by Emily James
Now it looked like it was the other way around. The generic brand ketchup was what they normally used.
If that were the case, though, they shouldn’t have had the other ketchup there at all. Even small businesses often made a deal with a particular company to only carry their brand. Not always, but often.
I picked up the new ketchup bottle and pretended to examine the label on the back. “Is this the ketchup you always use?”
Fear tried to tell me that my voice squeaked and that I’d given myself away, but this was one of the times I knew he was a liar. I’d perfected the art of keeping my voice casual when asking questions. It’d helped me avoid angering Jarrod by seeming to question his intelligence or actions. If I kept my voice casual, he took it as curiosity or that I wasn’t smart enough to get it.
Vinny’s jowls giggled, and he grabbed the bottle back from my unprepared hand. “What is it with you people and the ketchup? I’ll tell you what I told Claire Cartwright. Ketchup is ketchup, and I can’t get no different ketchup. It’s this ketchup or you can get your own like she did.”
Vinny’s raised voice sent spikes of numbness shooting through my limbs at the same time as my mind tangled up on the notion that Claire provided the specialty ketchup for the party herself.
Vinny took a step toward me in the small space, and I instinctively backed up and rammed into the drawers behind me. Pain shot through my spine, and I bit back a whimper.
Vinny pushed past me and opened the door up again. “I appreciate you thinking of us for your event, but I don’t think we’re gonna be the right truck for you. Best of luck.”
There was enough sarcasm dripping off his words to make the floor slick. One thing I could say for Claire, she knew how to leave a lasting impression on people.
I stumbled out the door and down the steps.
Claire purchasing the ketchup herself made the most sense if she wanted to easily be able to mix the almond butter in beforehand, but it wasn’t very smart. If the police questioned Vinny and his guys about the ketchup, they’d find out that they hadn’t provided it, pointing directly at Claire.
And she’d seemed genuinely annoyed at Vinny’s crew at the number of ketchup bottles. She was so picky about details that surely she wouldn’t have bought the wrong number of bottles and then forgotten she’d provided them so that she yelled at Vinny, causing a scene.
Unless that was her intent. Yell at Vinny so that people heard her, giving her plausible deniability later when Vinny claimed she’d been the one to provide the special ketchup?
Maybe this was enough to take to the police, but surely they knew all this already from talking to Vinny and they were still looking at me.
I walked away from Vinny’s truck, but stuttered to a stop after only two steps.
Dan Holmes stood at the edge of the sidewalk, arms crossed over his chest, his gaze hard enough to leave bruises.
Chapter 12
I wasn’t afraid Dan Holmes would hurt me. There’d been something in the way he interacted with Janie and with Claire that told me he had too deep a respect for women to ever do the kind of things Jarrod had done.
At least, I wasn’t afraid he’d hurt me physically. But physical abuse wasn’t the only way a person could be hurt. My career and my freedom were definitely in jeopardy.
I’d already been caught off guard and reacted to his presence, so I couldn’t walk by as if I hadn’t seen him or didn’t know him. Instead, I held my ground and waited for him to make the first move.
He could have been a statue with how still he stayed. “What are you doing here?”
Grudgingly, I had to admire his bluntness. He didn’t try to find out in some roundabout way or even couch it as Would you like to tell me what you’re doing here?
Though he probably knew if he phrased it that last way, I’d have said no.
“I was here to talk to Vinny. Food truck operators will often coordinate on events.”
The words were out of my mouth before I realized how incriminating that might sound. If Claire claimed Vinny provided the ketchup, and they thought I was the one who tampered with it, my words might make it sound like a conspiracy. We conspired to both get hired and work together to kill Harold.
“Don’t listen to that crazy lady,” Vinny shouted. “She’s not got any part in my business. I wouldn’t work with her.”
I spun around. He was leaning out the front window of his truck, across his counter. A woman stood in front of the counter, her hand extended in mid-air, a five-dollar bill dangling from her fingers as if she’d been in the middle of paying when Vinny overhead my explanation and decided to set the record straight.
“She came here saying she was looking to hire me,” Vinny said, his raised voice easily carrying to where we stood.
Carrying far enough, in fact, that an elderly couple walking by turned to look.
“Then the ketchup I’ve been using since I started this truck five years ago wasn’t good enough for her.” Vinny poked a finger in our direction. “So either you both buy something or you leave. You’re scaring away the non-complaining, paying customers, and I got a business to run.”
There was a story in the Bible where the ground opened up and swallowed people whole. That didn’t seem so bad right about now.
I didn’t want to turn back around and face Dan. He’d caught me in a blatant lie. No matter what I said from this point on, he wouldn’t believe me. I couldn’t blame him. I wouldn’t believe someone who’d been caught lying to me either.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t avoid facing him. I pivoted slowly back around.
Dan’s arms were still crossed over his chest, but his arm muscles looked less tense, and there was a twitch in the corner of his mouth that I would have thought was a smile had he been anyone else, in any other situation.
His arms lowered to his sides. “He doesn’t like you much.”
And the best thing I could think to say in response was, “Nope.”
