by Jessica Beck
“I thought you two were together,” Rebecca said.
“Why would you think that? Just because we walked into the store together?”
“It’s not just that. I saw you talking to her in back.”
I had to think of something to say, and unfortunately, what I came up with meant that I was about to throw Grace under the bus. “She wanted me to help her pick out a diet drink. Can you imagine asking that from a stranger?”
“The funny thing is that what she bought wasn’t even diet.”
I smiled at Rebecca as though we were sharing an inside joke, and then I said, “It is a real loss, isn’t it?”
“How did you know him?” she asked me. It was pretty obvious she still wasn’t one hundred percent certain that I was telling the truth.
“I work at a donut shop,” I said, downplaying the fact that I owned it. I wanted her to feel at ease with me, and she might not if she thought I had money. All I had to do was show her my checkbook to prove that wasn’t true, but this way was better.
She sniffed the air. “I thought I smelled donuts. For a second I almost believed that I was stroking out.”
“Try getting the smell out of your hair before a date,” I said. “Sorry about that. I wasn’t thinking.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I heard that you two just broke up,” I said. “It wasn’t that long ago, either, was it?”
“I don’t know. It was long enough for him to find somebody else to replace me,” she said as I stepped aside so she could ring up a few customers. “Can you believe it? He didn’t waste any time finding someone else.”
“I’m sure she was just a rebound,” I said, knowing full well that Trish was nothing of the sort.
“She had to be. If we’d had a little more time to work things out, James and I would have gotten back together. I’m sure of it. He would have gotten tired of that waitress and come back where he belonged.” Trish was no more a waitress than I was a cashier, but I let that one slide as well.
“Do they have any idea who killed him?” I asked once we were alone again.
“The cops? They’re idiots. I could tell them, if they’d just ask me.”
I leaned forward. “Really? Do you honestly know?”
She nodded. “It had to be that waitress. I’m guessing that he was dumping her, too, so she stabbed him so no one else can have him.”
I said, “I heard that she had a pretty solid alibi.”
“How could you have possibly heard that?” Rebecca asked me suspiciously.
I had to think quickly. “Cops and donuts. They go together, you know? I hear things. I don’t mean to eavesdrop, but I can’t help it.”
Rebecca accepted that, so I followed up with a tough question of my own. “Do you happen to have one?”
“One what?”
“An alibi,” I said.
Rebecca stared hard at me. “That’s what the cops wanted to know, too.”
“So, what did you tell them?”
Rebecca just shrugged. “There wasn’t much to tell. I wasn’t working, but I was nowhere near the park.”
“But it’s kind of tough proving where you weren’t, isn’t it?”
“I might be able to if I really have to.”
“You can tell me,” I said softly.
She looked around, and then when she saw that the convenience store was empty, she explained, “I was getting my hair dyed at Cutnip. You can’t see my roots, can you?”
“No, not a trace,” I said. “Why won’t you tell anyone that’s what you were doing?”
“It wasn’t all that I was up to yesterday, if you know what I mean.”
What did she mean?
I was about to ask her when Officer Grant walked in. “Suzanne, I didn’t know you shopped here.”
“You know her?” Rebecca asked.
I made a warning face at the officer, hoping that he’d follow my lead. He shrugged and then said, “You can’t keep a good cop away from his donuts.”
“That’s what she said,” Rebecca said.
“Suzanne, if you’ve got a second, could I speak to you?”
“Right now?”
“I think that would be best,” he said. “We can talk out by my patrol car.”
I put the candy bar back and thanked Rebecca as I walked out of the store with the police officer.
We were two feet away from the building when he turned to me and asked, “What are you and Grace up to now?”
“Why are you asking me about Grace? She’s not with me, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
He grinned as he answered, “That’s only because she’s already circled the block three times. Unless you two are planning to rob the place, I’m guessing this has to do with James’s ex-girlfriend in there.”
I knew when I was caught red-handed. “Okay, it’s true; you caught me.”
He looked surprised by my admission. “You aren’t even going to try to weasel your way out of this one?”
“No, not to you. Besides, we already told you what we were up to when I tried to give the journal back to you.”
He held his palms forward. “I had nothing to do with any of that.”
“Don’t worry. We know that you didn’t tell on us. The chief admitted that he found it all by himself.”
He looked back at Rebecca, who was closely watching our exchanges. Officer Grant grinned as he asked, “Do you want me to put you in the back of the squad car to make it look good?”
“No, thanks,” I said. “I think I’ll pass.”
“Then you’d better take off. The chief’s on his way over here to interview her again, and it wouldn’t do you any good for him to find you here.”
“Thanks for the heads-up,” I said as I waved Grace over to a parking spot out of Rebecca’s line of sight.
Before I could go, he asked, “Just out of curiosity, did she tell you anything important?”
I shrugged. “She blames Trish, and after I told her that she had an alibi, I asked Rebecca if she had one herself.”
“That was a little reckless,” he said.
