by Linda Reilly
Jill turned abruptly. When she saw Talia waving at her through the glass, her face relaxed. She set down the flowered teapot she was holding and scurried over to unlock the door. “Well, hey, you’re here late,” she said, lifting her gaze to Bea and Whitnee. “Can I help you all with something?” Jill’s words were gracious, but her tone was flat.
Talia scrunched her face in a sorry-to-be-a-pest kind of way. “We were just going out to our cars when I remembered something I wanted to ask you. Can I come in for a sec?”
“All of you?” Jill leveled a hard look at the trio.
“Ah, no,” Bea said lightly. “Whitnee and I are leaving, aren’t we, luv? Have a good evening, Jill.”
But Whitnee didn’t move, nor did she speak. She stood staring at Jill, her face a pale mask in the faint light that drizzled from the tea shop. Only when she realized Bea was tugging at her elbow did she finally turn away. The two hurried off toward the town lot, leaving Talia alone with Jill.
“So, it’s just us chickens,” Jill said, an uneasy flutter in her laugh. The subtle scent of honeysuckle swaying around her, she ushered Talia inside the shop.
“So, how was your day?” Talia said. “Lots of sales?” Her stab at sounding casual made her voice come out like a squeaky hinge.
Jill flashed a brief smile. “I’m sure you didn’t come over here after hours to inquire about my day,” she said evenly. “What can I do for you, Talia?”
Hmmm. Why the sudden frost? “Sorry. I know you want to close up, so I’ll get to the point. Last night when we all met in here and you were arguing with Kendra, I overheard you say she was sitting pretty. Do you mind if I ask what you meant?”
Jill lifted her chin, then shrugged. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to tell you. Phil had a sizeable life insurance policy naming Kendra as beneficiary. Now that he’s”—she swallowed—“gone, Kendra will be able to collect on it.”
Life insurance. That hadn’t even occurred to Talia. “A large policy?”
“Depends on your viewpoint, but two hundred fifty grand is large by most people’s standards.”
Whoa. A cool quarter mil.
“In my book it’s a queen’s ransom,” Talia said. “So why did he leave it to his ex-wife if he hated her with such a passion?”
Jill folded her arms. “Quite simply, it was a deal made with a she-devil, that being Kendra, of course. Poor Phil. I’m sure he didn’t expect her to be collecting on it so soon. Nor did I,” she added in a thin voice.
“A deal in return for what?” Talia prodded. Okay, casual was out the window. Pushy was in like a gale-force wind.
“In return for leaving him alone, for letting him run the shop the way he wanted to, without all the glitz and the showy trash she wanted to infuse into the place.”
“Maybe it’s me, but that just doesn’t ring true,” Talia said. “Why did she care? Was she really all that wild about vintage lighting?”
“Of course not. It was just another way to stick it to Phil.”
“But the life insurance policy wasn’t enough, was it, because Phil was relatively young and healthy. So she found another way to torment him. She persuaded her stepson to take over the old antiques shop and open a comic book store he didn’t even want. Jill, did it ever occur to you that Kendra could be the killer?”
Jill gave out what might have been a belly laugh if her abdomen hadn’t been as flat as an iron. “Kendra, murder Phil? Are you kidding? She’d have to risk chipping a nail, for God’s sake!”
Talia felt taken aback. “Honestly, Jill, I’m a little surprised at your reaction. I Googled her. I know all about her grand plan to build a spa on the land she’s buying from the town.”
Jill shook her head. “I hear what you’re saying, and believe me, there’s nothing I’d like more than to see Kendra doing hard time.” She toyed with the diamond-studded heart that hung from her neck on a chain. “But Kendra would never take a risk like that. She’s too smart. And how did you know about Aaron?”
Talia smiled. “He came into Lambert’s today for fish and chips. We had a short but very interesting chat. I liked him—he seems genuinely devoted to his dad.”
Jill sagged against the adjacent display counter. “I begged Phil to forget about the comic book store, but he couldn’t let it go. To him, it meant another win for Kendra.” She mimed licking her finger and swiping it down over a chalkboard. “He just couldn’t watch that happen. It was making him crazy.” Her blue eyes welled with tears. “Every so often, it hits me that he’s gone,” she whispered. “It hurts.”
