Deadly Valentine (Special Releases)

by B. J Daniels

  Out permanently. ‘‘You didn’t buy another box of chocolates exactly like the one you had Peggy pick up?’’

  Oliver regarded him for a moment, making Jack too aware of the past and the animosity there’d been between them. It seemed stupid now. After all, it had been high school and wasn’t high school hell for a lot of people? But the heart of the problem between them still seemed to run deep. Some odd male competition thing.

  ‘‘Why would I bother to buy a second box if I couldn’t get away from my office to buy the first?’’ Oliver asked.

  ‘‘To poison the second box and switch it with the first,’’ Jack suggested. ‘‘Or maybe you’d already bought the first box and doctored it.’’

  Oliver’s gaze went cold. ‘‘Are you calling me a murderer?’’

  ‘‘I’m not calling you anything,’’ Jack said calmly.

  The attorney placed a warning hand on Oliver’s arm. ‘‘Why would I want to kill my secretary?’’

  ‘‘How is your marriage?’’ Jack was rewarded with another flicker of anger. Much better than that dumbassed stare he’d been getting.

  ‘‘My marriage is just fine,’’ Oliver said between gritted teeth.

  So why did Jack doubt that? Because Mitzy hadn’t been turning cartwheels. Because Oliver didn’t care that Mitzy didn’t like chocolate; he bought her a huge box anyway. But both of them seemed to be trying to keep up the pretense, Jack noted.

  ‘‘Mitzy said she doesn’t really like chocolates so why buy her such a big box?’’ Jack asked.

  ‘‘Mitzy loves chocolate, Sheriff.’’ Oliver shook his head in disgust. ‘‘Is that really what she told you? She frigging loves chocolate. No doubt she wanted you to believe that she’s above such mortal desires and temptations as simple as chocolate.’’

  ‘‘You’re saying she lied to me?’’ Jack asked.

  Oliver glared at him in answer.

  ‘‘What about you? Would you have eaten some of the chocolates?’’ Jack asked, wondering why Mitzy lied, if she was the one lying.

  ‘‘Of course. Who doesn’t eat chocolate?’’ Oliver said. ‘‘I would have also drank some of the champagne. That’s why I had Peggy get the good stuff. So what’s your point? Doesn’t that prove I didn’t put poison in the chocolates?’’

  Jack considered this, telling himself, of course, the killer would say he’d have eaten the chocolates. But what did it really matter? Neither Mitzy nor Oliver had eaten the chocolates. Only Peggy.

  ‘‘But believe me, I won’t ever eat chocolates again,’’ Oliver said.

  ‘‘Does it seem odd to you that Peggy would have opened Mitzy’s box of candy and eaten some?’’ Jack asked.

  ‘‘I don’t know,’’ Oliver said, adding a long-suffering sigh. ‘‘She was a woman. Who the hell knows what a woman’s going to do?’’

  Interesting observation, Jack thought. If Peggy had been the intended victim, then it seemed the killer had to have known she would eat some.

  ‘‘Mitzy said you have a weakness for chocolate,’’ Jack pushed.

  The word weakness seemed to stick in Oliver’s craw. He leaned forward, his voice low. ‘‘I know what you’re doing. I know why you’re back here, why you wanted the sheriff’s job. I know.’’

  ‘‘Why is that, Oliver?’’

  ‘‘Because of Frannie.’’

  Jack felt himself go deadly still. He’d known it was just a matter of time before someone mentioned Frannie. He just wished it hadn’t been Oliver. ‘‘I don’t want to talk about my wife with you.’’

  ‘‘Don’t you mean your late wife?’’ Oliver asked.

  Jack moved so quickly, he even surprised himself. He shot around the table to grab Oliver’s collar, jerk him up and slam him against the wall, stopping just short of burying his fist in Oliver’s face.

  He could hear the lawyer Randall Garrison protesting behind him, but right at that moment, Jack didn’t give a damn. He didn’t like Oliver Sanders. And it had nothing to do with all the shitty things Oliver had done to him in high school.

  ‘‘Go ahead,’’ Oliver goaded, although he looked considerably more pale than he had just moments before. ‘‘You’ve been wanting to hit me for years. Don’t you think I know you’re planning to frame me for this murder? I know you are. To get even with me over Frannie.’’

