Jesse had a cute smile and a body that Bethany and I had checked out more than once. A freshman at one of the local colleges, he was only nineteen, so every time we let our gazes run all over his very muscular form, we both chided ourselves for it. Well, I chided myself. Bethany not so much.
Taking the letter from him, I smiled and tried to keep my eyes on his very cute face, but it wasn’t possible. As I thanked him, my gaze slid down over his torso straining against his t-shirt, instantly making me feel like I was violating him.
“Nice to see you again. You too, Bethany. I don’t have any mail for you, but maybe next time.”
I heard Bethany make a tiny moaning sound before she said, “Definitely next time, Jesse.”
He moved on to his next mail stop as we giggled like teenage girls. “We’re terrible, you know that?”
Bethany shook her head and pressed her lips together like she was in pain. “What’s terrible is that he’s so young. If he was just five years older, I’d be all over that like white on rice.”
“Well, that would be only a four year difference for you. It would still be too young for me, though.”
“If only. As it is, he’s just too young. But that won’t stop me from looking.”
As she sat fantasizing about The Eagle’s mail boy, I opened my envelope and began reading my letter. It didn’t take long for me to realize this wasn’t just another letter from a reader.
It’s a shame about Geneva Woodward being murdered. A good lead could be to talk to Candy Skerrit since she had as much reason to hate her as anyone in town. Maybe even more.
I looked to the bottom of the page and saw no signature. I turned the envelope over to see there was no return address either. An anonymous message about a potential suspect? I’d have to tell Alex about this as soon as Bethany left.
My cell phone rang just as I looked at the plain white sheet of paper, and I saw it was my partner calling me.
Answering it, I asked, “Reading my mind now?”
“What?” he asked in return, clearly confused by how I’d begun our conversation.
“Nothing. I’ll tell you later. What’s up?”
“What do you think about dinner at Diamanti’s tonight?”
His question floored me, and for a moment, I didn’t know what to say. When my brain finally turned back on, I stammered, “I…I…okay. Sure, okay.”
“I’ll pick you up at seven. See you then.”
Pulling the phone away from my ear, I looked at it like it was some kind of foreign object I couldn’t figure out as Alex ended the call. Dinner at Diamanti’s? What was that about?
“Poppy, what’s up? Is something wrong?”
I turned to look at Bethany and saw by the worried look on her face that I must have seemed shaken up by Alex’s call. Forcing myself back to normal, I waved off her concern and pretended everything was good.
“It’s nothing. Just a little surprised is all.”
“Who was that? Is something going on with your father?”
I set my phone down on my desk. My father? Why would she ask that? Then I realized she’d likely jump to that conclusion since he was the only person I ever worried about.
“No, it wasn’t my father. That call was from Alex.”
Bethany practically jumped out of her chair. “Alex? Who’s Alex? Are you with a guy now, Poppy?”
“No, no. He’s the retired detective from Baltimore who moved here a while ago and offered to work with me to investigate Geneva’s murder. Remember me telling you about him? He turned out to be a decent guy, even though we had a rough few meetings in the beginning.”
Her blue eyes opened wide and her mouth fell open. “Oh my God! I heard about him from Jennie when I got my coffee yesterday. She told me he’s hot! And you’re working with him on this case?”
Rolling my eyes at Jennie’s description of Alex, I nodded. “Yeah. He’s teaching me a lot. I’m so impressed by how good a detective he is.”
“I don’t care about that. Is he hot like Jennie said?”
I thought about her question for a moment. Was he good looking like Jennie thought? Alex definitely had a nice look about him, and those brown eyes were definitely the kind a woman could get lost in. And he did have a great body. Oh my God! What was I thinking? Alex was a friend and colleague, and that was it.
“Well? Poppy, are you going to answer me?” Bethany pressed with a nudge to my arm.
