Josie, who normally illuminated a room with a wide, toothy grin and wild gypsy clothes despite the scarlet letter of embezzler stitched across her chest, sat almost motionless with her legs tucked underneath her in the wooden chair.
Her hair hung in a limp mat that poorly concealed the dark circles ringing her eyes. It was like someone had walked over and switched off her light. There was no spark, no joy, and no smart aleck comebacks, just resignation that she was going to sit here in this cinderblock room under these depressing fluorescent lights and wither away.
I thought about putting on a false display of enthusiasm that this nightmare would end soon, but I couldn’t lie to my friend. Swallowing against the sudden heaviness in my throat, I mustered up a grimace. “It seems like you’re screwed.”
She finally laughed, a low, rusty chuckle that didn’t quite make it to her eyes. “Appears that way,” she said, flinging her leg out and letting her heel hit the floor between us with a thud. “But at least I got my jewelry removed for a while. You wouldn’t believe how that thing chafed.”
I rested my hand on her arm. “We’re working on it, Jo. Have they set a bail amount for you yet? I don’t have much, but I’m sure we can scrape together enough to—”
“It’s a million dollars.”
I cleared my throat. “Huh. There’s not a single place I could scrape where I’d come up with that kind of cash.”
“The judge said he normally doesn’t issue bail for a first-degree murder charge, but because I had people to vouch for me, he gave me a chance.” She snorted. “Although I’m not sure where he thinks I’m going to find a million bucks.”
“He was a friend of Scoots, I assume?”
She shook her head. “No, Scoots called him a flaming bag of dog biscuits.”
I rolled my eyes. “Sounds about right. She needs to work on her courtside manners. Who could it have been, then?”
She tugged at an invisible string on the scrunched-up sleeve of her jumpsuit and avoided making eye contact. “Judge Abernathy said it was somebody inside the station.”
Gage.
I stared out the window toward the hallway. The blinds were open, and I could see Gage’s office door was ajar. “You don’t think…”
She folded her arms across her stomach and leaned back in her chair. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I’m going to figure out who did this,” I assured her. “But you need to tell me everything.”
Her foot scuffed the floor in front of her. “I’m not sure what’s left to tell. Beau’s dead. They think I did it.”
I swallowed, then asked the one question I hadn’t been brave enough to pose before. “Did you?”
Her nostrils flared, and she pegged me with a tired glare.
“I had to ask,” I said. “But if you didn’t do it, who did?”
She regarded me for a long time before finally responding. “I didn’t kill him, Glory.”
“I know—”
“But I did threaten to.”
I reflected on the day before the murder when Josie had confronted Beau. Angry and hurt, she was full of foul-mouthed epithets about her ex-husband. “I remember. But you were in shock, and nobody blames you for reacting that way to seeing your ex-husband out of the blue after he flirted with another woman on national television.”
“Look, Glory, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I don’t think—”
“You threatened to kill a man who wound up dead, and you’re wearing an ankle monitor that puts you at the scene of the crime.” I slammed my hand down on the table, making Josie jump and earning a side-eyed glance from the deputy. “You’re my friend, Jo. And friends don’t let each other go down for murder. So tell me everything that happened the day Beau died.”
She took a stuttering breath. “I needed closure. And I didn’t get that in the meeting Mimi set up.”
“I understand,” I replied. “She caught you off-guard, and you couldn’t prepare. Not to mention the fact that you were practically in your underwear. Nobody envisions giving their retribution speech in a sports bra.”
She acknowledged me with a grunt.
I leaned forward, resting my arms on the tops of my thighs. “You were near the warehouse when it happened. Did you see anything unusual?”
“You mean, other than the throng of people and the parade of emergency vehicles?” She ran her hand along the bulky cotton jumpsuit, smoothing out the wrinkles. “I don’t think so. I tried to get as close as I could to the building, but there were too many spectators pushing and shoving. One man barreled out the warehouse door like a bowling ball, knocking people over all the way through the parking lot. It was all I could do to jump out of the way before he flattened me.”
I sat up straighter. “He came from inside, so he was part of the cast?”
“No, I don’t think he’s on the show.”
“What did he look like?”
“He was a big guy, attractive. He had dark hair that stuck out all over the place.” She fanned her face. “He was hot and kind of savage.”
Rocco.
I rocked back in my chair. Why was the hairstylist in such a hurry to flee the scene? Had he just dropped a chandelier on Beau?
After I said goodbye to Josie, I stepped into the hallway to find Gage leaning against the wall just past the other guard, his blond hair shaggy and several days of beard growth casting shadows across his cheeks.
The top button on his uniform was undone, and it looked like he hadn’t slept in a while.
He took a hesitant step forward when he caught my eye. “How is she?”
I nodded toward the visitation room. “Why don’t you ask her yourself?”
“Because she won’t talk to me.”
“Even after you went to bat for her with the judge?” I asked.
“How did you know about that?”
A smug smile crossed my face. “Just a hunch. Listen, where do you guys stand on the investigation? Surely you’ve got other suspects.”
He scrubbed his hand through his hair and studied the floor.
“You have other suspects, don’t you?”
