A Shattering Crime

by Jennifer McAndrews

  Friday? Lunchtime?

  “Did she give any indication she would be away for the weekend?” Detective Nolan reached into the inside breast pocket of his suit jacket and produced his worn leather notepad. From the same pocket he pulled out a pen. “Mention anything about visiting friends or family?”

  Blowing out a noisy breath, Grandy folded his arms. “What business is it of yours?”

  Mom leaned forward a fraction, trying to make eye contact with Grandy from over my shoulder. “Dad,” she said, using the same tone she favored when accusing me of pushing my luck.

  “Pete, you might consider speaking nicely to the police,” Ben said.

  Grandy turned his scowl on Ben. “And you might consider not telling me what to do in my own home.”

  “Pete,” Diana said softly. The very gentleness of her voice, so unlike her, turned the shiver of cold I had felt earlier to heated fear. “No one has seen Rozelle since she left the luncheonette yesterday morning. A bunch of us are getting kind of worried.”

  “So you see why it’s important,” Detective Nolan said. He took a moment to shoot a quelling look in Ben’s direction before looking back to Grandy. “Did Mrs. Shurz tell you anything about her plans for the weekend? Have you heard from her at all?”

  To the unfamiliar eye, Grandy would have appeared unmoved, unconcerned. I had been living with him long enough to qualify as being quite a familiar eye. For me, there was no hiding the worry bubbling beneath his stoic exterior.

  “Not a word. Why would you expect her to tell me?” Grandy asked.

  Diana smiled. “Rozelle’s got a thing for you, Pete. We figured if she was going to share her plans with anyone, it would be Grace or you.”

  “And she said nothing to Grace?” Tony asked.

  Detective Nolan’s gaze snapped to Tony, bounced over me, and returned to Grandy. “If Grace had any information, we wouldn’t be here.”

  Grandy unfolded his arms, slipped his hands into his trouser pockets. He shook his head. “She never said a word.”

  Silence hung in the air as though we each waited for someone else to offer some tidbit of information about Rozelle.

  Detective Nolan produced a business card from the back of his notebook. He held it out toward Grandy. “If you remember anything, if anything comes back to you, give me a call.”

  I opened my mouth, intending to remind Detective Nolan that I had his cell number so the business card was unnecessary. Luckily I kept that thought to myself.

  “Of course I will,” Grandy said. He kept the card in his hand as good nights and promises to call with any news of Rozelle were exchanged. Diana and Detective Nolan turned to head down the porch steps while Mom, Ben, Tony, and I backed away from the door so Grandy could close it.

  Head down, I reached out for Tony. He caught my shoulder as I ran my arm around his waist, concern for Rozelle unnerving me, making me seek that extra support.

  But Tony stopped short, and I lifted my head to learn the cause. I didn’t even have to ask. All I had to do was follow the direction of his gaze.

  Atop the dining room table, Friday stood beside my dinner plate batting a piece of broccoli across the tablecloth and toward the edge to where Fifi sat below, eyes begging, tongue lolling, waiting for the food to drop.

  Grandy huffed out a sigh. “Turn your back for a moment and your whole world spins into chaos.”

  * * *

  I waited until the following morning to return the serving platters and good dishes to the sideboard. I wanted the work done before anyone in the house awoke and so I moved from the kitchen to the dining room as quietly as possible, clutching the plates tightly to keep them from rattling. All that effort and I nearly dropped them to the ground when Grandy said, “Georgia.”

  I had the presence of mind to slide the plates onto their shelf before turning my death glare on Grandy. “You scared the bejeezus out of me, Grandy,” I said.

  He shushed me, pressed his palms downward on the air. “Keep your voice down,” he whispered. “You want to wake the whole house?”

  “If I wanted to wake everyone, would I be tiptoeing?” I straightened, grabbed Friday off the table, and put her on the floor before edging closer to Grandy so I could speak softly but still be heard. “What are you doing up?”

  “I wanted to talk to you alone, without the possibility of your mother or . . .” He ran a hand over the stubble on his cheeks, and it was only at that moment the thread of unease began to unspool.

