Sweet Tea and Secrets

by Joy Avon

  “Are you with the press?” Callie sprung the question out of the blue, hoping to surprise and trap him.

  But Quinn looked genuinely confused, then began to laugh. “Excuse me? You think I’m some journalist who needs a big cover story?”

  “Isn’t that possible?”

  “I can’t prove I’m not a journalist, can I?” He leaned back, putting both of his hands flat in the grass. The paper bag rested beside him. “What do you want to see? The press card that I don’t have?”

  Falk wasn’t going to like this attitude. Quinn would be behind bars soon. She had to corner him and wring some answers out of him before he was locked up.

  “You seemed to know Jamison.” Before Quinn could protest, Callie added, “I know you did chores at his home. You talked to his wife. About Jamison’s work on the Monica Walker disappearance.”

  Quinn shrugged. “Is that forbidden?”

  “No. But it is a pretty big coincidence that that particular topic would just happen to come up, after all those years. I would think there are more natural things to talk about over coffee—the weather, activities around town. The grandchildren you saw in a photo on the mantelpiece. You get my point? You led the conversation to it. You wanted to know more. So, did you contact Jamison again? Maybe last night? Have a meeting with him at the newspaper building?”

  “Certainly not. Why? The information was coming to us now. From witnesses, people who knew a lot more than Jamison ever did. He didn’t want to help us at all.”

  If Quinn believed that, he might not have killed Jamison. But maybe it was an act of anger? A need to lash out at a man who had insulted him?

  And what had that map on Jamison’s desk been for?

  Callie said, “Have you taken a boat out since you’ve been here?”

  “No. I’m not very good with boats. Why all of these questions?” Quinn studied her. “Do you think I’m taking action on all this behind your back?”

  Callie smiled. “Well, you did lead me to this story on purpose. The woman at the library said she had seen you before. You denied it, but it proves you’ve been there before. You knew exactly what I would find and that it would pique my interest. You used me.”

  Although she said it in a pleasant tone, putting it into words made her realize how angry she was about it all. The hot lava streaming through her stomach took her breath away. She wanted to just reach out and grab and shake Quinn. He had used her, and now there had been a murder. Someone had died because they had stirred up a hornets’ nest.

  Quinn said tightly, “It’s for a good reason, Callie. You’ll see.”

  “I want to see now. Tell me. Explain it to me.”

  “No. Not now. We need more first.”

  “So you admit you used me?”

  “I admit that I knew that there was an interesting story in those archives, and I helped you find it. You wanted something big for your event: now you have it.” He added after a few moments’ thought, “I also knew that you and Iphy had helped find a valuable family heirloom that disappeared during a Christmastime tea party you hosted at Haywood Hall. So I thought Monica Walker’s story would appeal to you, and you might have the skills to help me figure it out. When Iphy put the notice up on the bulletin board that she was looking for a handyman, it made sense to apply. I could do your chores, and you could help me with Monica Walker’s disappearance. Win–win.”

  Callie swallowed hard. “Did you also hear about the other thing that happened at Haywood Hall while we were catering the tea party there?”

  “I heard there was a death, yes, and that you figured out who had done it. Which only goes to show you’re really good at sleuthing, so”—Quinn made a gesture with his hand—“I was even more convinced I needed your help.”

  “And you couldn’t have just asked for it? You had to go through this whole cloak-and-dagger routine, offering yourself as handyman to Iphy and then leading me to the Monica Walker story at the library?”

  “I thought you’d be more likely to help me if you knew me a bit. I could hardly turn up out of the blue at Book Tea and ask for your help. Why would you get involved with a perfect stranger? However, if I was already working on your cottage, it would look more … natural.”

  “And innocent?” Callie pressed. “Did you have any idea that our call for information might be dangerous?”

  “Dangerous?” Quinn echoed. He sat up and frowned at her. “Have you gotten weird calls? There are always people who use something like this to do a little heavy breathing. That’s why I told you to use a separate phone number for it.” He fell silent. Callie perked up as she heard sirens in the distance. That was fast.

