A Parfait Murder

by Wendy Lyn Watson

  Jason rolled his lips between his teeth. “Yeah. Things around there were getting . . . weird.”

  “Weird how?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Do you mean, ‘it’s privileged’?” I asked.

  He shrugged.

  “No,” Crystal said, giving her spouse a meaningful look. “It’s not. What’s in the files is privileged. What Maddie asked you to do with the files is not.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Jason looked uncomfortable. “Maddie asked me to start shredding a bunch of old client files.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing, technically. But she wasn’t clearing out all the old files, just, uh, some of them.”

  I thought about the note that had fallen out of Neck’s pocket with the list of names Finn had identified as drug dealers. On a hunch, I asked, “Were they all drug cases?”

  “That . . . that would be privileged information,” Jason stammered, but the look of near panic on his face told me I’d hit the nail on the head.

  “Huh,” I said casually. “Did Jackson and Ver Steeg represent a lot of drug dealers?”

  Jason’s expression turned to one of confusion. “No. No dealers. Just petty users.” He winced. “Alleged. Alleged petty users.”

  Now, that was weird. Why would Maddie be shredding the files for a bunch of possession cases, while Neck was walking around with a list of three of the biggest dealers in town in his pocket? It didn’t add up.

  Something hinky was happening at Kristen’s law firm, and it might have something to do with her death, but darned if I could figure out what it might be. As much as it pained me to contemplate, I decided I should probably call Finn and get his take on the information.

  While I had Jason there, though, I decided to do a little more fishing. “I heard that Kristen was a stickler for the rules,” I said, quoting back Cookie Milhone’s description almost verbatim. “I can’t imagine she’d be involved in anything unethical.”

  “Kristen?” Jason said. “I guess I never really thought of her that way. But, now that you mention it, she did file a question with the state ethics board just a few weeks ago.”

  “Wait. Kristen filed an ethics question?”

  “I. . . Wow. I think I should really not say anything else,” Jason said. His face had turned bright pink, and he actually took a step back.

  I felt a pang of guilt. Poor kid. Here he was, brandnew to his profession, and I’d been trying to trick him into offering more information than he should.

  “Sorry, Jason,” I said. “I’ll let you two get back to your date.”

  As I watched them walk away, her hand in his back pocket, I tried to process what I’d learned. Deena had been under the impression that Jason had raised ethical concerns about his employers. But if Kristen had been the one with problems . . . maybe whatever hinky things Maddie was doing at the law firm had bothered Kristen enough that she’d brought in the authorities. I was feeling more and more as though those shredded files might have something to do with Kristen’s death.

  “Got your salads, Miss Jones.” The curly-haired girl set my cooler on the counter.

  I smiled. When you’re strapped for cash, barter is a pretty fantastic way to do business.

  And that’s when it hit me . . . I thought maybe, just maybe, I knew what was going on at Jackson and Ver Steeg.

  I’d made it halfway back to the A-la-mode booth when I ran smack into Sonny Anders.

  “Oh, for the love of . . .”

  “Good to see you, too, Tally.”

  He was channeling his inner Johnny Cash, with a black suit, silver-tipped black boots, and a ridiculously clean black cowboy hat. Judging by the nice duds and the scent of some high-end cologne wafting off him, I guessed he was on his way to bilk some more people out of their money. Or to bilk some girl out of her panties. One or the other.

  “No offense, Sonny, but you’re pretty much the last person I want to talk to right now.”

  “Now, is that any way to treat a member of the family?”

  “You’re not family anymore, remember? Bree divorced you.”

  He rocked back on his heels. “We still got blood in common.”

  I opened my mouth to snap back, but then clamped it shut. Dang it all, when this whole mess had started, Sonny was the bad guy trying to disown Alice. Now the tables were turned. The Decker girls had lost the moral high ground, and now Sonny was the one in the dark, unaware that he really wasn’t Alice’s daddy.