  Without looking, without conscious thought, I reached for a chair back and grabbed hold, tried to look casual. “All right. What’s up?”

  I could almost picture the words coming out of his mouth, drifting into a speech bubble above his head. It’s about Tony Himmel, the words would say. But what he said in reality was, “I know I’ve told you time and again not to stick your nose into police investigations.”

  Relief flooded through me. I let out more breath than I’d taken in, my spine softened, and my shoulders sagged. “Grandy, don’t worry I—”

  “This time I . . . I have to ask you to, well, stick your nose in.”

  Good thing I hadn’t loosened my grip on the chair. I could have been knocked down by a heavy sigh. “You want me to . . .” I shook my head. “Grandy, you . . . Why?”

  And there was that heavy sigh. “I haven’t been precisely forthright with you about my relationship with Rozelle.”

  My brows rose high. “Can you be forthright now?”

  He scratched again at the stubble gathered on his jaw. “I didn’t see any reason to tell you I’d been seeing Rozelle socially. It was only lunch now and again.”

  “Lunch,” I repeated dumbly. How could he have been leaving the house to meet Rozelle and I had never noticed? But of course, he had already given me the answer. “Let me guess,” I said. “You and Rozelle met for lunch on days I was working at Drew’s law office.”

  His nostrils flared as he exhaled, and that was all the confirmation I needed.

  I wanted to be angry with him, wanted to feel some sort of offense at his unwillingness to share this development with me. Instead, I felt the stirrings of what could only be hurt. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, my voice almost impossibly quiet.

  Friday leaped onto the table again, her paws landing with a thud that seemed thunder-loud in the stillness of the room.

  Grandy glanced in her direction but made no move to shoo her away. “It’s my business,” he said, voice gruff. “My personal business.”

  I supposed I could understand the sentiment. “But—”

  “I don’t have to tell you everything,” he said. “I’m allowed my privacy.”

  The sense of being on the wrong side of the conversation threatened to make me dizzy. Those were my lines, weren’t they? Words the younger of the household had been uttering for eons.

  I closed my eyes for a moment, taking the time to allow all the news to sink in. “Okay, so you’ve been . . . lunching . . . with Rozelle.” I nodded—another move to encourage sinking in—and finally smiled. “That’s so sweet. I’m so happy for you. It’s nice to know—”

  “Which is exactly what I didn’t want.” His voice practically boomed in the hush of the room, startling Fifi out of her resting place under the kitchen table. The sounds of her nails on the linoleum as she lumbered to her feet gave away her movement. “I don’t want you giggling with your friends about how cute it is or pushing for information or, heaven forbid, telling your mother.”

  I pulled in a deep breath, preparing to defend myself—and my friends—from his impressions when the deeper implication struck me. Nolan and Diana had showed up at the house looking for news of Rozelle, which meant . . . “Who did Rozelle tell?” I asked.

  “Georgia, can you focus, please, before the whole house is awake?”

  “I bet she told Grace,” I said. “And Grace
told Diana—”

  “Georgia . . .”

  “Which is how Chris Nolan knew to come here.”

  Grandy’s wispy gray eyebrows popped high. “Chris?” he asked. “I didn’t realize you were on a first-name basis with the officer.”

  “Detective,” I corrected automatically.

  “Well, good.” He folded his arms and glared down at me. “That will help you get the information you need to find Rozelle. Won’t it?”

  “Grandy, I doubt Rozelle is truly missing,” I said as gently as I could. “She’s probably taking advantage of the bakery being closed and she’s gone off to a friend’s house.”

  “And told no one?”

  “Maybe she’s got the same approach to life you do,” I said, “and she wants privacy.”

  “She would have said something,” he insisted. “Maybe not to me, but certainly to Grace or a member of her staff. She wouldn’t just up and disappear. There’s something not right about her going missing.”

  I thought to argue his point, telling him maybe a little time alone was just what she needed most after all the upset with the death of David and the suspicion cast on the bakery. But it was that very thought that stole the argument from me. For someone like Rozelle to vanish might be unbelievable. For her to vanish at the same time her business was at the center of a police investigation was chilling.

  No doubt Grandy saw the understanding in my eyes. “You’ll help, won’t you?”

