Curious. “Do they have security cameras?”
“Not that I’m aware of, but anything is possible. I still have my job, barely. I’m on notice is what Felicity said.”
“That’s awful, and I’m sorry. But if you didn’t tell on me, who would? Anyway, that doesn’t matter right now. I know you’re in a hurry, so I’ll just come out and ask it. Do you know anyone who lives on Bailey Avenue?”
The color drained from Jon’s face as if he had just seen his dead great-grandmother walk right in front of him. It was noisy in the restaurant, but she heard his stomach gurgle so loudly she thought there was a monster sitting in the chair with him. “I have to go.”
“The bathroom is over there.”
Jon jumped out of his seat, tripping over one of the legs. “Not that kind of go. I just have to go.”
“But you didn’t answer my question.”
Jon was halfway out the door when he looked over his shoulder at Ricki. The look in his eye was a mixture of fear and, she thought, a hint of anger. He knew who lived at that address. It was probably safe to assume he knew the person and worked with them every day.
Seventeen
Ricki knew she shouldn’t have felt sorry for Jon because it was obvious he was hiding something, but she couldn’t help it. She remembered what it was like to be that age, where everything was scary and you weren’t sure of yourself. On the other hand, he was hiding something. Why should she feel sorry for him? He had some inside information and wasn’t sharing it with her.
As she finished her cappuccino, she remembered she could find who lived there by doing a simple Internet search. She was so caught up in the shock of learning the mayor was allegedly having an affair and the fight with her brother, she forgot to check it out. The results may not give her details, but it would give her names, and if she could recognize a single name, that would help.
She found one that was unmistakably memorable—mostly because she not so politely told Ricki she wasn’t allowed in the library anymore. Felicity Harmon, the library director, lived at that address along with her husband and kids. It was scary what one could dig up on the Internet. Long ago, when Ricki first started writing, she would do a search on her name to see if anyone was reading her books. That was fun for a while. She got to see all the wonderful reviews readers left and even found a community of fans devoted to her books. It became unfun when she found the really nasty reviews. When she found a few wishing she would stop writing and die, she quit searching her name.
She packed up her laptop and headed home, full of thoughts. The clues in Jennifer’s book pointed to the mayor and the library director having an affair. Once again, Ricki’s past experience clouded her judgments. The painful memory of Marty falling for someone and leaving her without much of an explanation was now turning into an angry memory. She was angry at Jennifer for busting up Trina Rossini’s impending marriage. She was angry at the mayor, who always preached conservative ideas, stepping out on his family with Felicity. She struggled to let go of the hypocrisy of it all, especially Jennifer. Why was she so obsessed with two people having an affair when she had a reputation of her own? She was obsessed enough to write a book about it, enough that she put books on a book truck by her desk that spelled out their addresses. She shook it off, telling herself that detectives, amateur or otherwise, thought objectively and didn’t allow their own personal issues to get in the way of solving a crime.
Standing in front of the corkboard filled with clues, one that she ignored for so long finally made sense. The cheating couple met every other Friday at Starlite Motel off Highway 6, the next county over. That meant, road trip. Tomorrow was Friday. Whether or not it was the right Friday, she didn’t know, but she was about to find out.
In Jennifer’s book, the name Starlite Motel kept coming up, tickling Ricki’s memory. She knew the name from somewhere. She remembered Becca telling her that the motel had a reputation for being a place that charged by the hour. Considering its location—just off the highway where lonely truckers and travelers had easy access to it—it made total sense. Of course there was only one small problem with this plan of hers: Felicity knew what Ricki’s car looked like. Which meant she would have to borrow someone else’s, someone like Becca’s.
It was still early enough that Becca probably had her hands full with baby Megan and couldn’t text, so she called. “Are you busy?”
“I have a baby latched to my boob.”
“All right, I won’t be long.”
“That’s all right. She’s pretty happy right now so talk away. What’s up?”
