Seven
Leaving Lloyd McLaughlin’s wake had been trickier than I’d expected. It was a little difficult to say good-bye to the number of people who were hailing me a hero even though I kept trying to point out that I actually hadn’t done the poisoning. It hadn’t mattered. They’d toasted me. They’d toasted my store. They’d toasted the existence of popcorn. They’d toasted toast. They were totally toasted.
I stepped out onto the sidewalk surprised to find it was still light outside. I started toward the Jeep, but found my path seemed to be more meandering than I’d intended. I pulled out my cell phone.
Garrett answered on the second ring. “Hello, beautiful. What are you up to today?”
“I think I need a ride,” I said.
There was a pause. I wondered if I’d slurred my words too much to be comprehensible, but I didn’t think I was that drunk.
“Where are you?” he asked.
I turned to look at the house and came close to losing my balance. “Thirty-seven twenty-eight Lone Oak Circle.”
Another pause. “Where exactly is that?”
“Over on the southwest side of town. Those new developments.”
“What are you doing there, Rebecca?”
“Paying my respects to the Widow McLaughlin. And bringing her cookies. The chocolate chip ones with the caramel inside.” Garrett liked those. I’d held a few back for him.
“You’re where?” Absolutely no pause that time. No pause at all.
“At Lloyd McLaughlin’s house where his widow . . . Wait. Are you still a widow if you’re divorced before your husband dies?” Was there some kind of technical term for that status? Ex-widow? No. That didn’t sound right.
“Are you drunk?” Garrett asked.
“I’d describe myself more as festive. Little more than tipsy. Little less than drunk. Definitely not suitable to drive, though.”
“I’m on my way. Don’t move.”
That seemed unnecessarily dramatic, but I parked my butt on the porch step and waited.
• • •
Garrett pulled up in his Subaru, but he didn’t get out of his car. I stood up from the porch, gave myself a second to recover from the head rush, walked over to the car, and got in. “Thanks.”
He kept staring straight ahead.
I buckled my seat belt and he put the car in drive. “I need to talk to Dan.”
Garrett nodded. “That’s one thing we can agree on.”
“You should hear all the things I found out. Lloyd McLaughlin was a lying, cheating son of a bitch and a bad neighbor.” I slumped down a little in the seat. Holding my head up was starting to feel like a bit of a chore.
Garrett turned left on Camellia. “Do tell.”
“Get this. After Devin and Miriam Stevenson built their deck, the first time they had friends over, he called in a noise complaint. They were six sixty-year-olds sitting on a deck drinking wine and talking about their IRAs. The next time they had people over, he put ‘Macarena’ on repeat and blasted it over the fence.” I wasn’t even sure that song had words.
“Annoying.”
“Totally. He would yell at people who parked in front of his house, but he couldn’t do anything about it. Then cars parked in front of his place would be keyed. Nobody could prove it was him, but everyone knew it was. People stopped parking in front of his house because they didn’t want their cars to get jacked up.” Such a cowardly way of doing things. I hated that.
“Terrible.”
“I know!” I settled farther down in the seat, feeling a little sleepy. “Maybe I should talk to Dan tomorrow. It’s getting late.”
“It’s four thirty in the afternoon, Rebecca.” He threw some side-eye my way.
“Really? It feels so much later. Must be because the sun’s going down so much earlier.” Would it be so bad to go to bed at five? Not every day. Just once in a while.
“The day drinking might have played a role, too, don’t you think?” Garrett asked.
He had a point, although my day drinking had been done for a good cause. I shrugged. Fighting would take too much effort when I needed all my strength to keep my eyes open. Then again, why bother? It wasn’t like I was driving. Closing them for a second wouldn’t hurt anything. I’d just be resting them.
“We’re here, sleepyhead.”
I started awake. I must have fallen asleep despite my best efforts. I checked my chin for drool, then looked out the window. We were in front of City Hall. “I thought you were taking me home, that I’d talk to Dan tomorrow.”