“You know I can’t discuss this with you, Glory,” he said.
I invaded his space and jabbed my pointer finger into his chest. “Listen to me.” Jab. “Josie Lyons is a lot of things. Crazy. Impetuous. Far too reliant on crystals and her horoscope. But she is not a murderer.” Jab.
Gage swept a gaze over my shoulder and lowered his voice. “Don’t you think I know that?”
“Then why haven’t you found out who really did this?” Jab.
He grabbed my hand, his grip firm and angry. “I’m working on it.”
“It doesn’t seem like it from here. From here it looks like you’re standing back and watching a woman you care about go down for a murder she didn’t commit.”
“I’m following protocol. I don’t want to lose my job.”
I pulled my hand free. “Lose your job or lose the girl, Gage.” Jab. “Your choice.”
I spent the rest of the evening making a list of careers that would suit me better than wedding planning. I stared down at Rusty, who was curled up at my feet, a string of drool between his jaw and my sock, and added dog-sitter to the list.
Since I was brave and ready to try new things, I scratched out the word dog. If I could handle this hundred-pound beast and his predilection for stealing my underwear and eating most of my snacks, I could deal with a guinea pig or a potty-mouthed parrot.
I was just about to search online for pet sitting positions when a hesitant knock at the door sent Rusty into a barking fit. I stared at the clock. It was after ten, so it wasn’t likely to be a social call.
When I peeked through the peephole, I found Josie wiggling her fingers in the air.
I threw open the door and engulfed her in a hug. “You’re here,” I said, pushing back to study her.
She smiled. “I’m here.”
“But it’s late… and you… how?” I s
tepped out onto the porch and glanced down toward the street. “Did somebody slip you a scarf so you could escape from jail?” I whispered.
“Didn’t have to. Turns out I have a benefactor with deep pockets who paid for my freedom.”
“Who?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. All I know is that Hollis pulled me out earlier tonight and gave me a stern talking-to about staying nearby and keeping myself out of trouble.” She motioned toward her door. “And then they sent me home to wait for my court date.”
“Somebody paid your bail?”
“It appears so.”
“But who? Do you have any rich family members you weren’t aware of?”
Josie shook her head. “No. I don’t have anybody.” She paused for a moment. “Unless you count a couple of creepy cousins from my mom’s side, but last I heard, they were living on a goat farm in Texas and selling soap online. I doubt they even remember I exist.”
She slipped the key from underneath her mat and unlocked the door. She hadn’t been home in days, but when we stepped inside, every light in her apartment blazed brightly. Rusty gave an excited yip beside me and bounded toward the sofa.
Josie let out a soft gasp. “Scoots. What are you doing here?”
Scoots lifted a large plastic bag from the cushion next to her. “I have crabs.”
I wrinkled my nose...
“Took you long enough to get here,” she said, grabbing a bottle of champagne that had rolled into the gap between the cushions. “I posted your bail hours ago.”
When I heard a sniffling sound from behind me, I turned to see Josie with the sleeve of her shirt balled up in her hands and tucked under her trembling lower lip. “You… you did?” she asked. “For me?”
Scoots glanced at me like she wondered if Josie had left her senses locked up in jail. “Of course I did. What’s the good in having a fat bank account if you can’t spend it getting your friends out of the slammer?” She stuck out the plastic bag. “But playing superhero makes me hungry, so I brought over something to eat. Do you like crabs?”
I tried to hide a grin. “It’s not crab season, Scoots.”
“Don’t you think I know that, girl? These are from the freezer. It’s not like you can get celebration food this late at night from the gas station. I had to improvise.”
I took the bag and carried it to the kitchen. Sure enough, it was filled with breaded blue shell crabs. “What do you want me to do with these?” I called out to her.
The champagne cork popped, followed by the hiss of someone slurping up the bubbles. “Put them in the oven. I don’t know for how long or at what temperature, so don’t ask.”
I knew better than to argue, so I fished through the cabinets for a sheet pan.
Scoots continued. “You can wait and ask Beverlee when she gets here in a few minutes. She’s going to whip up some dill pickle tartar sauce to go with them.” She turned to Josie. “Do you have the stuff for dill pickle tartar sauce?”
Josie laughed and put her arm around Scoots. “I didn’t expect a party,” she said over sniffles. “But I can’t think of a better reason to have one.”
Just then, Beverlee swept into the apartment without knocking, followed closely by Rusty, who sat down on the floor and stared up at the counter as if he were hoping a crab would leap into his open mouth.
Beverlee deposited a fat bouquet of black-eyed Susans from her garden on the counter with a flourish, their sunny yellow blossoms bright against the dark wood cabinets. “Freedom flowers. Hopefully you’ll stay out of jail long enough to enjoy them.”
Scoots poured a healthy amount of champagne into four coffee mugs, then passed one out to each of us. “To freedom,” she said. “And to finding out who did this.”
We all toasted to that while Beverlee fussed about in the kitchen, chopping pickles and dill, and telling us about how Matilda had gone after the mailman. She held up the knife. “Oh, I forgot to tell you, Glory. Hollis got the official toxicology report back on your friend Caroline earlier tonight, and he was right—someone slipped something into her drink. Some kind of club drug. Poor thing was lucky it wasn’t worse—a few more sips, and he said she would have gone into respiratory arrest.”
