No mention of the FBI investigating the case.
Ed Buckley’s death was tacked onto the story—as if Tiffany dying wasn’t enough misery for one family. Described as a local businessman, Ed had died last summer in a car crash outside of Charleston. He’d left behind a wife—Tiffany’s sister—and three daughters. Featured was a photo of Ed, the same one that special agents Paulson and Jordan had showed me.
No mention of the FBI investigating this death, either.
I sat back in my chair. Yeah, okay, Ed’s death was sad and untimely, but I still didn’t see what it had to do with Tiffany. Or why the FBI would be interested. And why would they ask if I’d seen Ed that morning in the Holt’s parking lot? Didn’t they know Ed had died last year?
I sipped my frappuccino waiting for the sugar, chocolate, and caffeine to kick in and give me that big brain jolt I needed to figure this out.
Nothing kicked in.
Jeez, I hoped I hadn’t built up a tolerance to these things. Next time, I should bring a Snickers bar to munch along with it. Or maybe I’d do that right now.
I glanced out the window again, hoping to spot a mini-mart or drugstore in the strip mall next door, but instead I saw Doug sitting in his car. I’d know that wimpy white Kia—complete with its optional look-like-a-dork package—anywhere.
I gasped and ducked down behind my laptop screen.
Oh my God. What was he doing here? At this hour of the morning? Wasn’t he supposed to be at work?
Maybe he was here to meet with his terrorist contact. Maybe I would see him passing government secrets.
As much as I didn’t want to believe Doug would do something like that, it seemed obvious that he was involved in something. I mean, Mom knew all about that super cruise, digital something-or-other that Doug and Dad were working on. Ben Oliver had been tipped to the same thing and told me all about it that night at City Walk, so the whole thing must be true.
I eased up from behind my laptop. Doug still sat in his car. I could see him talking on his cell phone.
If Doug wanted to ruin his life, well, okay. But I wasn’t about to stand by and let my dad’s life get ruined, too, simply because he was Doug’s supervisor on the project. I knew Dad wasn’t involved, but after the FBI, the CIA, Homeland Security, or whoever investigated terrorism got finished, who knows how they might twist the facts.
I didn’t want to screw Ben Oliver out of his big news story—or his opportunity to get back in the good graces of his editor—but I had to tell Doug that somebody had ratted him out, and he needed to walk away from this thing now before it was too late.
It was the only way I could figure to save my dad.
I shoved my laptop back into my Coach tote and left Starbucks. Across the parking lot, Doug got out of his car and headed toward the strip mall. He must have seen me because he did a double take, then walked over to meet me.
I knew I had to break this to him gently. It wasn’t the kind of thing I should blurt out in a parking lot.
“Look, I really need to talk to you,” I told him, and nodded toward Starbucks. “Come inside. We’ll sit down and—”
“Haley, please,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”
“What?”
“You have to stop following me,” he said.
“I wasn’t—”
“You have to let me go. I’m dating Emily now,” Doug said.
“What? I don’t want to talk about you and Emily,” I said.
“You have to accept that she and I are together now,” he said, and patted my shoulder. “Please, for your own sake, find a way to get over me.”
Doug walked away.
I stood there staring after him, my mouth gaping open as wide as a snap closure on a metal frame purse.
Oh my God. I couldn’t believe that guy. He actually thought I was so desperate and pathetically lonely that I’d stalk him?
My phone rang. I ripped it out of my purse, thinking it had better be Ty calling. Here I was humiliated in public—yeah, okay, so nobody else was around to overhear what Doug had said, but there could have been—and all along I had a gorgeous, wealthy, way-hot boyfriend who was out of the country because he was brilliantly overseeing an international, multi-billion-dollar deal—only nobody knew that because he was gone.
I snapped my phone open. “Hello?” I barked.
Silence.
I gripped the phone, fuming mad and said again, “Hello?”
More silence.
