by Fiona Grace
She’d planned this whole thing out in advance. Her interview with Pete was going to start innocuously enough, before she veered into the murder situation, and finally hit him with the evidence she’d gathered against him: the tainted meat scandal that put a sudden end to his previously lucrative business, and stirred a murderous rage within him.
But first she had to butter him up. Psychopaths liked to be flattered. If she was even going to get her foot in the door to conduct her interrogation, she was going to have to fawn her way in.
Pete twisted his lips. “I guess I could give you some tips,” he said. He widened the door for her to enter.
“You’re a hero!” Ali exclaimed, with fake enthusiasm as she stepped inside.
The moment his back was turned, she let her grin drop.
As she followed him along the pristinely clean corridor, with its white walls, polished beech floorboards, and golden wall sconces, she thought again about just how large he really was. Easily large enough to tower over Preston and throw him from the pier.
“Do you want coffee?” Pete asked over his shoulder. “I’ve just brewed a pot.”
“That sounds great,” she said.
The corridor gave way to an enormous kitchen. Just like with Kerrigan’s house, Ali was taken aback by the enormity of Pete’s property on the hill.
Everything in the kitchen was state of the art. Shiny white-tiled floors and expensive black granite countertops. Skylights letting in the bright daylight. A huge double-doored fridge, with a separate wine fridge beside it. And the walls were decorated with Pete’s Pitas posters, designed in an attractive retro style.
All signs point to narcissist… Ali thought. And who cleans their house this spotlessly, if not a murderer?
Every bit of Pete’s kitchen was a beautiful feat of design, ordered, neat, and exquisitely decorated. Pete’s Pitas must’ve been banking serious dollar in its heyday for him to afford all this.
But more importantly, Ali thought, Pete was a man who liked things to be clean. She couldn’t picture him getting himself a health code violation. It must’ve been Preston’s doing, she was sure of it.
“Take a seat,” Pete said, gesturing to a trendy leather, shabby chic barstool at the black granite kitchen island.
Ali did, reminding herself not to get too comfortable or drop her guard. She could be in a killer’s kitchen after all.
She watched Pete pace around the kitchen as he prepared the coffees, the whole while holding his Chihuahua in his arms like it was a baby being burped. The dog watched Ali in turn, its chin resting on Pete’s shoulders, its round eyes bulging. As much as Ali loved all four-legged creatures, the tense energy coming from the neurotic-looking Chihuahua was putting her even more on edge. It was a bit like how she felt hanging out with Hannah, like they were constantly on the brink of disaster.
“Cute dog,” she commented. “What’s its name?”
“Tinkerbell,” Pete said.
There was a stiffness in his tone, Ali noted. It was irrefutable. Her presence was making him uncomfortable, and not in the same way she’d made Jenna from Bookworms uncomfortable. It felt more like Pete was hiding something.
Her heartbeat accelerated. She wondered whether her hunch may well turn out to be correct. Had she really found Preston’s killer?
“Do you want milk?” Pete asked, his back to her. “Cream? Sugar?”
“Black is fine,” Ali replied, craning her head to see whether Pete was lacing her drink with poison or anything.
He came over and placed a steaming mug on the coaster in front of her. Ali could see no telltale signs of froth or residue, so decided it was safe. Still, she had no intention of drinking it. Instead, she grasped the mug in both hands, reasoning she could use the boiling coffee inside as a weapon if it came to it.
Pete took the stool next to her, spinning so they were facing one another.
Ali gulped. This was a little too close for comfort for her taste. She was close enough for the Chihuahua to lick her if it was so inclined, though since it looked utterly petrified of her, Ali guessed it wouldn’t.
Pete rested his elbow on the granite counter and looked at her expectantly.
“So?” he asked.
Despite her racing heartbeat, Ali forced out a calm voice. “So I’ve heard a lot about how fantastic your store was. I’m wondering if you have any suggestions on how to replicate your success. I can’t even get people through the door.”
