by Kylie Logan
“Liam is a trustworthy businessman.”
I plucked the paper from his hand and set it on the seat between us. “Are you telling me what to do?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Good.”
“Except you know, you could drive a little slower.”
* * *
• • •
THE NEXT MORNING, Saturday, I dropped Declan off at Bronntanas, then parked and went around to the front door of the Terminal.
I can’t say I knew something was wrong. Not exactly.
I can say I felt that something was wrong.
Just like I can say that the moment I felt it, I knew I was being too imaginative.
“Get over it,” I told myself, poking my key in the lock, swinging the door open, and letting go a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
Everything inside the Terminal waiting area looked exactly the way it should have.
“No boogeymen with or without fedoras,” I reminded myself, and strolled to the kitchen, where I pushed open the door and stopped cold.
My cookbooks were all over the floor. The fridge was open. Pots and pans were scattered all around, along with loaves of bread, cooking utensils, and just about every piece of cutlery we owned.
I don’t know if I screeched, then grumbled.
Or if I grumbled, then screeched.
I do know I made two phone calls, the first one to the cops and the second one to Declan.
* * *
• • •
DETECTIVE GUS OBERLIN is apparently not a morning person.
Then again, in the course of investigating a couple of murders, I’d run into Gus in the afternoon, the evening, and the nighttime, too.
Maybe he’s just not an any-time person.
He took a long slurp of coffee from the paper cup he’d brought into the Terminal with him, stretched his six-foot-four-inch frame, scraped a hand over his bulging belly, and burped.
“Who the heck would want to trash the Terminal?” he asked.
“If I knew that, maybe I’d also know who broke into my house.”
As I’ve mentioned, the Terminal is in Hubbard and Pacifique is in Cortland, out of Gus’s jurisdiction.
That would explain why his shaggy eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch.
Declan had his arm around my shoulders and before I could say another word, he gave me a little squeeze. “Friday night,” he told Gus. “You can get the report from Tony Russo.”
“A break-in here and a break-in there?” Gus scratched one meaty finger behind his ear. “Ain’t that strange!”
“And annoying,” I remarked.
“And troubling,” Declan added. “If someone has it in for Laurel—”
This was not something I wanted to think about so I dragged away from Declan’s protective hold and grabbed the closest cookbook off the floor.
“Uh-uh.” Gus wagged a finger in my direction. “Let us get some pictures before you start picking things up.”
“But we’re going to open soon and—”
Gus rolled the toothpick he was chewing on from one corner of his mouth to the other. “How about you hang a sign out front that says you’ll be delayed an hour or so? That will give us time to dust for prints, and you’re going to need time to clean up.”
He was right.
I put the cookbook right back where I’d found it, grabbed a piece of paper, and scrawled Opening Today at Noon on it, and Declan volunteered to hang the sign on the front door.
“So . . .” Gus gnawed the toothpick in his mouth. “This is crazy, huh?”
“You could call it that.” I leaned against the stainless steel counter where I thought I’d be prepping salads that morning, not looking at so much of a mess. “And we’re extra busy because of the Italian food.”
“Italian food.” Gus said the words like he could taste them. “Had some of that . . . what do you call it? . . . gelato once when I was in Vegas. Mighty good stuff.” His look was pure innocence. “I don’t suppose you’re serving gelato?”
He was about as subtle as a clap of thunder. “Pistachio or chocolate?” I asked him.
“Oh, chocolate. And maybe a scoop of pistachio, too.”
I went to the freezer to get the gelato.
Like most restaurants, the Terminal has a walk-in freezer. Ours isn’t huge, but it’s got plenty of shelf space and George is meticulous about keeping everything on them nice and orderly.
That meant there was always plenty of space on the floor.
Except that day.
The freezer door open, my jaw slack, and my heart in my throat, I gurgled out something that might have been “Gus!” or maybe it was just a half-formed scream.
“What?” He ambled over.
“There’s a—” I dared a step inside, closer to the woman who lay on her back with her arms splayed out at her side, her legs bent, and her red knitted cap askew.
“She’s dead!”
I don’t think I had to tell Gus. He could see she had a bruise on the side of her head and that she wasn’t breathing, just as well as I could. I could also see—
My heart started up again with a thump that pounded my ribs.
The woman’s glasses were off. And remember that bulge on the bridge of her nose? It was gone, too, a piece of actor’s putty that had come off to reveal a nose that launched a thousand cosmetic surgeons’ dreams.
“It’s . . .” My breath caught. My blood whooshed inside my ears. “It’s the lady who was here last night.” I gasped. “And the lady who was here last night is Meghan Cohan!”
Chapter 4
“So what was a Hollywood superstar like Meghan Cohan doing dressed up like an old lady and eating in your restaurant?”
I was listening to Declan, honestly I was, it was just that I was having a little trouble concentrating at the moment. I mean, what with the kitchen of the Terminal trashed and the body of my former employer in the freezer.
“I don’t think she was just the old lady eating in the restaurant last night.” The thought rose out of the fog inside my head. “I think she was the old man with the fedora, too.”
