Pop Goes the Murder

by Kristi Abbott

  “What are you going to do with those?” Garrett asked. Were his shoulders always so close to his ears?

  I looked at the wine bottle and then the flowers. It was a nice bottle from a little winery not too far from L’Oiseau Gris. It wasn’t cheap and I wasn’t sure you could even get a bottle of it in stores around here. It was also not my favorite. Too much French oak in their barrels for my taste. It was, however, one of Antoine’s favorites. The flowers were lovely as well. I wondered if he got them from Annie. I wasn’t sure where else to get a bouquet like this one in Grand Lake. “I’ll take the flowers to Barbara tomorrow. She likes bouquets in her store. Not sure about the wine, though. Maybe regift it to someone?”

  Garrett’s shoulders relaxed a little. “I’ll put the flowers in water while you finish cooking.”

  But as I walked past him, he grabbed me around the waist and pulled me to him. Then he kissed me.

  It was the first time I ever burned risotto.

  * * *

  The next morning at POPS, I printed out a Help Wanted sign from the Internet. Seriously, was there anything a person couldn’t find with the right search engine? I was taping it up on the window of POPS when Eric Gladstone came in. Eric was a firefighter and emergency medical technician. We’d met when Barbara got bashed on the head a month or so ago and then met again when I was knocked on the noggin by the same person. I’d brought him some Coco Pop Fudge as a thank-you and since then he’d become one of my regulars. He worked a twenty-four-hour shift and usually came in as I was opening before his shift started at seven in the morning and then a little after I opened the next day when he got off at seven that morning.

  He must have been going on duty because it was only quarter to seven when his face popped up in the glass of POPS’s door.

  “You’re hiring?” he asked through the glass.

  “I hope so,” I said, opening the door so he could walk in.

  “Full-time?” he asked.

  I headed for the kitchen to get his coffee. “Not yet. Part-time for now. Maybe fifteen or twenty hours a week.”

  “Counter only or would the person help in the kitchen?” He trailed after me.

  “Eric?” I asked. “Are you thinking about moonlighting here at POPS?”

  He blushed. “No. Not me. A friend. I know someone who’s looking for a part-time gig who also happens to be amazing in the kitchen.” He blushed a little harder.

  “A grown-up or a kid?” I asked. I needed someone who could be in the shop during regular hours, not just after school and weekends.

  “Grown-up,” he confirmed.

  “Tell your friend to come by. Make sure he or she mentions your name. Now, do you want the usual?” I started pulling out to-go cups.

  “Times two,” he said. I packaged up four white-chocolate cranberry breakfast bars and two large coffees. By the time I’d taken his money and sent him out the door, the morning rush was on and I didn’t have time to wonder what had made Eric blush to the roots of his handsome crew-cutted head.

  Around ten, Dan stopped in for coffee. “Have I finally converted you into being a coffee snob?” I asked, pulling out a chair at the kitchen table.

  He shook his head and sat down. “If I only drank good coffee, I’d spend three-quarters of my life with a caffeine headache.”

  “So what brings you here?” It wasn’t like he never stopped by, but usually during working hours Dan was . . . working, not hanging out with me drinking coffee and eating whatever breakfast bars came out too deformed to sell.

  “Oh, just wanted to see how you were doing.” He cocked his head and looked at me. “You know, after finding Melanie.”

  Ah. Checking up on me. “I’m fine.” I was, but I didn’t want to dwell on it. Sometimes a person was better off not thinking too much. “How’s the investigation going?”

  “Everything we’re finding points to suicide, Rebecca. Everything.” Dan picked at his breakfast bar.

  “What kind of everything? So her finances were a mess. Everybody’s finances are a mess at some point or another.” It didn’t seem like enough to me.

  “That boyfriend you remembered from a couple of years ago? Well, he left her about six months ago. It’s part of why she’s swimming in debt. She couldn’t make the payments on her condo without him.” He turned his mug in circles on the table. Something was bothering him. He only did that when something was gnawing at him. “Of course, her reaction to that seemed to be buying an awful lot of purses over the Internet. Seriously, why do those things cost so much?”