Pete’s lips twisted. There was a slight tremble in them.
“No, I don’t imagine it is easy for you to entice people inside,” he murmured, his fingers playing with the edges of his coaster. “It’s going to take a while before they’re able to shake off the image of those—those awful hazard posters.”
His voice cracked as he spoke. The memory was clearly still raw for him, and Ali was surprised by just how readily he’d brought up the scandal. She had not expected him to immediately admit to the health violation. Her carefully planned questions flew right out the window. Pete had skipped ahead, so she may as well just cut to the chase, as well.
“You were closed down because of a health violation, is that right?” she asked.
“Tainted meat,” he said with a wistful sigh. “But I’ve no idea how it happened. I’d been doing that job for fifteen years. I wasn’t complacent. I knew how to keep my kitchen hygienic.”
“Do you think someone tampered with it?” Ali asked.
“I know someone did,” Pete replied, emphatically. “Because it certainly wasn’t me!”
“You must have some suspicions about who it was,” Ali prodded.
Pete looked tense. “I assume it was a disgruntled ex-employee.”
He said it with a distinct air of flippancy that Ali wasn’t buying for a second. The man had lost his entire business. His entire livelihood. That wasn’t something to be dismissive about. If the same thing happened to her, she’d do anything to find the culprit, come hell or high water.
“You must’ve been a scary boss,” Ali said, chuckling in an attempt to play it off like friendly banter, “if you managed to instill such hatred in someone they got you shut down.”
“You never can tell what resentments some people are harboring,” Pete replied, thinly.
“Right…” Ali replied.
The atmosphere seemed to be growing frostier. Ali tightened her clasp on the mug, becoming increasingly concerned of the possibility she might need to throw her hot coffee in his face.
Her nerves seemed to rattle as she mustered every inch of confidence she could, and asked the crucial question. “Did you ever think that the culprit might have been Preston Lockley?”
Pete looked stunned. Too stunned. Too theatrical. It was like he knew she was going to bring Preston up and had rehearsed in his head how to act shocked. She knew this from Teddy. He’d practiced his shocked face on her about a million times. Over-hamming shock was one of the biggest pitfalls for an actor, in his opinion.
“Preston Lockley?” he repeated, with a gasp. “But he never even worked for me.”
“He didn’t have to be a past employee to have a grudge against you,” Ali said.
Pete paused. His eyes narrowed. Ali’s coffee cup started to quiver in her trembling hands.
“Why are you bringing a dead man into this?” Pete challenged.
“He wanted your store, didn’t he?” Ali replied. “Isn’t that reason enough to suspect he was the one who got you closed down?”
Pete’s expression remained stony. He spoke through clenched teeth. “Preston was a nuisance, yes. But he had nothing to do with anything. It was a disgruntled employee. I’m certain of it.”
She was getting to him now. He was rattled.
“How can you be so sure?” she pressed.
“I just am,” he countered.
He seemed increasingly flustered. Ali knew that meant she was getting close. It was time to turn up the heat even more.
“Are you really telling me you never eve
n considered Preston?” she continued. “The man had a history of screaming at store clerks. Who knows what else he did? He seemed like a loose cannon to me.”
“No,” Pete said simply.
“No, he wasn’t a loose cannon, or no you never considered him?”
“I never considered him,” he said firmly.
But Ali wasn’t letting this go. She was clearly getting to him. Pete was rattled, and she just needed to give him the final push over the edge, much like how he pushed Preston into the ocean.
“But who was more disgruntled than Preston?” she pressed. “Who would actually go to the lengths of tainting your meat just to get you closed down? I know who the most likely culprit was, and I think you do too. The guy who was a known pest. Who was so desperate to open his balloon store he was always haranguing the locals for their lease. Who hounded your landlord so much he ended up saying he could have the lease if you ever left. Preston was the one who tainted the meat and drove you out of business, wasn’t he?”
