Uprooting Ernie (Jane Delaney Mysteries Book 2)

by Pamela Burford

  “Look,” Dom said, “I know you like Norman. I like him too. But you have to admit he’s not the most reliable witness. Short-term memory, long-term memory, whatever. A lot is at stake here. Someone’s going to go away for life.”

  “Well, I still think Bonnie should bring Dean in for questioning,” I said, “but she practically bit my head off when I suggested it. And she refused to even discuss the accusation Dean made—you know, about Sophie and Porter doing in Ernie.”

  I had become accustomed to Bonnie’s cool civility toward me, her ex-fiancé’s ex-wife. But the evening before, in Sophie’s backyard, that polite façade had shown signs of wear. Which reminded me of watching her cozy up to Dom after the town meeting a couple of days ago. At least they’d looked darn cozy from where I’d stood.

  Dom said, “A police detective can’t be expected to share all the details of an investigation, Janey. You know that. How’s Bonnie supposed to solve the case with some civilian running around playing—” He clamped his mouth shut.

  I leaned back in my chair. “No, go ahead, Dom, finish the thought. With some meddlesome civilian running around playing detective and making a mess of the whole investigation.”

  “I didn’t say ‘meddlesome.’”

  I scraped my chair back, shot to my feet, and grabbed my purse. Dom rewarded that with a gusty, put-upon sigh.

  As satisfying as a grand exit would have been just then, my mouth had other plans. “Are you sleeping with her?”

  His head jerked up. “What? Sleeping with who?”

  A priest, a rabbi, and a minister walk into Janey's Place. They restrain Janey’s ex while she pours hot potpourri soup into his lap.

  I commenced the grand exit. Dom leapt to his feet and clamped his fingers around my arm. “No!” he said. “No, I’m not sleeping with her. Why would you even ask that?”

  Behind the counter, Cheyenne stared at us unashamedly, thumbs poised over her phone, while her texting buddy impatiently awaited the next L8R or CU46.

  Oh, please. Just sound them out.

  I stared straight into Dom’s bottomless espresso eyes, willing him not to guiltily look away. He held my gaze, but his next words were far from comforting. He released my arm and said, quietly, “Bonnie wants us to get back together.”

  His words squeezed my chest. After a moment I said, “And what do you want?”

  “You know what I want, Janey. I’ve waited three months for your answer.”

  Amateur, I wanted to shoot back. I waited seventeen years for you to come around. But Dom wasn’t used to being single. He was a man who needed a woman. For him, three months without a significant other must have felt like being stranded on the moon.

  A few months ago I’d been so certain my long… infatuation? Was that word even appropriate when referring to one’s ex-husband? I’d been so certain my long, hopeless, helpless infatuation with Dom was a thing of the past. For the first time in my adult life, I didn’t need this man in it.

  And all he’d had to do was crook his finger at me for all that maturity and personal growth to evaporate. One part of me howled, Why are you even stopping to think about it? He’s the love of your life. You’ve waited the better part of two decades for this. That part had never stopped fantasizing about a baby with Dom’s dark, curly hair and my pale hazel eyes.

  The other part of me asked why he was the one who got to call the shots, to demand answers at his convenience. Well, okay, it could be because he had smart, beautiful, desirable Bonnie Hernandez eager to share her life with him—while I had a toy poodle with OCD. Plus, even if there were no Bonnie, the man happened to be a sweet, sexy multimillionaire, which kind of, you know, tipped the scales of power in his favor.

  But all that was just noise. Strip it away and it was just me and Dom, two lower-middle-class South Shore kids who’d found each other twenty-six years ago in Mr. Bender’s eighth-grade Spanish class. One way or another, he’d always be in my life.

  “Dom,” I said, “how serious are you about wanting to remarry me?”

  He blinked. “You know the answer to that, Janey. I love you. We’re meant to be together.”

  “I have to admit, for me, it’s not so cut-and-dried,” I said. “We have so much history. It’s complicated. If you really love me, you won’t rush me.”

  A frustrated frown creased his brow. “What about Bonnie?”

