And Coco’s murderer was in jail.
Dan and I didn’t talk until we’d gotten a booth at Bob’s Diner. We slid into the orange vinyl bench seats and then all I had to say was, “Tell me.”
He watched while apple-cheeked Megan Templeton poured us each a cup of coffee, gave her a smile and a nod and then said, “I wanted to ask him a few questions, see if he’d seen anything when he picked up the popcorn you’d left him.”
“Makes sense.” I’d wondered the same thing. “So what happened?”
Dan pressed his lips together and shook his head. “He acted strange from the second we got there. Too friendly at first. Inviting us in. Asking us if we wanted anything. As if either Huerta or I would be willing to get even a glass of water in that dump he calls a house.”
“Dan, you don’t arrest people—even crazy people like Jasper—for being too friendly.” I sipped my coffee and sighed. It was weak and tasted a little like it had been boiled. I set it down and pushed it away.
“No. I don’t arrest people for being too friendly. I do arrest them for having a large wad of cash that appears to be about the same amount that would have been taken from Coco’s register and several trays of truffles hidden in their home.” He placed both hands palms down on the table and took a deep breath.
I sat back. That was a lot of reasons to arrest Jasper. I’d always thought of Jasper as addled, but harmless. Sure, he was a big guy, but I’d never felt threatened by him. I shivered thinking of how I’d encouraged him to come by my shop after hours to pick up the leftover popcorn. “Did he say why he did it? Why he hurt Coco?”
“Nope. In fact, he says he didn’t do it.” Dan took a sip of his coffee and didn’t grimace at all. Did the man have no taste buds?
“Did he say why he had all that stuff, then?” I asked.
“Of course he did. He said that someone had left the money and candy on his doorstep during the night. He said Coco’s place was fine when he went into the alley. He walked up onto her porch because sometimes she leaves treats for him, too.”
We all did. Jasper was sort of a town responsibility we all shared, like snow removal and lighthouse upkeep. “What time did he come through?”
“He said it was around nine thirty. We’re checking to see if anybody saw him.” Dan drank some more coffee as if it were a totally acceptable beverage.
I thought about it for a second. “Could he be telling the truth?”
Dan ran his hands back through his hair. “If he was telling the truth, I’m not sure why he felt compelled to smack Huerta in the back of the head with a frying pan and make a run for it.”
“He did WHAT?” I squawked.
Megan picked that moment to come back over and take our orders. I somehow doubted it was coincidental. I ordered the grilled cheese and curly fries. Dan got a burger. Megan lingered long enough that I realized she wanted to hear about Jasper’s arrest as much as I did. News travels fast in a small town. When she finally left, I whispered, “He hit Huerta in the head with a frying pan? Is Huerta okay?”
Dan snorted. “Huerta’s head must be made out of granite. He did one of those cartoon doing-doing-doing faces for about three seconds, shook his head and took off after Jasper like he was still playing nose tackle for the Grand Lake Otters. Jasper did not stand a chance.”
Jasper wouldn’t. Jasper shambled. He did not run or even walk with purpose and determination. He stooped over with his long matted gray hair around his face like he was hiding inside his tent of dirty, baggy clothes. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him in anything that wasn’t mud colored. “And what was Jasper doing in the kitchen while you were questioning him?”
Dan looked confused for a second. “Oh. You think we were in the kitchen because he had a frying pan. Nope. He pulled that sucker out from underneath the couch. I’m telling you, we should have gotten shots before we went into that shack.”
Our food came and I stared at it. Why had I thought I’d be able to eat? Dan was already tearing into his burger. I picked at a fry. “Why would he have let you and Huerta into his house with the money and the chocolate lying around?”
Dan shrugged and took another bite of burger. “He acted like he didn’t even know anything bad had happened to Coco. It was after we told him there’d been a break-in and that Coco was dead that he pulled out the frying pan. I’m just glad that we can put this to bed. I wasn’t crazy about the idea of a murderer roaming the streets of Grand Lake on my watch.”
