by Jeff Shelby
Denise shook her head. “Oh, no.”
“Oh no what?”
“You are not a detective,” she hissed. “You are not law enforcement. You are an activities director at a retirement community.”
“I know—”
“Which means this is none of your business!”
I couldn’t argue with her there.
It wasn’t my business. My business was to provide a rich and engaging community life, complete with lots of activities, for the residents.
But, at that moment, it didn’t matter.
“What do you think?” I asked. “Do you think she could have been involved?”
Denise slapped the dishtowel against her thighs. “You are barking up the wrong tree,” she said. “I’m not playing.”
“I’m not asking you to play. I just want your opinion.”
“I don’t have one,” she snapped.
“Oh, please. And pigs can fly.”
She spun on her heel but I grabbed her shoulder. She pulled away.
“I’m not doing this,” she said. “Not after last time.”
She was referring to Arthur Griggs and his murder.
“Nothing happened last time,” I pointed out. “Everything turned out just fine.”
“Exactly.” She whirled back around. “And I’m not about to tempt fate by sticking my nose somewhere it doesn’t belong again.”
This time when she tried to walk away, I let her go.
Her words reverberated in my brain.
And I’m not about to tempt fate by sticking my nose somewhere it doesn’t belong again.
They were wise words. I’d give her that.
Too bad I wasn’t going to heed them.
TEN
Denise ignored me when I went back into the kitchen to finish my makeshift lunch.
That was fine with me.
She’d told me about the fight she witnessed between Jackie and June, and she’d told me she didn’t want to have any part of what I was doing. There was nothing left to discuss.
I finished most of my slice of pie, all but the doughy, half-baked underside of the crust, and scraped the dirty dishes into the trash. Lola gave me a disapproving look when I left the plates next to the dishwasher but it wasn’t like I had any other option. We legally couldn’t wash dishes by hand and I didn’t think she’d want me to run two plates through the industrial-sized dishwasher.
I thanked her for lunch, which was met with a grunt followed by stony silence, and then headed out of the dining facilities and toward my office.
Aidan was just walking through the front door, and my thoughts immediately shifted from the discussion I’d just had with Denise about June to the conversation we’d had about Aidan the day before.
My cheeks grew warm the minute his eyes landed on me.
“How’s it going?” he asked in his easygoing, friendly way.
“Fine.” My voice sounded almost robotic.
“How are things here today?” He glanced around, looking from the front desk where Kelly was stationed to the Gathering Room where residents were still putting together puzzles and chatting.
“Fine.”
He gave me a curious look. “It seems like an awful lot of things are ‘fine.’”
The blush in my cheeks deepened. “Sorry,” I said, a little breathlessly. “I have a lot on my mind.”
This was a true statement. Because I wasn’t just thinking about what Denise had told me yesterday, but I was also rehashing my conversation with Megan from the night before. Her words were on repeat in my brain: how she thought I should ask him out, how I actually needed to go out on a date.
“Are you okay, Sunny?”
I blinked. “What?”
Aidan cocked his head. “You’re just standing there. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Oh. Yes, I’m fine.” I was probably nodding a little too emphatically. “So, what are you doing here?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Uh, working?”
I bit my lip. Duh.
“Of course.” I smiled. “Sorry, I’m just a little distracted.”
His expression instantly changed to sympathy. “About June?”
No, about you, I said silently.
I didn’t know what was wrong with me, why I was suddenly feeling so flustered in his presence. He was still Aidan. Nothing had changed.
Except it had.
Denise had told me how he watched me, and that he looked at me a certain way. Megan had spent an insufferable amount of time telling me how badly I needed to go out on a date.
Because of these things, I’d let my mind wander into the what-ifs. What if I asked him out? What if he asked me out? What if he liked me? What if we started actually going out?
Every single question I posed to myself resulted in weak knees and butterflies in my stomach.
Those weren’t things I was used to.
Not at work, and definitely not around Aidan Yates.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Aidan said dryly.
Darn it. I’d done it again. Completely tuned out.
Apologizing felt useless.
“I was just thinking about June,” I told him.
He immediately sobered. “Did something else happen?”
I shook my head. “No. Not really.”
“That doesn’t sound definitive.”
“She's fine,” I said. “At least I think she’s fine. I’ve just been thinking about what happened.”
“Me, too,” Aidan admitted. “It bugs me that something like that could happen here.”
I knew exactly what he meant.
“Are there any leads?” he asked. “About who might have been responsible?”
It was the perfect opening to tell him what Denise had shared with me.
But before I could say anything, he glanced at the clock above Kelly’s workstation and sighed. “I gotta go clock in.”
“Right now? Are you coming back from a break or something?” I hadn’t seen him earlier in the day, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. It wasn’t as if our paths crossed every day.
