Kernel of Truth (16 page)

“Just remember, Rebecca. You need to be careful.” Annie's forehead creased. “I know you didn't kill Coco.
Jasper didn't kill Coco. Allen didn't kill Coco. Someone, however, did kill Coco and probably doesn't want anyone to know about it.”

*   *   *

I went to
my shop. I mean, how much trouble could I get in there? Annie was right. I needed to stop sticking my nose into other people's business. What did it matter if everyone thought Coco was planning on retiring? What did it matter if I never found the business plan? What did it matter if I spent the rest of my life in the town where I was born where everyone assumed I'd be the reckless screwup I'd been in high school?

The little bell over the door rang and Barbara came into the shop. She no longer wore her gauze bandage fascinator and was looking much more her usual self. “I brought you a little something,” she said, plunking down a package on the counter.

“What for?” I asked. It wasn't my birthday.

“I felt bad that you got into trouble for picking those things up for me. Seriously, it's like that Jessica is following you around, trying to catch you being up to no good.” She looked around at my empty shop. “It doesn't seem to have been very good for your business, either.”

That was an understatement. “I was glad that Huerta didn't insist on keeping your tracksuit as evidence.”

“Yes, and thank you for sending him with the clothes. He's quite the eyeful, isn't he?” She chuckled.

I blushed. “Barbara!”

“Oh, please. I'm old, but I'm not dead. Yet. Unless someone else decides to hit me over the head again.” She touched the top of her head gingerly. She pushed the package toward me. “Open it.”

I did. It was a beautiful antique set of containers for sugar and flour in a blue-and-white willow pattern that would look perfect in my kitchen. “Oh, Barbara. Thank you so much. You shouldn't have.”

She waved a hand at me. “Don't get too excited. They were in the shop.”

I motioned her into the kitchen and started water for coffee. “Speaking of the shop, did you make a decision?”

“I did.” She sat down at the table and looked around. “I really like what you did with this room. It's so much brighter than before.”

I snorted. “That's damning with faint praise. It was like a tomb in here before. So what was the decision?”

“I'm keeping the shop. Sort of.” She folded her hands on the table.

“How does one ‘sort of' keep a shop?” I asked.

“I have this niece in Illinois. She just got divorced. She's been out of the workforce for a while. She's not quite sure what to do with herself. I suggested that she move here and become my assistant manager with a plan to take over the place when I'm ready to fully retire. This way I can still spend a few months a year down in Arizona. She finds a way to make a living. Her kids live in a nice small town that at least used to have a low crime rate. It's kind of a win-win.”

“I should say so.” I poured us each a cup of coffee. “Do you remember anything more about the attack?”

“No. I wish I could. I'd love to help Dan catch the bastard who did this.” She took a sip and winked at me. “Good and strong. Excellent. I can't stand that weak swill they serve over at the diner.”

I clinked my mug against hers and took a sip, then started shaking the leftover popcorn into bags.

“What are you doing with that?”

I sighed. “Putting this stuff out back for Tom Moffat. He's been coming by to pick up the leftovers since Jasper was arrested.” I made a face. “He may not like women being in the workforce, but that sure doesn't stop him from taking handouts from them.” I froze. “You don't suppose . . .”

“Oh, don't mind Tom. That's just a bad case of sour grapes. He's still mad that I wouldn't marry him.” Barbara chuckled.

I sat up straighter. “You dated Tom?”

“I don't know if you could call it dating. We had a few dinners together. Maybe shared a few smooches. He was quite the slobberer.” Barbara made a face. “Anyway, I said no when he proposed. I think he's still mad.”

“I can't imagine spending a lifetime with a slobbery kisser.” A shiver of disgust rippled my shoulders.

“Neither could Coco. He made a play for her, too, back in the day.” Barbara sipped her coffee.

“I had no idea that Coco had ever even contemplated getting married,” I said.

“I don't think she did. Both of us liked being independent too much. We like everything in its place, and men . . . well, men just mess that up.”

*   *   *

After Barbara left,
I texted Susanna and told her not to come in and closed POPS early. Coco would have shaken her head at me and told me it was important to be open when people stopped by, but I didn't have it in me today.

Instead I went home. Not my apartment. Real home. The home where I grew up. Haley and Evan were deep in the construction of a fairly complicated Brio train-track configuration.

“So what were these big plans you had with Coco?” Haley snapped together a piece of wooden train track while peering at the diagram on the box.

“Oh, you know.” I ran one of Evan's little wooden trains up and down my thigh.

“No, I don't know,” she said with what seemed like an exaggerated amount of patience. I wasn't sure if she needed the patience for dealing with me or for dealing with the wooden tracks. “I have no idea. I knew you two got together and talked a lot and cooked a lot, but until the funeral I had no idea the two of you were planning anything business-related.”

