by Dana Mentink
“No need,” Vince said coldly. Trinidad admired his self-control. “I am going to continue on at Store Some More like nothing’s happened until I am told otherwise.”
Trinidad felt like hugging the skinny kid to thank him for his loyalty.
Warren pursed his lips. “Sure, sure, no worries. And you can always boost up your hours at Pizza Heaven.”
Vince’s face fell, and he turned and strode away without another word.
“Sometimes you can be a class A chump,” Cora said.
“What did I say? I was just trying to help.”
Trinidad left the mystified Warren and the milling spectators behind. She hopped into the car, goosed the engine and caught up with Vince. “Want a ride? You left your book at the coffee shop, so I dropped it at Pizza Heaven.”
He shrugged. “Oh, thanks. I have class in an hour. If you can drop me there, I can get my book beforehand. That would be great.” He climbed in, and she rolled down the window to cool the car. They passed the turnoff to Three Egg Lake, stopping behind a lumbering RV.
“Plenty of strangers in town,” she mused.
“They come in to camp by the lake, get a spot for the holiday weekend. The fireworks bring them here in droves.” He sounded morose. “That’s what passes for excitement in this place.”
And a juicy murder doesn’t hurt either, she thought. There seemed to be plenty of people excited about poor Kevin. “You don’t want to stay here forever, I take it?”
“No way. Soon as I get my master’s degree, I’m applying to teach overseas at a university. I want to travel. Juliette and I talked about it all the time. She wanted to see the world, too.”
Trinidad thought of her grandpa. People could have such opposite goals in life. Her grandfather had loved to travel in his younger years, and he’d regaled Trinidad’s mother with tales of the beautiful, romantic town two hours outside Havana, where he’d first encountered his future wife. Papa Luis and his bride had met on the wide cobblestone streets. It was also where he’d proposed in front of the beautiful Iglesia de la Santísima cathedral. Decades later Trinidad’s mother had named her daughter after the gorgeous location.
Conversely, her father Manny was perfectly content with his head in the pipes under a kitchen sink right up until he’d died of a heart attack shortly after her marriage to Gabe.
Now that Papa Luis was settling into his eighties though, his wanderlust was waning. He was happiest puttering around the pots he’d stuffed full of garlic, oregano, and cilantro in their Miami backyard greenhouse. No man-made marvel would ever compare in his mind to the wonder of watching a fat tomato unfold in all its glistening glory. Maybe she was more like her father. At the moment, all she wanted to do was hide in her tiny house with Noodles, pull the pillow over her head, and never come out.
But that would not help Juliette.
“Vince, did you know that Kevin was seeing both Juliette and Tanya?”
Vince shrugged. “Not until I overheard Juliette on Tuesday night, but it doesn’t surprise me. He was always zipping around on his motorcycle, showing off his physique with those tight T-shirts. He was a jerk.”
Sour grapes, she thought. The young beanpole of a student did not get much in the way of female attention, she imagined. She stopped outside the coffee shop while Vince unloaded himself. “Is it okay if I get your cell number?”
He looked wary. “I don’t need any pity jobs, if that’s what you’re planning.”
“Not for that. In case I think of some way we can help Juliette.”
He blinked, then smiled. “Oh, okay. And I’ll call you if I think of anything, too. Thanks. Juliette’s been good to me, and, unlike everyone else around here, she’s never made fun of my dreams. She probably wasn’t even serious about Kevin.”
Trinidad remembered the fury in Juliette’s voice when she’d threatened to kill him. Vince may not want to believe it, but Kevin was more than just a casual friend.
Vince left, and Trinidad was alone with her thoughts. A memory niggled at her. What had Juliette said about needing a guard dog? Installing fake cameras? Could that have something to do with the current situation?
She would have to find out.
And all of a sudden, Trinidad realized her assignments were multiplying rapidly. She intended to start her own investigation, for what it was worth, to try and help her friend. Ice cream maker, paralegal, and detective. Why not?
Time to start serving up some justice in Upper Sprocket.
