“That’s what Tito told him. Told him he didn’t want any trouble, Jacob could have his spot if he wanted it, but by then the people from the show decided to go with Fancy.”
Tito’s tacos were still number one in my heart, but Fancy’s Franks didn’t make me sad. I was glad to hear she got the spot, instead of this elusive jerk Jacob and his fish and chips.
I’d never met Jacob. In fact, I had no idea what he looked like because he was always skirting Marvin Wexler, who’d been hanging around a lot at the food court recently.
Patty slapped Levonne on the back with a grin. “Good. I love her hot dogs. They’re amazing, and Jacob doesn’t deserve to have a spot on the show anyway. It’s bad enough we have to put up with him here in Ebenezer Falls, but to foist him on America once a week? No one would ever visit here if they thought that was how we all behaved. We’d lose all our tourism.”
Levonne chuckled and nodded, wiping his brow with a rag he pulled from the back pocket of his jeans. “Ya think he’s the one who did it?”
Patty stopped looking at the selection of crepes. “Did what?”
“Killed the old man, a’course! Po-lice was here askin’ all sorta questions this mornin’ ’bout the altercation.”
Patty’s mouth dropped open, her eyes growing watery. “He was
killed
? Someone killed Tito?” she asked, low and hoarse, looking surreptitiously at the very small lunch crowd.
“The gut never lies,” Win murmured.
I closed my eyes to keep from sobbing out loud and kept pretending I was writing out the longest check in the history of checks.
“Ain’t no other reason for the boys in blue to poke around the way they was, is there? They locked up Tito’s truck tight, gonna haul it away for evidence later today.”
Patty worried her bottom lip before she clenched her fists. “How awful for Mateo and Juan Felipe. How will they survive without the truck? It’s how they make their living, for Pete’s sake. You know how long these investigations can take, Levonne. They could have that truck for months. Tito saved for years to put a down payment on it while he worked on Stedman Mead’s fishing boat. If Jacob was the one who killed him, I’ll be the first in line to burn him at the stake!”
“Be right behind ya,” Levonne muttered, shaking his head as he and Patty headed back to their trucks.
I stood alone for a moment, dropping my check in the bucket and thinking about how awful this had to be for the Bustamante boys. This
was
how they made their living. If the police kept their truck, they’d have no income.
“I think it’s time to step up our game, Stevie,” Win remarked in my ear. “Mateo and Juan Felipe need this truck to eat, to take care of Maggie.”
“You read my mind,” I muttered back.
“Afternoon, Stevie.”
I looked up to see Sandwich. As he approached me, big and lumbering, I found I was still a little nervous around him. After all, it was only just last month when I’d knocked him down a flight of steps, sprained his ankle, and almost got him into trouble with his superiors for fraternizing with a suspect.
To say I was hesitant with him at this point would be putting things mildly. “Hey, Sandwich, er, Lyn. How are you?”
I kept forgetting to address him with his grown-up name, but he’d always be Sandwich from high school for me. The guy who ate a sardine sandwich with sweet pickles and mayo on a dare then threw it up all over our principal.
Sliding his hands into his pockets, he rocked back on his heels. “I’m good. Real good.”
Looking up at him, I cupped my hand over my eyes to block out the glare of the sun. “Sooo, what’s new?” I hedged, unsure how to broach the subject of Tito and the word “murder”, but I had to know if he knew anything.
As I wound up, Sandwich held up a beefy hand. “Before you start asking questions about Tito, let’s get one thing clear—”
“How do you know I was going to ask you questions about Tito?” I tucked my purse securely over my shoulder. “Maybe I was just being neighborly.”
He looked skeptical. “I’m not your neighbor.”
Sandwich had left the building and Officer Paddington had arrived. Look out.
I gave him a curt nod. “True that. You’re an officer of the law. Sorry I let myself get carried away and made it sound like we were friendly or something.”
Sandwich’s face went suddenly mopey and red from the heat. “Aw, heck, Stevie. Don’t be like that. Already we’re off on the wrong foot. I gotta do my job. Why’s that so hard to understand?”
I tightened the grip on my purse. I’d been the subject of him just “doing his job” once before and it landed me in an interrogation I’d not soon forget. “Is that why you’re here? Doing your job?”
Now he switched back to his professional face, all serious with a stab at commanding. “Yep. Officer Nelson saw you here yesterday fishing around the back of Tito’s truck, and he wondered if maybe you could offer some helpful information.”
