Finn wrapped an arm around my shoulders and tucked me close to his heat. He pressed his lips to my hair and murmured softly. “Sounds bad, huh?”
I managed a nod.
“Yeah. Sounded bad to Wayne, too. So he changed his story. Now he says he put Brittanie to bed, and then he left the house. Didn’t get back until mid-morning on Saturday. That’s when he found Brittanie and called 911.” A beat of silence passed before Finn lowered the boom. “Wayne says he was with you all night.”
That was why Wayne begged me to tell the cops we’d been together. He needed me to corroborate the story he’d already told. The story that made him look just a little bit less like a cold-blooded murderer.
“Cal’s going to question you, Tally. He’s going to want to know what happened that night.”
And if I told the truth, I’d expose Wayne as a liar. He’d look guiltier than sin.
“I know Wayne lied,” Finn said. “You didn’t even flinch when I told you Wayne’s original story, that he slept in the guest room. He wasn’t with you that night.”
So if I lied for Wayne, Finn would know.
“What are you going to tell the cops?” Finn asked, his voice barely more than a sigh.
As the silence stretched between us, I felt Finn pulling away, and I was bereft.
I pushed back, putting distance between us. A woman walking a pug was staring at us, her lips pressed tight in disapproval. I scooted away from Finn and tugged my jacket closed.
Before I could formulate an answer, my cell phone chirped. With an apologetic glance at Finn, I dug it out of my purse and flipped it open.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Tally? Tally Jones?”
“Yes.”
“This is Cal McCormack. I need you to answer a few questions. I know tomorrow is Sunday and all, but are you free tomorrow morning?”
I met Finn’s gaze. “Sure, Cal. You want to stop by the house or the store?” Finn gave me an “I told you so” look.
Cal kept his tone polite but formal. “I’d prefer you come in to the station so we can get this on the record.”
chapter 8
The fresh interest in Remember the A-la-mode generated by Brittanie’s death proved a mixed blessing. The clicking and chiming of the cash register eased my fear of losing my business, but the sly glances and furtive whispers of the customers frayed my last nerve.
In the evenings, though, when I locked the door of Remember the A-la-mode and pulled the roller blinds down over the storefront windows, I could lose myself in refilling the empty display freezers with fresh tubs of peach melba and coconut chip. Cooking the dense custard base, creating silky purees by pressing fruit through a delicate mesh chinoise, tempering dark chocolate—the mindful attention to a thousand careful details calmed my nerves better than yoga could.
The night after the funeral and my conversation with Finn, I needed something to center me, and making ice cream did the trick. By the time I began pouring the custard into the vertical batch freezers, I had achieved some measure of peace. The hypnotic rotation of the blades and the billowing swirls of soft color in the freezing custard restored my balance.
Alas, my delicious meditation competed with the usual end-of-day commotion. Bree teasing Kyle. Alice teasing Kyle. Kyle enduring it all with stoic, adolescent dignity. And, of course, Bree and Alice waging an epic mother-daughter power struggle.
“Yo, Alice.” Bree paused in the act of wiping down the burner grates on the industrial stove to lob the opening salvo of that night’s confrontation. “Don’t forget to throw a load of unmentionables in the wash when you get home. Your mama doesn’t want to have to wear ratty ol’ granny panties tomorrow.”
Alice cast a sideways glance at Kyle, who ducked his head over his mopping in mortification, before she heaved a dramatic sigh. “Geez, Mom. I’m not your slave.”
Bree chuckled darkly. “Au contraire, ma chère. You are the fruit of my loins, and that means I own your skinny butt until you’re eighteen. That’s why they call it ‘emancipation.’ As in the freeing of slaves.”
Alice disappeared into the walk-in cooler, putting away the leftover cream and eggs, then slammed her way back into the room. “I could divorce you. Kids can do that, you know.”
“Whoo-ee, Tally, listen to that one,” Bree said, jerking her thumb in Alice’s direction. “She thinks she’s all grown. Gonna live on her own.”
