“How well did you know Ms. Beale?” Cinnamon asked.
“Not well at all, though I liked her. She bought a few items at the Cookbook Nook, and I’d bought things at hers.”
I glanced over my shoulder at the book club group. Crusibella was consoling Z.Z., who was ashen. Lola was hugging Bailey. My aunt was holding hands with Gran. Flora was swaying to and fro. Her mouth was moving. She sang in the choir at church. Maybe she was praying or singing a hymn.
“I heard her parents are wealthy and live in San Francisco,” I added.
The officer hurried to Cinnamon with a blanket for Pepper. Cinnamon draped it over her mother’s shoulders, and after whispering a few words to her mother, ordered the officer to lead the way to the kitchen. Ten minutes later, she reemerged and approached us.
“Okay, one by one,” Cinnamon began, “what did you see? Nothing is insignificant. Mayor Zeller, you first.”
The ladies formed a semicircle.
Z.Z. said, “I felt something was off the moment I walked into the house. The music was on a loop, so the same song kept playing over and over.”
“It still is,” Crusibella said.
“It’s a Henry Mancini song,” Z.Z. went on.
“‘Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet,’” Flora offered.
That was it! Instantly, I wondered why the song hadn’t changed. Had the killer activated the infinity loop? Was the killer implying that he . . . or she . . . was Ivy’s lover or wannabe lover?
“Mom?” Cinnamon asked. “What about you?”
I glanced at Pepper, who was clutching the edge of the blanket tightly beneath her chin. She was blinking rapidly. She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out.
“Mom, what’s wrong?”
A knot formed at the pit of my stomach. Pepper couldn’t have had anything to do with Ivy’s death, could she? I recalled the way she’d taken up the tongs at the shop yesterday and thrust them forward like a dueling sword. She’d wanted to impale Ivy.
“Mom?” Cinnamon crossed to her.
I flashed on the moment Pepper had arrived at Flora’s. She’d been upset that Hank wasn’t answering his cell phone and had worried he might be with Ivy. Did she—
Whoa, Jenna. Backtrack. Pepper had wondered whether Ivy might have skipped the first stop on the book club tour to meet up with Hank. If she had killed Ivy, she would have known Ivy was dead, unless she’d groused to me about Ivy to divert suspicion from herself.
A teensy moan escaped my lips.
Cinnamon cut a look in my direction.
I flinched.
Crusibella stepped forward. “I know why Jenna moaned, Chief, but you won’t like what I have to say.”
“It’s not true,” Pepper blurted.
“What’s not?” Cinnamon swung her gaze from one woman to the other.
“I didn’t like Ivy,” Pepper cried. “That’s true. But I didn’t do it.”
“Didn’t do what?” Cinnamon asked.
“Kill her!”
Crusibella said, “Then why did you arrive late to the book club? Why were you out of breath and disheveled?”
“Because . . . because . . .” Pepper halted. “Hold it. I’m not the only one with a beef against Ivy. You were angry with her, too. Why do you have a red stain on your sleeve?”
Everyone focused on Crusibella.
She inspected her sleeve then sniffed it. “It’s strawberry juice. From my cheese and fruit platter.”
“Who slices strawberries for a cheese platter?” Pepper demanded. “They should be served whole.” She dropped the blanket and stepped toward Crusibella. “I think you stained it on purpose to cover blood splatter.”
“I did no such—”
“Ladies, stop! Be civil.” Cinnamon wedged between them. “Mom, why would Crusibella want Ivy dead?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” Pepper stammered. “I heard—”
“Chief,” I jumped in. “Ivy reneged on a deal to sell her business to Crusibella.”
“That’s a lie!” Crusibella cried.
“You were arguing about it last night when I was saying good night to Rhett. Your poodle barked and . . .” I paused. “What’s the significance of aventurine?” She had whispered the name of the stone when she’d seen Ivy’s body.
“It’s for healing,” Crusibella said. “Meant to erase negative energy. It’s resting on her palms.”
“Was Ivy sick?”
“No, she wasn’t sick. I mean, she had a false scare. Her heart.” Crusibella batted the air. “It was why she’d wanted to sell Dreamcatcher.”