“Me, neither.” Apparently someone capable of murdering Coco had been wandering the streets of Grand Lake for pretty much as long as I could remember. I shuddered. I’d been alone in the alley countless times when Jasper had come along to pick up the leftover popcorn from me and dig through the trash behind the diner. I shuddered harder when I thought about the times he’d come by when Susanna was alone at the shop. And that was only since I’d moved back! It was crazy to think about how long we’d all discounted Jasper as crazy, but not dangerous. It was devastating to think about how wrong we’d all been.
Dan waved a hand in front of my face to get my attention. Apparently, I’d been staring into space a little too long. “So be happy it’s over. I know it won’t bring Coco back, but at least no one else will get hurt.” Dan took another bite of hamburger.
“Wait a second.” I ate another French fry while I figured out what was bugging me. “Do you think Jasper was telling the truth about what time he was in the alley?”
“We’re going to be double-checking to see who saw him that evening, but it sounds about right.” He pulled my plate toward him and started eating my grilled cheese sandwich.
“What was Coco still doing there that late? That’s not like her.” Coco was pretty much an “early to bed, early to rise” kind of gal. I couldn’t think of anything that would keep her at her shop that late.
Dan shrugged. “Working on her books? Planning new truffle recipes? I have no idea.”
I didn’t, either. And now we’d probably never know.
* * *
Sunday morning is my morning to sleep in. POPS is a seven-day-a-week prospect at this point, but all work and no play makes Rebecca nearly as homicidal as Jack Nicholson in The Shining. So I don’t open POPS until two o’clock on Sunday afternoons and I don’t get up until I wake up. Unless, of course, my cell phone rings at eight thirty in the morning. Then I roll over and fumble for the phone as it vibrates its way across my bedside table.
“Hello,” I mumbled into it, not looking to check the caller ID.
“Darling, are you all right?” Antoine asked with that hint of a French guttural R in right that used to drive me wild in a good way as opposed to the way it was getting on my last nerve at the moment.
“I was all right. I was sleeping.” I checked the time again. If it was eight thirty here, it was five thirty in California. Of course Antoine was up already. He’d probably already been to the farmers’ market and the fish market to pick out whatever he would use in tonight’s menu at L’Oiseau Gris.
“I have just heard about poor Coco. Quelle tragedie!”
I pushed myself up into a sitting position in the bed, careful to keep from knocking my head on the sloping ceiling. There are some downsides to an over-the-garage apartment and I’d learned that one the hard way the first week I’d moved in. Luckily, my head is almost as hard as Huerta’s. “How do you know about Coco?”
“It is right here on the front page of the Grand Lake Sentinel! How could I miss it?”
“Why are you reading the Grand Lake Sentinel? What could possibly interest you in that paper?” Seriously, they didn’t even have a Food section unless you counted the recipes they ran in Penelope’s Corner once a month, and most of those were for casseroles that involved crumbled up potato chips as a topping. Delicious, I grant you. Haute cuisine? Not so much.
There was a pause. “You interest me, so I am inte
rested in what happens in the town you live in.”
I leaned forward and rested my forehead against my knees and let that sink in for a moment. “Like you were interested in me in Minneapolis, Antoine?”
“Oh, chérie, will you ever find it in your heart to forgive me for that?” He sounded sad, but I knew better.
“Probably not.” Once you’ve been abandoned in Minneapolis in January, you pretty much carry it forever. Antoine had been taping a segment on winter comfort food. As the taping finished, he’d gotten a call from his agent telling him that he had a gig in Miami the next day. Antoine sent an assistant to get his stuff from the hotel and check out.
I’d left the hotel to go to the Guthrie for the day. I came back to find out I had no hotel room and no clothes but the ones on my back and that my husband had already flown from the frozen wasteland of the upper Midwest in January to go to sunny Florida. He’d forgotten I was even there.
“You have no idea how sincerely I regret that lapse in memory, mon coeur, but now we have more important things to discuss. It is not safe for you in this Grand Lake. Your friend, your mentor, your neighbor has been murdered! You must come back to California where I can keep you safe.”
