Pop Goes the Murder

by Kristi Abbott

  I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that. “What? There was more?”

  She shrugged. “She was spying on her husband. She thought he was having an affair.”

  I stared at her, not believing what I was hearing. “Do you know who her husband is?”

  “Nope. I didn’t then and I don’t now. I just knew she was a fellow traveler so I gave her some tissues and told her to dump the rat.” She wiped off both girls’ faces. “Ready to go, girls?”

  “Then she’s not connected to Antoine at all?”

  “Not that I know of. You could ask her.”

  “No can do. I’m pretty sure I’m not allowed within twenty-five yards of her.” My face got hot at the thought of the piece of paper that Dan had handed me.

  “That makes sense, too, since it’s as far as you can run.”

  * * *

  Grand Lake was the kind of town that tourists visited to see the fall. The dogwood trees turned spectacular shades of red with elm trees showing orange and yellow. The nights would get cool, but the days turned warm. The sunlight took on a golden tinge.

  Well, that was over. We were heading into November. There was no light in the morning and the afternoon light was gray and it got dark way too damn early at night. I’d thought it would make me miserable. I’d thought I’d thrived on the sunshine of Northern California. I’d thought the golden hills dotted with the green of live oak was the landscape that opened my soul, the place where I could finally draw a full deep breath into my lungs.

  Turned out I was a little darker than that. I enjoyed the shiver that ran through me when Sprocket and I stepped out into the cold dark night, even if there was a spit of rain coming down. I liked watching the gorgeous red and yellow leaves turn slowly brown and drop to the ground. Granted, of course, only as long as I wasn’t responsible for raking them. I liked it when the golden hazy sun of summer became the sharp crisp white light of autumn.

  Maybe I was a midwestern girl at heart after all. Or maybe I should wait for the first snowfall to be sure of that. It also helped that I didn’t have far to walk tonight. Garrett had texted me to see if I wanted to meet him for dinner at the diner. I’d promised Garrett I would meet him. Megan did not look fondly on Sprocket coming into the restaurant so I settled him with a peanut-butter-filled Kong and walked down the street. I got to the diner before Garrett and asked for our usual booth.

  “Trouble sure follows you, sweetheart,” Megan said as she seated me.

  I looked up, startled. “What do you mean?”

  She set the water pitcher down on the table and put her hand on one hip. “Well, there was your folks dying when you were so young. That’s a start.”

  “That was hardly my fault!” I sat back in my seat, feeling like I’d been slapped. Losing my parents when I was still in high school changed my life, changed me, changed everything. While I felt like Haley and I had managed to put our lives on good tracks, there wasn’t a milestone that happened that I didn’t wish my mom and dad could be there to see. To blame it on me seemed unbelievably cruel.

  “Didn’t say it was, sugar. Just said stink seems to stick with you like dog shit on a shoe,” she said.

  Fine. “What else?”

  She squinted into the distance. “Well, you come back and Coco gets killed.”

  I didn’t protest too hard that that was not my fault. I knew my return to Grand Lake played a part in what had happened to Coco. Neither Coco nor I had foreseen how badly my return would play out, but it didn’t change the facts.

  “Now Mr. Belanger shows up to do a show about you and his assistant is dead and he’s in jail.” She picked her water pitcher back up. “Now, did you want to order or did you want to wait for Mr. Garrett?”

  “I’ll wait.” I twirled my glass. I didn’t have to wait long.

  “You may want to reconsider this,” I said as he slid into the booth across from me. “Megan thinks I’m some kind of bad-luck magnet.”

  Garrett picked up his menu and read. “Yeah, but you’re cute and I’m hungry. I’ll take my chances.”

  The bell over the door chimed and I turned to see who had come in.

  Jason walked in. He wasn’t alone, however. He held the door open for Marisela Santos and ushered her to a booth with a hand on her lower back.

  My jaw nearly dropped. Was he the husband she thought was having an affair? If so, she was very much connected with Antoine’s crew and had deliberately not told Dan that information.

  I sank down in the booth with a whispered, “Darn it.”

  “What?” Garrett asked, looking up from the menu.

  “Over there. It’s Antoine’s cameraman and the woman I think might be his wife. I’m not supposed to be within twenty-five yards of her. How big is this room?” I glanced over my shoulder. She hadn’t spotted me yet. Or if she had, she wasn’t acting like it.

