by Kylie Logan
Levi stepped back and crossed his arms over his chest, studying me carefully, and for one panicked moment, I thought I saw something very much like recognition register in his eyes. It passed in a heartbeat and a smile softened his chiseled expression, the kind of smile a saintly person might turn on a particularly ugly mutt.
“You, I don’t know.” He stuck out his hand and I hesitated, but then, I anticipated one of those too-warm handshakes guys sometimes give women: a little too long, a little too intimate for first contact. Fortunately, I was wrong about that. His handshake was quick and firm. Maybe my mittens were scratchy. “You must be new to the island. Like me.”
“This is Bea.”
The introduction came from Chandra, who put both her hands on my shoulders and pushed me forward with so much oomph, if there hadn’t been a bar between us, I imagined I would have found myself with my nose pressed against Levi’s sculpted chest.
Not a bad visual.
No sooner did the thought occur than I gave myself a mental swift kick in the pants. It’s not that I get all weak-kneed when it comes to gorgeous guys. Let’s face it, New York is full of them, and I’d met—and handled—my share. It wasn’t the hunk himself I was reluctant to get closer to; it was anything that even smacked of a relationship. Of any kind. Especially when the male in question was studying me with interest and, for the second time in as many minutes, I swore I saw his eyes light as if he knew more about me than he let on.
Imagination, I told myself. A case of the nerves brought on by our stealthy visit to Peter’s apartment. A momentary weakness I could—and would—conquer the way I’d always bested the things that stood in my way: through grit and determination and talent.
Right after I excused myself and headed into the ladies’ room.
There was only one candle burning in there, and the water from the tap was icy. I took care of my drippy nose and made my way back to the bar as quickly as I could, eager to fool myself into believing that the company of other people might help warm me. And I guess it was a good thing I did. I was just in time to hear Chandra fill Levi in on the details of my life. Or at least on some version of it that existed in Chandra’s scrambled brain.
“He was a lot older than her, you know. Marty Cartwright, that is. And poor Bea, she was heartbroken when he died. Just heartbroken. In fact, I heard she could barely get off the couch for months. But then, theirs was a passion that was doomed from the start.”
I didn’t bother to let Chandra know I was right behind her. I’d always loved a good story, and I was eager to see what she’d make of the one I’d told the ladies as we sat around the fire the night of the murder. She didn’t disappoint me.
“He left her in pretty good shape. Oh, yes.” At the same time Chandra nodded like a bobblehead, Levi glanced at me over her shoulder, apparently sizing up what he saw against what he was hearing. Something in his eyes told me Chandra’s use of the word passion didn’t exactly tally with the woman swaddled in mouse gray standing before him.
“That B and B of hers is all refurbished and redecorated and she doesn’t have a care in the world,” Chandra went on. “Not money-wise, anyway. But she is young and pretty, and of course, she’s terribly lonely. She didn’t notice me watching her when she told us the story, but I don’t miss a thing, remember. When she talked about Martin, there was a certain wistfulness in her eyes. And she had such a bittersweet smile.”
She would have gone right on and, truth be told, I was kind of anxious to hear it. Nothing hooks me like a juicy plot! Unfortunately, Luella threw me a sidelong glance, and Chandra caught on. She spun around, but it came as no big surprise that she didn’t spend any time at all looking guilty for gossiping about me.
“I was just telling Levi . . .” She grabbed my arm to pull me closer. “His lights and heat are off, too, and he’s tried to stay open, but he just decided this morning that he’s going to have to throw in the towel. He’s about to shut off the water so the pipes don’t burst, and I was just telling him, he really shouldn’t stay upstairs in his apartment because it must be freezing up there, too. He should come to the B and B. We have plenty of room there.”
We didn’t have anything. Including room at the B and B. What I did have were some questions I wanted answered, and I was willing to ignore Chandra’s chatter—and the spark of amusement in Levi’s eyes—if it meant I could get to the bottom of things.
