An hour later, following a discussion about Desiree’s rise to fame, her family, and circle of friends, a clerk arrived to tell Cinnamon she had a phone call. The clerk also brought me a glass of water. I was so grateful for the liquid and respite. My throat felt raw, my emotions as gritty as sand.
Cinnamon returned, her mouth grim, her eyes pinpoints of intensity, and I speculated about whether she was as dogged off the job as she was on the job. According to my aunt, she could roller skate and sing like an angel. Had she appeared in any of the local theater productions? The town boasted a modest theater company that put on plays every few months. The well-known actress who had starred in my last ad campaign, the Fountain of Youth Skin Cream series, had traveled to Crystal Cove for a juicy part.
“Miss Hart, are you listening to me?” Cinnamon said with a bite.
I stiffened. She had spoken? Shoot.
“Can you think of anything else, Miss Hart? Anything at all.”
“Um, no. Did you have a distressful phone call?”
“That was your father on the phone.” She hitched a thumb. “Until we have more evidential proof, he suggested that I release you on your own recognizance. I’ve agreed. You are free to go.”
Let’s hear it for Dad. Whatever differences we might have had, he would always act as my advocate.
“Thank you, ma’am.” I felt silly calling someone a few years older than me ma’am, but miss wasn’t respectful, although I didn’t see a wedding ring, and she certainly wasn’t a sir, and I didn’t think it was appropriate to call her Cinnamon seeing as she was calling me Miss Hart. I guess I could have said: Chief. I plucked at the wadded-up tissue that sat in my lap. Yeah, okay, the waterworks had started about midway during the questioning. How puffy did my eyes look? If only I had a jar of Fountain of Youth cream to refresh my skin.
“However, do not leave town,” Cinnamon added.
“Why would I? I just relocated here.” I pressed my lips together, realizing how stupid I sounded. Open mouth, insert both feet. I rose from my chair. “No, of course, I won’t leave. I’ll be here. At your beck and call. And I promise, if I learn anything new, you’ll be the first person I dial. I’m innocent. I did not strangle Desiree.”
Cinnamon eagle-eyed me. “How did you know she was strangled?”
Sheesh. Maybe I needed to wear duct tape across my mouth. “I heard you whispering when you were crouched beside the body.” I tapped my head. “Good ears. My mother always told me it was rude to listen in, but I can’t help myself. You said the word strangled, and then something about a bruise on the right side of Desiree’s head.”
I heard a snort and whipped around. Pepper Pritchett stood like a sentry in the doorway to her daughter’s office. How had she opened it so stealthily? I wondered for a second whether she would have killed Desiree to get me in trouble but chided myself for the notion. The woman was a sourpuss; that didn’t make her a murderer.
• • •
WHEN I ARRIVED at The Cookbook Nook with Tigger, I was shocked to discover that Aunt Vera had declared it Opening Day despite the morning’s tragedy. Crowds of people, including sandcastle makers, complete with buckets and shovels, packed the shop. Another dozen customers clustered on the boardwalk and waited for the opportunity to enter.
I ogled my morning exercise outfit and wished I had changed it when I went to the cottage to fetch the kitten, but thought: What the heck? Why did I need to wear business attire? Everyone in town, locals and tourists alike, dressed down. And focusing on work would help me keep my mind off, well, everything else. I planted Tigger in the office, refreshed his water, and joined my caftan-clad aunt at the register, where a stream of buyers waited, arms filled with our bargain cookbooks, regularly priced books, utensils, aprons, and Desiree’s cookbook: Cookies, Cakes, Sweets, and More. We had preordered fifty copies. Taking in the size of the crowd, I wasn’t sure we would have enough. The closest bookseller who might have a few copies on hand was located in San Jose, a little over an hour away. On the counter beside the books stood a tier of candies. Katie must have made them with recipes gleaned from Desiree’s cookbook: toffee fudge, colorful rock candy, and chocolate peanut butter crisp bonbons. In college, the two of us had downed more than our fair share of rock candy. Our teeth had ached for days and we vowed to cut out all sweets forever. Right. My chest tightened from the memory.