Suddenly I recalled how Ivy, during the argument with Crusibella, had advised her to grab hold of aventurine to find calm and balance. “Chief, maybe—”
“Hold that thought, Jenna.” Cinnamon eyed Crusibella. “Where were you, Ms. Queensberry, before the book club began?”
“At home. Making the cheese platter.”
Pepper raised a finger. “I was home, too. Making my appetizer. I was singing along with a Frank Sinatra album.”
“Details,” Crusibella muttered.
“Details matter,” Pepper hissed.
“Did anyone see or hear either of you?” Cinnamon gazed from one to the other.
Crusibella shook her head; Pepper waggled hers.
Z.Z. said, “Chief, maybe you should talk to Oren Michaels. He was Ivy’s boyfriend. He might know more about who had a beef with her.”
“I’m not sure he will,” Flora said. “Ivy broke up with him.”
“When?” I asked. “They seemed quite into each other when I saw them last.”
“This morning. Ivy came into Home Sweet Home to buy a few candles, and we got to chatting.” Flora could coax a mime to talk.
“Maybe that upset Oren,” Pepper said, looking hopeful. “Maybe he killed her.”
“Let’s not rule out Hank Hemmings,” Z.Z. said. “Pepper, you told me earlier that you wondered whether he was seeing Ivy on the sly. Maybe she jilted him, so he lashed out.”
Cinnamon groaned. I did, too. Apparently, Z.Z. didn’t realize that Pepper and Hank were an item. If Hank did get involved with Ivy and planned to dump Pepper, then she had just as good a motive as everyone else to want Ivy dead: jealousy.
Chapter 6
Emotionally drained, I called Rhett the moment I got home. Another murder? What was going on? Until I’d moved to town, Crystal Cove hadn’t had a murder in over fifteen years. Was I a magnet for evil?
Over the course of the next hour, Rhett talked me down from the ledge and assured me that crime was up all over the United States. Our town was not the only one suffering. Granted, most of the crimes involved guns, not crystals, but he sloughed that off. He offered to come over, but I told him he didn’t need to. Sleep would help me see things more clearly. He asked how Cinnamon was doing. They’d had a relationship years ago, before us. I said she was on edge but would rally when she proved her mother wasn’t guilty.
Around seven a.m., after a night filled with frightening dreams featuring quartz knives, swords, and spears, morning sunlight shot through the break in the living room drapes and woke me with a start. I’d fallen asleep on the couch. Tigger butted his head into my stomach. I nudged him to the floor and slogged to the bathroom. In less than fifteen minutes, I took a steaming hot shower, dressed in a tangerine dress with a flare skirt, applied lip gloss, and set off for work.
After setting Tigger on his kitty condo—my sweet father had made a duplicate one for the store—I went to the Nook Café. I was starved. Katie was in the kitchen sifting flour into a huge bowl while giving orders to her staff about specialty items on the lunch menu. Particles of flour billowed into the air.
“Jenna!” Katie cried when she saw me. She set the sifter down and hurried to me. Her hugs could rival a boa constrictor’s squeeze. She was as tall as me but bigger all over.
“Air!” I said.
“Sorry.” She held me at arm’s length while righting her toque. “How are you doing?” She and I
had been friends for years, although during high school we hadn’t hung with the same crowd. I had been a budding artist. She had been an aspiring cook. When we were hiring a chef for the café, she’d auditioned for the job and had wowed us with her skills. I loved her to pieces. “I can’t believe it. Ivy. Dead. And you found her? She was in just the other day. Ordered her favorite meal. Sent it back, like she often did. She could be so quirky, but she left the staff huge tips.”
“Quirky,” I repeated. My aunt had used the same word to describe Ivy.
“She came in with Oren. They were holding hands and laughing and obviously in love.”
Not any more, if Flora could be believed.
Katie ushered me to the chef’s table situated at the rear corner of the kitchen, where she often served elite dinners for up to six. “Hungry?” She smoothed the front of her white chef’s coat. “Want a classic egg sandwich?”
“I would—” I stopped short of saying kill for one. Wasn’t it amazing the phrases we used in everyday life? “I would love one. Thanks.”
