I thought about having to make that call and who might show up to investigate the attempted hit and run. Detective Gregson. The last time he was called in on an attempted vehicular manslaughter that involved me, he’d taken me into the station and held me in an interrogation room where he grilled me for hours. It still gave me nightmares.
“That’s a hard pass,” I said.
Zoey got up and offered me her hand to help me stand. “I want marshmallows,” she said. “You should serve toasted marshmallows on a stick at the café. Let’s go get some.”
That was Zoey’s way of offering to drive me to You Name It, the megastore where I did my shopping.
I smiled, feeling all kinds of love for the girl. “I’m buying us dinner,” I told her.
“Just as long as you’re not the one cooking it.” She winked.
The next morning had me refreshed and back in the kitchen. Thankfully Jonathan had made it in as well. The need to ask him why he’d had to leave was burning a hole in my throat, but I was determined to let him keep his privacy.
Jonathan popped his head through the door to the kitchen from where he’d been working the grill. “Another order for shakshuka, boss!”
“Really?” I was shocked. Of course, I had goofed by adding too much tomato to the potato, bell pepper, and onion base, which had landed it the discounted spot of honor on the Oops Board. I supposed that had helped get people to try it.
I made a couple of divots in the saucy mixture with the back of a large spoon, cracked a few eggs into a ramekin before managing to get two without broken yokes, and then gently poured an egg into each divot I’d made in the sauce. I then covered the pan and let the eggs stew while I pan toasted slices of baguette that Patty had made that morning. She’d already come and gone, working her magic so that she was ready to leave by the time I’d gotten downstairs. And let me tell you, there was nothing better than walking into the café’s kitchen, pre-dawn, to be greeted by the warm, yeasty smell of freshly baked bread. It was heaven.
As soon as the eggs were done, I carried them and a generous portion of the surrounding sauce and veggies out to the customer sitting at the bar who had ordered them. Jonathan had three different types of pancakes cooking on the grill for three different orders. Word about his pancakes was slowly spreading, and the café’s morning crowd had slowly grown. It was one of my best earning times. Those early morning hours—when everything came together in the best way possible—were the times when I had the greatest sense that the café could really and truly become a success.
“Boss, mind taking this plate down to Joel?”
Joel!
The memory of his distorted image from the traffic light camera filled my mind. He’d been there for the aftermath of that car trying to run me down.
I eagerly took the plate of blueberry and walnut pancakes plus sausage on the side from Jonathan and then spotted Joel sitting at the end of the bar on the stool nearest the café’s front door.
“This too, boss.” Jonathan handed over a condiment bowl full of a mixture of warm maple syrup, butter and a splash of bourbon.
I barely made it to where Joel sat without sampling his breakfast myself. If he’d ordered bacon instead of sausage, I’d have been a goner.
I put the plates down in front of Joel. “Want me to freshen your coffee?”
“Yeah, that’d be great.”
I topped him off, then returned to stand in front of him after putting the coffee pot back on its heating pad. I wasn’t sure why, but things felt awkward. They’d never felt awkward before.
Best to dive right in. “I had a bit of a scare last night.”
Joel paused mid-pour of his maple syrup over his pancakes. I was sure that there was a moment of indecision in his eyes. “What happened?” he asked.
My heart fell. He didn’t know that I knew he’d been there when the car had taken a go at me, and he wasn’t volunteering the information. I wanted to slink back to the kitchen and have a pity-party for one, but I had to forge on with the conversation.
“I was right out front of the café, stepped off the curb, and a car almost hit me.” My fingers played with the edges of a napkin. “It was, uh, a little after eight last night.” I just couldn’t leave it alone. I had to poke at his thin veil of not telling me what I already knew. I couldn’t stand that he was keeping something like that from me. He was a man of words, for Pete’s sake. He should be describing what happened to me with more detail than I could do myself.
“Oh, wow! Were you okay?” Joel’s expression of surprise and concern was flawless. I was getting madder by the second.
I crossed my arms, tapped my foot and glared at him. “I don’t know, Joel. Was I okay?” Boom! That’s right. I said it.
A slow, cheeky smile stretched Joel’s lips and his boyish eyes twinkled. “If you knew I was there, why’d you play coy?”
“I should ask the same, thank you very much.” Indignant—that was my name. Kylie Indignant Berry.
“How’d you figure it out?” he asked.
I twirled my finger in the air. “Zoey saw you.”
“Ahhh, her ol’ eye in the sky trick. Were you able to get a license plate?”
Wow, he was going to sweep right past the elephant in the room. “Why did you act like you weren’t there?” I wasn’t able to keep the hurt out of my voice. I was surprised when I saw that hurt mirrored in Joel’s eyes.
“Your ex is still in love with you.”
My head jerked back. I’d give him credit, Joel did not pull his punch. I knew that what he’d said wasn’t designed to hurt me, but the things that Dan had done to me couldn’t be called love. He’d cheated on me with more women than I had fingers and toes to count, and when I left him after I’d found out, he’d done his best to leave me destitute. I’d been living in a women’s shelter prior to moving down to Camden Falls and taking over the café.
