by Carol Culver
I was stealthily and carefully ripping the recipe out of the magazine with one eye on the nurse behind the desk when I saw Sam come walking down the hall, this time with a leather jacket over his shirt and tie instead of his blazer. I wondered if he’d ever worn a uniform, but I was glad he didn’t. Anyway, he looked better each time I saw him—even better than he did fifteen years ago, which isn’t true of all of us, unfortunately. I just wondered, how did a policeman, even the Chief of Police on duty in a small town where nothing ever happens, afford to dress like he’d stepped right out of GQ? What had he been doing since high school besides the police academy?
He stopped at the desk and I overheard him asking about Bob Barnett. The clerk said something and nodded at me. Sam glanced over and showed no surprise to find me there. Did he ever show anything?
He walked over and sat down next to me on a small padded couch. He was so close the tangy scent of his leather jacket and a hint of aftershave hit me like one of those rogue waves the surfers in Crystal Cove have to deal with. While I took a deep breath and tried to think of something innocuous to say besides “Hi,” he glanced at the ripped page in my hand. I smoothed it out and looked him in the eye with as much confidence as I could. “It’s a pie recipe,” I said.
“So that’s how you do it.”
“By stealing recipes, yes. I confess. But I prefer to call it research.”
Would he arrest me on the spot for defacing a magazine? Or would he let me off with a warning? Maybe I could think up a good excuse. Then I decided cutting up an old magazine was not worth apologizing for, not when the Chief of Police was looking for a murderer.
“I hear Mr. Barnett’s sister is visiting the patient,” he said. “Is that true?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what are you doing here?” he asked. His gaze traveled over my black dress and my shoes. I was glad I’d painted my toenails. But I was sorry to see him. As much as I needed a man in my life, I didn’t need the long arm of the law hanging around my grannie suspecting her of wrongdoing. I wished I could go home and get into a pair of jeans and start mixing, whipping, and baking and forgetting about old people being carted off to the local hospital after eating a piece of pie.
Nothing like work to offset the tension of a memorial service and the collapse of one of the mourners. I looked at my watch, then I looked down the hall. My shop was closed. Not that anyone noticed. Anyone who was anyone was at the service today, mourning the dead and eating my pie. Where was Grannie? I was stuck waiting for her. And I was nervous sitting next to Sam, wondering what he was thinking about me or my grandmother.
“I could ask you the same thing,” I said. “What are you doing here? You don’t think Bob had anything to do with Mary’s death, do you?”
“I’m here to check up on him. I need to keep in touch with all the residents of Heavenly Acres, especially those who passed out at the memorial service. And those who were involved with Mary. It seems Bob fits into both categories.”
“So you heard about Mary and Bob,” I said. “They were an item at one time.” If I had to, I would throw Bob to the wolves or on the lap of the law if it meant diverting suspicion away from Grannie. If Bob was desperate to disentangle himself from the tenacious Mary, it wasn’t inconceivable that he’d done her in no matter what Grannie said.
“I have another confession,” I said. “I lied to the nurse. Grannie wanted to check up on her friend Bob Barnett. I told the nurse she was a relative just in case his visitors were restricted. Go ahead, arrest me or sue me. It was my idea, not hers. She never lies.” I threw that in at the end. He probably saw right through me, but who cared? She’d be here any minute and anyone could tell him who’d she’d been visiting.
“As one of the few single men at the retirement community, I imagine Mr. Barnett has many women friends who might want to visit him.”
“I imagine he does,” I said lightly. “So that’s why you’re here? Checking up to see who visits Bob?”
“Among other things.”
“Are you sure you’re not here to trap some helpless old woman into confessing she’d tried to murder him in a jealous rage? Wait a minute, if they’re all after him, why try to kill him?”
“Come on, Hanna. It’s jealousy. Do you know how common it is as a motive?”
“No, I don’t. I didn’t go to the Police Academy, you did.”
“It doesn’t mean I know everything. If I did I wouldn’t be here. But I am here and so are you. Tell me your ideas. I know you have them,” he said.
