Of course, the little troublemaker was right. There were lots of men in Pine Hills. I just hoped that when I did find one, he wouldn’t end up like Brendon Lawyer.
Or worse: like the person who had killed him.
18
I hung around the shop for a few hours more because, well, what else was I going to do? I wasn’t really interested in going back home just so I could mope around. I was completely out of Rocky Road and didn’t feel up to going to the store to get some more.
So, in the end, I chose to come to work, after all.
A few customers came in, bought coffee, and one elderly man bought a book. Lena appeared on her skateboard, bought a red eye, and then rolled down the sidewalk, sipping it. I hoped she was careful or she could add severe burns to her list of bodily injuries she’d sustained while riding that death trap.
I must have been moping a little too much, because after two hours of me wiping down tables and looking gloomily out the window, Vicki had had enough.
“Go,” she said. “Find something to do.”
“I have something to do,” I said, indicating the thrice-washed table, which no one had sat at all day.
“Please,” she said. “You’re going to drive me crazy.”
“I can’t just leave you here alone,” I protested weakly.
She gave me her movie star smile and shooed me toward the door. “I can handle this. If we suddenly get busy, I’ll call.”
And out the door I went, still wearing the apron I’d put on. I considered taking it off and handing it to Vicki, but I was pretty sure any movements that didn’t equate to me getting farther away from Death by Coffee would end up earning me another firm reprimand—and I was all reprimanded out.
I left the apron on as I crossed the street to where I’d left my car. I figured if nothing else, it might serve well as advertising. The apron did have DEATH BY COFFEE on the front.
It took monumental effort not to poke my head into Lawyer’s Insurance as I passed. I had no idea what good it would do, considering Raymond would bite my head off the moment he saw me, and the police had once again been over the office. A part of me wanted to do it, anyway, just to irk the old man a little more before I headed home. But then again, if Raymond Lawyer had killed his son, he might kill me off, just to be rid of me.
I turned my back on the place just as the door flew open, nearly smashing into the wall. Mason Lawyer stormed out, face red. A few choice words hurled by his father chased after him. He stopped when he saw me, and the frown he already wore deepened.
“You again,” he said, as if I’d been out here waiting for him on purpose.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was just heading home.” I gestured toward my car.
His eyes narrowed as if he didn’t quite believe me, and then he gave a frustrated sigh. “Whatever.”
And then, like magic, both our stomachs growled at the same exact instant.
Mason glared at me like I’d planned it, and I did my best to look like it had not happened at all. Despite my best efforts, I could feel my face reddening.
“I haven’t eaten,” I said. Coffee and cookies didn’t count.
Mason ran his fingers through his hair. “Yeah, me either.”
Okay. I might have restrained myself from rushing over the moment I’d seen the cop car pull up in front of Lawyer’s Insurance, and I might have avoided begging Officer Dalton for every ounce of information he had about the case, and I’d even stopped myself from making matters worse by tweaking Raymond Lawyer’s nose by sticking my own nose where it didn’t belong, but there was absolutely no way on God’s green earth that I could possibly pass up this opportunity.
“You know,” I said, taking a step toward him, “I’m new in town. I’d love to sit down and talk for a little bit.”
Mason looked at me as if I’d just sprung horns and pooped on the sidewalk.
“Really,” I said hurriedly, before he could run screaming in the other direction. “I just want to talk.”
Mason looked either way as if he was looking for someone to rescue him before he grudgingly turned back to me. I gave him the smile I’d learned from Vicki, the one that would have earned her any role she could ever want. Mason visibly melted at the sight.
“Okay, fine,” he said. “At least take that thing off.”
The apron left my waist in a flurry of arms and hair. I balled it up and hid it behind my back, like I thought he might forget about it because he could no longer see it.
“I’ll drive,” he said, walking toward his car.
There was a moment where that little voice in my head started screaming: Mason Lawyer could be a murderer! If I got into his car with him, he could drive off with me, kill me, and then leave me lying in a ditch somewhere. No one would know I’d gone with him. I knew—just knew—that anyone on the streets now wouldn’t remember seeing me with him.
But I really did want to talk to him. If I turned him down now, or went to my car and followed him instead of riding with him, I’d lose a golden opportunity to get to know the man. Without me in his car, he might even change his mind and try to lose me. It wouldn’t be hard; I barely knew my way around Pine Hills. A few quick turns down the right side streets and I’d be as lost as if I’d been dropped into the middle of Eastern Europe.
I smiled, hoping it didn’t look too strained, and slid into his car, next to him.
There are some people you should never ride with: Mason Lawyer was one of them.
He clearly believed the rules of safety and sense didn’t apply to him. He stomped on the gas the moment my door was closed. I was thrown into my seat with a huff of expelled breath. I scrambled for the seat belt as he turned the corner, and I just got it snapped into place as I slammed against the door. His engine revved and we blew through a light that had just turned red.
I have to admit, I spent most of the ride with my eyes closed and my hands gripping what I’d always lovingly referred to as the “Oh, shit” bar, instead of actually saying anything. By the time we screeched to a halt outside J&E’s Banyon Tree, my hand felt as if it was locked into the claw position. I just about had to pry my fingers loose.