Shaking my thoughts out of my head, I said, “Sorry. I was thinking about something else. I guess Alex could be considered attractive. I don’t really notice that about him, though. I’m more interested in his abilities as a detective.”
So that wasn’t exactly the truth. It didn’t matter anyway. I admired Alex for his investigative skills more than anything else. That’s what mattered.
“What did he say that shook you up like that?”
“He asked me to go to dinner at Diamanti’s tonight.”
Bethany cooed, “Well, you may not think of him any way other than professionally, but he obviously thinks that of you. What are you going to do?”
Confused, I looked at her unsure what she meant. “What do you mean? I’m going to dinner, of course.”
“I mean about dating him.”
I dismissed her idea immediately. “I’m not dating him, and he doesn’t want to date me, Bethany. I’m sure this is about the case.”
Leveling a disapproving stare at me, she waved away my suggestion that dinner was nothing more than two colleagues getting together to talk about their work. “I’m sure you’re wrong. If he just wanted to talk about the case, he wouldn’t have asked you to dinner at the finest restaurant in town. So you need to start seeing this for what it is.”
While I didn’t want to disagree with her, I didn’t think this was a date. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it couldn’t be a date. It couldn’t be, could it? What if she was right?
“Well, whatever it is, I have work to do,” I said in an attempt to give Bethany the clue I needed her to leave so I could go talk to Candy Skerrit before it was time to meet Alex.
“What are you going to wear? Do you have a little black dress? I think that would look great. And you can do your hair in an upsweep look that would be terrific.” She stood to leave and added, “I expect to hear all the juicy details tomorrow, Poppy. If you don’t come in to work, you better call me.”
“There will be no details, so don’t expect anything.”
“I’ve known you for over three years and never once have I seen your eyes sparkle at a mere dinner meeting, so I’m expecting this to go well. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, but have a good time tonight.”
She gave my shoulder a tiny squeeze as she left, and I was glad to not have to protest again that this wasn’t a date because the more she talked about it, the more I had to admit I really wasn’t sure what this was.
Or how I felt about it.
Maybe her idea of the upswept look was good, though, and what better place to get that done than Candy Skerrit’s beauty shop, Candy’s Cuts? Hopefully, I could get Candy to fit me into her schedule, and while I got my hair done for dinner, I could ask her some questions.
Pleased with myself for coming up with an idea that would kill two birds with one stone, I closed my laptop and headed over to Candy’s beauty shop on the opposite end of town.
Candy’s Cuts looked like nothing special on the outside, even though it was the most popular beauty shop in town. The storefront windows merely had the name of the business in black letters and the building the shop was in was an old rundown brick type popular in Sunset Ridge.
The outside of its owner was similarly plain. Nothing special to look at with straight brown hair that hung in no particular style at all down to her shoulders and a face that rarely had any makeup on it, Candy Skerrit was also a woman with a streak of honesty that usually showed itself as rudeness. If she didn’t like you, then you could expect her to spew her opinions on everything about your appearance, whether you asked for them or no
t. I’d never been on the receiving end of her rudeness, but I’d seen it in person more than once at her shop.
I opened the door and walked in to see three women in various stages of having their hair done. Two sat under dryers and one sat in Candy’s chair as she snipped away at the layers in the woman’s hair. I didn’t see her assistant Kira anywhere in the shop, so I cautiously approached where Candy worked. Self-consciously fingering the bottom of my light brown hair, I hoped I wouldn’t be the latest victim of her brand of honesty.
“Poppy McGuire, what are you doing here? Do you have an appointment?” she asked as she looked at me in the mirror.
“No, but I was hoping that you might be able to squeeze me in.”
I saw the woman sitting in the chair getting her hair done look into the mirror with terror in her eyes. Candy frowned, but I didn’t get the response her customer feared.
“I guess I can probably squeeze you in. What are you looking for?”
Looking down at the split ends at the bottom of my hair, I cringed. “Just a trim and maybe if you could do my hair in an upsweep do?”
