The Azalea Assault (13 page)

“All the more reason to start with soft stuff, or commit to bed now.”

“Nick has some sleeping pills.”

Cam’s neck prickled.

“He does? Why?”

“The occasional midnight shifts have messed with his sleep cycle. He doesn’t have to do the late shifts too often, but often enough that when we go to bed around eleven or earlier, he can’t sleep… which we can live with, unless there’s a lunch thing, which means we have to start really early—so he got the sleeping pills.”

“Geez, Petunia. That sucks. Isn’t there something you could do differently?”

“Not without a lot of preparing ahead and freezing stuff, and Nick is pretty anal about everything being fresh.”

It was hard to picture Nick being anal about
anything
,
but she supposed if he was, it would be about his cooking. Then it occurred to Cam that this left Petunia without a cook.

“Shoot. Are you okay for the next few days? I mean if he’s in jail?”

Petunia looked up at Cam, her eyes watering.

“Not really.” Tears filled the corners of Petunia’s eyes. “We got two new lunch orders this afternoon—a hot lunch and then a huge sack lunch order.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Well, at least we don’t have
your
thing tomorrow night.” Petunia’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

“Seriously? At least is right! Look, I’ll help. Dad will help. If Rob and Annie need to, they’ll help.”

“Dad.” Petunia paused, a faraway expression on her face. “Dad could probably do most of it.”

Before the sentence was completed, Cam had speed-dialed their father. He was clearly upset about Nick and expressed the outrage she would have expected, but he rallied at Cam’s plea for help.

“Well of course I’ll help! I’m no slouch in the kitchen, you know, so long as someone tells me what to do!”

Cam relayed the message, which got a wet laugh from Petunia, so that was something.

Shot of tequila taken, arrangements for cooking and catering assistance made, Cam urged Petunia to take the sleeping pill, then took her sister’s catering van. She vowed to return first thing in the morning. First, though, she had to get through the various obligations of the night.

“Shoot!” she shouted as she started toward home to change for brownie making. She’d forgotten the front that was expected, but now pictured her seedlings, barely peeping above the soil. They were fragile when they were so freshly sprouted. The same thing would be true at the plot she maintained at her dad’s house.

Cam spent the next couple hours frantically staking the stronger plants and putting tents over the least hardy of the
younger ones, in some cases covering the seedlings completely with a tarp, and in others, using a mesh that allowed water through but blocked the pummeling of driving rain. After all her efforts at the two gardens, she was tired and sweaty when she arrived home to shower, but she needed to hurry because she was running late for the brownie party.

“N
ice of you to make it,” Annie snapped. Rob looked up gratefully from a mixing bowl that appeared to hold the dry ingredients for brownies.

“Where’s Jake?” Cam asked as she put three wine bottles she’d grabbed from her own stock on the counter. She figured she’d have at least two or three glasses, so for four of them, three bottles might be necessary if she counted what went into the brownies.

“Couldn’t be bothered,” Annie said, tossing her thick ponytail via head flip. She was clearly pissed.

Cam looked at Rob. He wore an apron already covered in flour, but he shrugged innocently, as though oblivious to the reason for Annie’s mood. Cam could tell he really knew what was going on.

Annie went to her back room, and Rob moved closer.

“He backed out on me, too. I think he really had work to do, but explaining that doesn’t seem to help at all. She was really angry at him when I got here, and what I said only made it worse, so I dropped it.”

Cam nodded. They’d get to the bottom of it. Nothing like a little baking with wine to get Annie to open up.

Annie came back and tossed Cam an apron just as Rob pulled the first cork from a wine bottle.

“Are we allowed to?” Cam asked. “These aren’t actually… for the brownies?”

Annie didn’t even let her finish before she’d poured three glasses and taken a pull from the fullest one.

“A little goes in the brownies—half a cup or so. Other than that, have to keep it out of the work space, but between batches, cooks indulge. Though you better not sue me.”

Rob started to laugh, but Annie’s glare silenced him. He looked at Cam. Annie set the wine bottle on a back counter and put her glass next to it. Cam and Rob nodded agreement, then took much smaller sips and followed Annie to the main work space, washing their hands on the way. The hand washing Cam remembered from helping in the past, but Annie’s leer would have made them aware of the rule anyway.

