Stiff in the Sand

by Winnie Reed

  Who was I going to call? I could call Dad, but he would just tell me this was one more reason to stay out of the investigation. Was it even related to the investigation, though? I didn’t know. Why else would I have to watch my back?

  And why would anybody in Cape Hope care?

  I had to tell somebody about this, though. I’d burst if I had to keep it to myself. Raina was on a flight to Barbados and wouldn’t be back until Monday.

  “Don’t make me regret this, Deke,” I whispered as I waited for him to answer, huddled in the back corner of the kitchen. I had to position myself as far as I could from the swinging door and hope neither mom nor Trixie was listening from the alley. It was just the sort of thing they would do.

  “Hello? Deke’s phone.”

  Why did the sound of a woman’s voice startle me so badly? Because I’d expected it to be Deke, of course. That was all. Nothing more than that. “Um. Hi. Sorry. I was calling for Deke. Obviously. Sorry.” Great, and now whoever she was would think I was deeply disturbed and unable to express myself.

  “He’s in the shower at the moment. Can I tell him who’s calling and have him call you back?”

  Gosh darn it, why did my stomach clench and my chest tighten and my eyes water? What, did I expect him to be pining over me? Living a chaste life in hopes of winning my heart one day? Of course not! I didn’t even like him like that.

  “Uh, sure. It’s Emma Harmon. It’s—I mean, I can tell him why I called when he calls back. But it’s not an emergency or anything.”

  “Okay. I’ll tell him you called, Emma. Have a good one!” Whoever she was, she had perkiness down pat. I had a hard time seeing Deke with a perky girl, since he was about the furthest from perky of anybody I’d ever met.

  But opposites did attract. Look at Dad and Holly, who were on opposite ends of the spectrum in every way and deeply in love.

  I didn’t know if I was more stricken over the note or Miss Perky as I hugged myself in the corner of the kitchen, eyeing the blueberry muffins and rationalizing the eating of just one. One wouldn’t make a difference.

  Someday, I’d have to learn healthy ways to deal with stress which didn’t involve baked goods. I wouldn’t always have a high metabolism.

  No, a muffin wouldn’t help. I looked at the note again, wondering who could’ve left it. And exactly what I was supposed to be watching out for.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “There she is. My favorite wannabe sleuth.” Joe Sullivan was grinning in a humorless way when I stepped into the jailhouse. He was sprawled casually on a wooden bench, waiting for me, and stood when I approached.

  I barely kept from rolling my eyes at his rudeness. “I sure was hoping you’d be here today,” I managed with a sickly-sweet smile. “I wanted to thank you in person for making this possible.”

  “Who said I made anything possible?”

  “My dad, of course. He said I had you to thank.”

  “He’s too generous.” Joe tossed a coffee stirrer into the trash, and I couldn’t help but look as we passed the basket. Sure enough, he’d chewed it to bits. Was he still worried about the case?

  “Well, I do thank you. This means a lot.” I followed him past rows of cubicles, nodding to a few people we passed. They didn’t know me, and I didn’t know them, but when somebody stared at me, I couldn’t help but react.

  Or maybe they were staring at him. Heck, I’d stare at him, too.

  We walked down a flight of stairs. “I take it your father gave you the rundown. Ten minutes. No more.”

  “Got it.” I bit back a retort, something sarcastic, knowing it would only mean pressing my luck. This wasn’t the time to be sassy.

  He looked me up and down, and for a second, I thought he was sizing up my sundress and sandals. No, he just wanted to be sure I wasn’t bringing anything to Robbie. “No weapons?”

  “No weapons. Do you want to search my bag?” I held it out to him. “You can.”

  He considered it, then shook his head. “No, I trust you.”

  “You do? Wow. I feel like I should record that for posterity.”

  He was chuckling as we reached a green, metal door with a window in the center. Two panes of what I guessed was unbreakable glass with metal wiring in between. “I’ve got to admit, you’re more amusing than the people in my office.”

  For a second, I considered telling him about the note under my windshield. It burned a hole in my purse, on the forefront of my mind. But there was nothing he could do about it. Besides, I still didn’t know exactly what it meant or what I was supposed to be watching out for.

  “You all right?” My expression must’ve shifted when I thought about the note, reflecting how conflicted it left me. “Not getting cold feet, are you?”

  “My feet are warm, thanks.”

  “Because you don’t have to do this if you’re nervous.”

  “I’m not nervous!”

  “You look nervous.”

  “If I do, it’s because you’re pestering me.”

  “If you say so,” he shrugged before opening the door, nodding to a pair of guards. I nodded, too, before I could ask myself why in the world I was nodding. I felt like I should do something. Maybe I should’ve been sedated before this, since I clearly couldn’t handle myself.

  He led me down a narrow corridor lined in doors painted the same drab shade of olive green. “You’ll be in the room at the end,” he explained, pointing. “Glass separating you, of course.”

  I decided not to remind him at that moment that I did, in fact, understand how this worked. He was nice for once and he was technically doing me a favor. Even I knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  “Okay,” I murmured, my palms slick with nervous sweat.