I was still trying to think of how to respond when Joel spoke again.
“You two, you have this chemistry…” he said. “It really made me think. I’m not sure you two are done with each other.”
The words that came out of my mouth next surprised even me. “I had a really great marriage, and I loved every second of it. Dan was a fantastic husband, you know, when he was with me, in front of my face and accountable. He was my best friend, and we were good together. And even more than that, I was happy. Really, really happy. I thought that if there was anyone in the world whom I could trust without a doubt, someone who would always, always, always, have my back, that it was him. He was the center of my universe.”
Joel’s gaze fell to his plate and his big shoulders seemed heavy.
“But then he lied to me, abused my trust, destroyed the sanctity of our vows—vows I had believed in—and stripped away everything that I had believed about my life. And when I left him… when I left him”—my voice cracked—“he did everything he could do to take away any chance I had at being able to have a good life without him.”
Joel’s eyes were back on me.
“He will never be the person I call my love again. Never.”
Joel smiled. He even got a dimple in one cheek. “I know that I shouldn’t be happy about Dan being such a cad”—his hand reached for mine to cradle my fingers in his palm—“but I am. You’re quickly becoming one of the best things about my life, Kylie.”
I wanted to sigh. I wanted to lean across the counter and place a kiss right on his lips, but the murmur and jostle of the line of people next to him kept my feet firmly on the floor. But I did let myself lose myself in his honey brown eyes, and I laced my fingers with his.
“Aw, to heck with it,” I finally said.
I leaned across the counter. There was no way I could reach him on my own, and Joel didn’t leave me hanging. He met me more than halfway in a soft and tender kiss that curled my toes. It wasn’t a kiss that would have looked like much to someone else, but it made my heart go pitter-patter.
20
“Are yo
u sure it’s okay?” I asked Jonathan. The breakfast rush had barely finished. We had all the fixins ready to make Reuben sandwiches for lunch, and I was going to be leaving Jonathan on his own to handle all of it. He’d have Melanie to work the dining room, but it would still be a tremendous amount of work to tackle in the kitchen. I’d try to make it back in time to help, but it was hard to gauge how things would go. These murder investigations of mine had a way of taking on a life of their own.
“I’m good, boss. You go do what you gotta do.” He paused, his expression becoming momentarily stricken. “But then I gotta leave right after lunch. I’m so sorry, boss.” He looked like he’d just told me that my house had burned down and that it was his fault.
I rubbed Jonathan’s arm in consolation. “Hey, you’ve been my rock. We all have life stuff to juggle.”
He nodded sagely with a look that said he’d never heard truer words.
I didn’t know what challenges had been thrown at him, but whatever they were, I hoped that he was doing okay. I’d give it another day or two and then see if I could get him to open up about them. Maybe there was something I could do. If there was, I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to help the man who had made managing the café a dream and instead of a nightmare.
Leaving everything in Jonathan’s capable hands, I headed over to Zoey’s. There, I found Brad pacing back and forth in front of her door. It was one of the few times I’d seen him out of uniform. He was wearing sneakers, jeans and an untucked blue button-up.
The man knew how to make casual work for him. If he’d struck a pose, he could have been on the cover of GQ magazine. Yet, he seemed completely clueless as to how devastatingly gorgeous he really was.
“What are you doing out here? Did you knock?” I asked. We’d decided to meet at Zoey’s for a quick plan powwow before heading out. Brad had the day off, and he’d wanted to have some hands-on involvement in figuring out who had killed Hank.
At first, I’d considered sticking to my original declaration that he couldn’t be actively involved in the investigation, but then I thought better. If I didn’t let him do some investigating with me, he might feel pushed to desperation and investigate on his own. That could muddy the waters by having too many people questioning suspects and witnesses. So I decided it was better for him to work with me instead of risk the alternative.
“No, no way am I going in there by myself. That woman, she’s crazy. You know that, right?” Brad didn’t have a very high opinion of Zoey. Or rather, he had a very high opinion of her, just not the type of opinion that was particularly flattering.
I scowled at him, tried to ignore that I was standing next to someone who could be successful as an underwear model, and knocked on Zoey’s door.
No answer.
I scowled again, this time with concern. Zoey knew we were coming. Brad had texted me in the middle of the night to say he wanted in on the investigation today. I’d texted Zoey two minutes later and had gotten a reply one second after that. She was in.
Brad reached over my shoulder and pounded on her door with the side of his fist. That earned him another scowl from me.
“You’ll bother her neighbors knocking that loud,” I whisper hissed.
Brad gave me a look that said, “What?”, shrugged and shoved his hands into his front pockets. “Her neighbors would think nothing of it. I guarantee that they all already know she’s a sociopath. She’s probably got people over here banging on her door every hour of the night and day. And if people don’t know how dangerous she is, they should. There’s got to be someone willing to warn her neighbors about her. Someone has to be willing to put it out there for the sake of the innocent. They have a right to know. They do.”
I worried about Brad sometimes. His connection with reality seemed to snap in two on all issues relating to Zoey. If I told him that she was the love child of a princess and a ninja assassin, I was pretty sure he’d believe me.
