by Kylie Logan
“Then she can start by telling me where she was last night.”
“With me,” Declan told him. “All night. We left here, went to Pacifique, had a glass of wine and a snack, went to bed.”
“So you’re”—Gus pointed one meaty finger in my direction—“his alibi.” He swung his finger around to Declan. “And he’s your alibi.”
“And believe me, we wouldn’t be covering for each other,” I assured him. “Declan never met Meghan.”
“But you knew the victim. You knew her lifestyle and her friends. Who else might want to see Meghan Cohan dead?” Gus asked me.
I couldn’t help myself. I burbled out a laugh. “My guess is just about everyone who ever met her, and for sure, just about everyone who ever worked with her.”
“Ah, someone who worked with her.” Gus threw out the comment, as innocent as can be, but that didn’t change a thing.
I knew what he meant, and the realization froze me to the bone.
Yikes! Bad analogy. I mean, considering what had happened to Meghan.
Still, that didn’t change the truth and the truth was this—my former employer was dead, and with each passing minute, I was looking more and more like the prime suspect.
* * *
• • •
THE FORENSIC TEAM finished with the kitchen right before I got in there, which meant it was still as much of a mess as it was when I walked into the Terminal that morning.
I propped my fists on my hips and looked it over. “This is going to take some doing.”
“You got that right.” George carried an armload of pots and pans over to the sink that Dolly had already filled with hot, soapy water. “But we’ll be good to go by lunch.”
And we were.
Of course, by lunchtime, the Terminal was also overflowing not only with our usual customers, but with media, Meghan’s fans (there were plenty of them and they heaped flowers near our front door), and the curious.
“No order, no eat, no table,” I reminded Dolly and Inez because I remembered when the Lance of Justice was killed and how a lot of the media just wanted to camp out and get information.
“I still can’t believe it.” Since Dolly had a tray of cannoli in one hand and a tray of tiramisu in the other, she couldn’t dab at her damp nose so she had to sniffle. “I remember Meghan in Sunset over Sarasota. She was so beautiful. And remember that other movie . . . that . . . Oh, I know which one it was. Meghan was a princess who was kidnapped by pirates and there was this tropical island and the dashing pirate and . . .” Her sigh made the tiramisu jiggle.
I remembered that movie, all right. While it was being filmed, I’d spent two months in the Caribbean with Meghan keeping her happy—culinary-wise—while I cooked my way around mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds.
“She married him, didn’t she?”
Dolly’s question snapped me out of the memory, which was just as well because I was starting to itch.
“She? Married who?”
“Meghan, of course. She married the guy who played the pirate.”
“Rolph Longstraw, yes.” I didn’t bother to mention that Longstraw was the most egotistical, least mature man I’d ever met. There was no use disappointing Dolly. The way her eyes shone, I could tell she still dreamed of that scene with Meghan and Rolph in front of the bonfire on the beach.
“They were married for a while.”
“Two years, six months.” Dolly’s cheeks shot through with color. “At least that’s how I remember it.” And with that, she raced off to deliver desserts.
I went up front to see if Sophie needed any help at checkout and was just in time to see Declan sidle his way through the crowd waiting to be seated.
“Looks like murder is good for business.”
Luckily, he said it quietly enough that no one but me could hear, but just in case he decided to say anything else inappropriate, I crooked a finger and beckoned him to join me in the kitchen. We pushed through the swinging door and the noise of the restaurant receded.
“It’s nuts.” Not that Declan needed me to tell him that; he’d seen the crowds in the waiting area, the TV trucks out front. “Anybody try to get you to talk?”
“Everybody.” When I got bottles of water out of the fridge and offered him one, he took it and cracked it open. “It’s mostly the local media now, but I have a feeling the national media is going to be showing up here any minute now. The news is all over TV and the radio.”
I leaned back against one of the high stools pulled up to the stainless steel counter and while I was at it and because I knew we were going to need it, I started rolling spoons and knives and forks in paper napkins. “And I don’t suppose any one of those news stories can explain what Meghan was doing here in Hubbard.”
“Gus is dodging and feinting for all he’s worth. So far, he’s been pretty successful avoiding the questions.”
“That’s because he doesn’t know the answers. Has my . . .” My throat went dry so I took a long swig of water. “Has my name come up?”
“I’m not going to lie to you. Wish I could. But, yeah, some of the media outlets have gotten hold of the fact that you work here, that you used to work for Meghan, and that you’re the one who found the body.”
I cringed. “Has anybody decided that I’m the murderer yet?”
“Come on!” Declan pulled me into a brief hug. I have a feeling he might have kissed me, too, if not for the fact that at that moment, George came out of the basement, carrying a case of canned tomatoes. “Nobody thinks you did it,” he said.
“Nobody but Gus.” I plunked down the newly rolled silverware in my hand. “You know the only way to prove him wrong is to figure out who really did it.”
A smile tickled the corners of Declan’s mouth. “I’ve been waiting for you to say that.”
“You’ll help?”
He thought it over, but only for a heartbeat. “Of course. Only, where do we start?”