  Just because I knew how it worked didn’t mean I wasn’t nervous as anything. No matter how many times I told Joe I wasn’t.

  He opened the last door, revealing little more than a cubby with a shallow shelf running underneath the glass wall separating it from the cubby on the other side. I took a seat on a metal chair and waited with my hands folded in my lap while Joe waited outside the door. I guessed he was a necessary evil I couldn’t get rid of.

  The opening of the door on the other side of the glass made me forget Joe and even the note in my purse for a moment. The sight of Robert Klein, a rising star in the culinary world, made the breath catch in my throat.

  He looked tired. So tired. Like a decade had passed since I saw him only a week earlier. The tan shirt and pants he wore—government issued, of course—only highlighted the sickly pallor of his skin. The light in his eyes had extinguished.

  Yet he managed a gentle smile when he sat across from me, on the other side of that glass wall. “You didn’t have to come,” he murmured.

  “Sure, I did. I’ve been thinking of you all this time, hoping there was some way I could help.”

  “There isn’t any,” he whispered. “They’re convinced it was me.”

  “I know it wasn’t.”

  “You would be one of the only people who do.” He sighed with a slight shake of his head. “I don’t even think Aubrey believes me anymore. She’s going ahead with the opening. Did you know that?”

  “Sure. I saw it for myself. They’re getting things moving again.”

  There I was, thinking he’d be happy the opening was continuing without him. I guessed there was only so much enthusiasm a person could show when they were handcuffed and facing the possibility of prison.

  “It’s a good thing, of course. Everybody’s counting on their jobs.”

  “But you deserve to be there, working alongside them.”

  He shrugged, looking so hopeless. “I thought I would be. I don’t know what went wrong.”

  I remembered the ticking clock and the questions I needed to ask. We were already wasting valuable time. “Robbie, were you having issues with James Flynn before that night? You said something to me before the doors opened about not letting James fool me. He wanted to pr
oject a certain image, but you seemed to know better. What did that mean?”

  He snorted. “He grew up on the streets but wanted everybody to think he had this rare pedigree. Sure, he got involved in real estate at an early age and probably swindled a ton of people to get where he ended up. I heard a story about a guy he worked for in New York having half his clients stolen by James, after James got fired from the firm for shady practices.”

  “You heard that, but you still wanted to work with him?”

  “I didn’t know about it—any of it—until after the ink had dried on the paperwork. Oh, Emma. I was such a fool. He saw me coming a mile away. I might as well have a bullseye painted on my back. He knew I wanted that restaurant more than anything in the world, and he drew me in with promises of success. He knew how to run a hotel, he told me, and I believed him. I’m sure he had skill. But he was better at lying.”

  “When did you find out about all of this?”

  “Roughly a month before we were due to open. I didn’t say anything to him. I did my homework, though. Asking questions, studying the books more closely. In short, he was a magician. Making numbers magically do what he wanted them to do. None of it made sense. I finally asked him about it a week prior to the opening, when I had what I considered enough proof.”

  “And?”

  “And he asked what I intended to do about it. We had already sunk a ton of money into the project—my life savings, for one, not to mention loans I took out to finance the rest. He pointed out how much I stood to lose and reminded me that his business was his, while mine was mine. I needed to focus on the restaurant and let him do what he did best. Only I couldn’t. Could you?”

  I realized he was truly asking me this question, looking for a response. I shook my head. “No way.”

  “I asked a few more questions during that impromptu meeting,” he confessed. “And found out what I’d suspected was true. He was a complete illusion, top to bottom. In debt up to his eyeballs. I decided I didn’t want to have anything more to do with him if I could help it. So I got a lawyer and had her draw up paperwork disengaging me from James Flynn. I wanted no part of him anymore. She assured me I could claim ours was a bad faith agreement. I gave him the papers that night, before the opening.”

  I almost fell off my chair. “He carried them in his pocket, didn’t he?”

  “I think so. Yes. In his jacket, now that I picture it in my head.”

  “How did he take it? When you gave them to him?”

  “It wasn’t as if I was handing him a certified check, you know. He was furious. Enraged. But we had to put on a happy face. Maybe I should’ve waited until after the event, but I couldn’t help myself. I needed him to know that I was onto him.”

  And those papers were missing. At least, they weren’t in his jacket when I stumbled across his body. “Did anybody else know you were doing this?”

  “I told Aubrey. She deserved to know. I didn’t tell her why, though. I tried to keep her out of it. I knew she would only be upset if she found out what a fool I was to let James sucker me in. I was the legitimate face of his business, you know? And I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d planned to leave me holding the bag once everything went south.”

  “How did she take it when you told her?”

  He shrugged. “She didn’t really understand. I told her the restaurant would still continue to operate, but we wouldn’t be sharing any of the profits from the resort itself. Just the restaurant. What was ours was ours, what was his was his. I was doing this to protect us. I mean, considering how indebted he was to just about everybody up and down the coastline, I figured this was the best way to keep from losing everything. She was grateful that I was handling it. She even made me out to be a hero, like I was clever enough to disengage when I didn’t quite trust him.” His head sank between his shoulders. “A hero. An idiot, more like. A sucker.”

