Crazy, Stupid, Dead

by Wendy Delaney

  I sat across from her. “What’s going on out there? Leland mentioned some sort of a meeting.”

  Her mouth flattened into a grim line. “If you have to ask, then you didn’t get a load of what was going on at table nineteen.”

  That was the booth in the back corner—farthest from the kitchen and not visible from the main entrance, making it the preferred location in the diner for meetups that required a little privacy. “I didn’t get a chance before I was summoned in here.”

  The pucker lines above her coral lips signaled her annoyance. “Missy, you got summoned because you wanted me to let you know when I heard something about that Cascara company.”

  My thoughts immediately went to Byron since I knew this was his last day in town to try to get that deal done. “Is Byron Thorpe here?”

  “What?” Lucille screwed up her face. “No. The son running the outfit for old man Carpp is here.”

  Not alone, according to what Leland told me. “Meeting with someone?”

  Staring across the table at me, Lucille’s mouth pulled into a tight little smirk. “I’ll say. Gordon Easley and his wife.”

  “Whoa.” They had to be meeting with one of the Carpps about the sale of the house. Maybe in advance of meeting with Byron.

  I needed to get out there, so I peeled off the jacket and stowed my stuff in my locker. “Whose table is that?” I asked while I pulled on a clean apron over my plaid flannel shirt and regretted that I hadn’t worn something more waitressy.

  “Courtney’s.” Lucille started walking back toward the dining room. “But they’re probably gonna be finishing up soon.”

  In other words, hurry. “Will you let her know I’m going to take over? Tell her I’m an old friend or something.”

  With a nod she picked up her pace. “Will do.”

  Following Lucille out the kitchen door, I headed for the coffee station while Hector watched me through the cutout window.

  “Is something going on that I should know about?” he called out to me.

  I waved him off as I went by with a coffee carafe en route to the meeting I didn’t want to miss. “Don’t be silly. I’m just going to help out for a little while.”

  He chuckled. “Knowing you, help yourself out is probably more like it.”

  Sometimes, my reputation in this diner wasn’t the least bit helpful. But since I had refilled a few thousand coffee cups here over the years, topping off three more shouldn’t give anyone reason to look twice.

  Although by the arched eyebrows on Gary Carpp’s face as he watched me approach, it might have helped my cause if I hadn’t been the one to take his drink order last night at Eddie’s.

  “How many jobs do you have?” Gary asked as he pushed his cup toward the edge of the table for a refill.

  I aimed my best customer service smile at him. “Just one unless Duke gets short-handed, then all family members get pressed into service.”

  “You’re related to him too?” Paula Easley tightened her gaze while I poured. “My goodness, what an interesting family you have.” She glanced across the table at Gary. “She’s also related to Marietta Moreau.”

  Gary gave me a wink. “So I’ve heard.”

  Good grief. I didn’t want to be the subject of their conversation.

  I had the carafe positioned over Gordon’s cup when he shook his head. “No more for me,” he said, pressing his hand to his chest.

  Paula turned to him. “Are you okay?”

  Gordon didn’t look okay to me. He had the ashen pallor of a zombie from one of Marietta’s old movies, with a bead of sweat trickling down his temple.

  He took a long drink of water. “I’m okay. I just had too much coffee.”

  I’d developed plenty of sour stomachs from sucking down too many cups of Duke’s rotgut brew. I’d even broken out in a sweat on more than one occasion, but I was pretty sure I had never looked like the undead. At least not if I’d followed my usual makeup routine.

  He pushed away his plate with the Spanish omelet he had barely touched. “The tomato in this may have been a mistake.”

  “Would you care for something else?” I asked as Gary’s phone started to ring.

  Gordon put his hand to his mouth but was unsuccessful in stifling a belch. “Yeah, some antacid.”

  I couldn’t help him there.

  Paula moved their two plates toward me while Gary excused himself to take the call. “I think we’re done.”

  Dang! This meeting was breaking up, and I had yet to learn a thing.

  I carried their plates to the dirty dish cart on the other side of the thick half wall that separated this section from the main dining room. With no tables within ten feet of it, standing by the cart was the perfect place for Gary to take that call, but the only thing I could hear him say was “One o’clock? See you then.”

  “Sorry to interrupt,” I told him when he shot me an irritated glance.

  “No worries.”

  By the steadying breath he sucked in before striding back to the table, I had a feeling Gary was trying to convince himself not to worry about the brief exchange he’d just had, not me.

  I grabbed one of the water pitchers from the stand by the wall and started following him, but got waylaid by a tourist at the next table holding up an empty glass.

  By the time I’d refilled all their water glasses, Gordon had pushed back from table nineteen.

  “Do you think a little more water would help?” I asked him.

  Gordon grimaced as he stood. “With a pill I need to take, yes.” He looked at his wife. “I’m going to the drug store across the street. Be right back.”

  “I should get going too.” Stepping away from the table, Gary picked up the bill and then squeezed Paula’s shoulder. “We’ll get this done.”

  She nodded. “We need to.”

  I filled her water glass. “Everything okay?”

