Sucker Punch (20 page)

I consider myself a reasonably intelligent woman, chiefly because I can recognize an immovable object when I run into it. I could have argued until I was blue in the face. Rachel was not going anywhere. “Fine. Let’s go.”

We wound our way along a hallway toward the restaurant, flanked by framed shots of local scenery on one side and a long bank of windows that looked out over the valley on the other. It was a beautiful hotel, I wouldn’t deny that. It just wasn’t forty-dollar chicken beautiful.

A hostess led us through the nearly deserted restaurant toward a table for two tucked in a corner where nobody would see us. I was about to sit when I spotted Geoffrey Manwaring at a table on the other side of the room. “Excuse me,” I called after the hostess.

“Yes ma’am?”

Ma’am.
I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to people calling me that. “We’d like to sit over there, please. One of those tables by the window would be perfect.”

I could see the war going on inside her. Say no and offend a customer. Say yes and offend all the others. Luckily, probably because there were only a handful of those “others,” she inclined her head and motioned for us to follow her.

“What are you doing?” Rachel demanded as we walked.

I nodded toward my unsuspecting prey. “That’s Geoffrey Manwaring. If I’m going to spend twenty dollars for a bowl of soup, I might as well get something extra out of it.”

Our hostess seated us at the table directly in front of Geoffrey’s. The location couldn’t have been more perfect. I smiled, delighted with the turn of events until I opened the menu. The constant assault of beef and garlic on my nostrils had convinced me that I was hungry, too, but steak tonight would mean ramen noodles for the next two weeks. It had better be worth the sacrifice.

After studying the menu for several minutes and trying to make the prices drop by sheer mental power, I decided on a jumbo seafood cocktail (
jumbo
being the operative word) and a Coke for a mere twenty-five bucks. Rachel ordered as if she had money to spare—tomato bisque soup, bone-in rib eye, and a glass of cabernet sauvignon. She squeaked in at just under a hundred dollars, minus tax and tip. A steal at half the price.

While our server was in the back mining the gold dust to sprinkle on each of the dishes, I pasted on a friendly smile and stepped over to Geoffrey’s table. “Well, hello. Geoffrey Manwaring, isn’t it?”

He looked at me with a blank expression. “It is.”

“You probably don’t remember me. Abby Shaw. I run the candy shop in town.” I held out a hand, which he promptly ignored.

“Ah. Yes.” He dabbed a napkin to his tight little mouth and ran a glance over my clothes. “You’re the lady who refused to deliver my order.”

“We did deliver it,” I reminded him.

“Yes. Thanks to the other woman.” Apparently, he sensed that I wasn’t going to leave, so he linked his hands together on the table and made an effort to hide his irritation. “What can I do for you, Ms. Shaw?”

I took that as an invitation to sit at his table. My mother would have had a fit if she’d seen me. “Well, it’s a little thing, really. Rachel and I—that’s Rachel right over there—were just at a rehearsal at the Playhouse. The music that Laurence wrote for the production still wasn’t there. I’m just wondering if you forgot to order the copies you promised to get?”

What little patience he’d been able to manufacture evaporated while I was speaking. “No, I didn’t forget. The music won’t be coming. You might as well let the others know.”

Not much room for interpretation in that answer. “But I was under the impression that Laurence wrote the music especially for this production. The troupe at the Paradise Playhouse were going to be the first ever to perform it.”

Geoffrey motioned for the waiter to bring him another cocktail. “You’ve been given some bad information. Laurence was in the process of writing his own screenplay. He was also writing the original score. That score is the only unperformed work of his in existence.”

What a jerk. I didn’t care that we were sitting in a world-class restaurant, or that I looked as if I belonged on the cleaning staff. I hate being lied to. “That’s interesting,” I said with a cool smile. “I heard Laurence himself talking about that music, so I know you’re not telling the truth.”

“Do you?” Geoffrey accepted a glass from the server and swallowed half of it in one gulp. “You have something in writing to support your claim? Because I don’t. There’s no contract. No promise. Nothing.”

“Laurence and Vonetta had a verbal agreement.”

“Well, that’s too bad, isn’t it? I don’t know anything about a verbal agreement. Now that Larry’s gone, his work is going to be worth a small fortune. I’d be an idiot to hand over the last work he ever did to a Podunk operation like the one you’ve got here.”

I could just imagine the reaction this news would get when Vonetta and Alexander found out. “Are you ever going to tell the others that you’re backing out of the deal? Or are you just going to let them go on thinking you forgot to send the music?”

“Oh, I’ll tell them eventually. But considering the fact that Vonetta tried to weasel out of a legally binding contract with my client, I’m not all that worried about her.”

“Maybe you should be.”

He laughed softly, and the sound made me so angry I barely resisted the urge to wipe the smile off his face. “You don’t frighten me, candy lady. I’ve been in this business a long time. You’re barely wet behind the ears.”

“That’s because I was busy practicing law while you were boning up on how to cheat people.”

His eyes widened for an instant, but he got over the surprise quickly and laughed again. “Nice try, but I’m not cheating anyone. Like I said, I defy you to find a written agreement promising that music to anyone.” He downed the rest of his drink and tossed his napkin onto the table. “In fact, I’ll make you a promise. If you produce an agreement, providing it’s not a fraud, I’ll honor it.”

“I’ll hold you to it. Now why don’t you explain to me how you knew that you didn’t need to send the copies of the music to the Playhouse before Laurence died.”

Geoffrey’s smile faded. “Are you accusing me of having something to do with the death of my best client and closest friend?”

