by Clover Tate
“I wasn’t jealous, I just wanted to make sure I got a fair shot at the kite contest.”
“Jasmine and I got to talking when I was in line behind her at the Brew House. Her credit card was declined, so I bought her latte for her.”
“You don’t have to explain,” I said, grateful, of course, that he’d explained anyway.
“I might have looked a little starstruck.” He laid his forearms on the counter and leaned forward. “Although I didn’t expect you to blow up like that.”
“I’d just been at Rose’s talking taxes, and my sister showed up in town unexpectedly, and I was out of sorts. I took it out on you. That wasn’t right.” Feeling shy, I smiled, and he did, too. Heat crept over my face. “Anyway, I won’t do it again. Unless you really deserve it,” I amended.
He laughed. “Life’s too short to be upset.”
“Thank you.” I leaned forward, too. Voices on the sidewalk drew near, and then passed. “What’s that under the fabric?”
From the glance I’d had of Jack’s kite, I knew mine would outclass his in looks. Jack didn’t make many kites from scratch. His shop’s kites came in kits. But Jack had gone to engineering school, and he knew a fast kite from one that would take a nosedive. He didn’t need to win the contest. His selection of games, on top of what he saved over the summer, kept him solvent. I, on the other hand, had to keep my kite sales going.
“You know what it is, and I’m not going to show it to you.” He double-checked that his kite was hidden. “Hey,” he said, his voice low.
“What?” I was all too aware that our heads were only a foot or so apart.
He fidgeted with a piece of line on the counter. I played it cool, but my pulse had gone from waltz to rumba.
“You want to go for a hike this week?”
“Maybe the day after tomorrow?” My voice might have been a little breathy.
Just then, the front door flew open with enough force to ricochet off the wall, knocking a display kite to the ground. Both Jack and I swiveled to face the front.
Darlene, the head of Rock Point’s chamber of commerce—such as it was—stood, gasping, holding the door frame. “I can’t believe it.”
“Are you all right?” In a second, I was at Darlene’s side and so was Jack. He led her to a chair.
“What’s wrong?” Jack asked.
“I had to come tell you.” Darlene plopped into the chair and put a hand to her chest. “I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
“Do you need some water?” I asked, and looked at Jack.
He turned, presumably to head to the sink in the rear, but Darlene grabbed his arm. “Stay.” She was beginning to regain her breath.
“What’s wrong, Darlene?” I crouched next to her.
“It’s Jasmine. Jasmine Normand. She’s dead.”
chapter four
“Jasmine Normand was killed?” I said. I’d heard the words, they’d come out of my mouth, yet it was incomprehensible. I rose and clutched the back of her chair. “I can’t believe it.”
“No one said anything about murder.” Darlene examined me. “What makes you think someone killed her?”
“I guess it was the first thing that came to my mind. She looked fine yesterday. She’s really dead?”
“But you said ‘killed.’”
I had. I didn’t know why. “Maybe it was all the excitement. The worst came to mind.”
“This kind of is the worst,” Jack said.
Darlene clutched her purse. “I’ll take that water now, please.” When he returned, cup in hand, she took a gulp, then continued. “Jasmine’s friend Caitlin found her this morning in bed.”
“Caitlin,” I said. The name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
“You met her yesterday at the Brew House,” Jack said. “Jasmine’s friend with the short hair.”
Darlene took another long sip of water. “Ace said Deputy Goff said Caitlin said she’d knocked on Jasmine’s door, but she didn’t get up. I guess Jasmine sleeps in sometimes, so she wasn’t overly worried at first. Jasmine’s husband, some guy named Kyle—”
“Kyle Connell,” Jack said. “Used to play for the Colts, but he was sidelined by an injury. Word is he’s aiming to be a sports announcer.”
“Yeah, well, Kyle had been trying to get in touch with Jasmine, but she wouldn’t pick up. So he called Caitlin to wake her up. Caitlin went into the room and found her. Dead.” Satisfied she’d got out her story, Darlene fell back into the chair and handed the half-empty water glass to Jack.
