Flamingo Diner (9 page)

Emma considered the idea, then dismissed it. They had to economize any way they could. They would have to manage on their own. “I don’t think so. We need every penny.”

Andy nodded, looking even more defeated.

“I’ll talk to Mama, tonight,” Emma promised. “If she came back, it would be a huge help.”

“What about Jeff?”

“Of course, we could use him, too, but I have no idea where he is.” She gazed into her brother’s eyes. “Do you?”

Andy shrugged. “Probably with that girl he’s been seeing.”

That Jeff had a steady girlfriend was news to Emma, but she had been out of touch with him for a long time. “Is it anyone we know?”

“I’ve never seen her,” Andy admitted. “Neither
have Mom and Dad. Jeff doesn’t say too much about her.”

Emma couldn’t help wondering why Jeff would be so secretive if the girl was someone special to him. “Do you have the impression it’s serious?”

Andy hesitated, looking torn. “I probably shouldn’t say anything. It’s not like I really know.”

“Know what? Andy, we’re on the same side here.”

“Are we?” he asked, his skepticism plain.

It was obvious he still didn’t entirely trust her, Emma thought with regret. He might never trust her again the way he once had. “Of course we’re on the same side. We both want what’s best for Jeff.”

“Then I don’t think it’s this girl,” Andy said.

“Why not?”

“I’m pretty sure they get together just to smoke pot and have sex. Jeff hasn’t said that exactly, just that she’s pretty wild and she’s hot, stuff like that.”

“I see,” Emma said wearily. Jeff wouldn’t be the first guy to choose a girl who liked to have fun over one who was more respectable or more appropriate. He was only twenty, after all, probably a long way from wanting to settle down.

It was just that right now, when he was filled with so much rage, a girl like that might tempt him into doing something that could ruin his life. They could end up arrested or, in some ways even worse, married.

“You’re not going to tell him I said anything, are you?” Andy asked, looking worried.

Emma forced a smile. “I know you’re still mad at me, but you know perfectly well that I never tattle.” She reached across the table and ruffled his hair. “I never told anyone it was you who broke Mama’s little porcelain statue of the Virgin Mary, remember?”

Andy flushed. “I’m still saying Hail Marys for that one. I should probably just confess to Mom.”

“Up to you,” Emma said. “But you might feel better, if you did, even if it was years and years ago. She loved that statue.”

“Because it was Abuela Conchita’s,” Andy said, his regret apparent. “She brought it from Cuba.”

“Tucked inside her bra,” Emma said, adding the footnote that always went with the story.

They fell silent then, sipping their soft drinks, trying to gather the strength necessary just to mop the floor and head home.

“Emma?”

“What?”

“Would it be better if we just sold this place like Mama and Jeff said?”

“Is that what you want?”

Andy regarded her with a forlorn expression. “I always thought I’d go to college and then come back and run it after Dad retired. I like working here. I like listening to what’s going on around town. There’s something special about Flamingo Diner, don’t you think?”

Emma tried to see what Andy saw, but she wasn’t entirely sure she did. She knew she hadn’t run across anyplace like it in Washington, but she hadn’t really looked. When she went out for a cup of coffee, she didn’t expect to have the shop owner greet her by name or ask about her work. All she wanted was decent coffee.

She could see, though, how people might come to a place like this and feel as if they were part of an extended family. For many of the seniors who stopped by, there was a comfort in knowing that Don
or Rosa or one of the other regular customers would worry if they failed to show up, that someone would inevitably check on them.

Ever since the funeral, the customers had returned the favor, offering support of all kinds. At first Emma had been taken aback. She’d grown used to keeping her personal business to herself. But after a few days, she had taken comfort in the genuine outpouring of warmth and concern.

She met Andy’s gaze at last and slowly nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Flamingo Diner is a special place, and if it’s where you want to spend your future, then we’ll do whatever it takes to make that possible.”

Her brother’s expression brightened at once. “I wouldn’t really need to go to college, if I’m just going to run this place. I could learn everything I need to know right here. Jeff could teach me some of the business management stuff he’s learned.”

“You’re going to college,” Emma said flatly. “That’s what Dad wanted for you and a business degree certainly won’t hurt when it comes to keeping this place in the black.”

He laughed then, the sound music to her ears. It was the first unrestrained display of real emotion he’d allowed himself in front of her since he’d told her he hated her.

“You sound exactly like Dad,” he explained.

“Well, he was right about most things.”

