Flamingo Diner

by Sherryl Woods

  Cramer wisely bit back a chuckle, then guffawed openly at something he spotted behind Matt. “Don’t look now, boss, but your night’s about to go from bad to worse.”

  Matt turned and saw Gabe and Harley being escorted across the room by a patrol officer. He frowned at them. “What have you two been up to now?”

  Officer Juan Gomez tried to control a grin and failed. “Found ’em digging in the trash over behind the Yeager Building. One of the tenants reported hearing prowlers.” He held up a zippered freezer bag containing what looked like an address book or a small date book. “They claim this is evidence in Don Killian’s death. Since the last I heard that case was closed, their claim made me suspicious.”

  “I’ll take it,” Matt said. “Thanks, Juan.”

  “Should I book ’em?” Juan asked.

  Gabe regarded him indignantly. “For what? Going through the trash ain’t a crime. If it were, you’d be hauling the homeless in here every night of the week, to say nothing of those middle-class scavengers who like to roam around town to see what treasures have been left at the curb on trash day.”

  “He has a point,” Matt conceded reluctantly. “Though I’m not above considering a charge of illegal trespassing with intent to create mischief, if I don’t like the answers I get when I question them.”

  “So that’s the thanks we get for finding Jennifer Sawyer’s date book,” Harley grumbled. “I doubt Emma would be as ungrateful as you seem to be. Then, again, I imagine you’d prefer she not get a look at it at all, what with your name likely to be all over the place in there.”

  Matt took a fresh look at the item in the plastic bag and realized that it was made of expensive leather. “You’re sure this belonged to Jennifer?”

  “Saw her with it often enough at the diner,” Gabe replied, evidently sensing that the tide was turning in their favor. “You must not have been too observant when she was around, if you don’t recognize it. Maybe your mind was on other things.”

  “Looks like a hundred other date books to me,” Matt countered, tired of being reminded that he’d kept his relationship with Jennifer—brief as it was—from Emma. It was a mistake he’d better correct before it blew up in his face.

  Gabe gave him a pitying look. “For a police chief, you sure are lousy at picking up on clues. Look at the initials, right there in gold, plain as can be.” He flipped over the bag to display them. “J.S.”

  Gabe leaned back with a satisfied look. “Well? You ready to change your tune now? Is this critical evidence or what? Why would she ditch an expensive date book she used every day of the week, if there weren’t something incriminating in it?”

  Matt regarded the two men with surprise. “You haven’t looked inside?”

  “Of course not,” Harley retorted. “That would be tampering with evidence. We’re not fools. We didn’t even touch it, except with a pencil to get it into that bag. Didn’t want to mess up any fingerprints.”

  “I see watching all those crime shows has paid off,” Matt said. Gabe and Harley might be annoying the daylights out of him, but they definitely weren’t fools. “Okay, then, let’s take a look and see what we find.”

  He led a small parade into his office, retrieved a pair of latex gloves from his desk and opened the zippered bag. Gabe and Harley were all but breathing down his neck. He scowled up at them. “Back off, okay?”

  “We found it. Shouldn’t we get to see what’s inside?”

  “How about I tell you if I find anything worthwhile?” Matt countered. “Sit. Both of you.”

  He flipped to the date of Don’s death, then began working his way back, noting that F.D.—Flamingo Diner, maybe—was written in the upper corner of every single page. He’d flipped through one week before he saw “Don” scrawled in a bold hand at 2:00 p.m. It appeared once a week like clockwork from then all the way back to the first of the year. There were dozens of Dons right here in Winter Cove, but Matt had a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach that Jennifer’s notations referred to Don Killian. On some of those very same dates, Matt’s own name was penciled in as well.

  Could he have been wrong about the exclusive nature of their brief affair? Could Jennifer and Don have been involved at the same time he and Jennifer were seeing each other? Was that why she hadn’t been that brokenhearted when Matt called things off, because she’d merely been using him as a cover for a relationship she wanted to keep secret? Was that why Jennifer had left town? Had Don called an end to an affair right before killing himself? Had Jennifer been so distraught over the breakup that she’d run away? Add in the flowers, which she claimed not to have sent, and an ugly picture was starting to take shape.