I got a yucky feeling in my stomach.
Kirk Keegan flashed in my head. Was he here? In the parking lot? Watching me? Phoning to taunt me?
I turned in a quick circle and scanned the cars in the parking lot. I didn’t see anyone. Was he inside one of the businesses in the strip mall?
I got a double-yucky feeling in my stomach.
Had Kirk been inside Starbucks with me?
Why hadn’t I paid better attention? Why hadn’t I insisted that Jack get me a gun?
“Hello? Haley?” a woman’s voice asked softly in my ear.
Since I’m not big on suspense, I said, “Who is this?”
“Evelyn,” she said.
I heaved a mental sigh of relief as I pictured her standing in her blinding white kitchen, winding her fingers together while she talked.
“I was wondering if I could perhaps take you up on your offer?” Evelyn asked.
My mind spun. Offer? I’d offered to do something for Evelyn?
I didn’t want her to think that I’d forgotten, of course, so what could I do but say, “Sure, absolutely.”
Evelyn was silent for a few seconds. “Well, all right. If you’re sure. When would it be convenient?”
“When? Oh, well, when is good for you?” I asked.
“How about tomorrow?”
“Perfect,” I said.
“Thank you, Haley. I’ll see you then,” Evelyn said and hung up.
What had I just gotten myself into?
CHAPTER 11
Since Rita wasn’t at work again today, not watching over the cashiers, timing our break—like an extra minute or two would throw Holt’s into receivership—I saw no need not to abuse the opportunity. Bella and Sandy—she’s white, red-headed, about twenty years old and way cool—sat at the table in the breakroom with me, all of us enjoying a Rita-free environment, an array of chips and candy from the vending machine spread out before us.
“This room smells funny,” I said, sniffing the air. It actually smelled good in here, for a change.
“It’s that girl with the diet meals,” Sandy said, munching on a handful of Cheetos.
I realized then that I hadn’t seen that girl—I can never remember her name—since I’d come back from Europe. She was always cooking those diet meals in the microwave.
“Damn. Those things stunk,” Bella said, wrinkling her nose.
“Yeah,” Sandy said. “But she lost eighty pounds.”
“Eighty pounds?” Bella echoed, popping an entire Reese’s cup into her mouth. “I hate her.”
“Did you see her after she got rid of her glasses and colored her hair blond?” Sandy asked.
“She must have looked like Gastric-Bypass Barbie,” I said as I ripped open a package of M&M’s.
“She looked great,” Sandy said, nodding wisely. “I mean, really great. Not fake great. Really great.”
“I hate her,” Bella said again.
“She quit Holt’s,” Sandy said.
Okay, now I hated her, too.
Sandy leaned in a little, signaling the universal here-comes-the-best-part moment of the conversation.
“I heard,” Sandy said, “that she’s trying to be a model. She’s got an agent and everything.”
“Maybe she’ll let me do her hair when I finish beauty school,” Bella said, reaching for a bag of potato chips.
The saucer phase of hair design that had captured Bella’s attention of late continued. Today she’d fashioned her hair into the shape of an umb
rella.
“So what’s up with Rita being gone?” Sandy asked.
“Whatever it is, I hope it keeps up,” Bella said.
It seemed that nobody had a clue where Rita was. Her death hadn’t been announced to the store employees, so either she was off work due to something unrelated to Tiffany’s death, or her body hadn’t been discovered yet if she was really dead, of course.
“Have you heard anything?” Sandy asked me.
Without benefit of the facts, what could I do but speculate and spread rumors?
“I heard she had an STD,” I said.
Bella rolled her eyes. “Hard to believe there’s a man out there who’d get that close.”
“Speaking of men,” I said to Sandy, “what’s up with you and your boyfriend?”
To be generous, I’ll say that Sandy was not lucky at love. Probably because she was a living doormat.
She’d been dating a tattoo artist for a while now. They met on the Internet.
