie kicked the van up to forty miles an hour, making it to Bree’s place in fifteen minutes flat, which was definitely some kind of record. She’d just finished parking the van in front of the guest house and she and Libby had exited the van and were walking up the path to the front door when Duncan came out.
“I don’t have time to talk to you now,” he said to both of them. “I have to be at my lawyer’s office stat.”
“To talk about Liza?” Bernie asked.
“That’s right. Now if you’ll excuse me ...”
“My dad found the body,” Libby told him.
Duncan snorted. “That’s what my lawyer said. I thought you guys were supposed to be on my side.”
“We are,” Libby told him.
“It’s not working out that way. Your dad goes in, finds the body and now I may be charged with a second homicide. Good work. If I were my aunt I’d make you give back the money.”
“Hah,” Bernie said. “That’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard anyone say. It wasn’t as if Dad did it on purpose,” Bernie said indignantly. “He wanted to talk to Liza. Believe me, the last thing he wanted to find was her body. It just made trouble for him,” she said as she scrutinized Duncan.
He looked as if he was going to work. Freshly shaven, Duncan was impeccably turned out in an expensive charcoal gray pin-striped suit, pale pink shirt, and a pink and gray paisley patterned tie. If Duncan hadn’t told her, Bernie never would have guessed he was going to see his lawyer.
“What are you looking at?” he demanding tthoed.
“You,” Bernie replied.
Duncan put his hands on his hips. “Meaning?”
“Well, it occurs to me that you don’t seem very sad about Liza,” Bernie noted. “Or upset.”
“I’m not,” Duncan growled. “Not now. She made me the laughingstock of my friends.”
“So you knew what she was doing?” Libby asked.
Duncan shook his head. “No. Not until my lawyer told me.”
Libby unbuttoned her parka. It had gotten warmer as the day wore on. “And none of your friends let on?”
Duncan looked incredulous. “Of course they didn’t. Do you think I would have stayed with her if they had?”
Bernie shrugged. “Maybe. Some guys get off on that kind of thing.”
Duncan pointed at himself. “Well, I am most definitely not one of them.”
“So you really didn’t know?” Libby said, watching him carefully.
Duncan took two steps. By now he was almost nose to nose. “What are you, deaf?”
Libby held her ground. “No. Just making sure.”
Duncan’s eyes narrowed. He took a step back. “And do you believe me?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” Libby said.
Duncan laid his hand on his chest. “Be still my heart. I am so relieved.”
Bernie kicked a small rock off the path. “Wow, Duncan. You really don’t play well with others, do you?”
Duncan smiled despite himself and turned toward her. “I take it you believe me too, Bernie?”
Bernie shrugged her shoulders. “I’m a harder sell than my sister. I’m still trying to decide. So when was the last time you saw Liza?” she asked.
“I already told you—we went home together, and I passed out, and when I woke up she was gone.”
“So you say, Duncan.”
Duncan shot his cuffs. “Yes, Bernie. I do.”
“And you didn’t try and call her?”
“No, Bernie. I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
Duncan looked down for a moment, then looked back up. “Frankly, Bernie?”
“Yes, Duncan. Frankly.”
Duncan sighed, then said, “Because, if you really want to know, I was relieved I didn’t have to deal with her anymore. She was becoming a pain in the ass.”
Libby leaned forward slightly. “How so?” she asked.
Duncan scratched his chin. “How can I say this nicely?”
“Just say it, Duncan,” Bernie ordered.
He straightened his tie. “Fine, then. It’s simple. Liza saw us as having a future together and I didn’t. And I think that made her nuts.”
“Did she take pictures of you too?” Bernie asked.
“Pictures?” Duncan acted surprised. “What pictures?”
“The kind of pictures that are on her laptop,” Libby said.
Duncan’s eyes widened. He looked genuinely puzzled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
Libby looked at Bernie and Bernie looked at Libby. Bernie looked at Duncan again. He was looking at his watch.“Listen,” he said. “If you’re not going to tell me, I really have to go. I have to be in Westerly in half an hour.”
“What did you think we were talking about back there when you said that Liza had made a fool of you?” Bernie asked Duncan.
Two red dots appeared on Duncan’s cheeks. His eyes narrowed. “I thought you were talking about the fact that Liza slept around with everyone, including my friends, and that evidently I was the last to know.”
“No,” Bernie said. “We were talking about the sex pictures Liza had on her laptop.”
“Of who?”
“Of whom,” Bernie corrected.
Duncan waved his hand impatiently. “Who cares? Who are you talking about?”
Libby stepped in before the situation degenerated to a grammatical free-for-all. “We’re talking about your friends,” she said. “Liza had pictures of her and your friends on her laptop. They were all engaged in ... inappropriate behavior.”
“As in having sex,” Bernie added helpfully.
