by Meg Muldoon
“Well, I’m sorry, ma’am, but it’s against regulations,” he said. “Though I’d be perfectly happy to take it back there myself. I promise you that it’ll be in good hands.”
I smiled again, then leaned farther over the counter.
“Oh, I’m sure it would be,” I said. “But you see, Aunt Viv is a little… well…”
I tilted my head.
“She’s a little peculiar. If you give her these, then she’ll come up with some crazy conspiracy in her head and think that you’re trying to poison her.”
I sighed.
“Poor Aunt Viv gets a bit off her rocker when she’s stressed.”
The young officer rubbed his chin some more. His eyes locked onto mine, and I sensed that my power of persuasion was starting to work.
He cleared his throat.
“My grandmother’s like that, too. People get awful strange once they get up there in age.”
“Yes, they do,” I said. “So you see, Bud – can I call you Bud?”
“Uh… yes. Of course you can, miss,” he said. “In fact… in fact, I’d be honored.”
My magic was beginning to work.
“I think it’s probably best if I just go back there and give these pills to her myself. Is that all right?”
He gazed at me, seemingly dazed.
“Yes,” he said in a flat voice. “Of course. Go on ahead.”
I didn’t persuade people like that often. Only when a situation really called for it.
Bud got up and ran his key card through the scanner, opening the locked door. He held it open for me, and I walked through, tossing my purse with the nonexistent medicine over my shoulder. I headed confidently down the hallway, past several desks with cops so engaged in a heated conversation about some gun-heavy video game they were all playing together, they didn’t even see me. One of the empty desks had a name plate for Officer Madeleine Fox. She wasn’t there, and I figured she must have been out on assignment for another case. Talking to witnesses was as close to Mayor Ashby’s murder investigation as she was probably ever going to get, she’d told me.
I breezed through the station until I got to a row of closed doors. I paused, straining to hear which room Aunt Viv might be in.
It wasn’t long before I knew.
“You’re treating this like a joke, Vivian. But I can assure you this isn’t a joke,” a muffled voice sounded from behind one of the doors. “This is a very serious matter, and if we find out that you’re lying to us, then we’re going to make things very hard for you down the line.”
“Oh, hogwash,” a woman’s voice, who could only have belonged to one person, said. “All of you know I didn’t do it. So what if Penelope was my life-long enemy? I couldn’t harm a fly.”
I cringed. Somehow, quoting Psycho killer Norman Bates in this situation didn’t seem like the best idea—
The sound of shoes pounded the floor behind me.
“Are you lost, ma’am?”
I spun around. A man I didn’t recognize was walking toward me. I noticed he was carrying a cup of tea – a steady flow of steam drifted up from the mug.
“I…” I stammered.
He stopped walking and I got a good look at him. The man had salt and pepper hair, a perfectly-trimmed mustache, and deep lines at the edges of his eyes that betrayed a life of hard and stressful work. He wore a navy blue suit and cedar-colored leather shoes – both things that looked a little out of place in this town.
“Um… I’m just hoping to give my aunt, um, her blood pressure medication.”
I smiled innocently, but I knew before even saying anything that this special investigator looking into Mayor Ashby’s death wasn’t going to fall under my persuasive powers the way young Bud at the front desk had.
Some people were easier to persuade than others, and I sensed that this man would be a harder nut to crack.
“You know, I’m going in there now with some tea for her. I’d be happy to take the medication off your hands and give it to her myself.”
I detected a hint of a southern accent.
I gulped hard.
“I’m afraid it comes with special instructions from the doctor,” I said, lying through my teeth. “If you would let me just talk to her a minute, then—”
“You can trust me to deliver the instructions in full, ma’am,” the special investigator said. “We want to make sure we take good care of your aunt while she’s here.”
The way he said it, in that comforting open-arms, big-hearted southern kind of way, I almost believed him. The special investigator had some persuasion of his own, and it was clear that my little attempt to breach the interrogation and talk some sense into Aunt Viv was dead in the water.
I reached inside my bag, pretending to rummage around for a prescription bottle I knew wasn’t there.
“Oh, gosh,” I said, tapping my forehead absentmindedly. “I must have forgotten it at home.”
I felt the investigator’s skeptical stare burning into me.
“I feel like such a fool,” I continued. “I’ll have to return with it. I hope it won’t be any trouble.”
The investigator leaned back on his heels and smiled warmly.
But his eyes… his eyes told a different story.
And they made it clear that he didn’t buy what I was selling for a single second.
“Don’t worry, Ms. Westbrook,” he said. “You didn’t cause any trouble at all. If that were my aunt in there, I’d be worried too.”
Chapter 17
“Nice try.”
I stopped dead in my tracks, mere milliseconds before running right into Eddie Cross and his ocean blues.
All the air left my lungs.
Even as I struggled for air, though, I couldn’t help but notice that he was looking particularly striking in the plaid shirt he was wearing. It brought out his eyes, making them sparkle even more than they already did.
And though I wasn’t breathing, I also somehow noticed the scent of his aftershave. Something that smelled like pines on a rainy coastal day.