The laughter immediately faded. “Not lately,” he said, sounding bleak. “He’d changed, Em. I told you that when I called you. Nothing I ever did was right. If there was any kind of mistake, he was always sure it was my fault. He didn’t ask, he just blamed me. It wasn’t like that before. He told me when I screwed
up, but he was patient about it, you know? Lately, though, it was like everything was the end of the world.”

That certainly didn’t sound like her father. Emma had never known him to be either harsh or unfair. “Sweetie, there’s no question that he had something terrible weighing on him. I wish I’d listened to you and come home. Maybe he would have told me, but if he didn’t tell Mom, then I imagine he wouldn’t have said anything to me, either. Whatever that something was, it made him do and say things he didn’t mean. You have to forgive him.”

“Have you forgiven him for dying?” Andy asked pointedly.

Emma wished she could say with conviction that it hadn’t been his choice to die, but she couldn’t. All she could manage to say with honesty was that it was normal to be angry when someone died. She reached for her brother’s hand. “We’ll just have to work harder to get past the anger and hurt.”

And in the meantime, it wouldn’t hurt to go looking for answers she knew were out there, because without them, forgiveness was going to be a whole lot more difficult.

M
att was sitting behind his desk when Emma came striding into his office, looking as if she were about to embark on a crusade for truth and justice. Despite her pallor, despite the evidence that she’d lost a few pounds she couldn’t spare since coming home, she still looked beautiful to him. But it was the shadows in her gorgeous dark-brown eyes that almost did him in. He could almost hate Don Killian for putting them there and for putting him in the position of having to give her news she most likely didn’t want to hear, despite her claims to the contrary.

“You have a minute?” she asked, sitting down opposite him without waiting for a reply.

“For you, always. What’s up?”

Now that she had his attention, she seemed to be at a loss for words.

“You’re here about your father,” he said, relieving her of the need to tell him.

She nodded, her expression grim. “Do you know anything more?”

“Anything conclusive beyond a doubt? No. I spoke with the medical examiner earlier. I think he’s going to come out with a ruling, probably later today, that it was an accident.”

A faint spark of hope filled her eyes, then faded.
“But you don’t believe that, any more than I do, do you?”

“I’m sorry, Emma, but truthfully, no.”

“Did you tell the ME that?”

Matt met her gaze. “I thought about it.”

“And?”

“What would be the point? It wouldn’t change anything. It would only make your mother, Jeff and Andy even unhappier than they already are. I wish you could accept it and move on, too.”

She returned his gaze, looking torn. “I wish I could let it go. I really do,” she said. “But I can’t. I need answers. What convinced you it was a suicide?”

Matt told her about the tool found in the car’s console that would have allowed Don to free himself and escape from the car. “The console wasn’t even open. To me, that was a dead giveaway, especially in light of the fact that there was no evidence that he’d suffered any injuries in the crash or that he’d had a heart attack or stroke. He died from drowning.”

“In other words, he just sat there and waited to die.” Emma swiped at the tears on her cheeks. “It must have been so horrible for him. Why would he do such a thing?”

Matt had been waiting for that question. Emma wasn’t the first person grieving over a sudden loss who had come to him for answers. He’d never had them before. He most assuredly didn’t have them now. He fell back on platitudes and statistics. “People who commit suicide are usually under a great deal of pressure. They don’t see any other way out. Sadly, it’s a permanent solution to what most likely is a temporary problem, but they can’t accept that.”

She frowned at him. “I could have read that in a book.”

He shrugged. That was exactly where he’d read it the first time he’d had to handle a suicide. In that case it had been a jumper, who’d refused to listen to any of the officers trying to intervene. At least with that man, they’d had a slim chance. Don had made sure no one could even try to talk him out of it. He’d driven to the lake alone, late at night, making certain that his nearly submerged car wouldn’t be discovered until it was too late.

“It’s the best I can do,” he told Emma. “I wish I had something concrete to tell you about your father.”

“But you knew him, Matt,” she protested. “You’ve been back awhile now. I imagine you’ve been in and out of the diner a thousand times. Surely you noticed something aside from the fact that he was short-tempered. Was he worried about something? Distracted? Anything at all unusual?”

As he had a hundred times recently, Matt thought back over the weeks leading up to Don’s death, but there was still only one clue. “The way he was snapping at your mom and Andy is the only thing that sticks out in my mind. I wish there were something more I could tell you, Emma.”