I pushed my hands through my blond hair. That’s when I realized it was still down around my shoulders, the way it had been when I walked into the Terminal that morning, and I grabbed a ponytail holder from a nearby drawer and scooped my hair out of the way.
“We have to figure out what she was doing in Hubbard.”
“And why she didn’t want anyone to know she was here,” Declan added.
“And why she was looking through my things.” I thought about what I’d told Gus, about the night I hightailed it out of Meghan’s grand mansion so I didn’t have to face her again the next morning. Though Inez, Dolly, and George had cleaned up all the pots and pans and silverware that had been scattered in Meghan’s search of the kitchen, I’d asked them not to touch the cookbooks. Those, I wanted to organize myself since I knew which ones I used most often and which I’d be looking through in the next few weeks for Italian recipes. Automatically, I glanced over them there on the floor.
“My cookbooks at home were a mess, too,” I said.
Declan got the message. “You think that’s what she was looking for? Cookbooks?”
“Maybe not the cookbooks themselves. Maybe something in them?”
It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the closest we’d come to one and we didn’t wait another minute. I cleared off a space on the counter and together, Declan and I retrieved the cookbooks.
Chapter 5
“I don’t care what Gus says. If I knew Meghan was in town . . . if I was in touch with her like Gus thinks I might have been . . . then why would she need to wear disguises to come here to the restaurant to see me?”
“Excellent question.” Declan scooped up the last of the cookbooks from the floor and plunked them down on the stainless counter. “You know Gus is going to say it’s because you and Meghan didn’t want anyone to know you were meeting.”
“Then why would we do it here at the restauran
t? We could have met at Pacifique.”
“Playing devil’s advocate here.” Declan held up both hands, palms out, to distance himself from whatever he was going to say. “You were supposed to meet at Pacifique. Meghan came here disguised as the old guy to get last-minute instructions. Or last-minute directions to your house. She got there before you did and she would have stayed and waited for you if Otis didn’t see her and scare her off.”
“And she trashed the house as a sort of welcome-home present for me then came back here the next day in a different disguise?”
Honestly, I didn’t expect Declan to answer so I didn’t even give him a chance. “How did she even know where I live?”
Thinking, Declan pressed his lips together. “As the old guy, she could have asked someone. Everybody around here knows you inherited Pacifique last year. If Meghan knew even that much, it wouldn’t have been hard to find you.”
I wrapped my arms around myself. “I don’t think I like the thought of people talking about me. And I’m sure I don’t like the thought of some creepy guy asking where I live and one of our neighbors telling him.”
“I have a feeling Meghan would have been a little more subtle than that.”
“Maybe,” I conceded. From my days of working with Meghan, I knew she didn’t have a subtle bone in her body. But then, when you’ve got the face and the fame and the money, you don’t need to be subtle. Disguised as the old man, she might have needed to be more clever to get the information she was looking for.
“Dolly.” I groaned. “When I said something about the old man to Dolly, she said he was chatty. He sure wasn’t chatty with me.”
“You want me to have a talk with her?” Declan asked.
He should have known better. “I can handle Dolly,” I assured him. “As for all these cookbooks . . .” We both looked over the mountain of books in front of us.
“That’s a lot of cookbooks,” he mumbled.
“It takes a lot of recipes to keep a restaurant going. I usually make up my own, but sometimes it helps to get ideas from various sources.”
“And your cookbooks at home are messed up, too.”
“You saw it yourself last night. Except for picking them up off the floor and piling them on the kitchen table, I haven’t touched them.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing. If we don’t find anything interesting in this batch . . .”
“I can’t imagine what we’re even looking for.” I couldn’t help but sigh. Like Declan, I stepped back and sized up the number of books along with the enormity of the task. “It’s not like I tucked one-hundred-dollar bills in the pages to mark them.”
“Then we know Meghan wasn’t looking for one-hundred-dollar bills.”
It was a brilliant deduction that got us nowhere.
“Except . . .” Again, I looked over the variety of titles. Irish cookbooks, French cookbooks, Italian cookbooks, Japanese cookbooks. All used for our Ethnic Eats menus. (And just for the record, sushi did not go over well with the Hubbard crowd.) There were a lot of other, nonethnic titles, too: cooking with cheese, cooking without cheese, vegetarian delights, vegan cooking, desserts, desserts, desserts.
“If Meghan was looking for something, then it must have been something she suspected she’d find in one of my cookbooks.”
“Brilliant, Sherlock!” Declan’s sour tone negated the message.
“But wait, hear me out. If she was looking for something she suspected might be in one of my cookbooks, maybe it was something she put there. And if she put it there—”
“It would have to be in a cookbook you brought here with you from California!” He got what I was getting at and grinned. “That really is brilliant. So tell me, which of these books moved here with you from sunny California?”
“Not Irish. I hate to wound your ego, but Meghan didn’t exactly consider Irish cuisine anything she wanted to serve at dinner parties.”
“Her loss.”
