“So you think I have a shot?” Huerta’s face brightened.
I almost laughed. “Have you noticed how the temperature in the room goes up when you’re both in it?”
“I thought maybe it was just me. I’m kind of hot-blooded.” He must have seen the smile quirk at my lips, because he pointed at me and said, “Don’t sing, Rebecca.”
“Fine. I won’t. But the two of you will be able to melt the snow off the roof of the courthouse just with your glances.”
“It’s that obvious?” He grinned again.
“Apparently to everyone but you. Ask her. Maybe just for a drink. It’ll give her a chance to see you in something besides a uniform before she commits to dinner,” I suggested.
“Great. I will. Next time she comes in.” He let me into the conference room where Barbara was waiting.
“So what have you got for me?” I asked.
She pushed the copy of the diary toward me. “I think I figured out a few more people.”
“Great! Which ones?”
“So Dentures McGee here? I’m pretty sure that’s Saul Osborne. He had a way of sucking his teeth that was really unattractive. Also, Freckle Face has got to be Angelica Washington.” She flipped open the yearbook and pointed at the picture. It was pretty obvious where the nickname had come from.
“Are any of these people still around?” I asked.
“No. At least not those two. Saul went away to college in Virginia and only came back to visit his parents. They passed away decades ago. He might not even still be alive.” Barbara looked a little sad.
“What about the people who are just initials? Have you figured any of them out?” I asked.
“Maybe. I think HH might be Dominic Burns.” She opened her copy of the diary to a page she’d marked with a colored Post-it. “See here? She talks about how he ran a five-minute mile. I think he was the only boy to do that when we were in high school.”
“But HH aren’t his initials.” I wasn’t following.
“I think it might still be a code. She really didn’t want anyone to know what she was talking about if they found this.”
“Why was she so secretive?”
Barbara blew out a sigh. “Parents were a lot stricter back then. I remember something about her parents finding out that she had gone to a meeting of the chess club and grounding her for a month. They didn’t want her to join a club that had boys in it as well as girls. Her dad used to make her do this thing where she had to kneel in the kitchen until he said she could stand up. She had bruises on her knees all the time. All the time. She might not have wanted to risk them figuring out that she was talking about boys.”
I shuddered. “That sounds like child abuse.”
“It might be now, but back then it was just a father making sure his daughter didn’t stray from the straight and narrow. It was a different time.” Barbara made a face. “I’m not saying it was a better time, mind you, but people looked at things differently back then.”
I thought about that for a moment. I’d chafed against every rule that had been made for me, including ones I’d known were only made to keep me safe. It was a teenager kind of thing. I couldn’t wait to get away from Grand Lake, but I’d been willing to wait a little bit. Maybe Esther hadn’t. “So different that she might have run away to get some freedom?”
“She wouldn’t have been the first girl to do something like that,” Barbara said. “It might have felt like the only way out.”
Yes, but what would happen once she was out? Where would she go? What kind of job would she have been able to get? I’d had a place to run to. I’d had the Culinary Institute, thanks to Coco’s guidance and help. Who had Esther had? A potentially crazy cousin who thought the world was infested with secret Nazis, that’s who. “But before she graduated from high school?”
“That’s the part that doesn’t fit. She was a good student. Smart. Thorough. I would have thought she’d wait until she had that diploma safely in her hands before she took off.” She paused. “She wasn’t cruel, either. She may not have liked how strict her parents were, but she wouldn’t have wanted to hurt them, either.”
“What do you think happened, Barbara?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know, Rebecca. None of it makes sense to me. I hate to think that someone could have killed that girl, someone that I most likely knew, but I don’t see her running away, either.”
I took a deep breath. “I’m going to talk to Dan about it.”
“You think he’ll listen?”
“I’m not sure, but I have to try.”
• • •
When Barbara left, I asked Huerta to take me to see Dan before he took me back to my cell. He looked up from his computer when I walked into his office, and his shoulders slumped. “What now, Rebecca?” he asked.
I slipped into one of the chairs across from him. “There’s another murder you need to solve.”
He pushed back from his desk and laced his hand over his chest. “Who did you poison now?”
“What? Nobody! You know I didn’t poison anyone.” Part of me wanted to cry and part of me wanted to punch him in the nose. I wasn’t sure either would get me what I wanted at the moment, but I was pretty sure both of them would feel really good.
Dan held up his hands before I could decide. “Everyone’s a suspect until we figure out who was really responsible. Now whose murder am I supposed to be solving now?”
I plunked the copy of the diary down in front of him. “Esther Brancato’s.”
“Who?”
“Esther Brancato. The girl whose diary I found in the wall.” I tapped the copy of the diary.
“What about her?” He made no move to pick up the pages.
“I think she was murdered. She had a bunch of freaky things happening to her. A weird case of food poisoning. Getting shoved into traffic. Someone put a Star of David in her locker. Then she disappeared. When I tried to read about it in the old copies of the newspaper, someone had burned out those sections of the microfiche.” I sat back in the chair. I’d made my case.
