by Fiona Grace
Ali quickly obliged. She placed the pie down on the coffee table, which was a lacquered wooden block that screamed 1970s, then perched uncomfortably on the edge of the couch, as if ready to flee at a moment’s notice.
Up close, she could see Genevieve was far from elderly. She looked a similar age to Ali’s own mother, who’d just turned sixty. “Sixty years young,” as she liked to say. Georgia Sweet still did weekly Zumba classes. She had regular hairdresser appointments to keep her grays at bay. She even owned pleather pants (much to Ali’s embarrassment). She wouldn’t be seen dead in an armchair with a lace doily behind her head. Ali deduced there was something wrong with Genevieve Lockley, beyond her grief.
“What flavor is it?” Genevieve asked.
“Apple.”
“Apple?” She scoffed. “That’s the worst kind.”
Just then, the nurse came into the room. She placed three porcelain plates on the coffee table, and three forks clattered beside them. She got to work carving up the pie.
“Who did you say you were again?” she asked, as she dumped a plate in Ali’s lap.
“I didn’t,” Ali said.
“It’s Bess!” Genevieve exclaimed. “From church!”
The Asian woman flashed Ali a knowing look. “We’re all Bess from church.”
Ali shifted uncomfortably. This hadn’t been what she was expecting when she’d come here. She thought she would be talking to a grieving mother, but instead she’d found a confused woman and a nurse in scrubs as an audience member.
The nurse handed Genevieve her slice of pie, then took a whopping great slice for herself. She flopped down onto the couch beside Ali.
“So, Bess from church, who are you really?” she asked.
She had an interrogative way of speaking, which took Ali aback.
“I run the new bakery,” she explained. “Seaside Sweets. My name’s Ali.”
“And you knew Preston?” the nurse continued.
“Sort of. I met him once before he died.”
Just then, Genevieve let out a huge gasp. “Preston’s dead?”
Ali’s eyes widened with horror. She didn’t know? No one had told her that her son was dead?
But then Genevieve frowned and added, “Who’s Preston?”
Ali exhaled all in one go. It finally fell into place. Genevieve had Alzheimer’s.
The nurse answered Genevieve’s question by pointing her fork at a family photograph on the wall, which showed Preston and his mother holding a big bunch of balloons.
“Balloon man!” Genevieve exclaimed.
Genevieve’s Alzheimer’s must be rather progressed, Ali thought, if she was unable to remember her own son, or his death the day earlier. That meant Genevieve Lockley wasn’t the person who knew Preston the best, because her own brain was eroding her memories of him. Coming here was a mistake.
Ali put her pie on the lacquered table, ready to apologize and leave, when she noticed Mrs. Lockley’s gaze had changed. As she looked at the photograph of her son and his balloons, her eyes became bright, alert. She seemed suddenly present.
Ali paused. She’d heard about this, how some Alzheimer’s patients would slip in and out of lucidity. Maybe coming here hadn’t been a mistake after all.
“A lovely man,” Genevieve continued, speaking with her mouth full of pie. “A lovely man.” She looked at her nurse. “Did he ever open his store?”
The Asian nurse’s cheeks bulged with the apple pie she was devouring. “The landlord didn’t want him,” she said, loudly, spraying crumbs down the front of her green apron. She looked at Ali. “Did you make this? It’s good.”
“Uh, yeah,” Ali said, absentmindedly, only half listening because her full attention was on Genevieve. The woman’s expression had soured the instant she’d heard the word landlord, and Ali’s curiosity was piqued.
“Do you know Kerrigan?” Ali asked the woman.
Genevieve forked some pie into her mouth. “Kerrigan O’Neal? He’s a nasty man. I never liked him. All poor Preston ever wanted to do was open a balloon store of his own and that man just kept saying no.”
“He refused him?” Ali asked.
This was news to her. Back when Preston had barged into her store to accuse her of undercutting him, Ali had just assumed he’d struck a deal with Kerrigan, one she’d accidentally interrupted.
“Every time,” Genevieve said.