I swallowed over the bubbles of champagne still lingering in my throat. “At least they can’t try to pin that one on you,” I told Josie.
“So, who can they pin it on?” Beverlee asked. “Who else was there for the party?”
“Unfortunately, most of the cast and a good portion of the crew,” I replied. “It went from being a girls’ night out to an on-location shoot pretty quickly. And Mimi is being shifty about letting me see the footage.”
“Have you reviewed the backgrounds of the people on the show?” Josie asked, reaching into the drawer in the side of her coffee table to lift out her laptop. “Because I could use a project to distract me from everything else that’s happening around here.”
“Have at it,” I said. “And start with Rocco. Something’s going on with him and Lily, and he was there that night, looking particularly ferocious and intense.”
After a few minutes of clicking her keyboard, alternating with shoveling food and champagne into her mouth, Josie’s brow furrowed. “Did you know your guy has a record?”
“What kind of record?” I asked. “And he’s not my guy.”
“A couple of drug possession charges, and… whoa.” She moved the laptop closer to her chest. “Three years ago, there was an incident where he was accused of stalking an up-and-coming Hollywood actress. He was arrested for possession of an illegal substance with intent to distribute it to a minor. It’s all right here in the court documents for the entire world to see.”
“And what happened?”
More clicking.
“Nothing,” she said. “Charges just vanished. He was all over the news, and then he disappeared. Aside from a couple of low budget movies a few years back, he didn’t show up in the press again until Romance Revival.”
My chest tightened. “And just in time to commit a murder.”
The next morning, after Shirley filled my mug and packed up a half dozen maple glazed donuts for me to snack on, I stopped by the police station to see Hollis. I found him sitting at a conference room table with a plate of fresh crab eggs Benedict and his own steaming cup of coffee.
I nodded toward the dish, a white ceramic plate with a bright blue ring. I had eaten waffles off those plates for years. “I’m glad I didn’t get you a muffin. It would have seemed suspicious if both of us showed up with food this morning.”
He rested his hand on his stomach. “I would tell you and your aunt that you need to come up with another way of trying to obtain information from me, but Beverlee is a superb cook, so I don’t want to discourage her.”
I cleared my throat.
“And you buy a great muffin.”
I agreed with a dip of my chin.
“Can I assume this isn’t a social call?” he asked.
I slid into a chair next to him. “Have you figured out who tried to hurt Caroline yet?”
“You know I can’t discuss that with you, Glory.”
I tilted my chin toward the stack of papers on the table next to his breakfast. “Can I ask if you’ve at least checked into somebody?”
He raised a brow but didn’t speak.
“The hairstylist for the show. His name is Rocco Sabatino. It turns out he has a history of threatening behavior against women.”
Hollis took a long sip of coffee. The only sound in the room was the liquid sloshing against the cup. “Go on.”
“I think he might be in love with Lily Page.”
“I’ve seen the Internet, Glory. Half the world might be in love with Lily Page.”
“Yes, but he was there. He was there when Beau was killed and was also there the night that somebody spiked Caroline’s drink.”
“If he is so in love with Lily, why would he try to hurt her sister?”
I shifted in my seat. “I don’t know,
” I finally answered. “It’s possible Caroline was keeping Lily away from him.”
He wiped his mouth with a napkin and pushed his chair back from the table with a scrape. “I love it when you visit, Glory, but trust me when I tell you we’ve got this under control.”
A flush crept up my cheeks. “What about the footage?”
“What do you know about the footage?” he asked, deep furrows slashing across his forehead.
“Just that there was a camera crew there that night. They probably captured something that the rest of us weren’t even aware of.”
“We’ve considered it already,” he said, transferring his gaze back to the papers. “And it was a dead end.”
“What do you mean? They were filming the whole time. Surely they got a shot of the person who drugged Caroline. And once we know who that is, we—”
He held up his palm. “According to Mimi Wakefield, the camera went missing during the chaos. Without that footage, we’ve got nothing.”
15
I stepped out onto my porch the next morning just in time to see Ian come to a stop on the street below me. He was wearing running shoes and his t-shirt was damp with sweat. I tried not to fan myself.
“It’s too early for all that exercise, isn’t it?” I called out, jogging down the steps toward the alley behind the pawnshop.
He shielded his eyes against the sun. “Shouldn’t you have been at work an hour ago?”
“Funny,” I replied, annoyed that he was right. I should have been down at the studio first thing this morning. Instead, I was sitting outside pretending I didn’t want Ian to pull his shirt off to mop his sweaty brow. “I’m waiting for Scoots. I have a favor to ask her.”
He chuckled and motioned for me to follow him toward the pawnshop’s back entrance. He entered the code on the lockbox, a rush of cold air slapping me in the face as he pushed the door open.
“Why do I have a feeling this favor will end up with you in hot water?” he asked.
I shrugged and leaned against a filing cabinet. “Because you have no faith in me?”
Tying the Knot (A Wedding Crashers Mystery Book 2) Page 13