Reap What You Sew (16 page)

And countless others like them who found Anita Belise to be more than a little insufferable.

The key was finding the right needle in a very large haystack.

Glancing to her right, she drank in the sight of her beloved library, its calming and steadfast presence calling to her sleep-deprived body like a warm hug. Glancing left, she took in the tents and trailers that dotted the far side of the town square, the hustle and bustle that had brought the former movie set to life virtually nil now that tragedy had come knocking.

She knew which way she wanted to turn. She also knew which way she
had
to turn.

Step by step, she followed the same path she’d made twenty-four hours earlier, a path that no longer led to a new experience for her mental memory book, but, rather, critical answers to questions that were no more than a few hours away. Tops.

She’d been on the receiving end of those kinds of questions one too many times. And it wasn’t a place she wanted to be ever again.

A familiar, burly figure emerged from a nearby trailer as she approached, his gait reminiscent of a mother lion Tori had seen at the Chicago Zoo years earlier—the animal making no bones about its job as protector and how it felt about the notion of people coming too close.

“Good morning, Mr. Kelly.”

The security guard stopped just inside the fence line, his stance easing ever so slightly, his answering response coming via a quick nod.

“In all the chaos yesterday, I’m afraid I may have left something in the tent.” She tilted her head a hairbreadth to the left and offered up a wide smile. “Would it be okay if I took a moment to look around?”

“What is it?”

“What is what?”

“The item you left behind,” the guard prompted through narrowed eyes.

She searched her thoughts for something that sounded believable, the need for yet another white lie making her feel all the more guilty. “I… uh… left a… small notebook I’d been jotting work notes in during down times. It’s… it’s got information I need to enter into a computer at work this morning.”

The second the words were out, she drew back, surprised at just how easily she’d concocted an answer that sounded fairly believable. Perhaps some of that was because she had, in fact, used that exact notebook while sitting in the tent before Margaret Louise and Annabelle had arrived for their set tour. Perhaps some of it was because she had, in fact, been looking for that very notebook not fifteen minutes earlier before heading out the door. The difference, though, was that she’d found it. And it was safe and sound in the purse that hung from her shoulder at that very moment.

Semantics…

Shaking any sense of a moral misstep from her conscience, she added a few blinks to her smile. “It won’t take me long….”

For a moment she thought he was about to decline her request, her attempts at female persuasion not as finely tuned as those of someone like, say, Leona. But, in the end, he waved her through. “It’s a good thing you waited until now to come back and look. Had you come back yesterday afternoon, or even into the evening, I would have had to tell you no.”

“Oh?” It was a lame inquiry but one she hoped would do the trick.

It didn’t disappoint.

“This place was a circus yesterday—studio personnel, publicity people, police officers, you name it. You’d think the Queen of England had been murdered.”

“Murdered?” she echoed. “They think Ms. Belise was murdered?”

A slight crimson rose in the guard’s face, followed by a tightening of his jaw. “I didn’t say that.”

“No, but you likened the commotion to that of a murder.”

He ran a hand down his face, stilling the motion at his chin. “Look, nothing is official. And if you quote me as saying otherwise, I’ll deny everything.”

“I understand….” She let the words disappear into the air in an effort to prompt further discussion. The effort, however, was met with the sweep of the man’s hand in the direction of the tent.

“Look around the tent all you want, but that’s it. If I see you wandering around the grounds or catch you anywhere near the victim’s trailer on one of my cameras I’ll throw you out, you understand?”

“Absolutely.” She reached out, touched his arm briefly. “Thank you so much. If I find this notebook, it will save me a ton of time once I get to work.”

Once again, Stan Kelly acknowledged her words with a nod of his head, leaving her to follow the makeshift path that led to and from the main tent and the only chance at digging up answers she could craft on such short notice. Yet, as she got within steps of her final destination, she wasn’t exactly sure where to start.

Inhaling sharply, Tori pushed back the flap of the main tent and peered inside, the once bustling interior now inhabited by only a handful of studio personnel. She recognized a few of the faces from her time spent in this very spot, but none well enough to approach, even with casual conversation.

“Tori?”

She looked to her right, a smile creeping across her face at the sight of Margot. “Oh, hey, how are you?”

Margot ran a hand through her already unkempt hair and shrugged. “Worried.”

Tori stepped further into the tent, letting the flaps close in her wake. “Worried? Why?”

Dropping onto the nearest folding chair, Margot exhaled a strand of red hair from her cheek. “First, I’m worried about my job. I’m hired gig by gig and I was counting on this one lasting awhile. Second, I’m not exactly used to keeping my feelings for someone like Anita under wraps. But, if I don’t, then the cops might start looking at me once they figure out what the rest of us already know.”

It was hard not to sound too eager, to pounce on the girl’s every word, but if she’d learned one thing about situations like this over the past two years, it was to take things slow. To do anything else might jeopardize her end goal.

The lost notebook was only going to buy her so much time. She needed to use it in ways other than trying to pry a turtle out of its shell. “Oh?” Tori wandered over to the nearby snack table, her interest in finding a pretzel at the bottom of one of the near-empty bowls far less intense than that of knowing whether her nonchalance was paying off.

Fortunately, Margot’s mouth was on some sort of autopilot, spouting out so many gems Tori couldn’t help but wish she could pluck her supposedly missing notebook from its spot inside her purse and take notes.

“I mean, c’mon, what are we, in Mayberry here? Is Barney Fife the chief of police?”

Not sure whether to defend her new home or to agree on some level, Tori opted, instead, to stay mum. Margot wasn’t the type that necessarily believed in two-way conversation, anyway.