With that thought in mind, I hopped up on a barstool and watched Levi uncork a bottle of Riesling from the Wilder Winery. He poured it into glasses and passed them around, and when he handed the last one to Kate, he stood near her at the end of the bar, his elbow comfortably close to her hand.
In the dancing glow of the firelight, I realized how perfect they looked together. Him with those Slavic good looks, one lock of golden hair drooping over his forehead, the generous mouth, the strong chin. Kate, as usual, was all rosy and glossy, her cheeks a pretty shade of pink and her eyes smiling their approval when she sipped, then set down her glass. I wondered how long the two of them had been lovers.
Right before I told myself it was none of my business and I didn’t care, anyway.
“We were just talking,” I blurted out, eager to dispel the images that popped into my head, “about the murder on Monday.”
The bar wasn’t the least bit dirty, but Levi grabbed a rag and swiped it all around. “You and everybody else. That’s one of the reasons I stayed open during the storm. When something like a murder happens in a close-knit town like this, people need a place to gather and talk so they can try to make sense of it. You know, like a community wake.”
It was a surprisingly insightful remark from a bartender. Or was it? Aren’t pithy observations what bartenders are supposed to be all about?
“One of the reasons.” It was still before noon, but it had already been a long morning, and hey, living through a drive with Chandra behind the wheel was definitely something to celebrate. I sipped my wine. The Riesling was nice and crisp, and I tasted pears and a hint of citrus. To show my appreciation, I raised my glass in Kate’s direction. “You said giving people the opportunity to talk about the murder was one of the reasons you stayed open. What was the other one?”
Levi had a glass of water on the back of the bar, and he reached for it, took a drink, and set it back down. “The locals need someplace to gather,” he said. “Someplace they can go for a change of scenery. You know, to relieve the cabin fever. I’ve actually had a pretty good crowd in here since the storm started. Until this morning, that is. Word must have gone around that my lights are finally out, too, and the heat’s gone. I can’t even cook anything. Tell me”—his eyes gleamed—“do you think they were coming in here just for the burgers? Because I kind of thought it was all on account of my sparkling wit.”
Oh yes, as sure as I was sitting there, I was convinced that this little bit of gleaming (not to mention the schmoozing) was designed to distract me from the topic of murder. Truth be told, it almost did. But then, I’d always been a sucker for a guy with blue eyes. Call me shallow. The broad shoulders didn’t hurt, either.
But hey, if I’d learned nothing else since my life in New York had turned upside down, it was that I was the one in control.
Of my life.
Of my emotions.
And of this investigation.
As if the Universe was reminding me of exactly that, the mailman walked in the front door, a pleasant man named Charles whom I’d met a couple times, but who, of course, knew Luella, Chandra, and Kate well. He stopped to chat with them.
And I closed in on what I wanted to talk about in the first place.
Which, just for the record, had nothing to do with gleaming blue eyes.
“Did you have a pretty good crowd here on Monday night?” I asked.
It obviously wasn’t a question Levi expected from a woman with a recently drippy nose and her hat pulled down to her eyes. His gaze snapped to mine and don’t think I didn’t notice that his dreamy smile turn
ed a little icy around the edges.
“Are you asking me if I saw anything the night of the murder?”
With one gloved finger, I traced an invisible pattern against the bar. “Yeah. I mean . . .” I turned on the barstool so that I could look beyond where Charles and the ladies were talking about the storm and see out the front window. “It’s a pretty straight shot from here over to the Orient Express. If the lights were on over there—and they must have been since Peter was still open for business and they were on when we arrived after our book discussion group—and if you were behind the bar, standing where you are now . . .” I wondered if he even picked up on my casual shrug, seeing as how it was encased in layers of wooly clothing and topped off with a parka. “It seems to me you would have seen exactly what was going on over there.”