  “Smaller than twenty-five yards. Why aren’t you supposed to be around her?” Garrett set his menu down.

  “I was going to get to that over dinner. I wanted to ask her some questions and she ran so I ran, too . . .”

  “You ran?” Garrett interrupted. “You never run.”

  “Yes. I ran. She ran faster, but Sprocket ran faster than both of us and sort of knocked her down . . .”

  “Sort of?” he interrupted again. “How does a dog sort of knock a person down?”

  “Okay. More than sort of. Actually knocked her down. If you want to know what happened, though, you’re going to have to stop interrupting.” I crossed my arms over my chest and pressed my lips together.

  “Fine.” He mimed locking his lips with a key and throwing the key away.

  “She’s the woman I kept seeing that Dan thought I was making up, but I wasn’t. She’s real. And I think she’s married to Antoine’s cameraman and according to Faith she thought her husband was having an affair with someone and she was here to spy on him.” It all came out in a rush.

  “I think I would have understood more if I’d kept interrupting.” He rubbed his forehead with his thumb. “She thought Jason was having an affair?”

  “I know. Think about it. Maybe Jason is who Melanie was getting ready to meet that night. It would explain the whole date-night vibe she had going.”

  “Did you tell Dan that part?” Garrett asked.

  “No. I only found out about the affair thing after he’d already cited me for assault, and I only found out the husband she thought was having an affair was Jason now.” I gnawed on the edge of my thumb.

  “Dan what?” Garrett said loudly. Too loudly. Loudly enough that all the heads in the diner turned toward us, including Jason’s and Marisela’s.

  “And now I think I’m too close to Marisela. Dan said I had to keep twenty-five yards away, but is it my fault if she came into the place where I already am?” Megan made her way toward us. She’d thrown me out of the diner before. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.

  “We need to call Dan,” Garrett said. “We need to tell him the rest of what you found out.”

  “Okay. Go ahead.”

  “Why me?” Garrett asked. “You do it.”

  “He’s mad at me.”

  “Well, I don’t want him to be mad at me.”

  “I think I know one sure way to get him over here,” I said. I stood up and walked over to Jason and Marisela’s table.

  Marisela started shrinking back into the corner of their booth when I was halfway across the room. “Stay away from me,” she hissed when I got to their table. “You’re not supposed to be within twenty-five yards of me. The sheriff said.”

  Jason looked back and forth between us. “Why can’t Rebecca be within twenty-five yards of you, Marisela?”

  “Because she and her filthy dog assaulted me this afternoon.” Marisela’s face crumpled as if she were about to cry.

  “Sprocke
t is very clean. He’s not filthy at all,” I said.

  Marisela pulled out her cell phone. “I’ll call the sheriff. He gave me his number.”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Do it. Maybe once he gets here we can get this all cleared up.”

  “You assaulted my wife?” Jason asked, starting to get up from the table.

  I took a step back and bumped into Garrett, who literally had my back. “I didn’t assault her. I wanted to talk to her. She ran.”

  “Why did you want to talk to Marisela?”

  “I will call the sheriff,” Marisela said loudly.

  Megan said, “I already called him.” I knew she wouldn’t hesitate for a second to turn me in.

  “Never mind,” Jason said. “We’re leaving.”

  Jason helped Marisela with her jacket after she got out of the booth, and they were both headed for the door when Dan walked in. For a second I thought Jason was going to try to bolt. I’m not sure whether or not he saw Huerta out on the sidewalk or decided that it wouldn’t do to leave Marisela holding the bag, but he seemed to think better of it.

  Dan walked up to me. “Rebecca, I told you to leave that woman alone.”

  “Thank you, Sheriff,” Jason said.

  “Yes, if you’ll all come down to the station now I can take your statements,” Dan said.

  “That’s okay,” Marisela said quickly. “I just want her to leave us alone.”

  Dan’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He frowned. I knew normally he’d ignore his phone at a moment like this, but with Haley so close to going into labor he didn’t dare. He pulled it out and looked at the message. His brow creased. Then he held up the phone. “Maybe you’d be able to explain this, too,” he said. On his phone was a photo of Jason looming over Melanie in the parking lot of the Grand Lake Inn. His face was angry, his arms wide. They were clearly arguing and Melanie was cowering from him.

