After a moment of awkward silence, I said, “I don’t mean to intrude, but the way your wife died sounds so tragic. Can you tell me what happened?”
David grimaced. “She got an inner ear infection, which threw her off balance. She suffered from them often. We visited many specialists. No one could figure out the source. That day, she must have teetered on the top step and tumbled to the bottom. Paula has always blamed herself.”
“Why?”
“Because she was the only one home.” David sighed. “There was nothing she could have done. She was in bed with a broken leg. I’d carried her there earlier before heading to work. We believe her mother must have been heading downstairs for Paula’s crutches. She doted on Paula and Paula on her.” He switched the package to his other hand.
“Lyle is pretty hard on her.”
“He was at one time, I’ll admit that. I think he knew early on that she was smarter than him. Better at math. Better at reading.”
Funny. I recalled Kent saying that Lyle had gotten the brains.
“But my son was headstrong and, realizing his sister was a sensitive little girl, bullied her into submission. I take the blame for not curbing that early on, but he has reformed and loves her fully now.”
I nodded indulgently. “I heard at one point that Paula wanted to go to culinary school, but you nixed that idea.”
He tsked. “I didn’t nix anything. I merely suggested she had a good brain and it would be best applied to more respectable prospects. She followed my lead.”
“What will you do if Paula insists on leaving the family business?”
“She can’t be serious about that.”
“She’s quite confident in the garden,” I said and told him about seeing her being tutored by Raymond.
“Really? Her mother loved to garden, too.” David sighed. “You should have seen her hybrid tea roses. She had dozens of varieties—all of them red. Gypsy, Gentle Giant, Mister Lincoln. She could talk about them for hours.” He gazed at me. “If gardening makes my daughter happy, I will encourage that hobby.”
Hobby, I noted. Not profession. I didn’t correct him. It wasn’t my place to tell him that Paula was considering opening a bed-and-breakfast.
“We all want our children to be happy, don’t we?” he added.
I didn’t have children. I probably wouldn’t at this point. I had hoped Derrick and I would have some. I had gone off the pill, but I didn’t get pregnant, and a few months later, he died. I wasn’t a woman who could raise children by herself. I would need support. Plus I craved the kind of loving relationship my father and mother had shared. It had been magical.
David hitched a thumb at the black Mercedes parked directly behind the Jeep. “I should get going.”
“Sir, one more thing. Did Sergeant Daly contact you?”
He tilted his head as if wondering where this line of questioning might lead. “As a matter of fact, yes.”
“Did you tell him about your call to Israel?”
“I did.”
“Did you also mention that it, um . . .” I screwed up my mouth. “Gosh, how do I say this?”
“Spit it out.”
“Well, sir, I’m not sure it was entirely true. You see, a friend of a friend talked to Nachum Abrams, and he didn’t corroborate your account.”
“Ah.” David lowered his head and ran his tongue along his teeth. After a moment, he reconnected with me. “Fine. You caught me.”
“I wasn’t trying to—”
“For your information, I do have an alibi, and it is solid. It’s humorous, really.” He forced a smile. “You know how Bryan was investigating Lyle?”
“Your son told you?”
“We have no secrets.”
I could dispute that. If Lyle hadn’t told his father that he’d eloped or had bridge loans, I would imagine he had kept other things from him.
David continued, “As it turns out, I was doing the same thing—trying to get dirt on Angelica.”
“Why?” I asked, again wondering whether he had killed Bryan to make sure that Angelica would inherit and thus be able to salvage Lyle’s business. But how would David have known about the inheritance? Angelica swore she didn’t know, which would mean Lyle didn’t know, and even if he did tell his father everything, he wouldn’t have been able to share that tidbit. Had Paula related her lip-reading story to her father, prompting him to take action?
“To be honest, I’ve never trusted Angelica,” David said. “I believed she was after Lyle for his money.”
“She makes a good living—not to mention he’s the one in financial trouble.”