Pete stared at her. His pretend aghast face was so atrocious it belonged on a telenovela.
Ali took her moment. She slammed her coffee cup onto the coaster, making it slosh over the edges, and exclaimed, “Admit it! Admit you wanted revenge!”
Pete broke. All at once, big fat tears starting rolling down his cheeks. Tinkerbell feverishly began licking them as Pete’s shoulders shook with emotion.
Ali was stunned. Psychopaths didn’t cry. They didn’t feel complex emotions like self-pity. They felt rage, not sorrow. Maybe her hunch was wrong. Had she misjudged this whole thing?
Self-doubt swirled inside of her.
But then Pete looked at her with his bloodshot eyes and spluttered, “You’re right. You’re right. It was me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Ali stared at Pete in disbelief. The room began spinning around her. Had she really just heard what she thought she had? Had Pete really just admitted to killing Preston?
“What happened?” she heard her voice say, though it seemed to be coming from a million miles away, from someone else who was not her.
“Preston had it in for me from day one,” Pete whimpered, sniffling on his sobs. “That whole obsession he had with being undercut for the lease? It started with me. I was the one who undercut him. He might’ve hassled every new store on the boardwalk, but I was the one who bore the worst of it. Because I was the real villain.”
He clutched his Chihuahua in his arms like she was a security blanket. Tinkerbell appeared to be finding this whole thing very distressing, flinching every time one of Pete’s tears plopped onto her head.
Pete sniffed loudly. “It’s very difficult to be the object of someone’s hatred for so many years. And it wasn’t just me, it was Kerrigan, too. Preston hassled the both of us, everywhere we went.”
Ali thought it was pretty rich that he was trying to paint himself as the victim here. She suspected he’d justified the whole thing in his head. That Preston’s decades-long campaign of harassment had pushed him right to the brink, and had boiled over one day with unexpected, murderous consequences. And while the years of Preston’s torment sounded like a nightmare, that didn’t justify his murder. There were far more legal, non-murdery options they could’ve exhausted first.
“Why didn’t you take out a restraining order against him?” Ali asked.
“Kerrigan and I talked about it,” Pete sniveled. “But we decided it would be unfair. His mother had Alzheimer’s. She relied on him for care. If we’d had him banned from the boardwalk, he wouldn’t have been able to get his groceries. I’m not sure if anyone told you, but the man was missing a few screws. He couldn’t drive, and he stuck to the same small area, never venturing outside of it. A restraining order would’ve ruined his life.”
Ali was tempted to ask him how resorting to killing the man was in any way better than forcing him to take a different route to a new grocery store, but since Pete was now on a roll, she sat back and let him talk himself into his own hole.
“We tried to endure it,” he continued, “Kerrigan and I. But it put us both under enormous stress. Then one day, it all just stopped. I’d not said anything to Preston, so I asked Kerrigan if he had. Kerrigan told me about the promise he’d made to Preston, that if I ever left my store, he’d be next in line for the lease. He knew right away he’d made a terrible mistake. We were both afraid of the implications, of what Preston might do next. I think we instinctively knew he’d do something. And alas, he did.”
“He tainted your meat,” Ali offered coolly.
Pete nodded pitifully, and started to sob again in earnest.
Ali found it impossible to find any sympathy for him. He could pretend to be a good guy pushed to the brink all he wanted, but she wasn’t buying it for a second. None of this was a justification for what he’d done to Preston.
Pete wiped the tears from his eyes with his palms. “A bunch of people got food poisoning. It was a miracle no one died. Once the health inspectors traced the meat back to my pita store, that was it. They didn’t care whether I was sabotaged or not, the buck still stopped with me. So they shut me down. I lost my store. My pride and joy. I’d devoted years of my life to making that place a success! And…” His voice lowered with shame. “I guess the only way I can explain what happened next is that I saw red.”
Ali shook her head, reviled by what she was hearing.
“You killed him,” she said.