“If he was treating my mom and my brother like that, why didn’t you say something? Why did you just let it pass?” she asked, her voice rising.

Matt understood her anger. “In retrospect, I wish I had confronted him, but at the time, I thought it was just a bad patch. People hit them all the time.”

“This one was so bad, he killed himself,” Emma retorted. “And you did nothing! How could you?”

The accusation stung more than she could possibly realize. Matt wanted to rush around the desk and hold her, tell her that no one had guessed Don was so desperately depressed that he would end his own life, not even Rosa, who had known him better than anyone. Because his own sense of guilt ran deep, he didn’t say a word, didn’t try to defend his decision to give Don a little space to work things out on his own.

Finally Emma sighed. “I know it’s not your fault, Matt. I do. But it’s awful knowing that he was so desperate and felt he couldn’t turn to anyone. Maybe if I’d been here—”

“Stop that right now. Thinking about what might have been won’t do you or anyone else any good. I know, darlin’. I’ve never felt more helpless or guilty in my life than I did the night I found that car. I’ve gone over and over that day and the days before it trying to come up with something I could have done differently, but your dad wasn’t the kind of man to open up about his problems. He solved everyone else’s, but whatever issues he had, he kept to himself.”

“I know,” she whispered, swiping furiously at the tears tracking down her cheeks. “And I also know it’s too late to fix things, but I still need to know what drove him to it. Maybe then I’ll be able to find some peace. Please, Matt. Help me find some answers. Where can we start?”

Matt suspected Don had deliberately set out to make the cause of his death seem ambiguous. He’d left no note offering a tidy explanation. Maybe he’d thought he was sparing the family, rather than causing them even more anguish. Maybe it had been a matter of the insurance money, thinking it would help them
move on with their lives. If his death were ruled a suicide, whatever policies he had would be null and void. He wondered if Emma understood that.

He also knew that anything else Emma discovered, no matter how it stacked up, would never be conclusive proof of anything. The best Emma would ever have would be circumstantial evidence and speculation.

“Will it really help?” he asked, hoping to convince her to let it go. “No matter what we find, it will still only be conjecture. And, in the end, it won’t really change anything, except the fact that there will be no insurance money.”

She paled at that. “I hadn’t considered that. We need that money.”

He heard the edge of panic in her voice. “If you need it that badly, then let this drop. Accept the medical examiner’s ruling.”

She seemed to weigh his words for an eternity, then shook her head. “As badly as I want to do that, I can’t. I think it’s important that we understand what was going on in his head, even if we can’t ever say for sure what drove him to kill himself.” She looked more lost and vulnerable than he’d ever seen her look before. “Please.” She picked up a tote bag she’d brought in with her. “I have these.”

She pulled out what looked like accounting books.

“You think there’s something in there?” he asked, surprised. The diner had been in business a long time in a prime location. It was always crowded with customers. By every standard he could imagine, it most certainly had to be a financial success. Some sort of business problem would be the last thing Matt would have suspected.

“I don’t know,” Emma admitted. “The attorney told us some things, then Jeff looked over the records and he says the numbers don’t make sense, that dad was bleeding the business dry. He’d taken out a new mortgage on the house, too. There had to be a reason for it. He’d never been reckless with money. If anything, he was conservative.”

A shudder washed over Matt as he realized why she’d sounded so desperate about the insurance money. He didn’t like the direction this was taking. Suicide was always messy and left families with a million and one questions, but what Emma was suggesting hinted that more had been going on. Blackmail? Gambling losses? Another woman? Whatever it was, it could get ugly. Did she really want to take the chance that her father’s reputation might be tarnished forever, even if the only people who knew were members of his own family? And the odds of keeping the truth secret would diminish with every clue they unearthed. The mere fact that they were conducting an investigation would tell people that he and Emma, at least, didn’t believe the accidental death ruling.

“You might not like what I find,” he warned her. “It’s not just the insurance we’re talking about. Your father’s reputation could be ruined if I discover that he was mixed up in something illegal or immoral.”

She regarded him with a familiar stubborn set to her jaw. “I don’t believe for a minute it was anything illegal or immoral, but whatever it was, I have to know the truth.”

“What about your mom? Would she want this? As devout as she is, would she want to know that Don committed suicide?”

Emma faltered at that. “I don’t know,” she admitted, sounding shaken. “In a weird way, even though we haven’t discussed it, I think she already suspects it. I think that’s why she’s been hiding out in her room.” She regarded Matt wistfully. “Couldn’t we do this quietly, then decide what to tell her?”