At this, Declan sat up and pulled back his shoulders. We were in the Terminal office along with Gus and Sophie, George and Dolly and Inez, and, believe me, it was more than a little crowded in there. Since I was the one who’d stumbled on Meghan’s body, I’d been given the chair by the desk. Everyone else was packed into every other inch of the room: Sophie in the guest chair, Declan sitting on the desk, Inez and Dolly hanging on to each other near the door, George looking even more gloomy than usual with his back up against the filing cabinets, and Gus Oberlin pretty much taking up the entire center of the room.
“Wait a minute!” Gus waved a hand and the murmur of conversation that started up when I made the comment cut off in a jiffy. “What do you mean he’s . . . that is, she’s . . . what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about her hands.” Declan and I exchanged looks and he knew exactly what I meant. That’s why he gave me a nod. The rest of them didn’t have a clue what I was talking about, so I explained. “When the old guy with the fedora was here, he didn’t want me to see his hands. Last night, the old woman . . . well . . . er . . . Meghan, she wore fingerless gloves. So you see, I couldn’t see either of their hands.”
“But why . . .” I couldn’t blame Sophie one bit for being upset. A body in the freezer is not a daily occurrence. She sniffled and sipped the coffee George had been kind enough to pour for everyone before we started this powwow.
“Because Meghan is a . . . well, she was a skilled actress. She knew how to choose clothes to disguise herself. I’ll bet the clothes she wore as the old man were stuff she bought at Salvation Army or Goodwill. I remember thinking how tired they looked. And she’s had enough experience
with makeup to know how to create an illusion and fool the eye. The glasses, the hats, the putty she used to make the old lady’s nose look big and bumpy. But your hands . . .” I held mine out and looked at them and automatically, everyone else did the same.
“It’s harder to disguise hands,” I told them. “And believe me when I tell you I know Meghan has . . . had . . . hands that were pampered to the max. Massages, manicures, hand soaks, seaweed wraps. She had beautiful skin and beautiful nails.”
“And that’s the kind of thing that’s harder to camouflage.” Gus nodded knowingly.
“Exactly. My guess is she never thought about it until she was dressed as the old man and in here reading the newspaper. When I walked up and started talking to her, she realized her hands were a giveaway. That’s why she hid them and why she was wearing mitts last night even though it wasn’t all that cold out. The old lady she wanted me to believe she was wouldn’t have such gorgeous hands.”
“So that explains that.” Declan crossed his arms over his chest and sat back, careful not to squish the computer monitor. “But it doesn’t explain what she was doing here in the first place.”
“Or why she broke into Pacifique,” Sophie pointed out.
“Or what she’s doing dead in our freezer,” Inez said.
“Dead! In our freezer!” As I might have mentioned, Dolly is the newest member of the Terminal staff. She hadn’t been here back when the Lance of Justice, a local TV reporter, was killed in our dining room. I couldn’t blame her for sounding a little breathless and looking a little green. She hiccuped, clapped her hand over her mouth, mumbled, “Be right back!” and rushed out of the room.
“You don’t suppose she’s going to quit?” Sophie asked no one in particular.
This, I couldn’t say, so I kept my mouth shut. At least until an idea hit.
“Meghan was looking for something,” I said. It seemed like a no-brainer so I was grateful no one pointed that out. In fact, they actually looked interested in my theory.
“I mean, she must have been,” I said. “She broke into Pacifique and trashed the place, and my guess is she didn’t find whatever it was she was looking for because she came here last night and looked again.”
“And while she was here,” Gus said, “somebody else showed up, knocked her unconscious, and dragged her into the freezer and she froze to death.”
It was too horrible to even think about.
Before I could hug my arms around myself, Declan came over and draped an arm over my shoulders. It helped ease the tattoo of panic that started up inside my rib cage. At least a little.
I looked at Gus. “So there’s another question we need to ask. Not only what was Meghan doing here and what was she looking for, but who wanted her dead?”
Gus is not the thinking type. He rolled his toothpick through his mouth a time or two before he made up his mind, then clapped his hands together, and we all jumped. “All right! I’m going to want to talk to each and every one of you in the next couple hours, but for now, Sophie, you and George and Inez, you can go into the kitchen and see if my guys are done in there. If they are, you might as well start cleaning up.”
“We’re going to need someone to handle the media.” The very thought made my stomach swoop. “Talk about a feeding frenzy! Meghan wasn’t just a star, she had a host of charities she raised money for, her work as a director, her line of clothing . . .” If I didn’t already have a headache, I would have had one now.
“I’ll take care of that.” I had no doubt of it, though if Gus would do it with any finesse at all was another matter altogether. “For now . . .” He made a shooing motion with his hands, and Sophie, George, and Inez filed out of the office. Once they were gone, Gus gave Declan an evil-eye stare. “I’ll talk to you later, Fury. Laurel will be along in a minute.”