The reason Haley didn't know is because pretty much nobody knew except Coco and me. We were keeping it on the down low until we were ready to put our plans into action. Maybe it sounds paranoid, but we both felt it was best to hold our recipes and plans pretty close to our chests. “We wanted to combine forces. We thought it would be fun to have a kind of chocolate and popcorn wonderland.”

“And what would happen to the shops you have already?” Haley got down on the floor and started laying out the track.

Evan started running his little train along it, making
chug-chug-chug
noises. “Finish, Mama! Finish track!” he yelled when he came to the end of it.

“Doing my best, sweetheart.” Haley pulled more track pieces from the plastic crate. “Your shops?”

“Well, I'd probably close POPS as it is now, but Coco was planning on giving her shop to Jessica.” I hadn't told Coco that I thought Jessica wanted to run that shop about as much as she wanted to run a marathon, which is to say not at all. I'd figured that was Jessica's business and that Jessica could take care of her own.

Haley sat back on her heels to check the box again. “So Jessica would profit quite a bit from Coco and you going into business.”

I squirmed a little. “I guess.”

Haley turned to look at me. “What are you not saying?”

“How do you know I'm not saying something?”

“You're talking to the sister you spent a good deal of your adolescence lying to in some form or another. What aren't you saying?” She shook a curved piece of track in my direction.

“Coco was going to give her shop to Jessica, but she wasn't going to give Jessica her recipe, remember?”

Haley set both pieces of track down. “So?”

“That would make the shop worth a lot less.”

“Did Jessica know?”

“I don't know. I don't think so.” Coco wouldn't have told her. I wouldn't have told her. But Pearl told Ruby that Coco had made an appointment with Garrett to change her will. Ruby would have told Phillip. Phillip might well have told his son, who was currently Jessica's boyfriend. “Maybe. I suppose she could have, but it would have made for a really long game of telephone.”

“When was it going to happen?”

“Sooner than I thought it would. Apparently Coco made an appointment to talk to Garrett about it,” I said.

“Do you have any proof that that was what she meant to do?” Haley asked.

I shook my head. “It was something we were talking about. Coco didn't want Jessica to sell the fudge recipe. She knew I wouldn't no matter what.”

“So it's your word about it, like with the plan to open the new business.” Haley sighed and picked up the track pieces
again. “It doesn't matter, though, does it? Coco didn't change her will. You guys didn't open your new business. The fudge recipe belongs to Jessica along with the shop. Bad timing, I guess.”

“And timing is
everything.”

Amherst, Ohio, is
about fifteen miles from Grand Lake. You pop down to Highway 2 and head east. The road is straight, and on a crisp fall day with the trees starting to turn, it's kind of pretty. That still did not explain why on earth Coco would have chosen to take something to be copied all the way in Amherst when we have a perfectly good copy shop two blocks away from Coco's Cocoas in Grand Lake. Especially since Coco liked driving less and less. She said she didn't trust her reflexes the way she used to.

The next day, I left Susanna in charge of the shop as soon as she'd gotten there after school—not that there was much happening. Garrett showed up to buy a breakfast bar, I think just out of pity. Janet Barry came in for her little bag of caramel cashew popcorn, but she acted even more like she was doing a drug deal than usual. She kept glancing over her shoulder and checking who might be on the sidewalk. She actually asked if she could go out the back. They had been my only customers all day. I wasn't sure how long I'd
be able to keep the shop open with that kind of slowdown, especially after depleting my bank accounts to pay Jessica all the money I had owed Coco.

Sprocket and I got in the Jeep at around three thirty and headed off to Amherst to pick up whatever Coco had felt was important enough to take to another town to get copied. Sprocket had given me a look and sat down when I'd opened the car door. I'd dangled a treat in front of him to induce him to jump in. Hoisting fifty-plus pounds of standard poodle into a four-by-four with decent clearance was more of a workout than I'd wanted. He still hadn't budged. Finally, I'd said, “No vet.” He'd jumped in, scarfed the Milk-Bone down in one gulp and settled in with a grin.

“Dr. Ambrose is not the devil, you know,” I'd told him after I got in, but Sprocket had snorted his disdain. I knew better than to argue with him and instead I started the Jeep and we went off on our adventure.

Twenty minutes later, we pulled into the parking lot of the Kinko's on Cleveland Avenue. I cracked the windows on the Jeep for Sprocket, went into the store and got in line. Now I really wondered why Coco had driven this far. There was never a line at Kendall's Copies in Grand Lake.

When it was my turn, I presented the ticket to the stout woman behind the counter and smiled.

She did not smile back. She pushed the ticket back at me and said, “You're not Ms. Bittles.”

Surprised that she even knew, I pushed the ticket back to her. “No. I'm not. I'm picking this up for her.”

