Death by Espresso

by Alex Erickson

  “I wasn’t implying that,” I said, though I was intrigued. I hadn’t said she was sleeping with anyone, yet she’d quickly jumped straight to that conclusion. So, did that mean she was closer to Vince than she was letting on? Or was it Jacques she was concerned about? Something about her denials felt off, as if there was indeed something going on between her and one of the two men.

  But which one?

  Asking would be futile, I knew. Lyric was watching me, just waiting to put me in my place for pressing, so I moved on.

  “Do you know anything about Jacques’s stomach problems?” I asked. “Someone mentioned he went to the doctor to have it checked out.”

  “Someone does a lot of talking,” Lyric said, casting a longing glance down the trail. She looked anxious to be running. “I don’t know anything about that. You could always ask him yourself if you’re curious.”

  “I wish I could,” I said. “I don’t know how to get ahold of him.”

  Lyric started stretching again, warning me she was about to resume her power walk. “That’s not a problem.” A sinister grin spread across her face. “I can give you his number.”

  “Great!” I waited.

  Lyric rolled her eyes. “Not here. I’ll text it to you when I’m done. I don’t have it committed to memory, and my phone is in my car.”

  “Oh.” I looked down the path. Just past the trees ahead, I could see the crystal-clear waters of a small lake. Birds were fluttering overhead in the breeze that was causing the branches of the trees to sway. It was beautiful, but I didn’t think I could handle another leg of Lyric’s walks.

  “I think I’ll head on back then,” I said, shaking my legs as if I’d done a full set of squats. “You go on ahead.”

  Lyric gave me a cynical smile, and then started walking, arms pumping, entire body tensing and releasing with every step.

  “Don’t forget to text me his number!” I called after her.

  She raised a hand and waved, though she didn’t look back.

  I turned back the other way, entire body slumping now that she wasn’t watching me. We’d only gone a mile, yet I dreaded every step as I worked my slow way back to my car. My eyes were itching, and my nose running. I liked nature, but I’d prefer to watch it from afar.

  I decided I wouldn’t sit in the parking lot to await her return. There was no telling how long she’d be, and honestly, I wanted out of there. I desperately needed to find someplace where I could put my feet up and relax and that wouldn’t trigger my allergies. And maybe have something cold to drink. And sit down. Yeah, I definitely needed to sit down.

  And after? Hopefully, I’d get my chance to talk to Jacques. And then, once that was done, I could spend the rest of the day with Dad and Laura.

  I just needed to make it back to my car alive.

  22

  My phone dinged as I was chugging my second bottle of water. Sweat was still dripping from my forehead where I stood in my kitchen, feeling as if I might die. The warm day had turned hot by the time I’d gotten back to my car, and to top it off, when I’d tried to turn on the air-conditioning, only hot air had blown out at me. My car, it seemed, was in its twilight years.

  I finished my water and tossed the bottle into the trash with its companion, mind on my poor little Focus. It had served me well for many years now, but seriously struggled last winter, and had only gotten worse since. Once Vicki’s wedding was over, it looked like I was going to have to make a trip to the local car dealership to find a replacement.

  Feeling as if I might yet survive the day now that I had water in me—though, by now, my stomach was sloshing around and I was feeling decidedly seasick—I picked up the phone and checked the text. As promised, a phone number awaited me.

  “Here goes nothing,” I said to Misfit, who was perched on the island counter, watching me with a “When’s she coming back?” look on his face. Laura and Dad were still out, though I found it hard to believe they were still eating breakfast at this point. Despite what the actors think, there’s quite a lot to do in Pine Hills, if you don’t mind spending your time in locally owned businesses instead of chain stores.

  I scrawled the number down on a pad of paper and then dialed. It rang for so long, I was afraid Jacques was ignoring an unfamiliar number. Just as I was about to hang up, however, he answered with a jaunty “Yo?”

  “Hi, Jacques, it’s Krissy Hancock.”

  “Who?”

