“I think you aren’t seeing the big picture. Mary said Delilah had probably had him at one of her parties. What if she knew him from that?”
Alex’s shoulders sagged. He took a deep breath in and blew it out slowly. “Okay, I’ll go with this idea. So that’s your theory of the case—that Delilah killed Canton Walters?”
He caught me off guard putting me on the spot like that. I hadn’t really formulated a theory of the case involving Delilah Roberts. I had a sneaking suspicion she’d known the victim, but just like with Mary, I couldn’t see her killing anyone.
I didn’t dare tell Alex that, though. In the mood he was in, I’d likely get an earful about how murders are solved by facts, not feelings.
Hedging my words, I said, “I think it’s just as likely she did as his wife. The problem with both women is how did they get into the hotel without that night clerk seeing them and how did they commit the crime?”
Alex shook his head. “I’m thinking Joe Steadman isn’t as observant as he claims. He barely heard us come in the other day. Remember?”
“Okay, then if it’s possible anyone could have gotten past him without being seen, does that change your opinion on who may have done it?”
“No, it doesn’t. The wife still looks good to me,” he said setting his jaw defiantly again.
“Not even Mary or Delilah are worth looking at another time if any of them could get in past the desk clerk?” I asked, amazed at how obstinate he was acting.
Without even thinking about what I’d said, he answered, “No.”
“And that’s it? No?”
I stared at the person sitting beside me and felt like I didn’t even know him. He’d never been like this in all the time we’d worked together, so I couldn’t understand what had made him change into this pig-headed man who sat obstinately staring back at me, refusing to budge even the tiniest bit.
“We’re going to have to agree to disagree on this, Poppy, but I’m going ahead with Rose Walters as the murderer of Canton Walters.”
His voice was so flat it clearly signaled he was in no mood for discussion of the point at all. I didn’t know how to react to this Alex, but I couldn’t simply sit back and let him basically say he didn’t think what I believed had any merit at all.
“I thought we were partners. Don’t partners take one another’s opinions into consideration and leave open the chance that the other person sees something they don’t? You’ve never been like this. You always listen to my ideas because you think I have good instincts. Remember those?”
He turned the car onto the far end of Main Street and drove past the sign welcoming people to Sunset Ridge before he answered me. When he did, I felt like I’d been slapped across the face.
“Poppy, I do value your opinions, but this case calls for a less emotional and reactionary look. Sometimes your jumping to conclusions like Dr. Watson is helpful because it makes me take a look at alternative theories, but this time it’s just muddling the case.”
I’d never told him how working cases with him made me feel like Dr. Watson, that hapless tagalong to Sherlock Holmes. I’d only told my father that night in the stockroom and Bethany right after Alex and I began working together months ago. Suddenly, I felt like the butt of a private joke between them as I sat there a captive audience in that passenger seat next to him.
Had Bethany told him how inferior I felt working with him? My chest hurt as the thought of them talking about me settled into my brain. Why would she do that? I felt like a foolish girl who’d let herself believe she meant more to the world than she really did.
I opened my mouth to speak, to say something to let him know how much I hated what he just said to me, but nothing came out. All at once, everything I’d ever told her about working with Alex raced through my mind. What else had she shared with him in their time together? I couldn’t decide which was worse—thinking about them sleeping together or thinking about them talking about me as they sneered at my inability to do much of anything than follow him around like some eager, clueless idiot who yearned to learn from him.
When my mind stopped spinning from the rage coursing through my body, I tried to speak again, but my mouth had turned as dry as sand. Swallowing hard to create some saliva, I struggled to speak but had to. I may not have been as talented an investigator as he was, but that didn’t mean I had to sit there and be insulted.
“I thought my insights helped you, but obviously I was wrong.”
“I didn’t mean it like that, Poppy. I just meant—”
“I know exactly what you meant. You don’t need to explain yourself any further.”
“Poppy, please. I didn’t mean to upset you. I meant something else, but it came all wrong. Just listen to me, okay?”
With every word that came out of his mouth, I felt like I would burst into tears. I hated how when I got angry to the point that I couldn’t even talk that my body resorted to turning on the water works like I was some teenage girl who couldn’t handle her emotions. Whenever it happened, the person in front of me always misunderstood, and instead of thinking I wanted to rip them in half, they thought my delicate feelings had been hurt.
Before that happened, I knew I had to escape from that car. “Just stop now so I can get out.”
My words shocked him, and he snapped his head right to look at me. “What are you talking about stop the car? I’m taking you to The Eagle so you can go into the office.”
The car came to a stop at the red light near Diamanti’s, and I flung the door open. “I’m not going to be the reason you use to stop at the newspaper. Find your own excuse for going there.”
I shot him a glare and jumped out of the car before slamming the door closed. The last thing I saw was a look of hurt settling into Alex’s eyes as I turned away from him in disgust. As if he had any reason to be hurt by anything I’d said!