Jasmine Normand dead. Unbelievable. “How?” I asked and rose from beside Darlene’s chair. I remembered the lights at Jasmine’s beach house before dawn, and the man at the window. But it couldn’t have been Jasmine’s husband, since he’d called for her this morning. Anxiety fluttered in my stomach.
“Don’t know,” Darlene said. “The sheriff is over there right now.”
“Poor Rose,” I said.
“Yep,” Darlene said. “She’s a good kid. This can’t be easy.”
We all stared out the Sullivan’s Kites front window for a moment. How strange life was. One day you’re on top of the world, lauded in your hometown, getting your lattes paid for by handsome guys like Jack, and the next day you don’t wake up.
Jack and I glanced at each other. I think we both had the same thought, but he said it first. “Are you going to cancel the kite festival?”
Darlene stood and sighed. “I don’t see how we can, although it feels heartless to hold it now. The festival committee is meeting this afternoon to talk it over.”
I was still in a daze. “You’ll let us know?”
“Naturally.” She straightened her suit jacket. “I guess I’ll stop by the gas station and the post office, make sure the word gets around.”
After Darlene left, Jack turned to me. “Amazing.” He shook his head. “At least there’s still more than a week and a half until the festival. Plenty of time to find a judge.”
“If the festival is still on. No kite festival, no kite buyers.” No chance for my kite to earn a ribbon.
“I wonder how it happened? Jasmine’s death, that is,” Jack said.
“She looked healthy yesterday,” I said, remembering the scene at the Brew House with a twinge of embarrassment.
We settled our plans for a hike the day after next, but we both seemed to have our minds somewhere else.
Jasmine was dead, and there was possibly no kite contest. My shop’s future was on shaky ground. Sunny was camping out on the sleeping porch.
Needless to say, I was in a distracted mood when I returned to Strings Attached.
“Anything happen while I was away?” I asked Sunny. I expected her to say “no,” after which I’d tell her about Jasmine.
Instead, she stared at me like a nun caught at the slot machines. “Um.”
“What?”
“I was only making tea. I didn’t see it there.”
“See what?” I stepped closer. “Sunny, what did you do?”
She lifted her hand from behind the counter. In it was my competition kite, with a hole the size of a fist burnt right through the middle.
• • •
I snatched the kite from my sister’s grip and examined it. It was ruined, no doubt about it. No amount of patch appliqué would be able to cover the massive burnt hole with its blackened edges right through my meticulously stitched depiction of Rock Point’s old marina. I held the kite to my face and looked through the hole to Sunny’s red, swollen eyes.
All that work, all those hours for nothing. For a moment, I teetered between the desire to burst into tears and the urge to yell. I took a steadying breath. Then I tossed the kite to the side.
“Don’t cry. It’s not a big deal. The kite festival might be canceled, anyway.” What the heck. Like Jack said, life was too short. Maybe I’
d learned something from losing my temper yesterday.
Sunny dabbed her eyes with a tissue and sniffed. “What?”
“Jasmine Normand, the contest judge, died last night.”
“Jasmine, from Bag That Babe?” Her eyes were wide now, the kite forgotten.
“They found her in bed.” I remembered blurting out that she was murdered. Was it Jasmine’s bedroom that had the lights on? I needed to talk to Sheriff Koppen.
“What happened?” Sunny came around the corner, as if the counter would somehow slow the news from getting to her.
“I don’t know. I was talking to Jack when the president of the chamber of commerce ran in and told us. Listen, are you up to watching the shop for another hour?”
“Do you still trust me?” She reverently lifted the destroyed kite and leaned it against the wall. “Honestly, I was making tea, and I guess I forgot to turn off the burner, and then the kite must have fallen—”
“I know it was an accident.” Frustration rose as I looked at my kite’s carcass. I breathed deeply. “You get a second chance. I have to see the sheriff.”