  “Krissy. Vicki’s friend. I met everyone at the airport and then again at Death by Coffee.”

  “Oh, yeah, Krissy.” Pause. “How did you get this number?”

  “Lyric gave it to me,” I said, feeling only mildly guilty for ratting on her. Served her right for how she’d treated me at the trail.

  “Really? Huh.” Another pause, while he reflected on that. “What can I do for you, Krissy Hancock, Vicki’s friend?”

  “I was hoping we could talk.” I thought about that, and added, “Face-to-face.”

  “Sure. What about?”

  Not wanting to scare him off, I chose my words carefully. “I can’t really discuss it over the phone right now. Can we meet somewhere? I promise not to take up too much of your time.”

  “Cute Cuticles.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m heading to Cute Cuticles now. Meet me there.”

  A niggling at the back of my mind. A pink, exaggerated sign. Fingernails the size of my head. “At a nail salon?” I asked, not quite sure I’d heard him right.

  “I’m overdue,” he said. “Come get a manicure with me and we can talk.”

  I wasn’t so sure I wanted to discuss Cathy’s murder in front of the manicurist, but this might be my only chance to talk to Jacques before the wedding. Time was quickly running out, and I was no closer to catching the killer.

  “I’ll meet you there.”

  * * *

  Cute Cuticles was housed in a tiny building downtown. The big pink sign out front was just as I’d remembered: artfully drawn fingernails, and the name of the store, but little else. Large windows gave a good look inside, where I could see six chairs, two women dressed in pink, and Jacques Kenway. He was seated in one of the chairs, facing the windows, hands soaking in a bowl.

  I entered, feeling about as out of place as I could get. I’d never gone to get my nails done before. No manicures, no hand baths or whatever people do these days. I could barely be bothered to use lotion unless my hands were so dry they were cracking. The only thing I ever did was clip my nails, and normally, that only happened after I broke one of them or sliced myself with a jagged edge, which happened more often than I cared to admit. I worked with my hands all the time at Death by Coffee, so it was inevitable I’d break a nail or two.

  Jacques nodded to me as I approached. “I remember you now,” he said. “I had a hard time placing you on the phone. They say the memory is the first thing to go.” He chuckled. “And I have to admit, I wasn’t my best after the flight into town and everything that’s happened since.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I took the seat next to him. One of the women in pink appeared and placed a bowl in front of me. She didn’t so much as speak before turning and walking away.

  “I went ahead and paid for you,” Jacques said. “We can get the same treatment while we have our little conversation. It’s supposed to be a good one—a house special. We’ll see.”

  “Thanks,” I said, dunking my hands into the water with a nervous frown. I wasn’t sure what it contained, other than water. It smelled a little like lavender, actually. When the lukewarm water didn’t cause my fingers to start burning or turn funny colors, I relaxed.

  “So, what did you want to talk to me about?”

  I took a moment to collect my thoughts. So far, Jacques had been the nicest person out of all the people the Pattersons had brought with them, but I didn’t trust his smile, his friendly tone. His name had come up so much in conversation, I could be sitting with a killer, and I refused to be disarmed by his
sparkling personality.

  “How’s your stomach?” I asked, just so I could gauge his reaction. I doubted his pains had anything to do with Cathy’s death, but it was strange how he’d wanted to work around the paperwork at the clinic.

  There was a flicker of something in his eye before he shrugged. “Better. When I get stressed, it acts up. Always has. I left my pills at home like a dope, so went in to pick some up. How did you know about it?”

  I ignored the last question, not wanting to bring Will into this. “Are you stressed because of Cathy’s murder?”

  Another flicker in his eye, accompanied by a slight hesitation to his smile. “That’s part of it, I suppose. Coming all the way here when I have so much to do back home adds to it. I have a movie coming up and I always get nervous the closer one comes to shooting, even after all these years.” He laughed. “You’d think I’d be used to it by now.”