Chapter Six
Trinidad was led into the visitation room at the county jail at precisely 2:30 p.m. She’d had a moment to buy a few snacks at the vending machine, a trick recommended by Stan.
“The snacks sell out quick,” he had told her. “It’s one of the few creature comforts in jail.”
Juliette was led in, pale and small in a stiff orange jumpsuit. Trinidad leapt to her feet, ready to embrace Juliette until the guard barked at her to sit. Cowed, she dropped into the chair and slid the candy bar and bag of pretzels across the wooden table, blinking hard to control the tears. “I…I figured you might not be getting, you know, good food,” she babbled. “Here are few nibbles. It’s all that was left in the machine. Next time, I’ll…” Next time? How long would Juliette be jailed? Until her trial? And what if that didn’t go her way?
“Thank you,” Juliette said.
Trinidad swallowed and forced a smile. “Don’t worry. Stan is working hard on this, and Quinn and Vince Jr. and I are trying to help in any way we can.”
She nodded, eyes dull and smudged underneath with dark circles. “Is Vince able to run things at the Store Some More?”
“He’s keeping it afloat.”
“Not much new business, anyway, I’m sure,” she said. “Who would want to rent from a murderer?”
“People don’t think that.” But Trinidad feared that many Sprocketerians believed, without question, that Juliette was a killer. The outsider who’d come to town, already the spurned woman with a tarnished reputation before she even arrived? By her own admission, she’d not made friends, except for Bonnie.
And me.
“Do you want me to contact Bonnie? She would probably love to talk to you.”
Juliette shook her head with some violence. “No. Let her enjoy her vacation. I don’t want Felice to know anything about it, anyway. I’d rather she think I just up and moved away.” Juliette sniffed, and tears pooled in her eyes. “She calls me Auntie. How can she understand that her auntie was imprisoned for killing someone?”
Trinidad itched to take her hand, but she knew the guard would disapprove. “Okay, let’s focus on what we can do to get you out of here. Do you remember when we met in your office? I had Noodles with me?”
“Yes. That feels like a lifetime ago.”
“You said things had been strange and you could use a guard dog. Remember?”
“I guess so.”
“You said there was someone prowling around Store Some More. Can you tell me any more about that?”
Juliette blinked. “Why does it matter now?”
“Because it might have something to do with who killed Kevin.”
She straightened. “Oh. Okay. I drove over late on Sunday night to file some papers.”
“What time, exactly?”
“I don’t remember. Maybe 10:30 or so? I saw movement. I thought at first it was a deer; they wander through once in a while on their way to the grassland behind the property. They stop and drink out of the birdbath sometimes. When I pulled into the drive, whatever it was ran away.”
“Anything else?”
“I examined the units, and there were signs that it wasn’t a deer, more like a person looking to steal.”
“What signs?”
“Scratches on one of the unit padlocks, as if someone had been trying to pick it. The back door of the office w
as open, too. I thought, at the time, that Vince or I hadn’t secured it properly, but it could have been jimmied. Fortunately, all the keys are in a safe, and I’m the only one with the combination. Maybe that’s why they tried to break into the unit instead.”
“Did they succeed?”
“No, the lock was secure. After that I put up the fake camera… I figured it would be a deterrent.”
“Did you call the police?”
She pulled a face. “I wish I had now, but the fact of the matter is I bad-mouthed Gabe all over town. I didn’t really think his big sis would go out of her way to help me.” She sighed. “Telling her after the fact will only seem like I’m making things up to save myself.”
“I’ll have Stan arrange for her to hear you out anyway. Whose unit was tampered with?”
“Edward Lupin’s.”
Trinidad sat back in her chair. Edward Lupin, the junk collector.
Then it dawned on her. “Sunday was the day before you auctioned off his belongings, wasn’t it?”
She nodded. “But I looked in that unit myself, Trinidad. There was nothing but trash in there. Piles of it.”
The guard signaled that their visit was over. Juliette was led away after one helpless look at Trinidad.