“She’ll hear about it if we’re asking questions, Emma.”

“Not if she doesn’t leave the house, and she’s showing no signs of going out.”

“And is that what you want? Do you honestly want her to continue avoiding everyone?”

“No,” she conceded.

“Then you have to sit down and tell her what you’re doing, you have to explain the insurance implications, because once I start looking under rocks, you won’t be able to turn back. The truth will come out, whatever it is. And you won’t be able to hide it from Rosa or Jeff and Andy. They’re hurt and confused now, but at least their memories of your father haven’t been destroyed. At least whatever financial mess your father created would be solved. Think it through, Emma. Maybe it’s best to leave it alone. Pick up the pieces and move on.”

Her hands were clenched together so tightly that her knuckles were white. Matt noticed that, as well as the strain around her mouth. He wondered idly if a kiss would put some color back in her cheeks, maybe soften her lips into a smile. And then he felt like a complete jerk for allowing his thoughts to even stray in that direction when she was in such obvious pain. She didn’t need a momentary distraction. She needed much more from him.

“I’ve been thinking about this for days now. I can’t
move on without answers,” she said finally. “No matter what it costs.”

Matt nodded, knowing he had no choice. He had to help her. She would do this alone, if she had to, and he didn’t want her making whatever discoveries were out there without someone supportive at her side.

“Then we’ll find the answers,” he told her.

She seemed relieved by his response, as if she’d doubted it. “Where should we start?” she asked.

“The books are here. Let’s start with those,” he said. “Unfortunately, I don’t know a thing about accounting procedures or numbers. Do you?”

Emma shook her head. “I can do the day-to-day stuff, but my boss has an outside accountant do the books.”

“Then I know someone who does have some expertise,” he said. “Would you mind if I show them to her?” When Emma looked uncertain, he added, “She’ll be discreet. She’s known your folks for years.” Besides that, it would give him a chance to check out a few of the things Gabe and Harley had said at the reception following the funeral. He’d hesitated about going to see Jennifer before, because of their history. He didn’t want to give her any reason to think he’d had a change of heart about the two of them.

Surprise registered on Emma’s face. “Who is it?”

“Jennifer Sawyer. She was in school with me, so she’s a couple of years older than you. She’s a very successful financial planner, and she’s been a regular at the diner since we were kids.” He deliberately didn’t add that, according to Gabe and Harley, she’d been spending an inordinate amount of time huddled
with Don Killian before his death. Granted, it had been very public huddling, but who knew where that might have led?

“Of course. I remember her,” Emma said, her expression brightening. “She hasn’t been in since I got back, though. May I come with you?”

Matt would have preferred to go alone. He didn’t want Emma picking up on any of the vibes between him and Jennifer. Not that he was either ashamed of the relationship or had any reason to hide it from her, but it would only complicate things. Besides, there was every chance that he’d have better luck getting information from Jennifer if he handled it alone. And if there were any ugly secrets to be uncovered, he wanted the chance to pretty them up before telling Emma.

But these were Emma’s accounting records and Don had been her father. She had a right to come along. Hopefully he wasn’t leading her straight into a quagmire.

“Of course,” he told her, standing up. “Let’s go.”

“Shouldn’t we call first?” she asked, sounding oddly hesitant now that they were about to move forward.

“She’ll be there,” he said wryly. “She doesn’t go anywhere during the day where she can’t keep her eye on the stock exchange ticker tapes.” It hadn’t been the reason he’d stopped seeing her, but it had put some other men off, men who’d wanted to be her first priority.

“Okay, then,” Emma said with obviously forced enthusiasm. “Let’s do it.”

Matt tried to make small talk en route to the office building where many of the brokerages in town main
tained suites. Jennifer’s financial planning firm was in the penthouse, a testament to her success.

When he’d parked down the block from the building, he turned to her. “We don’t have to do this,” he reminded her quietly one last time. “Or I can go in alone.”

“No,” she said, clutching the record books more tightly. “I’m coming.”

On the twelfth floor, the elevator doors whooshed open quietly to admit them to a carpeted suite with dark paneled wood on the walls and Sawyer Financial Services in gold block letters behind a very impressive reception desk.

“Hey, Matt,” Corinne Fletcher said, brightening when she saw him. “What brings you by? I thought…” Her voice trailed off and her eyes widened. “Emma Killian, is that you?”