  I was going to ask him some more questions, but waited when the two women in pink removed our hands from the bowls. Jacques’s manicurist was a pretty woman in her mid-twenties who couldn’t seem to take her eyes off the good-looking actor. I had an older woman who appeared as if she was having the worst day of her life. She took my hands, looked down at them, scowling as if offended by my lack of care, and then started rubbing a lotion of some kind into them with all the force she could muster.

  Jacques was getting a gentler application, and for a few moments, I was forgotten. He murmured something to his manicurist, who giggled and blushed like a schoolgirl before batting playfully at the hand she was holding. I noted how he squeezed her fingers every so often, and the way she would suck in a breath nearly every time it happened.

  It was fascinating to watch, really. Did she know he was an actor? I had a feeling Jacques wasn’t shy about telling all the pretty girls about what he did for a living, so it was possible.

  This went on for a few minutes, and I was just starting to get used to the rubbing when the pain began.

  Maybe it was because of my manicurist’s bad mood, or maybe it was because of how bad my nails had become, but when she started pushing on the cuticles with this small, metal torture device, it was like she was jamming bamboo stalks up my fingers. I yelped and tried to pull away, but she held on with the fierceness of a tiger.

  “Hold still,” she barked, jamming at another cuticle.

  “Never had a manicure before?” Jacques asked, grinning at my discomfort.

  “No!” It came out at a near shout as she moved on to the next nail. “First time.”

  “I can tell.”

  Okay, I’m a wimp. I gritted my teeth and tried to find my center, in the hopes I’d somehow forget about the pain. It worked, kind of, and I decided it might be best to go ahead and continue with my questions. Maybe speaking would get my mind off of what this evil woman was doing to me.

  “How well did you know Cathy?” I asked, sucking in a sharp breath as my manicurist dug at a particularly stubborn spot. She was biting her lower lip and glowering.

  “Not too well, actually,” Jacques said, seemingly unfazed by what was happening to his fingers. “I knew of her, of course. I’ve seen her around. People get married, divorced, married again, so there’s always a never-ending supply of weddings to go to. I’m sure I’ve seen her at quite a few.”

  “I heard you went with her to Geraldo’s here in town?” I asked.

  “That’s right,” he said, not missing a beat despite the contradiction. “We did.”

  “You fought?”

  He shrugged. “I suppose. It was nothing. We didn’t actually go there together, if that’s what you think. We happened to be hungry at the same time, and when I saw her there, I went over to say hi. Didn’t take long before our personalities clashed, so, before things could get out of hand, I left.”

  “You didn’t argue about anything specific?”

  “Nah. She wouldn’t shut up about the wedding, what she planned on doing with it, and so on. I got tired of it and asked her to stop. She didn’t like that.”

  “It wasn’t about any of the rumors?” I asked.

  “What rumors?”

  “That she liked to steal from her clients, for example.”

  Jacques shrugged. “If she did, I knew nothing about it.” He smiled at his manicurist, who was taking far gentler care of his hands than the older woman was of mine. Of course, his fingernails were already near pristine, so there really wasn’t much she needed to do. Maybe that was why he wasn’t crying like I was very near doing.

  “She was found with the necklace Gina was going to give to Vicki,” I said. “Well, a fake one, actually. Do you think she might have stolen the real one and replaced it with the replica?”

  Jacques laughed. “I don’t think so.”

  I waited, but he didn’t go on. “Why not?” I asked, and then, “Ow! That hurts.”

  The manicurist glared at me, and then jabbed all the harder.

  “I suppose she might have been stealing it, but I doubt she was replacing a real necklace with a fake one.”

  “Why not?” I asked again.

  “It was always fake,” Jacques said, dunking his hands back into the water to soak. After a few seconds of that, he removed them again and turned them over so his manicurist could rub something into his fingers and palms.

  “Why do you say that?” I asked. I found it hard to believe Gina would give Vicki a fake necklace.