“I think you should talk to Dan today. I think you should talk to him right now.” Garrett opened my car door.
I rubbed my eyes, then remembered I’d put on mascara that morning. I flipped down the vanity mirror to make sure I hadn’t raccooned myself. I was a little smudgy, but still totally publicly presentable. Probably. “Fine. I’ll do it now. You’re right. Might as well get it over with so I can go back to worrying about POPS instead of Lloyd McLaughlin.”
Garrett took my arm and guided me up the steps, which I thought was kind of unnecessary until somehow the toe of my boot caught on one of the risers. “They really should make those things a consistent height. Someone could hurt themselves.”
“Mmm-hmm,” he said, without looking at me.
Vera Bailey was at the desk when we walked in. “Hey, Rebecca. Hi, Garrett. Come on in. Dan’s expecting you.”
“He is?” I looked over at Garrett.
“I texted him from the car. I wanted to make sure he could see you now.” He kept moving me forward.
“Oh.” Garrett seemed to feel a lot more urgency about this conversation than I did at the moment.
“So when are you going to reopen POPS?” Vera asked.
“When Carson’s finished redoing the kitchen.” I followed her down the hall to Dan’s office with Garrett still keeping that grip on my elbow.
“I’m totally missing it.” She stopped, pulled the waistband of her uniform pants out to show that they were loose. “I lost five pounds since I stopped snacking on that Mexican chocolate popcorn you made. I don’t want to gain ’em back, but those Snickers bars in the vending machine start calling my name around two thirty in the afternoon.”
“I’ll make you a special batch and drop it by.” At least I’d still have one customer left when I reopened, despite Megan’s smear campaign.
“Thanks, Rebecca. You’re a pal.” She knocked on Dan’s open office door. “Rebecca and Garrett here to see you, sir.”
Dan stood from behind his desk as we walked in.
“I have got so much to tell you!” I plopped down in one of the chairs in front of his desk.
“And you’ll have plenty of time to do that,” he said. He took my hands and then snapped handcuffs around my wrists. “Rebecca Anderson, you are under arrest for impeding a police investigation.”
• • •
“Dan, you’ve gotta listen to me. That Lloyd guy was a jerk. Everybody hated him. Everybody. There are tons of people with motives to do him harm. I mean, maybe whoever it was didn’t even really mean to kill him. Maybe that person just wanted to make him a little sick, you know? Payback? For all the trouble he caused around the neighborhood. Regardless, there are bunches of people who totally hated him and could have poisoned that popcorn.” I sat back in my chair. “I can give you names if you want to make a list of people to investigate.”
Dan tapped his pen against his notebook but didn’t look like he was ready to take dictation. “Rebecca, what is it that you think I do here all day?”
It wasn’t the question I’d been expecting. It took me a few seconds to make the transition. “You do sheriff-y things.”
He took in a deep breath and blew it out. “What do you suppose sheriff-y things are?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know for sure. You do the
stuff that needs to be done to keep our town safe.”
He smiled at me. “That’s right. That’s exactly what I do. Do you suppose that one of those things might be to investigate someone who had died under suspicious circumstances?”
“Of course. That’s what I’m helping with.” Finally, we were about to be on the same track. He could start investigating. I could go home.
“What makes you think I don’t already know all about Lloyd McLaughlin and his neighbors?” His tone was pleasant, but his face was getting less smiley by the second.
“I, uh, don’t know. I just knew that Megan was only talking about me poisoning Lloyd, not about anybody else poisoning him.”
“And you think that Megan is the first person I go to when I discuss my ongoing investigations?”
“Well, no, of course not.”
“So you think I’m bad at my job?”
“No! Absolutely not! Why would you say that?”
“Because you seem to think that it’s beyond the scope of my capabilities to figure out that the victim was unpopular. You seem to think I don’t know to check into the whereabouts of the people who hated him around the time he was murdered. You seem to think I don’t know how to do my job.” With each sentence he leaned closer and closer to me across the desk.