  “The hell with Bonnie,” I snapped. “This isn’t about Bonnie. It’s about you and me, Dom. I’m telling you I need more time. Can’t you understand that?”

  “How much time are we talking about?” he asked. “A week? A year?”

  “I don’t know! For crying out—” I took a deep breath. “Not a year. Come on, I’m just asking you to be patient a little while longer, a few weeks maybe, so I can sort out my thoughts without feeling like I’m under the gun. Think you can do that for me?”

  “Sure, Janey.” He smiled and dropped a tender kiss on my mouth. I let him. “I think I can manage that.”

  After leaving Dom, I went next door to UnderStatements, hoping for a few words with Lacey. A young saleswoman I didn’t recognize told me her boss had taken an early lunch break at the town park and wasn’t I that satanic Death Diva person who’d made their shop famous? I learned that my humiliating television debut had been great for business. By popular demand, UnderStatements had added ugly, high-waisted, full-coverage, white cotton drawers to their inventory, and the granny panties were flying off the shelves—along with sexy thongs to wear over them. Seems I’d started a trend. She pointed to a prominent display near the entrance, then tried to shove a Sharpie into my hand. The idea was for me to autograph them. People would pay big bucks to own a pair of granny panties signed by the real Death Diva.

  As much as I admired her business acumen, I declined the honor.

  Nevins Park—named, as was Sophie’s home, for the town’s founding family—encompassed a dog park and the beach as well as a baseball diamond and bleachers, picnic tables and pavilions, a large playground, and plenty of wide-open green space. The park was typically busy for a summer Friday. The playground I’d passed was alive with the gleeful shouts of children overseen by a handful of young mothers and nannies, plus a stay-at-home dad. Under a pavilion decorated with balloons, about twenty preschoolers dug into birthday cake. The breeze shifted, blending the briny tang of the nearby Long Island Sound with the scent of cut grass.

  I found Lacey sitting alone at a wooden picnic table. A small white sack featuring Patisserie Susanne’s distinctive white and gold label sat before her and she was nursing a large plastic takeout cup filled with black coffee and ice. Another one sat next to it, this one lightened with milk.

  If she was aware of being Detective Hernandez’s number-one suspect, I saw no sign of it in her calm features as she opened the sack and arranged a pair of pastries—chocolate croissants, my all-time favorite!—on paper napkins. Her placid expression closed down when she looked up and spied me heading toward her. “I don’t want company,” she said, when I seated myself across from her.

  “Really?” I nodded toward the second iced coffee and the croissants. My stomach whined, despite the nice, filling papaya-ginger smoothie I’d just sucked down. “I think you mean you don’t want my company.”

  “If that’s how you want to put it,” Lacey said. Was she meeting a guy here? Was it possible she’d moved on that quickly?

  I knew I wasn’t this woman’s favorite person, despite my contribution to the newfound popularity—notoriety might be a more accurate term—of her lingerie store. I couldn’t expect her to be grateful to me for revealing that her own husband, rather than his dead buddy Ernie, had been responsible for the death of her beloved Tim. The bearer of bad news makes very few BFF shortlists.

  “Just let me run one thing by you,” I said, “and then I’ll be out of your way.” I folded my arms on the table, squirmed my butt into a comfortable position on the hard wooden bench, and let my body language do the talking. Hey, I can wait here
all day. Who are we meeting today? Is he cute?

  Lacey shook her head in exasperation. “Okay, make it quick.”

  Now that I had the undivided attention of the prime suspect in the three-decades-old murder of Ernest Waterfield, I was at a loss for words.

  That’s right, I’d sought her out without having the slightest idea what I intended to say to her. Not a clue. Zip. Zilch. All I knew was, it was driving me crazy that Dean Phillips might be involved and that no one except Sophie and me—certainly not the detective in charge of the investigation—seemed to think the idea worth pursuing. Even Lacey’s husband, who loved her beyond all reason, logic, or good old-fashioned common sense, was convinced she’d bludgeoned his old pal Ernie to death.

  See how good I am at leaving the investigation to the experts? Okay, in my head that came out “the so-called experts.” Probably in yours, too, am I right?