“Hey, these questions have to be asked.”
“By the police, not you,” he said, though there was just a hint of disapproval in his voice as he said it. “What did she say?”
“She said she was getting her hair done at Cutnip, but she implied that she was up to something else as well. If I’d had a little more time to push her, I might have gotten her to confess.”
“Suzanne, I personally think you’re crazy getting involved with these murder investigations, but I usually understand your reasoning. I know that you and Settle were friends, but that doesn’t mean that you have to avenge his murder.”
“Some folks think that I might have had something to do with it,” I said. “My reputation is important to me.”
“Your life should mean more. Just watch your step, okay?”
“Okay,” I agreed. “Good luck in there.”
“Thanks, but I don’t need it. I’m not the one who’s going to question her. The chief made it clear that he was taking the lead.”
Officer Grant looked over my shoulder, and then he said, “There’s the chief. You’d better hurry.”
“Thanks for the warning. Come by and get a free donut sometime.”
“I just might take you up on that,” he said as I hurried over to Grace’s car. I got inside just as Chief Martin drove up and parked in front of the shop. If he’d been trying to make a grand entrance, he’d succeeded magnificently.
Grace asked, “Should we hang around and see what happens?”
“I don’t see why. He’s not going to arrest her, and we can’t afford to pop up on the chief’s radar for a while. As discreetly as you can, why don’t we leave?”
“I’d be delighted to. Just tell me where we’re going.”
“I will as soon as I come up with something,” I said.
“Tell you what. Why don’t I drive around a little until you’re
able to figure out what our next step should be?”
“Just don’t keep driving around the convenience store,” I said. “Officer Grant thought that we were robbing the place.”
“We’d never do that,” Grace said.
“Of course not. He should have had more faith in us.”
“Everybody knows that there’s no real money in a convenience store. If we were going to knock over a business, it would have to be a jeweler. Think of all of that gold in inventory and the cash in the safe, too. We’d make out like bandits.”
“But we’re not robbing anyone, right?”
“Who knows? The day is still young, and the night’s yet to come.”
CHAPTER 10
We’d driven down Springs Avenue twice when I finally decided on our next move. “What do you think about taking another trip to Pinerush?”
“It beats cruising the streets here in April Springs,” Grace said. “Do you think we’re still going to have access to the Pinerush estate?”
“Actually, I was hoping to talk to Harry again,” I said.
“What makes you think he can get away?”
“Pull over and give me a second to call him. There’s no use driving all that way if he’s tied up at the manor.”
She did as I asked, but after I dialed Harry’s number, it went to voice mail after half a dozen rings. I decided to go ahead and leave a message. “Harry, call me when you get a chance. This is Suzanne Hart.”
I hung up. “Well, that was a wash. Do you want to keep driving until I can come up with something else?”
“Why don’t we drive out to the lake instead?” she suggested.
“Trish won’t be there at this time of day.”
“Probably not, but it would give us both something to do, and the worst-case scenario is that we get a pretty view while you’re scheming.”
“I’m not scheming; I’m planning our next course of action.”
“Call it whatever you’d like,” she said with the hint of a laugh.
After we got to the lake, we parked near Trish’s place, and I asked Grace, “Are you up for a walk around the lake?”
“All the way around?” she asked incredulously. “Suzanne, that sounds suspiciously like exercise to me.”
“I thought you worked out most days,” I said.
“I already did this morning, and that included more miles than I care to think about on my treadmill before we got together. I’m not sure how much more I can handle today.”
I scanned the lake and saw a bench near the water. “How about going that far? Think you could manage that?”
“It might be tough, but I’m willing to try if you are,” she answered with a smile.
We were walking toward the bench when my cell rang.
It was Harry.
“Sorry I missed your call, but Mrs. Pinerush is in one of her moods today.”
“Does she get that way often?” I asked.
“Since you two left, she’s been biting my head off so consistently that it can be timed to every four minutes. I understand, though. She obviously thinks that it should have been me instead of James who died.”
“What an awful thing to say,” I said. “She can’t really believe that.”
“It’s true, she does.”
“How can you possibly know that?” I asked.
“She just said as much to me. She always thought that Jim and I were too close; we were the commoner and the prince. Only I didn’t leave the manor; Jim did, not that anyone in their right mind would blame him. He got a bad shake in life, and my dad and I kind of took him in when things weren’t going so hot at the house.”
It was an odd way of putting it, the gardeners looking out for the heir apparent, if that’s what James really was. For all Grace and I knew, Forrest could have been next in line to run things, or even the mysterious cousin. I had to believe that Mrs. Pinerush was in charge now, at least on paper. The way her son had pushed her, though, made me wonder if that was the case in actuality. “Who’s running things out there?” I asked. “Is it Forrest, or Mrs. Pinerush?”
