“You could check my cell phone. The police have it. Probably around nine thirty,” Antoine said.
“Do they have a time of death for Melanie?” I asked.
Cynthia shook her head. “Not that I know of. Or at least not yet. I imagine the body being immersed in water is going to complicate making those determinations.”
“How long after you called did you go to her room?” she asked.
“Right away.” His shoulders tensed a bit again. “I was upset. I did not want to sit in my room and stew while I waited for her to answer my call.”
“You knocked and no one answered?” Cynthia set the tablet down to really focus on Antoine.
Antoine nodded. “Then knocked again. Then perhaps called to her through the door.”
“Loudly? Loudly enough for other people to hear?” she asked.
He nodded again and sank down in his seat a bit. “I believe it would have been hard for people not to hear.”
“And when she didn’t answer?” she pressed.
His hands flew up in the air a bit. “I returned to my room. What else could I do?”
“You didn’t enter her room.” Cynthia leaned forward to look Antoine directly in the eyes.
“Of course not!” He stiffened again.
“The door was locked?” she asked.
“Yes,” Antoine confirmed.
“Did you try the door? Will your fingerprints be on the knob?” The questions were coming faster now.
Antoine didn’t reply.
“Antoine, it will be better if I hear it from you than get blindsided by it during the trial. Did you touch the doorknob?” Her voice had gotten louder.
He nodded.
“Were you in her room earlier?” she asked.
He nodded again. “I helped to carry some of the equipment to her room when we unloaded the van. The entire crew’s fingerprints will be in there.”
She picked the tablet back up. “After you went to her room and knocked, what did you do?”
“What could I do? I went back to my room, took a sleeping pill, and went to bed,” he said.
Cynthia’s head shot up. “Sleeping pill? Do you take them often?”
“I travel a great deal. Time zones change. It’s difficult to sleep. I use them often, but not all the time.” Antoine shrugged.
Something else bothered me about the scene at the hotel. “If someone messed with a blow-dryer for the express purpose of murdering someone, they would have to know that there’d be an opportunity to use it. How would they know that Melanie would even take a bath?”
“Because she always did,” Antoine said. “It was one of her road rituals. She would take a bath when we were done for the day. She said it helped her relax.”
“Who would have known about that?” Cynthia asked.
“The entire crew. Possibly the hotel staff. She always made a point of asking if her room had a tub. There is a desk clerk in New Orleans whose ears are probably still blistered from Melanie’s diatribe after being promised a tub and not getting one.” Antoine smiled and chuckled a bit. “She had such spirit.”
Cynthia snapped her tablet shut. “Well, we do have our work cut out for us here. Basically, Antoine, you have means, motive and opportunity. I can see why the sheriff arrested you. I think there are more than enough holes in their evidence for us to exploit, though, as well as a few other angles we might be able to use.”
“That is good, yes?” He leaned forward.
“Very good. Now try to get some rest. I’ll be in touch on Monday.” She rapped on the door to the room. Vera showed up and ushered us both out. We retrieved our cell phones and other items. When I started to say something, Cynthia shook her head and pointed at Vera. I took the hint and waited until we were out on the steps to talk. A small knot of people stood at the bottom of the steps. “The press?” she asked, straightening her skirt and tucking an errant lock of hair behind her ear.
No lights. No camera. I squinted. Lucy. Brooke. Jason. It was Antoine’s crew. “The press must have headed home for the night,” I said.
She shrugged. “I’ll give a press conference in the next few days.”
“What do you think? Do you think you can help?” I asked.
“Absolutely. I see all kinds of room for creating reasonable doubt. It should be more than enough. If nothing else, I might be able to argue diminished capacity with the sleeping pills.” She blew out a breath and squared her shoulders. “It’s actually going to be kind of fun.”
My shoulders dropped with relief. It wasn’t my idea of a good time, but I’d learned a long time ago that someone who enjoys her job puts a whole lot more of herself into it. “That’s good. That’s very good.”
“To really cinch it, however, I’d love to come up with an alternative explanation of the crime. Someone else who could have done it. Juries eat that up like frozen custard on a hot summer day,” she said. “Any ideas?”
I hadn’t had time to consider that. Dan had gone from insisting it was suicide to insisting it was Antoine too fast for me to wonder too much. “I’ll see if I can find anything out.”
She cocked her head to one side. “You two don’t seem like a normal divorced couple. Some of the divorced couples I know would likely plant the evidence to get their exes arrested. Even if they weren’t that vindictive, they certainly wouldn’t be giving each other shoulder rubs in jail cells.”
“Antoine’s not an ordinary guy,” I said.
“I have a feeling you’re not an ordinary woman, either.” She took a few steps down and then turned. “So is the rest of your family as friendly with Antoine as you are?”
I laughed. “Not exactly.”
“Oh?”
“They never really got to know him when we were married. We were always traveling or busy at L’Oiseau Gris. Then we split up. So you can see how they wouldn’t be close with him.” I wasn’t entirely sure that Dan and Haley would have liked Antoine any better if they had gotten to know him, but it was a convenient excuse.
