by Logan, Kylie
No such luck.
And in the long run, that turned out to be a good thing.
See, my circuitous route took me right past Crown Hill Cemetery, and there, a flash of flamingo color caught my eye.
I wheeled into the cemetery, and a minute later I was out of the SUV and walking toward where Tiffany Hollister stood with her head bowed and a bouquet of flowers in her hand.
It wasn’t until I was right up next to her that she realized I was even there, and it wasn’t until I was there that I saw that she was staring at a bit of newly disturbed earth between a mausoleum and a tall obelisk with an urn at the top of it.
“Buried in an unmarked grave.” Tiffany’s words escaped her on the end of the sigh that sounded as if it had been ripped from her soul. “Such a sad ending to so noble a life.”
I would have been excused for saying, “Huh?” Instead I settled for, “Who?”
When Tiffany turned my way, I saw that her cheeks were streaked with tears. Her eyes were a color three times as deep as her pink shirt, and her melancholy was even bigger than her shoulder pads. “Richie, of course.” Her words were soaked with tears. “This is where they buried Richie yesterday.”
I couldn’t believe I’d been so busy that I’d actually missed the funeral.
“Not to worry.” Tiffany must have known what I was thinking because she patted my arm. “That was the way he wanted it. No funeral. No mourners. No big to-do. The man from the funeral home told me. Richie . . .” Her voice wobbled and the hand she touched to her cheek trembled. “Richie left instructions for them years ago about his cremation and what he wanted done with the ashes. He told them he wanted to be as anonymous in death”—she fished a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose—“as anonymous in death as he was in life.”
I can be forgiven for being caught flat-footed by all this. After all, this was the woman who was numero uno when it came to the I Hate Richie club. And when I saw her the night before after the concert, I remembered she’d mumbled something about Richie before she fled the park.
“Did you kill him?” I asked her.
Tiffany’s tears, the trickling kind before, erupted into the Niagara Falls variety. “Of course I didn’t kill him,” she wailed. “Why would I kill anyone as heroic and wonderful and talented as Richie Monroe?”
I looked at her hard. I’d once seen a dog trainer pull the same stunt on a particularly ill-behaved Jack Russell, but alas, the strategy worked no better on Tiffany than it had on the dog. When all else fails, I’m a believer in logic. Or at least in honesty.
“Tiffany,” I reminded her, “you hated Richie Monroe.”
I don’t think I’d ever actually seen anybody wring their hands. “No! No! I never hated Richie. I hated the man I thought Richie was.”
In its own weird way, this was starting to make sense.
I backed up a step, the better to give myself a little space to think. “So what you’re telling me is that you hated Richie—”
“Because I thought he tried to lay claim to Dino’s song. And he took Dino to court. And he did his best to besmirch—”
This I knew, so I waved aside the rest of her explanation and got down to the meat of the matter. “And now?”
“Now?” She sniffled. “You heard Dino last night. You came right out and asked him point-blank if Richie really wrote ‘Ali, Ali,’ and Dino . . .” The waterworks started up again. “He didn’t deny it. Don’t you see? Dino . . .” She hiccupped and added a little hyperventilation just for dramatic effect. “I think Dino’s been lying all these years. Richie really did write ‘Ali, Ali.’ And I . . .” Forearm to forehead. “I’ve spent my life standing up for Dino and telling anyone who would listen that Richie was the bad guy. And all this time . . .” She hung her head.
“Poor, poor Richie,” she said, talking now to the patch of barren ground. “Your name was dragged through the mud and you were cheated out of the fame and fortune that should have rightly been yours. I’ll never forget you, Richie.” She laid her bouquet of daisies and carnations on the small mound of freshly dug earth. “I’ll tell the world your story, Richie. I swear.”
I waited for the as God is my witness part, and when it didn’t come, I figured it was safe to talk again. “Tiffany, yesterday Dino showed me Richie’s website, the one Richie started up to tell the world his side of the story. You said when you saw it, you did something to retaliate.”
