by Maria Geraci
“Did you know that Travis is thinking about working for the FBI?” I blurt.
His eyes pop open. “Where did you hear that?”
“Agent Billings. She’s encouraging him to apply.”
He shrugs. “Fontaine is a good cop. And smart. He’d probably do okay at the Bureau.”
It’s the first time I’ve heard Will compliment Travis in a long time. “The night of the reading, after Travis found us in the storage room. What did you and he talk about?”
Will shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “Guy stuff.”
“Guy stuff that included me?”
“Maybe.”
“If you talked about me, then shouldn’t I know what you said?”
As if to emphasize my point, Paco pushes his head from the back seat to nudge Will’s elbow. My dog is the best wingman ever.
“Well?” I demand.
“I asked him what his intentions were. Regarding you.”
“I’m twenty-six years old. I don’t need anyone to ask a man what his intentions are.”
“I know that,” he says uncomfortably.
“Who do you think you are?” I joke. “My big brother?”
He turns and looks at me.
Holy wow. Brittany was spot on.
All these years I thought I was in love with Will. And maybe I was, in a teenage girl kind of way, but I don’t get the same tingly kind of feeling when I’m around him that I get with …
I groan.
“This thing between us. It isn’t going to work.”
“I know,” he says quietly. “I love you, Lucy. You’re my best friend. When I saw that Fontaine was interested in you, I think I got scared. Sebastian and I were best buds for all those years, and when he chose the priesthood, well, I was happy for him. It’s his calling. But it always comes first. As it should. When I think of my life without you in it—”
“Why would you ever not be in my life? What? Because I might have a boyfriend?” I laugh-snort. “What do you take me for? One of those girls who put bros before hoes?”
Will laughs. “What?”
“Oh, just ask Betty Jean. She knows what it means. The thing is, I love you too. And you’ll always be in my life. Even if we’re both married to other people and have eight kids apiece, you’ll always be my best friend.”
“Lucy, I am not having eight kids.”
“Well, neither am I. It was just an expression.”
“Now that we’ve cleared that up,” he says, “I want to say something.”
Uh-oh. This sounds serious.
“I didn’t tell you that I was J.W. Quicksilver because … it’s not because I didn’t trust you or that I didn’t want you to know. The only reason Sebastian found out was because I wanted to donate the money to pay for the new roof for St. Perpetua’s, and he insisted on knowing where the money came from. It’s just that the stuff I write, it comes from a place inside me that I’m not even aware of sometimes. Being anonymous makes it easy for me to not hold back. If everyone knows that Will Cunningham is the author, I’m afraid I’ll be too safe with my choices.”
I take it all in. “Yeah, I get it.”
“Does this mean you’re not mad at me anymore?”
I roll my eyes. “Come here.” I reach out and hug him, and for the first time, it feels … right. He still smells heavenly, like a fine old leather-bound book encased in the slightest hint of cologne. But he’s just Will. My best friend. My big brother. My cohort in crime (so to speak).
My phone goes off. We break away to glance at the screen. It’s Betty Jean. “What’s Betty Jean doing calling you at nine o’clock at night?” he asks.
“Oh no.” I put her on speakerphone. “Hey, Betty Jean, I’m so sorry.”
“You should be. Dinner is getting cold. When you will be here?”
“Um. Five minutes? And could you put an extra plate on the table? Will’s going to join us.”
She makes a growling sound. “With pleasure.”
Chapter Sixteen
“That’s the best beef stew I’ve ever tasted,” says Will. “Thank you.” He pats his tummy appreciatively, then smiles across the table at Betty Jean, who openly leers at him because some things never change.
“Glad you liked it,” she says. Thank goodness she’s ditched the Farrah Fawcett wig and the Spanx. Her hair is back to normal, and without all the mascara she’d been caking on in the past few days, her blue eyes seem clearer. I’ve never noticed before because her big personality overshadows it, but she’s an attractive woman. I bet when she was younger, she was a real knockout. No wonder she was able to, as she puts it, “snare” four husbands.
