Love You to Death (16 page)

J
olie and Rebecca came shopping with me to buy my dad’s gift, as they had for the past three years. Jolie’s father had died when she was only ten. Rebecca’s was alive and well and had raised her as a single parent when her mother died from cancer when Rebecca was only two. She also had a stepmonster. Rebecca’s dad had remarried when Rebecca was thirteen. The worst possible age for a stepmonster. They barely got along.

But both Jolie and Rebecca understood the strange ritual of buying a present for someone who was no longer alive and going to his birthday party. Jolie visited her father’s grave in Florida—where he’d always wanted to be buried—on his birthday. Rebecca traveled to a different foreign country every year on her mother’s birthday; her mom’s dream had been to travel the world, and Rebecca was keeping something of a travel log for her.

Veronica’s birthday celebrations gave her points with my friends, neither of whom liked her. Jolie had known Veronica since she was six, when we met and became best friends in Mrs. Gleeson’s first-grade class.

“Why do you look so happy?” Jolie asked me as we walked around the men’s department of L.L. Bean (I’d vowed never to shop there again, at least until the case was over, but it
was
my dad’s favorite store).

“I look happy?” I asked, eyeing everything in my path. Nothing I saw was quite right. A sweater? What was the point? A wool throw with a giant moose? Again, the point?

“You do,” Rebecca said, rubbing a cashmere sweater against her cheek. “You look
happy.
”

“Like you’re in love,” Jolie said. “You look the way you did that day I ran into you in the park with Ted.”

I froze. I looked as if I was in love because I was.

“I sort of have a crush on someone inappropriate,” I said.

They laughed. “What else is new?” Rebecca said, tugging on my hair. “Not that there’s anything wrong with crushing on someone totally wrong for you. It’s the American way. I’ve got a new crush on a guy at work—married—and it feels great. I’d never act on it, of course, but at least the crush itself gets my mind off jerkface.”

“You’d better not do anything about the crush,” Jolie said to Rebecca, her finger practically in Rebecca’s face.

“I would never,” Rebecca said. “It’s just nice to have someone to fantasize about. Someone secret. Someone totally inappropriate and forbidden.”

Like Ben.

“So who’s your crush, Abs?” Jolie asked, holding up a huge fleece sweatshirt to her petite frame. “Some new cute guy at work?”

“He’s cute, but he’s not new,” I said. “It’s someone who sounds a lot like your guy, Rebecca. Only he’s not married. It’s Ben.”

“Ben?” Jolie repeated. “Do we know a Ben?”

“Ben Orr,” I said.

“Wait a minute,” Rebecca said. “You mean the cop?”

I nodded.

“You have a crush on the cop who’s investigating you for murder?” Rebecca asked.

“A big hopeless crush,” I said.

“Totally hopeless?” Jolie asked.

I nodded again. “What Rebecca said.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like you did it,” Jolie pointed out. “When he catches whoever did kill Ted, you and Ben will be free to move in together.”

I laughed. “I’d be happy to start with an amazing kiss. Do you know long I’ve been waiting to kiss him? Let alone other things.”

“Since sophomore year of high school,” Jolie said. “That’s a long time.”

“He followed you to Moose City, and you slept at his apartment last night. He’s coming with you to your dad’s party. He’s your boyfriend,” Rebecca said.

“He’s my
police escort,
” I corrected. “A boyfriend doesn’t tell you that if you confess now, he could talk to the prosecutor for you.”

“Except in your case,” Rebecca said, tugging on my hair.

Jolie smiled at me. “On a scale of one to ten, how in love are you?”

“Eleven,” I said.

“Well, no matter what happens,” Jolie said, “we’re here for you. Okay?”

Thank God for good friends.

I’d gotten to know Ben so well I had no doubt what he’d say to that—so good that they’d kill for me?

There was that time in sixth grade when Jolie had punched a boy for telling the class that I’d kissed him with tongue, when it wasn’t true. She nailed him in the stomach in the school yard. She also once told Opal off, something I’d never been able to do as a teenager. And she was the one who’d renamed Veronica
Demonica,
which comforted me when it was true and made me laugh when it wasn’t. The day after my twenty-eighth birthday party, Jolie had called to check on me and told me she’d left a message on Ted’s machine to let him know he was a “total slime-bucket bastard” and that karma would take care of him and his “cousin.”

