Chapter 10
A
T 9:15
A.M.
,
I exited the stockroom and surveyed the shop. Dozens of customers were browsing the cookbook shelves, but none appeared ready to buy. Bailey was kneeling beside a pair of munchkins in the children’s section, pointing out the finer points of cake-pop decorating sets. They gawked at her as if she were the wisest person on earth. She was. Thanks to a couple of recent baking lessons from Katie, Bailey had taken up cake-pop art. Her latest batch, in honor of the beginning of the school season, were Oreo pops made with kitty cat faces. Tigger the imp lay sound asleep, stretched out on the back of one of the reading chairs. My aunt stood by the gadgets display, chatting up a pair of buyers who were engrossed with the embroidery on some potholders.
“Bailey, do you mind if I leave the shop for a bit?” I said as I exited the stockroom. “I have three errands to run before Natalie’s memorial.”
“Feel free. Your aunt and I can handle the crowd, but”—Bailey snapped her fingers and beckoned me closer—“do me a favor. Stop by The Pelican Brief and check on my mom, would you? She sounded low when I called her this morning.”
“Sure,” I said. The diner was on the way to my first errand, the bank. I needed to withdraw cash. Rusty’s Repair Shop was one of the few businesses in town that demanded honest-to-goodness greenbacks. No plastic. No ifs, ands, or buts. I certainly preferred when customers used cash at The Cookbook Nook and the café, but I wouldn’t demand that they did
.
However, I understood the practice. The steep fees charged by credit card companies for services rendered could put small independent businesses in dire straits.
A short while later, I rolled out my mother’s retro bicycle, which I now stowed in the stockroom—errands around town were more easily handled using the bike—and I pedaled to The Pelican Brief. I parked the bike in a rack on the sidewalk and secured it with a lock. As I entered the restaurant, Lola exited her office. She didn’t look glum; in fact, she looked buoyant. Her face glimmered with subtly glittered rouge. Her large eyes were outlined in silver to match her hair and snug outfit. She carried a fashionable leather briefcase. She saw me and hurried over.
“Sweet Jenna.” She grasped one of my hands and bussed my cheek. “What a bright spot you are in my morning.”
“You look great,” I said, meaning it.
She winked. “Fake it and you own it, as some famous actress used to say. Bette Davis, I think. Or maybe it was Mae West. I’m not sure.”
“Where are you off to?”
“To see ZZ. She wants to discuss the finer points of my case.”
“I thought she wasn’t your lawyer.”
“She’s not. But she likes to have her say. Friends: Can’t live with ’em; can’t fire ’em.” Lola chuckled. “She wants to discuss what happens if I’m arrested.”
I squeezed her hand. “You’re not going to be arrested. Chief Pritchett has nothing on you.”
“One mustn’t rely on what
should
be. Just like in a restaurant, preparation is everything. Seeing the pitfalls before they happen is vital.” She pulled free and let rip with a seal’s bark of a laugh. Bailey laughed with the same gusto as her mother. “Ooh, that chef of mine. He started this whole thing. If he hadn’t left me for Natalie . . . I don’t miss him. Not a whit. Yes, he was gifted with fish dishes; however, I found a superb new chef. Did you meet her the other day when we convened in the kitchen? She’s a sprite. Not good with fish but fresh out of cooking school and so daring with spices. She’ll give that Katie of yours a run for her money.” Lola glanced at her watch. “Must hurry off. Tell my daughter to lighten up.” She shook a finger. “Don’t roll your eyes.”
Had I? Of course I had.
“And don’t try to tell me otherwise. I know she sent you to do reconnaissance. Don’t worry. I’m coping. I didn’t binge shop.” Lola leaned closer. “Between you and me, I think Bailey could use a cup of coffee. It might take the edge off. Or maybe she could use a little you-know-what.”
“What?” I said, then understood. A rush of heat warmed my cheeks.
Lola laughed again, then blew a kiss and dashed from the restaurant.
I made an about-face and started to head out when Keller Carmichael, a rangy young man who supplied ice cream to many of the restaurants around town—ice cream that he actually kept cold on the back of his bicycle by pedaling fast enough to energize a freezer—trudged in with a vat of ice cream balanced on his shoulder.
Blind to my exit, he nearly sideswiped me.
“Whoa,” I said. Two near collisions in one day, although Keller wasn’t one-tenth the weight of the car that had tried to run me off the road, made my heart skip a beat.
Keller swung around and caught sight of me. One-handed, he whipped off his cap and swooped a thatch of brown hair off his face. “Hey hey, Jenna. Sorry. Making a delivery.” Keller rarely used a formal
miss
or
mister
when addressing anyone. His mother, the owner of the Taste of Heaven Ice Cream Parlor, a sit-down dessert shop up the street, acted appalled, but I knew she wasn’t. She adored her entrepreneurial-though-quirky son, and why shouldn’t she? He was as cute as all get-out with his quick, toothy smile. “How’s that chef of yours?” Keller asked.
“Fine,” I said, wondering why so many people were mentioning Katie today.
“I hear she’s my competition in the chilled food category.”
Katie made delicious ice cream.
“Only at the café,” I said. “She’s not about to pedal around town, like you.” I had to admit that I wasn’t completely sure about that. Recently I had learned that Katie liked to parasail and Jet Ski. She didn’t look the type, but what did I know? I didn’t look like I would rappel off steep mountains, and yet I had done exactly that during a wilderness survival trip I’d taken with my brother during high school.
“Katie’s missing out,” Keller said. “You get to see all sorts of things biking everywhere around town.” He grinned. “Say, someone I know . . .” He scratched his head in an odd way, right hand to left ear. “Can’t remember who. Anyway, whoever it was said you were investigating the murder of Mrs. Mumford.”