“Yes, but I didn’t kill him.” She shook her head. Then nodded. Then did a weird sort of combination of both that left me feeling as if we’d been transported from South Bass and set down along the San Andreas Fault. “If that’s what you were thinking, don’t. What I did . . .” She pulled out another tissue and dabbed it to her eyes. “I’m ashamed to admit it. Ashamed to think I was taken in by the likes of Dino. All these years . . .” The tears came tumbling down. “All these years I’ve been president of the fan club, and this is what I get in return. My heart broken.” She pounded her chest. “My faith in mankind crushed.”
“So you . . ?”
“I . . .” She heaved a sigh. “I started up a website, too. It was all about how Richie’s was a pack of lies. I talked about how Dino wrote ‘Ali’ and that Richie was nothing more than a poser. But don’t worry!” She said this with all the conviction of a woman who thought I really might. “I’ve already started to make amends. I stayed up all night last night taking down the old page and starting a new one. You know, as a tribute to Richie.”
“That’s nice.” It was, in its own twisted way. “But it still doesn’t explain what happened to Richie. Do you think Dino could have—”
“Killed him?” Tiffany’s voice ricocheted off the mausoleum and echoed through the cemetery. “Richie was a walking dead man all these years. Ever since his song was stolen and he lost faith in his talent and his friends. Don’t you see? Dino ripped out Richie’s heart. He robbed Richie of his ability to trust. I just don’t think Dino killed Richie; I know he did. All those years ago.”
I was hoping for something a little more definitive but knew it was not forthcoming, so I left Tiffany to her mourning and her new obsession and continued on to the park, my mind playing over the possibility of Dino as killer. Dino and Gordon. At least I was narrowing down the field. The trick, of course, was to figure out which was which, and which had (so far at least) been clever enough to pull the wool over all our eyes.
By the time I was close to downtown and actually found a place to park, the parade had started. I wound my way through knots of gawkers, TV cameras from the stations on the mainland, and the tables that had been set up for a craft fair, zipped by Levi’s (eyes straight ahead and refusing to glance around), and came up almost all the way to the Defarge Knitting Shop when I realized Mason Burke was standing outside.
Again.
Since he had his nose pressed to the glass in the front door, he didn’t notice me right away, but I noticed that he wasn’t carrying the big, flat package we’d seen him with the night before.
“So, how did Margaret and Alice like the poster?” I asked him.
“They’re closed.” As if to prove it to me, he gave the doorknob a tug. “I haven’t had a chance to give the ladies the picture yet. I decided it would be more fun to present it to them in person than just to leave it here for them. You know, so I could see the excitement on their faces.”
It explained why he left with picture in hand the night before. “And maybe when you give your gift to Margaret and Alice,” I suggested, “your wife could be with you since the thank-you gift is really from her.”
“Wife? Yes, of course.” Burke laughed a little too loudly and hurried down the shop steps. His chin on his chest, he disappeared into the crowd.
“Chin on his chest.” I watched him go and mumbled to myself, my brain nibbling at the image, reminding me I’d seen it some time before last night when we’d watched Burke sneak into town with the poster under his arm.
Funny thing, though; it’s hard to hold on to
thoughts when you’re surrounded by a few thousand people pushing for a peek at the parade, and soon, I wasn’t as worried about Burke’s chin or his chest as I was about making it over to the park across the street in one piece.
I was waiting semi-patiently for a high school marching band to . . . er . . . march past, when another flash of pink (it must surely be the color of the day) caught my eye.
This time it was Margaret Defarge, resplendent that day in pants and a matching top in a shade that reminded me of blushing roses. She’d just walked out of the candy shop near the antique carousel and I thought about going over to say hello, but hesitated when I saw her dart to the side of the building, behind the lines of folks jockeying for position at the parade and away from the windows of the shop. She had a blue bag in her hand about the size of a evening purse, and she glanced around to be sure no one was watching, then reached inside, grabbed something, and popped it in her mouth.