“As a matter of fact I do. I overheard something interesting this afternoon. It has nothing to do with my grandmother, but it does have something to do with a motive for murder.”
“Really,” Sam said. “I’m not surprised you’re one step ahead of the law.”
“You don’t mind?”
“Not at all. As long as you share your findings with me,” he said. “You always did have a good mind and an active imagination.” One corner of his mouth twitched but no smile. I don’t think he ever smiled in high school either, so why should I be surprised? This was one guy who’d changed a lot, but no one would say he’d mellowed.
“I guess you heard Bob is going to be okay,” I said. “He wasn’t murdered. Nobody even tried to murder him. As you know he had a mild heart attack. So I could ask you, what are you really doing here at the hospital? Did you think you had a serial killer on your hands? First Mary Brandt then poor Bob Barnett.”
“Is that what you thought?”
“Is that what they taught you at the Police Academy? To answer a questions with a question? Anyway, I think I know the answer to my question. You’re here in Crystal Cove and at the hospital so you can catch this killer before he kills again.”
“So you assume it’s a man.”
“I should have said he or she.”
“Catching killers is only one of my jobs. The other is to protect the populace from all kinds of crime. Not just homicides, which are rare around here. If I wanted to specialize in homicides, I would have stayed in San Francisco.” He looked grim, and he must have remembered that I knew exactly why he hadn’t stayed in the city after his partner was killed.
“I thought you might be glad to show the town how you go about finding a murderer. But what do I know? I’m just a simple pie baker, but people sometimes say things to me or around me when they don’t know I’m listening.”
“You may be a pie baker, but you’ve never been simple, Hanna,” he said dryly with his sideways look of slight amusement. He stretched his long legs out in front of him and crossed them at the ankles. “You have a duty as a citizen to report any suspicious or illegal activity, you know. So spit it out,” he said with an air of studied casual unconcern that didn’t fool me for a minute. He was dying to know what I knew. Or was he pretending not to care so I wouldn’t know he really did care?
“What I heard today was very interesting …”
At that moment Grannie came walking down the hall, her eyes popping at the sight of me with Sam. I saw her smooth her hair with one hand and adjust the neckline of her lace dress with the other.
“Why, Officer Genovese,” she said. “Nice to see you again. What are you doing here?”
“Just checking up on Mr. Barnett,” he said, standing up to tower over Grannie. “Can’t afford to lose any more Crystal Cove citizens.”
“You’ll be glad to know he’s on the mend. He told me just now he’s anxious to leave and get back to Heavenly Acres. That’s the way we all feel,” she added. “We love it there.”
“Heaven on earth,” I murmured. I don’t think either of them heard me.
“I won’t keep you then,” Sam said to Grannie. “But I am wondering if I could invite you two ladies to dinner tonight. I understand the old Seaside Grill has a nightly buffet.”
I jumped to my feet and blinked rapidly. My mind was racing about sixty miles an hour, about ten miles faster than the speed limit on the winding coast highway. What was
going on here? Was he going to ply us with cocktails and pump us for information, thinking we’d confess to Mary’s murder since he had no luck last Saturday with his lie detector? Or maybe he’d get us to finger each other for the crime. Well, I wasn’t going to play his game and neither was Grannie.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said. “We are more than happy to cooperate with your investigation without your bribing us.”
Grannie shot me a warning look. “But we’d love to have dinner with you, wouldn’t we, Hanna?” she said.
“Of course,” I said. But I was thinking of course not. Whatever his motive for this bizarre invitation, I could not get involved with this guy in any way again. It would be the height of stupidity. I needed to concentrate on my new career. Inviting both of us might be just what it seemed, a chance to pump us for information and no reason to worry about Sam’s hitting on me. Then why dinner? Why me? I didn’t need to be pumped. I’d be happy to give him my theories if only he’d take me seriously.