As the warm breeze ruffled my dress, a prickle of apprehension skittered up my spine. “About?”
“Stevie…” he warned, pursing his lips.
I threw my hands up in the air. “What? I don’t know what I’m supposed to inform you of. The last time I cooperated with the police, I ended up downtown. Remember that?” I just liked giving him a hard time. I wasn’t really still grudging—not with him, anyway.
“What were you doing at the time Tito was killed?”
“Me? I was auditioning for
America’s Next Top Model
,” I said on a curtsy. Holding out the hem of my vintage sundress, and with hand on hip, I struck a pose.
Sandwich tried to give me his “I’m in an official capacity” look, but I noted it was an effort. “Stevie,
please
cooperate.”
I paused as though in thought. “Wait, this was yesterday, right? Maybe it was
Survivor
. I can’t keep track of my reality shows anymore.”
“Everyone else who was in or around the area at the time gave a statement,
willingly
. Why can’t you just make my job easier?”
My ears perked up. “Did anyone make a statement about Jacob from Deep Sea Diver? Is he a suspect?”
Sandwich was on to me after our last tango in Paris. He clamped his lips shut for a moment then said, “You know I can’t tell you that, Stevie. You don’t want to thwart justice, do you?”
“Oh, nice turn of the table, Copper! Using my code of ethics against me. Okay, fine,” I conceded. “So yesterday, let me see… Oh yes. I remember. I was in the store doing a reading for Edward Randolph.”
He pulled a pad from the pocket of his uniform. “The late Kitty Talucci’s boyfriend? The burlesque dancer?”
“That’s the one. And
he
can give you a statement. I was nowhere near the food court until I heard someone scream during the reading. Which means I have an alibi.”
“And what can you tell me about last night?”
“Last night?”
“Yep. What did you do?”
I scratched my head and lifted my sunglasses, unsure what he meant. “Um, I made a PB&J, had two chocolate Pop-Tarts, washed it all down with a big glass of milk. Looked over some of the estimates for the proposed sunroom off the kitchen. Crazy expensive, by the way. Do you have any idea how much glass windows with screens cost for a room that size in Mayhem Manor? A fortune, I say. Then I watched
How To Get Away With Murder
. Not for reference, mind you. Just because I love a good mystery, as you well know. Brushed my teeth and hit the sack at like midnight.”
Sandwich’s usually innocent, jovial eyes narrowed—in aggravation, I’m sure. “That’s not what I meant, Stevie.”
Putting a hand on my hip, I got indignant. “Okay, so what
did
you mean, Officer Paddington?”
“I meant what did you do with the Bustamantes last night?”
Now I bristled. I held readings on par with attorney/client privilege. A reading was confidential and whatever happened was no one’s business but the client’s. “How did you know about that?”
“I’m a police officer. It’s my job to sniff around. I was canvassing the area, and I saw them all go into your shop. So why were they there?”
“I gave them a reading, of course. That’s what I do.”
His dark eyebrow lifted. Now he was in full cop mode. “And what happened in that reading?”
“Elvis showed up, demanding to know how his life had been reduced to buffets, slot machines and chapels of love in Vegas named after him.”
“Stevie?”
“Yes, Sandwich?”
“Do I have to take you into the station to get some answers?”
Déjà vu
, folks.
Déjà vu.
“
Y
ou can’t be serious, Sandwich. I don’t know anything, and whatever the Bustamantes told me in that reading is confidential. Period. I won’t answer any questions about it unless you’re going to get a warrant—or whatever it is you do when you want to squeeze a perp for info.”
“We don’t squeeze perps. That’s only on TV.”
“You do, too. You’re very squeez-y. Just ask Sipowicz and Simone. Believe me, they know how to squeeze.”
“Are they the same as Starsky and Hutch?” he asked, referring to my comment yesterday about those two overeager detectives who’d grilled me to within an inch of my life back when I was accused of murdering MZ.
“One in the same.”
“So you’re refusing to tell me what happened in the reading?”
“You bet your bippy I am. A reading is confidential to the client and me, and I’m not giving anything up. I don’t know if that’s legal or not, but it’s just the way I roll. So now what? Do I once again offer you my wrists for some cellblock jewelry? Because we’ve done this before. Just say the word and I’ll go willingly and wait for my attorney to arrive so he can poke holes in your stupid arrest.”