The truth of his words sunk into me. Oh, crap. I’d been a jerk. “Dan, I’m so sorry. I got so wrapped up in clearing my name that I didn’t think to check what you were doing. I didn’t know.”
“Because you don’t need to know. You’re not a detective on a case. You’re an ordinary citizen who needs to stay out of the way of my investigation.” He had his cop face on. It was as if someone had wiped the expression clean off his face.
I’d thought he was joking. I’d been sure he was joking. I’d been absolutely flabbergasted to find out he wasn’t joking.
Dan had arrested me. Thrown me in the hoosegow. Locked me up. Put me in the pokey. I couldn’t believe it. Yet here I was, wearing orange scrubs with a pair of black plastic shower shoes. Vera told me I was lucky that Dan had let me keep my own bra and panties and that I probably shouldn’t complain.
Shocked, however, didn’t begin to describe how I felt about Garrett telling me that he was firing me as a client, though.
“I’m sorry, Rebecca, but you don’t follow my advice and, frankly, representing you is a clear conflict of interest. You’re going to have to find another lawyer.” He’d said it as if he’d been practicing the speech. Given the looks exchanged by Dan and Garrett, it was possible that he had.
“I am not going to be represented by Russ Meyer!” Russ was an okay guy if you needed to fill a plate at a dinner party, but trust him to get me out of jail? I didn’t think so.
“Suit yourself, Rebecca. You can hire any lawyer you want except me.” He rolled his shoulders like he was uncomfortable. “I’ll go by your place and pick up some things for you, if you want.” Then he left.
Vera had given me the scrubs, a pillow, some sheets and a very scratchy blanket and had led me to this cell.
• • •
After Faith left, Huerta came in to our cell block. “You want to take the beast for a walk?” he asked.
I jumped up. “You bet.”
Huerta unlocked the cell door and both Sprocket and I practically ran through. I’ve always thought of myself as an indoor-type person, perfectly content in an interior space. Then I spent twenty-four hours in a cell. I could not wait to get outside, feel the sunshine on my face, the breeze on my skin. Huerta let us out of the cell and put a leash on Sprocket.
“Don’t mind me,” Cathy said, waving weakly from her bunk. “I’ll be right here.”
“You’ll have your exercise time as soon as we get back,” Huerta assured her.
She snorted. “Whatever.”
We left the cell block and headed for the side door that I knew led out onto the street. “Uh, where are we going?” I’d expected to go behind City Hall, not out onto the street.
“For that walk?” Huerta looked at me as if I’d suddenly become dim.
I pointed. “Out there? In front of everybody?”
“It’s that or walk up and down the corridors. I thought you might want some fresh air.” He held the door open.
I did. More than anything. Well, not more than anything. I didn’t want it more than my self-respect, despite how good the fresh air smelled as it swirled in the door.
Sprocket whined and scratched on the doorpost with his paw. Then he looked up at me with his big brown melting eyes. I took a step toward the door. Apparently I wanted my dog to be happy more than I wanted self-respect. This was going to suck. The town gossips had already had enough of a field day with me. Now I was going to be strutting around downtown in my orange prison scrubs. There’d probably be video on YouTube before we even got back to my cell.
“It’s Saturday, Rebecca,” Huerta said as if reading my mind. “Downtown is half-deserted anyway.”
“Whatever half is here will be on the phone with the other half before we get halfway down the block.” I took a deep breath, blew it out, straightened my shoulders and said, “Let’s go.”
Huerta opened the door farther and I squinted into the sunlight. The air was crisp and the sky was that light blue you only see in the late fall and winter. I inhaled, sure I could smell the tang of the lake and taste it on my tongue. Sprocket danced down the steps as if the judges of Westminster were assessing his prance. My footsteps were almost as light. Who cared what people thought, anyway? Sticks and stones and all that.