“Aren’t you afraid someone will see you having dinner with a suspect or a witness or an informant or all three rolled into one … or two?” Grannie asked with a twinkle in her eye. She was amazing. Instead of withdrawing or turning a cold shoulder, which a normal person would do when confronted by the police, she was being her regular charming self. That should be enough to send Sam back to the drawing board.
I could have told her the Sam I knew wasn’t afraid of anything. Not the school principal, not his father who was an abusive drunk, or … or …
“You do have a reputation to uphold,” I suggested.
“I don’t think it will be compromised by dinner with a senior citizen and a local businesswoman. Especially when they’re the most attractive women in town. And the purpose is to talk business.”
“In that case we’d be delighted,” Grannie said, who obviously loved the part about the most attractive women in town. I opened my mouth to decline, but then I closed it. There was no chance there would be anything personal about this dinner with Grannie on hand.
But when she mysteriously came down with a bad headache that evening, I felt my own headache coming on.
Look,” I said when Sam came to the door of the bakery that night wearing dark pants and a white shirt that made him look like he’d never left town at all. For a moment I was swept back in time, fifteen years ago. He’d come to pick me up for a school picnic on the beach. That was weeks before the incident at the prom. Sounds harmless, doesn’t it? But nothing with Sam ever was. Not then, and not now. He never looked that good then, or did he? Or was I so desperate to connect the dots I couldn’t remember? I wiped my hands on my apron. I was deliberately wearing ripped jeans stained with peach juice and Nike running shoes to indicate I wasn’t going anywhere. Not with him. Not without Grannie. “What is this about? Really.”
“It’s about my solving a murder,” he said, walking right past me into my shop though I really hadn’t invited him. The store was warm and the fragrance of baking pies hung in the air. The contrast with the atmosphere and his stark words was startling. I wasn’t sure he even noticed. I had several excuses for not going out with Sam on tap besides the one about the headache, but first I needed to have a talk with him.
“That’s what I thought you’d say. I know you’re looking for a murderer. I know you gave Grannie a polygraph test, which I assume has convinced you she is not your murderer. Tell me you’ve taken her off your list of suspects.”
“How can I? First, her test was inconclusive. Second, she told me in no uncertain terms she wanted Mary out of her way. She had the motive, the means, and the opportunity. That doesn’t mean I don’t find her charming. In fact, that’s a characteristic of many famous criminal minds.”
“Oh please. You’re saying my grandmother is like Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, and the Sundance Kid?” I asked incredulously. “I’m surprised you’d trust her across the dinner table. She might slip you a mickey.”
“I’m not arresting her. Not yet. I’m taking both of you out to dinner. All I want to do is for the two of you to relax, let down your hair, and talk to me. Tell me about the people in town. You both know the people here better than I do. That’s all.”
Oh, sure that was all. If I believed that, he’d be the first to sell me the Golden Gate Bridge. “So you were planning to take us to dinner, ply us with wine and good food, and pick our brains and try to get my grandmother to incriminate herself. Is that right?”
“It beats bringing you into the station with her and sitting both of you down across a table in an examination room. Doesn’t it?”
“Like you already did once with Grannie. How could you?” I demanded.
“I had to.”
He stood in the semi-darkness of my shop, gripping the back of the chair at my new table. In the light from the overhead fixture he seemed to fill the small shop, towering over my new furniture and making it look like it belonged in a dollhouse. “Hanna, a woman died. Maybe nobody liked her. Maybe many people wanted her dead. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that one person killed her. A person who had access to her medications. A person who fed her a cranberry pie.”
“It wasn’t Grannie,” I said, crossing my arms across my apron and leaning against the wall. “I know it wasn’t. I don’t care what she said during the lie detector test. It’s a well-known fact they’re not that accurate. I don’t know who killed Mary, but I do know it could have been anybody.”
“No, it couldn’t.” He straightened. “Get dressed. We’re going to dinner. We’ll talk later.”
“What about? I’m not going to spend the evening defending my grandmother.”
“Fine, we’ll talk about something else.”
“Let’s talk about someone else. Grannie isn’t coming with us. She has a headache.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” he said.