“Trust me when I say there were a lot of times,” the nurse added as a wry aside. “He pestered Kerrigan constantly. Followed him around and around.”
“Poor Preston,” Genevieve said. “He had the money, but that nasty Kerrigan always said no.”
“He never got over it,” the nurse added.
Ali sank back against the couch, the revelation percolating through her mind. So the deal she thought she’d ruined between Kerrigan and Preston had never even existed in the first place? There was no contract after Pete’s Pitas had vacated the premises that she’d accidentally trampled on. Preston had been pestering Kerrigan for the lease for years, by the sounds of things, and had always been turned down.
Ali wondered why. Kerrigan had seemed eager to get the lease off his hands when she’d called him. She’d watched him practically run out of his yellow house to meet her. He’d snapped up Teddy’s offer with barely any back and forth, like he’d been desperate for someone, anyone, to sign on the dotted line. And yet all along, he’d had a very eager and willing person in Preston.
Ali needed to find out more. And she knew exactly who to speak to next.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Ali went up the hill to the canary yellow door of her landlord, Kerrigan O’Neal, and knocked. There was still a couple of hours before the usual mid-morning lull would turn to lunchtime, so Ali didn’t feel much of a pressing need to get back to her store any time soon.
The door clicked open and Ali’s stout landlord stood before her. He was wearing muddy boots and gardening gloves, and had the same blustery aura of their first meeting, like he’d just been interrupted in the middle of a very pressing task.
“Allison?” Kerrigan said, sliding the gloves off and holding them in his hands. “Is everything okay with the store? The apartment?”
“They’re both fine,” Ali said. “I just wanted to ask you something. Is now a bad time?”
“No, no, I’m just doing some gardening,” Kerrigan replied, waving the gloves as proof. “What did you want to ask?”
“It’s about Preston Lockley,” Ali said, watching carefully for any change in Kerrigan’s demeanor.
Kerrigan tutted and shook his head. “Preston. Shocking. Terrible. It’s hard to believe something so awful can happen in a town like this.”
“I heard he wanted to rent my store before me,” Ali said. “And that you turned him down?”
Kerrigan looked uncomfortable, his gaze darting over Ali’s shoulders to scan the street behind her.
“Maybe we should talk inside?” he said.
Ali faltered. She’d expected this to be a quick chat, with Kerrigan explaining his reasons for turning Preston’s offer down. But something about his mannerisms made her uncomfortable. A tingly sensation spread through her.
“I guess we can talk while you garden, if you want,” Ali said.
Kerrigan looked surprised, as if multi-tasking was a novel idea Ali had just invented. Maybe that was one of the reasons he always seemed so blustering.
“That’s a good idea,” he said, opening the door wider to allow her inside.
Apprehensively, Ali stepped in.
Kerrigan’s house was bigger than she’d expected looking at it from the front, but three-story townhouses always seemed to be optical illusions. She followed him along a corridor with high ceilings, and into a large, bright kitchen, with enormous windows that looked out onto a steeply banked garden, stretching for yards up to a dividing fence and the back of the next big rainbow house on the hill. It gave Ali a peculiar combination of claustrophobia and vertigo.
“Wow
, you don’t get much privacy on the hill, do you?” Ali commented, peering up to the next house where she could easily see in through the French doors at the back to their kitchen. She was, of course, just as easily visible to them.
Kerrigan chuckled. “You wouldn’t be able to hide a body in the garden, that’s for sure.”
Ali didn’t quite know what to make of that. Off-color jokes didn’t seem particularly advisable considering the circumstances. And her hackles were already up.
“Sorry, that’s what we say in Ireland,” he added.
Ali reminded herself to Google that later.
Kerrigan gestured to a wooden bench, and Ali sat. Then he hitched up his trousers, crouched, and began weeding a flower bed full of wildflowers that were luring in numerous bee and butterfly visitors.
“So you want to know about Preston?” he asked, his focus on the task at hand.