“That’s a good question. Forrie’s been trying to worm his way into power for years and Mrs. Pinerush hasn’t been putting up all that much of a fight, but Jim’s death has been some kind of catalyst for her. She may have let Forrest push her around yesterday when you were here, but she’s not having any of it now. In fact, if you hadn’t called me, I was going to try to track you both down myself.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“Mrs. Pinerush would like to request your presence at dinner tonight. Actually, since she’s gotten older, it’s more like this afternoon. She would have normally had her butler call you, but she’s got him off running another errand for her, so I had to do it myself. She must have found out that we’d already talked, though how she managed it is beyond me. Can you and Grace make it to the manor in an hour and a half?”
I considered the time that it would take us to drive home, shower, change, and still make it to Pinerush in time. There was no way we could do it, and I knew it. “How important is it that we dress up for the occasion? Is it better to be on time in jeans and T-shirts, or should we push dinner an hour later so we have time to make ourselves presentable?”
“Prompt is fine, early is better,” he said. “As long as you’re not fresh from the barn shoveling stalls, she can let just about any dress code violation go.”
“Seriously? There’s actually a dress code for dinner?”
“You don’t want to know,” Harry said. “I’ll tell her you’re coming.”
“Great. Thank her for the invitation, would you? And if there’s time after we eat, could we talk to you? We have a few more questions for you about James.”
“I would be amazed if you didn’t,” he said with an easy laugh. “Like I told you before, if I can help, I will. All you have to do is ask. I’ll be by your car when you leave.”
“We’ll see you soon then,” I said and then broke the connection.
“I take it we’ve been invited to see the queen,” Grace said.
“She’s not even picky about what we’re wearing, which is a very good thing. What do you say? Are you up for a dinner out?”
“I can face showing up like this if you can,” she said.
I had to laugh, and Grace asked in response, “Did I just say something amusing?”
“You sell cosmetics. You are always a veritable fashion plate, while I’m rarely seen in anything other than what I have on right now. I have a feeling that you’re going to have a lot harder time with this than I am.”
“Point taken,” she said, “but don’t count me out yet.” When we got to the car, she popped the trunk lid on her car and pulled a few things out.
As she put on a tweed blazer, I said, “Hey, that’s not fair.”
“I’m sure I’ve got something here that you can wear, too.”
Grace and I shared many things, but clothing was not one of them. Our shapes were so different that about all we could both wear were scarves and gloves. “Thanks, but I’ll take my chances looking like this.”
“Suit yourself,” she said. In less than a minute, she’d freshened up her makeup and at the same time she’d elevated it a notch or two to a more formal look than she’d been sporting before. “You really are good at that,” I said as we got into the car.
“Practice makes perfect. Hey, don’t sell yourself short. You’ve got talent, too.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“I’m willing to bet that no one in April Springs can make a donut like you can.”
“As far as superpowers go, that’s not a very good one, is it?” I asked with a smile as she drove away.
“That depends on how hungry you are, and I just realized that in our haste to tackle our suspects, we forgot to eat lunch.”
“We can’t stop now,” I said. “We’re just going to have to toughen up and go without until later.”
“We can’t eat a full meal, but
we have to get something to take the edge off.”
I was about to protest when my stomach started rumbling. “Okay, but it can’t be much.”
“Trust me. I know just the place,” she said.
* * *
By the time we got to Pinerush, we’d finished off the fruit-and-yogurt treats we’d picked up on the way. They weren’t the small mass-produced fare some fast food chains offered, but a nice portion of yogurt and fruit that was fit for royalty. I was still a little hungry, but at least I wouldn’t eat the bread basket when we sat down for supper.
* * *
“Come in,” Stephen said as he answered the door. “Mrs. Pinerush is expecting you.”
“Thanks,” I said. He led us down a grand hallway, the oak floors gleaming. The walls on either side were covered with portraits from generations long gone, and I felt as though I’d stepped into some kind of gothic novel. After passing several doors, we were led into a grand dining hall with a table large enough to feed twenty. There were just four place settings, though. I couldn’t believe it when I actually saw my name on a place card.
“Mrs. Pinerush will be in momentarily,” Stephen said, and then left us alone.
I held my name card up. “This is pretty fancy, isn’t it?”
“Look at this china. It has to be a hundred years old.”
“I wish you hadn’t told me that. Now I’ll be afraid to eat off it.”
Grace laughed. “Then I won’t say a word about how much those water goblets must be worth.”
“I’d appreciate that.” I looked around the room and couldn’t help admiring a lovely large tapestry hanging nearby. “What do you make of this?”
She approached it, and then said, “It’s just like one I saw at the Biltmore House the last time I was in Asheville.” The Biltmore was the world’s largest private residence, and a great many folks took tours of the home, especially around Christmas.
“You have a keen eye,” Mrs. Pinerush said from the doorway. “This is the twin of one hanging there. Only two were made in this exact pattern, and we’re fortunate enough to own this one.”
“It’s truly lovely,” I said.
She seemed to shrug slightly. “In all honesty, it’s been hanging there since I was a child, and I freely admit that sometimes I take its presence for granted. Would you two be seated?”