I turned and walked to the kitchen, knowing he probably thought she couldn’t take being interrogated by him over dinner. Maybe I couldn’t either. “We could talk now,” I offered. If it would save Grannie, I would sing like the proverbial canary and tell him about Bob and his possible motive for getting rid of Mary.
“Later.”
“This is blackmail,” I called over my shoulder as I walked up the stairs to my tiny apartment. The sexiest man in town was buying me dinner and giving me a chance to clear my grandmother if I said the right things. Why should I object to an opportunity to exonerate my grandmother while eating an expensive dinner? A win-win deal, I told myself. Then why was I dawdling, trying on a long skirt, taking it off, then putting on a pair of skinny jeans with a tunic top that skimmed my knees, blowing my hair dry and slipping into a pair of Steve Madden flats? Maybe I was afraid of telling too much. Afraid Sam would pry into my past the way I’d done with his. Afraid he’d force me to come clean. Afraid of sounding defensive. Of being laughed at or even worse, afraid of being taken seriously and fingering the wrong person. Or giving too much away.
Most of all, I was afraid of letting down my guard and falling for Sam again. Falling for the man who was no longer a bad boy, but just as dangerous for me. It was bad enough to get mixed up with the town bad boy some fifteen years ago, worse to get mixed up now with a law man who had something to prove. Which he did. He had to prove to the town he was up to the job of protecting and serving. Why else was he back in Crystal Cove? Though you could ask me the same thing. In fact, he did ask me the same thing. I had terrible taste in men. That was obvious. But I would prefer to keep my problems to myself.
I told myself I was being ridiculous. It was only dinner. I hadn’t had a date in months, and no serious boyfriend in years. Just a botched relationship that never should have happened. An attractive man asks me to dinner. Sure, he’s only doing it to find out what I know so he can solve a murder, even if he suspects my own grandmother. I’d be crazy not to go. So I was going.
I wouldn’t have hesitated so much if I’d known Sam had a Mazda Miata convertible. I’ve always had a weakness f
or cool cars, which is why I was happy to get Grannie’s old Buick. Not everyone’s idea of cool, but I liked it. We drove out of town along the coast highway with the wind in my hair and the setting sun slanting rays of golden light on the winding road with the sea on one side and the sheer cliffs on the other. I let my mind drift, trying to forget this was a business dinner and that I had my work cut out defending my grandmother and her friends from being charged with murder.
“Wait, this isn’t the way to the Grill,” I said, thinking of the noisy, crowded family restaurant I remembered from the old days.
“Too noisy and crowded,” he said.
“Too noisy and crowded for you to get me to spill everything I know, is that what you mean?”
He slid a glance in my direction. “Something like that. Have you been to the Bohemian Beach Distillery?”
“I haven’t been anywhere. I’ve been working round the clock, trying to get my business going. But I remember hearing about it. Hasn’t it been around since Prohibition?”
“That’s the one.”
“I thought it was a tourist trap. They even claim a blue ghost who comes around for atmosphere.”
“I haven’t seen the ghost but the food is good and the view is worth the drive.” What he meant was it was worth a drive to escape prying eyes and nosy neighbors. If it was a tourist trap, all the better for us to have a private conversation where no locals would hear us.
“So you’ve been there.”
“A few times. It’s quiet. We can talk there.”
Of course, we could have talked quietly at the police station or at the pie shop, but I was here and we were on our way. Who else had he brought out here so they could talk quietly? Other suspects? I wouldn’t put it past him. He’d been to Mary’s family’s house. And God knew where else. He wasn’t sitting around the station waiting for someone to turn himself or herself in, that’s for sure.
Maybe he’d been here with other women. Why hadn’t Kate told me if she’d heard he was dating anyone in town? Wait, I thought I was the only single, eligible woman around. It didn’t matter. This was not really a date. In fact, I should offer to pay for my dinner even though it was no doubt expensive. If I could persuade him of my grandmother’s innocence, it was worth it.