He lowered the window and called out my name, but I didn’t turn around to look at him. I didn’t head in the direction of my office either. The sun beating down on me made me break into a sweat before I made it a block away and I didn’t know where I was walking to, but if he thought I was going to get back into that car after what he’d said to me, he had lost his mind.
I may have admired him and even idolized him for months, but as of that moment as I turned the corner toward my house, I didn’t even want to see his face. I knew if I did I’d just make a fool of myself when my confused tear ducts kicked into overdrive anyway.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him follow me all the way home. It was so quintessentially Alex not to say a thing but drive just behind me for blocks. I didn’t care that he clearly seemed concerned that I didn’t want to be around him. Let him be. He should be. It wasn’t that I just didn’t want to be anywhere near him at that moment.
I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to be around him again.
By the time I closed my kitchen door behind me, my clothes stuck to me from how much I’d sweat just walking the few blocks home. All I wanted to do was crawl under the covers and forget this day had ever happened, but a shower would have to happen first. After that and a few hours of hiding out from the world, maybe I’d try my hand alone at solving the case of Canton Walters’ murder. I may have been reactionary and emotional, but maybe that’s what this case called for.
Even if it didn’t, that’s all I seemed to have to offer, so it would have to do.
Three hours later, I’d all but forgotten what we’d argued about, but the terrible feeling that I’d been the topic of conversation between Alex and Bethany remained, still making my stomach ache. I hated how stupid I felt.
As a late day thunderstorm rolled in, I pulled the covers over my head and closed my eyes as my phone vibrated across my nightstand. Some part of me dreaded what the text would say while another part of me hoped he realized how he’d screwed up. It vibrated two more times before I rolled over and grabbed it, unable to quell my curiosity.
I swiped the screen and saw the first text wasn�
�t from Alex at all. I’d forgotten in all the day’s events that I had a job and my boss wanted to know if I ever planned on coming back to the office. As thunder rumbled outside, I quickly shot him a message apologizing profusely and promising to have both my articles for him to read by end of business the next day. He liked when I said things like that. I just hoped I could follow through on my promise.
The second message was The Third National Bank alerting me to the need to change my password on my account. I had to wonder why I bothered to look at all at these messages.
I deleted the bank text and moved on to see the third message was from Alex. Unsure if I wanted to know what he said, I opened it to find he truly had no idea what had made me so angry.
Typical man. Rose Walters seemed to understand Alex pretty well, after all.
You okay? Let me know. See you tomorrow at The Grounds.
I dropped my phone back onto the nightstand and returned to my place under the covers to hide away my hurt feelings as a crash of thunder rattled the window next to my bed. Out of all that had happened in the past few hours, one thought occupied my mind.
No, you won’t.
Chapter Fifteen
After a night of tossing and turning like a dingy on the high seas, I awoke to clearer skies, if not a clearer head. The rains had passed and the morning sun shined through my bedroom window making me look forward to greeting the day. Well, assuming I didn’t think about everything that happened yesterday.
My phone chimed to let me know I’d missed my alarm, and I rolled over to see it was already eight o’clock. The time I usually met Alex at The Grounds. A pang of sadness passed through me as I realized this was the first morning since he and I began working together all those months ago that I didn’t want to be across from him enjoying my morning caffeine.
Swiping the screen to turn off the alarm, I saw no more messages had come in since I’d last looked before bed. All the better. There wasn’t anything he could say at that moment that I wanted to hear anyway. I couldn’t just talk about work after what he’d said, and the truth was we had nothing else to talk about.
We were partners, but it didn’t seem like there was much left of that relationship.
By eight-thirty, I knew I had to get out of bed. I couldn’t spend any more hours under the covers pretending the world wasn’t happening outside my door. I headed downstairs to make myself a cup of coffee, and as I took my first sip, my phone rang.
Alex.
I imagined he’d sat there at our table for the last half hour or so wondering why I hadn’t showed up. Or maybe he knew why. I doubted it, though. Neither he nor Bethany would likely understand why what he said comparing me to Watson had upset me so much. To him, it was merely a statement among the thousands he’d made to me, harsher than normal but just another one in his mind. To me, though, it was so much more than him reminding me how differently I looked at things. It was proof that I’d been part of their conversations and none too complimentary a part either.
Like Holmes’ sidekick, I was more than likely the butt of a joke. A hapless character they could laugh at. The forgettable tagalong who added nothing of real worth to any investigation.
Five minutes later as I washed my mug and left it to dry in the drainer next to the sink, I heard my phone vibrate across the counter. I looked down to see who messaged, but I knew before I even saw the name pop up on my screen.
I’ll be around tonight after my shift. I want to talk about our case.
I didn’t answer. I had nothing to say. I didn’t want to talk about the case, but that didn’t leave us much else to talk about.
That fact had been glaringly apparent since that night at my father’s bar as I sat there watching Bethany find out more about Alex than I had in three months. Since then, I’d had to face it. In all that time, he and I had never gotten past being work partners, and after what he’d said in the car yesterday, I couldn’t even say we were that either.
What that left was me with all these feelings for someone who barely saw me as an acquaintance, and not even one he respected much. Considering I’d had all those months, I hadn’t done much, had I?