Mason didn’t even wait for me to get out of the car before he was inside the diner. I closed the door and ran after him, knowing I looked a mess after my terrifying ride. The guy was a legitimate maniac.
A waitress fluttered over as soon as we were seated. She took our orders—I ordered the grilled cheese and a water, while Mason ordered something called the Tree Burger—and then whisked herself away as if she was going to float off into the clouds and marry the first man who looked at her twice. I had a feeling she needed to cut back on both the sugar and the caffeine.
“What do you want to talk to me about?” Mason asked, folding his napkin onto his lap.
“I know it’s hard, but I thought we could discuss your family.”
He scowled, but he didn’t say anything. The waitress set our drinks onto the table and then vanished again without a word.
“Did you know your brother was cheating on his wife?” I blurted out the question both because I was afraid of him and because I hoped to catch him off guard. I wasn’t sure what I’d learn from it—but, hey, I never said I was good at this.
Mason’s scowl turned into something that would scare little kids. “I knew,” he said. “Everyone did.”
“Did you know he had more than one mistress?”
“Of course.” He took a long drink of the tea he’d ordered and just about slammed the cup back down. Iced tea sloshed over the side and splattered onto the table. “Why does this matter?”
I bit my lip. I couldn’t tell him the police suspected his brother had been murdered. If Mason had killed Brendon, I didn’t want him to know I suspected anything, either. I really didn’t want to end up stuffed in his trunk.
“I don’t know,” I said with what I hoped to be an indifferent shrug. “It happened so close to where I work—it was kind of shocking. And then there are the r
umors . . .”
That caught Mason’s attention. He tried not to show it, but I saw the way his eyes widened for a heartbeat, how his hand froze for an instant as he set his silverware onto the table in an orderly fashion.
“What kind of rumors?”
Before I could speak, the waitress returned. She placed a scorched thing that was supposed to be a grilled cheese in front of me and a strange concoction in front of Mason. The bun had been toasted to a dark brown and I was pretty sure it consisted of ham, bacon, hamburger, lettuce, maple syrup, and almond slices. My own heart cried out in protest.
“Anything else?” our waitress asked. Both Mason and I shook our heads and she vanished as if she’d just gone up in a poof of smoke.
I took a moment to think about how I was going to word what I was going to say next. I tried my grilled cheese and found that despite its blackened state, it wasn’t half bad. The cheese might have been a little too gooey and the blackened bread a bit on the crunchy side, but it was still far better than anything I ever produced out of my own kitchen.
“You were saying something about rumors?” Mason prodded just before taking a bite out of his sandwich. Surprisingly, he didn’t keel over from heart failure right then and there.
“Well,” I said, leaning forward, “I’d heard a rumor that Heidi was so upset with her husband, she chose to, well . . . ,” I trailed off, suddenly uncertain I should go on. I was about to accuse this guy of something that some people view just as bad as murder. He might decide to dispense with the trying to kill me in a roundabout way and instead force me to eat his heart attack on a bun.
But there was nothing I could do but go on. If I stopped now, then I might never get a straight answer from him ever again. And with the way everyone else had been treating me lately . . .
I glanced around the diner and lowered my voice. The place was actually pretty packed, making me feel worse about the state of my own store. If only a third of the people I saw drinking coffee here would go to Death by Coffee, we’d be set.
“I heard you and Heidi had gotten together.”
Mason snorted as if dismissing the idea, but his hands squeezed on his sandwich, squirting maple syrup and almond slivers onto his plate.
“Where did you hear a thing like that?”
I shrugged, hoping he wouldn’t kill me for bringing it up. “Around.”
Mason ground his teeth together and looked at his Tree Burger like he might take his frustrations out on it instead of my head, which was a good thing in my book.
“It’s a lie,” he said, still staring into his toasted bun. “Nothing but a pack of lies.”
“So you and Heidi never . . . ?”
“Of course not!” he roared. Everyone in the place turned to look at us. They stared for a few moments before turning back to their meals, though I could tell most of them were now leaning our way in the hopes of catching some juicy gossip of their own.
Mason glanced from side to side, set his Tree Burger down, and then leaned closer.
“Look,” he said at a near whisper, “Heidi and I are friends. Brendon was a dick to her and she needed a shoulder to cry upon. I lent her that shoulder, but I would never take advantage of her. Everyone is so busy blaming each other for what happened to Brendon, no one is seeing how torn up Heidi is over his death. Maybe if more people cared about something other than themselves, they’d see it.”
I cringed back into my chair. I detected nothing but honesty in Mason’s voice. I felt like a royal jerk for even thinking he could have had anything to do with Heidi, outside friendship, let alone with Brendon’s death.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to insinuate anything.”
He smirked. “Of course, you did. Right now, that’s pretty par for the course around here.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Mason started to speak, but I never got to hear what he had to say.
“Out!”
I just about fell out of my chair. The command had been barked directly into my right ear. I managed to choke back my yelp of surprise as I turned into the furious face of Judith Banyon.
“I said, get out!”
