by Vicki Delany
“That’s absurd!” My fury mounted.
“You’re too clever by half, Gemma,” he yelled, “and that’s always been your problem. It was a mistake coming here. I should have let Estrada interview you.”
The office door flew open. “What on earth is going on?” Jayne said. “It sounds as though someone’s being murdered in here. I can hear you all the way through to the tea room, and every one of our customers has stopped what they’re doing to listen in.”
“A minor disagreement.” I dropped back into my chair.
“I’m interviewing a reluctant witness,” Ryan said.
“Reluctant! I’m anything but reluctant!”
“Stop it.” Jayne looked back and forth between us. “I suggest a cooling-off period. Gemma, the shop is full, and your attention is needed. Detective Ashburton, I doubt you want the entire town of West London knowing police business.”
“I need to talk to you, Ms. Wilson,” he said. I couldn’t help but notice how attractive Ryan was when he was flustered. I gave myself a mental slap. That was over and done with, and good thing too. He would always be, first of all, a cop.
“The lunch rush is slowing down, so I can spare the time now,” Jayne said. “Why don’t you come to the tea room, Detective? We can talk in my kitchen. I’ll even provide coffee and a sandwich.”
Ryan didn’t look back, but Jayne threw me a questioning look over her shoulder. Moriarty smirked and settled down to wash his whiskers.
I remembered to breathe deeply. I let a few minutes pass, and then I lifted my head, pointed my chin, and sailed down the stairs. Seeing that Ryan had left without dragging me in handcuffs, kicking and screaming, to an impromptu hanging, the customers had returned to minding their own business.
Maureen swooped down on the store. I sometimes wondered if she had my place bugged so she’d be able to respond instantly to the slightest impropriety. “Really, Gemma. Did you have to make such a scene? It doesn’t reflect well on the other business owners on this street.”
“Is that the police I see going into your place, Maureen?” She had her back to the window, and I was facing out into the street.
She whirled around. “What? Heavens yes, I think it is.”
“You’d better get back and see what they want. I hope they don’t damage any of your fine art in their search of the premises.”
She ran.
Okay, so I lied. But I didn’t feel like defending myself to her. Or to anyone.
I turned around. Ruby ducked her head, trying to pretend she hadn’t been watching me, but she wasn’t fast enough.
As I helped customers and rang up purchases, I kept replaying the conversation with Ryan over and over in my head. He hadn’t come right out and said he believed I’d stolen the magazine and killed the woman. He only suggested that others, Detective Louise Estrada in particular, might think so.
Fortunately, Jayne had been with me the entire time yesterday evening, from discovering the magazine to finding the dead body to coming home and realizing that my house had been searched. Jayne had the most innocent, wide-open face of anyone I’d ever met. She’d tell the police what transpired yesterday, and that would put all their suspicions to rest.
* * *
“I knew I’d find you two here,” Irene Talbot slid into a seat opposite us in Mrs. Hudson’s Tea Room. It was quarter to four, and Jayne and I had just sat at the table in the window alcove for our regular afternoon meeting. Irene plucked a smoked salmon pinwheel sandwich off my plate. “Any coffee left?”
I was about to say “no,” but Jayne got to her feet. “I’ll see what I can find.” On her way into the back, she flipped the sign on the door to “Closed” and locked the door.
The sandwich disappeared and a strawberry tart followed it. “Help yourself,” I said.
“Thanks,” Irene said. “Don’t mind if I do. It’s been a heck of a busy day, I can tell you. Not often we get a murder in our sleepy little town, never mind one that goes unsolved for a whole twenty-four hours. Usually they either find the killer still at the scene in a state of shock or down at Pete’s bar telling everyone she deserved it.” She pulled a pen and a notebook out of her giant handbag.
Now that Irene was here, I might as well make the best of it. “What have you learned?”
She set about telling me everything I already knew. Jayne put a coffee mug on the table and began to sit down. “Any more of those sandwiches left?” Irene asked. “They’re great.”
