Andy leaned against the kitchen sink and motioned me over for a power hug. “Let it go, Tobi. It’s just one dinner and there’s enough of us here we can talk around her if necessary. Don’t let her presence ruin a really cool idea.”
He was right and I knew it. But still, I had to have my say. Because, well, I’m not exactly a fan of silence. “Her presence shouldn’t even be an issue because she shouldn’t be here. This is supposed to be for family and friends. She qualifies as neither.”
“She was there last night, to cheer you on.”
I stepped out of his embrace and made a face. “She wasn’t there to cheer me on. She was there because my grandfather invited her and she has the hots for him.”
Bookending my shoulders with his hands, Andy waited until my gaze met his. When it did, he gave me the smile that generally turned my legs to mush. But even the addition of his dimples didn’t work this time. I was aggravated. Plain and simple.
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, sweetheart, but your grandfather has the hots for her, too.”
I shuddered so hard all conversation in the other room stopped for a moment. When it resumed, I marched over to my cabinet, reached inside the Cocoa Puff box I’d opened for sustenance while I was cooking, and pulled out a gorilla-sized handful. “I don’t get it. What does he see in her? She’s mean-spirited, her breath is questionable, and she bears an uncanny resemblance to the beast currently sitting under the table—uninvited, I might add.”
“Apparently your grandfather sees something very different when he looks at Ms. Rapple.”
“Does Medicare cover eye transplants on wiry bald grandfathers?” I groused. And when I say groused, I mean groused.
Andy waited as I shoved the last few puffs into my mouth and then pulled me close once again, his breath against the top of my head a comfort. “I know she’s not who you would have picked for your grandfather.”
“I wouldn’t pick Rapple for the delivery guy who dropped my pizza on the sidewalk last week, either.”
The sound of a throat being cleared in the general vicinity of the kitchen doorway made me jump back in time to see my grandfather’s hooded eyes gazing back at me. “I thought I’d check and see if you needed any help, Sugar Lump.”
I looked from Andy, to my grandfather, and back again as my heartbeat rose into my ears.
Uh oh.
“Grandpa, I—”
He stepped all the way into the kitchen, pointed at a bowl of green beans on the table, and then hooked his thumb in the direction from which he’d come. “I’ll take these out to the table before Carter starts lecturing everyone on the importance of greenery at all meals.”
I looked to Andy for help, but his eyes were cast down at the floor. Mine joined his until my grandfather (and the beans) were en route back to the living room.
“Please tell me you don’t think he heard me,” I whispered.
Andy’s answer came via his silence and a squeeze of my left hand.
“Crap.” I raked my hand through my hair only to realize, as I did, that I’d completely screwed up the braid I’d let Carter do when I returned from the pet shop that afternoon. Great. Now Carter would be irritated, too.
“Come on, Tobi, let’s just get everything else out to the table and keep things light. With any luck, by the time we’ve eaten and played a few rounds of whatever themed charades Carter has up his sleeve, your grandfather will have forgotten everything.”
I think I managed a placating smile.
And I know I grabbed the basket of rolls and pointed Andy toward the butter.
But as I followed him back out to the table, I knew the chance of my grandfather forgetting what I’d said was slim to none for two simple reasons. One, my grandfather forgot nothing. Ever. And two, the sadness in his eyes as I returned to my seat and encouraged everyone to dig in for dinner was impossible to ignore no matter how hard I tried.
Still, I tried…
I talked about my meeting the next day with a potential client—a microbrewery out in St. Charles County.
I prompted Mary Fran to share some of the more funny stories about Rudder and the rest of the pet store gang.
I quizzed everyone on their feelings about the last episode of the newest, yet incredibly addicting, reality TV show, Suburban Warrior.
And I encouraged Carter (with the help of a few effective under-the-table kicks) to do what he did best—entertain.
Occasionally, when I snuck a peek at my grandfather, I saw him nod at something that was said. A few times, he even spoke when addressed. But the mischievous sparkle that was as much a part of my grandfather as his love for me was noticeably absent. And it was my fault.
Somehow we made it through dinner and dessert. But it was while eating the chocolate cake I’d purchased from Tara’s Tasty Treats that I gave into my guilt and slumped back against my chair.
“Still thinking about what you said earlier?” Mary Fran asked. “About Cassie?”
Realizing she was talking to me, I forced myself to focus just as Carter snapped-to on my left.
“When she first came out, I was mesmerized by her hair. But then, when she turned, it was all I could do not to stand up, march on to that stage, and smack her upside the head for that one ombré strand that just threw it all off.” Carter set his coffee cup down on the table and made himself breathe. “I mean, why? Why!”
Andy pushed his own cup into the center of the table and reached for a cookie from the tray Mary Fran had brought. “Cassie is the one who handed out the last award, right?”
“Yes, that’s the one.” Mary Fran, too, took a cookie and shook it at me. “Tell them what you came up with while we were talking at the pet shop this morning.”
Grateful for the opportunity to step away from my guilt, I seized on the conversational gem I’d been handed—a gem that would surely appeal to my magnifying-glass-packing grandfather.