  Paula shook her head. “It will be, one way or the other.”

  I grabbed a napkin to clean the table, affording me a good look at her face. “I heard about today’s meeting with some of the other sellers. The way an old buddy of mine described it, you guys could be sitting on a pile of gold.”

  She pressed her lips together as if she’d taken a vow of silence on the subject, but not before the corners of her mouth quirked into a little happy dance. “I really don’t know—”

  “You probably don’t come here enough to realize what a small town this is. It’s really hard to keep a secret. Trust me when I say that there are a bunch of us who can’t wait to see what Cascara does with the property.” Please trust me.

  Paula glanced back at the table the water guzzlers were leaving. “Nothing’s a done deal yet for our property, so …”

  I slid onto the seat that Gary had vacated. “But you must be getting close, otherwise I can’t imagine that Mrs. Walker would have told me—”

  I clamped my mouth shut. “I probably shouldn’t repeat it.”

  Paula’s pupils dilated with interest while she schooled her features into a Mona Lisa pose. “You can tell me. I’ve been talking to the neighbor about this deal for weeks.”

  She had?

  No wonder Paula had wanted to pounce on that banker box like Fozzie on a pork chop when I mentioned that Naomi had listed the house. Paula hadn’t wanted anything to screw up this multimillion-dollar deal.

  “It was just that the word ‘negotiation’ was used.” Not by Vivian Walker but by Byron, when he asked me not to repeat what I’d heard.

  I shrugged as if such big words were beyond my comprehension. “Robin must have had a change of heart, huh? The last time I talked to her she was pretty determined to stay put.”

  Paula rolled her eyes. “I think her brother is going to have to be a little more persuasive than he has been so far.”

  “I’m sure it will work out. Really, it’s obvious the house is too much for Robin. When my grandmother and I went there to return that box of
Naomi’s things, we practically had to use a machete to get to the front door,” I said, dangling that bit of hyperbole in front of Paula to see what reaction I could get.

  Mona Lisa’s smile stretched with satisfaction. “It’s remarkable what can happen over the course of three months.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s been three months since Gordon’s heart attack.”

  Paula was telling me this as if it were common knowledge. “I didn’t realize …”

  She flicked a wrist. “Oh, he’s doing fine now that he’s not killing himself with that albatross of a house.”

  I remembered what Gram had said about Gordon helping Naomi with things around the house. I just hadn’t realized she had meant Naomi’s old house at the heart of this development deal.

  “So he was handling all the yard work for Robin.” And now there was three months’ growth of weeds taking over the landscape.

  “He did everything for her. No matter how sick it made him.” Paula’s eyes turned to stone behind her tortoise shell-framed glasses. “But that’s over now.”

  I wasn’t sure that I understood. “Because of his health.”

  Her lips thinned as if she needed to be cautious with her answer. “He needs to take better care of himself.”

  “Sometimes guys are stubborn and need our help with that,” I said, watching her carefully.

  Closing her eyes for a second, she blew out a shaky breath. “Indeed.”

  “He’s lucky to have you looking out for him.”

  Paula hesitated as if she wanted nothing to do with where this conversation was heading. “He’s doing much better. The heart attack was really just a warning.”

  “That some changes needed to be made, right?”

  Color flooded into her cheeks, telling me that I’d just hit a bull’s-eye. “Most of them small ones, like an aspirin regimen.”

  I could think of one great big one that Paula must have had a hand in. “But getting your husband out from under all the maintenance work of that house must have been huge.”

  She looked over her shoulder like she wanted to get out from under Duke’s roof and meet Gordon outside. “It’s been very good for him to relax on the weekends instead of coming down here to play handyman.”

  “I bet selling the house to get rid of that stress all together would be even better.”

  “That’s certainly my hope.”

  I had a sinking feeling that it was more than just a hope, and with Gordon Easley coming toward the table, I had time for just one last gasp at getting to the truth.

  “How many weeks ago did you start talking to Mrs. Walker about this deal that’s in the works?” I asked with enough volume for Gordon as well as Courtney taking an order three tables over to hear.

  “What are you two talking about?” he asked, standing next to his wife while opening a small box of antacid.

  “Nothing.” Paula set his water glass in front of him. “Take your pill and let’s go.”

  “Actually, I was just asking your wife about this development deal that she and some of your mother’s old neighbors have been involved in.” I looked across the table and noticed all the color draining from Paula’s face. “Because she said the discussions have been going on for several weeks, which really surprised me since it hasn’t even been a month since your mother’s funeral.”

  Gordon held the pill to his lips. “Going on for two weeks, maybe. Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “Well, sir, as a deputy coroner of the county where your mom died under some mysterious circumstances, it kind of is my business.”

  Whether anyone else in my department would agree with me might be debatable, but he didn’t know that. “So if your wife was aware of an offer on your mom’s house prior to her death, that seems like information that the investigating officer should have had.”

  Gordon turned to his wife. “What is she talking about? We didn’t get an offer until last week.”

  “Take your pill,” she bit out, the cords in her neck strained above the collar of her lavender pullover. “We can talk in the car.”