“We’re on a break,” Sandy said.
“Your idea? Or his?”
“His,” Sandy told me. “He said I was stifling his creativity.”
“He does tattoos.”
“Artists need freedom to express themselves, Haley,” Sandy said, and grabbed a Hershey bar. “I was at the movies the other night and I saw that guy my mom set me up with last fall.”
“The one who would only take you to restaurants that accepted discount coupons?” I asked.
Sandy nodded. “After the movie ended, I saw him pick up one of those big popcorn buckets somebody had left behind. You know, the ones with the free refills? He took it to the concession stand and got popcorn.”
“Gross!”
“You know, Haley, it just shows how financially resourceful he is,” Sandy said.
“Please tell me you’re not going out with him again.”
“I’m meeting him after work tonight.”
The breakroom door opened and Christy bounded in, her blond curls bouncing, smiling for no apparent reason.
“Hi!” she called.
We all mumbled something.
“The store is so busy today!” she said. “I love it when it’s busy! And, shoot, I have to go home now.”
Christy fed her time card into the clock. “Sandy, I saw you waiting on a customer in accessories today. She was a tough customer, wanting you to match up her new top to those earrings. You did a great job!”
“Thanks,” Sandy said.
“And Bella, you’re the best cashier ever!” Christy declared. “Your line was moving faster than—well, faster than fast!”
Christy disappeared into the rear of the stock room where our lockers were located.
“I hate her,” Bella said.
A moment later, Christy returned with her handbag, froze, and gasped in shock. For a minute I thought maybe she’d spotted Rita’s dead body stuffed behind the refrigerator or something, but she pointed to the customer satisfaction chart on the wall.
“Oh, no,” Christy wailed. “Look! We’ve fallen even lower!”
I looked at the chart. Our store rating was 15 percent.
Jeez, how did that keep happening?
“We’re even below beach-towel range!” Christy cried.
We might not get Holt’s beach towels? Wouldn’t that be a damn shame.
Christy pulled herself up and straightened her shoulders. “Don’t worry, girls, we can do this! We can improve our rating! If we all pull together and follow the six-step program, we can win those flat screens!”
We all mumbled something.
“Thank goodness we get to go through the training again!” Christy declared. “I know it’s just what we need! I’m going to talk to Shannon about it now and see if we can hurry it up!”
“You already punched out,” I said.
“That’s okay. It’s worth it,” Christy said, and left the breakroom.
“She’s kind of weird,” Sandy said.
“I hate her,” Bella said.
The cell phone in my back pocket vibrated. I pulled it out and saw Shuman’s name on the I.D. screen.
“Something’s come up,” he said when I answered.
I took that for cop-speak that he’d learned something new about Tiffany’s murder. I guess he was talking in code because, wherever he was, he didn’t want to be overheard.
That was way cool.
I was glad Shuman had come through, like he’d promised. Maybe that meant everything was finally, once and for all, okay between us.
“I can meet you after work,” I said.
The bad part about working the late shift was that when Holt’s closed for the day, most everything else was closed, too—at least all the cool places, like the handbag section of department stores.
“How about that bookstore near your favorite coffee place?” Shuman asked.
More code-talk. Oh my God, this was way cool.
“See you there,” I said, and hung up.
The only place that was just about as cool as a Starbucks—except for a handbag shop, of course—was a bookstore. It was filled with music, games, magazines, photo albums, great stuff to decorate your desk and office—oh, and books, if you were into that sort of thing.
I got there ahead of Shuman and hurried through the aisles grabbing books off the shelves, then found a table in the café and piled them up around me. It was really easy to look smart in a bookstore—you didn’t even need a laptop, like at Starbucks.
I could have actually brought in my homework, but I saw no need to carry this thing too far.
I got a mocha frappuccino—thank God they had my favorite drink here—and ordered a huge chocolate chip cookie—just to insure good brain power after my mind-numbing day at Holt’s—and got a coffee for Shuman.