“Okay.” I pushed my empty dessert plate off to the side and, with the help of the elbows I probably shouldn’t have on the table in the first place, rested my chin atop my hands. “So there are two reasons Lexa’s ad might have started to play on that screen at the top of the spiral stairs. Either the tech crew responsible for running the videos last night pressed the wrong one… Or they pressed the right one and the wrong winner was called.”
Sure enough, I saw my grandfather’s eyebrow cock upward.
Phew…
Sam set down his glass of milk at the far end of the table. “Wait. Each presenter comes out carrying a sealed envelope with the winner’s name in it, right?”
“Yes.”
“So then the only way the wrong name could be called is if the wrong name was put in the envelope—from like a miscount or something, right?”
I used the index finger of my free hand to dab up a chocolate smear from my plate and then licked it off with my overeager tongue. “That would be one way, sure, but it’s not the only way the wrong name could be said.”
When I verified all eyes (including my grandfather’s) were on me, I filled in the blank with the same realization I’d shared with Mary Fran at the pet shop. “The presenter—which in this case was Cassie—could’ve simply called a different name than what was on her card.”
No one said anything for what had to be a good thirty seconds but, eventually, Carter spoke, his eyes round with intrigue. “So you think Ms. Ombré-Strand read the victim’s name even though the real winner was the other woman?”
“It’s certainly a possibility.”
“But I thought we were looking at the category as the target,” my grandfather said, pushing his chair back from the table, and heading toward the same piece of paper he’d jotted notes on after the party at my agency.
“It’s certainly a possibility, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s not.”
“Think this idea that
Cassie made it so Deidre was on the platform when it collapsed is a theory you should raise with the police?” Andy asked, as he, too, pushed his chair back. But unlike my grandfather, Andy didn’t stand. He merely hiked his left ankle onto his right knee and tented his fingers beneath his chin. “It certainly seems an avenue worth exploring.”
My grandfather looked up from his notes, his eyes finding and then abandoning mine before doing the same with Ms. Rapple. I looked at Ms. Rapple to gauge her reaction, but her attention was focused on Gertie, her brows furrowed in something that looked a lot like worry. Before I could inquire though, Carter took a turn with my latest supposition.
“If Ms. Ombré Strand—”
“Cassie. Cassie Turner,” I corrected.
Carter swept his hand in my general direction. “Semantics. Anyway, if Ms. Ombré Strand called Deidre’s name in error just to get her up on that platform, there would have to be something pretty big there between them. Because if she was just angry she hadn’t been nominated and she was railing against that, she wouldn’t have cared who was on the platform when it gave way. But if you’re right, and she intentionally changed the real winner to Deidre, there had to be a reason. Something big. Something that would drive a seemingly successful person in their own right to retaliate against someone else via murder.”
“Carter’s right,” my grandfather said.
Carter grinned at Sam. “That has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
But I was focused on my grandfather and the fact that while he was finally looking me straight in the eye, it felt different. Hollow, even.
I shivered.
“Do you remember hearing any scuttlebutt about the two of them?” Mary Fran stood, gathered up everyone’s dessert plate, and handed the stack to Sam. When he took the hint and carried them into the kitchen, she moved on to the forks and spoons, handing that pile to Carter. “Any sort of run-in, bad blood, salacious rumors, et cetera?”
“About Deidre? No. She wasn’t the type.”
“You sure of that, Tobi?”
The sound of my name—my given name—on my grandfather’s tongue caught me by surprise. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d called me Tobi, instead of Sugar Lump. I just knew I didn’t like it one little bit.
“Am I 100 percent sure? No. But I’m up for changing that if you are.”
Andy held his hands up in the air. “Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Do I need to remind the two of you what the job of the police is?”
I met and held my grandfather’s gaze. “No. But I could have been on that platform just as easily as Deidre. And while I can’t say I knew her super well, I know she didn’t deserve to die the way that she did.”
~Chapter Seven~
I’d always considered myself a punctual person, usually arriving wherever it was I needed to be a full five to ten minutes before anyone else. But compared to JoAnna, I was a complete slacker.
So I wasn’t too surprised when, at ten minutes to nine, I stepped inside my agency to find my secretary not only at her desk, but also typing at her usual one hundred-words-per-minute pace. And that’s without coffee.…
“Good morning, Tobi,” JoAnna said, her fingers slowing to ninety-nine-words-per-minute as she smiled at me around her desktop computer. “I stopped at Central West End Perks and picked you up a medium hot chocolate with whipped cream, and at Tara’s for one of those chocolate donuts you love so much. They’re both on your desk, along with a copy of the program from Saturday night in the event you didn’t think to keep one.”
She shifted her attention back to the screen, her fingers picking up speed as she did. But less than five seconds later, she stopped and made a face at me. “What? What’s with that look?”
“I should be used to you by now. It’s been a year. But yet you still surprise me.” I reached for the pair of sticky notes in my otherwise empty tray behind her desk and shuffled through them to find a good morning call from Andy, and a call from Ben Gibbens, my former co-worker and fellow nominee. “Ben called?”
JoAnna craned her neck around my body in order to see the note and then nodded. “He left a message shortly after noon yesterday.”
