Coffee & Crime

by Anita Rodgers

  I sighed and looked away then sighed again but Ted continued his unblinking stare. I had two choices; I could pick a fight and blow him off, never to see him again or I could tell him truth, leaving out the part about the reward and my plan with Zelda. I opted for plan b.

  Ted listened with interest and for a few minutes considered what I'd told him. "Your bank can't help you out?"

  I shook my head. "I applied for a loan but the loan officer made it pretty clear my chances aren't good." I held up my hand to stop an onslaught of questions. "I went to George's lawyer too but he gave me a handful of forms and wished me luck." I glanced at the sparkling, rain-drenched city below. "My only chance is if the other buyer backs out and Manny agrees to new terms." Sighing, I leaned my head against the car window, it was cold but soothed my aching head. "Now do you understand why I didn't want to talk about this?"

  Ted blew out a sigh. "Yeah." He smiled and leaned over the console, "How about..."

  I wagged my finger at him. "Don't say it. I am not going to ask you for a loan."

  "But..."

  "No buts. End of discussion. I'm a big girl and can take care of myself. You don't need to swoop in and save me."

  Ted held up his hands and sat back. "Well I guess you told me, then." He laughed. "But for the record, I wasn't going to offer you a loan."

  Blood rose to my cheeks and burned. "You weren't?"

  He leaned over the console, slipped his arm around my waist and pulled me close. "What I was going to say before I was so rudely interrupted was how about we make out for a while?" His lips brushed mine.

  I took in a stuttered breath. "That really won't solve my diner problem."

  Ted kissed my neck with his soft, warm lips. "Nope. But like you said, you don't need anybody to swoop in and solve your problems."

  I nuzzled his neck and he smelled so good. "That's true, I did say that. And there's a lot to be said for affection..."

  His mouth found mine and all thoughts of murders, rewards and diners went out of my head.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I awoke smiling. The world was a kinder, friendlier place and I stretched in a homage to the new day. And to prove that new philosophy Boomer dive-bombed my head, all doggie kisses and wagging stub. I got him by his furry scruff and gently set him on the floor. "Okay Booms, Mommy is going back to sleep now because she was having the best dream and wants to pick up where she left off."

  Zelda stood in the doorway, hands on her hips and scowling. "About time you woke up."

  I threw back the covers and sat up in bed. "Good morning to you too."

  "Barely morning."

  I glanced at the bedside clock - almost noon. Jumping out of bed I asked, "Why did you let me sleep so long?"

  She smirked. "Let you? A bomb wouldn't have gotten you up." She eyed the bed. "Are you hiding a man in there?"

  I stepped out of bed and drew back the covers to expose an empty bed. "Anything else I can do for you?"

  Boomer threw himself against my legs and yapped, angling for attention. I bent and shushed him.

  "It's time." Blank stare. Zelda snapped her fingers. "The George stuff! The stuff I wasn't allowed to look at while you were out with mister tall, dark and handsome, doing God knows what." She squinted at me. "When did you get home? Did you sleep with him? Were you up all night doing it?"

  I put my fingers in my mouth whistled. Zelda stopped and glowered. "I don't know what time it was. His name is Ted. Mostly we talked. No, I didn't sleep with him you idiot."

  Zelda dropped her gaze to the floor. "You don’t have to yell."

  I scooped up Boomer and squeezed past Zelda out the door. "Come with me."

  Grumbling, Zelda followed me to the kitchen. As I suspected the only sign of breakfast was stale coffee and a half-eaten cherry pie. "What you need is a decent breakfast, young lady.” I started a fresh pot of coffee and whipped up a couple of cheese omelets with a stack of hot buttered toast. Feeding Zelda improved her attitude and she laughed while Boomer danced for toast crusts. Refilling our coffee cups I said, "You feel better now?"

  Zelda tossed Boomer the last crust. "Yeah, I'm a brand new me."

  "Then do you mind telling me what you've got against Ted?"

  She twisted her lips and poured cream in her coffee. "He's a distraction."

  "From what?"

  She slathered an inch of grape jelly on the last piece of toast and took a big bite. "Everything."

  I pushed my half-eaten omelet aside and sipped my coffee. "He's been nothing but kind to both of us."

  She pointed a finger at me. "And that's the problem with his type. They suck you in with their kindness and do-goodiness until you trust them. Then when you're not expecting it," she punched the countertop, "they screw you."

  I cut my leftover omelet into small bites and scraped it into Boomer's dish. "Are you sure we're discussing my love life?" I cleared the dishes and took them to the sink.

  Zelda mocked me with a look. "We're definitely discussing your love life."

  I walked back to the butcher-block. "Ted's not like that. He's a good guy." I gave her ponytail a gentle tug. "If you gave him a chance, you'd see that."

  Zelda grunted. "Right — after twenty-eight years of unrelenting shit, you've hit the lottery?" She shook her head. "That fairytale stuff doesn't happen to us, Scotti. Haven't you figured that out yet?"

  I started for the living room. "Maybe our luck has changed."

  "Sure and maybe there really is life on Mars."