“How on earth does that add up to her being murdered?” Dan looked at me the way he had when I’d explained how mayonnaise was made, like I had somehow stepped outside the bounds of logic.
I took a deep breath. Mayonnaise existed and I was pretty sure Esther had met with foul play. “I think it’s a pattern, don’t you?”
“No. I don’t. I think someone pulled a prank on her at school and she tripped on a sidewalk and she got some kind of bug and then she ran away.” He shoved the diary back at me.
“What about the microfiche?” I countered.
He shrugged. “Those bulbs burn hot. It’d be easy to accidentally mess up the film. It’s a bunch of coincidences.”
“A few too many, don’t you think?” I leaned forward, trying to make my case.
He shook his head. “Not really.”
“Dan!”
“Look. I have one murder and one attempted murder to solve. Even if Esther Brancato was murdered, it’s not exactly high on my priority list at the moment. I’ll get to it when I get to it.” He sat back in his chair. “By the way, we found out how Lloyd got your popcorn.”
I froze. “How?”
“One of the candidates told the messenger to keep the container of popcorn.”
“Why?” I sat back offended. Why would someone not want my Bacon Pecan Popcorn? What was wrong with them? “Is the person a vegetarian?”
“No. The person is allergic to nuts.”
Allen hadn’t mentioned any food allergies to be concerned about, but I should have thought to ask. I blushed. “I could have easily made a nut-free batch if Allen had told me.”
“Well, it’s lucky for Justin Cruz that you didn’t. Not so lucky for Lloyd, of course.”
“It was Justin’s batch?�
�� I thought for a second. “But they were all the same. I didn’t put names on them.”
“So we still don’t know who the poison was intended for. It was just random that it was almost Justin’s.” Dan didn’t look any happier than I felt.
“It could have gone to any one of the candidates.” That still bothered me. “Unless only Justin’s was left when someone put the poison in. So when was it put in?”
Dan shrugged. “We haven’t gone over the route yet.”
“So Lloyd was delivering the popcorn?” He didn’t seem like the messenger kind of guy, but then again I’d only really gotten to know him through the eyes of his ex-wife and ex-neighbors. Based on their observations, he was a sociopath.
“No. We’re still trying to track down all the connections. Right now, all I know is that Justin is the only one who didn’t still have his popcorn.”
“So Lloyd could still be the intended victim? Someone could have put the poison in anywhere along that path.” I slumped back in the chair. It felt like we kept taking two steps forward just to take three back.
“I suppose. It seems less likely, though.”
“Nightmare,” I said, leaning my head down on the desk.
“But not your nightmare, right?” He tapped me on the shoulder.
I lifted my head up to look at him. “Definitely still my nightmare. Until you find out and prove who poisoned that popcorn, my reputation is on the line.”
He sighed. “Then leave me alone and let me figure it out.”
“How about you tell Megan to leave me alone?” No one seemed to understand that I was a victim here, too.
“If she was doing something illegal, I would. While I’d be one hundred percent behind making gossip a punishable crime, I don’t think we have enough jail cells to put that into practice,” Dan said.
“So who hates the city council?” I asked Dan.
He snorted. “Nobody hates the city council.”
“Now,” Huerta chimed in. “No one hates them now.”
“What does that mean?” I turned to look at him.
“You weren’t here for the big showdowns,” he said.
That so didn’t sound like Grand Lake. “There were big showdowns in the city council?”
Dan shot a look at Huerta. “It’s ancient history, Huerta. It doesn’t have anything to do with what’s going on here.”
“Are you sure?” Huerta asked.
“Yes. I’m sure. You know who it was that caused all those problems, and you know he’s gone now,” Dan said firmly.
“Gone like dead gone?” I asked.
“No, Rebecca. Gone like off the city council and moved away.” He leaned down to retie his shoelace. “Not everybody in Grand Lake gets murdered.”
“I know that. Gone seemed ambiguous. And if whoever it was happened to be a troublemaker . . .” I shrugged.
“And what a troublemaker!” Huerta said. “Didn’t matter where he went, there was trouble.”
“Who exactly are we talking about?” I asked.
“Reston McGinn,” they said in unison and then stared at each other wide-eyed like they might have done something wrong.
“If you say his name two more times, does it conjure him?” I asked.
“I hope not.” Dan shook his head. Dan was a calm kind of guy. He wanted to sail through life with smooth water all around him. This McGinn guy didn’t sound like a smooth-water person at all. “I’d probably have to get him a personal protective detail.”
“That bad?” Wow.
“Yes and no. Reston’s heart was in the right place,” Dan said.
Huerta snorted.
“It was, Huerta. Really. He wanted protections in place for city workers. He wanted the city to invest in our infrastructure. He wanted good stuff for Grand Lake.”
“Those all sound really good to me.” Who doesn’t want protection and solid infrastructure?
