by Kylie Logan
Hank nodded, and we followed him up the stairs.
The moment I stepped inside the office and caught sight of the golden oak desk that dominated the far wall, I could see why Levi wanted to buy it. It was a beauty, at least five feet wide, complete with a row of cubbyholes across the top back and a dozen little drawers under those. Estelle had obviously cherished the desk—the polished brass hardware twinkled at us in the evening light.
“So . . .” Hank sat down in the chair in front of the desk. There were two chairs across from the desk, both upholstered wing chairs I had a feeling were designed to put Estelle’s customers at ease. I sank into the one to the right of the window that looked out over the street. Levi took the chair on the other side of the window. “Who wants to start?”
“We were here to buy furniture from Vivien,” I said.
“Both of you? Together?” The note of skepticism in Hank’s voice was anything but professional, but I guess I couldn’t blame him. Levi and I were as discreet about our breakup as we’d ever been about what we had of a relationship. But Chandra is my next-door neighbor, after all, and she doesn’t miss a thing. She doesn’t much care who she talks to about the things she sees and hears, either, and I was sure that by now, she’d told Hank all about how Levi and I were on the outs.
“Not both of us together,” Levi clarified. “I was supposed to be here at seven thirty to see Vivien.”
“And that’s the time she told me to stop by, too,” I added.
“And the rest of them?” Hank asked.
“The Twins said they were here to look at furniture,” I said, filling Hank in. “Alex Canfield told us he stopped by to look at some old tools. Cody Rayburn—”
“Ah, Cody Rayburn!” Hank leaned back and his chair squeaked. “What do you know about him?” he asked both of us.
Levi shrugged. “He works at the gas station. Once in a while he shows up at my place and drinks too much.”
“And he was hiding in the rhododendron bush when we got here,” I added.
Thinking this through, Hank tipped back his head and pursed his lips.
“You don’t look surprised,” I said.
“We’ll talk about it later,” Hank replied. “How well did you know the victim?” he asked me.
“Hardly at all,” I admitted. “We’d met a time or two, and I was at the memorial service yesterday, of course. Before that, I talked to Vivien on the phone the other day. You know, to arrange to meet here tonight. She knew what I was coming for. She knew that Estelle wanted me to have the highboy. We talked value and we agreed on a price. And the highboy, by the way,” I pointed out, because it never hurts to let a professional know these kinds of things, “isn’t here.”
“Not here?” Hank didn’t sound as interested in the missing highboy as he did in wondering why this was important.
I filled him in. “I came here specifically to buy the highboy. The highboy isn’t here.”
“You think someone stole it. Was there any sign of forcible entry?”
I thought back to when we’d all arrived. “The door was open,” I told Hank. “But the doorframe wasn’t scratched and I haven’t seen any broken windows.”
“And nothing inside the house looks as if it’s been disturbed?”
“You mean except for the highboy that wasn’t where it was supposed to be? No,” I told him.
“Probably not a robbery, then. Ms. Frisk must have known her killer if she let the person in,” Hank mumbled. While we were talking, he’d taken a small notebook and a pen out of his pocket and, pen poised over the page, he looked Levi’s way. “How about you?” he asked. “Did you know Ms. Frisk?”
“A bit.”
Not a surprising comment from Levi. After all, it’s a small island and something like two hundred people actually stay put throughout the winter. We were all bound to bump into each other now and then.
Levi shifted in his chair. “We dated for a while,” he added.
I’d already sat up like a shot and uttered an amazed, “What?” when I realized it was not only an overreaction, but pretty tacky, too, and way too revealing. I could have kicked myself. I sank back into the wing chair and wished I could disappear, but even that didn’t keep me from noticing Levi turn my way.
“It was just a couple of times,” he said, and he was talking to me, not to Hank, because Hank hadn’t asked anything about how often Levi and Vivien might have seen each other. “Last spring. After you and I—”
Hank cleared his throat just in time. “So, Levi, obviously you can tell me more about Ms. Frisk than Bea can.”
Levi’s shrug wasn’t exactly convincing. “She was . . .” He pressed his lips together. “Well, I guess anybody who ever met her knew that Vivien was bright and attractive and—”
“She was sexy and she knew it,” I sang.
“I suppose some people might say that.” Like we were the only two people in the room, Levi kept his eyes on me. “I thought so, too. At first,” he added, almost a little too quickly. “But the more time I spent with Vivien—”
“How much time was that?” The question didn’t come from Hank.
A muscle bunched at the base of Levi’s jaw. “Not very much. Then again, it didn’t take me very much time to realize that she was full of herself and demanding.”
I knew my smile was tight and so sweet, it could have rotted teeth. Ask me if I cared. “I suppose that all depends on what she was demanding and who she was demanding it from.”
“Well, not what you’re thinking,” Levi answered quickly.
“As if you’d know what I’m thinking.”
“I thought I did. Back before . . .” He twitched his broad shoulders. “You can’t expect that I’d just sit around every night all night by myself and—”
“Like I did,” I snapped. “Every night. All by myself.”
“Which is fine if you’re into the whole tortured, lonely artiste thing.”