  So that’s how I found myself sitting across the table from Miss Congeniality, trying to formulate an intelligent question while eyeing those chocolate croissants and fighting the urge to cry, Look! Behind you!

  “Okay, um,” I started, “so here’s the thing, Lacey. I mean… yeah, this thing is just so…” My urbane chuckle came out as a consumptive wheeze. “Well, you don’t need me to tell you, am I right?”

  She stared balefully, awaiting further elaboration on This Thing, before something over my shoulder snagged her attention. She looked up and waved. To me she said, “You can go now.”

  I turned to see Porter striding in our direction, as handsome as ever in a black polo shirt, khaki shorts, and boat shoes. He appeared surprised to see me sitting with his wife. He greeted me before circling the table to lean down and kiss Lacey’s cheek.

  Her gaze zeroed in on his throat. She pulled the collar of his shirt aside to reveal the dark bruise left by his homemade noose. Her brow creased in concern. “What happened to you?”

  Porter’s tired eyes flicked to mine as he sat next to her. He looked worn down. I’d assumed Lacey knew about her husband’s attempted suicide. Apparently not.

  “Is this for me?” He tapped the iced coffee with milk.

  “Yeah. Three sugars.” She handed him a straw and one of the croissants, then seemed to notice I hadn’t vamoosed as promised. “Goodbye, Jane.”

  “Don’t run off on my account.” Porter sipped his coffee.

  “This is a family matter,” Lacey said. “I didn’t invite her here.”

  “Yeah, well.” He tugged his collar back into place, concealing the livid streak on his neck as best he could. “Jane saved my life. I wish I could be grateful.”

  “Saved your…?” Lacey’s startled gaze flew between me and her husband. “Somebody better tell me what’s going on.”

  Suddenly I wished I had indeed vamoosed. Porter looked directly at his wife. “I tried to kill myself yesterday. Jane stopped me.”

  Color fled her face. She stared at his throat. “No. No, that’s crazy. You wouldn’t do that.”

  Sadly he said, “Yes, it’s crazy, and yes, I’m afraid I did to it. Or tried to.”

  “But… why?”

  His eyes briefly closed. “You know why.”

  Her mouth opened, but no words emerged. Her eyes welled. Finally she whispered, “Porter. Porter, no. It’s not… That was...” Helplessly she shook her head.

  “It’s not just that.” He swallowed hard, waging his own battle to retain his composure in this public setting. He took a deep breath. “They’re going to arrest you, sweetheart. I can’t protect you. I tried… I tried and I failed.”

  She shook her head in confusion. “That’s insane. Why would they arrest me? You confessed.”

  “They didn’t buy it. I wish to God they had. Lacey, I’m so sorry.” He took her hand. “The police know you killed Ernie.”

  She jerked her hand out of his, eyes wide. “What are you talking about? You killed him. I saw you. I hid behind the rhododendrons in Sophie’s yard and watched you put his body—” Her voice cracked. “I saw you, Porter. How can you say…?”

  “Jane knows, sweetheart,” he said. “You don’t have to keep up the pretense with her.”

  “Pretense?” Lacey looked from one of us to the other. “This is insane. I had nothing to do with Ernie’s murder. I went there straight from Teddy’s house and saw you—”

  “Wait, when did you go to Teddy’s?” He frowned. “When you left our house, you were headed to Ernie’s. You said if I wasn’t going to end our friendship, you’d do it for me.”

  “Yeah, by going to his mom and getting her to set her son straight.” Lacey winced at her own unfortunate choice of words. “I figured I’d have more success going through her. I was wrong.”

  I spoke up. “Porter, it’s true. Teddy herself told me Lacey visited her that day, and for just that reason.”

  He appeared to be waging a mental battle, struggling to shoehorn new facts into three-decades-old assumptions. “How long did you stay at Teddy’s?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know, twenty minutes, a half hour? Just long enough for her to tell me her precious boy could choose his own friends and to get lost.”

  “I thought you went straight to Ernie’s.” He dragged his fingers through his hair, a habit that was becoming familiar. “After you left, it didn’t take me long to cool down and decide I was an idiot, and then I went there looking for you. I was going to cut ties with him—anything to make it right between you and me. But when I got there he was already dead.”