  Quinn also turned his head to listen. “What’s that?”

  “Time for me to leave.” Callie shot to her feet. But Quinn was faster. In a heartbeat he was up from the ground and grabbed her by the arm.

  Chapter Six

  Quinn hissed to her, “Did you turn the police on me? What did you tell them? I’m not a criminal.”

  Callie winced in pain under the pressure he was exerting on her arm. She tried to look calm as she countered, “If you’re no criminal, you have nothing to fear.”

  “No?” Quinn huffed in frustration. “I know Jamison didn’t like me asking questions. Now you asked the police to come here, and what for? I don’t get it. I’m taking care of your dog for you.”

  “It’s not my dog!” Callie struggled to be released. “You used me and never told me what this is all about.”

  “Let go of her!” a voice called. “Back away from her right now.”

  Quinn turned to Falk, who was holding his hand on his weapon, ready to pull it from its holster.

  Releasing Callie, Quinn raised both his hands in an apologetic gesture. “I was only asking her why she called the police on me.”

  Falk closed in on Quinn. Once he reached him, he jerked Quinn’s hands down and behind his back, putting the cuffs on. “I’m arresting you for the murder of Joe Jamison.”

  “What?” Quinn turned deathly pale. “Jamison is dead? Murdered?”

  “What a nice little act,” Falk said in a scathing tone. “Isn’t that what Callie already told you?”

  He glared at Callie. “You should be happy I’m not arresting you as an accomplice.”

  “Why? What did I do?”

  “You came out here to warn him. He might have fled.”

  “Callie didn’t tell me anything about any murder,” Quinn protested. “She was just mad at me for using her to get information in the Walker case.”

  “You’re a journalist,” Falk spat.

  “Yes, I admit it.”

  Callie stood rooted to the ground. He admitted it.

  Her mouth went sour. She had just trusted the totally wrong person. And once word got out about Jamison’s death, the media would pounce on it, relating it to the Walker case and the recent call for more information. People would assume she had known Quinn was a journalist and had worked with him to get some sensationalist story. They’d hate her for it. This was a nightmare.

  “Come on. You can tell your story at the station.” Falk dragged Quinn away to his car that was parked out of sight.

  Callie turned to the tent and opened the zipper. Biscuit came to her right away, dancing around her. She put him on the leash and went after the deputy and his prisoner. She was sure that Falk wouldn’t listen to anything she had to say right now. She was also sure she wanted to say absolutely nothing to defend the stone-cold liar that Quinn had turned out to be.

  But deep down inside, she just wasn’t sure he was a killer.

  She somehow felt like there was more to it than that.

  * * *

  Falk beat her to the police station and was already inside with his prisoner when Callie arrived. She pushed through the double glass doors, keeping Biscuit beside her. He wasn’t very upset about Quinn’s disappearance from the camp site but seemed to think it was some sort of game they were playing: Look for Quinn.

  Inside
the station, he sniffed the floor and barked, pulling Callie to the left as if he wanted to say, “Here is the trail—just follow me and we’ll have him in no time.”

  Callie followed him as far as the little corner where visitors could sit. Biscuit wanted to continue, into the corridor that led to the interrogation rooms, but Callie called him back. “We’re going to wait for Quinn here,” she said softly, brushing Biscuit’s head.

  He looked up at her. She expected he would try to pull into the corridor anyway. But he seemed to sense that she was tense and serious, and lowered himself onto his bottom beside her. He whined and pushed his head against her leg, and she sat down in a chair and sighed, rubbing his ears.

  What a mess. Falk would never trust her again. He believed she had actually rushed out to warn Quinn and help him escape arrest. Of course she hadn’t intended any such thing, but …

  Her conversation with Quinn hadn’t yielded anything useful either. Especially not when she took into account that he had probably been lying about every single thing he told her. Imagine him laughing off the suggestion he could be a journalist and then admitting to Falk outright that he was.