“You’re forgetting . . .” Declan stood. He was nearly as tall as Gus, but not nearly as bulky. Still (and I might be just a tad prejudiced here), he was an imposing figure, especially with his head held high and his shoulders thrown back and that stony expression on his face, the one that said he wasn’t going to put up with any nonsense, not from Gus, not from anyone. “I’m Ms. Inwood’s attorney,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
In all the time I’d known him, Gus had never had a good thing to say about Declan or his Irish Traveller family. He claimed it was because the Fury family—and all their relatives, which, as far as I could see, numbered in the hundreds—were nothing but frauds and cheats and involved with the local Irish mob, too. It may have been true in the past, but it sure wasn’t now, and what Gus didn’t know was that thanks to Declan, his Uncle Pat’s ill-gotten money (which Declan handled as business manager for his family) was being put to good use in keeping the St. Colman’s food pantry open.
Gus’s top lip curled. “It’s up to Laurel if you stay.”
“Of course.” I squeezed Declan’s hand. “But I’m not sure how much I can tell you that you don’t already know, Gus. You were with me in the kitchen when I found the body, and you came right away to see what was going on and—”
The truth of the situation slammed into me, as clear as the stains of raspberry jelly from his morning toast on Gus’s green and white tie.
“You think I’m a suspect!”
He rolled back on his heels. “Did I say that?”
I clapped a hand over my heart. I guess I figured that way, neither Declan nor Gus would hear the way it was suddenly pounding. “You didn’t have to. You think I could . . . you think I might have . . . Are you saying you think I could have . . . ?”
“All I’m saying is that you knew the deceased. And you’re the only one here who did.”
“Not exactly accurate,” Declan pointed out. “Since just about everyone, everywhere, knew who Meghan was.”
“Knew who she was, sure,” Gus conceded. “But they didn’t know her. Not personally. Not the way Laurel did. The way I recall the story, you worked for her and things didn’t turn out so well.”
I gulped down my horror. “It’s no secret. Meghan, she thought . . . see, she has this son, Spencer. He’s maybe . . .” I thought about it for a moment. “I guess he’s fourteen or fifteen by now, maybe even older, though he doesn’t act like it. And it’s not entirely his fault because he’s always been coddled and had everything handed to him and he’s never been taught about consequences, but Spencer, you see, he’s one bad kid. And he’s got a serious drug problem.”
“The way I remember it, Miss Cohan, she’s the one who thought you leaked that piece of information to the press.”
I hadn’t realized Gus had taken a notebook from his pocket. His pen poised over the page, he waited for me to respond.
I nodded, then realized he needed more than that. “It wasn’t true. I’m not the one who told the press, but Meghan . . . well, once she gets something into her head, it’s impossible to change her mind. She decided I was the guilty party and that was that. She fired me.”
“And you were angry.”
Gus’s statement hung in the air between us.
In an attempt to steady my erratic heartbeat, I pulled in a breath. “Yes, I was. At first. I mean, who wouldn’t be?” I looked to Declan for support and found it there in those amazing gray eyes of his. His look gave me courage. “This whole thing, it blew up in Meghan’s home in Malibu. At the time, she told me I could stay on for a few days. You know, long enough to get my things together and figure out what I was going to do although she already knew there was no way I’d find a job with any of her A-list friends. She blackballed me, only I didn’t know that at the time. I didn’t wait around. I packed up everything I owned that night and jumped in my car and got away from there as fast as I possibly could.”
“Were you angry enough to want to hurt Ms. Cohan?”
I shook my head. “Mad, sure. But I’ve never been violent. You can check the rec
ords, Gus. I’m sure the California Department of Social Services has all the files pertaining to my foster care. I could be a real pain in the neck.”
“No surprise,” Declan muttered.
I made a face at him. “And I could be difficult. But I was never violent.”
“You know I have to check,” Gus said.
“Go right ahead. Besides, even if I was mad when Meghan sacked me, that was a year ago, before I came to Hubbard. Since then, I’ve made a home for myself here. And friends. Honestly, Gus, looking back on it, getting fired by Meghan was the best thing that ever happened to me. Why would I still be mad at her?”
Since his shoulders were so big, Gus’s shrug reminded me of a glacier inching toward the ocean. “All this time, maybe you did get over being mad. But then out of nowhere, she shows up here in Hubbard and—”
“Why?”
Since he didn’t know, he ignored my question.
“She shows up here in Hubbard and my guess is she wants something. That would explain why she went through your house, and the restaurant. She’s looking for something, you don’t want her to have that something, and—”
“What something?”
This, too, he couldn’t answer. “One thing leads to another,” Gus said, “and before you know it, Ms. Cohan ends up in the freezer.”
“Except I didn’t know she was in town. I haven’t heard a word from her, not since the night I left her house.”
“That’s not exactly true. She was here in the restaurant. You said so yourself. You talked to her last night, and the night before.”
“I did, but I didn’t know it was her. You’ve seen her in enough movies. Everybody has. Meghan could be petty and vengeful and nasty. But she was also a darned good actress. I worked for her for six years and I didn’t know she was the shabby man or the old woman.”
“So you say.”
This was not the ringing endorsement of my honesty I’d hoped for. I looked to Declan for backup.
“That’s all Ms. Inwood is going to say for now,” he told Gus. “Of course, she’ll cooperate with your investigation as much as she’s able.”