  Pinning Jennifer down had taken a back seat to a lot of other things lately. Even Emma seemed to have lost interest in pursuing the cause of her father’s death. Of course, maybe that was because he’d given her something else to concentrate on overnight.

  Still, Matt couldn’t deny that the date book raised some sobering questions about Jennifer’s relationship with Don, questions that he wanted answered. Whether he shared those answers with Emma would depend on what they were.

  He was on his feet and heading for the door when he remembered Gabe and Harley, who’d been waiting patiently for him to comment on the date book they’d found.

  “You guys did good work tonight,” he told them. “But it’s time to hang up your trench coats and put away your detective kits. I’ll take it from here.”

  “Then there is something in there?” Harley demanded excitedly.

  “A hint,” Matt conceded. “Nothing more.”

  “But a good hint,” Harley persisted.

  He grinned. “Yeah, a good hint.”

  Harley turned to Gabe. “Well, I’ll be damned. I thought we risked getting shot for nothing.”

  “Told you,” Gabe said triumphantly. “I think maybe we should think about getting licensed and putting out our shingle.”

  Even the thought of these two in the private eye business made Matt shudder. “Forget it,” he said fiercely. “This was a one-time-only adventure. Count yourselves lucky that you survived it. You mess around in another one of my investigations, you might not be so lucky.”

  “I still say—” Gabe ventured.

  “Listen to me,” Matt interrupted. “Go home, take a shower and go to bed. Your investigative days are over. Finished. At an end. Got it?”

  Both men looked disappointed.

  “Too bad,” Harley noted.

  Gabe nodded. “Yeah.” He shot a pointed look at Cramer as he added, “It was a helluva lot more fun than going bowling, I can tell you that.”

  Cramer scowled back at him. “You’ll get no arguments from me.”

  As far as Matt could tell, assigning a watchdog to the two men hadn’t paid off, anyway. They were a pair of sneaky old coots. He had to admire that, even if he didn’t want to deal with ’em ever again.

  18

  It was 10:00 a.m. and still there had been no sign of Matt at the diner. Emma tried to pretend it didn’t matter, but she felt oddly bereft inside. He was always around for breakfast, and even though she’d expected to be vaguely uncomfortable seeing him here among all their friends and neighbors after what had happened between them, she’d also known that she hadn’t wanted that night to change their routine. She’d begun to count on his solid presence to keep her grounded.

  “You know,” Kim said casually, “you’d probably make a lot more tips if you paid attention to the customers who are here, instead of worrying about the one who’s not.”

  Emma frowned. “I am not worried about Matt. He can take care of himself.”

  “I wasn’t referring to his physical prowess, merely his failure to appear,” Kim countered. “Tell me you haven’t noticed.”

  “Okay, I’ve noticed. Kill me.”

  “I think your mom’s noticed, too,” Kim said. “She’s watching you watch for him and getting more curious by the second. I think the questions are about to start rolling off
the tip of her tongue.”

  “Heaven forbid!” Emma said. The last thing she wanted was for her mother to start making plans for the future that included Emma staying here with Matt. She didn’t want to be responsible for another disappointment in her mom’s life.

  Kim propped her chin on her hand. “So where do you think he is?”

  “On a case, I imagine,” Emma said, though she had never before known a case that was big enough to keep him away from the diner all morning long. She was struck by a sudden thought. Gabe and Harley had been behaving like a couple of cats who’d gotten hold of a particularly tasty canary. She regarded the two of them with suspicion. They knew something. She’d bet on it. She grabbed the coffeepot and went to check out what they knew. If all else failed, she could always dump the hot brew over their hard heads to get some straight answers out of them.