Candy’s oddly unkempt eyebrows shot up. “Really? Have somewhere special to go?”
“No, just wanted to try something new,” I said in my most casual voice and hoped she hadn’t heard Jennie’s gossip about my partner.
“Okay, I think I can do that. Just give me a few so I can get these three done.”
I took a seat near the two women under the dryers and waited about a half hour before she was free. When everyone else had left and she’d returned from smoking a cigarette outside, Candy waved me toward her chair.
“So how have you been, Poppy? Still working at the newspaper?” she asked as she wrapped a black cape around my shoulders to catch the hair she cut.
“I am.”
“Does anyone read the newspaper anymore? I read all my news on the computer.”
“You know how the people in this town are. They’re set in their ways, so The Eagle gets to benefit from that.”
She gave me a knowing smile in the mirror and turned me around to wash my hair. “I definitely do know this town. Having lived here for all my life, I know these people live in a time warp. Do you know that when I divorced Mr. Skerrit the old ladies in town couldn’t wait to ask me how I was going to find another husband?”
As she lowered me back toward the sink, I said, “I just ignore them. It’s not like there’s a guy in this town I’m interested in anyway.”
She washed my hair and made small talk about how much she hated the busybodies in town. Every so often, I nodded to keep the conversation going, but I really wanted to seize a chance to introduce Geneva’s murder into it to see if the anonymous letter writer was correct.
Lifting the chair, she turned me toward the mirror and began cutting the bottom of my hair before I even told her how much I wanted trimmed off. I knew better than to stop her, though, unless I wanted an earful of her kind of truth, so I left my look in her hands and hoped for the best.
Ten minutes and about an inch later, she was done cutting my hair and had dried it enough to begin working her magic to give me the upswept look Bethany had suggested. As she twisted and pinned my hair into the most romantic style I’d ever worn, it suddenly became a possibility in my mind that the dinner I’d have with Alex in just a few hours could be a date.
I needed to get that ridiculous notion out of my head, so while Candy concentrated on giving me what she called “the sexy look,” I took a chance that she might be willing to let me chat her up about Geneva.
In my smoothest voice, I said, “So how about what happened to Geneva Woodward right here in Sunset Ridge?”
Candy’s fingers stopped their movement at the back of my head, and I averted my eyes from the mirror just in case my motives were obvious in them. She didn’t say anything for a moment, and when she finally spoke, I knew the person who’d anonymously sent me that letter hadn’t lied.
At least not about Candy hating Geneva.
“That woman! Nothing was ever good enough for her. She’d come in for a color and cut, and it never failed. She was always dissatisfied. I swear to God I was tempted this last time to tell her to never come back again!”
She jabbed my scalp with a hairpin and quickly apologized, but if a little beauty tragedy was the cost to get information out of her that may help Alex and me solve the case, then that was a price I was willing to pay.
Waving off the stab and the real pain radiating across the top of my head, I pushed on. “I’ve heard from others around town that she could be difficult at times.”
“Difficult?” Candy snapped. “I can tell you stories that would make you see me as a saint compared to her. I did exactly what she wanted every time she came in here, and each time she stiffed me with no tip. She’s lucky I never turned her hair bright blue. I’m surprised she was able to ever get Girard to give her a second look with how nasty she was.”
“She certainly had a way of angering people,” I said into the mirror as I watched for Candy’s reaction, but then what she’d said about the former mayor hit me light a bolt of lightning. “Was he cheating on his wife with her?”
“I think so. At least once a week I’d see the two of them a block or so away near the park talking like they were meeting in secret.” Her eyes flashed true rage, and she returned to her own issues with Geneva. “Every one of my customers had to pay for that woman’s cheapskate ways!”
I opened my mouth to ask her if she knew anything more about Geneva and Mayor Girard, but her assistant Kira interrupted us to let her know her next appointment had arrived. Candy apologized and left me in the chair right after she finished my upsweep, and I was sure I’d missed my opportunity to get any real details about the affair or her feud with Geneva.