“Oh, I definitely see. I was just curious. Your relationship with him seems good.”
I shrugged. “He’s not a bad guy. He didn’t beat me or cheat on me. It just wasn’t the right relationship for me. Or it wasn’t anymore.” It actually would have been a lot easier to leave him if he had been a bad guy. If someone cheats on you, or hits you, or gambles away your mortgage payments, or snorts cocaine, or drinks until he blacks out, everyone understands why you have to leave. When it becomes clear that you’ll never truly be happy if you don’t leave, everyone looks at you with that vaguely quizzical look sort of like how Sprocket looks when he’s eating peanut butter.
“Mmmm.” She looked thoughtful and then smiled. We walked down the stairs and into the arms of Antoine’s crew. Talk about out of the frying pan. I braced myself for the storm of invective and took evasive action, trying to walk to the side and onto the sidewalk without walking through them. Brooke moved in front of me. “What did you do? Why has Antoine been arrested?”
I thought about pushing past her, letting her comments roll off my back, but I was a little sick of Antoine’s crew’s attitude. I wasn’t the enemy here. I looked down at Brooke. “Antoine’s been arrested because he had the means, motive and opportunity to murder Melanie.”
Lucy gasped. Brooke stared at me openmouthed.
“I found a lawyer for him and arranged for them to meet.” I gestured toward Cynthia. “This is Cynthia Harlen.”
I pushed through them to the sidewalk.
“Wait,” Brooke called. “How is he? Is he okay?”
I stopped. “So you’re speaking to me now?”
She had the decency to blush. “Yes. I am. We all are. What can we do? How can we help?”
Lucy stepped up next to her. “We’ll do anything. Anything at all.”
I looked f
rom one to the next. Their loyalty said more positive things about Antoine than anything else I knew. Forget his celebrated restaurant, his successful television show, his booming product lines. His people felt this loyal to him. Loyal enough to treat me like vermin when they thought I’d hurt him. Loyal enough to swallow their anger if they thought it could help him.
“I don’t suppose any of you saw him that night after you got back to the hotel,” Cynthia asked.
Looks were exchanged. Lucy shook her head. “We were all pretty exhausted. I went to my room and crashed. I didn’t come out until the next morning.”
“You mean when I saw you in the café?” I asked, remembering the way she’d turned her back on me.
“I guess.” She looked down at the ground, clearly embarrassed.
Whatever. The rest of the group nodded and made agreement sounds. Nobody had seen Antoine after their return to the hotel. Nobody had seen Melanie, either. Nobody had even seen one another.
I would have been suspicious. These people were young and healthy. One could reasonably assume that they’d be interested in partying on the road, but I’d gone on the road with Antoine a few times. I knew how exhausting and long those days could be, especially for the crew. The amount of equipment that had to be shifted, the arrangements that needed to be made and double-checked, the personnel that had to be tracked. It was a huge job.
“So we can’t help, then?” Lucy asked.
Cynthia shrugged. “Only if you know of someone else who might want to hurt Melanie.”
The group fell silent. I looked around, but no one met my eyes. Whatever anyone knew, no one was telling. “Call me if you think of anything,” Cynthia said.
Cynthia and I started down the sidewalk toward where she’d parked her car. I heard a sharp bark and turned. It was Garrett with Sprocket. “Wait up, will you?”
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I thought I’d walk you home.” He handed over Sprocket’s leash.
I was about to make a smart-ass comment about it being Grand Lake and it not exactly being a high-crime area, but then remembered that a woman associated with my ex-husband was dead and we didn’t know why or how. “Thanks.”
He turned to Cynthia. “Nice to see you again, Cynthia.” He stuck out his hand.
Instead of taking his hand and shaking it, though, Cynthia stepped forward and straightened the knot in Garrett’s tie. “Thank you, Counselor. That means a lot coming from you. I was surprised you recommended me. I know you haven’t always been a fan of my work.”
“That’s not true, Cynthia. I just operate a little more within the boundaries than you do. It doesn’t mean I didn’t admire your . . . moxie.” He tried to take a step back, but Cynthia still had hold of his tie.
She laughed that deep throaty laugh, her head tilted back a little. I stared at Garrett staring at the white column of her throat. “Moxie? Who says words like that?” She let go of his tie with one hand for long enough to hold it up traffic-cop style. “Never mind. I know. You use words like that. This little town might be the perfect place for you.”
“It’s okay,” he said.
Okay? It was okay? I bent over and pretended to straighten Sprocket’s collar and got a good look at my food-stained jeans. I looked over at Cynthia in her beautifully cut suit, the pencil skirt hugging her in all the right places. Everything about her was in place. Everything about her was in order. Stray hairs didn’t escape and curl wildly around her head. She wasn’t smudged with flour or sugar or chocolate. What the hell was Garrett doing with me?
Garrett took a step back, forcing Cynthia to let go of his tie or strangle him. “Is this your car?”
She nodded and got into a sleek Mercedes sedan. “See you around,” she said through the window, and then drove away.