Will offers to do the dishes, and I’m more than happy to let him. He goes back and forth between my kitchen and the dining room, clearing plates and cleaning up.
“Yes, thanks for dinner,” I say. “And sorry again for being so late.”
“Just where were you kids anyway?” she asks.
Why not tell her? It’s not exactly a secret. “Trying to figure out who killed Jefferson Pike.”
“Any luck?”
“Not really. Pretty much everyone who had a motive to dislike the man has an alibi for the time of his murder.”
“I hear the real J.W. Quicksilver is the prime suspect. I hear he came to town and confronted Jefferson Pike and the two of them had a big fight and that he killed him. Which means the real J.W. Quicksilver was in my house.” Her eyes go round. “Looks like I got J.W. Quicksilver to my book club meeting after all. Just a couple of hours too early. Too bad no one knows his real name or what he looks like. He might be a murderer, but to the people in this town that Jefferson Pike swindled, he’s a hero.”
“Where on earth did you hear all that?” I ask.
“Table number six. I had no idea how much gossip you could pick up working here. You must know everything juicy that happens in this town.”
Will rejoins us in the dining room. “Lucy tells me that you helped at the café today. That was nice of you.”
“Oh yeah. Easy peasy. I’ll have to get some better shoes, but I think I can make it work.”
“Make what work?” I ask.
“Sarah asked if I could stay on a few mornings a week, so I said, sure, why not?” She winks at Will. “That way I’ll get first crack at all the best gossip.”
“She mentioned something about that,” I say carefully. “But we haven’t fully discussed it yet.”
“Well she went ahead and hired me. On account of how you’re going to be busy once she goes into business with that Heidi Burrows.”
I go still. “What?”
“And I thought I needed a hearing aid,” Betty Jean mutters. “For partners, the two of you sure do seem out of whack. That’s why she left early today. To go over to Heidi’s Bakery.”
“Lucy,” Will warns, seeing the expression on my face, “don’t jump to any conclusions. I’m sure there’s a logical explanation behind that.”
There’s a logical explanation, all right. Sarah wants to ditch our partnership. Not that I blame her. Ever since I’ve found my first dead body, disaster has become my middle name. I’m always running out the door on some emergency or other, leaving her stuck to do her job and mine. No wonder she’s looked so tired lately.
How long have she and Heidi been planning this? Long enough to be quoting the same marketing tactics, that’s how long.
The only thing that doesn’t make sense is her offer to cover Will’s loan. Except … it does make sense. Sarah is the nicest person I know. If she’s planning to leave me, then she’s probably feeling horribly guilty. Paying off Will’s loan is her way of making it up to me.
I feel worse than I did last Christmas morning when I ate the entire bag of dark-chocolate-covered almonds.
“You look sick,” says Betty Jean. “I hope it wasn’t my beef stew.”
I shake off my feeling of despondency. “No, it’s this … murder case.”
“So is it true? Did Quicksilver murder Pike?�
��
“No,” I say firmly. “And please, if you hear any more rumors claiming that he did, I’d appreciate it if you’d nip those in the bud fast.”
“Sounds like this is personal,” she says.
“I just don’t like to see an innocent person railroaded for a crime they didn’t commit.”
“If J.W. didn’t kill Pike, who did?”
“Like I said, that’s what Will and I have been trying to figure out.”
“Maybe I can help,” she says. “Most likely I was the last person to see him alive. Besides the killer.”
Good idea. Why didn’t I think to ask Betty Jean before? Probably because I wasn’t sure she’d be honest with me. Considering what I think happened between her and Jefferson Pike.
“Are you sure you want to answer our questions?” I ask cautiously.
“Sure, go ahead.”
Okay, here goes.
“The book club meeting was scheduled for seven, but you said Jefferson Pike got there early to help set up. What time was that?”
