Murder Most Likely (an Emma Cassidy Mystery Book 3)

by Karen Chester

  “How did he react when you asked him to stay on?”

  “He wasn’t happy, that’s for sure.”

  She recalled how furiously Ivan had reacted when she’d told the police about his confrontation with Todd. Ivan had a short fuse, and he was also physically intimidating. It was easy imagining him losing his temper with Todd and killing him.

  “You will be careful around Ivan, won’t you?” she said.

  Mervyn paused before replying slowly. “I’m pretty sure he’s not our man.”

  “But you can’t take any risks. You don’t want to arouse his suspicions.”

  “Uh, fine. I might get Georgia involved so he’ll think it’s all to do with business.”

  “Good. Sorry, I’m probably jumping at shadows.”

  “Please don’t apologize. I really appreciate you looking out for me.” Mervyn paused, and his voice grew tentative. “It’s…nice.”

  There was an awkward hiatus.

  “I’ll let you go now,” Emma said in a rush.

  “Yeah, I’m really busy. Talk to you later. Bye.”

  Emma terminated the call and set down her cell phone with a rueful smile. What had happened there? Had she imagined it, or had Mervyn sounded like he had a soft spot for her? Oh, it was too complicated to think about, and she was surely making a big deal out of nothing. Talk about molehills…

  Her cell phone began to ring, and for a second she hesitated, wondering if it was Mervyn. But the screen showed an unknown caller, so she answered it with her standard friendly but business-like greeting.

  “Hi, this is Emma Cassidy from A Perfect Party.”

  “Oh, hi, Emma,” a subdued female voice breathed on the other end of the call. “It’s Georgia.”

  “Georgia. Oh, hi!” Emma felt her eyebrows shooting up in surprise. “How are you? I was just talking to Mervyn.”

  “You were?” Georgia sounded startled for a second before she recovered. “He’s downstairs, and I’m in the bedroom, so I didn’t realize. Anyway, I was wondering if you were free for lunch today.”

  “Lunch? Yeah, uh, sure.” Emma’s brain raced to keep up with the conversation. “Is anything the matter?”

  “No, I just thought I should chat with you. Do you know any place for lunch?”

  “I usually go to Becky’s Diner,” Emma said, still bemused by the invitation. “It’s on Main Street here in Greenville, just across the road from my office.”

  “Becky’s Diner? Okay, I’m sure my GPS will find it. I’ll meet you there at noon. Is that all right?” From initially sounding uncertain, Georgia was now business-like.

  “Yes,” Emma murmured. She’d hardly got the word out before Georgia hung up.

  How odd, Emma mused as she gazed at her cell phone. Since they’d first met last Friday, Georgia hadn’t exactly overwhelmed her with friendliness, but here she was setting up a lunch date. Maybe she was just feeling at a loose end and needed a distraction, but Emma doubted it. This lunch was more than just a casual, amicable meeting.

  ***

  Lips compressed, Georgia squinted warily at the menu. “Is there anything low fat here?”

  “Oh, well, I guess there’s the Cobb salad,” Emma said. She didn’t come to Becky’s Diner for low fat food. She came here for the waffles, the burgers, the apple pie, and for Becky’s company, like the rest of the locals.

  Mags, one of Becky’s waitresses, came up to their table to take their order. “I’ll have the grilled cheese on rye,” Emma said, “and a chocolate thickshake.” She had gone to gym this morning; she could afford a few extra calories.

  “The Cobb salad for me, please,” Georgia said, “but hold the avocado, bacon, and blue cheese.”

  “Okey dokey,” Mags said, keeping a straight face.

  When they were alone, Georgia glanced about the diner, tapping her fingernails on the table. Emma noticed that the varnish was slightly chipped, whereas last night Georgia’s nails had been polished to perfection.

  “My assistant is also a manicurist,” Emma said. “She could touch up your nails, if you like.”

  “Oh.” Startled, Georgia grimaced at her fingernails. “I guess I’ve been under some strain these past few days.”

  “I can imagine,” Emma murmured. “It must be hard for you.”