Suddenly, Pete’s gaze snapped up to meet hers. He looked horrified. Genuinely, this time, not like his awful attempts at acting before.
“What?” he cried. “That’s not what I meant! I saw red when you arrived. When your store popped up in place of mine. I—I told everyone your place also had health code violations.”
“You did what?” Ali cried.
Was that why no one had set foot inside her store?
Pete’s eyes darted down with shame. He spoke more quietly. “And I—I encouraged Tinkerbell to do her business outside your store.”
Now Ali was completely lost for words. She thought of the neatly coiled dog poop she’d cleaned off her step just this morning. That had been deliberate?
“I thought that was why you came to my house today. To get me to confess. But you were here because you thought—you thought I killed Preston?”
He sounded incredulous. Insulted.
Ali’s head began spinning with self-doubt.
Had this all been a huge misunderstanding? Had Pete been acting guilty this whole time only because he’d circulated rumors about her and left dog poop outside her store, or was he just using that as an excuse now and playing her for a fool? A double bluff, so to speak.
Ali couldn’t make sense of it at all. Pete’s acting had been woeful before, and now he seemed completely genuine. Was he just better at acting incredulous than he was at acting shocked? If this was all an act, had Pete gotten Tinkerbell to poop there as a decoy? Then why admit to starting the rumor?
“Why are you just sitting there?” Pete yelled. “I demand an apology!”
“You expect me to apologize to you?” Ali shot back, almost choking on her shock. Now it was her turn to be incredulous. “You just admitted to trying to ruin my business! And leaving dog poop on my doorstep!”
“And you just accused me of being a murderer!” he bellowed.
Ali leapt up off her stool. “Someone killed Preston Lockley, and it wasn’t me!” she yelled.
Pete jumped off his stool too, and towered over her. “Well, it wasn’t me, either!” he yelled back.
They both stood there, fuming, glaring at one another. Pete’s confessions had riled Ali so much, she didn’t even feel intimidated by his hulking size. She was filled to the brim with fury and adrenaline.
“Nothing you’ve told me proves it wasn’t you,” she said.
Pete’s eyes narrowed. “Are you demanding an alibi? Well, I can’t give you one because I was at home alone.”
She folded her arms. “How convenient.”
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“Actually, convenient would be that I was out in a public place with lots of witnesses. Instead I was at home watching TV and crying over a dying dragon.”
Ali wasn’t buying his alibi. There’d been enough spoilers about Raquel the dragon’s tragic demise that everyone in the country had heard about it by now, whether they wanted to or not. He’d have to do better than that if he wanted to convince her.
But he didn’t get the chance. Their argument was interrupted by a sudden loud, persistent knocking on the front door.
Ali and Pete exchanged a glance, then turned their heads in unison toward the source. Tinkerbell let out a terrified squeak and began trembling in Pete’s arms.
“I appear to have a visitor,” Pete said coolly. “I think you should leave.”
“After you,” Ali said, gesturing to the corridor.
She didn’t trust Pete not to grab a bottle of wine from his special fancy wine fridge and bop her over the head with it.
The pounding on the door continued. Pete rolled his eyes with defeat and went first. Ali followed along the corridor behind him.
When Pete reached the door, he pulled it open, giving Ali a clear view of who it was standing on the doorstep. She froze to the spot with surprise.
It was Detective Elton.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
The black-clad woman looked just as surprised to see Ali hovering over Pete’s shoulder as Ali was to see her standing on his doorstep.
“What are you doing here?” Detective Elton asked, her husky-voiced question directed at Ali rather than Pete, who was presumably the person she’d actually come here to see.
“Nothing,” Ali said quickly. “I was just leaving.”
She squeezed past Pete’s bulking frame and out through the door.
But as she passed Detective Elton, the woman grasped her arm tightly and tugged her closer.
“Get back to your store, Ms. Sweet,” she said in a low whisper. “I don’t want to see you meddling in this case again…”