I glanced at Jolie, peering at the display of chocolate-shaped lobsters. If she’d killed Ted and tried to kill Riley and Tom because they’d dared hurt me, she would have gone after Rebecca’s ex-boyfriend, too. And he was alive and well; I’d spotted him the other day in the window of a restaurant, all cozy with some woman. And Henry would be fish food.

As for Rebecca, we were good friends, but we weren’t on the level of me and Jolie, friends forever. Jolie knew of every one of my boyfriends; Rebecca just the past few years’ worth. Plus, I was one hundred percent sure that Rebecca would never touch a gun.

This whole line of thinking was insane. Jolie wasn’t a killer. Rebecca wasn’t a killer. No one I knew was capable of murder—probably not even Roger, despite being very tall and the owner of a ski cap and a long-standing crush on me.

I would know it in my bones, wouldn’t I?

“Hey, Abby,” Jolie said. “I have a great idea for a gift for your dad. Why don’t you get him a fun picture frame, like this one with the moose on it, and put in a new photo of yourself looking the way you do today?”

“In love and happy,” Rebecca said, nodding. “That’s a great idea.”

“In love and happy?” I repeated. “Try in love with someone who’s investigating me for murder. Someone who thinks I’m capable of committing murder. How happy do you think I really am?”

“You’re happy,” Jolie said. “I know it. Look, like I said, Hot Ben will catch the killer soon, and then you’ll be free to date.”

I smiled. “Let’s hope so.” Thing was, I
was
happy. Despite everything. Because I
was
in love. Which led me back to my inability to fall for the right guy.

Just when I thought Ben couldn’t be any more gorgeous, he turned up—on time, of course—in a charcoal-gray sweater and nice gray pants and shiny black shoes. He looked less like a gun-toting officer of the law and more like a boyfriend dressing up for a family function with his girlfriend.

His girlfriend. I wanted that label.

“You look very nice,” he said, those dark eyes on mine. “Red is your color.”

At the last minute I’d gone for the red wrap dress and my knee-high black boots, which did nothing for making me look innocent. Every time I wore that outfit on a date (not that I was confusing a police chaperone to my late father’s birthday party with a
date
), the guy went sort of nuts about getting it off me. It was clingy and sexy, but not too clingy and sexy. And it was well worth the small fortune it had cost on a shopping trip a few years ago with Opal, who’d insisted I buy it.

“Guys will be putty in your hands,” she’d said, nodding at my ref lection.

I tried to imagine Ben as putty. He was so damned in control of himself!

“You look very nice, too,” I said. “Very uncop-like.”

He laughed. “Good.”

“Could you do me a favor?” I asked him. “Would you take a picture of me? It’s for my dad’s gift. I can print it out and pop it into the cute frame I bought.”

“Sure,” he said, taking my digital camera. He glanced around my apartment. “How about sitting on the sofa, next to the vase of tulips. That’ll be a good shot.”

I sat and waited for the “say cheese.” He spent a few minutes getting the frame just right. “Okay, so move the vase just a smidgen toward you. Okay, now back just a bit. Okay, so sit back, slightly forward—no, straight up. Yes, that’s just right. Okay, on three. One, two, three.”

I had no doubt that my smile was huge and genuine and would tell the world that on the day the photograph was taken, I was, indeed, quite happy. And/or in love.

He handed me the camera and I ran to my bedroom to print out the photograph at my desk. “How is it?” he called out. “Need me to take another?”

I stared at the photograph of me in my red dress, the red tulips at my side, glad that I had the shot stored in my camera. I’d want another for myself. I looked as happy as Jolie said I did.

I looked as if I was in love with the photographer.

“What do you think?” I asked, joining him in the living room. I handed him the moose frame, which now contained the picture.

He looked at it for a long moment. “I’m good.”

Yes, you are,
I thought.

“I think your dad would love this,” he said, handing it back to me.

I carefully tucked the frame into the tissue paper in the gift bag I’d bought. “Are you close with your dad?”

His expression changed for a just a second. “Reasonably.”

“Were you always reasonably close?” I asked, reaching for my gloves and hat.

“Reasonably reasonably close,” he said.

“Too personal?”