“A bridge loan doesn’t connote financial trouble. I’ve taken out many over the course of the last few decades.” He brandished a hand as if swatting a wasp. “Angelica is the one who is up to her neck in debt.”
“According to whom?”
“The investigator I hired to find out more about her financial situation. He was the person I was speaking to that morning.”
Doesn’t anyone trust anyone else? I wondered and then bit back a laugh. Given my history, I probably should have been less trusting.
“Does this investigator have a name?” I asked.
“Seamus O’Brien.”
“Seamus? You’re kidding.” I mentally amended the typical spelling of Seamus to shamus, slang for investigator, and snorted.
“Yeah, go ahead, have a good chuckle,” David said. “He laughs about his name, too. He’s a good old Irish boy from New York.”
“Why hire someone from New York when Angelica lives in Los Angeles?”
“Seamus lives in LA, but he happened to be in New York visiting family last weekend. Here, have a listen.” He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and pushed buttons until he could broadcast a conversation. He displayed the screen to me and talked over the beginning of the digitally recorded conversation. “We talked nonstop for two hours, starting at four.”
I listened for a good ten minutes as David and his investigator conversed rapid-fire about Angelica. Neither spoke for longer than a minute at a time. The investigator said Angelica had a propensity for making high-risk investments.
“Is that enough?” David paused the recording.
I hadn’t heard how much Angelica was in debt. Perhaps the investigator went into detail later on in the conversation. According to the image on the display screen, the length of the conversation ran one hour and fifty-five minutes.
“For now,” I murmured.
It dawned on me that if Paula had eavesdropped on her father talking to Seamus and gleaned that Angelica was involved in high-risk investments, she might have lied to me about lip-reading Angelica’s exchange with Bryan. Why? Because otherwise, if her father learned that Paula was aware of his conversation with the investigator, she would have to confess to him that she had listened in. I doubted he would appreciate that kind of sneaky behavior. If that were the case, it also meant that Paula hadn’t been asleep in the library when she said she was. One lie breeds another, my father used to say. Taking my theory a step further, if Paula hadn’t stuck around to hear the entire exchange between her father and Seamus, she could have sneaked out, lured Bryan to the patio and killed him, and then raced back to the library to establish her alibi of being asleep in the chair. Of course, there were a lot of ifs in my speculation.
David wiggled the phone. “This proves my alibi.”
“Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”
“I didn’t want my son to know what I was up to.”
“But you said you and he have no secrets.”
“I was protecting his interests.”
“Yet you didn’t. He married Angelica anyway.”
“Impulsive,” he muttered.
“Um, perhaps you should share that recording with the sheriff.”
He nodded.
“By the way, I saw Lyle a bit ago. Right over there.” I gestured to the tables outside the cheese shop. “He was dining with a very attractive wom
an.”
“Who?”
“Kaya Hill. A defense attorney.”
David’s gaze turned dark. “Back off my son!” A viper couldn’t have sounded a more threatening warning. I flashed on the person in blue shoes at the mobile trailer. Had it been David? He dabbled in acting. Had he also stolen into the bistro and jimmied the mirror hook?
I held up my hands. “Whoa, sir, I’m sorry. I only mentioned it because I suggested to Lyle that the gems found at the crime scene could have come from his portable safe, and an hour later, there he was with Kaya.”
“Out in the open,” David managed to rasp. “Maybe he was talking to her on behalf of his new wife. Did you consider that?” He jammed a finger at my nose and, without further ado, marched to his Mercedes. The force with which he slammed the door after entering was deafening.
Chapter 20
I strode into the bistro carrying the tea-leaf-shaped mirror. Later, on the way to my cottage, I would collect the other from the car. The restaurant was packed with diners, Francine and Kent among them. Kent noticed me instantly and said something to Francine. Was he whispering that he had warned me? Was there a threat behind his warning like there had been from Lyle? Or the person at the festival? Or whoever had caused the mirror to crash? Were they all acting in concert?
Am I supremely paranoid?
My stomach growled. I inhaled the aroma of onion soup and promised myself a bowlful after I got settled.