As I sat there admiring her work on my hair, Kira sat down in the chair next to me and leaned over to ask, “Did I hear you talking about Geneva Woodward? I’m not surprised someone murdered her. She was a miserly woman. All that money and she refused to tip Candy whenever she did her hair.”
“I guess there was no love lost between them?”
Kira shook her head and whispered, “No, and Candy was fed up with her. I heard her say she was going to get revenge on her someday soon for being so nasty and never tipping her. After that last time, I was worried they’d get into a fight right here in the shop.”
“Really? It was that bad?”
“Yeah. Geneva called her a ham-handed, second-rate barber and threw her fifty dollars on my desk before storming out. I thought Candy would wring her neck. She chased after her out onto the sidewalk, but Geneva got into her car and drove away too quickly.”
“That sounds pretty bad. She really did know how to make enemies.”
I saw Candy coming toward us in the mirror, and before I could get anything more out of Kira, she quickly ran to the front of the shop. I’d gotten some good information out of her about how much Candy hated Geneva, and maybe I’d found another suspect.
Tucking a few stray hairs into my hairdo, she smiled at me in the mirror. “Looks terrific! I like this look on your, Poppy. It’s way sexier than your usual boring look with your hair just hanging straight and doing nothing in particular.”
There was that classic Candy truthfulness that stung with each word. That she could dish it out was certain, but maybe she couldn’t take it in return. Perhaps words weren’t enough to get revenge on Geneva for her brand of truthfulness, and she’d taken it to a higher level that night.
Chapter Thirteen
By quarter to seven, I stood in my kitchen dressed and ready for whatever Alex and I were going to do at Diamanti’s. Well, whatever we were going to do other than eat. As Bethany had suggested, I wore my sleeveless little black dress with my favorite black pumps, and together with my fancy hairdo and makeup done up to accentuate my eyes and lips as all the magazines suggested, my look was just as Candy had said.
Way sexier. Whether it was appropriate for our dinner wa
s an entirely different story.
At exactly seven o’clock, Alex knocked on my door. I opened it to see him like I’d never seen him look before. He wore a dark grey suit, a black dress shirt, and a red and grey tie. For the first time, I thought I saw what Jennie saw.
Dressed like this, I couldn’t deny it. Alex was hot. Actually, it was more than that. He was stunning, like the kind of good looking I’d never seen in Sunset Ridge. Lost in thought about how gorgeous he looked, I said nothing and simply stared at him as I held the door open.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, shaking me from my thoughts.
“No. Please come in,” I answered as I gathered my composure.
Alex looked around my kitchen as if he was searching for a reason why I was acting so weird, and when he couldn’t find one, he said, “I’m looking forward to this dinner at Diamanti’s. In all the time I’ve lived here, I’ve never gone there.”
“It’s very nice. Great food. I’ve always enjoyed it.”
I didn’t know why I was speaking in staccato, explaining things like people did in their reviews on travel sites. I’d been to Diamanti’s countless times, and the food had never disappointed. Why I didn’t tell him that I didn’t know, but if I didn’t stop acting like a teenage girl on her first real date, we’d never have a chance to have a good time.
At whatever we were doing.
“Are you ready? Should we go?”
I reached for my bag and uncomfortably said, “Sure. I’m fine. I mean ready to go. Let’s go.”
God, I really was acting like a teenage girl.
Snap out of it, Poppy! You’ve been on dates hundreds of times, and this probably isn’t even a date. Just two co-workers getting together to talk about something they’re working on. See? There’s no reason to be acting so awkwardly. Get it together!
Alex guided me out of my kitchen and closed the door behind us. We silently walked out toward the sidewalk, but instead of turning toward downtown, he gently took hold of my arm to steer me the opposite way.
“My car is parked up here a little ways.”
The Eleventh Hour Page 13