  <<>>

  We spent the next few hours on the sofa trying to make sense of the contents from George's briefcase. After giving up guessing the passwords for the phone and flash-drive, the only thing left was the appointment calendar. The day before, every item in the case seemed like a clue that could lead us somewhere but the excitement of discovery had given way to reality.

  Though there were several entries, they boiled down to five people. Actually, initials with phone numbers. We hoped these five were the pieces of the puzzle that George referred to in his letter and jotted down the initials and numbers in a separate notebook.

  The first was T.S. with a local phone number. T.S. seemed important because appointments with him or her appeared at regular intervals throughout the previous six months. The last appointment scheduled for T.S. was on the day before George died.

  The second was J.C. also with a local number. Appointments with J.C. also appeared several times over the course of the previous six months, but not as frequently as T.S.

  The next two appeared only once. "Test results?" with a Los Angeles number and "Skyfall - K.L." with an number and a private extension.

  The last one, J.T., appeared several times over the previous three months but the area code for the phone number was out of state. I searched the area code on the Internet and discovered it was for Washington D.C. I made a note next to J.T. and a question mark. Was George involved in some sort of government cover up?

  Zelda flipped through the calendar while I worked the Internet for names to go with the phone numbers and she grunted in discovery. I looked up from the laptop. "What?"

  "Sessions? Isn't that the business attorney?"

  I shrugged and typed in the D.C. number in the search box. "Yeah, so?"

  She shoved the calendar under my nose. "Why'd George meet with his business attorney five times in the last two weeks of his life?" She flipped the pages and pointed to each appointment. "Huh?"

  "So, that’s six?” I thought about my meeting with Sessions. "Funny, he didn’t act like George had any problems when I met with him." I shrugged. "But that probably isn’t something he would’ve told me about anyway." I brightened up. "Maybe George was trying to get out of his partnership. And Jake found out and offed him. He did say that my brownies were delicious. I wouldn't mind turning him in for a hundred grand."

  Zelda considered it. "Maybe. And I think he said exquisite. And I doubt he meant your brownies." She helped herself to my laptop and searched for Sessio
ns’ website and brought it up. She clicked through a couple of pages then said, "Aha! He does wills too."

  I hunched a shoulder and frowned. "Yeah that makes more sense. George was probably just updating his will to include Lily."

  Zelda snapped her fingers. "Right all that weird stuff she said after the wake. Maybe it was about her getting added to George's will."

  I stood, stretched and headed for the kitchen. "The conversation was weird but she didn't say anything about a will. Sounded more like a family spat."

  Zelda followed me into the kitchen. "Right all that talk about upsetting their perfect little life? If you add in the will, doesn't that make more sense now? Maggie and Lauren were pissed that Lily would get a cut of the family pie."

  Hungry, I opened the fridge. "True, Lauren wasn't too thrilled about her big sister. Growing up as an only child and treated like a little princess all your life — then Lily comes along?" I laughed then grabbed a container of leftover chicken and carried it to the butcher-block. "That could piss a girl off."

  Zelda pulled up a stool and pried off the lid to the chicken container. "Let’s ask Lily if she's in the will." She snatched a drumstick and bit into it. "Where's the notebook? We need to make a note of that."

  I grabbed a chicken thigh and smirked. "Right." The chicken tasted good but it needed something. I went back to the fridge and snagged a container of potato salad, then grabbed forks and plates.

  Zelda turned in her stool and said, "What?"

  I brought everything back to the butcher-block and sat. "Kind of personal, don't you think? I sure as hell wouldn't talk about family wills with a stranger." I wiped my greasy fingers with a napkin. "Lily's strange but not stupid."

  Zelda spooned potato salad onto her plate. "They're all strange. What have we got to lose? We ask, if she tells us to fuck off, so be it."

  I snorted and helped myself to potato salad. "Good luck with that. Something tells me that Lily could come unhinged if you asked the wrong thing."

  Zelda's dark eyes sparkled. "How cool is this? We’ve got our first suspect — Lauren. She was pissed that Lily was getting a chunk of the family jewels so she had it out with George and lost control..."

  "Then what? Force-fed him a brownie?" I shook my head. "Lauren's upset because her father is dead. Having Lily around makes it worse. And if Lauren wanted to keep her half sister out of the will, she'd kill George before it happened, not after the fact."

  Zelda deflated for a few seconds. "Maybe. But I still think the sibling rivalry is part of it."

  I chuckled. "Can you imagine Maggie Manston paying a reward to the person who proved her daughter was the killer? That money would be channeled to a dream legal defense team in nothing flat."

  Zelda pouted and stared at the computer screen. "Okay now that you've shot me down. How'd you do? Get anywhere with the phone numbers?"

  "Yeah. We've got a private detective, an insurance company, an interior designer and a lab. But none of them will be open today. We'll have to call after work tomorrow."

  Zelda frowned. "That's four, I thought there were five numbers."

  I shook my head. "Nothing on the Internet. But we can call the number tomorrow and see what we get." I noticed the time and jumped off my stool. "We better get moving. Those pies aren't going to drive themselves to the diner."