Around me, people were flipping pages and talking. I opened two of the books I’d picked up and placed them on the table.
I stared at them for a couple of seconds, then closed them again. It reminded me too much of studying.
My classes flashed in my mind. I hated them. I hated having to sit there for hours on end. I hated having to learn the material. I hated homework. I hated how the instructor seemed to always know when my thoughts had wandered off and picked that exact moment to call on me.
Three more years of this? I didn’t know how I was going to make it. How did anybody last?
But I needed a degree—even though I didn’t know what sort of career I wanted yet. There had to be some way to make it easier, or quicker.
Then it hit me: maybe I could buy a college degree from somewhere.
Oh my God. That would be perfect.
People did it all the time, didn’t they? People like me who were working lots of hours—yeah, okay, I was only working part time, but still—and had really hectic schedules, and couldn’t spend years in a classroom.
Plus, I had tons of life experience. Surely there was a way to convert that into an actual degree of some sort.
Oh my God. Wouldn’t that be the coolest thing—to already have my degree?
A scene flashed in my head.
Me, working a great job—somewhere, doing something—dressing in fabulous clothes with fabulous purses, of course. A Fendi briefcase, maybe. And, oh my God, I’d never have to set foot in a Holt’s store again. My mom bragging about me—not just about my sister and brother—to our family and her bitchy pageant friends. And, oh my God, Ty. He’d come to me, tell me how proud he is, what a tremendous accomplishment this is. He’d want to whisk me away to a romantic mountaintop retreat to celebrate, but I’d tell him no, I can’t go. I’m much too important now, with tons of responsibilities and dozens of people standing around, waiting for me to tell them what to do. Ty would be crushed, of course. Then, to ease his pain, I’d whip out my fabulous Louie Vuitton organizer and pick a date when I can squeeze him in. He’d be so grateful, he’d—
“Hey,” somebody said.
I looked up expecting to see Ty standing over me with a look of heart-wr
enching desire on his face. But it wasn’t Ty. I blinked and Shuman came into focus.
I guess he’d had a long day because he was still dressed for work—sport coat, shirt, and tie that didn’t quite go together. He sat down across from me. I passed him the coffee I’d bought for him and he took a sip.
He didn’t say anything, just sat there. I wondered for a moment if he’d changed his mind about talking to me, or if maybe he was deliberately trying to be annoying, but decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. Homicide detectives didn’t usually share info with anybody besides other cops. I guess taking me into his confidence was a little hard for him.
Still, I didn’t have all night.
“So, what’s up?” I asked.
“I checked out Ed Buckley,” Shuman said. “He was killed—supposedly—in a car accident last year.”
“Supposedly?”
“I talked to one of the detectives with the Charleston P.D. who handled the case initially,” Shuman said. “Ed Buckley’s car was found outside the city on a secondary road that winds through the swamps.”
“I read the newspaper story on the Internet,” I said. “That’s pretty much what it said—except for the supposedly part.”
“The car had gone down an embankment,” Shuman said, “then went up in a big fireball.”
“The gas tank exploded?” I asked. I mean, jeez, what else could it have been?
“Everybody figured the body inside was Ed’s,” Shuman said. “The detectives figured differently when the FBI showed up and took the case away from them.”
“Just like with you and Madison,” I said. “What did the detective think happened?”
“He was off the case,” he reminded me.
“I know,” I said. “So what did he think?”
The tiniest grin tugged at Shuman’s lips, and I knew the detective in Charleston had continued to investigate the case, just as Shuman was doing with Tiffany’s case—with my help, of course.
“Buckley was a businessman. He lived high. Expensive homes, cars. Very high profile,” he said.
That fit with the image I’d gotten from Virginia and the newspaper article. Tiffany’s family was old money—old Southern money—and Ed Buckley sounded as if he belonged there.
Dorothy Howell Page 10