He sounded weary, like he’d been anticipating the conversation. Ali felt even more on edge, like she was on the cusp of learning some big secret.
“That’s right,” she said, her voice quivering slightly. “He was supposed to lease the store before me, right? Before I undercut him.”
Kerrigan said nothing. For a moment, the sound of his trowel entering the earth was the only noise.
“You didn’t undercut him,” he said, finally. “Because I never had any intentions to rent to him in the first place. I wouldn’t trust the man to water my plants, let alone run a successful business. A balloon store would’ve folded within the first month, and then I’d have to find someone else to take over the lease. Assuming I was even able to evict him, that is. The sort of man who still lives in his mother’s home at forty isn’t the sort of person I can imagine leaving without a fuss.”
Kerrigan clearly didn’t have any qualms about talking ill of the dead. Ali wondered if that was an Irish thing as well.
“He seemed to think differently,” Ali said. “According to him, there was a deal.”
Kerrigan’s hunched shoulders gave off the impression her questions were flustering him.
“I might have… implied something of the sort,” he mumbled.
Ali frowned. “What do you mean?”
Kerrigan turned. “Look. Preston was a pest, okay? He must’ve asked me a million times for a lease for that blasted balloon store. Sometimes the only way to get him off my back was to bend the truth a bit.”
Ali narrowed her eyes. “You told him you would one day.”
He let out a big sigh. “I told him that if Pete’s Pitas ever closed down, I’d rent to him. Because I never, ever thought Pete would close that place. I know. I’m not proud of it. It was a cowardly thing to do. But he pushed me to the end of my tether, really.”
Ali wanted to ask him why he hadn’t warned her about Preston. If the man had been so relentless in his pursuit of a lease, Kerrigan must’ve anticipated she’d soon be getting the brunt of his anger. At the very least her landlord could have warned her to expect a visit from him so she could prepare herself. If she’d known Preston had been harassing him for years, she would never have even entertained the theory that he’d thrown himself off the pier because of her undercutting him! It would’ve saved her a whole lot of grief and anxiety.
But Ali held her tongue, because she wanted to give Kerrigan the space to explain himself.
“I’m not proud of what I did,” her landlord said in a low voice. “I should’ve stayed firm and just said no. I didn’t think it would come to… this.”
Ali instantly knew what Kerrigan meant. He’d heard the gossip going around town that the new bakery lady had killed Preston Lockley after a vicious argument witnessed outside her store. And since that argument had essentially been caused by Kerrigan himself for leading Preston to believe he actually had a chance of taking on the lease, he was clearly carrying some of the burden of blame. It took all of Ali’s patience not to tell him that fact. Because who could’ve possibly imagined it would come to this?
“Why were you so dead set against leasing to him?” she asked. “A balloon store doesn’t seem like such a terrible idea to me. This is a tourist town after all. There are plenty of kids around with parents’ arms to twist. Why would a balloon store be such an obvious failure?”
Kerrigan sighed. “Beyond him lowballing below the asking price?” He shifted uncomfortably. “I thought he was weird. He gave off creepy vibes.” He became more quiet. “Put quite simply, I just didn’t like him.”
Ali pondered his words. From what she’d learned so far about Preston Lockley, he’d been unanimously unpopular in Willow Bay. The local weirdo. But beyond being upset about Kerrigan misleading him and taking it out on Ali, she’d heard no concrete reason to justify everyone’s dislike. It was as if they’d just decided he was a bad guy, in much the same way they’d all decided she was a killer. Poor Preston. Had he been ostracized by his entire community for no reason? And did the same fate now await her?
Ali cast her mind back to that moment in the store. Preston had been furious with her, accusing her of undermining his deal with Kerrigan. But what had happened after he’d left? All she knew for certain was that shortly after, he’d ended up on the pier. What had he been doing there? What had happened between the time he was yelling at her and the time he’d ended up floating in the ocean?