  Still, I reminded myself, he was a no-account snake in the grass who left his wife and the child he thought was his own high and dry to run off with a stripper. And now he was ripping off my friends and neighbors. He didn’t deserve my pity.

  I’m not proud of it, but I was confused and conflicted . . . and I resorted to playground tactics. “You’re a sleaze.”

  He grinned. “Nice one, Tally. Clever.”

  “About as clever as your oil scam. How’s that going?”

  He tsked softly. “Now, Tallulah, that there is dangerously close to slander. I’m just offering some intrepid businessmen the opportunity to partner with me in a legitimate corporate enterprise.”

  “Uh-huh. An opportunity to pour their money into your pockets. And how much of it will they get back?”

  He shrugged. “There are risks associated with every business. I assure you everything I’m doing is one hundred percent legal.”

  “Maybe. But there’s what’s legal and there’s what’s right. And they’re not necessarily the same thing. Speaking of legal, have you found another attorney to represent you? Someone to help you persecute Bree and create a legal shield for your oil ‘investment’?” I was holding the cooler in one hand, so I could only make one-half of the air quotes, but my sarcasm was pretty obvious.

  His smile faltered a bit. “We’re working on that.”

  “You mean not every lawyer is champing at the bit to help you con people out of their cash?”

  I was talking faster than I was thinking, but my brain was catching up. Jason had just said that Kristen had filed an ethics question with some state agency. Maybe Kristen had reservations about helping Sonny with his scam. Alice had seen Sonny with Kristen at the Dutch Oven the night before she was killed. If she had told him about her ethical concerns, maybe he was afraid she was going to blow the whistle on him. Maybe he’d killed her to protect his con. If he was willing to drag his own child through hell and back to save himself a few bucks, surely he wasn’t above killing a veritable stranger for the same.

  I narrowed my eyes and fixed Sonny with a hard look. “Did Kristen have a problem with the oil deal? Was she getting cold feet?”

  Never let it be said that Sonny Anders is a stupid man. Vain, amoral, and even a little lazy. But not stupid.

  He cottoned to where I was going right away.

  “Whoa,” he said, raising his hands in defense. “Hold on just a second. I didn’t have any reason in the world to kill Kristen. First, she didn’t draft the incorporation papers for the oil deal.”

  Of course not. Duh. Why would he need lawyers to draft incorporation papers for a corporation that wasn’t even real?

  “She was just representing me in the paternity suit,” he continued. “And as far as I know, she was happy as a clam to be representing us. I only met her like twice, ever. Char retained her, and Char never said word one about Kristen having a problem with our lawsuit.”

  He cleared his throat. “We’d contacted Kristen weeks before we got to Dalliance, and she had the papers all drawn up before we even arrived. Billed us a pretty penny for her work, too. I was the one who hesitated to pull the trigger and actually file the dang thing.”

  It might sound crazy, since I knew Sonny to be a bald-faced liar, but I believed him. I’d caught him off guard, and even Sonny couldn’t spin a yarn that fast.

  Besides, I was sure I saw a flash of genuine emotion on his face, some real sorrow. He looked past me. “She was better o
ff without me.”

  “Who? Alice?”

  He nodded.

  I couldn’t bring myself to argue with him.

  He coughed, as if he was choking back tears. “She grew so much. Got herself a boy, I hear.”

  “Yep.”

  “God, I remember being that young.” He nodded toward something behind me, and I turned to see two kids wrapped around each other in a heated embrace. They were half in the shadows, but I could make out the boy’s head, shaved on both sides in a style only a teenager could get away with. And when they shifted just so, the girl’s long hair fell away from her face, and I realized it was Dani Carberry.

  “That’s how I felt when I met Bree, you know.”

  “It didn’t last, though, did it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you left her. You must have gotten bored with her. The spark died.”

  He looked at me, a quizzical smile on his face. “Are you kidding me? You think I could get bored with Bree? No way.”

  “Then why did you leave? Why did you leave her and Alice?”

  “Just like I said. They were better off without me.”

  “But you had a family. You had a home.”