“Tortured, lonely artiste!” I sat up and slapped the arms of the chair. “Is that how you think of me? Because let me tell you something, buster—”
“All right, you two.” I guess Hank knew the only way he was going to get our attention was to hop out of his chair, come stand in front of us, and give us a glare of monumental proportions. “I don’t know what’s going on between you two. I don’t want to know,” he added, with one hand out like a traffic cop to stop us just in case we were about to tell him anything personal. “All I know is that I’m investigating a murder. And having you two sitting here squabbling like angry cats isn’t helping me. So you”—he swung around in my direction—”you wait until I ask for your opinion. And you”—this time he turned to Levi—“you are going to tell me anything you can about Vivien Frisk.”
Hank knew it was all he needed to say. He stalked back to his chair, sat back down, and picked up his notebook and his pen. “You dated her,” he said to Levi, recapping what we already knew and forcing me to reconsider what it meant. “And you said it was when?”
“Back in the spring. We went out”—Levi had to think about it—“twice. We went out twice. Once for coffee, and Vivien was so picky and so demanding of the barista, I was amazed anyone could be that particular about coffee.”
He knew I was particular about my coffee; I was perfectly justified in giving him a sour smile.
“I cut her some slack. I figured she was having a bad day,” Levi continued. “Then, about a week later—”
“That’s why you have her cell number!” Yeah, sure, Hank had told me to keep my mouth shut but the pieces fell into place and I couldn’t help myself. I dug my fingers into the fabric arms of the chair. Better that than letting Levi see that I was shaking. “I had her office number, and that’s the number I called when we came into the house. But you, you had her personal number. You have her in your contacts.”
“Yes, I have
her in my contacts.”
“And even though you thought she was . . . what was that you said, picky and demanding? Even though you thought she was picky and demanding, you never deleted her from your contacts?”
Levi slapped one arm of his chair. “So I never deleted her from my contacts. Big deal! I’ve never deleted my grandfather’s name from my contacts, either, and he died three years ago!”
“That’s different,” I announced, folding my arms over my chest and plunking back in my chair. “Dying isn’t the same as dating.”
“Sometimes it’s just as painful,” Levi growled. Something told me he wasn’t talking about Vivien Frisk.
“Don’t even start!” Hank snapped when I opened my mouth. “I told you, Bea, you keep quiet. If you two want to duke it out after I’m done here, you have my blessing. Right now, you’re slowing me down. And I don’t appreciate it.”
With thumb and forefinger, I pinched my lips shut. While I was at it, I bit the inside of my cheek, too.
“So, about a week after you and Ms. Frisk went out for coffee . . .” Hank hauled in a deep, calming breath and let it out slowly, but that didn’t fool me. His voice still simmered with aggravation. “Then what?” he asked Levi.
“She called one evening. Vivien called. She asked if I’d like to meet her for dinner. I wasn’t doing anything.” He cast the briefest of glances in my direction. “I told her sure. After we got to the restaurant, it took me about a minute and a half to realize we really didn’t have anything to talk about, and besides, that night, she was even nastier than she was when we went out for coffee. She criticized every little thing our waitress did, she complained about the food, she talked about herself nonstop. Yes, Vivien was vibrant and sexy.” Another look in my direction. “But she wasn’t my kind of woman. She called again a few days later and asked about lunch and I told her I was busy. She must have gotten the message because I never heard from her again.”
“But you came here tonight anyway,” Hank remarked.
“Believe me, it wasn’t Vivien’s charms.” Levi pointed toward the rolltop. “It was to buy that desk.”
“And where were you, say, two or three hours ago?” Hank asked.
“That’s when you figure she was killed?” Levi didn’t even need to think about it. “At the bar, checking in an order from our beer supplier. There were plenty of people around. They can tell you I never left there all afternoon.”
“And you?” Hank turned my way.
“Me? Why would I kill Vivien? I told you, Hank, I hardly knew the woman.”
“Looks like you don’t have to know someone well to have really strong feelings about her,” he said.
“Look . . .” I twined my fingers together and leaned forward, my elbows on my knees. “I had nothing against Vivien. And I certainly couldn’t have been jealous or mad at her for dating . . .” Call me a coward, but I couldn’t make myself say the name. “I couldn’t be mad at her because of who she dated, because until just a couple of minutes ago, I had no idea who she dated. As to where I was this afternoon . . .” I thought back. “I went down to the ferry just after noon to pick up a food order from a specialty shop on the mainland. After that I stopped at the grocery store for things like bread and milk, and then at the newspaper office to place an ad. I went home, did some paperwork, read a couple chapters of Gone with the Wind, took a nap.”
“Anybody see you around the house?” Hank asked.
I swallowed down the realization that it was actually harder to admit I had no guests than it was to convince Hank I had no alibi. “No. But I did see some people over at Chandra’s briefly, and I talked to them, too, so they could vouch for me. I went out to the front porch to chase Jerry the cat away from my flowers and I saw there were some people at Chandra’s front door. I called over to them, asked if they needed help. They said they had appointments for tarot readings and Chandra wasn’t home.”