Talia still couldn’t make sense of Jill’s relationship with Turnbull. It was a puzzle with pieces so warped they simply didn’t fit together.
“Jill, I know I’m prying, but what was really going on with you and Phil? What is it I’m not seeing? And please don’t tell me it was his good looks. As women, we both know that gets old very fast.”
The tiny lines next to Jill’s eyes deepened. “Then you may as well sit down. This will take a few minutes.”
“Am I keeping you from your daughter?” Talia said, feeling more than a twinge of guilt.
“Yes, but she’s in good hands. She and my mother are going to watch a movie and order a pizza, so they’ll be fine until I get home.”
They sat at one of the small tables in the front of the shop. Jill folded her elegant fingers on the table in front of her. “Phil and I knew each other since high school. We lived in the same neighborhood, in a town just outside of Hartford. Went to a pretty rough school. Phil was a year ahead of me, and a fairly good student. He was a loner in a school where most of the boys hung out in gangs.” She smiled, and her face took on a dreamy look. “Phil never tried to fit in. That was one of the things I admired about him. He wasn’t very macho, but he was sooo good-looking. Gorgeous eyes, wavy blond hair with a hint of auburn, perfect skin.”
“You had a crush on him.” Talia smiled at Jill.
“Kind of.” Jill flicked an imaginary crumb off the table. “Anyway, this one afternoon I was walking home from school. I was almost there when three of the seriously bad boys from school appeared out of nowhere. They’d been lurking, waiting for me. Two of them grabbed me, started squeezing me in a really nasty way.” Her face flushed, and she rubbed at her cheeks. “The other lowlife just stood there, leering at me, laughing. I’d never been so terrified.”
“I can only imagine,” Talia said, a shiver running through her.
“They started pulling me toward this junky car that was parked on the street. I was sure I was going to be taken somewhere and raped … and God only knows what else. I tried screaming for help, but the ringleader—this creep named Wally—put his ugly hand over my nose and mouth so I couldn’t breathe.”
Talia tucked her hands under her arms. “Wasn’t anyone around to witness this, or to help?”
Jill paused and shook her head. “No, no one. I was starting to see spots, when all of a sudden, they just … let go.” Her blue eyes were alight. “Like a bold knight from a fairy tale, there was Phil, wielding a baseball bat. Before I could blink, two of the scumbags were writhing on the ground. Phil had whacked them in their family jewels.” She laughed, but without mirth. “The third coward took off so fast I could almost see his dust. Oh, Talia, if you could have seen Phil. He was like a Norse god. When he turned to ask if I was okay, my legs slid out from under me, and I collapsed against that crappy old car. His eyes so were full of worship—he held out his hand and pulled me to my feet. I realized, then, that he adored me.”
“He was your hero,” Talia said.
“Yes, and I know it sounds nuts but Phil’s always been my hero, in spite of his faults. And believe me, they were numerous.” Her laugh flitted through the tea shop.
Yeah, no kidding. “Did those jerks get arrested?”
Slowly, Jill shook her head. “No,” she said. “One of them had a father with some half-baked connections, so it all got swept under the rug. I didn’t care—I was too ashamed for anyone to know.
”
“But you didn’t do anything wrong!”
“I know. It’s the old dilemma, isn’t it?” Jill stood abruptly. She went over to a shelf where a celery-colored teapot with a hummingbird-shaped spout sat with its lid slightly askew. With her slender fingers she straightened the lid, then moved the pot back a smidge.
“Sorry. That was driving me insane,” she said, dropping back into her chair.
“Jill, is that why you carry a gun, because of that assault?”
“Exactly. And believe me, if anyone ever tries to hurt Carly or me, I will use it.” She aimed a finger at Talia and pulled an imaginary trigger.
Talia shivered under her flared jacket. “So you knew Phil since high school.”
Jill nodded. “We stayed close through the end of his senior year, then he got a scholarship to Springfield College. After that, we saw each other mostly on weekends. But after I graduated high school, my folks moved to Wrensdale. Even though it wasn’t that much farther away, it changed everything.”