“I’ll see you soon,” she called, but the door was already closing.
So, Lupin’s unit was of interest to a prowler. Why risk breaking in for a bunch of trash, as Juliette put it?
One man’s trash, she thought, might be a treasure worth killing for.
***
After communicating her conversation with Juliette to Stan, who promised to alert the chief about the potential break-in at Store Some More, Trinidad stopped at her tiny house to get her thoughts in order and fix Noodles a snack. She plonked herself in front of her laptop and tried to think like a detective. Lupin’s mysterious storage unit remained an enigma.
Sensing her unease, Noodles shimmied to the refrigerator and yanked on the towel she’d tied around the handle. She waited to see what he’d bring to comfort her. It was a source of endless amusement.
He presented her first with a bottle of ranch salad dressing.
“Thank you, hon,” she said, drumming her fingers on the table. What was the first thing a detective would do?
The dog’s next soothing offering was a jar of dill pickle spears. She scratched his ears. “I’ll eat some later, okay?” The screen threw her own frowning reflection back at her.
Finally, when Noodles arrived with a container of guacamole, she sighed and pushed her chair back. He crawled into her lap and licked her chin. She eyed the computer screen over the top of his fuzzy head as she massaged his sides.
She knew detectives tended to “follow the money.” But who would benefit from Kevin’s death? His family was out of the area, but that didn’t mean they weren’t his heirs. She’d heard a police investigator say crimes all boiled down to three motives: greed, love gone wrong, or power.
Her thoughts wandered to Gabe. So which camp had he fallen into? She felt the familiar confusion as memories washed over her again. He had been greedy for love, it seemed, along with the money he’d embezzled.
“We were meant for each other. You’re my soul mate,” she recalled him saying, and how the words had flown right to her heart. That she, plain, ordinary, shy, and clumsy Trinidad, might be the whole world to someone had thrilled her to the core. When something seems too good to be true, it usually is, she recalled her father saying in her teen years. The wisdom hadn’t even dented her rosy-colored view of people in general and Gabe in particular—her unshakable belief that there was good in everyone. Only her divorce had stripped the world of its beautiful hues and left it painted in bitter tones of gray and black. She remembered Juliette’s revelation that her life was divided into B.G. and A.G.
Someday, when she had the courage, perhaps she’d ask Bonnie and Juliette if Gabe had babbled to them about being soul mates. But what was the point? Build a wall around today and don’t climb over it, Papa Luis had told her during her darkest period. And Juliette had no doubt felt the same thing, along with a healthy dose of anger to which she was entitled. How many people agreed with Warren that Juliette’s anger at being betrayed by Gabe might easily turn her into a murderer? It was grossly unfair.
“All right,” she said aloud, earning a look from Noodles. “Juliette needs us, and we have to do everything we can for her.” It was odd to be needed, and somehow the knowledge warmed her inside.
Opening a new document, she made three columns: greed, love gone wrong, and power.
The greed column she left blank.
Love gone wrong? Tanya Grant certainly seemed to have strong feelings for Kevin. And Bigley already had Juliette fixed under the “scorned in love” motive.
Power? She could not think a guy who made popcorn for a living had clout enough that someone would murder him to get a leg up. Revenge maybe? That was a way someone could exercise power over a foe. Blackmail? The cursor blinked at her as she sat and thought, time ticking away and Noodles overflowing her lap.
Though she didn’t feel particularly hungry at dinnertime, she was restless, so she fixed herself a peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich and a bowl of kibble with a wee bit of boiled egg for Noodles. Alone at the table, her thoughts wandered again to Gabe. He’d charmed her mother, the same way he’d done with her, arriving to meet her parents with flowers in one hand and a chessboard in the other, prepared to please.
Her mother had adored him at first sight, or perhaps she was just thrilled that a successful man was courting their socially awkward daughter. Her reaction bordered on giddy. Her father was more reserved but ready to like the young man who would play chess with him. Papa Luis, a chess champion in Cuba, declined to play with Gabe, a red flag if there ever was one.