When I turned around and darted across the street, I was laughing. No doubt Alice was somewhere nearby and Margaret didn’t want her sister to know she was indulging in candy. Or maybe she just didn’t want to share?
Another smile brightened my expression. Leave it to the Defarge twins to make a gentle competition even out of eating candy!
• • •
By the time the parade was over (and just for the record, it was a mighty long parade), most of the congestion and the noise died down. Let’s face it, there are only so many people who are interested in a Charles Dickens look-alike and trivia contest. While most of the island’s visitors headed off to water sports or bars, the diehard few gathered in the seats that had been set up in front of the gazebo.
Gregory Ashburn tipped his tall top hat to me when I passed.
If the smile above that unruly goatee of his meant anything, Timothy Drake looked confident.
Tyler and Max, the kids with the paper beards and pipe cleaner spectacles, were anything but nervous. In fact, they’d attracted something of a following in the way of a half dozen girls who giggled and hung on their every word, and they took full advantage, regaling the girls with stories about “that Dickens guy” that sounded way more like fiction than fact to me.
Charles Dickens would have been proud.
Our female contestant—as it turned out her name was Eva DeNato—sat in the shade under a nearby tree, a notebook open on her lap.
Mason Burke . . .
I glanced around the park.
The contest was set to start in less than thirty minutes, and Mason Burke was nowhere to be seen.
“Why the worried look?” Marianne Littlejohn zipped by carrying an armful of books and a manila file folder stuffed with typewritten pages that she handed to me, the questions for the contest. “You look like you’ve lost someone.”
I gave the area another quick scan. “Just one of the contestants, Mason Burke. I saw him a little while ago over near the knitting shop, and come to think of it, he wasn’t dressed in his Dickens costume. That explains it, of course,” I added, feeling relieved though I didn’t know why. “He had to go back to the cottage to get dressed.”
“Well, kick-off time is in exactly . . .” Marianne checked her watch. “Oh my, I’ve got to hurry and make sure everything’s set up. Look over the questions. I’ve included a lot of the ones you emailed me.” She grinned. “This is going to be so much fun!”
And actually, I believed her.
That is, until Levi showed up.
Yes, yes, I know . . . the arrival of the island Adonis should have cheered me, not chilled me. And it would have. Honest. If only I didn’t suddenly feel as jumpy as a high school student at her first mixer.
“Hey.” Levi, it should be pointed out, did a pretty good job of acting like a high school kid, too. One of those cool boys who is oh so not flustered by the rapidly beating heart of every girl around him.
Or was he?
When I opened my mouth to respond with I don’t know what, I saw that his hands were poked into the pockets of his jeans. He refused to meet my eyes.
Whatever I had expected from him, it wasn’t bashfulness, and in a twisted sort of way it gave me courage. “Hey.” I stepped up nice and close, the better to catch his eye and force him to look at me. “You left in a hurry the other night.”
“I did.” He did not sound especially proud of this, which is why I would have cut him some slack if he didn’t add, “It was a mistake.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer, but I had to ask so I swallowed hard and plunged right in. “Leaving? Or kissing me?”
Levi lifted his chin. “We need to talk.”
“Sure. And when you answer my question, we’ll be talking. Which was the mistake, Levi, leaving so fast or kissing me in the first place?”
“Both,” he admitted.
It’s not like I thought one kiss—as spectacular as it may have been—was some kind of commitment that was going to change my life. I’m way too much of an adult for that. But hearing him dismiss the incident so out of hand, I felt as if a fist had just introduced itself to my solar plexus. I may have even gasped, which is a terrible thing to even think about, and because I didn’t want to, I simply whirled around and rushed over to take one of the three seats to the left of the microphone in the center of the gazebo.