She laid a place setting in front of me.
I set the napkin on my lap. “Do lots of people buy fish from Oren?”
“Sure. He’s tenacious about keeping all the clients his father developed over the years. I’m not sure he has any competition left in town, other than Rhett, of course.” Katie fetched an English muffin from a container and split it with a fork. She buttered the muffin and set it to fry in a hot skillet. As she heated the premade sausage and cooked the egg, folding it into thirds, she said, “Early on, Oren tried to sweet-talk me into buying his wares. I didn’t bite.” She chortled. “Bite. Ha! Like I was a fish.” She removed the muffins, drizzled them with a honey-flavored hot sauce, topped them with American cheese and slipped them into the oven for a minute. “I made him prove to me his goods were the best. That’s what I’d promised you, I told him—only the best—so that’s what he had to promise me. It took six months before I gave him ninety percent of our business.”
“Do you trust him?”
“Absolutely.” When the cheese melted, Katie layered the sandwich together and placed it on a white scalloped plate. “Eat.” She set the meal in front of me. “You need your sustenance.”
I took a bite and raved about the sauce. “How’s it going with the baby hunt?”
“You won’t believe how many forms we have to fill out.” Katie couldn’t have children, but she and her husband, Keller—they’d married a month ago—decided they wanted to adopt. She dabbed her forehead with a clean white cloth. “Bureaucracy. Pfft. One form at a time, I keep telling myself. But we’re determined. Boy or girl. Any ethnicity. All we want is a happy, healthy human being.”
“Let me know if you need any references.”
“You’re my employer. I’m sure you’ll have a form or two to fill out yourself. Ahem.” She planted a fist on her hip. “Promise you’ll give me a good review.”
“Will do.”
• • •
Throughout the rest of the day, I worried about Pepper’s fate. I’d seen her open her shop, so she wasn’t incarcerated. Maybe the police didn’t have enough physical evidence to hold her. Or maybe they’d found another suspect. I called the precinct to talk to Cinnamon because I didn’t want to ask Pepper about her status, but she wasn’t in. I left a message asking her to call me back, and then begged my aunt to check in with Deputy Appleby. She did. He told her there was nothing he could offer at this time. How I hated that phrase.
At noon, Z.Z. came in to chat. She felt awful about implicating Pepper. I assured her Pepper was innocent and not to worry, though my insides were in a knot.
Late afternoon, after selling out of every book club title we had in stock, Bailey, Aunt Vera, and I convened at the vintage kitchen table near the front door. Weekly, we set out a new jigsaw puzzle that customers could assemble. This week’s puzzle was book-themed—a bird’s-eye view inside a cluttered bookshop. Each of us toyed with pieces as we discussed our thoughts. I took the upper left corner, Bailey the upper right. My aunt liked a challenge and preferred to start at the middle and move outward.
“You don’t really believe Pepper is capable of murder, do you?” Bailey asked. “I mean, she’s—” The baby’s heel pushed against the front of her embroidered shirt. She petted it and continued. “I mean, she’s Pepper. Sure, she’s feisty and she can be prickly and has a temper, but she wouldn’t harm a soul.”
Aunt Vera nodded. “Of course she didn’t do it. But someone did. If we can, let’s help the police figure out who.”
Bailey nodded. “Crusibella wanted to buy the shop, but Ivy reneged.” She fitted two corner pieces. “Maybe killing Ivy was Crusibella’s way of making a point.”
I winced at the word point, remembering the quartz that had pierced Ivy’s chest.
“Sorry,” Bailey muttered, realizing her gaffe, and then elaborated. “I mean, it was a clear sign that she shouldn’t have broken a promise.”
“Death makes that certain,” Aunt Vera opined.
“The ritualistic way Ivy was killed has to mean something,” I said, recalling a scene from one of last night’s horrific dreams. I was swimming on my back on a raging river, my eyes covered with tar. “Why put rocks on her eyes?”
“I’ve been wondering the same thing,” Bailey said.