I felt a twinge. Life with Antoine had definitely been easier. I hadn’t had to work unless I wanted to. Doors opened for me magically, if for no other reason than someone behind the door wanted to get to Antoine. I hadn’t had to worry about paying bills or calculating sales tax or how to take a day off. I also hadn’t been very happy.
I considered all the various responses possible to me. I settled on, “No,” and hung up the phone.
Six
Coco’s Cocoas stayed dark Sunday afternoon. There was no sandwich board on the sidewalk advertising whatever Coco had picked to feature that day. There were no lights on in the window. No fudge set out on doily-covered crystal platters in the window. It would have been disrespectful for Jessica to open the shop so soon, but my heart twisted uncomfortably in my chest anyway when I saw the dark windows. Jessica had already made an overture to Allen about selling the shop. She might never open the shop again. I wasn’t sure she should. She’d never be able to do Coco’s recipe honor. She didn’t have the kitchen sense.
Kitchen sense, however, was pretty much the only decent sense I had. I certainly didn’t have good sense in picking men. Or life paths. Sense and cooking muscle memory led me through my prep in POPS’s kitchen. Well, sense and Sprocket occasionally nosing me to break me out of staring into space.
Grief sucked.
Everything was almost ready. I flipped the sign on the door from Closed to Open and flicked the switch that lit up my window display. I was still putting popcorn balls on display trays when Janet Barry came in, pushing her double stroller.
“I wasn’t sure you’d be open,” she said as I held open the door for her. It wasn’t easy getting one of those land cruiser strollers through a door on your own. Her two-year-old, Lucas, was asleep in the back of the stroller, one chubby arm flung up over his head, the other dangling a woolly stuffed sheep over the side. The one-year-old, however, was wide-awake and banging his Yo Gabba Gabba! teether on the front rail of the stroller like he was auditioning as a drummer for Yo La Tengo.
“I wasn’t sure I would be, either,” I admitted. “Was there something in particular you wanted?”
“A tiny bag of the caramel cashew?” She said it as if she were asking for a little bag of crack, all whispery and furtive.
“If you give me a second. The fresh batch is almost ready. It’s best when it’s warm.” I patted little Jack on the head and turned to go into the kitchen.
He pointed the teether at Sprocket and said, “Bow wow wow!”
Sprocket replied with something along the lines of “Aroo roo.”
Jack laughed with such an open mouth that I could see all four of his teeth. Then he pounded even harder on the stroller. Sprocket crept closer and sniffed his tiny sneaker. The baby giggled.
“I’ll be right back.” I’d barely made it into the kitchen when Sprocket dashed past me to his bed in the corner of the kitchen and wailing started in the shop.
Poodles have notoriously soft mouths. It comes from back when they were hunting dogs. Sprocket apparently likes to show this off by stealing toys from babies or items out of purses or, really, whatever he thinks he can get away with. It’s not nearly as useful as carrying a duck without leaving any teeth marks, but he was still darned proud of it. Right now he was carrying the woolly sheep toy that I’d just seen in the hands of the sleeping Lucas.
I stood in front of Sprocket, hands on hips, and looked directly into his eyes. He sat.
“Drop it,” I said.
He did.
Lucas was wide-awake and screaming. Janet was trying to console him.
“I’m so sorry,” I said as I handed the toy back to Janet after rubbing the dog slobber off on my jeans.
She took it from me between her thumb and index finger like it had been dipped in Ebola rather than a little dog spit.
“The popcorn’s on me.” I turned to go back to the kitchen.
“Never mind,” Janet said. “I’ll come back later.” She trundled her way out of the shop, Lucas still screaming and Jack still banging with his teether and yelling, “Bow wow wow wow wow.”
I turned to give Sprocket a dirty look. “You keep losing me customers and I’m going to start buying the generic dog food for you.”
He lay down and put one paw over his eyes.
The door jingled and Susanna came in. “What’d the beast do this time?” she asked, going to get her apron.