  “I’ve always thought so,” Jacques said. “The Nest of the Viper was a low-budget flick that could barely afford to shoot in the studio, let alone use real props. Costume jewelry is pretty common in situations like that. I’ll admit, it looks pretty real, but if you were to look closely, scratch away the shine, all you’d find is a common, pretty glass.”

  Could it be possible? Gina hadn’t gotten the necklace appraised, so a professional hadn’t had the chance to look it over to confirm its value. If the woman who’d given it to her said it was real, who was she to call her a liar?

  “Does anyone else know?” I asked.

  Jacques shrugged. At this point, his manicurist was wrapping his hands in warm towels. “I doubt it. Too many people see sparkly things and lose their minds.” He winked at the young woman as she stood. She blushed and walked away with a giggle. “It’s likely they all thought it was real enough, so if Cathy Carr was stealing it, she thought she was in for a big payday. Once she tried to pawn it, she would have been sorely disappointed.”

  If she hadn’t been killed for it instead.

  My manicurist stopped poking me and pushed my hands into the water, which had cooled. She held them down as if she thought I might pull them out, before tugging them toward her to rub a scented oil of some kind into my fingers and palms.

  “Lyric says you two were discussing doing a movie together,” I said.

  He nodded. “I already have my spot—a cool-as-a-cucumber club owner accused of murder. She wants in on it. I figure I could grease some wheels for her.” He looked at his nails briefly, as if appraising them. “She knows how these things work and has already paid in full, if you know what I mean.”

  I thought I did, but really didn’t want to know. “She said you two barely know each other.”

  He shrugged, dismissive. “You know how it is. What goes on behind closed doors and all that.” He paused. “What’s this all about anyway?”

  “Nothing, really,” I said. “I’ve been hearing a lot of things lately, and was curious what was true and what wasn’t. I even heard one of you lost out on a role in a movie. Any idea who that might be?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Vince. He shouldn’t have tried to beat me out for the spot. There were better characters for his skill set, but he insisted on trying for the lead, the fool.”

  “You took it from him?”

  “I wouldn’t say I took it, but yeah, I beat him out for the part. I was surprised he’d agreed to come here at all, to be honest. The man has been a grouch ever since he realized he’d once again be relegated to doing stu
pid voices.”

  Grouchy and isolationist, actually. I’d barely seen Vince in town since he’d arrived. Was he keeping to himself because he was upset over the lost opportunity? Or was it because he had a murder on his mind?

  “Do you know where I can find Vince?” I asked, thankful that the manicurist seemed to be done torturing me, and had wrapped my aching hands in warm towels.

  “Try a bar.” Jacques shook his head sadly. “The guy has some talent, but doesn’t know how to handle rejection. His reputation has gotten around, so even if he did somehow manage to put on a better audition than me, his penchant for sulkiness and drink would work against him.”

  “Any idea which bar?” I asked. There weren’t a lot of them in town, but I didn’t want to go looking in every one on the off chance he’d be there.

  “Try the one closest to where he’s staying,” Jacques said, standing. “It’s some cheap hotel at the edge of town, if I remember right.”

  I thought I knew the place. “Okay, thanks.”

  “Anytime.” He turned to the manicurist. “Hey, if you have time later, I might be free.”

  Her eyes lit up, and she grabbed a pen and wrote something down on the back of a business card. She handed it over to him with a, “I get off in a couple hours.”

  “Fantastic.” Jacques kissed the card and shoved it into his pocket before turning to me. “Anything else?”

  I started to say no, but one more thing came to me. “I heard Jacques isn’t your real name. Is that true?”

  Jacques’s good humor slipped for an instant before his smile returned. “Stage names are common,” he said. “Just ask Toni.”

  “Toni?” I didn’t recall anyone by that name.

  Jacques merely nodded and then, without another word, walked out of the salon.

  23

  Looking for a possible murderer in a bar while alone probably wasn’t the best idea I’d ever had, but I didn’t want to go home and see if Dad might back me up. I knew he would jump at the chance, and honestly, it would have been the smart thing to do, but I also didn’t want to risk getting him hurt.