  “Todd’s parents arrived in town today.” Georgia rubbed her temple. “I guess they’re here to talk to the police and—and make arrangements…”

  “How awful for them.” Emma shook her head in sympathy. “Will Mervyn be meeting them?”

  “I’m sure he will.”

  “You knew Todd before you met Mervyn, I believe.”

  “What! Who told you that?” Georgia snapped.

  “I ran into Archer Janick yesterday,” Emma slowly replied, taken aback by Georgia’s reaction.

  Georgia scowled, her pretty face darkening. “Oh, Archer.” She sniffed, dismissive and disdainful. “I wouldn’t pay too much attention to what he says.”

  “You didn’t get on with Archer when you were working together?”

  “He gave me the heebie-jeebies, always staring at me with his mouth half open like some country bumpkin.” She shuddered and flicked her fingers like she was swatting a fly. “Honestly, I was glad when Mervyn got rid of him.”

  Clearly no love lost between Georgia and Archer, then. But that didn’t make what Archer had said any less true. “So what he said about you and Todd wasn’t true?”

  “Oh, yeah, I knew Todd from a while back.” Georgia shrugged. “I went to some of his seminars, but we weren’t that close. We were more acquaintances. I only got to know him better when he started coaching Mervyn one-on-one. He was very good at his job. Lots of people will attest to that. He wasn’t like some of those other fraudsters who pose as life coaches. He was the real deal.” For a few moments her eyes shimmered as though she were remembering something good, but then her face clouded over.

  The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of their meals. Emma hungrily tucked into her grilled cheese sandwich, while Georgia poked her fork at her denuded Cobb salad.

  “Anyway, let’s not talk about Todd,” Georgia said after she had munched a few mouthfuls of veggies. “I’ve been hearing Mervyn talk about you a lot recently, and it got me thinking. Were you and Mervyn close in high school?”

  Emma paused to swallow a piece of sandwich, caught off guard by Georgia’s question. “We weren’t that close.”

  “Oh?” Georgia’s blue eyes fixed on Emma, round with curiosity, making Emma feel like an insect pinned under a microscope. “You didn’t…spend time together?”

  There was an odd note to her voice that set off a warning bell inside Emma’s head. Could Georgia be jealous of her? No, surely not. That was just plain silly. How could she think that? Especially considering how beautiful Georgia was.

  “We moved in different circles,” Emma said. “We didn’t have many classes together, and we had different interests. To be honest, we didn’t have much in common.”

  Georgia had given up all pretence of eating, and her eyes were fixed on Emma. “I see.”

  Didn’t she believe her? Emma hunted for something more reassuring to add. “Plus, I had a—”

  “So Mervyn never asked you out?”

  “Huh? No!” Heavens, where had she got that idea from? “Like I was trying to say, I had a boyfriend in high school, and I spent a lot of time with him.” With Owen around, she had never noticed any other boy.

  Georgia stirred her salad, a look of intense concentration on her face. “I see. I guess Mervyn didn’t ask many girls out back then.”

  Unbidden, a memory filtered into Emma’s mind, a memory she hadn’t even realized she’d kept, until now. “Actually…”

  “Yes?”

  Emma shook her head. “Sorry, I was thinking of something else.”

  It was nothing, really, that memory. Just a small snapshot of Mervyn dithering around in a school corridor before slipping a heart-shaped card into someone’s locker and scu
rrying away, a furtive little grin on his face. At the time, she had been hurrying to meet Owen outside school, eager to show him a college brochure about a school in Connecticut. Expecting enthusiasm, she’d been dismayed by his indifference, and they had ended up arguing.

  Strange that she should remember Mervyn and that card now, after all these years. Perhaps it was the secrecy in Mervyn’s expression that made the memory survived in the recesses of her mind. Whose locker had he put that card into? Which girl had caught Mervyn’s heart?

  Anyway, she didn’t feel right telling his girlfriend about it. It was such an insignificant episode, and it had happened years ago, but Georgia, given the strange mood she was in, might interpret it differently, and Emma didn’t want to be the cause of any rift between the couple.

  “So Mervyn never had a crush on anyone?” Georgia asked. “He never obsessed over one particular girl?”