Jayne headed back to the kitchen, and Irene sipped her coffee. She sighed in appreciation. “Best coffee in town.”
“Drop the act,” I said. “You don’t have to play friendly, well-meaning journalist with me. You’ve told me nothing that’s not common knowledge.” Mary Ellen’s identity and the details of her dispute with the Kent family had been the lead story on the local radio news late this morning. I hadn’t had the radio on, but I had been provided with all the details by Jocelyn, Andy Whitehall, several of my neighbors, Uncle Arthur’s euchre partner (also grandmother to Officer Johnson), and the woman who worked at the accessory store next to Beach Fine Arts. There had been no mention of my name in the press, but Jayne had been described as “the owner of the popular West London café Mrs. Hudson’s, who discovered the deceased and called the police.”
“I don’t want to see my name in your paper, Irene,” I said. “I am not an interested party, I just happened to be on the scene with Jayne.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “You’re very interested. You told me yesterday you found something of the deceased woman’s and were trying to return it. Do you want to tell me what that was?”
“No comment.”
“I’ll find out anyway, you know. I have my sources.”
Jayne put a fresh plate on the table. “Strawberry tarts are finished, but I have some brownies left.”
“Thanks. What about you, Jayne? You were there yesterday. Is there anything you think the people of West London need to know?”
“No.”
“Have you given a statement to the police?”
“I was interviewed by Detective Ashburton last night and again earlier this afternoon,” Jayne said. “Everyone who was at the hotel yesterday was probably interviewed.”
“Were you interviewed, Gemma?” Irene asked.
I began to say “no.” Jayne interrupted me.
“Was she ever! I’m surprised you didn’t hear her and Detective Ashburton yelling at each other all the way over at the Star offices.”
“Is that so?” Irene forced her face into a surprised look. Not many people can act, which is why there’s a profession for those who can. Easy to tell this tidbit of information wasn’t anything new to her.
I sipped my tea. We smiled at each other.
I was saved from more smiling by a loud rap on the door. A man stood there, holding his hands to the glass, peering in. He saw me, waved, and knocked again. I’d never seen him before.
“Can’t he read?” Jayne said.
“Let him in,” Irene said. “He’s with me.”
“We’re closed,” I pointed out. Jocelyn was stacking chairs upside down on the tables prior to sweeping the floor, and Fiona was clearing what few leftovers there were out of the display cabinet.
“You’ll want to hear what he has to say,” Irene said.
I gave Jayne a nod, and she opened the door. The man who entered was short and slightly built. His gait tilted heavily to the right, the result of a bad knee. He wore faded jeans, bagging from wear at the knees and in the seat; a Boston Red Sox T-shirt; and heavy work boots. He peered at us through small black eyes from under a Red Sox ball cap. He gave me a nod and a weak smile. He was missing a tooth on the upper right side. A workingman—construction, most likely—unable to get work because of the injury to his knee and considerably down on his luck. The acrid scent of cigarette smoke, fresh as well as stale, permeated his clothes and emitted from his every pore. His stubby fingers were stained a deep yellow.
&nbs
p; “Have a seat, Mr. Longton,” I said. “Or is that just your mother’s name?”
He threw Irene a look. “You told her.”
“No,” she said, “I didn’t.”
“Jayne,” I said. “Would you mind asking Fiona to bring another coffee and maybe one or two of those brownies?”
One hardly had to be Sherlock Holmes to recognize this man as Mary Ellen Longton’s son. Anyone could have figured it out. Anyone who bothered to observe and correlate the known facts. I’ve found that almost no one does. If I’d passed Mr. Longton in the street, I wouldn’t have given him a second glance. But as Irene had invited him to join us after telling me she wanted to talk about Mary Ellen’s death and the police investigation, combined with his small stature, the same furtive mannerisms as the late woman, and some similar facial characteristics, it was obvious they were closely related. He was in his midforties; therefore, he was most likely to be her son rather than a brother or grandson.
Jayne sat down in the chair next to me, and Mr. Longton slid into the bench seat beside Irene. Ever so slightly, Irene inched away from him.