  He swiped his hat from his head, ran his fingers through his hair, and plopped the hat back on. “Aw, Tally, don’t you know? Home is the most dangerous place in the world. Where folks can kill you by inches, or cut out your heart with a single look, just because you love ’em so damn much.”

  chapter 20

  The karaoke competition didn’t start until nine, and Bree had scored the closing spot on the bill by winning a drawing at the Bar None, which was sponsoring the whole shebang. The competition was open to walk-ons, so we didn’t know exactly when Bree would go on, but it would certainly be late enough that we could wait for Beth to close up the shop on the square and for her and Kyle to take over the fair booth so the whole family could go watch Bree perform.

  “Are you sure I should?” Bree had asked. “I mean maybe it’s tacky for me to perform when I’m out on bail for murder.”

  “Girl, you need to do this,” Peachy had insisted. “You didn’t kill that woman, and you shouldn’t act guilty. You just live your life.”

  Peachy and I locked arms around her shoulders and walked with her to the amphitheater, because Lord knows karaoke was Bree’s life. To the best of my knowledge, the prospect of fronting a real band—original or cover—had never been a draw for her, but she loved to take to the stage for karaoke. And she was good, voice like a spring songbird’s and a gift for working a crowd.

  The crowd in the fairground amphitheater rocked, too. It was huge and, truth be told, mostly drunk. They cheered and booed in equal measures, but they got het up about every act that took the stage.

  Ted and Shelley Alrecht, Bar None karaoke regulars, were the last act with advance registration to take the mic. During the second verse of their totally predictable “Islands in the Stream,” Alice arrived.

  With Finn Harper.

  “I hope it’s okay,” Alice said shyly, looking up at me through her long pale lashes. “I know it’s weird, but he’s family now.”

  I couldn’t find the words to respond.

  “Honest, Aunt Tally. He’s been trying real hard. We had lunch the other day, and I get it. He didn’t know I was his kid. If he had, he would have been here.”

  With the sheer narcissism of youth, Alice thought Finn’s sin was being an absent dad. It never occurred to her that I might have been hurt by the very act of her conception.

  I gave her a hug, and glared at Finn over her shoulder.

  “What are you doing here?” I hissed, once Alice had drifted out of earshot.

  “Well, for one, I’m supporting Alice. She’s my. . .” He raked his fingers through his hair. “Dammit. She’s my daughter. I still can’t quite get used to the idea.”

  “We’re all struggling with that one.”

  Finn flinched at the poison in my tone. “I know, Tally. But we’re supposed to be keeping this turn of events quiet, right? For Bree? And that means we need to keep acting like the happy couple.”

  As angry as I was with him, his words stung.

  “Will that be so hard?”

  He hooked his forefinger beneath my chin and tipped my head, forcing me to meet his eyes. “It’s not hard for me at all, Tally. If I could undo this . . .”

  The play of emotions in his eyes mesmerized me. Regret, hope, grief, joy. I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to discover you’re a parent. With a single word, the proverbial flip of a switch, to become father to a grown child.

  Really, I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I couldn’t empathize with Finn yet. I still needed time to lick my wounds.

  “Let’s just get through tonight,” I said.

  Our bizarre little family unit huddled near the edge of the stage, waiting Bree’s turn. Finn stood at my side, close but not quite touching, as the walk-on competitors began performing.

  As the umpteenth dude in shit-kickers and a hat took to the stage to belt out Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue,” Bree turned green.

  “I can’t do it, Tally. I’m gonna puke.”

  I took her by the shoulders and looked her in the eye. “You absolutely can do this. You will do this, if only to show your daughter that everything is okay, that her world is still turning. So if you need to puke before you get up there and sing your heart out, you go right ahead and puke. And then you sing.”

  Her brow furrowed with resolve, Bree nodded. “Okay. I’m just gonna go vomit.”

  “Good girl.”

  But before Bree could take more than a step away, the emcee waved at her, letting her know she was on next.