It wasn’t my imagination; he hesitated. Just long enough to get his story straight in his own head. “Too bad I didn’t, or I might be able to do something to help the police. But you’re forgetting, it was snowing like a son of a gun, and that made visibility practically nonexistent. Besides, I didn’t have a moment’s peace that night. From dinnertime on, I was slammed.”
I leaned an elbow on the bar and propped my chin in my hand. “On a night when it was snowing like a son of a gun?”
He cocked an eyebrow at me. It was a nonchalant sort of gesture, and as sexy as sin. No doubt he’d perfected it on a thousand women before me, and just as certainly, every single one of them had succumbed. It was another shot at distraction on his part and he was way off base if he thought there was a snowball’s chance in hell of it working. Then again, this distraction was far more interesting than the last. The first time he may have just wanted to divert the conversation from the unpleasant topic of murder. This time, he was definitely trying to avoid talking about what he may or may not have seen on the night of the crime.
“Like I said, the locals like a place to escape, and on Monday night, the heat was still working. We had pool players . . .” When I followed his gaze into the darkness on the other side of the room, I made out the shapes of two hulking pool tables. “We had people at the bar. We had plenty of dinner orders, too.”
“And you were so busy, you didn’t notice a thing that happened across the street.”
It wasn’t a question. Which was why I wasn’t surprised when Levi didn’t answer. There was a tad more wine in the bottle, and he divided it among our four glasses, starting with Kate and working his way back down the bar to me. He drained the bottle into my glass. “The cook I hired for the summer hasn’t come over to the island yet,” he said, setting down the bottle and meeting my gaze straight on. “Good thing I’m really good at a whole lot of things.” He paused here long enough to make it clear that, just for a second, we weren’t talking about running a bar any longer. When he was sure I got the message, he got back on track. “I was pouring drinks and flipping burgers in the kitchen. If there was anything to see . . .” His gaze drifted to the Orient Express before it moved again to mine “Whatever happened over there, I didn’t see a thing.”
I didn’t so much give him a smile as I tried to move my lips, just to make sure they weren’t frozen. “I bet that’s what you told the cops.”
“How do you know the cops talked to me?”
“They would have been stupid not to, and don’t tell Chandra, but Hank Florentine doesn’t strike me as a stupid man.”
“But I do.”
“I never said that.”
“But you expected me to tell you something I didn’t tell the cops.”
“Did I?” I drained the wine in my glass. “And here I thought I just stopped in to be part of the communal wake.”
I slid off the barstool and prayed the other ladies got the message. Whatever we’d hoped to find at Levi’s, it wasn’t forthcoming. Neither was Levi himself. There was no use prolonging the visit or the agony of being so carefully studied by that steady, molten gaze.
Tugging down hats and rebuttoning coats, our little group shuffled to the door.
“We’ll see you later?” Chandra called back to Levi. “Remember, Bea’s got a generator and lots of heat.”
I had my back turned, but there was a mirror nearby, so I could see that Levi’s teeth were clenched. From this distance, I couldn’t be sure, but I swear his answer was something like, “The Ice Queen? That’s hard to believe.”
Me? Get angry at the slight? Not to worry. When he turned his back on the door and hoisted up another case of beer, I got a good look at his butt.
So I mean, really, who had the last laugh?
• • •
“I brought burgers.”
The last person I expected to see at my back door later that Wednesday afternoon was Levi, so it was only natural that I’d stand there with my mouth opening and closing like the walleye I’d heard the fishermen in these parts loved to catch.
If he held it against me, he didn’t show it. Without being invited, he stepped into the house, and just inside the door, he dropped the bedroll that had been under his arm. I stepped back, he stepped forward, and we did a little backward shuffle all the way into the kitchen, where he set down a couple overflowing shopping bags. “I’ve got fries, too,” he said, unloading the bags onto the counter top. “And chicken wings for lunch tomorrow. And onion rings. Do you like onion rings?”