  Callie leaned back against the plastic chair, feeling thoroughly humiliated. She wanted to rush in there and tell Quinn he had used her not just when he had suggested the Monica Walker case to her as if it was all a big coincidence, but all over again that morning. With his nice little act of knowing nothing about Jamison’s death. How could he!

  The doors opened, and a woman walked in. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and in her jeans shirt and pants she looked like a cowgirl.

  Callie rose from her seat and waved. “Peggy!”

  Peggy turned her head and saw her. “Callie! What are you doing here?” She closed in on her. “Are you here for my brother? Is he in?” Her voice sounded eager.

  Callie nodded. “He’s interrogating someone. Do you already know about—”

  Peggy lowered her voice, glancing toward where the other deputy was typing away at a keyboard. “The murder? Yes. I came to Book Tea to discuss some details for a tea party with Iphy. Then I saw all of the commotion. Is it true that …”

  She took a deep breath and glanced around again, as if she was worried about being overheard. “Is it true that Ace thinks Quinn has something to do with it?”

  Callie tilted her head. She had never called Falk by his first name yet, as everyone always called him by his last name, which fit him quite well. For a moment she felt sad at the idea she might never get to call him Ace, as their friendship seemed to have dissolved and he was livid at her for her part in the current trouble. She said quickly by way of a distraction, “Well, he has Quinn in there right now, so I suppose that means he does believe Quinn had something to do with it. But how do you know Quinn?”

  She knew of course that Quinn had done chores for Peggy and had played soccer with the boys, but she wanted Peggy to tell her side of the story.

  Peggy sighed. She gestured to the seats, and they both took plastic chairs, side by side. Peggy leaned over. “Quinn came to town and was looking for small jobs to do. I miss having a man around the house, and I asked him to do some chores for us. He really hit it off with the boys. They love him.”

  Peggy swallowed, knotting her fingers in her lap. “I was a bit worried about that, you know. Quinn is only here for a while, and Tate and Jimmy might get attached to him and be upset when he leaves again.”

  “That’s always a risk, of course.”

  Peggy continued, “Ace didn’t like Quinn from the get-go and suggested to me that he might have an ulterior motive. Some reason to be in town. Like conning people or something. I told him he was a total idiot.”

  Callie cringed at Peggy’s brutal assessment. “Falk is just worried for you and the boys. After all, it’s possible for a con man to come to a small town in summertime and—”

  “Yes,” Peggy said, cutting her off, “but Ace won’t give me an inch to move. I do have my own life. It’s so Ace to think that the moment I hire a handyman, I’ll get conned. Of course I won’t. I know what I’m doing.”

  Callie thought of how Quinn had probably been lying about everything he had told anyone here in Heart’s Harbor, and her heart clenched for poor Peggy when she found out about that. She didn’t deserve more misery in her life.

  And how about the boys who liked Quinn so much? Could he really be a coldblooded con man who used people, including widows and children, to attain his end?

  Peggy continued, “I told Ace that I could hire whomever I wanted, and he was not amused. I bet you he’s only grilling Quinn now because he doesn’t like him.” She fidgeted with her watch’s band. “He has nothing to do with the murder. He didn’t even know Jamison.”

  “I’m afraid that isn’t exactly true.” Callie held Peggy’s gaze. It might be better if she broke the bad news to Peggy herself. Peggy wouldn’t believe Falk, and it would be bad if she had to hear it through the town grapevine. “I was in Jamison’s office the other day with Quinn because we wanted to ask how much Jamison knew about the mysterious disappearance in 1989 of a TV star. Quinn thought it would make a nice item to speak about on the Fourth of July tea party that Iphy is setting up.”

  “And?” Peggy’s eyes were wide and questioning, not understanding how it all fit together.

  “When we got there, I had the impression Jamison and Quinn had some sort of tension between them. I also know for a fact that Quinn did chores for Jamison’s wife. Jamison wasn’t happy that Quinn was asking a lot of questions.”