A pickup truck slowed down as it went by us and honked.
I cringed. Oh, yeah. Apparently, I cared what people thought. My face got hot and I knew I was red to my curly brown roots.
Then Olive Hicks leaned out of the cab of the pickup and yelled, “Hang tough, Rebecca! You’ve got this!”
I looked over at Huerta. He shrugged. We kept walking. Sprocket stopped to sniff every other bush and tree.
A blue sedan with a dirty white top squealed over to the curb. Delia Woodingham hopped out and ran toward us, her arms wide. Huerta stepped in front of me and held up his hand. “No touching,” he barked. “Stand down.”
Delia stopped. She shot Huerta a look and then peered around him. “Don’t let the turkeys get you down, Rebecca.” Then she was gone.
“What’s going on?” I asked Huerta.
He shrugged. “You remember how well Cynthia used the media when Antoine was in jail?”
I did. It had horrified me a little at the time. Dan had gotten caught in the crossfire at least once.
“Well, she’s still good at it.” Huerta smiled a little.
I stopped walking. I hadn’t seen a newspaper or watched a television newscast since my unfortunate incarceration. “What did she do?”
Huerta stopped at the newspaper kiosk on the corner, popped in a quarter, pulled out a paper and handed it to me. The headline read: “Local Businesswoman Incarcerated.” Underneath, a subhead read: “Sheriff Suspends Due Process.” Underneath that was a big old photo of yours truly. I wasn’t sure when the photo had been taken, but it looked like I was at least wearing lipstick.
“Crap.” Poor Dan. No wonder he’d been so terse with me about Emily. He was probably ready to strangle me. Then another thought hit me. “You know that Antoine is going to see this, don’t you?”
Huerta nodded.
“I’m surprised he’s not already here.” This was the kind of thing he’d use as an excuse to meddle. He’d want to rescue me, even though when I’d really needed rescuing he’d been useless.
Huerta shrugged. “Maybe he’s finally given up.”
“And maybe pigs fly.” I didn’t think Antoine even really wanted to get back together with me. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I had been a good wife, but I hadn’t been that good. It was more like he’d gotten into
the habit of pursuing and didn’t quite know how to stop it yet.
His presence always made everything more complicated, though. He irritated Dan and pissed off Garrett. On the other hand, I was pretty irritated at Dan and pissed off at Garrett at the moment. What did I care? In fact, maybe I should irritate them a little more.
A group of people were gathered on the stone steps in front of the courthouse. “What’s going on over there?”
“I’m not sure. Some kind of announcement from one of the city council candidates.” He checked the time.
We stopped to watch. Justin Cruz came out of the front door of the courthouse in a suit that fit him just right. No tie.
“Nice suit,” Huerta observed. “He didn’t get that here in Grand Lake. That’s for sure.”
I wasn’t sure I’d seen Huerta in anything besides his uniform since I’d moved back to Grand Lake. “I didn’t know you were interested in clothes.”
He shrugged. “You wear a uniform all day every day for work, you want to make sure what you wear in your off hours is worthwhile.”
Justin cleared his throat and the crowd quieted. “I am coming forward because a blackmail threat has been made against me.”
There was a little gasp from the crowd. This was juicy. Samantha Freeman snapped pictures as fast as her finger could click.
“I received a DVD with a recording of me letting myself into the back of the First Community Church on several occasions. The blackmailer assumed I was entering the church late at night for nefarious reasons and told me that the recording would be made public unless I dropped out of the city council race.” He paused and looked around the crowd, making eye contact with several people. His gaze locked on me. He gave me a quizzical look and then nodded.
I nodded back, not sure if I’d just agreed to something or acknowledged something. I hoped nods weren’t contractual.
“I decided to come forward myself. Yes. I have been letting myself into the church at least once a week late at night for the past year. I’ll let Reverend Lee tell you what I’ve been doing.” Justin stepped aside.
Assault and Buttery Page 11
