“Will chips and beer do?” Garrett asked, pulling items from the bags.
I snagged a beer out of the six-pack and toasted him with it. “Any port in a storm, baby, and it’s been raining cats and dogs out there.”
* * *
Dinner was a slightly quieter affair than it had been the week before, but I decided to bask in the glory of having gotten Evan to eat his green beans with minimal fuss rather than worry about the fact that Dan didn’t seem to want to look me in the eye. Garrett walked me home afterward. It was the first time I’d let him past the front door. “This is . . . colorful,” Garrett said as he stepped inside.
It was possible I’d gone overboard with the color scheme. If I had, though, I didn’t care. I’d moved from my crappy student apartment that I’d shared with three other cooking school students in Yountville to Antoine’s house in Calistoga. It had felt like a fairy tale to move into his beautiful home up in the hills with its gorgeous artwork and cushy furniture and eight-hundred-thread-count organic pima cotton sheets. I’d practically burned all my own stuff as I’d danced up the driveway into what felt like a mansion for me. I mean why bring my dresser with the drawer that stuck or even my half-burnt hot pads into that palace of perfection?
I knew the answer now. Because then some of the stuff in that house would have been mine. I don’t know if that would have made our marriage last longer or not, but I know it would have helped if I had felt like Antoine’s house was as much mine as his, and maybe I wouldn’t have always felt like a guest in what was ostensibly my own house. Maybe I would have felt like my own person and, well, what might have happened then?
Maybe I wouldn’t be back in my hometown with everyone thinking I’d tried to maim the local preschool teacher. “Hot chocolate?” I offered.
Garrett nodded. According to him, somehow all anybody in the town was talking about was the fact that I’d dislocated Jessica’s shoulder. The fact that she smelled like a brewery on her way to teach preschool at the church? Not so much. The EMTs pumped her full of painkillers so by the time anyone thought to see whether she was drunk, it was too late to test her. There was only my word that she’d been drunk driving and nobody was putting too much stock in that since I was facing assault charges. I’d told Dan at the scene that she was drunk, but according to him that wasn’t enough.
“You really thought the car was going to burst into flames?” Garrett asked. He sat at the breakfast bar in my kitchen.
“Why is that so hard to believe?” I handed him a mug of hot chocolate. “And why doesn’t anybody care that Jessica was drunk driving to school?”
“Because there’s no proof of that and there’s plenty of proof you wrenched her arm out of its socket.” He took a sip of the hot chocolate, stared at the mug for a second and then took a second sip.
I sat down next to him with my own mug. “It sounds so ugly when you say it like that.”
He cocked his head to look at me. “How else would you like me to say it?”
“I would like you to say I was trying to save her life.” I sat up straight, as befitted a hero like myself.
“By wrenching her arm out of its socket,” he pointed out.
I took the hot chocolate back from him.
“Hey, give that back. It’s really good.”
I held the cup up and out of his reach. “Not until you say it right.”
He sighed. “Fine. Rebecca Anderson saved Jessica James’s life by pulling her from a car that could have burst into flames at any moment. She should probably be given a medal.”
“Better.” I handed the hot chocolate back and gave him a chocolate chip cookie to go with it. Sometimes I bake when I’m angry. Of course, I also bake when I’m sad, when I’m happy, when it’s raining, and sometimes just because.
“You’re going to make me fat.” But he took a bite of the cookie anyway.
“Run an extra mile tomorrow. You’ll be fine. I’d like to know why no one cares why Jessica plowed into Mrs. Calvin’s oak tree.” I slumped over my own chocolate. It wasn’t cheering me up.
Garrett swallowed his bite of cookie. “Everyone cares. That’s why no one’s asking.”
I shook my head. “You are not making sense. Perhaps you’ve had too much chocolate and it’s gone to your head.”
“I’m making perfect sense.” He set the mug down. “Jessica is grieving, Rebecca. People do all kinds of things when they’re grieving. I would have thought you of all people would know that.”
Heat rose up my face. “That’s kind of a low blow.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. Although I do think you’d be cutting pretty much anyone else more slack than you’re cutting Jessica.” He gestured at me with the cookie. “This is really good, too.”
I chewed on that along with my cookie for a second. “I didn’t cut her slack because I didn’t believe it at first. I didn’t think Jessica cared that much about anybody except Jessica.” Except she clearly did. She’d been completely distraught since Coco died.
“Do you think maybe there are other things about Jessica that you don’t see clearly?” Garrett asked.
I chewed even longer on that and then said, “Nope.”
* * *
Monday morning, I got into POPS early, made the breakfast bars, brewed the coffee and opened the doors to find absolutely no one waiting on the sidewalk.
I looked down at Sprocket. “Where’d everyone go?”
He looked up and down the street and then went back inside and lay down on his bed.
“Maybe it’s the zombie apocalypse and we don’t know about it yet,” I suggested. Or maybe it was some kind of holiday. I checked the calendar, but no. No holiday today. I looked down the street. No zombies.
I finally went next door to talk to Annie. I should have known it was going to be bad when she refused to come out from behind the counter.