“I know we should’ve remained closed, in honor of your friend”—Aunt Vera flaunted a hand at the crowd—“but how could I say no? People begged me to let them inside. Death makes curious bedfellows. And you should see the café. Not a seat available.”
Desiree would have been proud to see folks take such an interest in her—dead or alive. I urged the tears pooling in my eyes not to fall and pressed ahead.
“How’s Katie handling the pressure?” I asked, worried that we weren’t prepared in the café for such an onslaught.
“Like a pro. An Iron Chef couldn’t do better. We hired a couple of very cute sous chefs. We’re still looking for an assistant chef.” Aunt Vera poked the keys on the ancient register to make a sale. Multitasking suited her. Her cheeks radiated with a pretty pink flush, and her eyes sparkled with energy. “By the by, Katie made some delicious fruit-filled mini-cupcakes with the most luscious whipped frosting. She decorated them with little ships. They’re for the taking over there.” She wiggled her bejeweled pinky in the direction of the hallway leading to the café. Cupcakes and more goodies nestled on a table laid with an aqua-checkered tablecloth. I pondered whether we might go bankrupt giving away so much food but pushed the notion aside. Good marketing required drawing in repeat customers. “She’s calling them Katie’s Mateys,” my aunt added. “Isn’t that cute, seeing as we’re located in Fisherman’s Village?”
So cute my head was spinning.
“Ooh, look at this, Mommy,” a child screamed at the back of the store. “A bake set. Can we get it?”
“Yoo-hoo.” A string-bean-shaped customer standing at the far side of the store beckoned a stouter female. “Look at this.” She was holding up the The Gourmet Cookbook, Volume I. “The pages are gilded. No photographs, though, only drawings. But the recipes look yummy.”
The other female rushed to her, waving another cookbook. “I found the Barefoot Contessa Foolproof: Recipes You Can Trust. I hope her fabulous chicken salad recipe is in it.”
“Girls, look,” a customer shouted to her cluster of pals by the bay window at the front of the store. “Culinary mysteries. Oh, get these cute titles. To Brie or Not to Brie, An Appetite for Murder, and A Brew to a Kill.” She giggled. “Ooh, and there are recipes inside. What fun.”
Why wasn’t anyone using an inside voice? My head started to throb.
Aunt Vera squeezed my arm. “We’re a hit.”
If she was so excited, why did I feel like crawling under a log, or at the very least, a mound of quilts? Because a friend had died. Horribly. And I was the prime suspect. Except I couldn’t have done it. I never could have strangled Desiree, no matter what she might have been guilty of. I wasn’t nearly strong enough. Who was?
“Jenna, what’s wrong?” my aunt said. “Other than the obvious, of course.” Before I could lie and say, Nothing, she lifted my chin with her fingertip and pinned me with a concerned gaze. “I’m so sorry about Desiree. I truly am. But life continues to churn. We stop to appreciate what we lost, and we take a deep breath, and we move ahead. We will meet all those we love in the afterlife. This, I know.”
How could she be so sure? “Aunt Vera, I’ve got to ask. What’s the scoop with you and this place? Why didn’t you ever open it for business?”
Aunt Vera settled into one hip. Her mouth curved up. “I loved a man, dear. A chef and my soul mate. We planned to transform this into our special place.”
“Did he . . . die?” My voice caught. I felt ghastly for dredging up such a sad memory, especially today. If only I could turn back the clock a few seconds.
“Worse.” Aunt Vera sniffed. “He left me
at the altar.”
“Why?”
“That’s the awful thing. I don’t have a clue. We never talked about it. A month later, he married someone else. A year later, he traveled to the netherworld, and that’s when I . . .” She screwed her finger toward the ceiling.
“You pursued your psychic career.”
“Multiple times I visited the cemetery where he was buried. We never connected.” She fanned the air. “But enough about me.” She gripped me in a hug so fierce I thought the life might be squeezed from me. In the nick of time, she released me and took my face in both of her hands. “Find a smile and your spirit will follow.”
I tried. My face felt like it might crack.
Aunt Vera said, “Look around. This is life. It’s here.”