  Jack felt a chill of truth in Oliver’s words. He released him and stepped back. Only one man had wanted Frannie more than Jack. Oliver Sanders. And Oliver had done his damnedest to take Frannie away from him.

  ‘‘This murder investigation has nothing to do with her,’’ Jack said. That much at least was true.

  Oliver let out a snort. ‘‘Like hell. You don’t think I know she’s the reason you’re back here?’’

  Jack snapped off the tape recorder as he jerked it off the table and headed for the door. ‘‘Interview over,’’ he said over his shoulder.

  ‘‘I heard she left a suicide note.’’

  Jack stopped walking, but he didn’t turn around. ‘‘What do you want to know, Oliver? If she mentioned you?’’ He could hear the silence behind him like a toxic hole in the atmosphere.

  ‘‘Did she?’’ Oliver asked, his voice barely a whisper.

  Jack didn’t bother to answer. He strode out, slamming the door behind him, sick inside.

  Back in his office, he called Tempest and on impulse asked her to meet him at the nearby cafe´. He wasn’t hungry, but he knew he needed to eat and he’d had enough of his office for one day.

  She sounded surprised.

  ‘‘I haven’t had dinner,’’ he heard himself overexplain. ‘‘I thought maybe if you hadn’t either....’’ He wished he’d given the invitation more thought now.

  ‘‘No, I haven’t eaten yet,’’ she said.

  ‘‘Great. I’ll meet you there. Say half an hour?’’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SHE SHOWED UP exactly thirty minutes later, wearing slacks and a sweater, her hair freshly washed and scooped up at the nape of her neck, making him want to free it. They took a booth in a corner. It was late enough that the Valentine’s Day crowd had already done the date thing, but still it felt awkward being with Tempest.

  ‘‘I can’t believe you’re in River’s Edge,’’ Jack said after they were seated. She only smiled. ‘‘How did you come to be working for the Sanderses?’’

  She nodded as if she’d been expecting the question, maybe realized that curiosity more than anything had made him suggest dinner tonight. ‘‘Ellie Sanders called me and offered me the job.’’ Jack figured Tempest’s mother and Ellie Sanders probably still stayed in touch. ‘‘Ellie owns the hotel.’’

  That surprised Jack. Obviously Ellie hadn’t trusted her son. Jack liked smart women and while he’d detested Otto Sanders and spent half his life battling with Oliver, Jack had always liked Ellie.

  But Tempest hadn’t told him what he really wanted to know: why she’d come back to River’s Edge. ‘‘I would think working for Ellie would be all right. So what made you apply for undersheriff?’’

  Her gaze met his, dark and a little disturbing. ‘‘I applied for sheriff.’’

  Ouch. ‘‘Sorry, I didn’t know.’’

  She shrugged. ‘‘I like Ellie, but she promised Oliver she’d turn everything over to him on his thirty-fifth birthday, which is February twenty-first, just a few days away.’’

  The timing was definitely interesting, Jack thought.

  He watched Tempest pick up her menu. Once Oliver and Mitzy took over The Riverside, Tempest would be out like a stray cat and she had to know that.

  ‘‘I still can’t get over the fact that you moved back here at all after everything....’’ Subtle, he wasn’t. ‘‘I mean, it’s funny the two of us coming back here, you just a few weeks before me.’’ The timing definitely seemed coincidental. The sort of timing that bothered him. Just like Peggy’s death and Oliver’s upcoming birthday.

  Tempest didn’t look up from the uninteresting cafe´ menu. He
wondered why she was avoiding telling him what had brought her back. Or if he just wanted to believe she had some ulterior motive. Hell, she could have just missed the place, although he had a really hard time believing that. He cursed his suspicious nature.

  ‘‘Why do any of us come back?’’ she said finally without looking up from the menu. ‘‘I would imagine Peggy came back a year ago because of Oliver. And you because of Frannie.’’

  He started to tell her he didn’t want to talk about Frannie. Couldn’t.

  ‘‘You’re looking for answers,’’ Tempest said, lowering the menu to face him. She must have seen his closed expression. ‘‘Or did you come back to make amends for standing me up the night of the junior prom?’’ She softened her words with a smile.

  But still he felt like hell, relieved she wasn’t going to talk about Frannie, but embarrassed for what a jerk he’d been. ‘‘I can’t apologize enough for that.’’ He’d stood her up because of Mitzy. Later he realized that Mitzy had just been using him to make Oliver mad. Which was fine with Jack. But he’d blown off his date with Tempest, a date he’d only agreed to because Frannie had asked him to. He’d liked Frannie even then, even when they were only friends.