“No, I just got here. There was a talk at school that I didn’t want to miss so I arranged to come in for a half day today.” He chuckled. “You can imagine how well that went over with Anne.”
I smiled. “Not well?”
“She told me to be prepared to cram a regular day’s worth of work into four hours.”
“That sounds like something she’d say.”
His gaze drifted to the clock again. “I should get going. Maybe you can find me a little later and fill me in? Or text me tonight? You still have my number, right?”
I nodded, but I didn’t say anything.
Not right away.
But then, before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “What are you doing after work?”
“After work?” He frowned. “Nothing. Why?”
“Maybe we could meet up.”
Surprise bloomed on his face. His eyes shifted so he was looking at the floor and not at me.
I wanted a hole to swallow me up. Or find a cloak that would make me invisible.
“Like…a date?” he asked.
“No,” I said quickly. “I just meant so we could chat. About June. You know, in private and without having to worry about time clocks and Anne.”
“Oh,” he said, and I couldn’t tell if his expression was now one of relief or something else. “Sure, we can do that. I’ll probably be done around eight.”
“Do you want to meet someplace where we can grab a bite to eat? Or we could just grab coffee. Or I could just text you and we don’t have to meet at all…”
“I’ll be hungry.” He smiled. “Let’s do burgers. Tommy’s is open late. You know where that is, right?”
I nodded. I ordered food from there at least once a month.
“Alright,” he said. “I guess it’s a date, then.” His eyes widened and he added, “To talk about June.”
I swallowed.
He was right.
Regardless of what we ended up talking about, there was no other way to describe it.
We had a date.
ELEVEN
Tommy’s was packed.
Even though it was a Thursday night, and even though it was well past a normal dinnertime. In fact, the clock was pushing closer to nine o’clock, and nearly every booth in the place was full.
I slid into one of the last empty booths. The red vinyl seats stuck to the back of my legs, squeaking a little as I shifted more toward the window. Aidan’s shift ended at eight o’clock so I knew he should be there any minute.
And I was a nervous wreck.
I didn’t tell Megan what I was doing that night. Actually, I hadn’t expected her to be home but the water line outside the restaurant where she worked had broken so they’d closed up shop early. With Dylan out of town, she’d asked if I wanted to grab a drink and dinner with her. Lying to her didn’t feel great—I told her I had a seminar to attend for work—but I wasn’t about to tell her how I was really going to be spending my evening.
I glanced out the window, trying not to obsessively scan the parking lot for signs of Aidan.
“You ready to order?”
A waitress was standing next to the booth, holding an order pad.
I shook my head. “I’m waiting on a friend. He should be here any minute.”
She nodded, and the bun perched on top of her head wobbled back and forth. She smacked her gum. “Alright. I’ll check back in a few.”
She hurried off and I stole another glance out the window. Still no sign of him.
This was a mistake. There was zero reason for me to insist on meeting with him to discuss things. What I had to tell him could be conveyed by text, or even a two-minute phone conversation. And I still wasn’t even sure if the news I had to share would be of any particular interest to him. Sure, he’d been concerned about June and had brought her some essential oils to replace the ones she’d lost, but I didn’t know if his interest extended from there beyond a casual concern for her wellbeing and for who might be responsible.
I stared glumly out the window. What if he’d forgotten? Or worse, remembered but then just decided not to come?
My cheeks and neck burned. I put my hands on the table and pushed into a standing position. I’d text him once I got to the car. Tell him something came up and that we could chat in the morning.
But just as I was leaning over to grab my keys, a voice said, “Where are you going?”
Not just any voice.
Aidan’s.
He’d showered and changed. His hair was slightly damp, and he’d switched his scrubs out for a pair of khaki shorts and a navy blue t-shirt that managed to darken up the blue of his eyes.
“I…I thought I lost my phone,” I said, scrambling for a reason as to why I was standing with my purse in my hand. “But I found it.” I reached into my bag and held it up.
He half-smiled, half-frowned as he slid on to the bench seat across from me. “Sorry I’m a little late,” he said. “I wanted to clean up before coming here.”
The scent of his shampoo drifted toward me and it took every ounce of self-control I had to not greedily breathe it in.
Aidan reached for one of the menus tucked against the side of the table. “Have you ordered?”
“No, not yet.”
“The bacon cheeseburger is good,” he said as he looked over the menu. “And the Western is good, too.”
“That’s my favorite,” I told him. “With the onion straws.”
His eyes lit up. “I love those, too.” He re-folded the menu and put it back. “Well, that’s easy.”
Our waitress must have been equipped with telepathic abilities because she immediately returned to the table to take our orders. She was back a minute later with our drinks, and then we settled in to wait for our food.
“How was your shift?” I asked.
“Busy. Anne had a list a mile long of stuff she wanted me to get done.”
“That sounds about right.”
He let out a small groan. “I can’t believe there’s anything left to clean after tonight.”