  This conversation was getting stranger by the minute. “Not to my knowledge, no.” Was Georgia suffering from some kind of misplaced jealousy? Emma continued gently, “Georgia, I doubt very much you need to worry about old flames from high school. As far as I know, Mervyn didn’t date anyone back then.”Emma looked closely at the beautiful but obviously troubled woman opposite her. “Is that what’s bothering you, or is it something else?”

  Georgia’s dense eyelashes fluttered for a few moments, before she let out a small gasp. “Yes. No. Oh, I don’t know! It’s just that…” She crumpled her napkin, her lower lip trembling.

  “What? What is it?” Emma leaned forward, her alarm stirring.

  “Something’s not right. I—I’ve got this horrible feeling…”

  Georgia’s ragged whisper made the hair on Emma’s neck stand on end. “Yes?”

  The door to the diner slammed shut, causing both of them to jump.

  “Oh!” Georgia pressed a slim hand to her breast.

  “You were saying?”

  But the moment for confession had passed. Georgia leaned back in her seat, her gaze sliding away from Emma’s. “Uh, it’s nothing. I’m being silly.”

  “You didn’t sound silly.”

  “Please, ignore me. I’m just...just a little nervy after Todd, you know. Anyway, it was lovely to talk to you, but I must rush back. So much work to do.” She pushed a twenty dollar note under her barely eaten Cobb salad, grabbed her purse, and leaped to her feet. “Goodbye, Emma. No, no, please stay and finish your meal. I must dash.”

  Before Emma could utter another word, Georgia was already hurrying away. Seconds later, she was out the diner and motoring down the sidewalk.

  Chapter Ten

  “Didn’t she like her meal?”

  Emma turned away from the window to find Becky standing next to the table. “The meal was fine, although ordering a Cobb salad without all the yummy bits kind of defeats the purpose, in my opinion.” She waved at the empty seat Georgia had just vacated. “No, it was something else.”

  Becky slid into the seat. Blessed with the curves of a screen siren from the golden age of Hollywood, the diner owner was also as graceful as a ballroom dancer. “New client of yours?”

  “No, that was Georgia, Mervyn’s girlfriend.”

  “Ah, your old pal from high school.” Becky frowned at the remains of the Cobb salad.

  “Mervyn and I were never ‘pals’. We just…I don’t know how to explain it exactly. I guess I was nice to him when others weren’t, and Georgia seemed to take that the wrong way, even though it all happened years ago.”

  Becky shook her head. “If you ask me, high school anniversaries and reunions are the pits. Who wants to be reminded of what you got up to when you were immature and silly?”

  Emma couldn’t imagine an immature and silly Becky. The woman possessed a dignified, timeless beauty that defied convention. She never revealed her age to anyone, though Emma guessed her to be around forty. “Where did you go to high school?” Emma asked, suddenly curious.

  “Never mind your beeswax.”

  “No, seriously. I’d like to know.”

  “And seriously, it was a long time ago, and I don’t need to be reminded of it.”

  Emma shrugged. “When this weekend is over, we must have a girls’ night out, okay?”

  “Sounds good. I’ll be glad when this anniversary nonsense is over.” With that, Becky rose from the table and sashayed away, her apron whisking from side to side.

  In some ways Becky was a very mysterious woman, Emma mused. She rarely spoke of her childhood or relatives or what she’d done before arriving in Greenville. But then, plenty of people moved here wanting a fresh start, including herself.

  Her musings were interrupted by an incoming text message. When she glanced at the screen, her ribs tightened. It was a message from Owen, informing her of the informal get-together for their classmates tomorrow night. He ended the brief note with Hope you can make it.

  She reread the message several times, trying and failing to detect any hidden meaning behind it. Did Owen really hope to see her there, or was this what he had sent to everyone? In the end, she decided not to read too much into the invitation. She would take it on face value and accept the invitation, she told herself, and she would talk to Owen, and she wouldn’t care if Sherilee was there or not. In fact, if Sherilee did go, then she’d talk to her, too. Granted, they’d never been friends and they seemed to rile each other easily, but they had to overcome this awkwardness between them.

  She tapped out a breezy reply—Sounds great. See you there—and hit Send.

