Yet, there was a part of me, an annoying part, that didn’t believe Mona had done it. Maybe it was because of my discussion with Parker Dirke. Or maybe, it was the vandalized cameras. I didn’t see Jonah vandalizing the cameras she’d petitioned to have installed.
“Will there be anything else?” I asked.
Mona spun on her heel and marched from my office, slamming the door on her way out.
“She’s horrible,” Aggy whispered. “I bet she did it.”
“Now, Aggy, when you say things like that, it makes me think she didn’t.” My cousin was an emotional person—she cried during Super Bowl commercials—and while I admired people who followed their gut, there was no fact in her feelings. “Remember what I taught you.”
“Facts first. Follow the trail.”
“Exactly.”
“You don’t think that the trail leads to Mona?” Aggy asked, fiddling with her flat cap. “I mean, she was the last one with Emma. I think that’s what the receptionist said, right?”
“You were listening.” It was my turn to beam with pride.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know yet,” I said.
And that was what got to me the most. I just didn’t know.
11
Later that evening…
* * *
A thunderstorm had rolled into Sleepy Creek after we’d arrived back at my tiny apartment for the night. Rain pattered against the windows and on the roof, and the distant roll and clap of thunder set the perfect backdrop for a night of reading and lounging in bed.
I lay on top of my white sheets, Poirot curled up against my side, reading one of my favorite paperbacks. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie.
Reading a murder mystery helped me forget about the case. Agatha and I had had our dinner of pizza from Sal’s, upon her insistence since she didn’t feel like cooking, and then promptly retired—her to the futon and me to my room.
“Who do you think did it, Poirot?” I asked, stroking my kitty’s furry head. He had the markings of a great investigator, with a curling black “mustache” in the fur above his little mouth.
Poirot purred, and turned upside down, opening one eye with his kitty paws over his face.
“I’m not even sure who I’m talking about,” I said. “I mean, which case I’m talking about. The real life one or the book.”
The buzzer from my intercom shrieked, and I frowned, glancing at my alarm clock on my old bedside table. It was 10:00 p.m.. Who would stop by at this time of night?
I placed my bookmark in between the pages then got up and walked through to the living room area. Aggy was still snoring on the sofa. Nothing could wake the woman. Not a bullet or a rocket reentering the atmosphere.
The buzzer gave its shrill squeal a second time. I hit the button on my intercom. “Who’s there?” I asked.
“Christie.” Liam’s voice.
I smiled. “Oh, hey. Late night?”
“Yeah. Can I talk to you?”
“Sure. Come on up.” I figured he’d come for a quick coffee break because he was up late working on Emma’s murder case. I buzzed him in then unlocked the front door.
Liam appeared a couple of minutes later. He’d come straight from work, his leather jacket specked with rain, the white button down underneath spotted wet. His lanyard hung from his neck, and his expression…
My heart turned in my chest.
I stepped back to allow him into the apartment. “It’s good to see you.” I shut the door. “I was going to call but—”
“You were too busy interfering,” he said, his tone harsh. Harsher than I’d ever heard it.
“Liam.”
“What?” He faced me, his arms folded across his broad chest, those bright eyes boring into me. He was steamed. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”
“Liam, just relax, OK? I can explain everything.”
“Explain what?”
I opened my mouth, but words wouldn’t come. I would have to tell him about my failure. I would have to be vulnerable and allow him in, further than I had in the past.
“That’s what I thought,” Liam said. “There’s no excuse. I explained, very clearly to you, that I was having trouble with the Captain. That my job was at stake on this one. You promised me you would stay out of it.”
“I did,” I said, trying to remain calm. But I could tell this was worse than before. Liam usually chewed me out, got a little angry, but ended up forgiving me for my interference because it always paid off. Now—
“Then why did you decide it would be appropriate to approach Parker Dirke and pretend to be with the FBI?” he asked.
I swallowed.
Uh oh. Yeah, that was the dumbest move I’ve ever made. Desperation made people do crazy things, but I had no excuse here.
I couldn’t lie to Liam about it, but I wasn’t about to admit it either. It was a crime to impersonate an agent. And if I admitted to it—
“You realize that I can just bring you down to the station, get Parker Dirke, and have him identify you as this ‘Special Agent Carson’, right?” The longer his expression remained cold like that, the higher my blood pressure rose.
“Yes,” I said, at last.
“So, what’s stopping me?” he asked. “I love you, but I’m not going to break the law for you.”
I palmed my forehead. Man, I had really stepped in it this time. “I don’t expect you to.”
“You’re lucky I haven’t told anyone about this. Parker doesn’t know you. He didn’t know who you were, but the minute I heard the story about the nosy FBI agent who drives a Corvette…”
“Liam, please. I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Why am I sorry? Because I—”
“No, Christie,” he said, stiffly. “Why did you do this? Is it because you just can’t help yourself? Because you’ve just got to be involved? Because you want the glory of having solved the case and making me look stupid?”
“No!”
“Then what is it, huh? Because if it’s those things, Christie, then I don’t know… it just means you’re selfish,” he said. “And I never thought of you in that light before.”