I picked out those books and set them aside along with the French-inspired cookbooks Rocky Arnaud had loaned to the Terminal when we first discussed featuring the foods of her homeland. “This dessert one is new.” I handed it to Declan so he could add it to the pile. “And John and Mike over at the Book Nook got this one on wine pairings for me just a couple of weeks ago.” That one, too, got put to the side. “Some of the ones on Italian cooking, yeah, I had those back in California. In fact, I bought a couple of them in Tuscany the last time I was there with Meghan.” These I separated into another pile. “And this one and this one and this one . . .” The second pile grew larger. “These are all books I already owned when I worked for Meghan.”
“It helps. A little.” Declan pulled two of the high stools up to the counter. “Now we go through them.”
“So what are you looking for?” Dolly breezed through the swinging door that led out into the dining room, an empty iced tea pitcher in one hand. “A recipe? Maybe I can help.”
I figured this was as good a time as any to clear up the mystery of how Meghan found me. “You can help by telling me what you and the old guy talked about the other night.”
“The old guy?” Dolly’s eyes went wide. “You mean Meghan! Ohmygosh, if I knew that was her, I would have fainted right there at her table. Imagine, being that close to greatness and not even realizing it. I felt like such an idiot when I found out it was really her in disguise. I mean, I should have known, right? I’ve seen every one of her movies.”
“I worked for her for six years and I didn’t know it was her,” I told Dolly. “Now, you were saying, about what you two talked about?”
“Well, actually . . .” The sheen of excitement in her eyes never dimmed. “I was thinking about it. You know, after the cops were finished here in the kitchen and we got everything cleaned up and washed up and put back where it belongs. And if that was just any other customer, I wouldn’t have cared. But once I knew it was Meghan, well, I didn’t want to forget what happened. Not one moment of it. So I was thinking and . . .” She whipped a piece of paper out of her pocket. “I wrote it all down.”
I wanted to be sure. “You wrote down what you and Meghan talked about?”
Dolly nodded. “As much as I can remember. You know, for my scrapbook.”
“So what did you talk about?”
She set down the iced tea pitcher, the better to consult her notes. “Well, he . . . she . . . she asked for coffee and I said I’d be happy to get her some. And then when I brought it over to the table, I forgot the creamer. See . . .” She pointed to a line on the page. “I said right here that I forgot the creamer and I apologized and went and got some and brought it back to the table. Oh, if only I’d known who it really was sitting right there!” She groaned. “We could have had our picture taken together. I could have gotten her autograph.”
“I think the whole point was that she didn’t want to be recognized,” I said.
“Well, I didn’t recognize her. Not for a moment. Which just proves what a wonderful actress she is. I can’t believe she never won an Oscar. Can you believe she never won an Oscar?”
“And then what did you two say to each other?” Declan did his best to get Dolly back on track.
Lucky for us, Dolly didn’t read the rest of her report word for word. She looked it over. “I asked about the weather. She said it was raining. I said I hadn’t seen her at the Terminal before and she said it was her first time. Then she asked . . . well, Laurel . . .” I guess she remembered this part because she didn’t have to look at the paper. She clutched it to her chest.
“She asked if you worked here.”
“And you told her I did.”
“Well, of course.” Dolly laughed. “And then she said something about how people don’t always live close to where they work.”
“And that’s how you happened to mention where I live.”
“Sure. We were just
making small talk. And people love hearing the story about how you inherited that cute little farm of yours and . . .” The smile faded from Dolly’s face along with every last little bit of color. “Oh my. They’re talking out front. They said they think Meghan’s the one who broke into your house. That’s how she found out where you live. I . . .” She gulped down a breath. “I told her.”
“You did.” I was not about to forgive and forget. Not easily. Just so she was sure to get the message, I looked Dolly in the eye. “You made it possible for Meghan to trash my house, and who knows what would have happened if I came home and she was still there.”
“Well, nothing would have happened!” I was obviously the biggest dolt in the world to think it might. That’s what the look on Dolly’s face told me. “Meghan was the sweetest, the kindest, the gentlest soul in the world. She just wanted to see you, that’s all. What might have happened!” She chuckled. Then her lower lip protruded. “What happened is what happened to poor, sweet Meghan.”
“Which we might figure out if we knew what she was doing here,” I mumbled.
“Poor Meghan.” Dolly’s eyes filled with tears. “She was so beautiful, and so talented, and so young. What a terrible tragedy. I’ll bet that detective who was here, I’ll bet he asked you if you knew anyone who would like to see Meghan dead.”
I sloughed off the question. “It’s one of those standard things they always ask.”
“Maybe. But you’ve got the inside track.” When she shivered, Dolly’s sparkling earrings caught the light and twinkled at me like pink and blue and yellow stars. “You knew Meghan like no one else did. You worked with her.” Her sigh heaved the front of her maroon polo shirt with a picture of the Terminal embroidered over the heart. “You were so lucky. You had the best job in the whole, wide world.”
At one time, I would have agreed with her. But that was before I found out how demanding and vindictive Meghan could be.
Now, of course, was not the time to mention that. If I needed a reminder, it was the yellow and black crime scene tape slapped over the door of our walk-in freezer.