I found it hard not to be pleased with the activity in the shop. The design, the marketing, and the word-of-mouth had worked. The shop was going to be a success. I had carried out my aunt’s vision and saved myself in the process. Well, saved, if it weren’t for the fact that a local shop owner was accusing me of murder. A frown tugged at the corners of my mouth. As I worked hard to make the corners turn upward, I spied movement outside the shop, across the parking lot. The door to the Winnebago that the masseur and hairstylist shared was opening.
Sabrina, still dressed in the dark clothes I had seen her wearing yesterday, emerged. She teetered on high heels and descended the metal stairs. As she alit on the pavement, a blur of tattooed flesh rushed her—J.P., Desiree’s lover-slash-director, in jeans and a Stanley Kowalski–style wife-beater T-shirt. Sabrina hitched her matching tote higher on her shoulder. J.P. flailed his arms. He was saying something. Sabrina responded and backed up a step. He spoke again. Sabrina’s eyes widened. She jammed a fist into her mouth. Was she only now getting the news about Desiree? No, Chief Pritchett must have contacted her.
J.P. continued to flap his arms and move his mouth. I wished I could listen in on the conversation. Did J.P. know who killed Desiree? Did he murder her and turn her into a sand sculpture? He reached for Sabrina’s purse.
Sabrina screamed and wrenched from his grasp.
People on the sidewalk in front of the store watched in horror.
J.P. lunged for Sabrina and snatched the tote. He dove his hand inside and pulled out something thin and flimsy. A photograph?
At the same time, the door to the Winnebago opened and Mackenzie, the masseur, emerged. He didn’t look anything like he had when I had knocked on the door yesterday. Granted, his karate shirt was open and his bronzed chest gleamed, but his face smoldered with anger, not indifference.
Sabrina slapped J.P. As he reeled backward, she snatched what I assumed was a photograph and stomped away. Her shoulders heaved. Was she crying?
Mackenzie and J.P. exchanged hard glances before J.P. stomped off in the opposite direction.
Desperate to know what the drama was about, I told Aunt Vera I would be right back and hurried after J.P.
Halfway down the block, he barged inside Latte Luck Café. I forged in after him.
• • •
THE CAFÉ WAS an easygoing place with simple wooden tables and chairs and a few brown leather booths. Sepia pictures of what Crystal Cove looked like in the early twenties hung on the walls. The sweet aromas flooding the restaurant would make even the most devout sugar-hater dive into a sweet. I eyeballed the glass case filled with homemade goodies, and my stomach grumbled. When was the last time I had eaten? My version of Bobby Flay’s guacamole the night before? I had skipped breakfast. The trail mix my aunt gave me sat unopened in the pocket of my shorts. I ordered a glass of milk and a chocolate scone drizzled with orange icing, and I headed to J.P.
Families with beach gear crowded the booths. J.P. sat at a table by himself, his bare arms and face gleaming with perspiration.
“Join you?” I said.
He took a long swig from a bottle of water. “It’s cool.”
I took that as a yes and settled into the chair opposite him. The noise in the café was much more subdued than at The Cookbook Nook. Only the folks behind the counter spoke above a whisper. I sipped my milk. “I’m sorry about Desiree.”
J.P. gawked at me, his eyes red-rimmed and moist. Had he come to a popular place to flaunt how distraught he was? I scolded myself for being a cynic. Premature death of a spouse will change a person.
“You look upset,” I said, stating the obvious.
“Oh, man, I adored her. She’s dead. I’ll”—he pushed the bottle of water to the center of the table—“never see her again.” His response, even the pause, sounded rehearsed. Had he been an actor before becoming a director? A number of our commercial directors at Taylor & Squibb had acted. The director on the Daily Dose of D campaign confided that learning the craft gave him an edge up when dealing with actors’ quixotic natures.
“I saw you outside my store,” I said. “You manhandled Sabrina.”
“No way.”
“You wrestled her purse from her. You snatched something from it.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Okay, that response established that he was a liar. At least I knew the kind of person with whom I was dealing.
We sat in silence for a moment, J.P. sucking down water, me sipping milk and nibbling on my scrumptious scone, until he slammed the empty bottle of water on the table.
I snapped to attention.
“You were always jealous of her,” he said.
“What? No.”
“Sure you were. She told me. You said she was the pretty one, and you were the stable one. The guys always liked her best.”