It was the same kind he had started wearing that last summer before he left. Smelling it again made me lightheaded.
“Do they teach you that in journalism school?” I said. “To jump in front of people and scare the living daylights out of them?”
“No,” Eddie said. “That’s my own trick. Being caught off guard makes for good quotes sometimes.”
He glanced over my shoulder, down the narrow hallway where I had just come from.
“So they wouldn’t let you in, huh?”
I shook my head and made my way around him, back over to the uncomfortable waiting room chairs of the police station.
I was glad when he sat down next to me.
“I came close,” I said in a low voice, glancing over at Bud Madsen at the front desk.
The young officer was still gazing at me with that dreamy, blissed-out expression.
“But I got shut-down by that special investigator.”
“You losing your touch, Ging?”
I almost hit his shoulder playfully, the way I used to when we were so close and he’d say something like that just to get under my skin.
But I stopped myself.
We weren’t those kids anymore.
“No, I haven’t lost my touch,” I said. “I’m just… out of sorts, I guess. Aunt Viv’s trying to shoot herself in the foot in there, and there’s nothing I can do to stop her.”
“How’s she doing that?” Eddie asked.
“She kicked her own lawyer out. She said she doesn’t need one. And here the cops are thinking that she had something to do with Penelope’s murder. Can you believe that?”
Eddie shrugged.
“For most people, I’d say talking to cops without a lawyer is crazy,” he said. “But it’s Aunt Viv we’re talking about here. She never did like to do things the conventional way.”
“No,” I said, letting out a long sigh. “She never did. But in this case, would a li
ttle conventionality kill her?”
He let out a laugh.
I felt glad that I wasn’t sitting here all by myself, and that he was here to talk to—
Something dawned on me then.
“You’re here because of Aunt Viv, aren’t you? You’re going to write this up for the wires and say that the cops have a suspect in the mayor’s murder.”
I felt my eyes growing bigger, realizing I’d been babbling to a reporter all this time and not just to my old friend, Eddie Cross.
“You’re going to write all about her and Penelope’s feud. You’re going to make Aunt Viv out to be this crazy old bat who—”
“Whoa, whoa.”
He held up his hands.
“And then people will be reading that, and they’ll believe that she mur…”
“Just hold up, Ging.”
He looked deep into my eyes.
“Look, I’m not here to do any of those things. I’m not that kind of journalist, and aside from that, I’m not in the business of wrecking the lives of good people. And as far as I’ll always be concerned, your aunt falls into that category.
“Now, with that being said, I am here to talk to the Broomfield police chief about the progress of their investigation into the mayor’s murder. As far as I know, they haven’t arrested anybody yet for the crime. So your aunt’s name shouldn’t even be mentioned at this point.”
I watched him speak, trying to gauge whether he was being truthful or whether he was just selling me a story.
The old Eddie Cross that I knew growing up was as steadfast, honest, and as straight of an arrow as they came. He was nearly incapable of telling a lie.
Once, on one of those long summer days when we were kids, a group of us were throwing a baseball back and forth at Widow’s Field on the north side of town. Eddie’s throw went wild, and the ball crashed into old Janet Tolliver’s dining room window. We all ran away, including Eddie. But his conscience couldn’t handle it. He went back the next morning, showing up on her doorstep with all of his allowance money in a shoebox, offering to pay for the window he had broken.
That was Eddie then, and that Eddie I always knew I could trust.
But I also knew that I had to keep my wits about me.
It had been a long time since Eddie left that cold morning in September all those years ago. And I knew from my own experience that life had a way of changing people.
“All right,” I finally said.
A silence fell over the conversation.
I looked out the window that faced Second Street, watching as a couple of tourists carrying bags of kettle corn passed by, their thighs and arms lobster red.
“That’s gonna hurt tonight,” Eddie said, smiling.
I smiled too.
“So… So how long are you planning on staying in Broomfield Bay?” I asked.
“It’ll depend on the story,” he said. “And what my editor says. It might be that I’m here just a couple days. Or it could be a week, based on what else I find.”
He leaned back and studied me for a long while. I felt his stare burning into the side of my face.
“So do you have any kids yet?” he said.
My mouth went bone dry.
“Kids?” I said.
“Yeah. How long have you and Steve been married now? It must be like eight or nine years, right?”
Going through a separation and impending divorce was hard enough on its own. Dividing and breaking apart a life that had once been shared was excruciating.
But there was another part to that pain. One I hadn’t anticipated.
It was the shame you felt when you had to admit to someone that you failed at your marriage. That you couldn’t make it work.
I shifted in my seat before answering, taking my time in figuring out the right words. Bud Madsen was still staring at me, and I suddenly wished I had never exposed the poor guy to my persuasive powers.
“No on the kids,” I said. “And to answer your other question, Steve and I have been married for close to 10 years…”
Eddie glanced at the diamond ring on my left hand.
“Ten years! Time flies. That’s great,” he said. “Really. I mean that. Congratulations.”