She slid the ticket back toward me again. “Do you have some kind of note from Ms. Bittles saying she gave you permission? Or should I call her?” She leaned back like she'd won some sort of contest.

Coco was one of those people who won people's admiration
and loyalty all the time, but I was still a little surprised that the FedEx counter girl was this protective. “I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but Coco passed away.”

I'd said it as gently as I could, but the counter girl reeled back as if I'd shoved her. “She what? What happened?”

I didn't feel like I could possibly go into the details. “The police aren't sure. They're investigating.”

She glanced behind me at the growing line, then she called over her shoulder to one of her coworkers. “Paul, can you take over here for a minute?”

A bright-eyed twentysomething kid with curly hair and a nice smile nodded and walked up next to her. “I can help who's next.”

She gestured with her head for me to meet her at the end of the counter. She leaned forward and whispered. “Are you saying Coco was murdered?”

“It looks like it might be a burglary gone wrong, but yes.”

She put her hand to her heart for a second and then took a deep breath. “And who exactly are you?”

“I'm Rebecca Anderson. I had the shop next door to hers and . . .”

“The popcorn lady. Got it.” She held up her index finger. “I'll be right back.”

While she went into the back, I leaned back to get a glimpse of Sprocket in the parking lot. He'd moved into the driver's seat and had put both paws up on the steering wheel. Two little boys were pointing and a girl in jeans so skinny they looked like a second skin took a cell phone photo of him.

The counter girl came back and dropped three three-ring binders down in front of me. “Here's the plan.”

I waited, but she didn't elaborate.

“Well, do you want them or not?” she finally asked. “I'm pretty sure Ms. Bittles meant one of the copies for you.”

I looked at the front cover. It read: Bittles/Anderson Merger Plan: Coco Pop Fudge Empire.

The Holy Grail. The business plan no one believed me about. The one Coco had been working on. I ran my finger over the lettering. They'd have to believe me now.

“I'll take them.” I followed Counter Girl over to the payment area.

“What day did you say Coco died?” she asked.

“Two weeks ago Thursday,” I said.

She checked a tag on the top binder. “That was the day after I called her to tell her the order was ready.” She shook her head. “She said she'd come by the next afternoon before it got dark.” She shivered. “Wow. Creepy.”

And another piece of the puzzle fell into place. Coco had closed the shop early to come to Amherst to pick up the business plan copies.

Except she hadn't picked them up. And she hadn't left the shop. And she hadn't turned on the lights. And she didn't have glass on her shoes.

I hugged the binders to my chest as I left the shop. I had a lot more questions, but at least I had proof that I wasn't a liar and that Coco hadn't planned on retiring.

*   *   *

On the way
home, I called Garrett and asked him to meet me at Dan and Haley's. They were all there together when I got back from Amherst. I plunked the binders down on the dining room table in front of them and said, “See? I told you so.”

“What are we looking at?” Garrett took the top binder and pulled it over to himself.

“The business plan Coco was making for us.” I drew myself up taller.

“Where did you get these, Rebecca?” Dan's voice was unexpectedly sharp.

“From the FedEx in Amherst. Coco took them there to be copied and put in the binders.” It was so like her to have the plan organized into sections with tabs and dividers and everything. I'd glanced through. There were even charts and graphs. Charts and graphs were serious stuff.

“She told you that?” Dan asked.

“No.” I was starting to feel like I'd missed something. There was something in his tone.

“Then how did you know to get them there?” His tone was even sharper than it had been before.

“I found the little ticket thing they give you when you drop something off. You know, like the thingie for the dry cleaner.” I realized now what extremely thin ice I was treading on.

“Where did you find it?” Dan's shoulders were tense, and I could see the muscles in his jaw as he clenched his teeth.

I stared at him. The clock in the hallway ticked each second as we sat there, eyes locked. Light glinted on his badge. Finally, I said, “You can't possibly believe that I had anything to do with Coco's death. You just can't.”

“You're not giving me a lot of choice, Rebecca.” He started ticking items off on his fingers. “You were the last one to leave the shops that night. You've been caught rifling through her papers in her house and in her shop. You have a long-standing feud with her heir. Go ahead and stop me anytime.”

“Fine. I will. I have keys—keys that Coco gave me—to both her shop and her house. Why on earth would I have bashed in the back window of her shop when I could just let myself in with the key?” I leaned forward, glaring.

“I don't know.” He leaned forward, too. “Maybe to make
it look like someone had broken in, to cover your tracks. That would explain why there was glass on the bottom of Coco's cane, but none on the bottom of her shoes. Whoever staged that scene used the cane to bash in the window. Plus, the only fingerprints on that damn cane were yours. There weren't even any of Coco's prints on it.”

“So you're drinking the Jessica Kool-Aid, too? You think I had something to do with Coco's death?” I could not believe this. I could not believe Dan would take Jessica's side over mine. “The cane had my fingerprints because I moved it aside to get to Coco!”