  “He’s just a nice, open, considerate man. He doesn’t ask questions because he’s after money or anything.”

  “Peggy …” Callie put her hand on the other woman’s arm. “Please hear me out. Quinn hasn’t suggested this Monica Walker thing to me by coincidence. He’s here to look into that case. He’s a journalist. He’s after a story, and he … well, I can’t put it any other way than that he used me to get at what he wanted.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “He let me do the call for information on television and gather all the clues that came in so he could use them.”

  “But I thought that you yourself wanted something spectacular for the tea party.”

  “Of course, but Quinn didn’t tell me honestly that he was with the press or how much he actually knows about the case. I’m worried he knows much more than he told me, and because I was so ignorant, I stuck my head into a hornets’ nest. Especially now that Jamison is dead.”

  “I don’t see what his death has to do with it. Maybe Jamison simply had a heart attack.”

  “I didn’t see the body, but I don’t think it was a heart attack. It must be foul play or else Falk wouldn’t be taking action now.”

  Peggy scoffed. “Ace just wants Quinn to be involved. Then he can tell me with a smug smile that he was right all along saying Quinn couldn’t be trusted. But I don’t believe it.”

  She continued in a pleading tone. “Callie, you also met Quinn. He’s perfectly nice. He doesn’t have some hidden agenda. He came here to spend a quiet summer in a small town. He told me he was raised in one, and this brings back so many good memories for him. I saw in his smile that he meant it.”

  Callie wasn’t sure what to say.

  Should she cruelly dispel the notion that there was any good in Quinn?

  Or accept that maybe he was a man with two faces, a nice side and a business side where he was ruthless in pursuit of the story he wanted?

  “Tell me this,” she said to Peggy. “Can’t a man be charming and at the same time use that charm to get things his way? Yes, I admit that Quinn has a very disarming way of asking something and that he is really very nice. But that can also make him the kind of man who—”

  “Manipulates women.” Peggy crossed her arms over her chest. “Sure, that’s what Ace is going to say. He’s going to argue that we were both blinded by Quinn’s smile and never saw that he was a con man.”

  Callie felt a little
irked to be included on that list, but she had to admit that she had the same instinctive need to defend Quinn that Peggy seemed to feel. Maybe he was the sort of man who wrapped women round his little finger and always got away with everything?

  Peggy said, “We have to help him. We have to prove he has nothing to do with Jamison’s death.”

  “But how?”

  “Well, for one thing, we could find out where he was at the time of the murder. Maybe he has an alibi.”

  “If he does, he’ll be telling that to Falk right now.”

  Peggy looked up when they heard a thud. “Is that the sound of a door?” Just then Falk popped out from the corridor. He saw them together and froze a moment, tilting his head as if to assess why they were there.

  When Callie and Peggy both rose and came toward him, Falk lifted both hands in a defensive gesture. “I have nothing to say about it, ladies.”

  “Are you going to charge Quinn?” Peggy asked. “Have you checked whether he has an alibi? Does he even have a motive? He barely knew Jamison. Why would he want to hurt him?”

  Falk said, “He told me a thing or two I’m going to check on.”

  “When?” Peggy put her hands on her hips. “Have you already locked him in a cell? Do you enjoy this?”

  Falk’s eyes flashed. “He’s still in the interrogation room. With a colleague who’s keeping an eye on him, so don’t get any thoughts into your heads.”

  “I don’t intend to help him escape,” Callie rushed to assure Falk. “I only came here to explain to you what I was doing with Quinn when you found us together.” She felt Peggy freeze at the mention and hoped her newfound ally wouldn’t rush off in anger at this revelation.

  Falk said, “I really don’t want to hear it right now, Callie.” He reached up and rubbed his forehead as if he was already tired, though his working day had only just begun. “I can’t think of any valid excuse for entering a crime scene, asking me questions, and then rushing off to inform the main suspect of what happened.”