I love onion rings. I didn’t bother to mention this. But then, I was a little busy stepping back so I could cross my arms over my black sweater and say, “Wow, it must have gotten as cold as hell at the bar. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be desperate enough to opt for the Ice Queen’s palace.”
Good thing Chandra picked that moment to come waltzing in because, really, I was pretty sure he was going to pretend he didn’t know what I was talking about, and that would have been a major disappointment.
“Oh, this is perfect,” Chandra crooned. “I’ll set another place at the table. Oh . . .” Her mouth dropped open and I could see that she was doing some quick mental calculations. “If we only had one more,” she purred, “there would be thirteen. Thirteen suspects gathered together in the snow. Just like in the book!”
I didn’t give Levi the opportunity to ask what she was talking about. I suggested he leave his sleeping bag in the parlor until we figured out a more permanent place to house him, and told him dinner would be served at six.
Yeah, it was cruel to leave him hanging like that.
But then, two could play the game.
12
As it turned out, Chandra got her wish. Just as we were about to sit down to dinner, Jayce Martin, the owner of the local ferryboat fleet, showed up at my door. By this time it should have come as no surprise that he was looking for a place to stay.
Thirteen.
There were thirteen of us in the house.
But not thirteen for dinner.
I was waiting at the door to the dining room, directing my guests to their seats, when Amanda came down.
“Oh.” She stopped just short of the dining room, one hand on the wall to steady herself. “I think maybe . . .” She pushed off and back toward the steps. “I’m not feeling well again. I think I’ll just go back upstairs and relax.”
I couldn’t imagine it was the fabulous aroma of the burgers wafting from the kitchen that caused her cheeks to pale and her hands to shake, and after I promised her a bowl of soup once we were done eating and watched her go back upstairs, I went into the dining room, wondering if I’d been right about Amanda all along.
Maybe that threatening note she received meant she wasn’t ill, but was hiding from someone.
Maybe when she came down to dinner, she saw that someone seated at my table?
With a cold chill on the back of my neck, I stood at the head of the table until everyone else was seated, using the opportunity to take stock of my guests. Her back to where I stood, Kate was at the far end of the table nearest the windows with Chandra to her left. Levi was next to Chandra, Hank was next to Levi. Ted had automatically grabbed the
chair here at the head of the table, and there was an empty seat to his left that I would slip into as soon as everyone else settled in. That would put Meg next to me, but not her kids. They had chosen to eat in the kitchen. Luella was next to Meg, and Mariah (who was dressed to the nines in slinky black pants and a gorgeous red cashmere sweater) was next to her. Jayce was at the far end of the table. He was a rugged, dark-haired guy about our age, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that no lights and no heat were the least of his problems.
Two minutes into dinner I realized Jayce couldn’t take his eyes off Kate. Fifteen minutes later, and the story was no different. The poor guy was head over heels.
Kate might have noticed if she weren’t so busy checking her text messages.
“So, what do you think, Bea?” Luella passed a plate heaped with the burgers Levi had donated to the feast to Meg, and from Meg, it came to me. Since I already had a burger on my plate, I passed it on to Ted, who eagerly took a second. “I know it’s not my place to decide, but I couldn’t help but wonder about the logistics. If we all stay in the rooms we’re in, and Jayce and Levi bunk together in the parlor—”
It was exactly what I had been thinking, so I told her, “That’s the simplest solution, though it’s not going to give you a whole lot of privacy.” I glanced down the table toward Jayce, but since he was so fixated on Kate, he hadn’t even heard me. I had no choice but to look across the table at Levi. No skin off my nose, especially when I had the chance to add so very sweetly, “There’s a fireplace in the parlor. You should be plenty warm.”
I wondered if anyone else noticed that the smile Levi gave me was just a little too tight around the edges. In addition to the burgers and onion rings, he’d also brought salads that he said he didn’t want to see go to waste. He reached for the bowl, took another helping, and drizzled on blue cheese dressing. “I appreciate it,” he said with a nod toward me. “The floor to sleep on as well as the warmth.”