  I reached out and grasped his arm. Squeezing lightly, I said, “I’ll do what I can.”

  * * *

  In the past when I got myself into the middle of a police investigation, I had a ton of insider knowledge to work with—with Grandy falsely accused of murder, I had a lifetime of background information. With Carrie and her ex-husband as targets of a murderous arsonist, I had Carrie helping me out by sharing all the knowledge I may have needed. But with Rozelle . . .

  Rozelle was something of an unknown to me. She was the kind old lady that ran the bakery and had been sweet on Grandy since before I returned to Wenwood. Because of Carrie I knew Rozelle and her husband had divorced after only a few short years of marriage when Rozelle was in her forties. She had no children, a sister who had retired to Boca Raton ages ago, and a brother who had passed away in the late nineties. In short, Rozelle was alone.

  Except, of course, for those clandestine lunches with Grandy.

  By the time I got in the car to head to work, I was giggling over their secret rendezvous. Despite his marshmallow center, Grandy was a big, gruff, manly kind of man. It made me smile to picture him knocking on the back door of the bakery so he and Rozelle could lunch without witnesses.

  I made the drive into downtown Wenwood with those images in my mind and worry for Rozelle in my heart. It wasn’t until I pulled into a vacant space along Grand Street that I acknowledged the addition of the crazy hope that I’d walk into Grace’s luncheonette and Rozelle would be in her temporary spot behind the counter handing out fresh-baked cookies and muffins. Crazy though it was, the hope was there as I crossed the sidewalk and pulled open the door to the luncheonette.

  The aroma of frying bacon and fresh coffee assailed me the moment I stepped inside. It was both comforting and aggravating. Aggravating because my stomach went a little tight and spiky with hunger; comforting because I’d spent so many mornings at the luncheonette that the particular mix of smells had the soothing effects of the familiar, almost like home.

  If the fragrance of breakfast food was familiar and normal, the quiet of the luncheonette seemed unnatural and somewhat alarming. It was the quiet of an old-style Hollywood Western, when the troublemaking gunslinger swung into the saloon and everyone stopped talking and the piano went silent.

  A half-dozen sets of eyes turned to me, took me in, and showed a glimmer of disappointment before turning away. That was enough to tell me Rozelle wasn’t lurking in the kitchen fighting the grill cook for counter space. Everyone was still waiting, hoping for Rozelle to come bustling through the door.

  I followed my usual path, turning left at the spinning rack of faded postcards and edging up to the lunch counter. Clutching the handle on a mug of black coffee, Tom met my gaze, nodded, and turned away with a sigh.

  Grace’s usual space beside the cash register was vacant, and I perched on the empty stool next to Tom and waited for her to appear.

  At the tables behind me, conversation had started up again. Subdued voices accompanied the tap of cutlery on plates, the thunk of coffee mugs being lowered onto tables. It was this quiet conversation that made me tap Tom’s arm. “Where’s Terry?” I asked. “He didn’t go back down south, did he?”

  Tom shook his head. “Under the weather, he said. He’s back at the house, still in his pajamas.”

  “Oh.” I thought to continue the conversation, make small talk about how long Terry planned to stay in Wenwood and when he planned to head back to his daughter’s house in North Carolina, but with Rozelle as my number one concern, I couldn’t muster the energy to pretend interest in Terry’s travel schedule.

  And yet . . . Terry had been a private investigator during his years in Wenwood. No doubt he would have some solid ideas on how to go about locating Rozelle. Such as where to begin.

  Grace ambled through the pass-through, plates of food stacked along both arms. “Be right with you, Georgia,” she said and continued to the opposite, open end of the counter and out to the table of waiting patrons.

  I rested my elbows on the counter and leaned in, canting a bit in Tom’s direction. “Do you think . . . I mean . . . would you mind if I gave Terry a call at your house? Would you give me the number?”

  He looked at me first from the corners of his eyes, then slowly turned his head until his nose was in line with his pupils and he was looking at me full on. “Why would you want to do a thing like that?” he asked, suspicion in every syllable.

  “I’d like to talk to him.”

  “Are you sure that’s all?”