  ***

  “Are you up for an adventure today?”

  The suppressed excitement in Mervyn’s voice made Emma pause midway through her bowl of Cheerios. It was barely eight o’clock on Wednesday morning and far too early for bubbly phone calls.

  “I’m helping out with decorations and attending a committee meeting,” Emma said. “Does that sound adventurous enough?”

  “Pshaw!” Mervyn snorted on the other end of the call. “Cancel all that. You and I have more important fish to fry.”

  Wedging the phone between her ear and shoulder, Emma got to her feet and scraped the remains of her cereal into the garbage disposal unit. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about eSolutions!” Mervyn hissed. It sounded like he was in a small, enclosed space, like a bathroom. “I’ve got a lead, and I want us to go check it out together!”

  “Oh, that was quick.” She ran the disposal unit for a couple of seconds, then flicked it off. “But I’m not sure if I can cancel my appointments, especially the anniversary committee meeting this afternoon.”

  “Aw, come on,” Mervyn wheedled. “I can’t do it without you, Emma.”

  “What about Georgia?” At the back of her mind there still lurked the uncomfortable impression that Georgia was suspicious about her and Mervyn. If that were true, Emma didn’t want to fuel her doubts by spending more time than necessary with Mervyn.

  “I don’t think she’s up to it, poor darling. She’s still so nervy. I managed to persuade her to take a couple of tranquilizers. It’s best she try and rest for a couple of days.”

  If Georgia could only hear the attentiveness in Mervyn’s voice, she wouldn’t have any qualms about him.

  “Well, all right. Tell me more, then,” Emma said reluctantly. “What have you found out?”

  Mervyn eagerly continued. “You know the house next door to me? The one that’s being rebuilt? Anyway, one of the contractors who works there is a guy called Otto Wiseman, and guess who he used to work for? None other than Ralph Bautista!”

  “Wait, what? You’re sure about that?” Ralph Bautista, the CEO of eSolutions, who was trying to buy out Mervyn and had hinted he wasn’t above dirty tactics. She hadn’t expected Mervyn to come up with something so soon.

  “Yes, I trust my source. Wiseman was a personal security guard for Bautista at his home. He worked for him up until six months ago, when he quit for some reason and moved here to Greenville. I believe he got the job next door
because his brother-in-law owns a concreting business. Bautista must have hired Wiseman to break into my house and steal my code. Only, he was interrupted when I came upstairs and had to skedaddle. He must have hung around afterward, waiting for another chance. And then he must have killed Todd, maybe because Todd spotted him when he was wandering around the lake.”

  Mervyn paused, breathing heavily, his emotion evident.

  “Mervyn,” Emma said. “You should call Detective Gambino and tell her this.”

  “Aw, why’d you say that? The woman doesn’t like me. She was here yesterday, asking me a lot of questions.”

  “Oh? I didn’t know that. Did she say anything about the investigation? Do they think it was murder or an accident?”

  “She didn’t say, but I could tell she didn’t trust me. All those squint-eyed looks she was giving me. No, I’m not telling her about Otto Wiseman. She’ll just sniff and say she’ll look into it, and dollars to donuts she won’t!”

  Emma had to hold the phone away from her ear as Mervyn’s agitated voice rose. Calm down, she wanted to say. But telling someone that usually had the opposite effect.

  “Please, Emma. Won’t you help me? You’re the only one I can trust with this information.”

  His pleas got to her, and while she wasn’t convinced, her interest was piqued. “All right.” She sighed. “I’ll cancel the decorations, but I can’t blow off the committee meeting. I have to get back by three pm.”

  “I knew you’d say yes!” he crowed. “And you won’t tell anyone, will you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Not even Owen, okay?”

  “Not even Owen,” she said, puzzled by his earnestness.

  “You’re sure? I know how you and he…”

  “That’s all in the past. Owen is just a friend now, and he’s on the investigation team. Besides, he never approves when I get involved in these things, so what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Unless, of course, this becomes a solid lead. I can’t withhold vital information then, but for now it’ll be our secret.”

  “Good. I’m glad to hear it.” He sounded incredibly pleased. “So can I pick you up at nine, then?”