  “Workmanship and snobbery,” I said, although I wasn’t sure I always understood why, either. “Okay. Disappointment in love and money. That’s not a good combination.” Still, didn’t everyone end up in a place like that at some point? It was part of the whole adulting thing. I wasn’t saying it didn’t suck, but it was on the list with paying taxes and regular flossing. If you were a grown-up you pushed through those things.

  “Her cat died, too.” He stopped rotating the mug and took another sip.

  That got me. I’d be devastated if something happened to Sprocket. I had been beside myself when he was shot. I didn’t have to imagine it. Hideous. “Oh. That’s hard.” I reached down and patted his head.

  “Yeah. The cat—Freckles—was seventeen years old and after the boyfriend left, the cat stopped eating.” He shook his head. “Like maybe he liked the boyfriend better than her. That’s got to hurt.”

  “How do you know that?” I stood up to get the coffee to refill his mug.

  He shifted in his chair. “Facebook and Twitter. It didn’t take Huerta long to dig up all that.”

  “Huerta’s cyberstalking Melanie?” Sometimes I wondered if there was anything Huerta couldn’t do. Or wouldn’t do if Dan asked him.

  “It’s not stalking when the police do it, Rebecca. Then it’s investigating and is considered good form.” He smiled and there was my old friend. The boy who put a worm in my chocolate milk. My partner in crime through a million junior high and high school adventures.

  “So she’s in debt, her boyfriend left her, and her cat died.” I winced as I sat down. “It sounds like a country song.”

  “Pretty close. Her car broke down, too. I think it would have had to be a truck to be a really good country song.”

  It still bothered me, though. Something still didn’t feel right. “Did she leave any kind of note?”

  “No, but that’s not uncommon,” he said.

  “The door and the clothes still bug me. Why lay all those outfits out and then not wear any of them? And why wasn’t the door fully closed?” I couldn’t come up with a scenario where I would do any of those things, but then again, I wasn’t Melanie.

  “There could be an easy explanation. Maybe she left the door a little ajar so it would be easy for someone to get in and find her. Maybe she thought about dressing herself up, but decided that it was too much effort. You know how it is when you’re down. Everything feels like it’s too much.” There was a note in his voice I hadn’t heard before.

  I gave Dan a look. “When have you ever been depressed?” Dan was always a ship sailing through calm waters. He’d been that for me through my childhood and now he was that stable ship for my sister and my nephew. I’d never seen his boat rock, but maybe I hadn’t been looking. There were those years I was away and, embarrassingly, those years when I was too involved with looking at myself to notice much about anyone else.

  “No one’s up and happy all the time, Bec. Even if I were perpetually cheerful, I could still have empathy for depressed people and listen to what they say,” he said, not looking up at me.

  That shut me up for a second. I put my hand on his shoulder. “If you were depressed and I wasn’t there for you, I’m sorry.” I doubled my resolve to be there for Dan and Haley and Evan from now on.

  He patted my hand. “I’m fine, Bec. Just
fine.”

  “How’s Antoine’s crew taking it?” I asked.

  “Not well. There’s a lot of chaos. I guess Melanie ran a pretty tight ship and no one else seems to know how to steer it. Brooke and Lucy? They’re bickering like an old married couple. Your guy isn’t really helping, either.” Dan said your guy like a person might say your diseased worm with leprosy.

  “My guy? You mean Antoine? I’m pretty sure the divorce papers definitively prove that he is no longer my guy.” I felt defensive. He wasn’t my guy, but the only reason he was here was because of me. The only reason this whole mess was on Dan’s plate, rocking his usually stable ship, was because of me.

  Dan pressed his lips together. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Still, he’s kind of a mess.”

  That surprised me a little. Mess and Antoine didn’t exactly go together. He didn’t seem in too bad a shape the night before. “What kind of a mess?”

  “I think he might have been drinking, for one. Then he keeps crying.” Dan didn’t look at me as he explained.

  “Antoine?” The crying I understood. Antoine’s passions lived pretty near the surface. Drinking during the day? That really wasn’t his style.