“Would it be okay if I swapped cars with you for the night?”
“Only if you tell me why.”
Of course Becca would want to know why Ricki needed her car. “I want to do a little spying on someone.”
“And you think I’m going to let you borrow my car without me in it?”
“What about the baby?”
“Is your mission dangerous?”
Well, if Ricki had to count the death threat left on her doorstep as dangerous, it could be. “I don’t think so. Mostly a drive-by spy. Why?”
“If all you’re going to be doing is spying on someone, she can come along. Tell me your plan and I’ll tell you if it’s safe.” When Ricki explained to Becca what her plans were, she got excited. “Man Unit works late that day, so I’ll need something to do. Besides, I’m not letting use the car unless I can come along.”
“What about Megan?”
“We’re not getting out of the car, so it’s no problem.”
“If you’re all right with it, I am, too.”
“Tell me when, and I’ll swing by and pick you up.”
Ricki filled her friend in on the details and watched the clock. Late afternoon Friday couldn’t arrive fast enough.
“I like you being bored because it means I get to have fun,” Becca said. “The baby just ate so she should be down for a nap for at least a couple of hours.”
“I thought you were going to wear a disguise.”
“I am. It’s called busy mom who’s bored out of her mind. Do you like it?”
“Fetching.” For Ricki’s disguise, she pulled a baseball cap on and put on a pair of sunglasses. Since she was sitting in the passenger side, she could easily slouch down in the seat if someone saw her. Nobody was expecting Becca, but since Ricki was already on everyone’s radar in the library, she had to watch her step.
“Do you even care they’re having an affair?” Becca said.
This would have been the perfect opportunity for Ricki to explain what happened with Marty, but she told herself she needed to let go of the past and focus on the good life she had now. “It has nothing whatsoever to do with caring and everything to do with wanting to find out what happened to Jennifer.”
“You think there’s a connection somehow?”
“I’m trying to put pieces together. Jennifer hinted at it in her book, and I’m just trying to figure out what it means. That’s all.”
“I never thought of the mayor as someone who’d have an affair. He’s not even good-looking. Can you picture him naked?”
“Thanks for that image. You’re right, though. He doesn’t seem the type, considering the conservative values he’s always preaching.”
“Hypocrites never are attractive.”
“We better get going. The library closes at five on Fridays, so if we want to catch her, we have to hurry.”
Since baby Megan had fallen asleep on the drive, the two spoke in hushed tones. Ricki wanted to get Becca up-to-date, so she could offer some objective opinions or bring her back down to earth when she needed it.
“One of the mothers said Jennifer had a lot of dirt on people,” Becca said.
“What could she possibly know? I mean, this isn’t New York City or Los Angeles or something. It’s Unionville.”
“Every town has its secrets.”
“So maybe she was blackmailing other people. That would explain how she had al
l the nice toys.”
“That’s the impression I got by the way she talked. But you have to take what she says with a grain of salt. The woman exaggerates out the wazoo.”
“What kind of secrets does Unionville have and how do you know anything about it?”
“You need to get out of the house more. There’s a seedy side to this town. I would think that since your brother’s a cop you would know these things. Doesn’t he tell you anything?”
“Unfortunately, no, but I never ask either, so I guess I shouldn’t expect to know all these details. How do you know so much?”
“All you have to do is watch the local news.”
That would make sense, but since she was always working, watching television wasn’t high on her priority list. Just hearing Becca talk about the other side of the town she grew up in made her realize just how much she had been neglecting her own life by focusing solely on her writing career. Not that there was anything wrong with that, but she was too young to live in a cave, shut off from the rest of the community. Maybe it was a good thing she got bored with writing. Even if she wasn’t qualified to be a detective, it sure beat sitting at home trying to write another kissing scene after she had done it a million times over.
“And another thing,” Becca said. “If you want to write mysteries and you enjoy this little detective thing you’re doing here, you should get to know your town better.”
“You make me sound so provincial.”