  Not so fast. “Gary Carpp was seen with his brother at your mother’s condo the afternoon of her death.”

  Gordon took the pill but frowned as if it were leaving a bitter taste in his mouth.

  “I heard from one of your mom’s old neighbors that the Cascara guys approached them around that same date, so it only makes sense that they went to her condo to make her an offer.”

  Gordon stared down at Paula. “You knew about this?”

  She swallowed. “I didn’t want to bother you with it in case it all fell apart.”

  “Bother me?” he repeated, raising his voice.

  “So I went to make sure—”

  “You went there?!”

  “Just to facilitate the meeting,” Paula softly insisted.

  Gordon’s head looked like it might explode. “Facilitate!”

  Her eyes glittered with tears. “I—”

  “You knew my mother wasn’t ready to sell.” Gordon slammed his palms to the table. “She couldn’t have made that more clear the last time you brought it up.”

  “No!” Paula slapped the table with equal volume. “She was more than willing to kill you with the burden of that wretched house, but I wasn’t.”

  His breath shuddered. “What are you saying?”

  Paula gazed up at her husband with tears trickling down her cheeks. “It was to protect our future together. Gordy, she was never going to sell. Your mother would have let Robin live there rent-free until the last dollar of her savings was gone. Then we’d have to support the two of them!” She wiped her eyes with her coffee-stained napkin. “You never would’ve been able to retire.”

  “No, honey.” Gordon dropped down onto the bench seat behind Paula as if his legs could no longer support his weight. “She was almost to the point where she would’ve had no choice but to sell the house. My mother knew it too. She even mentioned having another talk with Robin about moving closer to Hailey. All you had to do was wait a few weeks, and Mom would’ve finally been ready to say yes to the next offer.”

  While Paula buried her head in her hands, Lucille peeked around the corner. “Everything okay?”

  Hardly.

  I stepped away from the table and set Gordon’s water glass in front of him in case his stomach was churning with as much acid as mine was. “I’ll be right back.”

  “I need to call Steve,” I whispered in Lucille’s ear on my way to the kitchen to grab my phone. “Keep an eye on things for a couple of minutes, okay? And let’s shut down this section.”

  She puffed out her chest as if I had appointed her my junior deputy. “Then something really did go down.”

  Yep. Way down.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I WAS HIDING out in the kitchen with a plate of scrambled eggs to avoid Leland’s probing questions about why Steve had joined the “meeting” going on in the corner.

  Leland was a clever man. And since he was the one who called in the “murder” of his neighbor, I had no doubt that he could figure out that I had made today’s call.

  I just wished the detective I had called would now do a little communicating of his own, because the suspense was killing me.

  I was thinking that I might have to channel my nervous energy into baking (and eating) some cookies when I looked up and saw Steve striding in my direction.

  “What’s happening out there?” I asked, envying his calm demeanor.

  He stole a slice of cold toast from my plate and took a bite. “I’m going to take Paula and Gordon to the station for a chat.”

  “They were pretty talkative right before I called you.”

  Nodding, Steve swallowed. “I’m sure they were, but I think we all realized that this isn’t the private setting that our discussion will require.”

  “Got it. I do want you to know that I called as soon as it became ob
vious that Paula was responsible for Naomi Easley’s death.”

  Steve smiled, his gaze locked on mine. “I don’t know how you managed to get her talking the way you did. I probably don’t want to know. But you done good.”

  “Wow.” I wanted to bask for a moment in his praise, my insides turning as gooey as a block of chocolate over a flame. “Thanks.”

  Then he abruptly focused on some message on his cell phone. “It’s probably going to be a few hours before I can get to the hospital, so I’ll meet you there later if you’re itching to get going.”

  If Steve had wanted to dole out some mental whiplash, he was doing a great job of it. “What?”

  “Eddie texted fifteen minutes ago.” Steve grinned. “With some interesting spelling for ‘hospital,’ so Pop must’ve been pretty excited that it’s finally baby time.”

  Holy smokes!

  I checked my phone for messages. Nothing. Then it dinged with a text from Rox to both Donna and me.

  Just checking in at hospital. No need to rush over, but it looks like Jr will be coming out to play today!

  I leapt out of my seat and wrapped my arms around Steve. “It’s baby time!”

  * * *

  Four hours later, Steve found me pacing the corridor of the third-floor birthing center, the same thing I’d been doing since arriving at the hospital around noon.

  The waiting area at the end of the hall had been crowded with Rox and Eddie’s family members as well as some nervous parents of a young mother who had been in labor since early this morning. In need of a private place to talk, I pulled Steve back into the empty elevator he had arrived on and punched the button for the first floor.

  “How are you?” I asked after I gave him a proper kiss during the only moment of privacy we might be able to claim for the next few hours.

  Steve put his arm around my shoulder. “Tired. If I’d known we were gonna have a confession and baby doubleheader today, I never would have agreed to finishing that movie last night.”

  I elbowed him. “That was your idea.”

  “Maybe,” he said, taking my hand as we stepped onto the first floor. “Where we going? Cafeteria?”