“And he went about getting them in the most obnoxious way possible. People who would have normally been on his side went the other way just so they wouldn’t have to vote with him,” Huerta pointed out.
“So what happened?” I asked.
“He got voted out.”
“Who took his place?”
“Hector Goodwin.”
“What happened to him?”
“He, uh, died.”
“It sounds like that spot on the council is kind of cursed.” One person voted out. One person dead.
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just a coincidence.” Dan waved his hand at me like he was shooing a fly.
“If you say so.” I shrugged.
“I do.” Dan looked at me through narrowed eyes.
“Except that now someone’s blackmailing people running for office and trying to poison them.” Sounded a little cursed to me.
Dan put his head down on the table. “There is that.”
• • •
Less than an hour later, Huerta was back at our cells.
“You have a visitor,” Huerta said.
“I have lots of visitors.” I gestured around my cell, which was looking less intimidating and feeling less uncomfortable practically by the hour.
“I know.” He looked uncomfortable.
I looked up from the notes I was making. “Cynthia’s back? Did you ask her out?” Maybe he didn’t like people seeing them make googly-eyes at each other.
He shook his head.
“Annie?”
More head shaking.
“Faith? Haley? Who?”
He grimaced. “How about you come and see?”
I did like surprises. I wasn’t sure being surprised in jail sounded as good as maybe people jumping up from behind the couch and yelling “happy birthday,” but I was willing to go with it.
“You know, this would be a lot easier if we didn’t have to do this dance with the cuffs every time I had a visitor,” I said, rattling at my chains.
“Trust me, it’s under discussion,” Huerta said. He didn’t sound happy about it.
“It is?” I’d mainly been intending on being a smart-ass. I hadn’t realized I’d hit on something.
“In the few days you have been in this jail, you have had more visitors than any other visitor ever. Even prisoners who have had to wait here for weeks before going before a judge or being transferred elsewhere. You also have had more rules broken for you than any other inmate. What’s one more? Besides, no one here thinks you’re going to make a break for it. Where would you go? No one thinks you’re going to get violent, either.” He looked down at Sprocket. “After you’re done with your visitor, do you want to walk Sprocket?”
“That would be great. Thanks.” I gave him what I hoped was a winning smile. “Sorry I’ve been such a pain.”
Huerta shrugged. “It is what it is.”
Sprocket and I followed him out of the cell and down the hallway. Sprocket began to growl low in his throat when we were only a few steps in. I patted him as best I could with my cuffed hands. “It’s okay, boy. We’ll get through this.”
Then we went into the interview room, where we found Antoine, my ex-husband. Who didn’t live here. Who had no business here. Who could not seem to leave me alone. Sprocket barked.
He leapt to his feet as I came in. “Rebecca, mon Dieu! They have you in chains! Shame! Shame on all of them. It is a travesty, a mockery of the system of justice. It shall not stand, Rebecca.”
“What are you doing here?” I gave Sprocket a look and he quieted. I should have known when he’d started growling in the hallway. There were only a few people who seemed to raise his hackles just by being in the same space as him, and one of them was Antoine.
“I saw the news of your arrest and, of course, the subsequent outcry against this tyranny. I came to lend my assistance.” He made a little bow.
> “I have Cynthia. I have all the assistance I need.” I took a step away from him.
Antoine made a noise in his throat that he usually reserved for a sauce that had separated. “Clearly not if you are still in here.”
“Cynthia will get me out of here as soon as possible. You know how good she is. There’s no need for you to be here. No assistance I need. Go back to California.” Antoine’s presence always complicated things. Always. Never in a good way.
“At least sit down and let us catch up a bit.” He gestured to the chair.
One of the things I hadn’t really expected about jail—not that I’d ever in a million years expected to be locked up in one—was the boredom. As many times in the year or so since I’d opened POPS that I’d dreamed of a day with nothing to do stretching in front of me, I hadn’t known what that would really feel like.
It didn’t feel good.
At least Antoine was never boring. I sat.
“How is the kitchen renovation coming?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Behind schedule and over budget. Pretty much what you would expect.”
“Did you decide to replace your range with the same model, or are you taking the moment to upgrade?” His bright blue eyes bored into me. When you were the focus of Antoine’s attention, you were absolutely the focus.
I bristled. “What was wrong with my range?”
Antoine laughed. “You know what was wrong with it. You are probably the last person I would need to explain that to.”
He was right. I did know. I just didn’t like to be judged. “I upgraded. Just a little. It seemed silly not to.”
“I agree. What about the refrigerator?” he asked.
I shook my head. “The insurance would only cover so much.”
“You should let me help.” He reached his hand out toward me.
I didn’t take his hand and I shook my head harder. “I appreciate the offer, but no.” I didn’t actually appreciate the offer. The offer made my skin crawl. If POPS was anything, it was my independence from Antoine. Borrowing money from him? Letting him invest in it? Any scenario that had him getting any of his sneaky little Antoine hooks into it would simply not do. I changed the topic. “So how are you?”
Assault and Buttery Page 14