  “Okay, you two, what’s going on?” she demanded as she refilled their cups.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Harley said, looking as innocent as a choirboy, or at least a choirboy who had a few years on him along with a grizzled face and a very guilty conscience.

  “I mean that Matt hasn’t been in this morning and I think you know where he is,” she told them with exaggerated patience.

  “Haven’t seen him,” Harley insisted.

  “Least not since last night,” Gabe added, then gasped when Harley’s foot apparently connected with his shin. He scowled at his companion. “We ran into him last night. That’s all I’m saying.”

  Ah, now she was getting somewhere. Another push or two and they’d crack. “Where?” Emma asked.

  Gabe looked to Harley for help.

  “Can’t remember,” Harley said.

  “Yeah, right,” Emma scoffed, plunking the coffeepot onto the table so she could lean down and get right up in Gabe’s face, since he was the one with the loose lips. “You two may be a lot of things, but you are not forgetful, Gabe Jenkins. Where did you run into Matt?”

  “Out and about,” Gabe said, obviously pleased with himself for coming up with an answer that told her absolutely nothing.

  “Where?” she repeated impatiently.

  Harley heaved a resigned sigh. “At the police station, if you must know. He was working.”

  She began to get a very bad feeling. “And you were there because…?”

  Gabe’s face lit up. “To see Cramer.”

  “Exactly,” Harley agreed, clearly delighted by his friend’s quick thinking.

  “When did you two get so chummy with Cramer?” she asked. “I’ve never seen the three of you together.”

  “Just lately,” Gabe explained. “Matt—ouch!” He scowled at Harley.

  “Okay, why were you really at the police station?” Emma asked again. When they remained silent, she drew her own conclusion. “You got picked up, didn’t you? Where were you poking around this time? I’m not walking away from this table until you tell me, so you might as well get it over with.”

  “The trash Dumpster at the Yeager Building,” Harley admitted, obviously resigned to giving her at least a small crumb of information to nibble on.

  Emma’s heart began to pound. “What exactly did you find?”

  “A date book,” Harley confessed.

  “Whose date book?” She looked from one man to the other. “Was it Jennifer Sawyer’s?”

  They nodded, their expressions guiltier than ever.

  “And Matt’s with her now?”

  “No telling where Matt is,” Harley said. “The man gets around.”

  Emma whipped off her apron, tossed it to Kim and headed for the door. If Matt was questioning Jennifer without her, she was going to string him up from the nearest tree. There wasn’t a jury in the world that would convict her once they heard how he’d gone sneaking around behind her back after promising to keep her in the loop about her father’s death.

  Matt had been cooling his heels in Jennifer’s outer office for hours now. He’d had no luck at all tracking her down the night before, so he’d come here first thing this morning, expecting to find her behind her desk by seven, eight at the latest. There’d been no sign of her.

  Cori had finally arrived at eight-thirty to find him pacing the corridor outside the office, getting more agitated by the second.

  “Where the hell is she?” he’d demanded, following Cori inside. “She hasn’t gone out of town again, has she?”

  Cori had frowned at his tone, then led the way to the inner office—the very empty inner office—without answering his question. That had been an hour ago and she was still giving him the silent treatment. Since his beef wasn’t with her, he’d let it pass. No point in riling up a pregnant lady, especially one whose hormones were reputedly swinging more wildly than a novice boxer.

  As if she sensed that his sour mood was lifting, she glanced up from whatever she’d been typing into the computer and gave him a hesitant smile.

  “You want some coffee or something?” she asked in an apparent attempt at a peace offering. “I was afraid to offer you caffeine before. You already seemed a little hyper.”

  Matt shrugged. “Sorry. It was a long night. As for the coffee, forget it. I’d prefer some information on your boss’s whereabouts.”

  “That I can’t give you,” she said. “Sorry.”

  “Because she swore you to secrecy?” Matt asked.

  “No, because I have no idea where she is. It’s one of her character flaws. She sees no need to keep me informed of her plans.”

  “Helluva way to run an office,” Matt commented.