“I’ve listened to enough of this nonsense, Stevie!” Win protested. “He’s simply pushing you around because he can use his badge to do so. I mostly like Sardine, but the way he’s going about asserting himself these days is ludicrous. He can’t arrest you for something that isn’t recognized legally. Legally, psychics, mediums…
magicians
, for that matter, aren’t considered reliable sources. Say as much before I set his pants on fire.”
“You can set fires?” I blurted before I realized I had.
“Set fires? Me?” Sandwich asked, his brow furrowing in a frown as the sun beat down on his red face.
Win’s sigh grated. “No. I don’t think so. But I’m going to give it the old college try if he doesn’t leave you alone. This is harassment.”
I pressed my hand to my ear where my Bluetooth was and pointed to it when I looked at Sandwich. “Sorry. Got a call from the contractor. It was a bad connection. So, where are we at? Am I going to the klink again or not? I seem to be everyone’s go-to for murder these days.”
His lips did that clamping-into-a-thin-line thing again, a sure sign of his disapproval. “No one said anything about murder, Stevie. You know the papers always sensationalize.”
“That’s what everyone said the last time they tore my house up and it wasn’t murder. So, if we have nothing else to discuss, if you can’t force me to tell you any more than I already have, I’m going to go get a hot dog for lunch. Are we done?”
Jamming his pad back into the pocket of his shirt, he sighed. “We’re done.”
Clenching my jaw, I looked up at him one last time. “Always good seeing you, Sandwich. Can’t wait ’til the next non-murder to chat again.”
Then I stomped off, my appetite gone. Crossing the street toward Forrest’s coffee shop, I pressed my finger to my Bluetooth. “So obviously, it’s officially murder.”
“The gut never lies, Stevie.”
“Winterbutt’s right,” Bel chirped from my purse. “I figured murder, too.”
“So now what? Do we press the Bustamantes? Maggie’s in such an awful place and Bianca’s just awful. Maybe we talk to the boys?”
“I say we dig around and see if we can find something on this Jacob. Can’t say I’ve ever seen him, but he surely fits the bill where sketchy’s concerned, wouldn’t you agree?” Win asked.
I nodded, stopping before entering the coffee shop. “So, beef with Tito—who had some? Gimme the rundown please, Bel.”
“We’ve got Jacob the fishmonger. Maybe the kid you saw yesterday, and that’s mostly it. Though, you might wanna check and see if anyone else was bent outta shape because Tito got the spot on that show. Also, couldn’t hurt to talk to Tito’s old boss. Maybe he knows somethin’ about Tito’s extracurriculars. I’m kinda with you on the Bustamantes, though. I don’t think any of them had anything to do with it.”
“You know what I want to know? Who told Maggie about this son of Tito’s? How did she find out to begin with?
When
did she find out? I hate to say it, but visiting Maggie might be a priority. The only thing I do know is we can’t let them take the Bustamante boys’ livelihood away, Win. They work hard. And Tito worked hard to get that truck and make it a success. Even just a couple of days could really trash everything they’ve accomplished.”
“Then I suggest we find this Jacob and begin there. But I warn you, Stevie, you must be careful. He sounds quite violent.”
“Any more violent than the last guy who held me at gunpoint? Don’t worry. I can take him. All that spy training will be put to good use if he comes for me.”
“All that spy training, my dove? Ten sit-ups does not a spy make.”
“She did thirteen, Winterbutt,” Belfry twittered in my defense. “Lay off her. Who are you? Jillian Michaels?”
“That’s true. I did do thirteen.” Thirteen of the ugliest moments of my life, but I’d done them.
“You did maybe five genuine sit-ups. The remaining eight hardly count. You can’t use the leg of a chair to pull yourself up, Stevie. It’s cheating.”
“Picky-picky, Spy Dude. Five is a good darn start.” Even if those five had taken every last breath I had right out of me.
“But not a good enough start if Jacob is a volatile man. Men like that use their fists to talk.”
“Then I’ll make sure I have the leg of a chair nearby to help me in case of emergency.”
“This is not a joke, Stevie. I do not approve of you speaking to Jacob alone. I said I’d look out for you, and I intend to do just that.”
He’d said that to Baba Yaga…
Everything came to a screeching halt for me in that second in time as I began to put something together that, in my stupidly trusting nature, had never occurred to me before. I had to ask and get it off my chest or it would drive me crazy.