“I could live on my own just fine,” Alice snapped, dumping a dishpan full of spoons into the dishwasher with a mighty clatter. “I’m more responsible than you are. Isn’t that right, Aunt Tally?”
Bree snorted, and they both looked at me expectantly.
“Whoa. Leave me out of this,” I said, throwing up my hands in mock surrender.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Kyle slinking out the back door. Smart kid. If I hadn’t had ice cream to make, I would have retreated, too.
Bree slapped a wet rag onto the counter by the stove and began mopping up the spatters of egg custard. “Miss Responsible Alice should remember that just last week she borrowed her aunt Tally’s car to go to the movies and brought it back with an empty gas tank. Remember that, Saint Alice?”
Alice gave up the pretense of working, planting her feet in a fighting stance and bracing her fists on her hips. “Yeah, Mom, I remember that. And I apologized to Aunt Tally the next morning. Did you apologize to Aunt Tally for losing the notices from the code-enforcement people?”
Bree froze.
Alice’s mouth turned up in a tiny smirk. “I’ll take that as a no,” she muttered.
“What code-enforcement notices?” I asked.
Bree sighed and tossed her rag in the sink. “Scram, Alice. And don’t forget the laundry.”
Alice drew her work apron over her head and hung it on the rack by the cooler. “My work here is done,” she said, and threw us a little salute before she slipped her arms through the straps of her backpack and ducked out the back.
The heavy door shut with a resounding thud, leaving only the ambient hum of the freezers to fill the silence.
“What code-enforcement notices?” I asked again.
“I’m sorry, Tally. I screwed up.”
“What code-enforcement notices?”
Bree sighed. “A few weeks ago, the historic district commission left a notice on the front door. Apparently, the color we painted the house last summer isn’t historically accurate.”
“The house is gray. What’s wrong with gray?”
She looked at me as though I were an idiot. “Tally, you’re the only person in the world who thinks that paint is gray. It’s purple.”
“It’s gray.”
“Tallulah Jones. The paint color is called lilac lullaby. It’s purple.” She waved her hand to dismiss the issue. “Whatever, the historic commission doesn’t like it. The notice said we had two weeks to repaint the house or appeal the ruling.”
I felt a wave of relief. I could hammer out some sort of appeal before bed, buy a little time to figure out my options.
“When is the appeal deadline?” I asked.
Bree winced. “A week ago.” She cautiously opened one eye to gauge my reaction.
“Okay.”
“I’m really sorry, Tally. I wanted to help, so I took the notice up to my room. I spent some time poking around on the Internet, looking for ideas of how to argue their ruling. And then I forgot.”
“Okay.”
Words tumbled from Bree’s mouth in a cathartic rush. “Alice found another notice on the door after her morning classes today. It said we are now delinquent and will be fined twenty-five dollars every day until we get the house repainted.”
“Okay.”
Bree rolled her eyes. “Is that all you’re going to say?”
I shook myself and turned back to the batch freezer churning away on the peach melba. The peach ice cream had frozen to the consistency of cake frosting, so I took the measuring cup filled with raspberry coulis and began pouring a slow, stea
dy stream into the spinning canister. A fuchsia ribbon bloomed across the undulating mounds of pale blush ice cream.
I allowed the canister to make a half dozen more rotations, so the raspberry swirl would run through the entire batch, then pulled the lever to raise the blade from the freezer and powered it down. While the rotation of the canister slowed, I turned back to Bree.
“What do you want me to say? ‘Thanks’?” I laughed sharply. “Tell you what. This time, you get to pick the paint color.”
“Wow.” Bree huffed in disbelief, then stalked over to the industrial sink. She cranked on the tap and began scouring the stainless steel for all she was worth. Like mother, like daughter: both Bree and Alice turned into cleaning machines when they were irked. “You are a piece of work,” she muttered.
“Me? What did I do? Other than accrue interest on a fine I knew nothing about.”
She threw down her sponge and turned to face me, striking the very same pose Alice had adopted earlier.