“Oh, I’m sure she’ll think of something.”
He sipped the soda in front of him. “I saw June for a little bit, too.”
“How was she?”
He shrugged. “She seemed okay, I guess. Still a little down, but I can’t really blame her.”
I nodded.
“So did you find out any more about what happened?” Aidan asked. “I tried talking to Denise about it but she wasn’t having it.”
I almost smiled. This was not news to me.
“There isn’t any real news,” I told him. I picked up my straw to take off the wrapper, then thought better of it. Megan was always complaining about having to offer plastic straws to customers and how bad they were for the environment. I’d promised her that I wouldn’t use them when I went to restaurants.
“No?” Aidan said.
“Nothing official,” I said. “But Denise did tell me about a conversation she overheard.”
He leaned across the table, and the scent of his shampoo washed over me again, an alluring mix of spice and sandalwood and vanilla. “Conversation with who?”
“Jackie and June.”
“Jackie?” He frowned. “The yoga instructor?”
“Yes.”
“What were they talking about?”
I filled him in on what Denise had told me. He listened, nodding a couple of times but saying nothing.
“Do you think she had something to do with it, then?” he asked, once I was finished.
“Honestly? I don’t know.”
The waitress returned to our table and slapped down our plates. A massive burger was the centerpiece on each one, with onion straws poking out from the bun and melted cheese oozing down the sides. A pile of crisp French fries accompanied each burger, along with a long pickle spear.
Aidan picked up a fry and popped it in his mouth before he grabbed the bottle of ketchup off the table. “I’m starving,” he said. “Didn’t eat lunch.”
“Why not?”
He squirted a red puddle on his plate and then dragged a fry through it. “No time. Not with school and the presentation and then work.” He picked up his burger. “Okay, finish telling me.”
“I did.”
He was quiet for a minute as he chewed his mouthful of burger. “There’s something missing.”
“What?”
“You told me about Jackie’s conversation with June. Now tell me why you think it matters.”
I took a bite of my own burger. “I don’t know that it does,” I said cautiously. “But I had a conversation with Jackie, too. About June.”
He arched an eyebrow. “You did? When?”
“This morning.”
I told him what Jackie said and once again, he stayed silent, letting me talk.
When I was finished, he let out a low whistle. “Do you think she might have had something to do with it?”
His reaction was so different than Denise’s. She hadn’t wanted to listen to a single word I said. She’d wanted to wash her hands of the whole thing.
Aidan wasn’t insisting we go break down Jackie’s door and perform a citizen’s arrest or anything, but he was at least paying attention and asking questions.
“I don’t know,” I said.
He was halfway through his burger and the mound of fries on his plate was quickly shrinking. “I can’t see her doing something like that,” he said. “Breaking in and destroying stuff.”
“I can’t, either,” I admitted.
He picked up his drink. “And I don’t know what she would stand to gain by putting June out of business. I mean, she volunteers her time. No one is paying her to come teach the classes, are they?”
I shook my head. It was almost laughable. There was no way Anne would budget for yoga classes, or even allow me to allocate money toward something like that.
&n
bsp; “So there is no financial benefit for putting June out of business, and I don’t see her as the vindictive type.” Aidan shrugged. “I guess I could be wrong about that, but I usually get a pretty good read on people.”
“No, I think you’re right.” An onion straw fell out of my burger and I picked it up and stuffed it back between the patty and the bun. “Jackie definitely didn’t like that June was selling products and she was happy she no longer could, but I don’t think she did anything to make that happen.”
Aidan picked up his napkin and wiped his mouth. “Are there any other leads that you know of?”
I was quiet for a minute. “I keep coming back to one person.”
He sighed. “Anne.”
I’d already mentioned this to him before. My suspicions.
“Because of what she said the other day?” he asked.
I nodded.
He scratched his head, thinking for a minute. “But she has this huge corporate visit coming up. Why would she do something like that the week before the visit? It doesn’t make sense.”
I rolled my eyes. “She does a lot of things that don’t make sense.”
“Good point.” He grinned. “But I still think it’s a bit of a stretch to pin this on her. Not because she isn’t capable of doing something like that, but because doing it right now would have the potential to hurt her as much as June.”
I couldn’t argue with his logic. I slumped back against the vinyl seat.
“Anything else?” he asked. “Other people or clues you found out about?”
I shook my head.
I didn’t have a single thing that pointed to a potential culprit.
“So where do we go from here?”
His words sent shockwaves through my system…and not just because he said ‘we.’ That word launched a thousand butterflies in my stomach but they were quickly grounded when I focused on the question he’d asked.
Because reality hit me full force.
I had no idea where we went from here.
TWELVE
I tossed an oversized beach ball up into the air. “Head’s up!”
It was Friday morning, and I was standing in the pool at Oasis Ridge, doing my best to engage the residents at their rescheduled pool party.