“There is no Kool-Aid, and I'm investigating this case. Everyone is a suspect until I say they're not, and you're not helping by going into people's houses and offices and removing evidence.” Dan threw his hands up in the air.

I leaned over the table to look at him eye-to-eye. “Well, somebody has to look at the evidence.”

Dan's face flushed and I realized I'd gone too far. If I could have grabbed those words and stuffed them back in my mouth, I would have. Being a chef has taught me to eat just about anything, but rarely my own words. I dropped my head. “I'm sorry, Dan. I didn't mean that.”

Dan didn't answer for a second. Finally, he said, “I think you better go, Bec. Try to stay out of trouble, will you?”

I left, but with a backward look over my shoulder at Dan and Haley. Dan gripped the edge of the dining room table so hard his knuckles were turning almost as white as Haley's face had gone. I waved and went out the door.

*   *   *

I trudged up
the stairs to the apartment with Sprocket on my heels. We went in and I looked around at my apartment. It didn't feel fun and colorful anymore. It looked
stupid. Like a child with a too-big box of Crayolas had gone wild in it.

I'd found the business plan, the one that was supposed to prove that I wasn't a loser, and it hadn't proved anything. Even my sister and my best friend didn't think it proved anything. And now, to make matters worse, I'd insulted them.

Maybe I should give up. I'd tried. I'd tried super hard. I'd worked long hours. I'd made plans. I'd tried new things. Where had it gotten me?

Back where I'd been in high school. Feeling like the whole town was against me. Feeling completely alone. Feeling like a total failure.

Antoine wanted me back. It's not like life with him was so miserable. I'd lived in a beautiful home in one of the most gorgeous areas of the country. I was constantly being given fabulous food and amazing wine. I didn't even have to work if I didn't want to and if I did want to, I would have connections everywhere. People would bend over backward to be nice to me so they could get close to Antoine. So what if I'd been abandoned in Minneapolis in January? It's not like he didn't get me on the next plane to Miami. Everybody forgets his wife in a frozen tundra once in a while, right?

All it would take would be one phone call. One word from me. That life could be mine again. I started to reach for my cell phone, but Sprocket chose that moment to bound up into my lap and lick the tears from my face. Stupid dog. Salt water just makes you more thirsty. I'd barely gotten him back down on the floor when there was a knock at the door.

“Rebecca? You in there?” It was Garrett.

“What do you want?” I asked, not getting up to answer the door.

“You forgot the business plans. I, uh, thought you might want them, so I brought them up.”

I should probably have told him to go burn them, but then I remembered all the work Coco had put into them. Maybe I should keep them if only as a memento of her sharp brain. I walked over and opened the door.

“Nice of you to carry my books for me,” I said, standing back to let him in.

“I try to be chivalrous to my clients even when they're going out of their way to incriminate themselves. You got that ticket out of Coco's house the night you broke in there, didn't you?” He handed me the binders.

“I didn't break in! I had keys!” Why couldn't anyone understand that? “And I didn't find the ticket there. I found her to-do list there.”

“Stop splitting hairs, Rebecca.” Garrett sounded almost as weary as Dan had.

“They're not hairs. They're facts. I didn't break in any more than I broke into her office where I found that FedEx ticket.” If you can't come clean to your lawyer, who can you come clean to?

Garrett groaned. “Seriously? Her office, too?”

“Yes. Her office, too.” Why not let it all hang out?

“Did anyone see you?” he asked.

“Only Annie.” She wouldn't rat me out. At least, she wouldn't unless she got on the “I hate Rebecca” bandwagon everyone else was riding.

“Not a good idea, Rebecca.” He shook his head.

“Says who?” I flopped down on the couch.

“Grand Lake's preeminent defense attorney.” He made a bow before sitting down next to me.

I snorted. “Preeminent defense attorney? How'd you get that title?”

“Well, I am currently representing one hundred percent of the murder suspects in Grand Lake. That is if you still count
Jasper as a murder suspect since the judge let him off with time served for his assault on Huerta with the frying pan.” He stretched his long arm out over the back of the couch.

“There are two of us. I think your statistics are spurious. Or maybe they're specious. I can never keep those two straight.” Plus, my head hurt. Maybe my heart hurt a little, too.

“The important thing about both of them is that they both mean I'm at least right on the surface.” Damn, he looked smug when he smiled.

“And the surface is where it stops. Neither Jasper nor I killed Coco, and you know it. So does Dan.” I pulled the afghan over my lap.

“I know it. You know it. Dan knows it. At this rate, though, I'm not one hundred percent sure the district attorney knows it, and I'm really not one hundred percent sure that the people of Grand Lake, at least some of whom would be in your jury pool, know it,” he said.

“Jury pool?” I squeaked. “I'm going to be tried?”