  Lacey straightened. “You got to Ernie’s before me. When I saw your car, I parked down the road and snuck onto the property. I thought maybe Teddy had called to tell him about my hissy fit, and that you guys were having a yok at my expense. Instead I saw you putting Ernie’s body in the trunk of his car.”

  “What you saw,” Porter said, “was me cleaning up after you, after the murder I thought you committed… the murder I’d driven you to commit.”

  “But—”

  “I know,” he said. “You went to Teddy’s first, which means you wouldn’t have had time to go to Ernie’s and kill him before I got there. And all these years I thought…”

  Lacey put a hand to her mouth, overcome. “And I thought you did it. I thought one of you started a fight and you ended up killing him.”

  Porter placed his hands on his wife’s shoulders. He tipped his forehead to hers. They sat like that while I turned away to study the birthday-party kids, who’d finished their cake and were now exploring the finer points of Duck, Duck, Goose.

  Eventually I heard a few sniffles, some soft whispers, and what sounded suspiciously like an actual kiss on the lips.

  I turned back to see Lacey gently touch the bruise on her husband’s throat. “I wondered why you weren’t dressed for work today.”

  “I have to wait for the marks to fade. Officially I’m working from home for a few days.”

  The look she gave him was brimming with wonder. “You confessed to a crime you didn’t commit to protect me. You were willing… you were willing to spend the rest of your life in jail. For me.”

  His voice was hoarse. “I messed up so badly, sweetheart. So badly. Starting with…” His throat worked. “Every time I looked at Colin, the whole time he was growing up, all I could see was Tim, and what I’d done. I wanted so much to be a good dad to him, but I knew I’d never deserve him. He’d never belong to me.”

  “Well, you picked a hell of a way to atone.” Her half smile was an amalgam of tenderness, awe, and exasperation. “I wish to God you’d trusted me with the truth.”

  “I never set out to… to hurt Tim. I was young and drunk and stupid.”

  She gave a slow, sad nod. “For years I could never find it in me to forgive Ernie for what I thought he did. My hatred consumed me, it poisoned me and everyone around me even after Ernie was gone. Tim would’ve been…” She swallowed hard. “He would have been disappointed in me.”

  Porter stroked his wife’s hair. “This is a good time to start over, what do
you say?”

  A smile creased the corners of her eyes, but swiftly faded. “The police really think I killed Ernie?”

  He held her face between his hands. “We’ll get the best lawyers. They have no case. It’ll never go to trial.”

  “Oh God,” she breathed. “I’m scared, Porter.”

  He wrapped his arms around her. I could barely make out the words he murmured into her ear. “It’ll be okay, I promise, sweetheart. I will never leave your side. We’ll get through this together.” He stroked her back in slow circles. After a while something seemed to occur to him. He leaned slightly away. “So why are we here anyway? What’s this important family matter you wanted to discuss?”

  “What? Oh!” Lacey smacked her head. “My news.”

  “Please tell me it’s good news,” he said.

  “It couldn’t be much better.” Her smile lit her from within, showing me the girl Porter had fallen in love with all those years ago. “You’re going to be a grandfather.”

  A surprised grin softened his tired features. “No kidding. You’re right, sweetheart, that is amazing news.”

  Lacey said, “Speaking of fresh starts.” I knew what she meant. Here was Porter’s chance to start over not just with his wife but with his stepson, Colin, as well.

  Porter cast me a crooked sidelong smile. “We haven’t forgotten you’re there, Jane.”

  “Hey, don’t mind me,” I said. “I could sit here listening to good news all day.”

  “While you’re listening, eat up.” Porter handed his chocolate croissant across the table.

  “Mine too.” Lacey pushed hers across. “No appetite.”

  It took every scrap of my self-control not to rip into those buttery, chocolate-filled pastries right then and there, but at the moment, the Vargases needed privacy more than they needed to sit there watching me stuff my face.

  “Well, you won’t catch me turning down these bad boys. Thanks.” I opened the sack and stuffed the croissants back into it. Rising, I said, “I’ll eat these in the car. I, you know, have to be somewhere.” I waved and started to leave.