Final Sentence (28 page)

“Why would you think—”

“I’m as woo-woo connected as she is.”

Aunt Vera caught up with us in the hall between the café and the shop. “I heard that, Miss Casey.”

Katie plowed past her, holding the platter as if it were a peace offering. “Puu puu?”

“Do not make fun of my powers.” Aunt Vera selected a meatball.

“I would never make fun. I’m in total awe.”

My aunt brandished the meatball on its skewer. “I’ll have you know I’ve been much more spiritually attuned ever since we opened the shop.”

I gawked. “Aunt Vera, you’re not telling me that we have ghosts, are you? If Dad finds out, he will cart you off to an asylum so fast your head will spin.”

Katie guffawed. “I get it. That’s an
Exorcist
reference.”

“No, it wasn’t. Not intentionally.” I hadn’t read the book nor seen the movie. Never would. Reading about some topics, such as body snatchers and freaky possessed kids, didn’t sit well with me. “Aunt Vera?”

“Too-ra-loo. I haven’t communed with any ghosts . . . yet.” She downed the meatball and hummed her approval. “I simply feel I have something to live for. Busy-ness is good for the soul.”

“I wholeheartedly agree.” Katie set the platter on the vintage kitchen table and folded her large frame into one of the chairs. “Now fill me in on the reason you’re both at the shop.”

“Our darling Jenna has been snooping again,” Aunt Vera said.

“Clearing my name,” I argued.

“Putting herself in harm’s way.”

Katie folded her arms in judgment. “So, what you’re saying, Vera, is you brought her here so you could keep an eye on her.”

“I never said . . .” Aunt Vera fanned the air. “Okay. Yes. Whatever. I’m worried and so is her father and Lola.”

“I’m fine,” I assured them.

Katie thumped the table. “I’m on pins and needles. Spill.”

I told her about the brunch and Lola’s intel that led me to track down Anton at his hotel and how he revealed he was a gambler, but afterward, he bolted. “If he was innocent, why would he run off, right?” My cell phone rang. The display read:
Private caller.
I usually didn’t answer those calls—most of them political robo-calls—but something in my gut told me to respond.

“Miss Hart,” Cinnamon Pritchett said through the receiver.

“Oh, phew, Anton d’Stang contacted you.”

“No. Why would he?”

“Because . . .” I paused. “Why are you calling me then?”

Cinnamon cleared her throat. “A witness implicating you in Miss Divine’s murder has come forward.”

I gaped. Please tell me this wasn’t about the idiotic photograph in my father’s hardware store. I had pushed that notion from my mind.

“You were overheard talking to Mr. Hessman in a café.”

I started to vibrate, head to toe. My conversation with J. P. was days ago. What had I said? What had been misconstrued? “Who is the witness? What did she say?”

“My mother heard from a third party that you told Mr. Hessman you were so jealous of Desiree that you wanted to kill her.”

“Are you kidding me? Yes, I said I was jealous, but I didn’t say—” I blew out a burst of air. My life was turning into a bad game of
Telephone
. “You do realize your mother has it in for me, don’t you? Way back when, she had a crush on my father. She thinks my mother stole him away from her. She hates both of my siblings and me. You can’t possibly believe her.”

“I have to follow every clue. That’s my job. My duty.”

“You follow the rules. I got it. My father set you on the straight and narrow. But this time—”

Before I could say more, my aunt wrestled the phone from my grasp and said, “Cinnamon Pritchett, this is Vera Hart. You know perfectly well what’s going on. Your mother is muckraking.” I heard Cinnamon respond but couldn’t make out the words. “Listen to me, young lady. If you want to arrest my niece, then arrest her; otherwise, stop harassing her. There’s no way in heaven she killed her friend, and the sooner you get that into your pretty head, the sooner you’ll find the real killer. That is, if Jenna doesn’t beat you to it.” Aunt Vera puffed with pride. “You heard me right. Jenna is an ace problem solver.”

Katie thwacked my aunt on the arm in support.

“If you want her, come and get her.” Aunt Vera stabbed the End button and handed the cell phone to me.