“I’m asking a simple question. You promised Laurence that you’d have the music delivered to the Playhouse the day he died, but you obviously didn’t. How did you know he wasn’t going to need it?”

Geoffrey sat back in his chair and let out a long-suffering sigh. “After Vonetta tried to terminate their contract—without a valid excuse, I might add—I was kept busy trying to convince Larry not to sue her.”

“
He
was going to sue
her
? On what grounds?”

“Breach of contract, what else?”

“Over his participation in this play? Was he crazy, or just vindictive?”

“He was the injured party.”

“Not even close,” I muttered. “He could probably have bought and sold the Playhouse a dozen times over. Why sue over one little job? I’m sure he wasn’t being paid much.”

“It was a matter of principle.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Somehow I doubt that. Why was he so determined to destroy Vonetta?”

“They had a history.”

“I know they did,” I said. “But in the version I’ve heard, he owed her.”

Geoffrey’s expression grew sober. “You know about that?”

I had no idea if we were talking about the same thing or not, but I nodded. “I do.”

“Vonetta told you?”

“Serena did.”

Geoffrey laughed through his nose. “Serena. Do you have any idea how angry I was to find out she was here? I checked. I double-checked. She hadn’t been back in years. Then Larry and I showed up, and there she was.”

“How did Laurence feel about seeing her again?”

“What should he feel? She practically ruined his life. Almost destroyed his career. He was furious.”

I wasn’t buying it. “How? How did she almost ruin his life?”

Geoffrey looked around to see if anyone could hear us, then leaned across the table and lowered his voice. “She tried to trap him. Got herself pregnant, and then tried to blackmail him into marrying her. Do you have any idea what that would have done to him?”

“A wife and a kid? Yeah. Brutal.”

His expression grew somber. “Larry was just getting started in his career. He was a rising star, but that would have sunk him.”

“They could have survived,” I insisted. “People did.”

“Yeah, but very few of them were successful. Laurence Nichols wasn’t created to survive. He was born to soar.”

“So he insisted that Serena have an abortion, even though she believed that she was killing her unborn child.”

Geoffrey’s frown etched deep lines around his mouth. “She could have said no.”

“She didn’t think she could.”

“That’s not my fault, and it wasn’t Larry’s.”

Men like these gave them all a bad name. “What about other women?”

“What about them? Laurence had ’em, that’s for sure. He kept me busy lining ’em up and getting rid of them afterward.”

“Was Colleen Brannigan one of them?”

“Colleen?” Geoffrey nodded once. “A long time ago.”

“So her husband was right to be jealous of Laurence.”

“Not now. At least not from Larry’s end. She’s a bit long in the tooth these days.”

“Yeah, all of forty. Practically decrepit.”

“What can I say? He liked ’em younger. She was none too happy when he sent her packing recently, I can tell you that.”

That got my interest. “I thought you said it was a long time ago?”

“It was—but there was another flare up a couple of days before he died. I don’t know why he suggested her for the job with this production, but I think she saw it as an invitation to reunite. Then she caught him with some twenty-year-old he met at dinner, and went nuts.”

“And who did he send the candy to? The twenty-yearold? Colleen? Or was it Serena? Or maybe there was someone else entirely?”

“It wasn’t anyone involved in the production,” he said firmly. He scribbled his signature on the dinner check and wagged the black leather folder so his server could see that it was ready. “If you want to know who wanted him dead, you don’t have to look very far.”

“What does that mean? You think Colleen is responsible for his death?”

He shrugged and pushed his chair away from the table. “One of the women in the play did it. I’d make book on it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have things to do.”

“Yeah,” I said absently. He walked away and I returned to the table where a minuscule glass filled with assorted seafood waited for me.
Jumbo, my ass.
“Sorry about that,” I told Rachel. “I didn’t expect it to take so long.”

“Not a problem.” She’s that kind of friend, too. “Did you find out what you wanted to know?”

“I don’t think so,” I said with a glance at Geoffrey’s retreating back. “But I did find out that he has no intention of letting us use the music in the production. He sees dollar signs floating in front of his eyes.”

“He looks the type,” said my friend, who’d just blown a hundred dollars on dinner. She slathered butter on a roll and pushed the bread basket in my direction. “The question is, did he see those dollar signs before Laurence was killed?”

It was a
very
good question. One I had every intention of answering before I was through.

My conversation with Geoffrey Manwaring bothered me all the next day. I still hadn’t been to the Avalanche to check out Doyle’s alibi for myself, but with Valentine’s Day just around the corner, work was seriously ramping up. I couldn’t skip out again tonight, so I stayed late, melting and pouring and dipping and wrapping until every muscle I hadn’t strained learning the dance steps the night before ached from exertion of a different kind.

A few minutes before ten, I climbed the stairs to my apartment, filled Max’s dish with kibble, and carried a cold takeout box of crab rangoon into the living room. My apartment is a far cry from the Sacramento condo I once shared with my ex. There’s not a stick of furniture that matches any other in the whole place. Everything is secondhand, cast-off from family and friends.

Aunt Grace’s old plaid sofa bed holds the place of honor. Uncle Butch’s dinged-up coffee table sits in front of it. Near the door is the hideous space-age chair that used to belong to my parents. I sleep on my grandmother’s bed and keep my clothes in a dresser that came from the Goodwill. Taken one by one, the pieces are wretched, but together they suit me. Just don’t ask me why.

I turned on the television, more to keep me awake until I could finish eating than out of any desire to watch what was on. While I munched, I flipped through channels, searching for something that might hold my interest for a few minutes. When I passed a local channel and realized that their news department was running a story on Laurence Nichols’s death, I paused to listen.