“Liam, it’s complicated.”
“That’s your excuse? It’s complicated?” His arms remained folded, and his painfully handsome face was shuttered against me. “You don’t think I deserve an explanation, do you? Or maybe you just don’t have one.”
“I—” I had to say it. I had to bury my pride if I didn’t want to lose him. “I took the job from Mona. I’m being paid by her to investigate this because—”
“Paid by her?” Liam nearly choked and raised a palm. “You are being paid by the prime suspect in my case to investigate the murder? Please tell me you’re kidding. I can’t believe you’d be this naive.”
“She offered me a lot of money, and I needed it, OK? For the apartment and Aggy. The business. Things haven’t been going great.” There. I had said it. I hadn’t told him exactly how bad, but it was enough of an explanation. It would have to be.
“So, you decided to take money from a suspect to prove her innocence because things haven’t been going great, not bothering to think of how it would affect me? After I told you that I was under pressure and I might lose my job?”
“I don’t think you understand how bad—”
Liam walked past me toward the door. “I can’t even look at you right now. I thought I knew you, Christie.”
“You do!” I turned, emotion clogging my throat. “Liam, you do know me. I might put my foot in it from time-to-time, but I’m not trying to hurt you. I—”
“That’s enough,” he said, his back to me, thunder rolling after his words. Quiet followed, filled by the sounds of the rain tapping against the living room window. “I think we need to take a break.”
“What do you mean?” My insides corkscrewed. He couldn’t be saying what I thought he was. After years of being together.
&nb
sp; “I mean, I want to take a break from our relationship. Until after this case. Or… until whenever I figure out who you really are, Christie.”
“But—”
“You can lie and tell me that you’ve been honest with me. Or that you’ve opened up. But you and I both know that our problems go much deeper than just one case. You haven’t been honest with me from the start, and I’m not sure if I can be with someone who can’t be open and honest.” He exited into the hall.
“Liam, wait!” The words came out in a voice that sounded nothing like mine. “Liam?” I ran to the door and onto the stairs, but he was already on the landing. “Liam, please. You can’t be serious. Please, come back. We can talk about this. Look, there’s a reason I took—”
But he was already out of the building, the glass front door slamming shut behind him.
The silence was deafening.
I hugged myself, tears welling in my eyes and then spilling over. This couldn’t be real. I couldn’t have lost the only man I had ever loved. Over a case. Over my stubbornness. Over my desperation to keep my business afloat and to pay my way. Over my fear of failure.
Liam was right. I was selfish. And he should’ve left me long ago.
“Christie?” Aggy stood in the doorway, her hair in disarray, her PJs wrinkled.
I turned toward her, unable to hide my misery.
My cousin opened her arms. “Come here.”
I walked over and hugged her, for what might’ve been the first time in a year, emotion taking hold of me.
A case wasn’t worth this. A paycheck wasn’t worth this. Maybe if I’d been open, as Liam had said, from the beginning, this would never have happened. He would’ve tried to help me. Grizzy would have too. And the twins.
But I had never allowed it through my own stupid, stubborn—
“It’s going to be OK,” Aggy said, guiding me back inside. She walked me over to her futon and sat me down. “Listen, Christie, you’re not a bad person. You’re not selfish. You’re trying to do the right thing in your own way, OK? And Liam… well, he can’t see that because he’s also stressed and trying to do the right thing.”
I shook my head, not daring to talk. Poirot trotted into the living room and leaped up onto my lap, purring and bumping his little head against my arms.
“Give him some time. He’ll come around. You’re not going to lose him forever. Liam really loves you. Like for real.”
I didn’t know what to think anymore.
12
I cracked an eyelid, squinting in the sunlight. My mouth was dry, my bedroom hot from the early morning rays penetrating my thin curtains. I shifted, and Poirot purred against my side. He sat up and yawned, showing off his fangs.
“Hello,” I croaked.
And then the memories rushed back in, covering me in a wave of despair and anger. Embarrassment. Guilt.
I had hurt Liam, as I had known I would, with my investigation. And the worst part was, if I thought about it, if I went back to the day when Mona had entered my office and offered me the money, I’d do it all over again.
That had to make me a terrible person. I would risk him and his livelihood for my selfish gain. And for Aggy.
Calm down. Calm down.
Truthfully, if I measured out what had happened, weighed my steps and why I had taken them, I had to admit that they made sense to me. It wasn’t about being selfish and saving my business. Aggy and I hadn’t been eating. Even Grizzy and the twins had commented on how we’d lost weight. Aggy had come up with some excuse about us going on a crash diet and I’d gone with it.
We’d had nothing for months.
Then you should’ve asked for help.
I pulled my comforter up and covered my head.
Yeah. I should’ve asked for help. But now, it was too late. I’d let my pride get the better of me. I’d decided to put myself first.
You should be ashamed of yourself. You deserve this. You deserve—
My door crashed open, effectively ending my pity party, and Aggy sashayed into the room, still in her rumpled PJs. “Good morning,” she cried. “I made you coffee.” She put down a cup on the bedside table.