I eyeballed him. “You haven’t done anything weird like put up some conspiracy theory website about her, have you?”
“No!” he exclaimed… right before he looked at the ground and shuffled his feet.
Oh my gosh, he had.
“Brad, she’ll kill you if she finds out!”
The door pulled open to reveal a bleary-eyed Zoey. Her usually fierce eyeliner had taken on a raccoon look and her hair seemed to have been the recent home to a rat. “Kill him if I find out what?” she asked before covering her mouth to hide a yawn.
“Ohhhh! You’re so cute!” She was wearing Snoopy flannel pajamas and was barefoot. For once she wasn’t taller than me!
“Shut up and come in.” She left the door standing open as she disappeared into the body of her apartment. I followed her in and Brad reluctantly trailed behind. As for Zoey, she curled up into a tiny ball on one of her huge floor pillows. With her eyes closed and looking ready to fall asleep, she said, “Talk.”
I plopped down on the other huge floor pillow, and Brad sat down next to me. I did my best not to smile like a giddy schoolgirl when he slipped an arm around my back and hip.
“We need to figure out who to investigate next,” I said. I was quickly figuring out that Zoey wasn’t going to be up to going with us. She’d apparently had a super late night.
“Hohani,” Zoey mumbled.
“Huh?”
She tried again. “Hot Hannah.”
I thought about it, then pulled my notebook out of my purse. I flipped it open to the page where I’d made notes about our conversation with Hannah at the gym. Other than providing a description about how scarily intimidating the woman was, the page was almost blank. We’d learned nothing from her, not directly. There had been the sparring sign-in sheet with her and Hank’s names listed right there for all the world to see, but she hadn’t pointed it out. Zoey and I had spotted that tidbit on our own.
“Have you talked to the business partner yet?” Brad asked. “Following the money is always a good direction to go.”
I flipped a few pages in my notebook. “Pete Hanley. They owned an online exercise equipment business together. Andy, the assistant manager at the gym, said he heard Hank and Pete arguing in the locker room.”
“Erryone argued in there,” Zoey mumbled.
“What about Clive?” He was the gym trainer, and he’d resented Hank for his perfect body and the attention he’d gotten from people wanting to learn about fitness. We’d seen him in the videos in the week leading up to Hank’s death but hadn’t seen him the day before or day of Hank’s death. He could have poisoned Hank and then made himself scarce.
“Noddim,” Zoey said.
“Not him?” I was getting better at interpreting sleepy Zoey. “Why not?”
Zoey opened her eyes and gained an ounce of focus. “Hospital. In traction as John Doe. Been there two days. Run over by a logging team of horses. Training running up a mountain, spooked the team. Didn’t have ID on him.” Her eyes drifted closed again, and a sound similar to a snore came out of her. Then she mumbled, “Faregnition.”
“Whoa,” I said in awe. I interpreted her last word as “face recognition.” Her computer must have dug up where Clive was. I still thought he was a suspect. He could have spiked Hank’s nutrition powder before getting trampled, but I was definitely tagging him as unlikely.
“Who else do you have on your list?” Brad asked.
I checked my notebook, but the only other suspect we hadn’t talked to yet was Samantha, Brad’s sister. She’d been Hank’s girlfriend. “That’s everyone,” I said, flipping the notebook shut. I would eventually talk to Samantha but not while Brad was around.
I decided to change the topic. “Did you get a chance to look at the toxicology report?” I asked Brad.
“Yeah, I did. It’s confirmed. Hank was poisoned. Somebody fed him a massive dose of anticoagulant.”
“What? Something to keep his blood from clotting?”
“Yeah, exactly. The guy bled out on the inside.”
I sucked in a
breath. “The bruises!”
Zoey opened her eyes. “He sparred with Hannah that morning. She probably whaled on him.”
If what we saw her doing to that other poor guy was any indication, Zoey was right. Hannah hadn’t pulled any of her punches or kicks.
“So that killed him…” Hannah had killed him. My brain continued to churn. “Did the coroner say whether or not Hank would have died from the anticoagulant no matter what?”
“You mean like if he hadn’t gotten beaten up?” Brad asked.
“Yeah.”
Brad thought a moment. “I can’t recall the exact words used on the toxicology report, but when I read them I understood them to mean that the dose was a lethal dose with no reference to activity. That makes me think that Hank was a goner even if he’d laid down and taken a nap.”
“Then Hannah beating him up probably just sped up the inevitable?” I asked.
“Yeah, that’s what I think.”
That meant that while Hannah was the one to hammer the final nail into Hank’s coffin, she wasn’t the one who actually put him in that coffin. Somebody else did, and that meant that somebody else was the killer.
I shook my head. Something was wrong with that logic. I could feel it.
“Okay,” I said. “What if Hannah poisoned him knowing that she would finish him off during their sparring session?”
“The gun and the bullet,” Brad said, nodding. “I can see that.”
Hannah was definitely still a suspect.
“All right,” I said, “I vote we go talk to Hannah again. We didn’t get anything out of her last time. She got mad and indignant, but she didn’t give us any information we could use to either clear her name or prove that she did it.”
A Berry Home Catastrophe Page 12
