“Dinner’s going to be ready soon.” The implication was clear in her voice, just like it had been when I was a kid. I had better come home. Immediately.
No one needed to convince me that it was time to make like a homing pigeon heading for the nest. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Good, because Steve and Barry are here, and while I’m sure they find my company quite charming, I think they’d enjoy yours more.”
I pocketed my phone, collected my mother, and headed for home, where my favorite cop was sure to be very pissed if Marietta breathed a word about what I’d just done.
I could feel her staring at me. “What?”
“You tell me. What’d you find out?”
“I found out who belonged to the car.” And then some.
“Well?”
“It was just a guy he works with.” I shook my head as if seeing Cameron there had been of no consequence.
“That’s it? I was in that house with all those cats for a guy from work?”
I didn’t dare tell her what I thought that guy from work might be involved in.
She ran her palms down the legs of her designer jeans. “I am positively coated with cat hair.”
“Hey, you’re wearing an angora sweater. I’m sure no one will even notice. Just don’t mention anything about what just happened. Steve isn’t involved in this case, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
Marietta groaned, scratching the base of her throat. “I feel like I need to be deloused.”
∗ ∗ ∗
She was still scratching ten minutes later when she sat down next to Mr. Ferris at the dining table.
“So, where did you two go today?” Steve asked, watching her.
Fortunately, my mother was eager to prattle on about the wineries we had visited while I poured the fume blanc.
Steve reached for his glass. “Did you have a run-in with a cat while you were there?”
Marietta locked gazes with me.
“More than one,” I said, covering for her. “Which is exactly why one of those wineries is out of the wedding sweepstakes.”
Mr. Ferris turned to her. “What about the others? Any possibilities?”
She gave her head a little shake. “Pretty grounds but other than the wine, not much to offer. I just loved the stone chapel we saw yesterday though.” She turned to me. “What was the name of it again?”
Dang, I thought she would have finished talking about it during their date last night. “River Rock Chapel.” I passed her the mashed potatoes with the hope that she’d start focusing her attention on the meal in front of her.
“Ooooh, that’s right. It was so lovely, and it had the most beautiful stained glass. You should see the way the light shines through it. Oh.” Marietta stared across the table at me. “I should have asked what time of day that picture was taken.”
“What picture?” Barry asked.
I jumped in to keep my mother from mentioning any names. “A wedding picture we saw in the office. One of the many weddings that have taken place there over the years.”
She spooned a thimbleful of potatoes onto her plate. “Wait until you see it.”
Barry grinned. “I don’t think I can wait after listening to all this. We should go tomorrow, after school. I could pick you up—”
“No!” My cheeks burning, all eyes at the table turned to me. “I mean, Mom and I have plans to see the rest of the places on her list tomorrow.”
“Good heavens, honey,” Gram said, passing Steve the platter of biscuits. “You don’t have to act like it’s a matter of life and death.”
As long as Victoria McCutcheon was staying on the property like a black widow in her nest, I wanted my mother to keep a safe distance. “Life and death.” I laughed Gram off. “It’s just that we have an appointment at one of the places tomorrow.”
Mr. Ferris narrowed his eyes at me.
I’d seen the look before, back when I was giggling at the dead-on Barry Ferris impersonation Austin was doing behind me in science lab.
“Is there something you’d like to share with the rest of the class, Charmaine?”
Nope.
“Fine,” he said. “We’ll go later in the week.”
I could only hope that Victoria was back home by then.
∗ ∗ ∗
“You gonna tell me what that deal at dinner was all about?” Steve asked when we were getting ready for bed four hours later.
Absolutely not. “I have no idea what you mean.”
“Is there some reason why you don’t want good ol’ Barry to see that chapel?”
I shrugged and crawled under the covers of his king-sized bed. “Yeah, my mother and I have other plans tomorrow.”
He slid into bed next to me. “You are such a bad liar.”
I rolled onto my side to face him. “She has three more places on her list, and I’m taking her to see them tomorrow after work. Now what about that isn’t true?”
“Nothing.”
I reached behind me to turn off the lamp on the nightstand. “I rest my case.”
“What’s up there that you don’t want him to see?”
“Nothing.” It was more like who was up there that I didn’t want to see my mother, especially if Victoria had spotted us there Saturday.
He blew out a breath. “You know I don’t believe you.”
I kissed him. “Believe me now?”
“Not yet.”
I kissed him again. “What about now?”
“It’s gonna take more convincing than that.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him close. “You drive a very hard bargain.”
He rolled me on top of him. “You have no idea how right you are.”
Chapter Eighteen
I spent most of my Monday inside a stuffy conference room, helping one of the more junior assistant prosecuting attorneys interview witnesses for an upcoming elder abuse case. After more than six hours of staring at people’s faces, weighing their actions against their statements, my eyes burned, my head felt like a lemon that had been squeezed dry, and my lungs ached for fresh air.
