“I certainly have lots of errands to do. If you’re okay flying solo, would you mind if I knock a few items off my to-do list tomorrow?”
“I’ll be fine. I’ll call you if the unforeseen arises, but I doubt I’ll need you.”
“Great.” After she made her way around the building to her car, Sherry came to a dead halt. Chutney stared at his owner.
“I forgot to ask Dad if Detective Bease called. I’ll call him later. I don’t want to disrupt the good mood Dad’s in. Let him enjoy a moment of peace.”
Sherry arrived at the News Twelve driveway, then she circled the parking lot twice before deciding on a spot she had overlooked on her prior laps. It looked like a tight fit, but, since she had no human passenger needing to leave the car, she shoehorned the car in with no margin for error on the side opposite hers. Leaving Chutney asleep in the back seat, Sherry carried a batch of home-baked butter pecan cookies to the station lobby.
Sherry approached the receptionist stationed behind a makeshift partition.
The woman leaned toward an opening. “Good afternoon. May I help you?”
“This is new.” Sherry tipped her head toward the partition.
“Management’s attempt at heightened security after Ms. Gordy’s murder. I can’t say I feel any more secure in here.” The woman shrugged as she leaned into the opening between her and Sherry. “How may I help you?”
Hi. I’m Sherry Oliveri. I have an appointment.”
The woman checked her computer screen. “Sherry Oliveri? We’ve been expecting you. Your meeting with Mr. Paladin and Mr. Fletcher is in the break room. Mr. Castle will join in, but he has a prior commitment, so his attendance may be brief.”
“I brought some cookies to share. Would you like one . . .” Sherry squinted and read the woman’s name tag. “. . . Elsa?” Sherry plunged the container of cookies through the opening.
“We have a new policy about no external food being allowed in without proper documentation. But I know you’re a remarkable cook, so I’m willing to, you know, make sure they’re not contaminated in any way.” Elsa snickered and shot her hand toward the bag, extracted a cookie, and popped it in her mouth. Her red lipstick-glazed lips pulsed forward and sideways with each chew. She pinched her eyes shut and sniffed in a rush of air before exhaling a column of sugar-laced breath. “The best. If you’ll leave me one more, I’ll be sure of my decision.”
Sherry laughed and reeled cookies back in, not before Elsa plucked out one more.
“Steele Dumont will be right over to escort you in. Sign the log, and pass through the metal detector first, please. Remember to power down your phone. Have a seat if you like.” Elsa pointed to the sign-in book and tethered pen on the ledge outside the partition. The phone on Elsa’s desk rang, and she turned her back to Sherry.
A few minutes later, Steele Dumont, with short, disheveled hair, appeared at Sherry’s side. “Ms. Oliveri, so nice to see you again. I keep hearing accolades about your pickle-selling skills from my grandmother.” Steele swept the unruly bangs from his eyes.
“She’s exaggerating. It’s her pickling expertise that’s doing the selling. I’m just the middleman woman.” Sherry stood and scrutinized Steele’s trimmed hairline. “I can’t help but notice your new look. Or is it flavor, you called it? What happened to all the long hair you used to put up in a bun?”
Steele lowered his head. “After Lucky died, wasn’t as much fun to sport the style. My twin was gone. In his honor, I cut it off.” Steele raised his head, and his eyes were glistening. “We better get going. Brett’s on the air in thirty minutes.”
Sherry trailed Steele to the break room, where they found Brett and Truman Fletcher seated at a small rectangular table. Damien Castle stood behind Truman, holding his cell phone in one hand and a clipboard in the other. As Sherry entered the room, Damien handed the clipboard to Truman.
“Good afternoon, Sherry,” Damien said.
Sherry set her cookies on the table. “Hi, Damien.” Sherry accepted his hand, but let hers go limp as he shook. “I brought cookies.”
“Please, have a seat.” Damien pointed to a vacant chair, but remained standing. He reached over Brett’s shoulder and grabbed two cookies. He handed one to Steele. “Dumont, could you please pick up Ms. Oliveri in twenty minutes?”
Steele nodded and shut the door behind him as he left the room.
