I hung my head. “I’m sorry that what I said implicated you. They asked me a direct question, and I answered it. I didn’t think I had much of a choice after Detective Flynn started throwing the term ‘obstructing justice’ around.”
“It’s okay. It’s not like they couldn’t have figured it out after taking one look at my face.”
“Speaking of your face, what happened?”
“I got in a fistfight with my brother.”
Cheese and crackers. “A fistfight? How did that happen?”
“A little before closing time last night, Jason came back in a foul mood from wherever he’d gone. He started an argument with me in the middle of the kitchen, in front of our entire staff. I insisted we take it outside, so the staff didn’t have to listen, but he only threw a few more insults at me and then stormed off. But then after everyone left, he came back and we had a knock-down, drag-out fight in the backyard, just like when we were teenagers.” I glanced down at his hands. His knuckles were red and rough.
My sister and I hadn’t ever had a physical fight like that. “What subject was worth coming to blows over?”
“The restaurant…family stuff…It was stupid.”
“Is your fight the reason the police think you should be a suspect?”
Drew nodded, running his hands through his brown hair. “Evidently Jason was killed shortly after I left.”
I let out a low whistle. “That looks bad.”
“And you’re my friend, and you were the first one on the scene. Detective Flynn told me he thought either we were in on it together, or you’re covering for me. I’m afraid he’s gunning for us. We could both go down for this, Quinn.”
My heart hammered in my chest. It had been clear to me during my interrogation last night that Detective Flynn thought there was a possibility I’d had something to do with Jason’s murder. But all he was basing it on was the fact that my account of the events didn’t work for him and the fact that I’d had the misfortune of finding Jason’s body. However, now it seemed that he’d expanded his theory into some crazy conspiracy between Drew and me. That was definite cause for worry. I wondered if Rufus agreed with his partner.
“Drew, this is bad.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Just to be clear, you know I didn’t kill Jason, right?”
He looked at me like I was crazy. “That goes without saying. And…you know I didn’t kill him, either. He was my brother.” His voice broke on that last word.
“Of course. We know the truth, but what are we going to do about the detectives’ theories? Did they say we were the only suspects or just the best suspects? What about Valerie? It’s always the spouse, right?”
He gave me an admonishing look. “I know you two don’t get along, but that’s no reason to accuse her.”
He had a point, especially considering the poor woman had lost her husband. “I know. That wasn’t kind of me. Is she doing okay?”
“As well as can be expected, I suppose.”
“I honestly hadn’t given much thought to how this would affect her.”
“Well, at least the police aren’t harassing her about the murder. She has a solid alibi. She was out with some friends.”
“That’s good, at least. Then they really aren’t looking at anyone else besides us?”
“Not that I know of.”
“So, what now? Do we just wait around for the police to come arrest us for a crime we didn’t commit? I mean, I have an alibi. Do you?”
Drew wiped a hand down his face, then he turned to me, his expression strained. “No.”
Chapter 7
“No? Nothing?”
Drew frowned. “With Jason and me living in the same building, I didn’t want to go back to my place after the fight. I needed some distance from him, so I wandered around town for a while, until the police tracked me down to tell me the news about what had happened to him.”
“Oh, that’s not good at all.”
He regarded me for a moment. “Speaking of alibis, why were you at Green last night? And why were you at home all evening before that? I thought you were all going to see the play.”
Suddenly my little gaffe from yesterday didn’t seem like such a big deal in the grand scheme of things. But Drew still deserved the truth. “I totally misread the situation yesterday when you were offering me the tickets. I thought you were asking me out, so I pretended like I would enjoy going to the theater. Once I realized that’s not what you were asking, I felt stupid, and I didn’t want you to know. So, I took the tickets and told you I’d go, then I gave them to Delilah. I hated that I basically lied to you, so I headed over to Green to come clean and tell you I’m sorry.”
“No need to apologize. But I did notice you were acting weird. So you actually wanted to go out with me?”
I wrinkled my nose. “Truth? Not really. I was kind of relieved when I realized you weren’t in fact asking me out.”
“Wow. You sure know how to stroke a guy’s ego,” he said dryly.
“Sorry. Admit it—if there was any spark between us whatsoever, we would have tried dating a long time ago.”
“Fair point.” He leaned back on the bench. “Well, buddy old pal, how are we going to get ourselves out of this murder mess?”
I exhaled deeply. “I have no idea. The real murderer is out there—which is a scary thought—so there has to be a better suspect than either of us. Surely the police will figure it out, though.”
Drew shrugged. “Not if they’re busy trying to find evidence against their two main suspects.”
My stomach flipped. “You think they’re trying to gather evidence against us?”
“You met Detective Flynn. What do you think?”
“I don’t know what to think anymore. I mean, Rufus—Detective King—is my friend. Well, at least he was my friend when we were kids. And he wasn’t necessarily jumping on Detective Flynn’s crazy bandwagon last night.”