“Stole a toy from a baby.” I shook my head in disgust.
“Again?” She shook her head at Sprocket. He sunk lower and put his other paw over his eyes as well. “Well, at least he feels bad.”
“He’s faking it. Don’t be taken in by those big brown eyes.” I headed into the kitchen to finish getting the caramel cashew popcorn ready in case Janet Barry actually did come back.
When I came back out, Sam Vander sat with his ridiculously long legs stretched out and propped on the chair opposite him. “Sam, get your shoes off the furniture.”
“Yes, Ms. Rebecca.” There was something about Sam’s tone of voice. I was never sure if he was being sincere or being so incredibly sarcastic that it sounded sincere. He gave me his full smile now and I decided it didn’t matter as long as he got his feet off the chair, which he did.
“And you have to get up if we get real customers,” I added.
“I’m not a real customer?” Sam scratched Sprocket under the chin. Sprocket’s back leg thumped the floor in appreciation.
“No. You’re not.” What Sam was was Susanna’s boyfriend. Maybe. They certainly spent a lot of time together for two kids who didn’t have a lot of spare time. Susanna had lacrosse and youth group at the church and, of course, her job at POPS. Sam, who had a wingspan that could almost rival Michael Phelps’s, could stand in the goal and block soccer balls all day while barely moving his feet. Plus he went to the church youth group meetings, too, and, come to think of it, spent an awful lot of time at POPS as well.
I went back into the kitchen and got two popcorn balls that had come out more like popcorn amoebas and gave them to Sam. He ate the first one in two bites. Honestly, it was like watching a snake unhinge its jaw to swallow a goat. “I think you might be the shop garbage disposal.”
He laughed. “That’s what my mom says about me, too. And coach. And Miss Jessica sometimes.”
“Poor Miss Jessica,” Susanna said. “She’s not doing so hot.”
“Grief is hard.” I knew that all too well. “What’s going on with Miss Jessica? Something in particular?”
“She feels so guilty about not checking on Ms. Coco. She kind of collapsed at church this morning. Mr. Meyer had to drive her home,” Susanna said.
I did not roll my eyes and I did bite back the twenty-seven sarcastic remarks that were on the tip of my tongue even if swallowing them down was harder than swallowing a dry scone. It was like Jessica was going all over town making sure people saw how much she was grieving. “We all feel guilty about not checking on Ms. Coco. Annie feels terrible. She was on the back porch to drop off sachets and didn’t go in. I feel awful, too.” I wasn’t collapsing publicly and making it all about watching me have appropriate emotions, though, was I?
“Yeah, but Miss Jessica was out. It wouldn’t have taken her more than a minute or two to check on Miss Coco,” Sam said.
I smiled. Ah, the egocentrism of teenagers. “I’m not sure I’d call running the ice cream social for the youth group being out. What time did you finish up?”
“I helped Miss Jessica carry the last few things to her car at about nine fifteen. She was going to the store to buy some bandages for the burns on her fingers and then going home.” Sam ate the second popcorn ball and then let Sprocket lick his fingers clean.
I made a face. “Wash your hands, Sam. That’s pretty precise recollecting.”
He grinned. “I didn’t have to be home until ten and neither did Susanna.”
Nine fifteen. Just a few minutes before Jasper would be looking in Coco’s back window, breaking it and then killing Coco for a few hundred dollars and some truffles. No wonder Jessica felt guilty. If she’d driven by, she’d have caught Jasper in the act. I felt another twinge of sympathy for her. I’d never forget her red eyes and pale face at the shock and horror of finding her aunt dead. I shook myself. She didn’t check on her aunt. She hadn’t seen Jasper and Coco was dead. No wonder she was falling apart all over town.
I told Sam to stop tilting his chair back before he broke it and went back to the kitchen to make more popcorn.
* * *
Sprocket and I were getting ready for bed when I heard Dan tear out of the driveway on Sunday night. I texted Haley: What’s going on?
A few seconds later, my phone chirped with Haley’s return text: Another break-in.
Kernel of Truth Page 6