“I have to leave in a minute, so if you’d give me the time frame and location of the Founder’s Day live remote, we can discuss the logistics.” Damien crossed his arms and sent a side-eye glance toward the back of Brett’s head.
“I thought Beverly Van Ardan was in charge of how the day unfolds.” Brett raised his chin.
Sherry’s forearms began to swelter, despite the cooling breeze the overhead vent sent her way. She pushed up her shirtsleeves. The frigid metal table surface shocked her flaming skin, and she broke out in goose bumps. She tugged at her sleeves to extend them again.
“Are you comfortable, Sherry? I could raise or lower the thermostat,” Truman said.
“We have a lock on the system now, remember? A real money saver, right?” Brett rotated his torso toward Damien.
“I’m fine.” Sherry’s reply clumped in her throat as if she were trying to swallow a spoonful of tahini paste.
“To address your belief, Brett, Beverly Van Ardan did approach the station about live Founder’s Day coverage, and, frankly, I think it’s a great idea,” Damien said with an air of confirmation.
“Seems like she’s full of great ideas.” Brett wiped his lips with the sleeve of his blazer, as if his words had left a bitter residue on them. “I don’t see why the usual post-celebration wrap-up we’ve done in the past isn’t sufficient.”
“I brought a diagram of the exhibit locations. We finalized it at a meeting this morning.” Sherry held the picture up in the air and waited for one of the men to take the paper from her.
Each peered at the others until Truman stood and pinched it from Sherry’s grasp.
“We’ll be at the location for two hours with a camera operator. We should speak to the table representatives first. Isn’t there a ceremony at some point on the town green?” Truman clipped the diagram to his board.
Sherry straightened her posture. “That’s right. The Trivselbit presentations follow the August-Tinies parade, which is the cutest parade you’ll ever want to see. That only lasts about ten minutes, depending how cooperative the kids are. Getting them all lined up and marching in somewhat of an order, youngest to oldest, is about as easy as getting fresh coconut out of the shell.”
“I don’t know, is it hard or easy to get fresh coconut out of the shell?” Damien asked.
“It’s hard to do.” Brett said. “The cook knows her metaphors.”
“What else do you need from me? I need to keep moving.” Damien tipped his head toward Truman and Brett. “These two are fully capable of finishing the meeting without me.”
“Speaking of metaphors, sharks need to constantly move or they drown,” Brett said. “We’re all getting used to Castle’s not being around much anymore. No one really knows where he constantly swims off to.”
Damien huffed a mighty exhale.
“Thank you for your input at my taste-testing.” Sherry held an unblinking gaze on Damien.
Damien peered at the ceiling for a moment with a finger on his temple. “I think what I wrote on my ballot is worth chewing over.” He took a bite of one of Sherry’s cookies and left the room.
“That sounded cozy,” Brett said. “Back to the business at hand. After we talk to the exhibitors and commentate on the parade, the ceremony will take place, correct?”
Sherry nodded. “Would you be interested in opening the first ever Trivselbit ceremony with a few words, Brett? We’d be honored to have you. Larson Anderson will introduce you. Then we promised Erik Van Ardan a few minutes, followed by acknowledgments onstage of Augustin’s wealth of talent. My dad and I are among the citizens being acknowledged, but I
’m pretty sure our role is as fillers.”
“My family’s ties to Augustin go way back, you know,” Brett said. “People may not be aware that my father’s father opened the first seafood eatery in town. All local fish and shellfish. Place was called Gadabee’s Seven Seas. I’m told it was very popular with the upper crust in town, but fell out of favor when the competition grew. That wasn’t all bad because his next venture led him to reporting the town’s news in print. Ultimately, journalism became the family business.” Brett cracked his knuckles, one finger at a time.
Sherry cringed with each popping sound.
“Yes, I’d be honored to open the ceremony.”
“Perfect.” Sherry handed Brett a piece of paper. “Here’s the list of event times. If you would be at the podium five minutes prior to the ceremony, events should all run smoothly. Thank you very much.” She stood, hands on hips.
“Is that all?” Truman asked. “If it is, I’d like to show you the final version of my invention to get kids to eat their vegetables.”