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”
All of my ice-cream Zen had dissipated in the wake of this new crisis, and I wanted nothing more than to go home to my purple house, crawl into a little nest of blankets on my sofa, and fall asleep to the soothing sounds of a home-shopping channel. So I turned my back on Bree, lifted the canister of peach melba ice cream off the freezer unit, and lugged it to the huge worktable we used for hand packing the pint and two-gallon containers we stored the ice cream in.
Bree followed me, taking up a position right by my elbow.
“You know what you are?” she asked.
I pulled a clean two-gallon tub and an ice-cream spade from the shelf below the table. “Oh, I can’t wait to hear this.”
“You’re emotionally constipated.”
“Bull pucky,” I said, whamming the spade deep into the peach melba. “What does that even mean?”
“It means you don’t experience authentic emotions.”
I laughed as I threw my weight behind the task of transferring the ice cream from one container to another. “I’m experiencing a pretty authentic emotion right now.”
“No, you’re not. You should be angry.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But you’re not angry. You’re ticked, you’re annoyed, but you’re not experiencing authentic anger. So you’re cracking wise instead of yelling at me.”
I shoved a hank of hair out of my eyes and looked at Bree in disbelief. “You want me to yell at you?”
A grin wobbled slowly across her face. “No, not really. But I worry about you, Tally. It’s not healthy to bury your emotions down so deep. You’ve got a lot on your plate, what with the business and the house and this whole thing with Wayne and Brittanie.”
I wasn’t sure how this recitation of my woes was supposed to improve my mental health.
“You’ve got to learn to let it out,” she continued, “so you don’t just explode.”
I thumped the tub of ice cream against the worktable to eliminate any air bubbles and began scraping the freezer canister with a rubber spatula to get every last drop. “Tell you what, Bree. I’ll let you emote for the both of us.”
She pulled a face and opened her mouth to argue, but a knock on the back door stopped her short.
We exchanged puzzled glances. Alice and Kyle had keys, and no one else would stop by so late. Bree took a step toward the door, but I laid a cautioning hand on her arm.
A muffled voice called from the alley. “Tally?” Wayne. “Tally, you in there?”
“What the . . . ?” I opened the door. Wayne stood with one hand braced against the doorjamb, looking like death warmed over. Jeans and a Dallas Cowboys sweatshirt had replaced his funeral finery, and a ball cap advertising a fire-ant poison rested low over his eyes. “Wayne, what are you doing here?”
He all but fell on me, wrapping his arms around me in a smothering embrace.
“Tally, sugar, I’m in an awful mess.”
I struggled to untangle myself and stepped out of range. “Don’t you ‘sugar’ me, Wayne Jones. I know you’re in a mess, and you’ve dragged me in right along with you.”
“You gotta help me, Tally. Cal McCormack is gonna ask you about the night Brittanie died.”
“Uh-huh. I have to go down to the station tomorrow morning.” The color drained from Wayne’s face, and he stumbled back a step. I admit, I didn’t feel much sympathy for him at that moment. “The police station, Wayne. I’m not very happy about that.”
“I’m real sorry, Tally. Cal wanted to know where I was that night, and I . . . I just couldn’t tell him. I didn’t know what to say. I panicked.”
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Bree watching our exchange with lurid curiosity. Despite her pestering all evening, I’d been true to my word to Finn and had kept my mouth shut. This was all news to Bree.
“Tally, they think I killed Brittanie.”
Bree gasped. I caught her attention and jerked my head to indicate she should give us some privacy. A mutinous look flashed across her features, but then she sighed and headed out to the dining area.
I waited a second, until I was sure she was out of earshot, before I spoke again. “Did you, Wayne? Did you kill her?”
“Shit, no! Of course I didn’t kill her. That’s why I need you to back me up, Tally. You have to tell Cal that I was with you that night.”
“Why, Wayne?” I snapped.
He sagged back against the wall, his shoulders slumped and his hands dangling loose at his sides. Wayne was nearly ten years my senior, but I’d always thought of us as being roughly the same age. Now, though, he looked old. All the heat went out of my retort. “Why should I lie for you?”