  Cori shrugged. “We’re working on it.”

  Matt smiled despite himself. “Who’s winning this little test of wills?”

  “She called in once last week, so I figure that’s progress.”

  “You haven’t heard from her since last week?”

  “Oh, she was in yesterday, but that doesn’t count. I’m talking about the times she disappears without a word and there’s nothing on her calendar.”

  Matt’s antenna went up. “Does that happen a lot?”

  “Often enough to drive me crazy, especially the last few months.”

  “You have any idea where she goes when she vanishes without a word? Is she with someone in particular?”

  “I have my suspicions, but that’s all they are.” She frowned at him. “And before you even ask, no, I will not share them with you. You can ask her yourself.”

  “Assuming she ever shows her face,” Matt said with disgust. “Doesn’t she lose money when she’s not here to take calls and make stock trades?”

  “She’s not a broker. She’s a financial adviser,” Cori reminded him. “But she does keep a close eye on the market for her own portfolio.”

  “It’s been a tough market. How’s she doing?”

  Cori shrugged. “As long as I get my paycheck, I don’t care. I’m not about to gamble it away on stocks.”

  “Some say it’s still the best way to make money,” Matt pointed out.

  “Also the best way to lose it,” she countered. “I’d have about the same amount of luck playing the slot machines in Las Vegas, and at least there I’d get to see a few shows.” Her expression suddenly brightened. “Not to change the subject or anything, but how are things going with you and Emma?”

  Matt considered his response carefully and decided to stick with something neutral. “Okay, I guess.”

  Cori rolled her eyes. “Not so hot, huh? Have you talked her into staying in Winter Cove?”

  “No, but I’m trying to show her all the advantages.”

  “You being one of them?” Cori asked, mischief brightening her eyes.

  “The jury’s still out on whether she sees me as an advantage or a disadvantage,” he said, thinking of the way Emma had gotten her dander up the last time they’d been together. She might enjoy the sex but she clearly wasn’t about to let it sway her decision to leave.

  “Then you must be losing your touch. Have you considered concentrating on what the town has
to offer?”

  His gaze narrowed. “Such as?”

  “I heard Mr. Mullins is thinking of selling that junk shop of his over on Palm Drive. Could be the perfect opportunity for a woman who’s been working in an antiques store. There have to be some good pieces buried under the rubble in that place and from what I hear, Emma’s got a knack for finding treasures. Don was always bragging about that.”

  Matt’s brain kicked into overdrive. He jumped up and planted a kiss on Cori’s forehead. “You’re a genius.”

  “Tell it to Jennifer,” she said, grinning.

  “You let me know when she’s back, and I will,” he promised her. He tossed a card on her desk. “Use my beeper number.”

  “You’ve got it,” she said. “And Matt…”

  “What?”

  “Good luck with Emma. I was sorry things didn’t work out with Jennifer for her sake, but I always thought you and Emma belonged together.”

  “Me, too,” he said, then spun around and ran smack into the woman in question barreling through the door with a full head of steam.

  “You…you…” Words seemed to fail her, so she took a swing at him.

  Matt caught her fist in midair and studied her intently. “Is there a problem?”

  “You bet there is,” she said, her eyes flashing with temper.

  The instant he released his grip on her hand, she stepped up and poked him in the chest. “You promised me that I’d be the first to know if you found out anything.”

  “But I haven’t found out anything,” he said reasonably, well aware of the fact that he was splitting hairs. He had seen the date book. He just didn’t know what it meant.

  “You’re lying through your teeth,” she accused. “I know about the date book that Gabe and Harley found.”

  He sighed heavily. “Of course, you do.” She knew because he’d been too stupid to tell the men to keep their mouths shut. He’d assumed they’d know enough to keep silent, especially around Emma. Of course, maybe the fault wasn’t theirs. She could be damned persuasive when she wanted to be. No one knew that better than he did.

  “Well, then, what do you have to say for yourself?” she demanded.