“What did I do?” I asked. I snatched up my grilled cheese and held it up like a tiny blackened shield against the woman’s rage.
“You opened up that dirty place downtown just to steal my customers,” she all but shouted into my face. “I won’t have you here advertising yourself.”
My mouth fell open. I wasn’t advertising myself. I wasn’t a product. I’d even taken my apron off before coming. It was sitting in Mason’s backseat.
“Judy, please.” The soft voice came from behind her. Eddie stood there, looking chagrined.
“Please, nothing,” Judith snarled. “This woman is here to steal our customers. She wants to kill them with her poison coffee!”
“That wasn’t my fault!”
“I don’t care!” Judith roared. She bared her teeth at me. They looked strong enough to snap steel, so I stood, holding my flimsy shield protectively in front of me.
“We just came in for a bite to eat,” Mason said, his voice full of reason. Out of all of the Lawyers I’d met, he sounded like he could actually have been a lawyer. He could talk a bear out of its cave, his voice was that smooth. “We aren’t here to cause trouble.”
Judith snorted. “If you knew what kind of person you were dining with, you wouldn’t feel so secure, mister.” She waved a finger in front of his face. “I have my sources, you know.”
And I knew who that source was. She was probably sitting in front of her window even now, waiting for me to get home with her binoculars at the ready.
“I have it on good authority that this woman is nothing more than a harlot who can’t even make coffee that doesn’t kill anyone who drinks it.” Judith glared at me. “She’s even trying to seduce sweet Jules Phan!” That earned her a gasp from the crowd. “I’ve even heard rumors she screams about killing people while in her own home.”
I was about to protest, but then I remembered how I’d threatened Misfit. I doubted anyone would care that I was referring to my cat, and not an actual human being.
Mason looked longingly at his Tree Burger. If anyone should be accused of trying to kill people with their food, it was Judith.
“Go,” she snarled, her attention back to me. “Never come back.”
With a sigh Mason rose. “Let’s go,” he said. “I’ve lost my appetite, anyway.”
I took one last bite of my meal, tossed the remains onto my plate, and then hurried out of J&E’s before Judith could strangle me with her apron. She looked mean enough to do it.
“Is everyone in this town insane?” I muttered, walking back to Mason’s car.
To my surprise, right then, he laughed. “They might be.” He opened his car door and ducked inside. “They very well might be.”
19
Unpacking is a chore best left for someone else. I managed to unpack my clothes and Misfit’s kitty treats before I called it a night. I couldn’t focus on the job and, quite frankly, I was beginning to wonder if living out of boxes was really so bad. I could always get things out when I needed them and then put them away afterward.
Misfit was curled up on the couch, watching me with one eye as I sagged into my recliner. What I really wanted to do was talk to Heidi Lawyer to find out what man she’d been sleeping with. Once I had that bit of information, I was sure everything else would fall into place.
“What do you think?” I asked the half-comatose cat. He kicked out with one back foot and turned his head away from me.
“Fine,” I said, rising. I couldn’t sit there anymore, doing nothing. “I’ll be back in a bit.”
I made sure to fill Misfit’s bowl with fresh water and sprinkled a few treats onto the counter for when he woke up. If I didn’t, he’d tear into the box himself and I’d have a bigger mess to deal with later.
I was pretty sure Heidi would be home this time of night. It wasn’t so
late that she would be in bed, but not so early that she’d be out working—though to do that so soon after her husband’s death would be pretty callous, if you asked me. It was odd how Pine Hills seemed to shut down earlier than the rest of the world. Is that what small-town living was all about?
I was about to get into my car when headlights from another vehicle came down the street. The car hesitated just in front of the Phan driveway before continuing down to my own, where the little car parked behind me. Jules Phan got out, wearing a startling pink suit with a polka-dotted tie.
“Hi, Krissy,” he said as he approached. “You looked like you needed someone to talk to.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “You could see that from all the way over there?” I indicated the end of his driveway with a nod of my head.
He chuckled. “Well, I’ve seen you around town and you’ve looked . . . upset? I’m not sure that’s the right word.”
I sighed and leaned against my car. “I suppose I have been. A lot has been going on lately.”
“About Brendon?”
I nodded. “I know I shouldn’t get involved, but I’m positive someone killed him. This wasn’t an accident. If I could just put all of the pieces together, I know I’d be able to crack this thing wide open.”
Jules was giving me a wide-eyed look. “So you are positive he’s been murdered? I haven’t heard anything about it.” He gave me an embarrassed smirk. “Well, I’ve heard things around town, but you know how some of the ladies gossip.” His gaze traveled to Eleanor’s house. A curtain swished closed.
My jaw tightened as I remembered all the nice things Eleanor Winthrow had been telling the Banyons about me. I forced a smile and pushed my anger away. There was no use getting bent out of shape about it. It would all work out okay in the end.
“I’m pretty sure he was,” I said. “He never would have forgotten his EpiPen.” I paused. “But I don’t have any proof, really.”
Jules nodded slowly. He looked mildly uncomfortable. He kept looking back at his house like he thought it might be the only place he’d be safe.
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