Duncan wrinkled his forehead. “You’re saying the Corned Beef and Cabbage Club had group sex?” he asked incredulously.
“No,” Libby cried. “Individually.”
Duncan shook his head. “By themselves? That’s even worse.”
“No, no, no,” Libby said, stamping her foot in frustration. “Connor, Patrick, and Liam all had sex with Liza at different times and she photographed them doing it. I can’t believe you didn’t know that,” Libby finished.
“And I can’t believe it either,” Bernie said.
“How could I have known, Bernie?” Duncan asked.
“Simple. You looked on her laptop. The pics were on her desktop.”
“I didn’t look.”
“Never?” Bernie asked.
“No. Never.”
“I find that diffic
ult to believe,” Bernie said, thinking of the times she had casually glanced at Brandon’s laptop when he wasn’t around. It wasn’t anything she was proud of, but it was hard to resist, in the same way that checking out people’s medicine cabinets was.
Duncan frowned. “Believe what you want, but I never did. Liza never brought it with her when she came over to my place. I mean she wasn’t the kind of person who carried her laptop around.”
“And you never went to her place?” Bernie asked.
“What? Are you kidding me?” Duncan asked in disbelief. “Give me a break. She lived in the basement of her parents’ house. I mean it had a separate entrance and all, but there was no way I was going over there. And you know what? I bet none of the guys knew they were having their pictures taken, because that’s the kind of p
erson Liza was. A sneaky bitch.” He grinned. “Serves them right.”
“Who?” asked Libby.
“My so-called friends.” Duncan bracketed the word friends with his fingers. Then he checked the time on his cell phone again. “Now I really have to go. This has not been a pleasure.”
And before Bernie and Libby could say anything else, Duncan hopped in his car and whizzed out of the driveway, turned right on the road, and lost himself in the oncoming traffic.
Chapter 15zzed out o
“Do you believe him?” Libby asked Bernie once Duncan’s taillight had vanished into the traffic.
“About the pictures?”
“Yes, Bernie. About the pictures.”
Bernie folded her arms across her chest. “You know, Libby, I almost think that I do. It’ll be interesting to talk to the remaining members of the crew and hear what they have to say.”
“But not now,” Libby said, more forcefully than she intended. “We have to get back to the shop.”
“We will,” Bernie said as she turned and studied the guest house.
Watching Bernie study the cottage, Libby knew exactly what her sister was thinking. “Absolutely not,” she said.
“Absolutely not, what?” Bernie said, playing the innocence card.
Libby pointed to the ADT sign that was on the lawn in front of the main house. “That’s why not.”
“We don’t know Bree actually has a security system installed in the guest house,” Bernie told her. “She could have just put the sign up.”
“You’re right. She could have,” Libby said. “But knowing Bree, I find that highly unlikely.”
“I don’t. I think that’s exactly the kind of thing she’d do,” Bernie opined. Bree was one of those odd people who’d buy a Mercedes, but keep her house at fifty-five degrees because she didn’t want to spend money on the utility bill.
Libby bent down and retied her sneaker before she slipped and fell, something it would be just her luck to do. “I don’t want to find out if you’re wrong,” she told her sister after she stood up. “As far as I’m concerned one family brush with the law is enough for the time being. And anyway, Duncan is our client. You don’t do things like that to your client.”
“Is that written somewhere in the Detective Rule Handbook?” Bernie asked her.
Libby ignored her. “Now, do you want to drive or shall I?”
“I will,” Bernie grumped. “But we’re missing a good opportunity.”
“To get arrested,” Libby said, unable to resist the temptation to have the last word.
Bernie muttered something and stomped toward the van, with Libby following. They hit traffic on the way, so it took them a half hour to get back to A Little Taste of Heaven.
“Jeez,” Libby said when she walked through the door and saw how packed the shop was.
The moment she and Bernie had threaded their way through the crowd and stepped to the other side of the counter, Amber pulled them aside and told them they were running low on cookies. Someone Amber didn’t know had come in and almost cleaned them out.
“I guess it’s good we came back when we did,” Bernie said grudgingly as she and Libby headed into the kitchen and got straight to work.
An hour later, working as fast as they could, Libby and Bernie had finished making two batches of chocolate-chip peanut-butter cookies, a batch of snickerdoodles, a batch of pecan shortbreads, and two batches of mint-chocolate brownies with chocolate icing.
Libby was taking a short break and sampling one of the brownies that she’d just finished icing, while she admired the pies Amber had made. She was complimenting her on a job well done when the kitchen door slammed open and Bree came storming in with Googie, one of the counne iv witer boys, right behind her.
“I tried to stop her,” he told Libby. She noted Googie was practically wringing his hands in dismay.