“There’s a rumor going around that you’re the one who killed Coco.” Annie shrank back like I might explode.
It was a good move. “That I did what?” I shouted. “Who would say such a thing? Who would believe it?”
Annie’s face crumpled a little bit. “I think you can guess who might say such a thing if you thought about it for a second.”
I plopped down in one of the chairs Annie had set up for consultations. “Jessica. Jessica is telling people I killed Coco.”
Annie came out from behind the counter and sat down next to me. “Not exactly, but she is stacking up evidence against you, Rebecca. You need to be careful.”
“What evidence? I had nothing to do with it. What possible evidence can there be?” Surely, if you were innocent there would be no evidence. Then again, there were constant stories on the news about people being released from prison after years and years because DNA testing proved they were innocent. I didn’t think DNA was going to help me.
“I guess you would call it circumstantial.” Annie tapped a pen on the table. “You were the last one out of here that night. You were the one who left the popcorn for Jasper that would lure him here to be set up. You didn’t want Coco to retire and maybe she was going to anyway. You were caught going through her papers at her house like maybe you were looking for the fudge recipe, and you’re a suspect in the attack on Barbara because there were fibers from your sweater in the broken window and you showed up at the crime scene like a lunatic. Then there’s dislocating Jessica’s shoulder.”
I laid my head down on my pillowed arms. “When am I going to learn?”
“Learn what?” Annie said, patting my head.
“To not let Jessica get me to make myself look bad all on my own. That woman should have gone into the diplomatic corps. She could have probably manipulated everyone to making peace in the Middle East if she wanted to. But no, instead she has to turn her superpowers on me.” I really had no one to blame but myself. And Jessica, of course. I could
always blame Jessica. That, at least, was comforting.
“Rebecca, are you listening to yourself?” Annie asked.
I flattened myself even farther down onto the table. “I am.”
“You do know that Jessica is mourning Coco just like the rest of us, don’t you?” Annie’s voice was soft but firm.
That was true. Not only had Jessica manipulated me into making myself into a murder suspect, she was also making me look like a selfish twit. I’d seen Jessica’s red-rimmed eyes, her uncharacteristic drinking, her shock at finding Coco’s body. Whatever else Jessica felt, she had loved Coco and was grieving. Maybe it was natural for her to try to pin the responsibility for that grief on someone she disliked as much as she disliked me.
Nasty and passive-aggressive and sneaky, but still natural.
“Remember, no one can make you do anything, Rebecca. You choose your own course,” Annie said.
My head shot up. “What?”
“I said you choose your own course.” She straightened some of the catalogs on the table.
That did not sound like Annie. “Have you been reading self-help books?”
Annie blushed. “Just one that Allen gave me. It’s got some good stuff in it.”
Annie was reading Allen’s self-help books. I felt almost as alone as I felt when Antoine had abandoned me in Minneapolis. I stood up. “Well, I think I better go donate my breakfast bars to the homeless shelter and figure out what to do to make the town realize I didn’t kill Coco.”
“Just remember, Rebecca. You need to be careful.” Annie’s forehead creased. “I know you didn’t kill Coco. Jasper didn’t kill Coco. Allen didn’t kill Coco. Someone, however, did kill Coco and probably doesn’t want anyone to know about it.”
* * *
I went to my shop. I mean, how much trouble could I get in there? Annie was right. I needed to stop sticking my nose into other people’s business. What did it matter if everyone thought Coco was planning on retiring? What did it matter if I never found the business plan? What did it matter if I spent the rest of my life in the town where I was born where everyone assumed I’d be the reckless screwup I’d been in high school?
The little bell over the door rang and Barbara came into the shop. She no longer wore her gauze bandage fascinator and was looking much more her usual self. “I brought you a little something,” she said, plunking down a package on the counter.
“What for?” I asked. It wasn’t my birthday.
“I felt bad that you got into trouble for picking those things up for me. Seriously, it’s like that Jessica is following you around, trying to catch you being up to no good.” She looked around at my empty shop. “It doesn’t seem to have been very good for your business, either.”
That was an understatement. “I was glad that Huerta didn’t insist on keeping your tracksuit as evidence.”
“Yes, and thank you for sending him with the clothes. He’s quite the eyeful, isn’t he?” She chuckled.
I blushed. “Barbara!”
“Oh, please. I’m old, but I’m not dead. Yet. Unless someone else decides to hit me over the head again.” She touched the top of her head gingerly. She pushed the package toward me. “Open it.”
I did. It was a beautiful antique set of containers for sugar and flour in a blue-and-white willow pattern that would look perfect in my kitchen. “Oh, Barbara. Thank you so much. You shouldn’t have.”
She waved a hand at me. “Don’t get too excited. They were in the shop.”
I motioned her into the kitchen and started water for coffee. “Speaking of the shop, did you make a decision?”
“I did.” She sat down at the table and looked around. “I really like what you did with this room. It’s so much brighter than before.”
I snorted. “That’s damning with faint praise. It was like a tomb in here before. So what was the decision?”
“I’m keeping the shop. Sort of.” She folded her hands on the table.
“How does one ‘sort of’ keep a shop?” I asked.