  Tempest waved it off. ‘‘It all turned out the way I guess it was supposed to.’’

  Had it, he wondered. He’d eventually ended up with Frannie, something that seemed to have led to her death. Had he come back looking for answers? Or someone to blame?

  The waitress, a bubbly little thing dressed in a red and white heart-print dress, bopped up to take their orders, but her interest quickly shifted to the plant growing by their table.

  ‘‘On Valentine’s Day it’s said that you can see the initials of your intended in a heart-shaped ivy leaf,’’ the waitress said dreamily as she fingered a leaf, squinting hard at it. ‘‘Ivy is a traditional symbol of fidelity.’’ She brightened and released the leaf. ‘‘What can I bring you?’’

  The moment the waitress left to get their drinks, Jack asked, ‘‘When do you start as undersheriff?’’ trying to steer the conversation away from the past.

  ‘‘I haven’t accepted the job yet,’’ Tempest said.

  ‘‘What’s holding up your decision?’’ he had to ask, afraid he already knew.

  Her dark gaze met his in answer just before the waitress returned with their drinks and put them down on red, heart-shaped napkins. ‘‘Did you know...’’ The girl moved her gum out of the way of her tongue, ‘‘...that lovebirds choose their mates on Valentine’s Day? Really!’’

  ‘‘I didn’t know that,’’ Tempest said.

  ‘‘Oh, yeah, and on Valentine’s Day if you put the guy you like’s initials in a piece of bread—I guess you’d have to like carve them in—and put the bread under your pillow, in the morning, if the initials are still there, then he’s the one. Cool, huh?’’

  ‘‘Very cool,’’ Tempest said, and took a drink of her iced tea, her amused gaze meeting Jack’s over the rim of her glass.

  The waitress nodded and bobbed off, humming to herself.

  Jack smiled across the table at Tempest, noticing she, too, was trying hard not to laugh. ‘‘I’m willing to bet you’re as wild about Valentine’s Day as I am.’’

  ‘‘It’s too pink for me,’’ she said.

  The waitress came back with two salads, but no more Valentine’s Day folklore fortunately. They ate, avoiding talking about the past—or the case—or her job offer. He learned that she’d gone to college back east, mastered in criminology and taught for a while before coming back here to apply for the sheriff’s job, most of which he would have seen on her application had he looked.

  ‘‘I thought you’d be a scientist,’’ he said, putting down his fork to study her. ‘‘You were so...smart.’’

  ‘‘Nerdy, I believe is the word you were searching for.’’

  ‘‘No. I remember being so envious of you in algebra class. You always knew the answers.’’

  His praise seemed to embarrass her. ‘‘I never knew the answers to anything that mattered,’’ she said looking down as she picked at her salad. ‘‘I would have given anything to be part of Mitzy’s crowd, just to know what to say, how to dress, how to act.’’

  ‘‘Our values are so screwed-up at that age,’’ he said and wanted to say more but the waitress appeared with their dinners. They ate in silence for a few moments.

  The waitress came back by to see if they needed anything else. ‘‘Let me know if you need any...bread,’’ she said to Tempest with a wink.

  ‘‘I’ll do that.’’

  Jack watched Tempest pick at her meal, trying to imagine her putting bread under her pillow. Why had she come back? Like him, she had no kin here anymore, nothing that he could see to drag her back. But he and Tempest weren’t the only ones who’d returned recently. Peggy had. ‘‘You and Peggy were pretty good friends for a while.’’

  She looked up, surprised either by his abrupt change of subject or that he’d remembered. He’d been a junior. Tempest and Peggy were sophomores, Oliver a senior and Mitzy and Frannie freshmen. It had been such a small high school it seemed impossible they could form cliques. But even on the basketball court or football field, it proved hard to play as a team because of their obvious social differences.

  ‘‘Outcasts often band together,’’ Tempest said after a moment. ‘‘At least for a while.’’ Her chuckle was hard edged. ‘‘Peggy realized I was more hopeless than she was. Even nerds have their standards.’’ What she didn’t say, he knew, was that even money couldn’t overcome that.

  While Tempest was one of the privileged, when she was a freshman, her father, a congressman, was charged with corruption. He took off with a female aide he’d been having an affair with, leaving his wife of twenty years and Tempest. The distasteful incident made Tempest and her mother outcasts among their own, except for Ellie Sanders who remained a friend.