I left Sunny standing in a daze.
The sheriff’s office was in a tiny storefront next to Martino’s Pizza on Main Street and had the garlicky aroma to match. I pushed open its door and came face-to-face with Deputy Sheriff Goff. Damn.
“Can I help you?” she said, looking as practical and annoyed as ever. Just because I’d called her out on her rendezvous with her boyfriend down at the dock a few months ago, and just because she’d probably received a formal reprimand for not disclosing a relationship with a homicide suspect, was no reason for her to get snippy.
“I have some information for the sheriff.”
She practically growled as she picked up a pen. “What?”
“I need to tell the sheriff. It has to do with Jasmine Normand’s death.”
“The sheriff’s not here. I’m an officer of the law. I’m fully capable of passing along your message to him.”
I bit my lip. It’s not that I didn’t trust her with the facts—I was sure she’d do her job—it’s more like I didn’t trust her with the implications for me. “Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“When who’ll be back?” came the sheriff’s voice from behind me. Sheriff Koppen was stern and dark—his mother had been Clatsop Indian—but not imposing.
“Oh, good,” I said. “I wanted to talk to you about Jasmine Normand.”
“I had a few questions for you about Jasmine Normand, too.” His placid expression told me nothing.
“What a coincidence . . .” My voice trailed off.
“I understand you had an altercation with Ms. Normand yesterday at the Brew House.”
Deputy Goff watched both of us, her gaze first on the sheriff, then on me.
The sheriff cleared his throat. “Come on back. Deputy Goff has work to do.” He led me to his tiny office at the rear of the space. The smell of garlic was even more intense here, tinged with oregano. Martino’s multilayered sauce was the key to its success. The sheriff must know every layer intimately by now. He pointed to a beat-up chair on the other side of his desk. “We’ll get to the conversation at the Brew House in a minute. First, what did you want to tell me?”
I told him how I had been out on a walk, and how I’d seen lights on in rooms on the opposite sides of Jasmine’s house. I also told him about the man’s figure I’d seen leaning over the sink.
Koppen’s features could have been carved in marble for all the interest he betrayed. “You were alone?”
“Yes.”
“What were you doing out at that time of the morning?”
“I couldn’t sleep. A lot’s been going on. I thought a walk might help. Sometimes I do that.”
Sheriff Koppen’s stare pinned me like a butterfly to a specimen book. “And you got into it with Ms. Normand at the Brew House yesterday.”
Did everyone know everyone’s business in this town? “I might have, well, had a few words.”
“We have witnesses, you know. I want to hear it in your words.”
“Look. I just wanted you to know what I saw in case it helps you pinpoint times,” I said. “I don’t see what the discussion at the Brew House has to do with Jasmine’s death.”
“I’ll make that determination.” He steepled his fingers. “Start with when you got to the café.”
I’d come here to give the sheriff information, and now I was the one being grilled. “Fine.” To put off talking about the brouhaha I’d stirred up, I spent a bit longer than necessary recounting my desire for a tuna melt. The sheriff waited patiently. “And then I saw Jasmine Normand. I didn’t know who she was right away.”
“And?”
Lord, this was embarrassing. “She was talking to Jack, and I gathered that they were flirting.” I smoothed my hair to hide my embarrassment. “I told Jack to lay off and told Jasmine she’d better be a fair judge of kites,” I added as quickly as I could.
If the sheriff was amused or shocked, I couldn’t tell by his expression. “Anything else?”
“No. Well, Marcus Salek was cheering me on from his table.”
“Marcus, eh?”
At last, I saw a glimmer of reaction. “Sure. You know how he is. Anyway, I’m not sure why my story matters.” When Koppen didn’t reply, I added, “I mean, her death was an accident, right?”
“The medical examiner will make that determination, but as far as we can tell, it was health related.” The sheriff examined a finger.
“Health related,” I repeated.
“Yes. Apparently.”