Ali didn’t want to admit it to herself, but there was a strong chance the next person Preston had sought out after their altercation had been Kerrigan. He’d just discovered their supposed deal was a fraud, and after having shouted at the innocent victim in the whole debacle, who would he need to unleash his rage on next if not the man who’d deceived him in the first place? Was she really the last person to see Preston Lockley alive? Or had it been Kerrigan O’Neal…
Ali’s heart began to race as she suddenly considered the terrible possibility she was sitting in the garden of a murderer. Kerrigan’s shiftiness. His perpetual blusteriness. Was there more to Kerrigan O’Neal than met the eye? What if that old, tired argument between them turned explosive that night? That on the end of the pier, the two men had had a scuffle that escalated into murder?
Ali watched her landlord digging his garden aggressively, like he had a lot of stress to get out and only had the soil with which to release it.
“I heard he was killed on the pier,” Ali said. She wanted to see whether she could provoke any kind of response in Kerrigan. “Pushed into the water.”
Kerrigan didn’t stop digging, though Ali noted a slight hesitancy in his movements. His shoulders appeared more hunched, like he was collapsing in on himself.
“I heard that too,” he replied. “I always say those railings aren’t high enough. If it’s not the college kids on spring break diving off the end, it’s things like this. People falling. There’s a reason I don’t let my kids go there, beyond that filthy monkey harboring diseases. It just doesn’t seem safe.”
He was blabbering.
Because he’s nervous, Ali wondered, or because he has something to hide?
“You have kids?” she asked, trying to prompt more of Kerrigan’s loose tongue.
“Yes. Three. And we prefer to get our amusements on dry land. They’re too old for most of the stuff on the pier these days, anyway. Now it’s all laser tag, which I’m much more partial to. Sad to think that while we were enjoying ourselves at LazerZone, a man was being murdered.”
Ali paused. Kerrigan had just offered an alibi.
“LazerZone?” she asked.
“That’s right.” Kerrigan looked surprised she was showing an interest. “It’s not far from here. Down the hill, on a side street off the boardwalk. You should try it some time.”
“Maybe I will…” Ali said, conspiratorially.
Either Kerrigan was trying to double-bluff her, or the way he’d seamlessly plucked an alibi out of thin air without hesitation was his ticket to freedom.
She left Kerrigan’s, realizing she needed to open her bakery soon. But Kerrigan had given her plenty to think about, and
she couldn’t help but strongly suspect he was hiding something from her. If his alibi proved to be fake, then she’d surely be on track to solve this whole case. Because if she didn’t solve it soon, she’d have no store left to open, and her whole dream life in Willow Bay would collapse.
Ali was going to investigate his claims herself.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
LazerZone was very easy to find. It was a bright pink building with a huge flashing neon sign.
Ali pushed open the glass doors and headed inside.
It was dark, noisy, and smelled of dry ice mixed with sweaty bodies. To her right was a set of double doors, spray-painted a silvery color to look like industrial steel, complete with plastic bolts and a black and yellow striped hazard warning sign. A big red light flashed on and off above it to complete the effect.
The room was cleaved in half by a big reception desk, bright blue retro plastic like the ones Ali remembered from video stores before they all went bust. A surveillance camera screen was mounted in one corner, live-streaming the goings-on of the closed off arena. It looked a bit like a soft play area, with two floors connected by climbing nets and bridges and slides. A dozen or so feral kids were running amok inside the arena, bulky black belts around their waists, laser guns aloft, all dodging and shooting like they were soldiers in a futuristic war. There were so many flashing lights it gave Ali a headache just looking at the screen.
“Can I help?” a voice said.
Ali looked over to see a young, male staff member entering the reception room through the white connecting door. He was a redhead, and looked like he was only five minutes out of high school himself, barely older than the kids he was in charge of. A swath of angry red pimples covered the right side of his chin.
Ali stepped closer and tapped her fingers on the plastic counter dividing them. “Yes. I was wondering if you could tell me whether there was a man in here the other night. Kerrigan O’Neal.”
The boy’s ginger eyebrows came together in a frown.
“I can’t tell you that,” he said, folding his arms. “It’s confidential.”