He glanced at me, then shook his head. “He did his own disappearing act when my brother died. In a different way than my mother, since he was physically there, which I’ll appreciate for the rest of my life. He stuck around for me. My mother didn’t. I’d just turned seventeen. Suffice it to say it was a very confusing time.”

“So your dad just kind of retreated?” I asked.

“Yeah. That’s a good word for it,” he said, putting his hands into the pockets of his long black coat. “We moved to Massachusetts to be closer to my dad’s mother, and if it hadn’t been for her, I would have been totally lost. I’d wake up in the morning and come downstairs and my dad would already be gone to work, even though he was a lawyer and didn’t have to be at work at seven, and I’d look in the fridge or the cabinets, and there’d be no groceries. There’d be a pile of cash on the counter instead, and a full coffeepot.”

I walked toward him, my coat on my arm. “It sounds very lonely for a seventeen-year-old.”

He took my coat and put it on me, and I thought, but I wasn’t sure, that he lingered for just a moment behind me. “Well, like you once said, loneliness can breed a certain kind of independence. I turned out well.”

“I did, too,” I whispered. “I didn’t turn out to be a cold-blooded murderer.”

He looked at me but didn’t say anything, just held open the door and then locked it behind us. And then we were off in his car, a small black SUV, a couple seemingly headed out on the town on a Saturday night. He didn’t say much as we drove the twenty minutes north to Barmouth.

“Hometown,” he said as he turned off the Barmouth exit. He seemed lost in his own thoughts, so I let the silence be, even though I was full of questions about how he felt about Barmouth and if it brought his memories rushing back and if he was okay. Then again, I doubted Benjamin Orr was ever lost in his own thoughts. He was always at the ready.

We pulled up in front of Veronica’s huge white Colonial with its pretty red door and black shutters. I spotted Jackson’s and Oliver’s cars.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Not really,” I said. “But I am looking forward to seeing my sisters and Oscar. Oscar is so cute and so tiny. And my only relative who’s not judging me.”

He smiled and came around the car to open my door for me. Nice gesture.

Veronica was already at the door before we walked up the path. “Abby! Lovely to see you,” she said, hands on both my shoulders as she air-kissed me somewhere near my cheek. She smelled so strongly of perfume. “Detective Orr,” she said to Ben, taking his hand in both of hers as though he were an old family friend. “Thank you so much for agreeing to join us for this special occasion. Come in.”

Something smelled delicious—it was fried chicken and corn on the cob and garlic mashed potatoes, my father’s favorite meal.

“Opal’s trying on some of my jewelry for the wedding,” Veronica said. “And Olivia’s changing Oscar, but they’ll both be down in a moment. Help yourself to drinks,” she added, gesturing at the bar.

Ben got us both club sodas, and we sat down with Veronica in her formal living room, which I was rarely allowed to enter as a kid.

“And of course you’ll come with Abby to Opal and Jackson’s wedding shower next week,” Veronica said to Ben. “The wedding itself is in three weeks. You’ll come to that, too, of course.”

“If necessary,” Ben said.

My heart leaped and sank simultaneously.
If necessary
meant if the killer wasn’t caught and I was still the prime suspect. I wanted the killer caught. But I also wanted Ben to be my chaperone to everything. The grocery store. The dentist. Opal’s wedding.

That would be that, I supposed, when the killer was caught. Ben would move on to some other case. He’d semi-romance some other suspect. There would be no reason for him to be in my life.

Opal and Jackson came downstairs and made nervous small talk with me and Ben for a few minutes. Jackson asked Ben question after question about the “gnarliest shit” he’d seen, and Ben told a funny story that shouldn’t have been funny but was because Ben was Ben and had charisma and charm and delivery.

“He is so cute,” Olivia whispered to me at the bar. I hadn’t even heard her come into the room. Oscar was wide awake in her arms, his tiny slate-blue eyes staring at me.

“Oscar or Ben?” I whispered back with a smile. “It’s a toss-up who’s cuter.”

“Are you two dating?” she asked.

“I wish,” I said. “Unfortunately Ben is very professional. Oh, and he thinks I’m probably guilty of killing Ted.”

“How are you holding up?” she asked. “I can’t even imagine what you’re going through.”

“I’m okay,” I said. “I’ve got good friends. And…”

I was about to say “Ben,” but that didn’t make any sense.