“Around four thirty.”
Archie claims he and Anita left town at four fifteen. Which means after they left the beach house, Jefferson must have come straight over to Betty Jean’s.
“Archie Clements told me that Jefferson was scheduled to meet a potential mark at The Harbor House at five for drinks before coming over to the book club meeting. Obviously, he never made it. Do you know why?”
Betty Jean makes an oops face. “Because I was the person he was supposed to meet for drinks but I invited him to come over early to my place instead.”
“You’re writing a book too?” Will asks.
“Nah. I just said that to get his attention.”
Will fights back a smirk. That’s just so Betty Jean.
“Did Pike know that you had no intention of buying into his scheme?” I ask.
“He did once he got to my place.”
I can’t keep beating around the bush and keeping a straight face at the same time, so I’ll just come out with it. “Did the two of you sleep together?”
“No. But we did have sex. No sleeping involved.” She clicks her tongue in disappointment. “I thought after all those hot sex scenes he wrote in his books, he’d be a little bit more entertaining in the sack, but he was just your typical sixty-five-year-old.”
I don’t even want to know what that means.
I glance over to gauge Will’s reaction. His face is redder than a cherry.
“So, after the two of you, uh—”
“Knocked boots? I told him I needed to go to the grocery store to get more wine for the book club meeting. But that was just an excuse to get out of the house. We had a whole hour and half before the group showed up, and I wasn’t about to sit there and make small talk, you know?”
“But you did go to the Piggly Wiggly, right?”
“Oh, sure. I got an extra bottle of wine, just in case. I was going to drive around the block to kill some time until six, because that’s when I was expecting you to show up, but then I saw the police cars coming to my house.”
“Let me get this straight. Jefferson Pike came to your house around four thirty-ish. You left at five to go to the Piggly Wiggly. And since you were expecting me, you left me a note telling me the door was open.”
She blanches. “I practically invited the killer to come inside.”
“It’s not your fault, Betty Jean,” says Will.
I continue. “So someone came to your house sometime between five and five thirty, walked inside, found Jefferson sitting on the chair, maybe asleep, even, then got a knife from your kitchen drawer and stabbed him. They wiped the knife clean and left it on the coffee table and walked out the door again.”
“Pretty cold, huh?” she says.
“During the time Jefferson and you were together,” I say, “did you hear anyone come to the door? Or did your phone ring? Any strange sounds?”
She raises a brow.
Let me rephrase that.
“Any strange sounds coming from outside the bedroom?”
“Nope. Nothing. Of course, I did have the music kind of loud, so it’s possible the phone might have rung and we wouldn’t have heard it. We were kind of busy, you know?”
Just out of curiosity, I ask, “What music did you have on?”
“‘Let’s Get It On’ by Marvin Gaye.”
Figures. I clear my throat. “And that’s it. You can’t remember anything else?”
“Nope. I wish I could be more help. Maybe one of my pervert neighbors saw something.”
Will looks at me and frowns.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.
“One of my neighbors is a peeping Tomasina. Either that or a peeping Tom in drag.” She gets up from the table, goes into the guest room and comes back out with an earring, then lays it on the table in front of us. It’s the earring I found on the grass outside her window the night of Pike’s murder.
“That’s not mine,” she says.
I almost say I know, but I bite my tongue. “What has that to do with anything?”
“You said you found this underneath the second window on the side of the house, near the hibiscus bushes, right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“That window belongs to my bedroom. Someone, wearing this earring, has been spying on me. Maybe even that night. Whoever it was, I hope they got their kicks.”
“Do you have any idea who it might be?” I ask.
“Someone who likes sparkly things?” she says dryly.
Considering that Betty Jean was decked out recently a la Farrah Fawcett, she doesn’t have room to be critical.
I pick up the earring and inspect it once more. She has a point. It’s a rhinestone. And it is sparkly …
My heart starts to pound.