  “Oh, crap,” Bree moaned. “I don’t have time to hit the Porta Potti. I’m gonna have to puke onstage.”

  “No, you’re not.” Finn’s hands rested on my shoulders. “We’ll buy you a few minutes. You go get sick, then hustle back.”

  Bree smiled her thanks, then dashed off before I could say a word.

  I spun on Finn. “What do you mean, we’ll buy her a few minutes?”

  “I guess we’re going to sing,” he said, a devilish glint in his eyes.

  “Oh no. I’m not singing. You go right ahead.”

  “What would people think? It’s what couples do, sing karaoke together.”

  “Not at the fairgrounds in front of thousands of people.”

  “Chicken.”

  “Absolutely.”

  He laughed.

  Peachy, who’d been hanging back during this whole conversation, stepped forward. “Both of you quit your bantering and get up on that stage,” she snapped. “Right now. That’s an order.”

  When Peachy took that tone, my body obeyed before my mind even knew what hit it. I was halfway to the mic before I realized I didn’t even know what we’d be singing. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Finn consulting with the stage manager.

  Finn joined me center stage. The crowd fell quiet. I nearly passed out. Finn rested his big warm hand in the small of my back, and I felt stronger.

  The music began, and I watched the karaoke video begin to play on the screens set at the foot of the stage. When I recognized the song, I shot Finn a nasty look, but he just smiled down at me.

  A beat after the first piano chord sounded, Finn started singing, and soon I was joining in, as the two of us crooned Dan Hill’s and Vonda Shepard’s parts in “Can’t We Try.”

  By the refrain, the crowd was booing in earnest. Rightly so. We were terrible. Neither of us could hit the notes, and our timing was all off.

  I heard them, but I didn’t care. In a weird way, Finn and I were talking to each other, our hurt mediated by the neutral arbiter of Dan Hill’s lyrics. Can’t we try just a little more passion? Can’t we try just a little less pride? I love you so much, baby, that it tears me up inside.

  By the time the song ended, the crowd was close to stoning us. I’d stopped singing, lost in Finn’
s eyes. He wrapped it up, singing directly to my heart. Can’t we try just a little bit harder? Can’t we give just a little bit more?

  He grabbed my hand, and squeezed. For a beat, we just stood there in silence while the crowd voiced its displeasure. For a beat, I thought maybe we’d get past this crisis. If we just tried a little bit harder.

  When he lifted my fingers to his lips, I shook myself out of my stupor. I glanced to the side of the stage and saw Bree standing there, waiting to go on, a pained look on her face.

  I grinned, a big, stupid grin, and felt a bubble of laughter, relief, rise in my chest. I pulled Finn behind me as I bolted for the far side of the stage, where performers exited. He quickly took the lead, tugging me along in his wake, his own smile a beacon leading me forward.

  I was halfway down the steps when I happened to glance toward the crowd and a familiar face caught my eye.

  The kid with the funky shaved head, the one who had been molesting Dani Carberry a few hours earlier. Only now his body folded protectively around the form of another girl. One with a haircut similar to his, shaved close on one side, cut in jagged peaks everywhere else, and dyed a brilliant purple. This girl was about as far from Dani’s headband-and-khakis all-American look as a girl could get.

  Sort of like the way Bree’s bodacious, flamboyant sexuality was as far from my own staid, good-girl persona as it could possibly be.

  As my foot hit the ground, I pulled my hand out of Finn’s.

  He looked over his shoulder, and I watched as the giddy smile on his face faded.

  Maybe we could try just a little bit harder and make it work. But we hadn’t gotten there yet.

  Later that night, we opened the A-la-mode for an impromptu celebration of Bree’s big karaoke win. She’d slain the audience with her Carrie Underwood cover, whipping them into a frenzy as she belted out the anthem of revenge.

  Bree made the milk shakes while Peachy listened with good-natured interest to Alice’s detailed postmortem of the performance.

  I pulled Finn aside.

  “So I’ve been thinking,” I said.

  “Always dangerous,” he quipped.