In the office, I set the mirror against the wall and crossed to the telephone. I dialed the sheriff’s station. The receptionist put me through to Tyson.
“You didn’t e-mail me,” he groused.
“I’m getting ready to do that right now.” And I was. I’d thought about it on the drive back to the restaurant. My computer was switched on, my e-mail open. I started a draft as we chatted. I told him about running into David and listening to his recording with the investigator. “That changes his alibi.”
“Mimi, I warned you. Do not get involved.”
“And I told you, I’m not getting involved on purpose. There I was on the street, and David and I bumped into each other.”
“Mimi.”
“Tyson.” I tried to sound as firm as he did. “Look, I cared about Bryan, and if I have a gut feeling and I happen to run into someone, I feel it’s my civic duty to follow up on that gut feeling.” I took a deep breath. “Might I ask who you have your sights set on? Someone must top your list.”
He sighed.
“C’mon, Tyson, tit for tat.”
“There will be no tit for no tat. I’m in charge. You’re not.”
I quickly mentioned having seen Lyle with Kaya Hill and added that I believed Lyle and Paula had the lamest alibis.
He didn’t disagree, but he did hang up.
I stared at the phone and wriggled my nose. Okay, maybe I hadn’t handled that conversation well, but at least I had relayed pertinent information. I should get brownie points for that.
After finishing my e-mail outlining the thoughts that I had jotted on the dry-erase board, I hit Send.
“There,” I said to no one. “Duty done.” Then I remembered that I hadn’t asked Tyson about the itemized list of Bryan’s valuables. Had he checked whether anything was missing? Was Bryan’s death a simple case of theft? I sent a quick follow-up e-mail.
Heather entered the office and noticed the mirror. “Ooh, you found one,” she gushed. Her face glistened with perspiration. A stray hair clung to her cheek and chin. She brushed it away. “Let me see.”
I removed the bubble wrap that Willow had carefully used to cover the mirror. Sunlight streaming through the office window bounced off the mirror. The tiles glistened like jewels.
“It’s beautiful!”
“I think so, too.” I set it on the floor near the wall. “We’ll hang it when the lunch crowd disappears,” I said, exiting the office. I paused by the hostess podium and surveyed the bistro. There were lots of people I recognized and plenty of new faces. “The place is busy.”
Heather joined me. “Sure is. We haven’t had a lull since, well, forever. By the way”—she lowered her voice—“I’ve got vibes about Angelica Barrington . . . I mean Angelica Ives.”
“Vibes?”
Heather tapped a finger on her chin. “At least I think she would be called Ives, since they’re married now, although I don’t know if she took Lyle’s surname. Do you?”
“I don’t.”
Heather hummed her concern.
I poked her gently. “Go on. Why do you have vibes?”
“Right!” She clapped her hands. “Because Angelica was here today having lunch alone, and she constantly checked her phone and looked over her shoulder as if she thought someone might be following her.”
“Maybe she’s hoping one of our diners has seen her flyers and will vouch for her. Or maybe she expected Lyle to show up for a postwedding celebratory lunch.”
“Uh-uh.” Heather shook a finger. “Trust me. She was definitely acting suspicious. You should have seen the lines etched into her forehead.” She fluttered her fingers near the top of her face.
“Is she still here?” I searched the crowd.
“Nope. She left a half hour ago. She seemed in a hurry. Just saying.”
The front door opened. Heather grasped menus and expertly greeted a couple entering the bistro. As she led them to a table on the patio, I pondered Angelica’s situation. Was someone after her? Who? A moneylender? Had she borrowed money to pay off a gambling debt and welched on the loan? My stomach clenched as another thought struck me. Did whoever had loaned her money take out his or her anger on Bryan?
The front door opened again, and Nash strolled in carrying a single bottle of wine. He motioned to the bar. “Hey, beautiful. Care to join me for a sip of something extraordinary? I’m not selling, simply sharing.”
Pleasure zinged through me. I smiled. “How can I turn down an offer like that? I haven’t eaten, have you?”