“It’s okay,” Libby replied. She nodded to the front. “Go back and wait on the customers.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive,” Libby said firmly. Then she turned to Bree. “So,” she said. “To what do we owe the pleasure of this visit?” Not that she didn’t have a pretty good idea already about what Bree wanted.
As it turned out, Libby was one hundred percent correct.
Bree put her hands on her hips. Her face was flushed. “I don’t believe it,” she said.
Bernie put down the pan she was washing and came over. “What don’t you believe?” she asked Bree, noting as she did that today Bree was in head-to-toe hot pink Chanel.
Bree clutched at her pocketbook. “That you’re standing here doing nothing when they’re charging Duncan for Liza’s murder. I told him that girl was no good. I told him she was going to get him into trouble, and she has. But has he ever listened to me? No. And now that he’s gotten himself in trouble, I’m the one who has to bail him out,” Bree ranted. “My sister is positively useless. I have to take care of everything. Absolutely everything. My back is killing me and I had to miss my appointment with my massage therapist today because of this. It’ll be another week before I can get to see him!”
“Yes,” Bernie said dryly. “I’ve always found murder to be inconvenient in the extreme.”
“What do you mean by that?” Bree snapped. “Are you being sarcastic?”
“Not at all,” Bernie murmured, having decided that maybe her mother had been right and there was nothing to be gained by being a smart-ass. “I’m sorry I misspoke.”
Mollified, Bree opened her bag, took out a Xanax, and popped it in her mouth. “I’m just so upset. So upset. I can’t believe this is happening to us.” She closed the bag with a loud snap.
Given the emotional tenor, Libby decided not to point out that whatever was happening was happening to Duncan, not to Bree. “So where are they holding Duncan?” she asked instead.
“At the cottage. He’s under house arrest. House arrest.” Bree’s voice rose at the indignation of it all. “He has to wear an ankle bracelet. It’s horrible. He shouldn’t be charged with any of this. The whole thing is ridiculous and it just keeps getting worse and worse.”
A sentiment Bernie was inclined to agree with. At least the getting worse part. “Well, I guess that’s better than being in jail,” Bernie said, trying for optimism.
Bree sighed and patted her chest. “I have to hire guards around the clock. Do you have any idea how much that costs?”
“A lot?” Libby said tentatively.
Bree’s nostrils flared. “That’s putting it mildly. I could take a three-month cruise around the world for what I’m shelling out for this.” Bree frowned. Talking about it had put her back in a terrible mood. She shook a finger at Libby. “I want you to do something about this. I want you to do something about this now. Not stand around and bake things, for heaven’s sake. This is an emergency.”
“What would you like us to do?” Libby asked.
Bree took a step toward Libby and poked her in her shoulder with her finger. “What do you mean, what do I want you to do? What kind of stupid question is that? Oionk abviously, I want you to find the killer and I want you to find him now, so we—meaning my family—can get on wi
th our lives.”
“It could be a woman,” Bernie said, just to have something to say.
As Bree whirled around and faced Bernie, Bernie told herself that she never knew when to leave well enough alone. Then it occurred to Bernie, as she noted Bree’s complexion getting redder by the minute and the slight slur in Bree’s speech, that Bree might have stopped off for a cocktail or two or three along the way. After all, even though Bernie couldn’t smell the alcohol on Bree’s breath, that didn’t mean anything. Bree could be drinking vodka. Which made sense to her because if she was in Bree’s position, Bernie thought she might be inclined to hit the bottle right about now.
Bree waved her hands in the air. “Listen,” she told Bernie. “I don’t care if the killer is a man or a woman. I don’t care if the killer is a pink baboon. I paid you a large sum of money and I expect you to do your job, not make things worse.”
“But,” Bernie said, “we told you that—”
“I don’t want excuses. I want results,” Bree snarled. “Otherwise ...” She stopped. Then she whirled around and stalked out of the kitchen.
“Wow,” said Amber. “That was pretty intense. Was she drunk?”
Bernie clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Maybe so.”
“I’ve never seen Bree that out of control before,” Libby observed.
“Yeah,” Bernie said. “She was a tad upset.”
“A tad?” Amber said. “A tad? What do you think she meant by ‘otherwise’?”
Libby shook her head. “I don’t know, but I’m sure it’s nothing good.”
“Could she do something bad to us?”
“Like what?”
Amber shrugged. “I don’t know. Close us down.” Bernie laughed. “No. But on the other hand, it’s never good to have an influential member of the community mad at you if you’re a business owner.”
“See,” Libby said, “I knew this would happen if we took this case.”
“Whine, whine, whine,” Bernie shot back.
“So what are you going to do?” Amber cried.
Libby patted Amber on the back and said, “We’re going to try to get to the bottom of this. Just the way we were doing before.”
A Catered St. Patrick's Day Page 13