Dan took a step closer so that we were a normal speaking distance apart. “I know you didn’t come here to actually hire him. If I asked you again what you’re doing here, would you tell me?”
What would be the point? “It’ll sound so crazy you’ll never believe me.”
His head tilted to one side as if he were trying to take my measure and couldn’t quite manage it. “How about we give it a try?”
He bought two hot dogs from Vinny, which seemed to calm the man down, then motioned for me to follow him to the picnic table a few hundred feet away.
He handed me one of the hot dogs. I hated to accept it. It had to be meant to bring my guard down in the hope that I’d slip up and admit to something that could identify me as Harold’s killer. But I was hungry, and I really couldn’t afford supper if I didn’t accept this.
Worse, there was a part of me that wished—hoped—it were an actual peace offering. That part of me was the stupid part that I couldn’t risk listening to.
“So?” Dan asked. “The truth this time. Please.”
The please almost undid me. Because maybe if I told him the truth and he believed me, I’d have an ally in this hunt.
So I did. I told him the whole story starting with how Claire told me there’d be a way for me to display my cupcakes already set up, and that there wasn’t, which was why I had to borrow the ketchup. I told him about Blake running into me in the parking lot, and my suspicion afterward. I told him that I hadn’t gone to the police with the information out of fear that it’d make me look guilty and like I was trying to be part of the investigation.
Finally I told him what I learned from Blake about Claire’s strained finances thanks to Harold’s long life—leaving out, of course, how I got Blake’s information and that I’d basically stalked him.
“I came here today,” I said in closing, “because I thought Claire might have hired someone from Vinny’s truck to spike the ketchup with almond butter ahead of time.”
Dan balled up his hot dog wrapper and tosse
d it in a perfect arc into the trash can ten feet away. He rested his arms on the top of the picnic table. “I’m guessing hot dog man would have been a lot angrier if you’d accused one of his guys of that. But you did ask him about the ketchup. Why?”
Giving him what I found out felt a bit like giving up my last advantage. He’d know everything I knew, and could very well use it to plug the holes in Claire’s story and protect her, framing me in a way that I couldn’t wiggle out of.
I met his gaze for a minute. He was handsome, I’d give him that, but handsome faces often hid ugly hearts.
He let out a slow sigh and flattened his hands out on the table. “Look. You don’t have any more reason to trust me than I do to trust you. But I loved my grandpa, and I love my daughter. I want to try to find out who really hurt them. If that’s not you, you have nothing to fear from me.”
That wasn’t entirely true. I still had a lot to fear from him. But I didn’t believe he would put Janie in danger or let the person who hurt her, however accidentally, go free without punishment.
“The ketchup at the party wasn’t supplied by their food truck. It was a different brand. They say Claire brought it herself.”
Dan leaned back and closed his eyes. “That’s what they told the police too. Claire says she didn’t.”
It almost sounded like he believed me. Almost. It was more like when a person believed someone but they didn’t want to believe them.
Dan opened his eyes again. He looked over my shoulder toward Serial Grillers, then focused back on me. “Claire thinks you and the owner of the other truck were in it together. That could be a story you both came up with ahead of time, and so you’re just telling me what you’d already agreed on. She says the hot dog vendor didn’t say anything to her on the day of the party about not bringing the ketchup himself, even when she was yelling at him about there not being enough.”
Claire had admitted to yelling at Vinny. That was something I wouldn’t have expected about her.
Still, Dan and Claire had a point. Thankfully, it was one I might be able to explain away. Vinny and I did have one thing in common.
“I was afraid that day that Claire would refuse to pay me over the smallest infraction. Vinny might have been afraid the same way. He probably thought it would be better to take credit for finding the special ketchup Claire requested and to have her mad at him for not getting enough than to risk her refusing to pay him because he pointed out she’d brought the ketchup and it was her fault if there wasn’t enough. He might have even thought she’d dock his fee because she supplied the ketchup herself. We often run on a small margin.”
Dan pushed to his feet. “Wait here, okay?”
He moved far enough away to be out of earshot and pulled out his cell phone. He could be calling Claire, double checking her story.
Or he could be calling the police.
Run while you have the chance, Fear said. You’ll have a head start.
I’d be able to duck down a few side streets and maybe reach my truck. But if I did that, I’d guarantee that I lost whatever small seed of trust I might have gained. I’d be guilty in Dan Holmes’ eyes.
I knew very little about him, but I had the sense that if I ran now, he’d hunt me down with the same determination as Jarrod, albeit for different reasons. It was hard enough watching out for one person. I couldn’t live my life trying to dodge two.
Besides, the information I’d uncovered about Claire seemed to be information the police already had. I had no way to dig into it further. Dan did. He had access to Claire’s life. If he turned his attention from me to Claire, he might find something that would also convince the police I wasn’t a suspect.
Dan slid his phone back into his pocket. “Blake confirmed your story.” The corner of his mouth actually came up in a real half-smile this time. “Looking to get out of the cupcake business and into bar tending, I hear.”
I cringed. “I didn’t tell him that. He assumed.”