“Nope.”
“I’ll have Oakley bring us bowls of onion soup. I’ve been craving it since I walked in a few minutes ago.”
“Excellent.”
He strode to the far end of the bar, set the wine on top, and perched on a stool. He pulled the neighboring stool close and rested his foot on the footrest.
After putting in our order, I joined him. He smelled yummy again, but different, like warm grass and almonds, and he looked rugged, dressed in jeans and boots with the sleeves of his green Pendleton shirt rolled up.
He said, “Do you think Red will mind if I do the honors?” He removed a wine opener from his jeans pocket.
Our bartender, who had gorgeous paprika-red hair—hence the nickname Red—was gregarious and always upbeat. She lingered at the far end of the bar, tending to a group of very discerning wine tasters. Flight glasses were set in front of each of them.
“Go ahead. She’s superbusy.” I slipped behind the bar, selected two Riedel Bordeaux wineglasses, and returned.
His forearm muscles flexed as he popped the cork. He poured two short portions of wine into our glasses. “This is a Joseph Phelps 2008 Insignia.”
“I can see that.”
He held the stems of both glasses and swirled deftly. “It’s eighty-nine percent Cab, seven percent Petit Verdot, and four percent Merlot, aged for twenty-four months in new French oak casks. It boasts fragrant layers of dark-roasted coffee and graphite.”
I giggled. “Graphite? I’m supposed to taste pencil lead?”
He chuckled. “Okay, call it minerality. Take a sip.” I obeyed. “Do you taste the flavor of black fruit?”
I let the wine float on my tongue and swallowed. “Definitely. It’s incredible.” On my days off, one of my favorite excursions was to visit Joseph Phelps Vineyards for an outdoor wine tasting. The view of Napa Valley from the vineyard’s patio was incredible. “What’s the occasion?” I rarely opened a wine of this caliber unless there was something to celebrate.
“I landed a terrific ac
count.”
“Good for you.”
“Nouvelle Vie Vineyards has taken me on to rep all its wines.”
I gaped. “No way. My mother hired you?”
He clinked glasses with me. “I told you I’d win her heart. And now to win yours.” He poured more wine into each of our glasses and whispered, “I’ve missed you.” He cut me a sideways look. “Have you missed me?”
“A bit,” I said coyly. I wasn’t ready to tell him that I had dreamed about him last night. Given all the drama going on in my life, I had been surprised to note it was a deliciously sensual dream. He definitely didn’t need to know that.
Oakley brought our soup, said, “Bon appétit,” and hurried off.
We ate in silent companionship.
Later, when she took the bowls away, Nash said, “Any word on, you know, the investigation?”
I shook my head.
“Mimi!” a woman called. “There you are.”
Swiveling on my chair, I spotted Willow striding toward us. She was still dressed in her form-fitting burgundy dress and ridiculously high heels. She was carrying a Fruit of the Vine Artworks tote bag. Glittery ribbon decorated the handle.
I glanced at Nash. “Are you meeting her?”
“No.”
“Is she following you?”
A curious look swept across his face.
Again I wondered, as I had kidded the other day, whether I should be worried about a Fatal Attraction kind of situation. Driving back to the bistro, I had reviewed my interaction with Willow at her shop, certain that she had been trying to warn me off Nash. Was it to protect me, or was it to keep him for herself?
Willow said, “Hi, Nash. Funny seeing you here.”
“Laugh out loud,” he muttered.
She removed an item from the bag she was carrying. It was well protected in ecru-colored paper. She unfurled the wrapping to reveal three of the vases she had shown me. She set them in a row and put the bag on the floor. “Mimi, I know you said you didn’t want these, but I figured you might change your mind. They would look so darling on the patio tables. Think about it. They’re on me. See how your guests like them. If they don’t or if you don’t, take them to your cottage as my gift.” She bumped shoulders with Nash. “What better way to display my wares than at a hot new restaurant, right?”
A Deadly Éclair Page 20