Brett rose from his chair. “I was going to ask if you’d try my improved breakfast cookie.” He extracted a small plastic bag from his blazer pocket and waved it in front of Sherry.
Truman produced a paper bag from under his chair. He thrust his orange and green, mesh-wrapped rolling pin in front of her face. “I have two companies interested in The Peas and Corn Rolling Pin. The days of clipboards and counting the seconds down until broadcast may, fingers crossed, be over soon.”
“I know if I were a kid, I’d have fun using your invention to gather my humdrum veggies off the plate to eat them like corn on the cob. You’ve got yourself a winner.” Sherry held up an imaginary corncob and nibbled across it while rotating the invisible cylinder in her fingers.
Truman pumped his fist. Brett’s shoulders drooped.
“And you brought a breakfast cookie sample, Brett?” Sherry enunciated, as if she were speaking to a five-year-old.
Brett broke off a piece of cookie and handed it to Sherry. She inspected the surface with the same attention to detail she used when washing sand from leeks, after having once served the vegetable halfheartedly rinsed and listening to her guests crunch their way through what was supposed to be a velvety smooth cream of leek soup. She placed the cookie in her mouth and said a silent prayer. Please let this cookie be okay, in taste and every other way. She used her tongue to roll the bite around in her mouth before biting down. “Very nice.”
Brett’s mouth dropped open. “Really? Do you mean it? I took all your suggestions to heart.”
“Really. This is the one.” Sherry swallowed. She coughed, in hopes of clearing her throat of a stubborn crumb that wouldn’t go down.
“Sounds like you might have baked up your ticket out of here.” Truman pointed to Brett’s baggie remains.
“This is a side project. I’m not going anywhere. They’ll have to pry my cold, dead fingers off the anchor desk to get me to leave.” Brett laughed through closed lips.
With an unsteady hand, Sherry collected her cookie container and purse off her chair. “Do you think Steele is in the hall? I should get going.”
Sherry left the room and followed Steele back to the building entrance.
The woman behind the glass panel slid open the window and called out, “Any cookies left?”
“They’re all yours.” Sherry frowned and handed the remaining cookies over. “This wasn’t a popular day for cookies. I usually don’t have any left. I’m glad you like them.”
Elsa winked. “Come back soon.”
Sherry made her way to her car and opened the door as quietly as she could, so as not to startle sleeping Chutney. As she slipped in undetected, her phone rang. Chutney leapt to his feet and barked. Sherry answered the call.
“Hi, let me pull out of the parking lot. Hold on a minute.” Sherry drove out of the television complex and pointed her car toward home. “I’m back. What can I do for you, Ray?”
“Did you know your father was a minor investor with Damien Castle over at News Twelve?”
Sherry steered her car to the side of the road and parked. She stared out her windshield as cars whizzed by her before increasing the volume of her phone. “Are you sure?”
Sitting in her car on the side of the road, her stomach churned from a combination of hunger and unease. “I can’t claim I know much about his finances, but I would have thought that nugget of information would have come up in conversation over the last few days, given the recent events.” She rubbed her turbulent tummy. Maybe Brett’s cookie contained too much fiber. It was a breakfast cookie, after all. He might have loaded the recipe with stick-to-your-ribs substances. When her stomach didn’t respond positively to her core massage, she reached over in search of the cookie container on the passenger seat. When her hand returned empty, she silently cursed her generous spirit for coming up with the idea of donating all the cookies to the receptionist.
“The legal and financial documents were at the station, under very lax security, I might add, and Erno Oliveri was listed among those who invested with Damien Castle when he took over the station from the Gadabee family,” Ray said. “Erno’s share was a small amount of money, relative to the other five investors; in fact, his was the smallest amount. He might have even sold his share at a later date to one of the other investors because a subsequent document doesn’t list him at all. This information is interesting for a few reasons. Number one, your father now dates Ruth Gadabee, if I’m not mistaken, correct?”
Sherry watched a well-worn green station wagon roll by. The car was the same relic her family had driven for years. “They seem to be more than friends, yes.”