Dan chuckled. It died too quickly, along with his smile, and I found myself wishing he’d laugh again. There was something warm and soothing about the way he laughed.
“Claire wouldn’t have done this,” he said. “Her finances are rough, especially with the divorce a few months ago, but she loved Grandpa too. She took him to every appointment, bought him everything he needed, and she spent months planning this birthday party for him.”
He brought his cell phone out again and swiped his finger across the screen. He turned the phone around to face me. Two grinning faces filled the screen. One was Janie. The other was Claire with the sloppiest make-up job I’d ever seen. She had dark blue eye shadow that surrounded her eyes like a raccoon and her lipstick looked like it belonged on a clown. She even had a smudge of red on her teeth.
“That’s from the day Claire let Janie do her make-up,” Dan said. “She knew about Janie’s nut allergy. Even if she might have gotten desperate enough to hurt Grandpa, she never would have done anything to endanger Janie. The police said there was nut butter in every bottle, and I watched Claire put ketchup on Janie’s burger herself.”
He jammed the phone back into his jacket pocket. “Claire didn’t do this.”
I shook my head and shrugged. I didn’t know Claire well enough to have his confidence, but I did know one thing. “I didn’t do this either.”
“Then maybe instead of working against each other, we should work together to figure out who did.”
Chapter 13
I wasn’t a team player. I’d never even been on a team. And life had taught me that it was rare to be able to count on someone else to look out for you. The safest thing was to look out for yourself.
Dan looked like the kind of guy who’d always been a part of a team—a sport’s team or a work team. Given that he’d been the one Claire called for when Harold collapsed, he was probably a paramedic or a fireman. Teamwork was probably ingrained in his DNA.
I couldn’t explain to a man like that why I preferred to work alone. Even if I knew the right words to use, I wasn’t about to share something so personal with a stranger.
Which left me trapped. If I turned him down, I’d lose his good will and he might go back to thinking I was behind Harold’s murder.
Besides, without his help, I had nowhere to go from here with the information I’d found.
Dan held his hand out toward me. “Partners?”
I nodded, rose to my feet, and extended my hand to him.
His palm was big enough that my hand disappeared inside his. His grip was firm but not alarmingly so, suggesting someone had taught him the value of a good handshake when he was young, but also gave him the self-confidence to use it. The two didn’t always go together.
He let go of my hand and took out his keys. “Our first step needs to be to talk to Claire.”
Yeah, that sounded like a good idea. I wasn’t nearly as convinced as he was that Claire couldn’t have done this—though that picture of her with Janie did make me question my original theory—and going would tip our hand. She’d know we were checking up on her. “Claire’s not going to want me on her property, let alone be willing to discuss this with me.”
The edges of his eyes crinkled like he was smiling inside, but didn’t want to seem cocky by smiling on the outside. “Leave it to me. I’ll drive us there. Then she won’t be able to turn you away without turning me away. And she won’t turn me away. She’s like my second mom even though she’s my cousin.”
Dan had a rare way with words. Even when I didn’t want to believe him, I wanted to believe him. He reminded me a bit of a non-smarmy lawyer in that sense. Unfortunately, it was also a quality that Jarrod had, and that made me disinclined to climb into a car with him.
Even more unfortunately, his argument for driving there with him made enough sense that I’d be silly not to go along with it.
He did seem to be overlooking one important thing though. “Shouldn’t we first ask Vinny if he saw Claire bring the ketchup or if he assumed she did beca
use he hadn’t? It seems like his answer should influence what we do next.”
The look he gave me said that wasn’t a question he would have expected a cupcake designer to come up with. And that he was a little impressed I had.
“He’s not going to want to talk to you again,” he said.
I sucked in the edge of my lip. I wasn’t sure if he was teasing me or trying to keep me away so he could ask Vinny but then lie to me about what he said to protect Claire. The way his eyes crinkled at the edges made me think teasing. And I’d already decided that I didn’t believe he would protect someone who hurt Janie, accidentally or not.
It was going to be even harder to work with someone else than I thought. It required trusting them even in little steps like this.
“He probably wouldn’t sell me a hot dog or a burger directly even if I offered him double,” I said to cover up my hesitation.
“I think he’d take double.” There was a smile in Dan’s voice. “Why don’t you let me do the talking. You can still stay nearby to hear what he says if you’d like.”
I had the feeling he knew exactly what I’d been thinking.
I stayed around the corner of the food truck, within hearing range, while Dan went to the back of the line and waited his turn. Given Vinny’s anger at us for disturbing his paying customers, we decided it was better Dan didn’t try to cut the line.
Two more people got into line after him, meaning Vinny wouldn’t have much patience. He might refuse to answer Dan’s question at all.
I leaned around the edge of the truck just enough for Dan to see me. He must have noticed the motion in his peripheral vision because he looked in my direction.
I pointed to the finger where my wedding ring used to be—I still had it in a plastic baggie in a drawer in my truck—and then mimed eating.
Dan’s eyebrows dipped a fraction. I repeated the process, and he gave me a slight nod.
“I’d like an order of onion rings,” he told Vinny. “And I wanted to ask you a quick question.”