And now they still ached, even after watching the sun set behind the Olympic Mountain range from the wedding gazebo of the Rainshadow Ridge Resort. Of course, that could have been because my mother smelled like she’d been flea-dipped in a bath of jasmine.
“Just tell me that we’re done now.” At least I could breathe a little easier if she had checked every wedding venue candidate off her list.
She sighed as I took the turnoff for Highway 104. “That was the last one. I really think it’s between Rainshadow Ridge and that darling rock chapel.”
“Rainshadow Ridge has my vote. Just imagine how beautiful a sunset ceremony would be there.” If this wedding had to happen, it needed to take place somewhere that had no connection with a murder.
“I don’t know. I do so love that stained glass.”
“Give yourself some time and think about it.” For another six or seven weeks until the lab results came back.
“You heard what they both said. Their calendars are filling up fast. I need to make a decision before I leave Sunday.”
That’s what I was afraid she was going to say, making me glad that I had taken this route back to Port Merritt.
She stared pensively out the window for the next few miles until we reached Gibson Lake. “Have we missed a turn?”
“Nope. We’re just going home another way,” I said, slowing to take the Clatska exit.
“Kind of a roundabout way of getting there, isn’t it?”
“If you and Barry plan to see that chapel this week, we need to make sure that Victoria McCutcheon is nowhere in the vicinity. So, we’ll do a quick drive-by to see if she’s back at her house.”
She patted my thigh. “Good thinking.”
I took the right turn onto Gibson Lake Road. “Not to say that she’s guilty of anything, and I sure wouldn’t want you to suggest that to Barry.” Or anyon
e else. “It’s just that her husband died under some mysterious circumstances.”
“And she and his best friend seem to have become chummy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Honay, that’s been the bread and butter of crime dramas for years. Why on my show, every season one of us girls would have to match wits with a beautiful black widow.”
“I don’t remember you doing that.”
“I was usually dressed in some skimpy outfit to act as bait for the boyfriend.” She finger-fluffed her cropped hair. “The things I had to do for ratings.”
Like she had ever minded flashing her goods for the right price.
Turning onto the narrow tree-lined lane that led to the McCutcheon home, I shut off my headlights after about a quarter mile. Between the moon low in the sky and the outdoor lights marking a neighbor’s driveway I could barely see where I was going as I crept toward a clearing.
“I don’t like this,” my mother said, leaning toward me as if she were afraid that an ax-wielding psychopath would jump out of the bushes. “It’s creepy skulking around in the dark.”
“There’s light up ahead.” Lots of light. Maybe Victoria didn’t like being alone.
No, not alone as I quickly discovered. A very familiar-looking car was parked out front.
Cameron’s car.
I shivered, the hair on my arms standing on end. My flight instinct screamed at me to speed away like Marietta’s psychopath was chasing us, but I couldn’t risk turning on my headlights and being seen.
Marietta pointed at the metallic blue coupe, shining under the spotlight illuminating the driveway. “Isn’t that…?”
Spitless, I nodded.
Was Victoria also telling Cameron to be patient, to keep his cool? The only reason such a conversation would take place was if he had been an accomplice and thought someone was onto him.
It wasn’t me. I hadn’t talked to him for over a week.
It had to have been a person close to Marty with some suspicions of their own. Someone who had confronted Cameron before I saw him last night at Bob Hallahan’s house.
I sucked in a breath. “Darlene!”
My mother stared at me. “What?”
“Nothing, I was just thinking out loud.”
“About Darlene? You think she’s mixed up in this?”
I flipped on my headlights and accelerated toward the main road. “I don’t know.” But I needed to find out.
∗ ∗ ∗
My grandmother greeted Marietta and me with a scowl as we stepped through the back door. “About time you two got back. Dinner’s been ready for a half hour.”
My mother slung her tote bag over the back of a chair at the kitchen table. “Oh, Mama, I thought I’d told you. Barry and I have plans and he’ll be here any minute, so I need to get ready.”
Glaring at me while Marietta ran up the stairs, Gram stirred something that smelled like spaghetti sauce. “I suppose you and Steve have plans.”
“Steve has football practice tonight, so no. I’m all yours.”
She looked at me like I wasn’t much of a bargain.
“Something wrong? Aside from the fact that we’re late and we didn’t call?”
Gram averted her gaze. “No, it’s nothing. Really.”
It didn’t sound like nothing.
“Okay.” I washed my hands and grabbed a knife to slice the loaf of French bread she had set out on the counter.
Since she kept worrying her lips I put down the knife. “Just tell me. Something is obviously bothering you.”
“Sweetheart, there are things that are best left unsaid.”
“Did I do something?”
Gram squeezed out a smile. “Of course not. Some people are just…. Well, they should mind their own business, that’s all.”
“Mind their own business about me and Steve.”
She didn’t answer me. Instead, she crossed to the sink to strain the steaming pasta.
“One of your friends said something.” Given how gossip was a staple of every gathering place, someone flapping their gums to my grandmother was inevitable.
“It’s unimportant. Slice that bread and let’s eat.”