I meant the question to be rhetorical, so his answer surprised me.
“Money,” he said. “I’ll pay you. Whatever you want.”
Apparently Wayne didn’t share Finn’s concern for witness tampering.
To be brutally honest, I considered his offer and, for the space of a heartbeat, a yes tickled my tongue. The revenue from the luau and the recent increase in sales had helped, but I still had a mountain of bills, a display freezer in need of repair, house painters to hire, and fines to pay. Money was finally coming in, but it was going out faster.
But there were limits on what I would do to get money. I wouldn’t sell my body, and I wouldn’t sell my honor. “Sorry, Wayne. I’m not about to perjure myself for you or anyone else.”
He closed his eyes and moaned.
“Why don’t you tell Cal the truth? Were you home that night?”
He shook his head miserably.
“Where were you?”
“I can’t tell you. I just can’t.”
What on earth could Wayne have been doing that night that he was willing to guard the secret so closely? I couldn’t even imagine. But he wasn’t my husband anymore, which meant it wasn’t really my business.
“Wayne, you don’t have to tell me, but you have to come clean with Cal.”
“I can’t.” He moaned again and slid farther down the wall.
I went out to the front of the store and, ignoring Bree’s questioning look, dragged back a couple of the wrought-iron café chairs.
I slid a chair next to Wayne and sat down in the other one.
“Wayne, if you stonewall Cal, he’s going to assume you’ve got something to hide. He’s not going to bother considering the possibility of suicide or looking for another suspect in Brittanie’s murder. You don’t have many options here.”
Wayne sank into his seat and leaned forward to rest his head in his hands. “You think I don’t know that? But I can’t tell anyone where I was.”
“And I can’t lie.”
Silence stretched between us, punctuating the end of our marriage more clearly than any legal decree. For months, we’d been building our separate lives, but the possibility of their converging again had remained. Now here was Wayne, reaching out a hand to pull us together, and if I didn’t take it, that tenuous connection wo
uld be severed forever.
I stared at Wayne, seeing him for what he was: a middle-aged man who had spun an illusion of power out of nothing more than forced charm and his own sense of entitlement, and who was now faced with the reality of his own insignificance. A man who had cheated and lied and put his own needs above mine for years. A man I didn’t want in my life anymore.
Still, I couldn’t quite bear to turn my back on him. And so I made a foolish promise.
“Tell you what, Wayne.”
He raised his head and the flash of triumph in his eyes almost made me change my mind.
“Don’t get your hopes up, Wayne Jones. I said I wouldn’t lie for you, and I meant it. But I’ll poke around a bit and see what I can learn about Brittanie. Under the circumstances, folks might be more willing to talk to me than to you. And maybe I’ll be able to find a little something to throw Cal off your scent for a while.”
I narrowed my eyes and looked at him hard. I needed him to understand I was as serious as a heart attack.
“Wayne, you gotta think long and hard about keeping secrets from the police. It’s the most hare-brained, cockamamie notion I’ve ever heard, and I want absolutely no part of it. But, short of lying, I’ll help you however I can.”
chapter 9
I didn’t sleep the night before my interview with the police. Instead, I huddled on the sofa in the den, a threadbare quilt tucked beneath my chin, the flickering light of the television almost hypnotic. The all-night Dolls by Design special on Shop Net drowned out Bree’s snoring, the muted, angsty rock emanating from Alice’s stereo, and the usual creaks and groans of our crotchety house settling in for the night. And with that chipper chatter in the background, I tried to figure out what I would say to Cal.
I showed up at the police station the next morning grouchier but no wiser.
The interview room smelled like pine cleaner and burned coffee. When I shifted my weight, a faint scent of body odor rose from the warp and weft of the chair’s coarse upholstery. I tried to stay still, but I couldn’t seem to stop fidgeting.
Across a battered table, Cal McCormack tipped his chair back on two legs. He absently tapped a ballpoint pen against his blank legal pad, clicking it open and closed, open and closed. The rhythmic snicks ate away at my nerves until I thought I might scream.
I Scream, You Scream Page 6