“I wouldn’t say that, exactly. More like a homebody.”
“Same outcome.”
“You can change that if you want.”
“I’m starting to. Maybe it’s not the writing I’m bored with. Maybe it’s my life. My world has grown small.”
Becca reached out and took Ricki’s hand. “Your world may be small, but it’s a rich world. Look at all you have, especially that family of yours. Wish mine was that way.”
“Stop or you’re going to make me cry.”
“Yeah, it’s getting deep in here.”
As they got closer to the motel, Ricki pulled a baseball hat down over her eyes and put her sunglasses on. It seemed too much of an obvious disguise, considering the sky was overcast. She looked like one of those dudes who thought it was cool to wear sunglasses no matter what time of day it was.
The motel itself was just one of those little rectangular boxes with a bunch of single rooms, doors facing toward the road. Unattractive, unobtrusive, inconspicuous—the perfect place for someone to go and have an afternoon quickie. Because of this, there was no place for Becca to hide the car. There was a gas station about a hundred yards down the road, but it wasn’t close enough to see who was coming and going. Across the road there were a couple of fast food restaurants, but the same thing. It was too far and had too much blocking the view of the motel. They drove up and down the road, scoping out the surroundings to see where would be the best place to hide. It looked like they didn’t have much of a choice but to park along the side of the motel and wait. Becca backed the car in so they could have a full view of who was coming and going. Luckily, there was a tree that cast a shadow over the car, concealing who was inside, at least she hoped.
“I have some snacks in the diaper bag, if you’re hungry,” Becca said, lowering the sun visor to shield her face.
“And by snacks I’m assuming you mean grown up food and not breastmilk.”
“Actually, I made brownies with breastmilk. Sorry. Not sorry.”
Just as Ricki was about to make a funny remark, a car pulled into the motel and stopped at the office door. Ricki pulled the sun visor down to shield her face. She waited for the person inside the car to step out.
What she knew of the mayor: he was tall and thin, bald, pale skinned, but had a very distinctive walk. He always talked about an injury he suffered from playing basketball in high school that left him with a slight limp. It ruined his basketball career, he would say during one of his speeches to make him appear more like a regular guy. The guy who got out of the car had a full head of curly black hair, was tall and thin, and had a funny walk. Becca and Ricki looked at each other. “That’s him,” Ricki said.
“This is just like a soap opera. Where’s my popcorn?” Becca reached in the diaper bag and pulled out a bag of popcorn.
“That’s a horrible disguise. But I guess nobody knows him over here.”
“I just can’t get over how anyone would want to have sex with that man.”
The man got back in his car and drove away. That was disappointing. At least Ricki knew it was the mayor coming to the hotel just as Jennifer wrote in her book.
Baby Megan let out a tiny whimper. “How long do you plan on spying on them?”
“Whatever is good for you. If you need to go home, we can leave anytime you want. It’s not like I’m being paid for this.”
Becca reached into the backseat to comfort Megan. “We’ll let her call the shots.”
Nothing happened for the next five minutes or so. Knowing that the baby was getting restless, Ricki wanted to give up and go back home right then. It was already past five o’clock and the hotel parking lot was still barren. That was until another car drove in. This time it was a woman wearing an equally horrible disguise: six inch platform heels with a trench coat and a poofy blonde wig.
“How cliché can you get?” Ricki said, snorting.
“Yeah, but those shoes, though. I wonder where she got ‘em.”
The woman in disguise went straight into a hotel room without stopping at the front desk. A few minutes later, the man with the curly black hair came back and parked on the opposite side of the hotel from where the woman parked. The man disappeared around back and reappeared on the side of the building where Ricki and Becca were parked. He went straight into the same room the woman just entered.
Becca laughed. “So that’s how you do it.” She stuffed her mouth full of popcorn. “I’m taking notes in case I ever want to cheat on my husband.”