Outside, people and cars passed by. The parking enforcement officer was writing up a ticket for an SUV parked in a loading zone.
Fiona brought another mug of coffee and a plate containing a selection of pastries.
Mr. Longton muttered his thanks. Fiona made no move to leave us, and Jocelyn’s sweeping was bringing her ever closer.
“Gemma Doyle, Jayne Wilson, this is Roy Longton,” Irene said. “Roy came to me because he has some questions about his mother’s death.”
“That’s natural enough,” I said. “But I don’t see what any of this has to do with us. Let the police handle it. I have some experience with the WLPD, and Detective Ashburton is more than competent.”
“You found her body.” He spoke properly for the first time. His voice was surprisingly high-pitched, squeaky almost. He gripped his mug. The tiny nicks and scars on his thumbs and the badly healed gash on the right palm confirmed that he’d been a construction worker.
“We found her by accident,” Jayne said.
“She was in your store, next door there”—he pointed with his chin—“a couple of hours before she died. What did you talk about?”
“We talked about nothing. We didn’t meet,” I said. “The shop was crowded when your mother came in and she left soon after.”
“Why’d you go to the hotel then?”
I glanced at Irene. “I’m assuming you know. So why are you asking us that?”
“She left something with you,” Roy said.
“I don’t have anything of hers.”
“She worked for that miserable old man. She was good to him. She treated him right. His family was happy enough to leave him alone to rot in that big house until he died. My mother was the one who looked after him. She deserved to get something for all that.”
“I assume she was paid,” I said.
“Sure. Paid peanuts. Why shouldn’t he leave her a little gift? Something to remember him by.”
“Sounds fair to me,” Fiona said. Jocelyn nodded.
I ignored them and spoke to Irene. “I fail to see what this has to do with me.”
“You’re the Sherlock expert,” Irene said.
“I’m nothing of the sort.”
“He, the old man, left my mother something from his collection. I’m thinking you can help me get it back.”
“What Mr. Clark left to your mother, if he left anything, is with the police.” I deliberately used the wrong name. Jayne gave me a surprised look, but Roy Longton didn’t appear to even notice. Not that close to his mother then, at least not in her final months.
Irene flipped through her notebook. “I thought the man’s name was Kent. Not Clark. I have to admit, I thought of Superman too.”
“My mistake,” I said.
“They’re rich,” Roy said. “They’ve got everything. They can afford fancy lawyers. My mom, she didn’t have much. But she had her honesty. She was a good woman. The old man owed her, and when he died, his family threatened to sue her. She was on the run. What else could she do? She couldn’t afford a decent lawyer. Now they’re going to come after me.”
“So unfair,” Fiona said to Jocelyn.
“That’s why Roy contacted me.” Irene took the last brownie. “The power of the press is the only weapon the underprivileged have against the rich and powerful.”
“You and your mother must have been very close,” I said.
“Yeah, we were. Yeah.” His eyes slid to Jayne sitting beside me.
“Did Mr. Kent leave anything to you?” I asked.
“Why would he do that?” Roy said. “He didn’t know me.”
“Just wondering.” I pushed my chair back and stood up. “I’m going out after work, so now I need to go home and let the dog out. Nice meeting you, Roy. Don’t forget our meeting tonight, Jayne.”
* * *
Violet greeted me effusively, and I did the same for her. I took her leash down from the hook by the back door, and we headed out for walk. Since a dog came into my life, I’ve found there’s nothing like time spent walking her to engage in some serious thinking. Something about meandering along at the pace of a happy dog, with no particular place to go, clears the mind wonderfully. Although right now, I’d rather my mind wasn’t cleared.
It bothered me deeply that Ryan thought I might have had something to do with the death of Mary Ellen Longton. After all we’d once meant to each other, he couldn’t possibly think I’d kill a woman for a magazine? I didn’t know Louise Estrada. I didn’t know anything about her world view or her thought process. Maybe she was influencing Ryan without him even being aware of it. She was an attractive woman. He was an attractive man. Though surely, if they were more than colleagues, I’d have noticed the signs.