One woman seemed to have her finger on the pulse of everything going on in town, so I could guess who had been doing the flapping. “It was Estelle, right?”
Gram stared down at the strings of pasta like she wanted to strangle Estelle with them. “I had lunch with her and Angela today.” She set the strainer on the counter. “Who’s having sex with who was all they wanted to talk about. Of course, my two girls were at the top of their list.”
Obviously, this hadn’t been a proud day for her. But after almost a year of celibacy I didn’t feel like I needed to apologize for my relationship with Steve.
“And then they started speculating about Victoria McCutcheon and Bob Hallahan.” She dumped the pasta into a crockery bowl. “You should have heard what those old biddies were saying. Like there’s nothing else to talk about around here.”
There was nothing else that I wanted to talk about. “What’d they say?”
“Charmaine! It’s bad enough that I had to hear it. I will not stoop to their level and repeat it.”
Typically, I had nothing but respect for her always wanting to stick to the moral high road, but tonight I needed her to unstick herself and dish some dirt. “What they said could have some bearing on something one of the prosecutors is working on, so think of this as your civic duty to—”
“Do I look like I was born yesterday?”
“Uh, no.”
“Then what’s this pile of horse manure that you’re trying to hand me?”
I buckled under the intensity of her parental glare. “Okay, it’s something that I’m working on.”
“You mean, having to do with Marty’s death?”
I held her gaze. If she could read me half as well as I thought she could she’d have her answer.
Her jaw dropped. “But he died of a heart attack.”
Cardiac arrest, but close enough. “Yes, but I really do need to know what they told you.”
“Oh, my.” She reached for the dishtowel as if the gossip she was carrying had sullied her hands. “It was just Estelle being a little graphic about some visits Bob had from Marty’s wife.”
I already knew about the visits. “Did she actually see them doing something?”
“I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she did. The way she keeps tabs on everything going on outside her window.”
Bless Estelle’s voyeuristic heart.
“What exactly did she say?” I asked.
“That Victoria must not have been getting enough at home.” Gram winced. “Crude comments like that while the two of them cackled like a pair of old hens about being serviced by the likes of Bob.”
I patted her hand. “Okay, enough said.”
“He certainly was very attentive to Victoria at the service Saturday. Do you think it’s true? Were they having an affair?”
I didn’t dare share my suspicions about the nature of their relationship. “I don’t know.”
I also didn’t know how Cameron fit into the equation. Some revenge angle having to do with his mother? Or had he come to the conclusion that he’d never be accepted into the McCutcheon family, and Victoria had lured him into her scheme with the promise of easy money? By Darlene’s reaction to his presence at her ex’s funeral service I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that she had wielded some influence in that regard. Maybe even paid a tidy sum to Cameron’s mother to stay away from her family.
“Even if they were, it’s none of our business.” Gram waved her hand as if she held a magic wand to make all the unpleasantness of the day go poof.
If only it were that easy.
She poured the sauce on the pasta and headed for the kitchen table, where we usually ate when it was just the two of us. “Grab the salad in the fridge and let’s eat.”
The doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” my mother chirped.
“We’re off
,” she said seconds later, when she and Barry waved goodbye from the doorway.
After the front door closed behind them, Gram turned to me. “I worry about that girl, rushing into this wedding.”
“Me, too, but she refuses to budge on the date. For whatever reason, it just has to be June.”
“When school’s out, so that makes some sense. Still, she’s practically galloping to the altar and with a man she barely knows. Barry’s a very nice man, but unless she’s willing to put him before her career, how is this going to work?”
“Yeah, well…” I was living proof of how famous she was for putting family first. I knew I’d sound petty if I said any more, so I clamped my mouth shut and helped myself to the salad.
When Gram fell silent I noticed her doing the worry thing with her lips again. “What?”
She stared at the bowl of salad as if the bits of red cabbage mixed with the leafy greens had suddenly become fascinating. “It’s not that I’m an old fuddy-duddy, and I only want your happiness, but I wonder if your mother isn’t the only one rushing into something.”
“I’m not the one sporting an engagement ring.” Nor did I think that would ever happen. Not if I were being completely honest with myself.
“No, but you’re practically advertising your relationship with Stevie by living with him.”
“It’s only while Mom’s here. Everything will be back the way it was by Monday.” I knew that was a lie before the words left my lips. As soon as I’d crossed the street with my clothes, I should have recognized the impact of my decision. There was no going back from this.
Maybe I was more like my impetuous mother than I wanted to admit. Leaping across the street when I should have been looking.
At least I hadn’t proclaimed myself to be in mad, passionate love with the man a week after he had first kissed me. That was a good thing, right?
Looking as unconvinced as I felt, Gram nodded and we ate in silence for a couple of minutes until the doorbell rang again.
“Hey, did you eat?” Steve asked when I opened the door.
“Doing that now and there’s plenty.” I waved him in. “Did practice end early?”
There's Something About Marty (A Working Stiffs Mystery Book 3) Page 17