  “You weren’t a sucker. You were looking for a way to get what you wanted. Your dream. There’s nothing wrong with that. He was wrong for taking advantage of you. I know he did it before, to other people. I only wish he’d gotten what he deserved before he did it to you.”

  I realized what I’d just said and how it could be misconstrued. “I mean, not that I wish he was killed before. But arrested. Prosecuted.”

  “I know what you meant,” he assured me with a ghost of a smile.

  How much time did we have left? I should’ve time us but dropped the ball. “How are you holding up? What’s your lawyer think about this?”

  “It’s not looking good,” he admitted. “At least I know this can still move on without me. Aubrey will sell the resort or bring a management company on. One or the other. She can’t possibly do everything on her own. And Kyle will manage the restaurant while this is all worked out. I can only hope justice will prevail. I didn’t kill him, Emma.”

  “I know you didn’t.”

  “I wish everybody else did. Not even my own wife believes me. I can see it in her eyes, no matter how upbeat she tries to appear. She’s coming in later today. I can’t believe I dread seeing her, but I do.”

  “She loves you. She wants to support you.” But I remembered what Dad told me, too. Many people in Robbie’s position would rather avoid their loved ones.

  Joe rapped on the door, signaling the end of our time together. I didn’t want to leave him in this place, looking so sad, feeling hopeless. “I’m doing everything I can for you, Robbie.”

  “What can you do?” he asked with a flat chuckle. “Unless you’re smarter than every investigator on the case. Which I guess is possible.”

  “I won’t stop trying. I promise.” I turned, prepared to leave with a heavy heart, when one more question popped up. “Was James on any medication you’re aware of?”

  He frowned. “I don’t think so.”

  Darn it. I was hoping for a clue as to how he might’ve been drugged.

  “Stay strong,” I whispered, pressing my fingers to my lips and blowing him a kiss before leaving with tears in my eyes.

  If Joe noticed, he was nice enough not to say anything.

  Though I knew I wasn’t imagining his hand resting against my back as we walked down the door-lined corridor, away from poor Robbie.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “Emma? Emma!”

  I paused in the act of unlocking my door, looking around to see who’d called my name. I wanted to get far away from that jailhouse. What did I think I was going to accomplish besides breaking my own heart?

  The sight of red hair attached to a stylish young woman only made my heart sink lower than ever. Poor Aubrey, trying to hold everything together while her husband sat in jail, awaiting trial. I waved with a smile. Only to find her unwilling to return my smile.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured on reaching me, “but what is there between you and my husband?”

  “What?” I laughed. It wasn’t funny, not in the least, but that was how my surprise came out. In the form of an ill-timed laugh.

  “You think this is funny?” she demanded, arms folded, looking me up and down like I was some sort of challenge. Terrific. I’d managed to make her angrier.

  “Aubrey, please. No. There’s nothing between Robert and me. I came as a friend to see him. Nothing more.”

  “Just like you so happened to run into my brother in the park the other day.”

  “I didn’t know he was your brother at the time. I did just so happen to see him, and I remembered him from the kitchen. That’s all.”

  She was not about to be calmed. “You say you aren’t writing an article about this, but you can’t stay away. Which tells me you’re either lying about that, or you’re lying about your feelings for my husband.”

  “I hadn’t seen him in ten years. Please, you have the wrong idea. I only want to see justice served. Don’t you want as many people on your side as possible? And we are on the same side, I promise.”

  She was just upset, overwrought as anybody would be under the circumstances.
>
  She hesitated, looking me over again, before deflating like a balloon. “I’m sorry. Really. I’m just so tired and heartsick.”

  “I can’t imagine. But you’re handling things so well. I’m sure Robert is proud of you.” Calling him Robbie would get me nowhere fast, I had a feeling.

  She grimaced. “Now I can see why he was so stressed out leading up to the opening. I thought he was acting strange. Especially while getting almost no sleep. His back started acting up, probably from stress. No wonder he took so many pills.”

  I could practically hear a record scratching in my head. “Excuse me?”

  “Pain medication, you know. The stress had him hurting all over. At least the meds helped his mood at first. Now I understand why he needed them so badly. I wish I had some myself, to be honest.” She rubbed her temples. “My head is splitting from morning til night.”

  My head bobbed up and down. Sure, yeah, totally normal. Confessing to a stranger that her husband was popping pain meds in the days leading up to the opening. Was this her way of easing me into the idea that Robbie was out of his mind when he killed James?

  Was Robbie right when he said she might believe he was the killer?

  Or was she only exhausted and traumatized, as any loving wife would be? After all, she was coming to visit him. She was devoted to him.

  “I can assure you,” I said after I found my voice, “that I’m only trying to help. I wanted him to know he has friends on his side who believe in him. I hope I managed to make him feel just a smidge better. I don’t expect miracles. But I’m thinking about him, and about you.”

  “Thank you, Emma.” She surprised me by giving me an impulsive hug—hard, fierce, practically crushing my ribs. “I should get in there. He’s probably waiting for me.”

  “Of course.” I went back to opening the car door and slid inside, starting up upon settling in. But I didn’t pull away immediately. I lingered, watching Aubrey walk into the building.