“Not now, maybe. But soon they’re going to get pressured by their superiors to make an arrest, which means they’re going to grab the most likely suspect. Trust me, I’ve seen this movie.”
“So what can we do?” I asked.
I could see the wheels turning in his head. “You said there has to be a better suspect than either of us.”
“Yes.”
“So, maybe we find that person.”
My eyebrows shot up. “You mean the person who thought nothing of ending another person’s life? You and I should find that person?”
“Quinn, come on. I’m not suggesting we physically take on a murderer and try to catch him ourselves. I’m saying we do whatever needs to be done to give the police a better suspect. We could start by making a list of people who might have an actual reason to have killed Jason.”
“We’re going to need more than a list of names to convince the police to expand their investigation. We can’t go randomly accusing half the town like a couple of kooky conspiracy theorists.”
“Right, so maybe we dig a little deeper. Narrow the list by doing some investigating of our own.”
I let out a bark of laughter. “What, like the Scooby-Doo gang?”
“This is serious.”
“This is ludicrous. We are not investigators.”
“We’re also not murderers.”
He had a point, but I wasn’t convinced. “What if we hired a private investigator to do the work instead of us?”
His eyebrows shot up. “Are you sitting on a few thousand dollars? Because I know I’m not.”
“Drew, what you’re proposing is incredibly dangerous.”
“I say looking for a murderer is a lot less dangerous than being convicted as one. I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer to not live out the rest of my life as a guest of the state of Georgia with a thousand or so violent offend
ers for company.”
I shivered at the thought.
I rubbed my temples, trying to wrap my brain around this. Grandmama Hattie was probably rolling over in her grave right now. As hung up as she was about manners and what others thought of her, she wouldn’t have stood by and watched a friend (or herself, for that matter) be accused of something he didn’t do. I tried to live my life from her wonderful example, but fear was clouding my judgment on this one. And well it should—that was why regular people didn’t run investigations. Police were trained for this kind of thing, they carried guns, and they could call for backup at any time. Drew and I would be all alone in this. I stole a glance at him. I guessed we had each other.
Drew said, “Look, I’ll do the parts of this that are even remotely dangerous.”
I put my hand on his arm. “No, we’re in this together. It’s only fair that we have each other’s backs.”
He smiled for the first time this morning. “Really? You mean it?”
I frowned slightly. “It’s not like we have much of a choice…”
“Not the best attitude, but I’ll take it.”
“Okay, then. Where do we start?”
“You got any paper?”
“Not on me.”
“Okay, partner. Let’s go to your place and get to work.”
* * *
—
At the B&B, Drew and I locked ourselves in the tiny office just off our foyer. It was actually a closet, but it was fine when only one person was in there. Today, Drew and I were a little crammed.
Drew said, “I guess we should first get a list going of people who might have had a beef with my brother. Our staff is as good a place to start as any. Our manager, Ava Newton, was always bickering with him.”
“Okay.” I wrote Ava’s name at the top of our list. “Besides Ava, who else didn’t get along with Jason?”
He snorted. “Everyone.”
“I’m sure you can narrow it down a bit.”
“I guess I can. One of our waitresses, Sasha Chambers, comes to mind. She and Jason had some nasty spats. And a fired employee named Ross Cline. He took a swing at Jason when Jason fired him. Not that my brother didn’t deserve it. Ross was one of the best assistant cooks we’d ever had, and I was ready to give the guy a raise. But one night he misread a recipe and julienned two pounds of carrots instead of dicing them. Jason lost his crap and fired Ross on the spot.”
I wrote down the other two names. “Have Jason’s fights with these three been so bad that one of them would consider murdering him? Even if they hated his guts, why would one of them take his life over a few heated arguments?”
Shaking his head, Drew said, “I can’t imagine.”
“What else was he involved in besides work?”
Drew wiped his hands down his face and was quiet for a while before saying flatly, “Nothing much, really. He was all about the restaurant.”
“What about the spice shop? Any angst there with employees?”
“No, he’s more of a silent partner.”
I couldn’t imagine Jason being silent about anything. I looked down at our paltry list of suspects. We had Ava, Sasha, and Ross. Wrinkling my forehead, I said, “This is not such a great list, Drew. There have to be more—and more importantly, better—suspects.”
He frowned. “Well, I know Valerie had been talking to a real estate agent about selling Green. She was hoping we could manage to convince Jason to sell, so she got the place appraised and had her realtor put the unofficial word out that the building might be available soon. It’s in a great location, and in fabulous condition for its age thanks to the renovations we made when we bought it. It’s some kind of historical property, but I don’t know the particulars. Val handled that kind of thing. From what the realtor said, once we were ready to sell, we’d have a bidding war on our hands.”
My ears perked up. “Are you accusing Valerie of something?”
“Of course not. I’m suggesting the realtor or one of the potential buyers might have wanted to move things along.”
“So they killed the owner who was trying to block the sale to get a property on the market…faster?” His theory sounded pretty ridiculous to me, especially spelled out that way.
Evidently Drew didn’t share my opinion on the matter. “Yes.”