“I wonder if she wears those shoes for her husband.” For some reason, one which Ricki couldn’t explain even to this day, she decided to get out of the car. With her phone in her hand, she darted off to the man’s car and snapped a picture of the license plate. She raced to the woman’s and did the same thing. In that instant, she knew Felicity was the woman in disguise.
The giveaway was too obvious and undeniably foolish. On the bumper, the owner of the car slapped a small bumper sticker that read I heart my library. Ricki kneeled down and snapped a picture of it.
Behind her, Ricki heard sounds of someone knocking. With as much noise coming from the highway, she didn’t think too much of it. Except it wouldn’t let up. Finally, she stood, turning toward Becca’s car to find her friend knocking on the windshield. Unfortunately, the tree they parked under cast too much of a shadow and Ricki couldn’t see what her friend was doing and why she was doing it. Becca beeped the horn. Ricki put her arms out to the side, questioning why she was trying so hard to get her attention. Becca stuck her hand out the window and kept motioning in a circle. She shrugged, not understanding the gesture. It took a few seconds, but eventually the light bulb went on. Ricki turned toward the window of the hotel room to find Felicity peeking through the curtain at her. Her eyes wide with shock, she hightailed it out of there, jumped in the car, which Becca already had running, and fastened her seat belt on the way down the highway. The entire way home, Becca laughed at her.
Eighteen
Becca had a good laugh at Ricki’s expense over the next couple of days. “You should have seen the look on your face when you got busted,” she had said right before making the face and laughing hysterically. “Your eyes grew bigger than your head. It was like a cartoon.”
Ricki could only roll her eyes and laugh along. She wasn’t sorry she got caught. She was only sorry she had to catch them.
What Felicity and the mayor were doing didn’t serve the public interest. The mayor espoused conservative ideas, preached them from his office, and here he was livi
ng a double life. His children were teenagers, and she hated to see their world crumble when they found out about their father’s infidelities. He had a lot more to lose in this game than Felicity did, at least publicly. Privately, they would lose the same.
If Jennifer knew about the affair in such detail, she had a lot to gain financially by helping the lovers keep their secret. It would explain the expensive toys, the plastic surgery Grace1 mentioned. For someone working part-time and only making a little over ten dollars an hour, that was an expensive lifestyle to maintain. Plastic surgery wasn’t cheap. Boob jobs alone could run into five figures.
So far she had only been paying attention to the people Jennifer worked with. The one part of the equation she seemed to have left out was Jennifer herself. Who exactly was Jennifer Barnes? Who were her family members? Was she ever married, did she ever have kids, did she have an ex-husband or several? All legitimate questions and none she had an answer for. Why was there such a cloud of mystery surrounding this woman?
Something irked her. Someone was dead, and there seemed to be a lot of people keeping a lot of secrets. When she was alive, everyone wanted to talk about how awful she was. Now that she was dead, everyone clammed up. Not anymore. Ricki would make them talk.
On Monday morning, she drove to the library—the branch that fired her from her volunteer position and, not so politely, asked her to use the branch across town so she wouldn’t have to show her face in that one ever again. It was the one where Jennifer Barnes died. Ricki firmly believed somebody in the library knew something about what happened to Jennifer. Even if they didn’t announce it on the news that Jennifer’s death was under suspicious circumstances, she had inside information, so for all they knew, she was just being nosy. And trespassing.
Feeling bold as brass, she pushed the doors open and marched inside like she owned the joint. Word must have gotten out that she wasn’t allowed through those doors anymore because all heads turned in her direction. All of a sudden, she was under a spotlight. Even the patrons knew she wasn’t supposed to be there. When she came to the library about once or twice a month to pick up her holds, they treated her like a rock star and often asked for her autograph. This time, not so much. They took one look at her, did a double take, and then turned their faces toward whoever was standing at the circulation desk. Which just so happened to be Victoria, who kindly assisted Felicity in asking her to leave and never come back.
Checked Out (A Ricki Rydell Mystery Book 1) Page 12