“It’s not like Anita’s allergy was some hush-hush secret. Shoot, they practically had to trip over a billboard advertising that fact when they went in to retrieve the body.”

“Billboard?” She knew she was taking a chance asking something that might derail the woman from her ramblings, but she couldn’t resist. The answer could potentially be important.

“You know, a big sign. Though, calling it a billboard might be a slight exaggeration—but only slight. I mean, this woman wore a medical ID bracelet, drilled every new hire about what to do if she came within five feet of a nut, and had more than one sign inside her trailer letting everyone know, in no uncertain terms, that nuts of any kind weren’t allowed. Ever.”

She opened her mouth to speak yet shut it just as quickly when Margot continued. “So why they’re not dragging each and every one of us into one of those windowless rooms with the swinging lamps overhead and the gun-toting partner behind the one-way mirror is beyond me. I mean, hello, a woman was just murdered, people! Granted she was aggravating and obnoxious and more than a little full of herself but still… someone killed her.”

“You’re that sure she didn’t just make a mistake? Maybe think the brownie was nut-free?”

Margot stared at her as if she’d grown three heads. Three insanely inept heads. “The only way that could have happened is if the person giving her the brownie was a mute. Because Anita the Great didn’t touch a piece of food without asking for a rundown of each and every ingredient.”

“So someone lied to her?”

“For starters.” The curious statement had no sooner left her lips when Margot sat up tall and pointed at Tori. “Wait a minute. How did you get in here? The set is closed to extras and other nonessential personnel.”

It took every ounce of willpower she could muster not to ignore the girl’s question in favor of their previous discussion. But she knew she couldn’t. Not if she wanted to get a jump on the police investigation that was sure to be under way in a matter of hours.

Summoning her best theatrical abilities, she sank onto the edge of a chair and made a face. “Would you believe I was getting ready for work this morning and realized that little notebook I’d been jotting in during breaks was missing? And I need some of that information for an order I’ll be placing this afternoon. Nearly tore my cottage apart looking for it until I realized the last place I could picture it was”—she shifted forward in her seat, glancing behind and around the circle of folding chairs—“somewhere around here.”

Margot leapt to her feet, grabbing her clipboard off a nearby table as she did. “Well, you didn’t leave it here. I’d have noticed it by now if you had.”

“Maybe I dropped it and it got kicked under the table.” Tori rose to her feet, as well, the presence of the floor-skirting tablecloth providing a momentary reprieve from her pending dismissal. “It’s worth a shot.”

“Suit yourself.” Margot flipped back the first page on her clipboard and consulted the next. “It’s weird, you know? All this quiet. It’s like holding a bone and having no dogs to give it to.”

Anxious to keep their dialogue going, Tori offered a few understanding noises as she dropped onto her knee and made a show of lifting the tablecloth and scanning the notebook-free floor.

“Don’t get me wrong, it’s kind of nice not to be dealing with a bunch of amateurs for a little while, but even that’s better than this holding pattern we’re in now, waiting to see what happens with the movie.” Margot glanced up from the clipboard, a faraway look in her eye. “Whoever did this was rather shortsighted.”

“Shortsighted?”

“Sure, we’re all rid of the diva and her nonstop drama—some of us more glad than others about that, I’ll admit—but, without her, there’s no guarantee the powers-that-be will recast.” Margot turned on her heels and headed toward the far exit of the tent, her ankle boots making soft clacking sounds against the temporary floor laid down by the studio. When she reached the end, she turned around, cut her hand through the air. “And without a leading lady, this all goes away.”

Chapter 14

By the time Tori walked through the door of Debbie’s Bakery, all she could see in her mind was a plate of chocolate—what kind didn’t matter—and a jumbo-sized cup of hot chocolate. She’d been down this road enough times to know it was her body’s way of craving a boost—something, anything to get through the rest of the day. But as enticing as the image was, she knew deep down inside it wasn’t going to matter.

All day long she’d done her best to focus on the library. She’d shelved, she’d tracked orders, she’d had a conference call with the board regarding the fast-approaching First Annual Holiday Book Extravaganza she’d been working on for months, and she’d read five stories to a handful of fascinated toddlers—all while dodging her fair share of glares from Dixie over coming into work when she said she wasn’t. And even with all of that, she hadn’t been able to get her mind off Anita Belise.

Or, rather, the
murder
of Anita Belise.

Because try as she might to think of a million ways the woman’s death could have been an accident, she knew in her gut it wasn’t. Educated adults with serious food allergies didn’t take eating lightly. Especially educated adults like Anita Belise, who told everyone under the sun about her allergy. The notion that she’d take a bite of a nut-laden brownie without a care in the world simply didn’t stack up.

Someone lying to the actress about the brownie’s true ingredients, however, did… .

Which is what had her worried.

If Chief Dallas was as predictable as Tori knew him to be, it wouldn’t be long before he paid the first of many official visits to his top trio of suspects—Leona, Margaret Louise, and her.

She knew this because they were the easy suspects. And Chief Dallas tended to latch onto the easy for far too long.

“Earth to Victoria, earth to Victoria, come in, Victoria. Do you copy?”

Shaking her head, she forced her focus onto the young girl behind the counter staring at her with a mixture of amusement and curiosity. Step by step, she closed the gap between them. “Sorry, Emma, I guess I was someplace else just then.”

Emma giggled and pushed a strand of strawberry blonde hair from her lightly freckled face. “I saw you walk in and then… boom… you just stopped. Like your feet were stuck to the floor or somethin’.” Bobbing her head to the left, the girl lowered her voice so as not to be overheard by anyone else. “I was hopin’ Mrs. Calhoun wouldn’t come out and see you, maybe think I hadn’t mopped well enough.”