I realize now that this earring looks familiar. It looks exactly like the earrings Shirley Dombrowski had on the day I went by the rectory to see Sebastian, shortly before I discovered Jefferson Pike’s dead body.
Chapter Seventeen
“Shirley Dombrowski? Sebastian’s secretary? That Shirley? Lucy, are you insane?” asks Will. “She’s like the sweetest lady in the world. I have no idea what we’re doing here.”
Paco, who refused to let us leave the house without him, looks up at me like he’s in agreement. The three of us are at Shirley’s front door, waiting for her to answer the ringer.
“Even the sweetest lady in the world can be a little kinky. You should have seen her reaction when Jefferson Pike came out on that stage doing his Sean Connery imitation. She was like a giddy schoolgirl.” I ring the doorbell again.
“That doesn’t mean she’s a voyeur.”
“Maybe not. But that’s her earring I found outside of Betty Jean’s window, and I want to know how it got there. We have thirteen hours left to figure out who killed Jefferson Pike, and I don’t intend to rest until we do.”
The porch lights come on and the door opens a crack. “Yes?” Shirley blinks in surprise. “Oh, Lucy, dear. It’s you. And Paco. And Will Cunningham?” She opens the door wide and ushers us into her living room. She’s wearing a robe, and her hair is in curlers. A crucifix hangs above the fireplace mantel.
“What are you all doing here? It’s almost eleven o’clock.” Her face pales. “Oh no. Don’t tell me something has happened to Father. Is Sebastian all right?” She pulls a set of rosary beads from the pocket of her robe and makes a sign of the cross.
Will gives me an I told you so look. “Sebastian is fine,” he says. “And we’re sorry to disturb you so late. Believe me, this wasn’t my idea.”
I cringe. Standing here seeing Shirley look so … Shirley-ish, I have to admit I might have overreacted. But like I told Will, I’m determined to find out what happened. “I’m sorry we alarmed you, but it’s important we talk to you tonight.”
“Shall I make tea?” she asks, clearly still confused over our presence.
“Thank you, but that’s not necessary. We jus
t have a few questions, and then we’ll leave.” I pull the earring from my purse and hand it to her. “I think this is yours.”
She recognizes it and chuckles. “It’s my earring! Where did you find it? I’ve been looking for it ever since … ” She stops cold. “Oh dear.”
“I found it the night Jefferson Pike was murdered. Right outside Betty Jean’s bedroom window. Do you want to tell us what you were doing there?”
She covers her face with her hands. “I’m so ashamed. Please don’t tell Father McGuffin. I don’t think I could ever look him in the eye again if he knew what I did.”
Oh boy. This doesn’t sound good at all. Surely, the court will go easy on her, what with her age and the fact that she probably has a spotless record.
“It’s okay, Shirley. Just tell us what happened,” I urge gently.
“That day, after you came by the rectory, I tried to finish my work, but I was just so excited about the book club meeting and the chance to speak to J.W.—well, he wasn’t J.W. Quicksilver, was he? I was so excited, I wasn’t thinking rationally. I left early, around four thirty, instead of my usual five. To see if Betty Jean needed any help with the refreshments,” she adds, wringing her hands together.
“What happened then?”
“I got to her house and rang the doorbell, but no one answered.”
“So you went around to the back?”
“Her car was in the driveway, and there was this awful music blaring, so I knew she had to be inside. I knocked on the back door too, but there was still no answer, so I became terribly worried.”
“Worried enough that you tried to peek through the windows?”
Shirley catches the skepticism in my tone. “Young lady, when a woman gets to be a certain age and she lives alone, she appreciates anyone who cares enough to snoop inside and make sure that she’s all right.”
My cheeks go warm. I’ve just been deservedly chastised by the secretary of St. Perpetua’s Catholic Church. “I’m sorry. You’re right, of course.”
“Imagine my shock when I saw Betty Jean was … was … ”
“Discovering what was beneath Jefferson Pike’s kilt?”