As distance often does, Talia thought. She remembered vowing to stay close to many of her high school buds, only to find that time—and maturity—had sent them scattering like spent dandelions. Thank heaven for Rachel, her loyal and lasting friend. She couldn’t imagine their friendship ever fading, even if they lived a thousand miles from each other.
“I couldn’t afford college right away,” Jill said, “but I landed a clerical job at Gerry’s accounting firm.” She laughed and shook her head. “One glance and he was hooked. As was I. Gerry was so charming, so classy, so …”
Rich? Talia almost blurted.
“… well, so sophisticated,” Jill finished. She fingered the jeweled heart again. “Even more amazing—he was divorced and available. Before I knew it, we were engaged.”
“How did Phil take the news?”
“Like you’d imagine. First he flew into a rage, then he stopped speaking to me altogether. By that time, I didn’t care. In my own way, I’d outgrown him.”
Talia shifted her purse from her shoulder to her lap. “How much did Gerry know about Phil?”
Jill blinked. “Almost nothing. After I married Gerry, I lost track of Phil for a long stretch. Then I had Carly, and honestly, nothing else really mattered to me. It wasn’t until she started first grade that Gerry encouraged me to start a business. He sensed I was getting bored, and he was right.”
“When did Phil pop back into your life?”
Jill glanced at the wall clock—a rose-encrusted teapot with thorns for hands. “About three years ago. He’d been checking me out on the Internet, and one day he just showed up here.”
“Were you happy to see him?”
Jill hesitated, then a smile crept across her face. “The second I realized who he was, I went all melty. He was my first love, you know? Anyway, he was working for an insurance company in one of the Boston ’burbs, but he hated it. When he found out the lighting store was up for sale, he saw the opportunity to get close to me again. Weirdly enough, he grew to love that business. He had a sense of aesthetics that surprised even me.”
Talia propped her chin on her fist. “Did you want him to be that close?”
“I didn’t know what I wanted. He wasn’t the same Phil anymore. He’d grown jaded and hard. Full of himself.” She looked away, her eyes filling. “But he still owned a piece of my heart, and with Gerry gone so much I was horribly lonely. It felt so good to be with Phil again. His womanizing didn’t matter to me—I blamed myself for that. Anyway, we started having the occasional tryst at the—”
“Wait a minute.” Talia held up a hand. “Why was Phil’s womanizing your fault?”
Jill’s eyes blazed like blue fire. “Don’t you get it? Phil changed because of me. Because I broke his heart all those years ago.”
Talia was beginning to feel like someone had stuck her brain in the deep fryer and left it on High. “No, Jill. Whatever Phil became had nothing to do with you. Whatever bad choices he made were his own.”
Jill buried her face in her hands and shook her head.
“Jill,” Talia said gently, “I’m sorry to ask you to relive this, but I’m trying to help Bea. The police think she killed Phil and I know she didn’t. I think Kendra’s involved somehow. When did—” Her cell phone chose that moment to ring. Talia excused herself to check the caller. When she didn’t recognize the number, she shoved the phone back in her purse and continued. “When did Kendra enter the picture?”
Jill folded her hands. “He met her one weekend at a charity gig at the Red Lion in Stockbridge. Gerry was away on business that weekend, and Mom and I had taken Carly to Disney World. I found out about it when I got back.”
Talia shook her head. “I can’t see the attraction, other than the obvious.”
“That’s because you don’t know Kendra,” Jill pointed out. “She likes her possessions wrapped in pretty packages, even if the contents are a bit spoiled. And when she sets her sights on someone, she doesn’t stop until she’s wrapped her coils around him and embedded her fangs firmly into his neck.”
“I get the picture,” Talia said. Had Kendra done the same to Aaron’s dad? “Did she know about you?”
Jill laughed. “She found out soon enough. The marriage barely lasted ten months. In that short time, unfortunately, she managed to get control of a half interest in the lighting shop. Phil was smart, but Kendra was smarter—and more cunning.”
“What does Kendra do, by the way?” Talia asked.