“How’d it go?” Garrett asked, head bowed slightly against the night breeze as we started to walk.
“Antoine’s crew is speaking to me again.” I wasn’t entirely sure it was good news, but it was nice not to be a pariah.
“I noticed. It’s part of why I waited a block away. I didn’t really want to talk to them.”
“Part of why? Is the other part Cynthia?” Our hands brushed as we walked.
He took hold of mine and intertwined our fingers. “Possibly.”
I tamped down the twinge of jealousy that spiked up in my chest. “Wanna talk about it?”
“No. Right now I want to hold hands and walk.” He gave my hand a squeeze.
It sounded good to me, too.
Six
When we got to the end of the driveway, we could see Dan sitting on the front porch with two beers and a blanket. Garrett kissed me on the forehead and said, “Talk to you tomorrow?”
I nodded and made my way to where Dan was sitting. I wrapped the blanket around my shoulders, sat down and took one of the beers. “How’d you know when I’d get here?” I asked. I would have suspected Garrett, but I hadn’t seen him text or call.
“I had Vera give me a heads-up.” He bumped me with his shoulder. He might as well have held up a neon sign announcing he forgave me.
“That feels weirdly stalkerish. You and Huerta are getting a little creepy.” I bumped him back.
“Live with it.” He shrugged. “How’d it go?”
“Fine.” I took a long sip of the beer and sighed.
“Was it worth pissing all of us off?” he asked, his tone even.
“If it keeps Antoine from being convicted it was.” I didn’t look at him. It wasn’t the answer he wanted, but it was the truth. “He didn’t do it.”
“Rebecca, he had everything. Motive, means, opportunity. All of it.” He shifted a little away from me on the step.
That sounded unhappily close to what Cynthia had said. It didn’t matter, though. “He’s not a murderer, Dan. A raging narcissist? Probably. A bit of an egomaniac? Also probably. I don’t think he’d kill anyone because of it.”
“You’re always cutting him too much slack.” He shot me a look from the corner of his eye.
I pointed at him with my beer bottle. “You’ve never cut him any.”
“I never felt like he deserved it.” He tapped my bottle with his as if we were toasting.
I couldn’t totally blame Dan. He’d only seen one side of Antoine and only heard about one side of him from me. Ex-wives really aren’t the greatest publicity people. “You should see how upset his crew is, Dan. He’s got to deserve something or that many people wouldn’t be that loyal to him. They’d do anything for him.”
He settled back down next to me. “So you met Cynthia,” he said, changing the topic. “What did you think?”
I sighed. “I think she’s smart and focused and gorgeous. I also think there’s a whole hell of a lot more to the story of her and Garrett than I know.”
“Probably.” Dan drank some more beer.
That was not much of an answer. “Care to elaborate?”
He stood up. “Nope. It’s Garrett’s story to tell, not mine.” He reached down a hand and helped me to my feet.
“You know, that doesn’t make me feel like there’s nothing for me to know.” I brushed off the seat of my jeans.
“It wasn’t supposed to.” He took my beer bottle from me. “Go to bed, Rebecca. It’s late.”
I was about to argue, but then realized how exhausted I was. “Good night, Dan.” Sprocket and I went to our apartment. I let myself in. This was one of the times the apartment felt empty. I hoped it wouldn’t stay that way.
* * *
My morning rush on Saturday tends to start and end a little later than the weekday rush, but I still get quite a few people coming through for coffee and breakfast bars. Usually. It didn’t quite work that way with the news vans parked in front of my shop. It probably didn’t help that we were keeping the blinds down at the front of the shop.
We barely looked open. A few courageous souls braved the sea of cameras and microphones to get their coffee and breakfast bars. I figured the same would be true in the afternoon. People had to have their fudge. I had at least five advance orders. That was worth staying open for, right?
Susanna had a lacrosse game, so Dario came to help—not that there was much to help with. Janet Barry, my most regular regular, backed her way into the shop with her double stroller at about two. “Whew,” she said. “It’s getting bad out there.”
Dario hurried around the counter to hold the door open for her. Joey—Janet’s two-year-old— said, “Hi, Dawio.”
Dario reached down and fist-bumped Joey. “What are they up to out there?”
“They’re asking people if they met that poor murdered girl or Antoine or . . .” Her words trailed off.
“Or?” I asked.
She squatted down to wipe some drool from Jack’s face. He must have been teething again. “Or if we know you and what you’re like.”
“What did you tell them?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest as if I could protect my heart that way.
“I told them I’ve known you since third grade and that you make a heck of a popcorn bar.” She straightened Jack in his stroller seat.
I didn’t expect it, but hot tears pricked behind my eyes. “Thanks, Janet.” I hadn’t always felt like my hometown had my back. In fact, I’d pretty much never felt like my hometown had my back. It was nice to know that at least one person outside of my family thought well enough of me to say it to the news media.
She turned to me and smiled. “No problem. Now what else does a girl have to do to get some caramel cashew popcorn around here?”
Pop Goes the Murder Page 9