Then again, maybe I didn’t want to see any signs.
A squirrel ran down a tree trunk and darted across the grass. Violet made to follow, and the abrupt jerk of her leash pulled me out of my thoughts.
I took her home, filled the food and water bowls, and went back to the Emporium.
* * *
Jayne was perched on a tall, colorful stool when I arrived at the Blue Water Café. Andy stood behind the bar, his elbows resting on the shiny mahogany, a huge adoring smile on his face, and the light of love glowing in his eyes. Brian, the bartender, slid a martini glass containing a lurid pink-and-yellow concoction topped with a bright-red cherry toward Jayne, and she thanked him with a brilliant smile. I thought Andy was going to faint.
I’d come directly from the shop, but Jayne had been home first. She’d changed into a red skirt that flowed in waves above her knees, a crisp white shirt with a deeply curved neckline, and strappy sandals with three-inch heels. When she crossed her bare legs, Andy wasn’t the only man who gulped and took a second look.
I lumbered across the deck in shoes suitable for spending a day on one’s feet and joined them. “Hey, Gemma,” Andy said. “What can we get you?”
Jayne took a delicate sip of her drink. She rolled her eyes in pleasure. “This is so good.”
“Sauvignon Blanc for me, please,” I said.
“Andy heard something about what happened last night,” Jayne said. “I was about to fill him in.”
“To tell him that we were simply innocent passersby caught up in an unknown person’s tragedy, you mean?”
“We were?”
“Yes, Jayne. We were.”
“Keep your secrets then,” Andy said. “I’ll get it out of you in due course.”
“Thanks.” I accepted a glass of wine from Brian.
“Better get back at it,” Andy said. “We’re full again tonight.”
He walked away, returning to the mysterious depths of his kitchen. I swung my stool around to check out the view. The restaurant overlooked the small harbor, and the outdoor seating area was perched on stilts above the water. The harbor faced east, toward the stormy waters of the Atlantic, but this s
tretch of the coast was protected by a sandbar lying a few hundred feet offshore. Big charter fishing crafts and small private sailboats were returning to port, moving slowly through the calm waters of the inner harbor. A seaplane flew low overhead, and far above it, the passage of a commercial jet drew a line of white vapor across the blue sky. Seals played under the pier or followed in the wake of the fishing boats, and sea gulls swooped though the evening sky on the lookout for dinner. The beam from the West London lighthouse flashed above it all.
“Cheers,” I said, and Jayne and I clinked glasses. Our seats were against the railing on one side, and on the other side, two elderly couples had gathered stools into a circle. They were not on their first drinks of the day, and their laughter filled the deck.
“So,” I said, keeping my voice low, “What did Ryan have to say?”
“I want the scoop first.”
“What scoop?”
“What’s the story with you and him?”
“I told you, there is no story. We dated once, for a short while, and it didn’t work out.” I took a slug of my wine.
“Seems to me there’s still a lot of feeling between the two of you, judging by the way you were yelling at each other earlier.”
“He was almost accusing me of murder, Jayne. I’m allowed to yell.”
“I’ll grant you that. But what about the way you blush when he talks to you and you can’t look him in the eye?”
“I do not blush,” I said around another mouthful of wine.
“You’re not the only one who can be observant, Gemma. Hope you’re not driving tonight, not the way that drink’s going down.”
I put the glass on the bar. “It’s been a difficult twenty-four hours. If you must know, the end of our relationship was . . . difficult might be the word. He got a job in Boston and moved away. Now he’s back. That’s all.”
“It’s obviously not all. He still likes you, Gemma. He likes you a lot. His face is as readable as yours.”
“Be that as it may, it wouldn’t work. We met when a series of nighttime arsons struck some of the stores along Baker Street. The police investigated, of course. I soon pointed out to them, in the person of newly promoted Detective Ashburton, that it was obvious that the owner of the jewelry store at 195 Baker Street—”