“I have this niece in Illinois. She just got divorced. She’s been out of the workforce for a while. She’s not quite sure what to do with herself. I suggested that she move here and become my assistant manager with a plan to take over the place when I’m ready to fully retire. This way I can still spend a few months a year down in Arizona. She finds a way to make a living. Her kids live in a nice small town that at least used to have a low crime rate. It’s kind of a win-win.”
“I should say so.” I poured us each a cup of coffee. “Do you remember anything more about the attack?”
“No. I wish I could. I’d love to help Dan catch the bastard who did this.” She took a sip and winked at me. “Good and strong. Excellent. I can’t stand that weak swill they serve over at the diner.”
I clinked my mug against hers and took a sip, then started shaking the leftover popcorn into bags.
“What are you doing with that?”
I sighed. “Putting this stuff out back for Tom Moffat. He’s been coming by to pick up the leftovers since Jasper was arrested.” I made a face. “He may not like women being in the workforce, but that sure doesn’t stop him from taking handouts from them.” I froze. “You don’t suppose . . .”
“Oh, don’t mind Tom. That’s just a bad case of sour grapes. He’s still mad that I wouldn’t marry him.” Barbara chuckled.
I sat up straighter. “You dated Tom?”
“I don’t know if you could call it dating. We had a few dinners together. Maybe shared a few smooches. He was quite the slobberer.” Barbara made a face. “Anyway, I said no when he proposed. I think he’s still mad.”
“I can’t imagine spending a lifetime with a slobbery kisser.” A shiver of disgust rippled my shoulders.
“Neither could Coco. He made a play for her, too, back in the day.” Barbara sipped her coffee.
“I had no idea that Coco had ever even contemplated getting married,” I said.
“I don’t think she did. Both of us liked being independent too much. We like everything in its place, and men . . . well, men just mess that up.”
* * *
After Barbara left, I texted Susanna and told her not to come in and closed POPS early. Coco would have shaken her head at me and told me it was important to be open when people stopped by, but I didn’t have it in me today.
Instead I went home. Not my apartment. Real home. The home where I grew up. Haley and Evan were deep in the construction of a fairly complicated Brio train-track configuration.
“So what were these big plans you had with Coco?” Haley snapped together a piece of wooden train track while peering at the diagram on the box.
“Oh, you know.” I ran one of Evan’s little wooden trains up and down my thigh.
“No, I don’t know,” she said with what seemed like an exaggerated amount of patience. I wasn’t sure if she needed the patience for dealing with me or for dealing with the wooden tracks. “I have no idea. I knew you two got together and talked a lot and cooked a lot, but until the funeral I had no idea the two of you were planning anything business-related.”
The reason Haley didn’t know is because pretty much nobody knew except Coco and me. We were keeping it on the down low until we were ready to put our plans into action. Maybe it sounds paranoid, but we both felt it was best to hold our recipes and plans pretty close to our chests. “We wanted to combine forces. We thought it would be fun to have a kind of chocolate and popcorn wonderland.”
“And what would happen to the shops you have already?” Haley got down on the floor and started laying out the track.
Evan started running his little train along it, making chug-chug-chug noises. “Finish, Mama! Finish track!” he yelled when he came to the end of it.
“Doing my best, sweetheart.” Haley pulled more track pieces from the plastic crate. “Your shops?�
�
“Well, I’d probably close POPS as it is now, but Coco was planning on giving her shop to Jessica.” I hadn’t told Coco that I thought Jessica wanted to run that shop about as much as she wanted to run a marathon, which is to say not at all. I’d figured that was Jessica’s business and that Jessica could take care of her own.
Haley sat back on her heels to check the box again. “So Jessica would profit quite a bit from Coco and you going into business.”
I squirmed a little. “I guess.”
Haley turned to look at me. “What are you not saying?”
“How do you know I’m not saying something?”
“You’re talking to the sister you spent a good deal of your adolescence lying to in some form or another. What aren’t you saying?” She shook a curved piece of track in my direction.
“Coco was going to give her shop to Jessica, but she wasn’t going to give Jessica her recipe, remember?”
Haley set both pieces of track down. “So?”
“That would make the shop worth a lot less.”
“Did Jessica know?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Coco wouldn’t have told her. I wouldn’t have told her. But Pearl told Ruby that Coco had made an appointment with Garrett to change her will. Ruby would have told Phillip. Phillip might well have told his son, who was currently Jessica’s boyfriend. “Maybe. I suppose she could have, but it would have made for a really long game of telephone.”
“When was it going to happen?”
“Sooner than I thought it would. Apparently Coco made an appointment to talk to Garrett about it,” I said.
“Do you have any proof that that was what she meant to do?” Haley asked.
I shook my head. “It was something we were talking about. Coco didn’t want Jessica to sell the fudge recipe. She knew I wouldn’t no matter what.”
“So it’s your word about it, like with the plan to open the new business.” Haley sighed and picked up the track pieces again. “It doesn’t matter, though, does it? Coco didn’t change her will. You guys didn’t open your new business. The fudge recipe belongs to Jessica along with the shop. Bad timing, I guess.”
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