“On a Sunday?” I looked back at the note and the phone number it contained. “Did he say what he wanted in his message?”
“Just that he’d like you to call when you get a chance.”
“Hmmm…”
“He was one of the other nominees for your award, wasn’t he?” JoAnna asked.
“For Deidre’s award…yes.” I shuffled Andy’s message into the top position and tapped the two-note pile against the palm of my opposite hand. “Hey, I don’t know if I said it Saturday night, but thank you for the party for Sam and me. I know I was more than a little distracted and I’m sorry about that. You did an amazing job and it was really nice for Sam to feel special.”
“It was for both of you, remember? And there’s no need to apologize for anything that night. I probably shouldn’t have insisted we even have the party after what happened, but I just didn’t want the evening to end there. You and Sam worked too hard for that.” JoAnna pressed a button on her computer, stood, and after a quick trek in and out of my office, handed me the hot chocolate and donut she’d purchased. “Sit.”
I sat.
“So how are you doing? Really?”
I set my still warm to-go cup on the little table next to my chair and took a bite of my donut while I considered the various answers I could give. But just as JoAnna was ridiculously punctual and organized and on-task at all times, she was also a bird dog when it came to getting the answers she wanted.
It was why I hired her.
And it was also why I knew it was best just to give her what she wanted.
“I’m rattled, frankly.” I took a bigger bite of the unexpected breakfast treat and chased it down with a few sips of my hot chocolate. “I only knew her from industry things, but she was always the one who registered in my head as being nice…sweet…genuine. If we were at a conference, we tended to gravitate toward seats in the general vicinity of one another.”
“Did you talk?”
“A little. I knew she was married and that she’d put her career on hold until her kids were both of school age. And I know that she wasn’t in to the backstabbing and other crap that seems to be becoming more the norm in our industry these days. In fact, when I think back, she seemed to keep to herself most of the time.”
JoAnna perched against the front edge of her desk, her eyes clouded with a worry I knew was for me. “That could have been you up there when that platform gave way, Tobi.”
“It could’ve, I guess. But…” I looked at my donut and contemplated a third bite, but as appealing as it had looked when she first handed it to me, my desire for more was gone. “Grandpa Stu thinks the category was targeted more than a single person. Like maybe someone was pissed off that they weren’t nominated.”
“Which makes the notion that it could have been you even harder to push away, doesn’t it?”
Shrugging, I took the napkin she held in my direction and, laying it atop my lap, set my donut down. “Then there’s the theory that Deidre was, in fact, the target.”
“But that would mean her winning wasn’t a surprise.”
“If she won at all.”
JoAnna’s gasp brought her back into my field of vision. “You think that other ad starting to play wasn’t a mistake?”
“You noticed that?” Wait. Of course JoAnna noticed. She noticed everything. I scooped up the donut, offered the rest of it to JoAnna, and, when she refused, wrapped it inside my napkin for a possible snack after my first appointment. “Hey, you’ll be pleased to know I didn’t kill anyone with my cooking last night. In fact, I’m pretty sure I overheard Sam asking his mom why I have a reputation for being a bad cook as they were heading home after dinner.”
JoAnna opened her mo
uth for what I’d be willing to bet was a protest of my intentional topic change but, after studying me like a scientist might study a test rat for any sign of problems, she humored me and played along. “I’m sorry I couldn’t join you. Maybe the next time Stu is in town?”
“He wants to help me solve Deidre’s murder.”
“Help you?”
“Uh huh.”
“But that would mean you’re actually planning on getting involved,” JoAnna said.
“I’m already involved. At least on some level.”
“And Stu is okay with this?”
“You know my grandfather and his love of a good mystery.”
“I do, but that doesn’t hold a candle to his love for you.”
I sank back against my chair and released the sigh I had been holding in until that moment. “I don’t think he’s too happy with me right now.”
“Who? Stu?”
I think I nodded. I know my hot cocoa sloshed around inside my cup. But that could have been from the way my hand was trembling. All I knew for sure was my eyes were stinging as JoAnna’s index finger guided my chin upward. “Talk to me, Tobi.”
“He heard me bitching about Rapple to Andy.”
“Oh, Tobi…”
“I can’t stand that woman, JoAnna. She’s nasty for the sake of being nasty. Has been since the day I moved in—to good people like Carter and Mary Fran. And now I’m supposed to forget all that and jump up and down over the fact my grandfather has taken leave of his senses and has a thing for the old biddy?”
“Maybe she’s changed?”
I laughed. “Rapple? Changed? No. She’s simply putting on the charm for a man. We all know the type. They eat, sleep, and breathe insincerity. And sorry, but I don’t want my grandfather involved with someone like that.”
“If that’s true, I can understand that.”
“If that’s true?” I echoed in disbelief. “C’mon, JoAnna, you’ve met Rapple. Heck, you’ve seen her in action more than a few times. The way she’s constantly taking mean spirited jabs at Carter? The way she nitpicks everything Mary Fran says? The way she glares at me and tries to boss me around like I’m some sort of child? The way she ridicules all of us to her dog?”
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