I can’t imagine why this interested Hank in the least, but he made a note of it in his book.
“And then?” he asked.
“They got in their golf cart and left.”
“Time?”
“Four. Maybe five. Does it matter?”
“It might,” Hank conceded. For him, that was sharing generously. He tapped his notebook with the tip of his pen. “Did Chandra talk to Ms. Frisk at that memorial service yesterday?”
“Not that I saw,” I told him. “But speaking of that . . .” I weighed the wisdom of mentioning Zane Donahue to Hank and decided I’d let him be the judge of whether I was imagining things or not. “When I got here this evening, Zane Donahue was across the street. Well, it might have been Zane Donahue,” I added in the interest of full disclosure. “I didn’t get a really good look, so I can’t really be sure. But it could have been him. He was heading around to the back of the church. You know what happened at the yacht club yesterday. You know he and Vivien—”
Hank groaned. “Don’t even remind me. Those two were always going at each other. Sickening. And you say he was here?”
“I said he was across the street. If it was him. I didn’t see him near the house.”
“I didn’t, either,” Levi added, “and I got here just a little while before Bea did.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Hank remarked. “Now, as for Chandra . . .”
“Chandra thinks Vivien was a lousy, dishonest, nasty person,” I told him, and okay, yes, so I emphasized the nasty just a little too much and made sure I was looking Levi’s way when I did. “That’s not news, Hank. There aren’t many people on South Bass who have much good to say about Vivien.”
“Chandra more than most,” he replied, and glanced from me to Levi. “You two don’t know, do you? Well, maybe you wouldn’t, being newcomers to the island. Chandra, see, was once married to a man named Bill Barone.”
I knew Chandra had three exes and that Hank was number three. “Bill, was he number one? Or was he her second husband?” I asked him.
“He was the first,” Hank said. “Chandra was in her twenties and Bill was older by ten years or so. He was a pilot over at the airport, and from what I’ve heard, he was a nice guy.”
“You didn’t know him.” It seemed like a no-brainer, but Hank would understand that I had to have all my ducks in a row.
“It all happened before I came here,” he admitted. “I wasn’t born on the island like Chandra was and like Bill was, too.”
“And you never met him after you came here?” I asked.
Hank shook his head. “He was already dead by then. Sad story. Got sick. Leukemia. There was nothing they could do, and he died young. But not before . . .” He let out a long breath through his nose. “Vivien didn’t grow up here on South Bass. The way I heard it, she came here from the mainland when she was in her twenties. She was at loose ends, looking for work, and Estelle, well, you know what a nice woman Estelle was. She offered to teach Vivien the ropes of the real estate business.”
“And then Vivien turned around and opened her own real estate company and stabbed Estelle in the back,” Levi said.
“Something like that.” Hank nodded. “But that’s not all she did. You see, once Vivien arrived here . . . well, you knew her, both of you. It only took two minutes in the room with the woman and you knew she was the type who, when she set her sights on a man . . . well, unlike you, Levi, most of them weren’t smart enough to know when to call it quits. You cut and run. A lot of others didn’t have the good sense. Bill Barone was one of them.”
I couldn’t have been more surprised if Hank had told me he could sprout wings and fly. “You mean . . .” I stammered.
“Vivien stole Bill Barone away from Chandra. Yeah, he was years older than Vivien, but he had some money and a good reputation, and I hear he was a good-looking guy. Vivien set her sights on him and never let up. She was Bill’s widow. And Chandra never forgave her for what she did.�
� Hank shook his head slowly back and forth. “It’s no surprise to anyone who knows her that Chandra doesn’t keep her feelings to herself. More than once, I’ve heard her say that she hated Vivien Frisk and wanted nothing more than to see her dead.”
4
Chandra had been done wrong by Vivien Frisk.
Serious wrong.
But that didn’t mean . . .
While Hank was downstairs corralling the next person he wanted to interview, I chewed over the situation—and everything Hank seemed to be implying when he brought up Chandra’s name.
It didn’t take long to make up my mind.
“No way,” I mumbled.
“You’re thinking about Chandra.”
I’d been so deep in thought, I’d forgotten Levi was there. Or at least I would have forgotten if that little thrill of excitement that shot electricity through the air every time he was around weren’t tickling over my arms and prickling along the back of my neck.
With a harrumph under my breath, I told the prickles and the tickles to get lost.
It helped that I had other things to think about—Hank had pretty much come right out and said one of my best friends might also be a killer.
“No way,” I said again.
“She does tend to get carried away.” I didn’t need Levi to point this out. He didn’t know Chandra nearly as well as I did.
Unless he’d dated her, too, somewhere along the line.
The thought was unworthy of me, not to mention preposterous, and before I could let it upend me or sour my mood even more, I told myself to stick to the matter at hand.
“You know her, Levi. Yeah, sure, Chandra can be something of a drama queen. She proved that yesterday by acting the way she was acting just because we’re reading Gone with the Wind. But you also know that she doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. Besides, if she was going to kill Vivien, you’d think she would have done it years ago. Why wait until now? She’s been married twice since Bill Barone. She’s had plenty to keep her occupied.”