  I didn’t know whether to be surprised or confused. That is, I thought I knew what Tom was inferring, but I couldn’t be right, could I? “You don’t think I have some sort of romantic interest in Terry, do you?”

  Tom sniffed, turned his attention back to the window on the opposite side of the counter. Only a few cars rolled by; no one was out on foot. “Terry’s a good-lookin’ fella,” he said. “Might make a fine catch.”

  Terry was, of course, old enough to have gone to kindergarten with Grandy. That alone was enough for me to overlook him as a potential paramour. I opted not to share that with Tom, though, and went instead with a simpler truth. “I’m sure he would,” I said. “But I’ve already caught myself a man.” I tried a grin, to add a bit of levity.

  Tom shrugged, almost like he thought I was lying but he wasn’t going to call me on it.

  “Now then.” Grace rounded the end of the counter and stopped in front of me. “Coffee and an egg sandwich to go?”

  “Please,” I said.

  She went on through to the kitchen to put the sandwich order in and I tried again with Tom. “If I promise I’m no threat to Terry’s status as a bachelor, can I have the number?”

  He shook his head. “Don’t understand why you want to talk to him.”

  “I want to pick his brain about some old cases he worked on,” I said. I wanted to ask him if he had any experience with people who’d gone missing, how one went about finding them.

  Before I could get further, Grace returned from the kitchen. She set a paper cup on the counter and filled it from the ever-present carafe of coffee. “I hear Diana went by your house last night,” she said.

  I sneaked a peek at Tom.

  “He knows,” Grace said. “Everyone knows.”

  “Everyone knows the police were at my house?” So much for Grandy’s secret.

  Grace gave a sad shake of her head. �
��Everyone knows about poor Rozelle.”

  Poor Rozelle.

  I didn’t know whether shivering or shuddering was the right physical response.

  “Did Diana mention anything to you about theories? Any ideas of where Rozelle might be?”

  Tom lifted his coffee cup to his lips. “Her car’s gone and so is she. She maybe wanted to get out of town for a while, until all the Rayburn nonsense blows over.” He sipped noisily from the cup.

  Forgoing her typical good-hearted yet cutting remark, Grace grimaced briefly at Tom then looked to me. The glistening of her eyes made my stomach sink beneath a heavy heart. “Diana hasn’t said anything other than what the department allows,” she said softly.

  She capped my coffee cup as the cook popped his head out from the kitchen, my paper-wrapped sandwich in his hand. I fished in my purse for a five-dollar bill. By the time I came up with one, Grace had my sandwich and coffee secure inside a brown paper bag.

  “If I hear anything,” she said, trading a single for my five, “should I let you know?”

  A demurral was ready on my lips, but there was no sense in lying, was there? “Yes,” I said. “As soon as you can.”

  12

  Working for Drew Able, Esquire, meant dressing in a semiprofessional manner. Sure, I was a kind of back-office girl, the accountant who did occasional copying and filing because her boss was a bit too scatterbrained to pull that off in a timely fashion. But in the small, in-house office it wasn’t uncommon for me to cross paths with his clients and it wouldn’t do for me to greet them in yoga pants and an I LOVE NY sweatshirt.

  I parked my car across the street and down a ways from Drew’s, leaving the space in front of his house vacant for clients. At the peak of summer when I started working for Drew, parking at a distance hadn’t been a problem. Now, with summer gone and mornings biting cooler, the air against my legs made me lament that my professional wardrobe consisted primarily of unlined trousers and pencil skirts, and made me think fondly of those yoga pants back at home.

  Hurrying up the walkway, I clutched the hot cup of coffee in one hand and the bag holding my egg sandwich in another. I jogged up the few steps and faced the door to his private home ahead of me and the door to the office on my right. With the hand holding the bag, I tried to turn the knob on the door that led to the office but found the door locked. Having been in this predicament before, I knew Drew hadn’t squirreled away a key inside a hollowed-out rock or beneath a decorative Wenwood brick. I also knew that the window in the back room where I worked was never locked and in a pinch I could climb in through there—as long as I wasn’t wearing a pencil skirt. But in order to pull that off, I would have to put down my coffee, and that just wasn’t going to happen.