Because Cam had helped Annie before, they set Rob at the mixer, while Cam retrieved ingredients and Annie directed. They got the first batch mixed and in the oven, and the second mixed before Annie began swearing at Rob about Jake.

“Why didn’t you freaking tell me he was married?”

“What?”

“I was at Mick or Mack for more cake flour and eggs this afternoon, because this was unexpected.” She paused to leer at Cam. “So I didn’t order for it, and in comes Mr. Two-Timer with his wife and kid!”

“He’s not! I’m sure he’s not! He doesn’t wear a wedding ring. He’s never said…” Rob was clearly flustered. Cam knew infidelity didn’t sit well with him for personal reasons, and he’d never knowingly enable it.

“Well, then it had to be a longtime girlfriend—one who
does
wear a wedding ring! The kid was feeding him—fingers in his mouth and he was doing the loud… munching thing, nom, nom, nom!” Annie’s mimicry would have
been comic if she weren’t so upset. “That is
not
casual friend behavior!”

Rob sputtered but decided to change topics, in his typical cowardly fashion.

“You had a hard day, too?” he asked Cam.

She’d hardly said a word, but being late was clue enough for the two people who were closest to her to know it couldn’t have gone smoothly. Cam was never late.

“They arrested Nick.”

Annie dropped her wineglass, sending fragments flying. Cam grabbed paper towels to wipe up the spill and pointed Rob toward the broom. She felt a small sense of relief that Annie was as shaken up by the news as she had been. And maybe a little additional relief that Annie had stepped outside of whatever insanity she was submerged in.

“Why?”

“They didn’t say, but I’m pretty sure it was murder. I took Petunia home and got her to bed—she was a wreck.”

“I bet—poor girl. Poor Nick.” Annie stared around in a daze for a moment and then swore about Jake being stupid as well as a cheater.

Cam walked over to Annie and hugged her, glad for some solidarity on the Nick front, before she picked up a new wineglass and filled it for Annie.

“I think I know why,” Rob confessed as he swept the glass into a dustpan.

Cam rounded on him. “Why?”

“Well, a couple things—it looks like maybe Jean-Jacques was harassing Evangeline.”

“Because of the phone call?”

“How’d you know about that?”

“I’m the one who found the phone.”

“Oh, right. Though I don’t think you were supposed to look,” he smirked. “And there’s more, but I don’t think it’s public yet.”

“That’s not related to Nick, though.” Cam responded to the issue of the calls, ignoring the fact she shouldn’t have
looked for now. She also didn’t mention Petunia blaming Evangeline. It seemed premature and biased. She did want to hear the new information, though.

“Apparently… Spoons… the loan… was cosigned by Evangeline Patrick.”

“What?” That threw Cam off balance. It was the last thing she’d expected.

“There has to be something big there for her to back him up on a loan that size. Jake didn’t tell me how large, but restaurant start-up is huge.”

Cam was about to protest, but the buzzer went off, indicating the first batch of brownies was done. Rob excused himself to pull the pan out, sensing Cam’s annoyance.

“Did you know there was a connection?” Annie asked. Her face was etched in disgust.

“No.”

“That bastard better not have cheated on Petunia!”

“Annie, I don’t think there was anybody cheating on anybody. There’s an explanation.”

“Oh, somebody was cheating on somebody,” Annie said. Her dark expression didn’t flatter her.

Rob returned in time to hear that and opted once again for the coward’s way out, in Cam’s opinion.

“Hey, did you know Samantha is Jean-Jacques’s aunt?”

Fortunately for Rob, this new tidbit had the desired effect.

“What?” Cam and Annie asked in unison.

“Jake got it from her today.”

That was a misstep on Rob’s part.

“Jake! What the hell does he know?” Annie drank the contents of her fresh wineglass, rather a lot for one swig.

Cam frowned.

“Why didn’t she just say so?”

“They’d had an agreement. I guess… he’d borrowed money or something from her when he was first starting out and hadn’t paid it back, so she used it to pressure him to come, but she gave him a place to stay and lent him the car.
Admitting they were related, though, would have blown that French artist thing.”

Annie tutted, letting them both know she hadn’t been fooled.

“I guess now we know why he called her,” Cam said.

“Exactly,” Rob replied.

“But not what he was doing at the Patricks’ so early.”