And we wondered how rumors got started.
“I’m not.” I wagged a finger. “No-o-o.” I sure didn’t want Cinnamon Pritchett to get wind of the allegation.
“Well, in case you are, I’ve got a tidbit. No bigger than a chocolate chip, of course, but it’s something. See, I was riding past The Pelican Brief a week or so ago. Sunday, I think.” Keller hefted the vat of ice cream to his other shoulder. “The Mumfords were here.”
“As in
here
here?”
“Yup. The Sykeses, too.”
That surprised me. I didn’t think Natalie would have deigned to enter her competition’s restaurant. She’d seemed appalled to learn that Sam had gone there. Had her outrage been for show? Did it matter any longer?
“It was a brunch day. I remember because, like, the line was down the block.” Keller brushed his bangs off his face again. I wondered why he didn’t simply trim them. “It was a warm day. I decided to take advantage and sold ice cream to the folks standing in line. Even though I had to pedal double-time to keep the ice cream cool, I was doing amazing business.”
“I’ll bet you were.”
“I was offering caramel macchiato ice cream. One of my best flavors. The caramel is really rich.”
I twirled a finger for him to continue.
Keller grinned. “Right. I do that a lot. Get off track. Not on my bike. With my thoughts. That Mrs. Mumford. I couldn’t believe she was wearing a coat. Sheesh.”
I twirled my finger a second time.
He chuckled. “Message received. Anyway, here’s what I saw.” Like a spy in training, he stopped talking as a couple of patrons edged around us to exit the diner. When the door closed, he resumed. “Mrs. Mumford . . . the other one.”
“There’s only one.” There
was,
I corrected in my head.
“Right. Ellen’s last name is Bryant, same as Willie’s, right? I’m such a doofus.” He shook his head. “Natalie, the mother, got all hot and bothered with Lola. I thought it was important because, you know, a week ago, they had a fight on The Pier and then . . .” He let the rest of the sentence hang.
“What did they argue about?”
“I don’t know. See, I saw it go down in pantomime, like a Charlie Chaplin movie.”
The Latina hostess sidled up to us. “I heard something that day.” While fixing the collar of her white midriff shirt, she added, “Hope you don’t mind, but I’ve been listening in on you two.”
Keller flushed the color of cotton candy.
The hostess duplicated the spy-in-training move then said, “That was the day Lola caught Natalie having a private tête-à-tête with the chef. Lola was steaming. An hour later, the chef resigned.”
Had Natalie hung around and fished the torn letter from the garbage can in Lola’s office? Why would she have cared about it?
“I remember,” the hostess continued, “because yesterday the police came in asking questions. Guess there were other witnesses who talked to them about the set-to already.”
I was glad to hear that Cinnamon and her crew were on the job.
“I feel so bad for Mrs. Bird,” the hostess went on. “She was simply trying to protect her turf.”
“Does Lola know that you spoke to the police?” I said.
“Sure.”
I glanced at the exit. Perhaps that was why Lola had been in such a hurry to chat with the mayor. She knew she wasn’t in the clear. Not by a long shot.
I left the diner, glum from the bad news, and headed to Crystal Cove Bank. Last night, when I realized I needed cash for my car repair, I decided to ask someone at the bank about the mysterious key in my possession. Although I didn’t believe David would have leased a safety deposit box account in town, I didn’t want to overlook the possibility. At David’s memorial—I hadn’t been allowed to have a true funeral without a body—his mother had confided that David had intended to retire with me to Crystal Cove someday. He’d told her how much I loved the area. After that conversation, I had raced to the restroom and sobbed for an hour.
The bank, which was situated near the main intersection of town, wasn’t busy. Two tellers, three customers. I headed toward the line but paused when I spied Willie Bryant talking to the Asian teller—Manga Girl, as Bailey had dubbed her—the woman whom Sam Sykes had been chatting up the afternoon Natalie died. Willie had cornered the teller by the entrance to the safety deposit box room. He was stabbing his finger at what I assumed was a savings passbook. The teller, clearly frightened, shook her head. Willie repeated the gesture. Tears filled Manga Girl’s eyes. She placed a hand over her mouth and scurried past him. Willie charged after her. Manga Girl raced through a barred door and shut it seconds before Willie caught up to her. Like me, the other customers watched the scenario with wide-eyed interest. Willie booted the door, but the teller didn’t open it.
Grumbling beneath his breath, Willie trudged toward the exit. The cartoon character Pig-Pen, who is always accompanied by his cloud of dust—or as my mother called it, his cloud of
gloom
—couldn’t have appeared more annoyed.
As Willie neared me, I said, “Is everything okay?”
“What do you care?” He heaved a sigh. As he left the building, letting the glass entry door bang closed behind him, the others in the bank released a collective sigh.
I picked up a withdrawal slip, then got in line to wait. When it became my turn, as luck would have it, Manga Girl, who had returned to her post at the counter, gestured for me to approach. I was fascinated by the tattooed, aqua-green lizards crawling up both of her arms. Matching colors adorned her eyelids. How could Mitzi possibly think her husband was interested in this woman? On the other hand, many men found an exotic young female intriguing.
“Three hundred dollars, please.” I pushed the slip toward her along with my ID and ATM card.
“Enter your pin on the pad.”
As I punched in my four-digit code, I said, “I’d like to find out if my husband leased a safety deposit box.”
“He’ll have to come in with you.”
“He’s—” My chest tightened; my voice snagged. Her request caught me totally off guard. “He can’t. He . . . he passed away.”
“I am sorry,” she said in a cool, impassive tone, either due to the hint of an Asian accent she retained or because all her emotions had been spent on Willie. She pointed across the room. “You will have to take that up with our manager.”