  “Yes, Antoine. He keeps asking if there were signs he should have seen or if he could have done something to prevent it,” Dan said, leaning back and scratching his chest. “It’s like he feels responsible and that makes me suspicious.”

  “I can see him feeling guilty. If someone you spent every day with killed herself, you’d feel a little responsible. Maybe you should cut him a little slack.” I probably would be asking those same questions if I were in Dan’s shoes, but I was pretty sure he was on the wrong track.

  Dan nodded. “You’re right. Maybe you’re right about me cutting him slack, too.” He shrugged. “We still have a few more things to check out before we close the case, but I’m pretty sure I know how this is going to go.”

  “What kind of things?” I asked.

  “Mainly details. There are a few things bothering me still, like why there aren’t any fingerprints on the blow-dryer.”

  That seemed like a no-brainer to me. “It was in the tub with her, under water.”

  “Yeah, but there should still be a few partials at least on the plastic and definitely one or two on the inside where she had to alter it. So far it’s completely clean. That seems a little weird to me.”

  It did to me, too. “Thanks for letting me know.” I shook my head. So sad. I might not have liked Melanie much, but I certainly would never have wanted her to be in a place that seemed so without hope that she would take her own life.

  “Thanks for keeping your nose out of it.” He shifted in his chair and turned his coffee cup around a few times. “Although speaking of Antoine, Haley wants to know if that was him showing up at your place last night.”

  My eyes widened. “Haley sent you to check up on me?” That explained the mid-morning coffee klatch.

  “Not exactly. If she’d wanted me to check up on you, she would have sent me over to your place last night.” He still hadn’t met my eye.

  Dan had a great cop face. He could do that thing they all seem to do with keeping their faces totally blank. With most people, it meant he could keep a lot to himself. It didn’t work with me and he knew it. I could tell when he wasn’t saying something and that’s all I needed to know to get me to start digging. “She wanted you to do it last night, didn’t she?”

  He slumped. “Yeah. I told her it was overstepping.”

  I whistled. “How’d she take that?” I didn’t imagine that she’d taken it well.

  He snorted. “I got a ten-minute lecture on the importance of family and then a five-minute follow-up on your role in our birth plan.”

  “And you still didn’t come over?” That had taken some serious spine.

  He laughed. “Antoine had left by that time. I was just relieved I wasn’t going to have to arrest Garrett for assault again.” His face turned serious. “Try not to tweak her too much, Rebecca. She’s really on edge.”

  “I’m not trying to tweak her. In fact, the only reason I was home instead of at the movies was so I wouldn’t have to turn off my cell phone. Just in case,” I protested.

  He smiled. “I’ll tell her that. Maybe it will calm her down a little if she knows you’re taking this seriously.”

  “As seriously as a grease fire, and that’s about as serious as I get.”

  * * *

  Once Susanna arrived in the afternoon, I grabbed the flowers Antoine had given me to take them over to Barbara’s. A dark-haired woman left the antique shop when I was still about a half a block away, started toward me then pivoted and took off walking in the opposite direction. For a moment, I thought it was the Café Lady again, but that was crazy, right? Besides, what did it matter if it was? Melanie had committed suicide. Inside the store, Faith had set up a table to one side and was getting ready to photograph a silver tea set. She had the camera on a tripod and a white sweep on the table. I waited until she’d squeezed off a few photos and was frowning at the digital display.

  “Would flowers help?” I asked, holding out the bouquet.

  She looked them over without taking them from me. “They’re nice, but I’m not putting out for a measly bouquet.”

  “Wouldn’t have expected it.” I looked around for something to use as a vase.

  “As long as we’re clear.” She started packing up items. “Where’d they come from?”

  “Antoine brought them by my apartment last night.” I selected a cut crystal vase and put the bouquet in it.

  She whistled. “To make up for that fight you two had over by the lighthouse?”

  I blinked. “How did you know about that?”

  “Rebecca, you had about a quarter of the town as an audience.” She stowed her camera behind the counter.