I smiled awkwardly, feeling caught. Caught between the embarrassment of my husband fleeing town with his new girlfriend, and between feeling the flutter of my heart as I stared into Eddie’s eyes.
“Yeah, well the thing is, Steve and I are—”
“Eddie Cross?”
My tense muscles relaxed as Bud saved me from having to spill the ugly details.
Eddie turned his attention to the front desk cop.
“The chief can see you now,” Bud said, not looking at Eddie.
“Uh, great. I’ll be right there.”
Bud didn’t respond. His eyes were stuck to me like Krazy Glue.
Eddie looked amused.
“Well, I guess I was wrong, Ging,” Eddie whispered quietly before standing up. “You haven’t lost your touch at all.”
He grabbed his messenger bag from off the chair and slung it over his shoulder.
“See you around.”
“Wait… Eddie?”
I reached out without thinking, placing a hand on his arm.
My fingers inadvertently brushed up against the bumpy, raised skin of the long scar, and I felt myself flinch.
I hadn’t meant to touch it.
I cleared my throat, and he gazed back at me with a questioning look as I struggled to come up with words.
“It’s just that…”
I trailed off.
Ever since he got back into town, it seemed that I was always calling after him desperately with nothing to say.
He gave me one of those big, generous smiles of his.
“I think I understand,” he said. “We really need to catch up, don’t we? What do you say to dinner at The Chowder Bowl tomorrow night?”
I looked up at him in surprise, the words stuck in my throat like sand.
“I, uh… well, that would be…”
“I mean, as long as you don’t have any plans. Bring Steve along. I’d really like to meet him.”
“Mr. Cross, Chief Logan has a very limited window for this interview, so you should—”
“Okay, officer. I’m coming,” Eddie said, his eyes still fixed on me. “What do you say, Ging? The Chowder Bowl like old times?”
Like old times.
“That sounds really nice,” I said.
“I’ll see you and Steve there.”
He left before I could tell him that it would just be me.
Chapter 18
“Oh, stop acting like a modern day Elizabeth Taylor,” Aunt Viv said, pulling down the visor and fluffing up her blonde hair in the mirror. “I didn’t do a thing to our newt of a mayor. And besides, I’m still not convinced that it was actually murder. Penelope wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box, you know.”
I bit my lip to keep from saying the thing my mind had been screaming since she’d walked out of the police station.
Don’t you get it?! The cops are a shred of evidence away from locking you up forever!
“And anyway, I’m not so concerned about what the police think,” she rattled on, like we were having a conversation about what new herbs she was planting in her garden this summer. “Besides, they were very nice to me. They got me lemon tea and even a Snickers from the vending machine. Hon – they most certainly don’t treat murder suspects the way they treated me.”
She started fidgeting with the radio, flipping through stations.
“Look, Aunt Viv. You need to listen to me. This is much more serious than you realize,” I said, hooking a left off of Seabreeze Boulevard and onto the highway that followed the shoreline for a while. “Everybody knows that you and Penelope didn’t get along and that your feud goes way back. Maddy told me that half the town saw you get into that fight with Penelope after she almost mowed you down with her car. On top of that, you’re a quirky, witchy cat
lady who lives alone in a big Victorian house that the mayor was trying to turn into a historical landmark. Against your wishes, by the way.”
I shot her a sideways glance.
“Do you see what I’m saying?” I said. “Motive? I’d say in the eyes of the cops, you’re the one to charge for this crime. Not to mention the fact that—”
“Oh, Stevie Nicks in Scottsdale! This is my song!”
Not surprisingly, Aunt Viv had managed to find “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” – a Stevie duet with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. She started swaying in the seat, making hand motions with her arms as a gust of wind blew through the open window and sent her long blond hair flying around us.
I had just about had it with her.
I reached for the car radio dial and turned it off.
“Hey!” she shouted. “That was my song. They hardly ever play that one—”
“I’m trying to talk to you! And impress upon you that you should be taking this more seriously, Aunt Viv. Because if you don’t, then I don’t know what—”
“You worry too much, hon.”
I could feel my blood starting to boil. I tried desperately to think of a Dr. Honeycutt mantra, but my anger blocked them all out.
I turned to Aunt Viv, meeting her green eyes.
“I think most sane people would worry in a situation like this,” I said, curtly.
She shrugged.
“Okay. So you spelled out the situation the way you see it. I’ll spell it out the way I see it. I’ve got the truth on my side, and that’s good enough for me. I didn’t do anything to Penny, and I don’t need a lawyer who charges $325 an hour to buy himself more ugly ties, and I don’t need anybody doing my talking for me. I’m not going to worry about it. I can’t help what the police think, now can I? All I can do is be myself. They’ll draw whatever conclusions they will, but I’m sure it will all come out in the laundry.”
I rolled my eyes.
“I’ll let you in on a little secret,” she said, pulling down the visor again and applying a layer of her coral-pink lipstick. “I know everything’s going to be all right. Just like I know that I won’t be living alone for much longer.”
I furrowed my brow, unable to make heads or tails of what she was saying.