“Ah, so you’re one of the judges.” When Gregory Ashburn stepped up and smiled as if he thought being a guest at the B and B would somehow give him an edge in the contest, I’m pretty sure I didn’t smile back. I was trying too hard not to burst into tears.
Levi slipped into the chair next to mine. “That came out wrong,” he said.
I gave him the briefest of glances and clung hard and fast to the minutiae of the occasion. Better that than giving in to the mortification that left me feeling inadequate and the inadequacy that mortified me. I lifted my chin. “These chairs are for the judges.”
“You didn’t tell me you were a judge.”
As statements went, it was pretty noncommital. But I was past the objective stage. Anger bunched in my stomach. “So, first you don’t think I’m smart enough to investigate a murder, and now you don’t even think I can handle judging a trivia contest. I guess that proves you are right. What happened the other night was a mistake.”
Oh, how I love it when they squirm!
Levi ran a hand through his hair. “That’s not what I meant.”
“About me being smart? Or about the other night?”
Since Marianne zipped over to stand in front of us, I couldn’t be sure, but I think Levi’s response was either a curse or a growl.
“Questions,” she said, and she handed Levi a manila folder like the one she’d given me.
My mouth fell open and I spun in my seat to face him, and yes, the question came out a bit too loud. “You’re a judge, too?”
“What, you don’t think I’m smart enough to be a judge?”
I wasn’t in the mood to handle the cocky smile that went along with his question, so I turned in my seat so I was facing the audience again. “I’d like to think I have a little more class than that,” I said, and gave myself a mental pat on the back. Way to go putting him right in his place!
Before I could get too carried away congratulating myself, Marianne took the chair on the other side of me and Gordon Hunter stepped up to the microphone to introduce each of the Dickens impersonators and ask them to step up to the gazebo. While he was at it, I took another quick look around and noticed Margaret sitting in the back row nibbling out of that blue candy bag.
But still no Mason Burke.
Maybe he got cold feet, I told myself.
Maybe his wife had a relapse and, devoted husband that he was, he opted to stay with her.
Maybe he couldn’t find his top hat, or lost his pocket watch, or wasn’t happy with the way his cravat was tied.
Maybe—
“. . . good-looking.”
The word Levi whispered snapped me out of my thoughts and I automatically glanced his way
. Good thing I didn’t assume he was talking about me and say something stupid like, “Oh, this old outfit, it’s just something I threw on,” because I saw that he was watching Eva DeNato.
“That suit, and the silver-tipped cane,” he rasped when he realized my mind had been a million miles away and he needed to repeat himself. “It’s a good-looking outfit.”
It was, and as it turned out, Eva DeNato did it proud. She was as smart as a whip. One by one, we went through our questions, following the ground rules that had been established for the contest:
Each judge took a turn asking one question.
Each contestant could get two questions wrong before being disqualified.
Each contestant had to stay in the Dickens persona the entire time.
Needless to say, that pretty much disqualified Max and Tyler from the get-go, but hey, they were nothing if not good sports. When they were dismissed, they smiled and waved and bowed like rock stars.
That left Drake, Ashburn, and Ms. DeNato, and that’s when things got interesting.
Not to mention cutthroat.
“Who is Phillip Pirrip?” Marianne asked, and when Drake, whose turn it was to answer, hesitated for just a moment, Ashburn clicked his tongue.
Drake shot him a look, pulled back his shoulders, and in his very best—and loudest—British accent—said, “‘. . . my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip.’ The answer to your question, madam, is Pip, Great Expectations.”
There was a smattering of applause from the crowd, not for knowledge, because let’s face it, this was a pretty easy question, but certainly for style. Ashburn did not join in. It was his turn to answer and my turn to ask.
“Why did Mrs. Bardell take Mr. Pickwick to court?” I wanted to know.
The way Ashburn rolled his eyes sent the very clear message that my question was not in his know-it-all league. “For breach of promise,” he said.