  Jack wished he hadn’t been such a jerk, standing Tempest up, especially since she’d been Frannie’s friend. But he’d felt intimidated by Tempest’s brain—and her money—and had been running on teenage testosterone. And then there’d been temptation in the form of Mitzy.

  He and Tempest finished their meals, the restaurant nearly empty by the time the waitress cleared away their plates.

  ‘‘I need to get your statement. Do you mind if we do it here rather than back at the office?’’ he asked as he pulled out the tape recorder. She seemed a little surprised. ‘‘You don’t mind, do you?’’

  ‘‘It wasn’t like I thought this was a date,’’ she said, then reddened.

  ‘‘Look, I’m sorry if you thought—’’

  ‘‘Let’s just not go there.’’ She hit the record button and met his gaze. ‘‘What is it you’d like to know?’’

  Why had she thought he’d asked her to dinner? He felt like a jerk, again. What was it about Tempest that made him so...awkward around her? Frannie. She had known Frannie probably better than he had. Maybe that’s why he and Tempest had never gotten along. That and the fact that Tempest had been against the marriage. Jack figured she didn’t think he was good enough for Frannie. Which was true.

  Tempest was waiting, the tape recorder rolling.

  ‘‘What do you know about Mitzy and Oliver’s relationship?’’ he asked.

  ‘‘The word around the community is they’re perfect for each other, but there is all kinds of ways to take that.’’ She shrugged. ‘‘To all appearances they seem to be...lovebirds,’’ reminding him of the two birds Peggy had brought to the penthouse, birds that, if their waitress could be believed, had mated for life just today.

  ‘‘Okay, tell me what happened from the time you heard Mitzy scream,’’ he said.

  Tempest’s story matched what Mitzy had told him and yet even as he listened he had the feeling Tempest wasn’t telling him everything.

  ‘‘You didn’t see Oliver on the back stairs?’’ he asked.

  ‘‘No. I was with Mitzy out by the elevator when
Oliver showed up. I just assumed he’d come up the back stairs.’’

  ‘‘Could he have come up the elevator after Mitzy?’’ Jack asked.

  She shook her head. ‘‘The elevator door was blocked just as he said with Mitzy’s shopping bags. You’re wondering about the extra key.’’

  ‘‘Could he have arrived before Mitzy, left his key in the elevator by accident, poisoned Peggy or at least found her body, then hid in the penthouse so that you and Mitzy only thought he’d come up the back stairs, but was actually there the whole time?’’

  ‘‘Could have, I suppose.’’

  Oliver was guilty of something. Jack would bet on that. But murder? ‘‘I saw him look at you as if he expected you to say something when he was telling how he’d come up the stairs after you were already there.’’

  ‘‘I didn’t notice.’’

  Jack definitely didn’t believe that. He remembered thinking she was angry about something. But he let it go. For now. He reached over and shut off the tape recorder. ‘‘Take the job. I need your help on this.’’

  Tempest stared at him, surprise and something he couldn’t put his finger on in her gaze. ‘‘Aren’t you afraid I’m too personally involved?’’

  He shook his head. ‘‘No more than I am.’’

  She smiled at that. ‘‘I’ll think about it.’’

  It started to snow as he and Tempest left the cafe´. Large, lacy flakes drifted lazily down from the darkness. The air felt cold, the snow icy against his face, and yet after she left him in front of the cafe´, he walked around the small community of peak-roofed condos, art galleries, upscale restaurants and fancy shops.

  The town had grown since he’d been gone. And changed. Once River’s Edge had been little more than a playground for the affluent. But a resort needs workers. That’s where people like he and Peggy and Tempest had come in. Their families had lived down the mountain in hurriedly thrown-up buildings along the highway and worked cheap just for the opportunity to ski on their days off or fish when the mayfly hatch was on or because they had no place else to go.

  In the years he’d been gone, something had happened though. Not that people still didn’t live in the flats down by the highway and drive old cars up to clean the condos and wait tables, but now there were smaller houses sprouting up, houses with real foundations and swing sets in the backyards, houses with real families who actually lived here year round and shopped at the pizza parlor, burger joint, service stations, working-class bars and video stores that had moved in among the fancier businesses. If River’s Edge wasn’t careful, it would turn into a real town one day.