“Blood coffee?” Bought with the money from my deal with Mona, the maybe-murderer.
“Come on, Christie, don’t be dramatic.”
“You sound more and more like Missi every day,” I replied.
“Listen, I’ve been thinking about it,” Aggy said, perching on the end of my bed. “And I think that you did the right thing.”
“That’s just depressing, Agatha.”
“What? Why?”
“Because that means you have less moral compunction than I do,” I replied. “Maybe it runs in the family.”
“Wow. You really are down.” She poked me on the shoulder.
“Ouch.”
“Snap out of it,” she said. “What? Don’t look at me like that. That’s what you say to me when I start fainting because of blood or corpses or—”
“That’s different. I have every right to be upset.”
“What you’re doing is sulking. Which only makes you seem more self-involved, don’t you think?” Aggy had cut me right down to the bone.
“OK. Point taken.” I sat up and took a deep breath. The scent of the coffee was good, but thoughts about Liam kept my stomach churning, my heart in a state of perpetual ache. I’d never felt anything like it before. Apart from when my mother had died.
“Drink the coffee.” Aggy lifted the mug and forced it into my hands. “It’s good. And it will wake you up for the next part.”
I took a sip. “Next part?”
“Sure. I’ve just come from the living room.”
“How was your trip?” I asked. “Take you long?”
“See? Your sarcasm is already coming back.” She grinned at me. “So, I was in the living room thinking about this whole thing that’s going on, and I’ve got to say that this is kind of a little bit my fault.”
“Huh?”
“I know that I came here and kind of ruined stuff for you.”
“What? No, Aggy. You didn’t ruin stuff for me. I mean, it wasn’t ideal that you turned up when you did, but you didn’t ruin anything. That’s not fair.”
“Yeah, but you’ve felt responsible for me ever since I arrived, so…”
I waved it away. “I made stupid choices. This is my fault.”
Aggy chewed on her bottom lip. “Well, uh, I have something to tell you.”
“OK?”
“Remember how I said I came from the living room?”
“Sure.”
“I was watching TV this morning and the sheriff’s department did one of those press statement things with the, uh, with the detectives.”
My grip grew tighter on my coffee mug.
“They’ve made an arrest.”
“They have?” I set my mug aside, afraid I’d drop it. “Who?”
“Mona Jonah.”
My eyes went round. I’d been suspicious of Mona, but I’d never believed that she’d actually done it. Mona was mean, but she wasn’t a killer. She had much worse ways of tormenting a person. Mona was the type who’d prefer to keep you alive and make your life a misery with gossip, rather than risking her own by getting rid of you altogether.
“They’re wrong,” Aggy said.
She sounded sure about it. A first for Aggy. She never sounded sure about anything unless it was in the midst of her whining about how hot it was, how far we had to walk, or how hungry she was getting.
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I just have the feeling that they’re wrong. And I saw the looks on Liam and Arthur’s faces. They didn’t look happy about the arrest. They were sort of glaring at the sheriff while he was talking.”
I didn’t comment.
“Christie, it’s not Mona. We’ve got to figure out who really did this.”
“No,” I said. “I’m going to return the money to Mona and stop investigating.”
“Return the money? Christie, no way. You can’t do that. We need the money. We don’t have anything else, and I get that you feel bad about what happened with Liam, but you can’t turn back now. It’s too late. He’s already mad. Let him be mad.”
“Aggy. You don’t understand.”
“Yeah, I do. I understand that you love him and you’re heartbroken, but I heard what happened last night, and he was so mad he didn’t give you a chance to explain. Selfish or not, he should’ve let you have a minute to talk about what’s going on,” she continued. “And anyway, what are we going to do, give up because some guy says you’ve got to?”
“He can have me arrested for impersonating a law enforcement official. That’s a serious offense.”
“Yeah, well, so what?” Aggy tossed her red hair. “So what? You did the wrong thing, but it was because you wanted answers. And now look what’s happened.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the living room. “They’ve arrested Mona and even Liam and Arthur are unhappy about it. I can just tell.”
“What do you expect me to do?”
“If Liam thinks that Mona wasn’t the one who did it, but he’s arrested her because the sheriff put pressure on them, that means that he can’t find out who really killed Emma, right? He won’t be allowed to check it out any further.”
“Yeah.”
“So? That means that we’re the only ones who can do anything about it anymore. We’re the only ones left,” Aggy said.
Darn it, she’s right. Since when had my cousin become so switched on?
“Come on, Christie. We can’t sit back and let them hold an innocent woman, even charge her with a murder she didn’t commit. We have to try.”
But what about Liam?
“There’s nothing you can do about Liam,” Aggy said, answering the question I hadn’t asked. “He’s going to be mad, but he’ll, I don’t know, come to his senses and talk to you when the time is right.”
I could use the break time to solve the case, get my payment, and then… I would have to deal with Liam later. I would explain. I would freely admit that I had been prideful and selfish. Hopefully, he would believe that I was sorry about it.
The BBQ Burger Murder Page 6