“I think they might have something to do with the underworld.” In junior high, I’d loved studying about Roman and Greek gods and goddesses. I’d paid particular attention to the story of Persephone, goddess of the underworld. She was playing in a field when Hades abducted her. Because she ate pomegranate seeds while in hell, Zeus wouldn’t let her fully return to earth. Her annual return in the spring brought flowering meadows and fields of grain. Needless to say, being impressionable, I’d been afraid to frolic in a field during high school.
“The underworld,” Bailey repeated.
“Yep.” I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and opened the Internet browser. In the search bar, I typed: Stones on eyes for burial. Up popped a number of sites explaining the purpose of eyestones, many of which were painted with a set of eyes.
“Listen to this.” Reading out loud, I said, “According to Greek lore, having one’s eyes open after death was a way to help the deceased not fear death. Charon, the ferryman for the god of the underworld—Hades—would collect the stones as payment to transport the dead across the river to its afterlife. If Charon didn’t receive payment, then the deceased could be doomed to wander the earth and possibly haunt the living.”
“But the stones on Ivy’s eyes weren’t painted with eyes.”
“True.”
“Even so,” my aunt said, “perhaps the killer was making a loving gesture in an effort to help Ivy cross over.”
“A quartz dagger through the heart was hardly loving,” I said.
“Maybe”—Bailey let the word hang in the air for a moment—“the killer was ensuring that Ivy wouldn’t come back, even in spirit form.”
“Why?” The notion jolted me. “Did she know something? See something? What hold might she have had over the killer?”
“Perhaps the literature in Ivy’s store could tell us more about the stones,” Aunt Vera said.
I scoffed. “As if Cinnamon would let us inside.”
My aunt patted my forearm. “Why don’t you suggest the eyestone theory to her?”
“And incur her wrath?”
“You helped solve the last murder.”
“Because Dad made her listen to me.”
“I’m sure she could use a fresh take,” Aunt Vera pressed.
“She has a highly qualified staff.”
“Who might not understand the significance of the stones.” My aunt pursed her lips. “Face it, dear, with her mother as a suspect, Cinnamon is too close to this. You’re her friend. Be one. Not to mention, you’ve been through this yourself. You understand what it means to be suspected unfairly.”
Chapter 7
On Sunday nights, our family al
ways met for a sit-down dinner, sometimes at my dad’s house and other times at my aunt’s. I looked forward to hosting one after Rhett and I moved into our new home. I’d already come up with our first menu. Rhett, bless his heart, promised to do the heavy lifting and cook most of it. I would be his sous chef.
My father’s house was a beauty of a Mediterranean villa set way up in the hills. My mother had decorated it with an ocean color scheme. I noted a few of Lola’s touches in the house: a few extra throw pillows plus additional family photos, including Bailey’s wedding photos. From the rear patio, even in the glow of tiki torches, we could see the ocean.
Lola, Bailey, and her husband, Tito, had joined us for dinner. For a laugh, Bailey had brought ice cream and pickles for dessert. She was seated on the patio divan with Tito on one side of her and Lola on the other. For the past ten minutes, Lola had been cooing about the baby and pressing for names. Tito petted Bailey’s hand with regularity. Normally my pal would have acted trapped under such scrutiny, but tonight, she seemed in her element. Who’d have thunk?
On the other hand, I couldn’t sit still. I chose to lean against the railing, something my father hated. He didn’t have acrophobia, but he was afraid the railing, given its age, might break. I assured him it was sturdy and told him to relax, but he couldn’t. It didn’t matter how many times he, the know-it-all handyman, had checked it out. I asked if he’d like me to don a parachute. That had earned me a wry scowl. Rhett stood next to me, drinking in the view. He didn’t seem concerned about me plummeting to my death.
“Wine?” my father asked as he made his way around the patio pouring chardonnay into wineglasses. As always, he looked quite dapper. He was wearing chinos and a light sweater. A thatch of his silver-gray hair dangled on his forehead.
“Sure.” I took a glass from him and waited as he filled it halfway. Because the evening breeze was faint but cool, I had changed out of my dress into ecru slacks and boat-neck sweater and was glad I had.
“Your aunt assures me this will go well with dinner,” Dad said.
Aunt Vera was busy in the kitchen making her fabulous shrimp curry.
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