“At the time of the transaction, Mr. Gadabee had recently passed away. Brett, his son, was too inexperienced to take over as owner, and his wife, Ruth, wanted to liquidate her deceased husband’s holdings for financial security. Your father and the other investors did her a big favor. The station was doing well at that time, and she made quite a profit. If she’d waited much longer, she would have never realized the amount she did. There was even a bidding war with a fledgling company, the MediaPie Corporation, but they backed off early in the game.”
“Maybe Dad got out at the right time, too. Possibly at the urging of Ruth. I can imagine, if their friendship was blossoming, he thought his holdings were a conflict of interest of sorts.” Sherry put her hand up to shield her ear as a group of motorcycles thundered by.
“Here’s interesting reason number two. Damien Castle says he bought the station as fulfillment of a dream to control the local broadcasting in the Augustin and immediate vicinity’s market. Your father began advertising his store on News Twelve the same year Castle purchased the station. There’s no record of payment from your father for advertising time, so I deduce he got ads for free in some sort of deal he struck up.”
The corners of Sherry’s mouth lifted. “Again, I’m surprised. Dad never mentioned he knew Damien before the cook-off. Sounds like a shrewd business move on Dad’s part.”
“His connection to the station appears to have a long history.”
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at.” Sherry squinted as the lowering sun pitched brilliant rays through her side window.
“Your father may not know who killed Carmell Gordy and even the young man Lucky, but I’m betting he knows why they were killed.”
“Detective, I mean, Ray, I’m not sure . . .”
“I have to go. Someone’s trying to call me.”
The line went silent.
Sherry set the phone down, checked her side mirror for oncoming traffic, and began her merge. She pushed the accelerator to the floor and merged into the fast lane.
Chapter 18
“Tomorrow is the big Founder’s Day celebration. How excited are you?” Sherry unhooked Chutney and stored his leash on the peg next to the door.
Bean emerged from the back room to greet his friend, and they scampered off toward the display rugs.
Amber ru
bbed her hands together. “I’m excited to be manning the Ruggery table while you and Erno are receiving honors on the Trivselbit podium.”
Erno carried a hand towel from the yarn storage room. He used the cloth to wipe the sales counter after he applied spray-on wood polish. “Hi, sweetie. Did I hear my name being mentioned?”
“Amber was saying how she didn’t need us tomorrow. She’s doing well on her own.” Sherry winked at her friend. “I dropped Chutney off. He’s over there with Bean.” She pointed to the two canines sniffing a newly hooked area rug depicting a fawn in a forest setting. “I’ll be back for him after the farmer’s market. I fed him already, but any snacks are always appreciated.”
“Did you tell Sherry about the tennis social?” Erno asked Amber.
Amber produced a gasp that turned Sherry’s head.
“Sorr y, was that a secret?”
“Dad’s way of letting the cat out of the bag is more like releasing a raging bull out of a shoot. So be careful what you say to him.” Sherry let out a hearty laugh. “What’s the tennis social all about?”
“I wanted to ask if you’d join me in a tennis happy hour at the indoor facility where we played, next Saturday,” Amber said. “No rush on your decision, but I need to sign us up by midweek.”
“Let me think about it. I have to tweak my curry recipes before the contest’s entry deadline, and I’m running out of time.”
Erno tapped his shoe on the floor. “Tick, tick, tick. Hear that? It’s the time of your life passing you by. Get out there and do some cooking outside of the kitchen, if you get my meaning. Stir the pot; get wild. Skip the main course, and jump right into dessert.”
“Okay, Dad. Message received. I should branch out. Marla must have gotten to you.” Sherry sighed and raised her arms as if waving the surrender flag. “I’m off. I’ll see you later, Amber. Thanks for watching Chutney. Dad, I’d like to have a discussion with you, so if I don’t see you here later, I’ll call you.” Sherry waved to no one in particular and left the store.
Sherry’s morning at the farmer’s market was a human smorgasbord of casual browsers, pickle connoisseurs, impulse buyers, and foodies. There was a lull in the action after the noon hour, while most patrons were seated at picnic tables enjoying their lunch. Seeing them enjoying their purchases, Sherry’s stomach began whining, so she emptied the thermal lunch bag she had brought from home onto her table. She peeled off the lid of one of the two containers she had set on her table.
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