“Stop it. You’re twisting things. Yes, I was jealous of her, but not in a bad way. I wanted to emulate her.” People in the café were staring. “I loved Desiree. She was a lifelong friend.”
J.P. sank into himself. After a long moment of silence, he muttered, “I heard you found her body.”
“Yes.” I didn’t add that Pepper Pritchett had accused me of murder. I wondered if, by now, she was spewing rumors at the Crystal Cove Crier. Would that reporter, Tito Martinez, run with the story? Would my face be plastered on the front cover of tomorrow’s paper? Headline: Hooked on Murder: Widow Questioned in Quirky Twist of Fate. As an ad exec, I’d had the task of coming up with catchy loglines. “Let’s start over, J.P. I’m Jenna Hart.” I offered a hand. He didn’t shake. “What’s your last name?”
“Hessman.”
“You said you come from Florida.”
“Yeah, that’s where I started out.”
“Doing what?”
“I was a cable TV director.”
Not an actor.
“I had aspirations of becoming the next Martin Scorsese.” He honked out a laugh and sucked in a huge gulp of air. “I had dreams. Big dreams. Making films that mattered. Films that spoke to people. Films that would stand the test of time.”
“But that didn’t work out.”
“‘Never was so much owed by so many to so few.’”
I gaped. He was quoting Churchill. Though I was an art history major in college, I knew the phrase because we had used the quote for a Bentley commercial that starred Peter O’Toole. Had I judged J.P. by the number of tattoos and underestimated his intelligence?
“And never was so much denied to so many others,” he added.
I settled back into my chair. The latter was not Churchill. J.P. wasn’t bright; he was egotistical.
“To become one of the elite . . .” He waved a hand. “What does it matter, huh? I didn’t succeed. To make ends meet in L.A., I took a gig at a game show. Hated that. I ended up at the Food Channel. I like to eat. That’s where I met Desiree.”
“And you fell in love.”
“And now she’s gone. Gone. It’s so not cool.” He rested his forehead against his fingertips.
“I’m sorry. I miss her, too.” If only I could extract the insidious doubt that had wormed its way into my soul.
I glanced out the window, hoping to find my calm in the happy-faced pass
ersby, and was startled to see Sabrina climbing out of the passenger side of a black minivan. Desiree’s masseur, Mackenzie, offered a hand for support. Sabrina looked shell-shocked. Beyond them I saw Cinnamon Pritchett on roller skates. She made a figure eight, avoiding a few pedestrians, and pulled to a stop. She wasn’t in uniform. Was she tailing Sabrina or simply out for a spin?
Mackenzie spotted us and guided Sabrina toward the café window. J.P. caught sight of them and snarled. Mackenzie winked then whisked Sabrina away. Cinnamon resumed skating.
“You and the masseur don’t like each other,” I said, stating the obvious.
“He’s a jerk.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“He picked apart a couple of Desiree’s recipes in her current cookbook. He thinks he knows how to cook. When he said the chicken breasts in cream caper sauce lacked salt, Des got blazing mad. He made her cry.”
“Are he and Sabrina an item?”
“He’s into himself, the egotistical . . .” J.P. rubbed his forearm hard. “Des talked about you,” he said, switching topics. “A lot.”
“She did?” Did she happen to tell J.P. the truth about David and her?
Hold up, Jenna, hearsay, I could hear my father warn. As an analyst, he never let my siblings and I assume anything. Not to mention, Sabrina had started the rumor. What if Sabrina lied to me to stir the pot? What if she had some gripe with Desiree? What if Desiree told Sabrina not to date the masseur? I flashed on the confrontation between J.P. and Sabrina in the parking lot and wondered if J.P. had a thing for Sabrina and not Desiree. What if Desiree found out, accused J.P., and he lashed out?
“Um, yesterday,” I said, steering the discussion in a new direction, eager to pin down J.P.’s alibi at the time of the murder. “You and Desiree went out. Did you come here to eat? See, I’m new to town. Well, not new. I grew up here. But I’d been living in San Francisco for years. So many unique places have cropped up in Crystal Cove since I left for college. This scone is fabulous. Is the regular food any good?”
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