I added Evil Realtor/Property Buyers to our list.
“This is a great start. Thanks, Quinn,” Drew said, a hopeful expression on his face again.
I felt like it was a mediocre start at best, but I wouldn’t dream of dampening his spirits.
Drew’s phone beeped. He sighed. “I’m supposed to meet Valerie at the funeral home in a few minutes to start talking about…” He stopped, unable to finish his sentence.
No wonder he was so unfocused while we came up with our list. With making funeral arrangements looming over his head, it was natural that he’d been distracted.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “Go do what you need to do, and we’ll pick this up later.”
He nodded and without another word got up and left.
Poor Drew. I couldn’t imagine losing a sibling, much less having to plan a funeral and work to exonerate myself of a murder all at the same time. Even as much as he wanted to concentrate on our list of suspects, I could tell Drew’s head wasn’t in it. But that was why it was a good thing that we were in this together. While he was away, I could spend some time finding out the real dirt on who Jason didn’t get along with—by cyberstalking his social media profiles.
I spent a good hour on Facebook and Instagram, scrolling through Jason’s accounts. His general angriness radiated through his posts. He fought with people in the comments and made snarky posts intended to ruffle feathers. I could see no advantage in Jason, especially as a business owner, putting his worst foot forward on social media. Didn’t he realize that his personal image affected his business image? Maybe that was a reason Green was failing. If locals thought ill of a business owner, it could make a real difference in where they chose to spend their hard-earned money.
Impoliteness aside, I noticed that a few names kept popping up as online adversaries of Jason’s—Ava Newton, Mark Potter, and CJ McLeod. If he and Ava had Facebook fights over stupid nonissues online, no wonder they fought over the tough business decisions they had to deal with at work. Mark Potter was the chef-owner of another restaurant in town, Abercorn Bistro, who didn’t seem to present himself any better than Jason did. CJ McLeod didn’t have an obvious connection to Jason, but there were some pictures on Drew’s wall of the two of them together, as if they were or had once been friends.
And of course then there was Valerie, who didn’t seem to have one good word for her husband, not that I blamed her. Jason would post unflattering pictures of her, then pick fights with her in the comments section. I couldn’t imagine putting up with that kind of abuse. And if their fights for the whole world to see were this bad, how horrific were the ones behind closed doors?
Chapter 8
After I’d finished my cyberstalking and done my daily bookkeeping for the B&B, I returned calls to my closest friends (my three bandmates, Pepper, Rhetta, and Callie) to assure them I was fine after last night. Then I completed my remaining morning chores on autopilot, my thoughts fixed squarely on the predicament Drew and I were in. What he’d said kept playing over and over in my head, as if on a loop: Give the police a better suspect. Like Drew, I could come up with a list of suspects. The real problem was coming up with a better suspect for the police than Drew or myself.
Papa Sal found me on the second floor, stripping a bed in one of the guest rooms. He had spent most of his morning fielding calls for me from reporters, and he looked exhausted, poor thing. I felt terrible that he had got sucked into my mess.
Exhaustion aside, there was a glint in his eye I could see from across the room. “Quinn, you have a gen
tleman caller downstairs.”
“A gentleman caller?” I laughed. Papa Sal loved that term, but he also loved to tease Delilah and me. Sometimes Papa Sal’s “gentleman callers” for us turned out to be merely the UPS man or a door-to-door salesman. “Wait. It’s not a reporter, is it?”
“No, they haven’t started showing up in person yet, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.”
I hurried downstairs, but found no one in the foyer. I opened the front door and glanced around outside, but there were neither any gentlemen nor any boxes waiting for me on the doorstep. I went back inside and saw Delilah having a conversation with Tucker Heyward in the parlor, but I did not want to talk to him today, so I slipped back up the stairs.
I knocked on Papa Sal’s door. Odd, I heard him speaking to someone in there. Delilah was downstairs, so it couldn’t have been her.
Papa Sal called, “It’s open.”
I entered his room and glanced around. There was no one there besides Papa Sal, who was sitting in his easy chair by the window with today’s paper. “I thought I was interrupting something. I heard you talking to someone.”
He gestured to the right of me. “I was talking to Frank.”
Oh. Although I had no problem telling Delilah what I thought of her Uncle Frank nonsense, I didn’t have the heart to argue with Papa Sal as to whether or not his brother’s ghost actually hung out in his room.
“Right. Uh, I thought you said I had a gentleman caller downstairs. Were you pulling my leg?”
“No, it’s the neighbor boy. Trucker.”
I smiled, forgetting he’d always teased Tucker about his name when we were kids. “Are you sure he came to see me or maybe to see Delilah? They’re getting awfully chummy.”
“He specifically asked for you.”
“Oh. Well, if it happens again, tell him I specifically don’t want to see him.”
Papa Sal set his newspaper down and peered at me over his reading glasses. “Delilah said you’re still holding on to old grudges. That’s not like you, Quinn.”
Southern Discomfort Page 5