  While I put away the food, Zelda locked the George stuff in the pantry. Maybe we were being paranoid, but my gut told me that keeping George's stuff away from prying eyes was a necessary caution.

  Still I had to wonder how a briefcase, a surprise daughter and a predictable unassuming man added up to murder.

  Chapter Twenty

  After we pulled the old pies and restocked the cases with fresh pies, I left Zelda chatting with a regular in the dining room and went to the back to find Manny. He and Chewie were huddled in the kitchen, chatting in Spanish.

  The smell of eggs, Cuban chorizo and spices made me flash on the first day I walked into Manny's. Zelda and I were terrified of him and desperate for jobs. How things had changed. Gently, I put my hand on his shoulder.

  Manny turned and smiled. "Hey mamasita, pies all done?"

  "Yep."

  "You heading out?"

  I hooked my arm through Manny's and guided him toward the office. "Let's talk."

  I closed the door and Manny sprawled in his chair like he had no bones in his body. I propped against the wall because there was no place to sit. The office was a converted pantry and barely accommodated a desk, chair, filing cabinet and a couple of wall-mounted shelves. His desk was littered with empty to go cups, packing slips, invoices, and guest checks. The clutter drove me crazy but Manny liked it that way and it had never been clean in all the years I'd worked for him. Manny rocked back in his seat and leaned an elbow on the desk. "Whassup chica?"

  "That's what I want to know." I wagged my finger at him. "Tell me the truth."

  Manny yawned and propped his feet on the desk. "Been a long day, Scotti. Don't make me work for it."

  "We had a deal. Then out of the blue you tell me there's another buyer? What's that about? How could you even consider selling to somebody else?" I paused but Manny said nothing. I pushed off the wall and paced the tiny room. "I'm totally invested in this place. I haven't spent the last five years busting my ass for nothing, right? I make the soups, the pastries — run your dining room..." I threw up my hands. "I don't know how else to prove to you that I'm serious about this. I thought we were on the same page. That you wanted me to have the place. Now what? I have to compete with some stranger to get what you promised me?" I blew out a sigh. "And you wait to bring it up when we're six weeks out? Why?"

  Manny scratched the dark stubble on his chin. "Five weeks now," he murmured. I said nothing. Manny bared his big white teeth and shrugged. "It ain't personal. I know you work hard. I know you want this place — you don't gotta prove that to me. I like you, Scotti — you're good people. But this is business and I gotta have a backup plan."

  I shouldn't have been but I was surprised by his indifference. "Because you don't believe in me?"

  Manny pawed around his desk for coffee but all the cups were empty. "I gotta get outta L.A., Scotti. I gotta get back home." I sighed. He flipped his hand at me. "Don't give me that face. I shoulda been back to Miami last year. But because I'm your friend I say, 'Okay, I'll wait.' And now you're acting all hurt that I wanna get going? I got pressure too. If I don't go this time, then I lose my spot at my uncle's villa. He'll give it to Pedro. He acts already like it's his." He frowned. "I hate that guy."

  Manny's family wanted him back in Miami to run a resort hotel they'd bought and renovated. But the motivating factor wasn't the resort — it was a woman that Manny knew back in Cuba. His first love, Maria, had moved to Miami. He didn't give a crap about moving up the food chain in the seaside resort business. His real concern was that some slick Guapo would steal Maria away before he could woo her back into his arms. And his cousin Pedro was the kind of Guapo who'd stab Manny in the back while he smiled to his face.

  "I know, Manny. You hate this place." I looked around the dingy room and beamed. "But I love it."

  Manny shook his head. "Why you want this place so bad Scotti?"

  "Because I want something that's mine. All mine."

  Manny looked touched then got a grip of his machismo and snickered. "A headache that's all yours? You don't make no sense." He stood up and patted my shoulder. "I ain't gonna sell it behind your back. That's why I told you there's the other buyer — so you're warned, right?" He shrugged. "You got the money in five weeks — you got this place. For all your own. Okay? I get my money, you get your diner, we're both happy, si?"

  I smiled and nodded.

  He looked me in the eye. "But you don't got the money in five weeks, I gotta sell it anyway. Even though we're friends and that ain't gonna make you happy. That's the way it is, chica. Comprendes?" Manny paused at the door and gave me a little grin. "We good, Scotti?"

  "As good as we
ever were, Manny."

  He grunted and walked out to the kitchen. But I hung back and redesigned the office in my head. New built-ins, sunny yellow walls, and fresh flowers on my desk. I believed that if I could keep that image in my head that somehow it would all work out for me.

  Debbie snapped her fingers in my face. "Hey Scotti, you in there?"

  "What?"

  Pointing toward the dining room Debbie said, "Zelda wants you out front." She stared at me for a few seconds then ambled away.

  The conversation with Manny didn't make me feel any better and I walked through the kitchen hoping I'd be redecorating in five weeks and not looking for a new job. I couldn't imagine starting over again and I was determined to make this work. George was dead but I wasn't.