I needed to get my head straight or those covers would start to look pretty good for a second day, so I grabbed my laptop and headed to my favorite comfy chair in my living room to get some work done. My editor’s message had told me loud and clear his patience was running thin, and if I wanted to stay gainfully employed, I needed to produce some articles or Howard would be handing me my walking papers any day.
For two hours I let my fingers fly over the keyboard as I wrote about the Fourth of July block party the former mayor and First Lady had arranged for the holiday, careful to describe the affair in the most glowing terms or risk having to listen to my boss lecture me on the proper way of treating elected officials and their wives. My intimate knowledge of how crooked the former mayor of Sunset Ridge was and how dreadful his wife truly could be had to be pushed aside in favor of journalistic realism, as my editor liked to call it.
In truth, which played little part in my job, what he wanted me to do was paint pretty pictures of our town with delightful words that told no part of what really went on with the people we wrote about. Not that I hadn’t known that fact since they offered me the job. It was just that some days when I felt particularly edgy about things, I didn’t want to whitewash the goings on in Sunset Ridge.
On those days, I wanted to spell it all out in vivid terms so everyone could see what we all really were instead of pretending.
However much I wanted to do that, I never did, though, and for one reason. I needed this job. After losing my online investigative work, my role as social reporter and crime beat feature writer was all I had to pay my bills. I didn’t want to dip into any more of the money my mother had left me. I’d bought a house, but the rest of the insurance money needed to stay untouched in the bank as long as I had a job.
So knowing that, I put down in words how lovely the Fourth of July block party was and how gracious hosts the former mayor and First Lady were. My readers would get details about how lemony the lemonade tasted and how the baked beans were sweet enough to make even the harshest person smile in happiness when that sugary deliciousness hit their tongue.
Just the way my editor loved it.
I guess I didn’t have to wonder why some people in town didn’t take me seriously. I mean, how could they when all they knew of me was gossip from the busybodies about my nonexistent love life and my gushing descriptions of small town minutiae?
Stopping to take a break from the world I’d been creating, I heard my phone ring and saw Bethany’s name come up on the screen. Now she was calling me too? What did she want? I suddenly felt like the happy couple was everywhere around me, threatening to smother me with their very existence.
Two more calls from her in the next five minutes told me Bethany was likely unraveling about something. That was her way. Something must have happened at work and she had no one else to turn to, so she was calling me. Unfortunately for her, I didn’t want to be a shoulder to cry on today. I knew unlike Alex, she would leave a voicemail, but I didn’t intend on listening to that any time soon either.
The calls from both of them made focusing on my job difficult, so I saved my work and figured maybe it was time to get some fresh air. I knew my father would already be at the bar getting ready to open up for the afternoon, so I walked the few short blocks to McGuire’s and enjoyed the slightly cooler eighty degree temperatures the late morning offered.
Poking my head in through the open doorway, I found him sweeping the floor like he always did right at the start of his workday, hunched over that old broom of his.
“Hi, Dad!”
He looked up and smiled at me. “Poppy, I’m happy to see you this morning. How are you, honey?”
I walked into the bar toward where he stood, my arms open wide to hug him. “I’m okay. What about you? Another great day as the best bar owner in Sunset Ridge?”
Squeezing me tightly to him, he chuckled low in my ear. “Do you have such low aspirations for your old father?”
I leaned away from him and looked into his faded blue eyes. “You aren’t old, Dad. You’re a classic.”
My father smiled, crinkling the outer edges of his eyes where the crow’s feet had become more pronounced in the last few years. “I like that. A classic. So how is my favorite girl doing today?”
“I’m all right. I’ve been working all day, so I thought I’d take a little walk to visit you before I get back to the grind.”
He propped his broom against the wall and looked at me like he was studying me. “You’re not working on your case with Alex today?”
“Not today. I have to make Howard happy with a couple of articles, so it’s a writing day for me. What about you? Do anything interesting this morning?”
Thankfully, he didn’t seem to pick up on how much I didn’t want to talk about anything to do with Alex or my work with him. He pointed down at the floor toward his sneakers and said, “I got my miles in, so that was better than yesterday. Other than that, it’s just another day.”
He had no idea how much that resonated with me at that moment. Just another day. After months of thinking my life had changed, there I was the same old Poppy doing the same old things like I had for so long.
“How’s your case coming?”
I followed him to the bar and sat down on the same stool as Alex had sat on a few nights before. My father slid a glass of root beer toward me as he waited for my answer to his very normal question I didn’t want to answer. Whatever I said, he’d see something was bothering me, but if I didn’t answer, that would be a dead giveaway too.
Such were the trials of being so close to someone.
I took a sip of soda and pressed a smile onto my lips. “Slow going, to be honest. We’re having a hard time with this one.”
Lifting the glass to my mouth for a second time, I watched my father’s expression to find out if he saw right through me. I hadn’t lied as much as given a summary of the case that didn’t include anything about the two people investigating it.
After Hours Page 16