“Aunt Vera—”

“Don’t thank me, dear. It had to be said.”

I wasn’t about to thank her. I was pretty sure that, push come to shove, Cinnamon Pritchett wouldn’t allow herself to be browbeaten. In fact, I would bet she was on her way to the shop with handcuffs at the ready. I stared out the window and breathed shallowly in my chest while downing another meatball. I would need sustenance in jail.

“Let’s go over this one more time,” Aunt Vera said, cutting into my nightmare about a future behind bars. “What do we really know about suspects other than Anton d’Stang?”

“Gigi Goode.” I ticked my finger. “Motive: to keep Desiree from revealing her proclivity for theft.”

“J.P. Hessman,” Aunt Vera coached.

“Motive: jealousy.” I pictured J.P.’s bulging biceps with the writhing tattoos. He was definitely strong enough to kill Desiree and lug her to the beach, but did he have the artistic ability to create a mermaid sculpture? Maybe I was making too much of that skill. Perhaps a hack could have pulled it off.

“Let’s pin down his alibi.” Aunt Vera shuffled to the cashier’s counter, picked up the telephone, and whistled as she dialed.

“Who are you calling?” I said.

“The Crystal Cove Inn.” Aunt Vera asked for the manager. While waiting, she twirled a tendril of red hair. A moment later, someone came on the line and my aunt said she needed information on J.P. Hessman’s comings and goings. “Uh-huh,” she muttered repeatedly. A short while later, she giggled like a schoolgirl and hung up. “Well, the manager—you know him, with the big handlebar mustache? The man is crazy about me.” Judging by her flirty demeanor, she was crazy about him, too. “He tells me that one of his Russian housekeepers—those girls have relocated here in droves, you know. They share a room and expenses. Anyway, one of the girls saw a man with big muscular arms, tattoos, and funky hair”—Aunt Vera used both hands to outline an imaginary Mohawk—“sneaking around the hotel on the night of the murder.”

Which further corroborated Anton’s story, establishing that J.P. was not in bed, as he claimed.

“The Russian added that she saw Desiree arguing with a young dark-haired woman.”

“Sabrina,” Katie said.

I rose to my feet. “I should go to the inn and talk to the housekeeper. Maybe she—”

A whoop of laughter coming from across the parking lot drew me up short. A pack of teens flew out the front door of Beaders of Paradise. Right behind them charged Pepper wielding a broom.

I dashed outside to help.

“How dare you, you urchins,” Pepper screeched.

The teens, led by the dystopian girl, juggled spools of thread and bags of loose beads as they fled between the Winnebagos and disappeared from sight.

Pepper whirled on me. “What are you staring at?” she sniped and stomped into her store.

I would have felt sympathetic and excused her for her rudeness, except that I was still angry at her for reigniting her daughter’s suspicions about me, and a sudden urge to have it out with her overtook me. I hurried to Beaders of Paradise and plowed inside. I let the front door slam shut. The strands of seashell-shaped beads that served as a window shade clacked with riotous scorn. No customers populated the shop. All the better.

I darted between racks of sparkling beads toward Pepper, who was heading toward the stockroom behind the sales counter. “Who told you that I said I wanted to kill Desiree?” I demanded.

Pepper wheeled around; her nose flared. “Joey.”

Her nephew, the kid who clerked for Rhett. The traitor. And here I thought the kid liked me. “Bullpuckey.” I borrowed Rhett’s semi–curse word, liking the way it tripped off my tongue.

“He was there. He heard you.”

“He’s lying.”

“If he were, you wouldn’t be so upset.”

“Stop. This. Now.” I shook a fist at her.

Pepper gasped. The space went deadly silent.

Heat flooded my cheeks. I lowered my fist and clutched my hands in front of me. “Look, Pepper, I’m sorry it didn’t work out between you and my father. I’m sorry your husband left you and your daughter. I’m sorry for everything. But please, can’t you put the past behind you? You are harassing me out of spite. Can’t you forgive and forget?”

“No. Never.”
Pepper jammed the butt end of the broom on the floor. “Leave.”