  I cringed. “Do you think someone’s told Garrett?”

  “If Pearl hasn’t, Megan probably did at lunchtime.” She rearranged the flowers in the vase. “Auntie Barbara will love these. Good idea. Make sure he knows you won’t even keep flowers from him, that you don’t want a damn thing he’s selling.”

  “But I kind of do. This spot on his TV show could set me up with enough business to keep the shop afloat for the next few years.” I was starting to wonder if it was actually going to be worth it. Maybe Faith was right. Maybe I should tell Antoine to pack his stuff up and leave right now.

  She glanced at her watch. “I gotta bounce. The girls will be done with soccer in a few minutes. Talk to you tomorrow?”

  “Sure.” I started to leave then remembered the dark-haired woman. “Hey, was there a customer in here right before I got here?”

  Faith looked up from digging through her bag for her keys. “Yeah. Why?”

  I shrugged. “She looked familiar. I was wondering who she was.”

  “I thought she was trying to shoplift something. She kept scurrying around near the window and . . . skulking.”

  “Skulking?” I wasn’t sure what skulking looked like.

  “I don’t know how else to describe it. She skulked. Plus with that trench coat . . . it was weird.” Faith picked up her purse.

  She had a point. Does anyone really wear trench coats outside of New York City? “So what did you do?”

  “I accused her of putting a paperweight in her pocket.” Faith blushed.

  “Had she?” I asked.

  “No. But when she emptied her pockets, she started crying.”

  “Whoa! Seriously?”

  Faith shifted her feet. “Yes. Seriously. Something about everything going wrong and her husband and I’m not sure what else. It got garbled.”

  “Then what?”

  “I gave her some tissues, told her to dump the bastard’s sorry ass, and she left.”

  A jilted woman. It probably wasn’t even the
woman I’d seen in the coffee shop or the one I’d seen by the lighthouse when Antoine was creating his own personal mythology. I was losing my mind, seeing conspiracies around every corner.

  We said good-bye and I went back to POPS and the safety of my own kitchen. I did feel safe there. Safe and happy and content. I’d worked hard to make it that way. Maybe it could be my new happy place now that Antoine had ruined the lighthouse for me.

  * * *

  Later that afternoon, the chime on the door tinkled. I continued working on my new lunch item plans. Susanna could handle any customers that came in. Then I heard her call my name. I wiped my hand on a dishcloth and poked my head out of the kitchen into the main shop area.

  A man filled the shop. I was used to Sam taking up a goodly amount of space. This man took up more. I didn’t think he was taller than Sam, but he was definitely broader through the shoulders although just as narrow through the hips. He had that whole classic V-shape thing going on for miles. Then perhaps a few kilometers past that.

  And his skin. Oh, my. My own skin tone tended more toward marzipan, perhaps with a touch of honey in the summer. By midwinter it would be way more toward mayonnaise. To be honest, most of Grand Lake trended that way. Oh, sure. Susanna and Huerta were more caramel-toned. Reverend Lee was more golden. This man, however, was deep into the chocolate ranges and he was fricking gorgeous.

  “Can I help you?” I asked.

  “Are you Rebecca?” His voice was deeper than deep, like bottom-of-the-ocean deep.

  I resisted the urge to flip my hair. “I am.”

  He stuck out his hand and smiled. “I’m Dario. I’m Eric Gladstone’s friend. He said you were looking for some part-time help.”

  “Come on back to the kitchen. Let’s talk.” I indicated the way with a tilt of my head.

  “Coffee?” I offered as we got settled.

  He looked over at my setup and said, “How about I make you a cup of coffee? It can be part of my interview process.”

  I hesitated. I didn’t like to admit it, but I knew one of the big barriers to me getting some extra help was that I might have had the teensiest, tiniest bit of control issues in the kitchen. Elsewhere in my life? Have at it. Change my hair. Do my makeup. Tell me where to invest what little money I have. I would smile and barely notice. But touch my whisk and suddenly I’d be all tensed up. When you started messing with my coffee grinder and my French press? Hooey, baby. My head might pop open.