Koppen wasn’t sure. I could tell by his tone of voice. “Apparently” was about as extreme an expression of doubt as he’d share. “Is there any reason it wouldn’t be?” I asked.
“Show me again exactly what you saw,” he said and ripped a sheet of paper from a lined pad. “Draw a map.”
I pulled the paper toward me and took the pen. Pen and paper felt good in my hands, although the sheriff’s pen was a scratchy felt-tip number. I capped it and pulled a soft pencil from my bag. I always kept a sketchpad and pencil with me for kite ideas.
“I was standing here.” I marked an X on the thin strip of beach I’d drawn between the high tide and the bluff. I quickly sketched two stories of the beach house, complete with deck, and filled in squares for the windows where I’d seen light. I tapped the pencil on the upstairs window to the left. “This light was on here at first, then it went out. Here, this lower one”—I tapped the lower, right-hand window—“stayed on the whole time. Maybe it’s the kitchen?” I glanced at Koppen, but he was still examining my drawing. “I saw a man. He looked out toward me.”
“A man, you say.”
“I think so.”
“How long did you stand there?”
“Not more than a minute or two.”
The sheriff sat back. “You were standing far away. Are you sure it was a man?”
I closed my eyes and recalled the height and broad shoulders. Could it have been a tall woman? “Now that I’m trying to remember exactly, it isn’t as clear. But my first thought was that it was a man. Now, on second thought . . .”
A metallic clang out back told me that someone was taking trash to the Dumpster behind Martino’s. The sheriff didn’t seem to notice the noise.
I tried again. “You seem to think maybe Jasmine didn’t die of natural causes.”
“She was diabetic. The medical examiner will say for sure, but she might have taken too much insulin.”
“By mistake?” Depression was a mysterious illness, but Jasmine didn’t seem particularly down when I saw her. I doubted it was suicide.
“Don’t know.” The sheriff stood. I wasn’t going to get any more information out of him. “The media are descending on Rock Point,” he said, seemingly as an afterthought.
<
br /> “Already?”
“Deputy Goff spent her lunch hour chasing one reporter out. She said he wouldn’t give up. He had some pointed questions.” He gestured toward a business card.
I read the card upside down, one of my specialties. “The National Bloodhound.” The Bloodhound was mostly known for celebrity exposés and diet schemes.
“He asked about you, in particular.”
“Me?” My jaw dropped. The thought that a reporter for a tabloid as huge as the Bloodhound was interested in me boggled my mind.
He nodded. “Knew you by name.”
“What? What did he want to know?”
The sheriff led me to the hall and shut his office door behind us. “He wouldn’t say, but I’d imagine it’s about your scene at the Brew House.”
“Oh.” My throat tightened.
“You’d better watch yourself. It would be easy for someone to jump to conclusions.”
chapter five
Avery stood in the kitchen with the pantry door open. “We can make spaghetti for dinner. Do you eat meat, Sunny?”
“No,” I said.
“Yes,” my sister said at the same time.
“Since when do you eat meat?” I asked her. “I thought you told me you were vegan.”
“How come you think you know everything about me?” She turned to Avery. “I eat meat, but only ethically raised. No hormones or antibiotics.”
“Fine. I have some beef from a ranch up the road. Let’s have spaghetti and meatballs. A good old-fashioned dinner.” Avery pulled a few vegetables from the refrigerator and set them next to a can of tomatoes on the counter.
“What did you do this afternoon after you left the shop?” I said. Once I’d returned from seeing Sheriff Koppen, I’d spent the rest of the afternoon convincing myself that the reporter from the National Bloodhound had moved on and forgotten about me. Surely some celebrity’s affair with the nanny or a botched face-lift would kick me off his radar.
Avery knew I wasn’t talking to her. Her afternoon had undoubtedly been filled with the Brew House and probably a visit from Dave. Dave was ostensibly Avery’s good friend, but was clearly crazy about her. She ignored us and chopped onions.