As I fled, I heard her weeping.

Chapter 21

I
TRUDGED INTO THE
Cookbook Nook. Katie was nowhere to be seen. Aunt Vera fiddled with the new display of foodie bookmarks, all hanging by their cute tassels. She glanced at me, her face pinched with apprehension. “What happened?”

“I ran into Pepper’s shop, and I . . . I . . .” I pulled free and flung myself into a chair by the vintage kitchen table. “I wish . . . No, I regret my behavior just now. I wanted to sock her in the nose.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No.”

Aunt Vera inhaled and petted the amulet around her neck. “Not to worry then. I’ll patch things up.”

“How can you?”

“That’s not your concern. It’s mine. Pepper is my tenant. My contemporary. I’ll think of something.” Aunt Vera sat in a chair opposite me. “Now, you said you wanted to go to the Crystal Cove Inn and talk to the housekeeper. Might I recommend against that? You don’t want the woman to lose her work visa, do you?”

“Why would she lose . . .” I paused. “Oh, I get it. She doesn’t have a visa at all. She’s an illegal.”

“My manager friend didn’t suggest she come forth as a witness because the murder happened elsewhere.”

“Do you know if the housekeeper can pinpoint what time she saw J.P.?”

“She wasn’t sure. The next morning, she knocked on his door. No answer. She entered and was shocked to find him passed out on top of the bed, bare naked.”

“Didn’t he have a
Do Not Disturb
sign on his door?”

“Guess not.”

Unless I could confirm that J.P. met with Desiree after she left the Chill Zone Bar, I had nothing. “I’ll find other witnesses. I’ll question the bartender and the waitresses.”

“Don’t you think Chief Pritchett has done that?”

“Even if she has, it never hurts to have a second opinion.” At Taylor & Squibb, my superior demanded a comparative analysis. A client couldn’t be expected to sink millions into a campaign without one. “I was planning on going out for drinks with Katie. Instead of Vines, we’ll go to the Chill Zone Bar.”

“Great idea, and ask Bailey to join you.”

“Bailey?”

Aunt Vera bobbed her chin toward the stockroom. “She came in while you visited Pepper.”

Visited. Ha!

“She looks a little blue.”

Earlier at the diner, Bailey had mentioned a doctor’s appointment. Was something wrong? Was she sick?

Aunt Vera tapped her heart with her fingertips. “My sixth sense tells me she might be suffering man trouble.”

• • •

I LED THE
charge into the Chill Zone Bar. Bailey and Katie followed.

“Hoo-boy, get a load of this place.” Katie twirled in a circle, the skirt of her gingham dress fluting out. “How hip.”

Rays of blue and purple light filtered through a heavy gauze ceiling. Gray leather barrel-style chairs clustered around dark granite tables. Every few feet stood plastic ice sculptures shaped like stacks of two-foot-square ice cubes. Water cascaded out of the tops of the sculptures and down the sides.

“I’ve always wanted to come here,” Katie went on, “but I never had the courage.”

“Why not?” Bailey said. On the way to the bar, I hadn’t found the opportunity to ask her whether anything was bothering her. She didn’t look sad. In fact, she looked radiant, her skin tone rosy, enhanced by the summery orange halter and harem pants she had worn to brunch.

Katie said, “You know, single women, out on the town. Not what Mama expects of me. Or Papa.” Her eyes widened. “Wow. Take a look at the bar.”

A stream of men chatted up women. No families. No children.

“All those selections of rum,” Katie went on. “So much for a glass of wine. I want the jellyfish mojito. According to the description in the cocktail list that the bar posts online, it’s got a real sting to it.” She wended through the chairs and tables to one of the booths along the perimeter of the room.

Bailey and I followed. We ordered from a waitress in a low-cut, electric blue spandex dress—Katie and I opting for the mojitos and Bailey selecting San Pellegrino water, claiming she was the designated driver. Loud instrumental Caribbean music, heavy on the steel drums and maracas, made it nearly impossible to talk.

“Hey.” Bailey pointed at the dance floor. “Isn’t that Desiree’s sister?”