Jill narrowed her eyes, and Talia thought she spied a hint of envy. “She started by opening a couple of chic boutiques for women—the kind that cater to the upper crust. She did so well that she started to invest in other types of shops. Each time she did, their sales soared. It kills me to admit it, but Kendra is one of the savviest businesswomen I’ve ever known.”
And now she’s building a new empire—a spa to die for. Did Turnbull die for it?
“So tell me,” Talia said. “Did Kendra dump Phil? Or was it vice versa?”
“You were right the first time—Kendra dumped him. See, here’s the thing. As much of a witch as she is, she’s a loyal witch. When she realized Phil was a cheater, she shed him faster than she shed one of her many skins. Finding ways to hurt him became her new pastime. A woman scorned, and all that.”
It was all starting to make a crazy kind of sense to Talia. Jill’s attachment to Phil. His obsession with vetoing the comic book store. The odd piece that still didn’t fit was Kendra. Not that she wasn’t Talia’s number one suspect. She definitely was. But why kill Phil? Was she so desperate for the life insurance money that she would take that big a risk?
There was so much more Talia wanted to ask, not the least of which was whether or not Jill had gone to the police with her story. Jill’s prints were all over Turnbull’s office. Surely the investigators had discovered that by now. And the bracelet—did the police find it? Wouldn’t that have Jill’s prints, too?
Talia settled for one last question. “Jill, did Carly ever own a pair of orange plaid boots?”
Jill stared at her. “That is probably the strangest question I’ve ever been asked. The answer is, are you kidding me? Do I look like the kind of woman who’d dress her child in orange plaid boots?”
At that, Talia had to laugh. “I guess not.” She pictured Carly wearing plush suede boots lined with fleece, the kind that would keep her feet toasty warm and look charmingly stylish as well.
But the little girl in that photo wouldn’t leave Talia’s head. Talia didn’t know why, but she felt sure the child with the orange plaid boots was somehow connected to the killer.
14
After leaving the tea shop, Talia hurried over the cobblestone plaza in the direction of the town lot. Bea would’ve popped out a batch of kittens if she knew Talia had made the trek to her car, short as it was, by herself.
The lot, illuminated by sodium lights in each of the four corners, was empty save for her turquoise Fiat and three sedans that were parked
adjacent to one another. Talia’s feet picked up speed as she drew closer to her car. She’d no sooner opened her door when her cell rang again. She jumped inside, locked the doors, and dug the phone out of her purse. “Hello,” she said, slightly out of breath.
“Ms. Sunday?”
For a moment Talia was baffled. Then she remembered—it was the name she’d given to the woman at Always You. “Yes, this is Ms. Sunday.”
“Oh, good.” The young voice sounded relieved. “I got your number from the caller ID on the phone at the spa. This is Marya … I mean, Misty. From Always You?”
Talia sat up straighter, her mental antennae on high alert. “Yes, Misty.”
“Um, there’s something I wanted to tell you before. You know, when you asked about Kendra LaPlante?”
“Oh yes, of course,” Talia said, trying to keep her tone even. “Did you find her cosmetics bag?”
“Well, no. We didn’t find anything like that. But there’s something else. Something I couldn’t talk about while I was at the spa.”
Talia felt her heartbeat do a little tap dance. “What is it, Misty?”
“Um, remember I told you Ms. LaPlante had a full body massage? At seven forty-five?”
“Why, yes, I think you did say something like that.”
“Well, um, I’m really good friends with the masseuse—the woman who always does her massage? She told me something the next day that was kind of strange.” Misty paused. “So, okay, here’s the thing. My friend had no sooner started Ms. LaPlante’s massage when Ms. LaPlante jumped off the table. She claimed she had severe intestinal cramps and had to go to the bathroom.”
“Oh dear. That must’ve been quite embarrassing—for both of them.”
“I guess,” Misty said. “But here’s the weird thing. Ms. LaPlante never came back to finish her massage. She just … disappeared for almost an hour.”
Talia struggled to keep her voice calm, but a tiny voice inside her was leaping to some lofty conclusions. “I see. Well, she must have been in some distress. Did anyone … go to the bathroom to see if she needed help?”