“Jake thinks he was there to pester Evangeline.”

“And what does Evangeline say?”

Cam felt newly defensive for Evangeline. She’d shown herself to be helpful and sympathetic earlier that day, and Cam wasn’t eager to put her in a negative light.

“Please!” Annie interrupted with as snotty a tone as Cam had ever heard Annie use. “Jake doesn’t need to
talk
to Evangeline! He can just stare at her… at her…”

“Annie, Jake has never been like that, at least not that I’ve seen,” Rob said.

Annie wasn’t having any of it. “Like you’d notice.” She’d poured another large glass of wine and was drinking it too fast.

Cam looked at Rob helplessly.

“Tell you what, Annie. I’m meeting Jake for a while tomorrow. I have to—for the police investigation,” Cam added defensively. “I will find out the scoop, because I’m sure he’s not married. He can’t possibly be as horrible as he seems right now.”

“Bastard probably wouldn’t marry her! Even with that cute little boy!”

Cam went over and hugged Annie again, letting Annie cry tears of frustration onto her apron.

“He just seemed like one of the good guys—and I know y’all wouldn’t steer me wrong. I was so sure I wouldn’t get burned again!”

“Again?”

Annie sniffed. “Oh, geez, I snotted on you. You have to go change aprons or be banished.”

Cam eyed Annie. She knew this was avoiding, or at least stalling, but Cam was also pretty repulsed with the snot on her apron, so she went in back to change it. By the time she returned, the third batch of brownies was in and Annie and Rob had both slouched down to the floor, each holding one of the brownies from the first batch.

“Get a brownie,” Annie ordered.

“I’ll have a few bites of Rob’s.”

“No you won’t. Get your own brownie!” he demanded.

Cam laughed. Rob didn’t have much of a sweet tooth, but if he demanded his own, he loved what he was having. She retrieved a brownie and sank down with the two people she loved most, aside from her family.

Rob ate a bite of brownie, then nuzzled Cam’s ear.

“Ick! You’re getting brownie in my hair!”

“I am not, but so what? I know you’ll take a shower first thing when you get home anyway.” He sounded amused, which helped. Then he blew it. “Cam, I think you need to get used to the idea Nick might be our guy.”

She scowled and used her legs for leverage against the wall. She pressed herself to a standing position and walked away.

“I wouldn’t believe it was Nick if you found him with the body in his trunk. I’m that sure.” She finally took a bite of heavenly brownie to show her confidence.

“But Cam, the evidence… His past conviction, Petunia getting… grabbed. The loan from Evangeline and Evangeline being harassed…”

“The evidence is really incomplete right now, so I’ll thank you to keep that particular opinion to yourself!”

Rob sighed.

“I hate that! Don’t you patronize me! I’m right on this! Annie?” Cam was glad Annie seemed to be standing guard with an “I told you so” expression.

“Nick’s a good guy, Rob,” Annie said, “even if you have to take it on faith.”

That wasn’t quite as strong an endorsement as Cam had
hoped for, given Annie’s posture. She looked at Annie more closely.

“Geez, Annie, are you okay?”

“When do I shoot your dad?”

“What?” Rob sputtered, confused, but Cam got it.

“Late morning. I’ll have to look.”

“Good. I could use a talk with him. He’s a good listener,” she said. She sounded a little bit drunk. Then, after a pause, “Listen, I need to clean up.”

“We can help.”

“No, really—dishes and Jane’s Addiction will clear my head better than you two or sleep ever could.”

Cam was worried, but also not inclined to force herself on Annie when she wanted privacy. And if Annie craved Jane’s Addiction, the original “Screamo” band, in Cam’s estimation, she’d rather give the space. She’d learned over the years that her friend usually knew when alone time was the answer.

“You ready?” she asked Rob.

He tried to protest, urging her to stay and help Annie, but it didn’t take long before he agreed and the two of them left together.

C
am was prepared to tear into Rob about his refusal to accept Nick’s innocence, but when she got in the Jeep, he offered another tidbit of information that distracted her.

“Print results come back tomorrow.”

“Prints?”

“Fingerprints from everybody at the party—so they can match the shears.”

Cam grimaced. Somehow being fingerprinted had been humiliating, even though she knew she hadn’t done anything wrong.