That a patient, handsome, tenderhearted man would fall in love with her, and she with him, seemed so fanciful she’d had to pinch herself on a regular basis. Too good to be true, her inner skeptic had said. She should have listened to that inner skeptic. Only her grandfather had sensed something wrong with Gabe Bigley.
But, sometimes, regardless of the betrayal, the anger and hurt that shook her to her very foundation, she missed the love she’d had, or thought she’d had, with Gabe.
Shrugging off the angst, she forced down her dinner. When the shadows crept across the kitchen floor, she resumed her computer sleuthing. She turned her attention to searching the web for information about Kevin. Her curiosity made no practical sense, but she felt a burning desire to find out more about the life of the man she’d known for only a few scant weeks before his death.
His name popped up in her Google searches several times: when he’d assumed ownership of the Popcorn Palace a decade before and his participation in various charity events, including a motorcycle ride to solicit toys for the underprivileged. Trinidad sat up higher when she saw a photo of Kevin participating in a show at the Vintage Theater. He was dressed in a tuxedo, a smiling woman dipped in his arms. The woman was pretty with a bouncy auburn wig and lips painted scarlet, Tanya Grant. In her arms she clutched a bouquet of pink roses. The play was entitled “Princess and the Pirate.”
Tanya was the Princess.
The two items of information rolled around each other in Trinidad’s brain. The Pink Princess rosebush waiting to be planted next to Kevin’s front porch steps. The blooms that matched the bouquet Tanya held in the photograph. Had the rosebush been intended as a gift for Tanya? The cast picture led her to a different thought. She reached for her bag, pulling the crumpled theater flyer out and smoothing it.
Our Founding Fathers, a patriotic extravaganza, opening July 5 for two weekends only. Featuring a talented cast of local singers, dancers, and actors, graciously sponsored by the Grant family. Tickets available now. There was a number and a website. Trinidad pulled up the website and enlarged the tiny group
photo. Tanya Grant was pictured there, too, standing next to Warren along with four other actors, but Kevin was apparently not in the cast. Did that indicate a rift had developed between Kevin and Tanya? Or, perhaps, it was just a busy time for Kevin, and he could not free up his schedule for theater.
She folded the flyer and was just reaching to return it to her purse when a different thought flashed across her mind.
What had Warren said when he was stopped in his van across the street from the popcorn shack?
“Right now, I got a cargo area full of flyers. Hot off the presses, or at least the copy machine.” He’d said he hadn’t even looked at them. They’d been tucked securely in the back. But, if he’d just picked them up and stopped to wait for his van to cool off, how had one come to be flying around her feet? The only way that would have happened is if someone had opened the rear van doors, someone very close to the scene of the murder. Maybe they’d stashed something inside? What about Warren himself? Could he have arrived earlier, killed Kevin and stolen something from him, then driven around the block, appearing as if he’d just pulled up?
He was Kevin’s gambling buddy and not overly broken up about his pal’s murder. Perhaps he owed Kevin a debt he couldn’t repay and decided to kill him? Warren, Kevin, Tanya. What did they all have in common? They had all acted in plays together. It was the best lead she had, but what did any of it have to do with her brainstormed motives—greed, love gone wrong, and power?
What should she do with her strange ideas? Talk to the police? Picturing Chief Bigley’s face as she trotted out her oddball ponderings was enough to discourage that notion. She needed more to offer the chief than a vague suspicion. Head to the theater and ask a few questions tomorrow, she told herself. What harm could it do? It would take her mind off her current worry about Juliette and her fear that her shop would fall into a sinkhole of failure.
Determined to calm her mind in preparation for some restorative sleep, she walked with Noodles outside into the yard. Noodles did his business and ambled the fenced perimeter, which was home to nothing more than scruffy grass and a lopsided tree. They stayed outside, inhaling the faint whiff of a faraway barbecue. When the sky turned dark and the shadows crept in, Trinidad began to think of Kevin Heartly’s body lying curled in the iron pot. Someone in this quaint little town was a killer.