  Jason sagged. “I was hoping this wouldn’t come out. I knew it would look bad.”

  “Who sent that?” I asked Dan. I looked around the diner. Whoever had texted Dan the photo either had amazing timing or knew where he was and who he was talking to at precisely that moment.

  Dan looked at the phone again. “Unknown number,” he said. His eyes narrowed farther. “You’re right, Jason. It does look bad. I think we should go down to the station and talk about it.”

  Jason nodded. He started to walk out of the diner with Marisela and Dan following. I followed after them, but then Dan turned around. “Not you,” he said.

  I stopped. “But . . .”

  “No buts,” he said. “Go have dinner.”

  “No,” Jason interrupted. “I want her there.”

  Dan turned to him. “What? Why?”

  Jason’s chin came up. “She’s the only one who seems like she really wants the truth. I need someone who’s going to look deeper than the surface of this thing. I want her there or I want a lawyer.”

  Dan’s shoulders dropped. “Fine,” he said. “You can come, Rebecca.”

  * * *

  When we walked into the Sheriff’s Department, Dan pointed to some benches in the lobby. “You can wait there, Ms. Santos.”

  Jason’s shoulders slumped. “No. She might as well know, too.” He reached for her hand, but Marisela put hers in the pocket of her coat. He kept his hand out. “Please?”

  It was one of those moments where I was aware that a lot more was going on than met the eye. On the surface, the stakes were pretty low. Would Marisela take his hand and accompany us into the interview room? Would she stay in the waiting area with Vera? Didn’t seem like it made a lot of difference.

  But I could tell it did. I could tell it was one of those marriage-defining moments. Jason was offering to show himself to Marisela at his most vulnerable. Would she say yes? Would she stand by her man? Or make him stand alone?

  I held my breath. Finally, Marisela took her hand out of her pocket and tucked it into Jason’s. I think the whole room exhaled at once.

  I started unloading my forbidden items into the tray and froze for a second with my cell phone in my hand. The funny way Haley had been wincing on and off crossed my mind. “Can I ask you a huge favor?” I asked.

  “Depends. What kind of huge?”

  “I know I can’t take my cell phone back in there,” I said, hoping she’d maybe tell me it was okay this one time.

  “Nope. Strictly forbidden.” So much for that.

  I went with Option B. “What would be the possibility of you keeping an eye on it while I’m in there?”

  “What kind of eye?” She narrowed her own eyes as she asked.

  “Haley’s due date is coming up and I’m supposed to take care of Evan when she goes into labor. She’s getting a little freaky about me not having the phone with me and it’s making me jumpy. If she texts a 911, would you come get me?” The words tumbled out of my mouth.

  Vera laughed. “Which one of you is actually jumpy? You or her?”

  “Both,” I admitted.

  She snorted. “I remember what waiting for my second was like. You know exactly how bad it’s going to be, but you can’t wait for it to get started anyway.” She took the phone and tucked it in her pocket. “I’ll keep an eye on it.”

  Then we trooped down the hallway into the room where I’d seen Antoine chained to the table.

  Jason sat where Antoine had sat. Dan sat across from him and Marisela sat next to him. Huerta took up a position leaning against the door and I headed to the corner behind Dan.

  “So do you want to explain to us what you were arguing with Ms. Fitzgerald about the night she was murdered?” Dan asked in a conversational tone.

  Marisela made a noise of distress. Jason put his hand over hers. “It’s a long story.”

  “I’ve got time.” Dan tipped his chair back onto two legs and crossed his arms over his chest.

  Jason sighed. “Look. It’s not like I don’t know how I look. I get up in the morning and my hair falls a certain way. There’s not a lot I can do about it. I’ve never really been comfortable with it, though. I mean, I know what I look like on the outside. I’ve just never felt like that guy on the inside. It’s why I like being behind the camera rather than in front of it.”

  Interesting.

  “What does this have to do with Ms. Fitzgerald?” Dan asked, clearly unimpressed with Jason’s existential crisis over his own good looks.

  Jason glanced over at his wife, who was not looking at him. He rubbed at his temple with his thumb. “Melanie always looked at me . . . that way. She’d think I wasn’t looking and I’d catch her checking me out. I figured as long as she was only looking, it was okay. I mean, they all look.”

  I thought back. Had I? I remembered shivering when he put my mike on. That was hardly my fault, though. It was reflex, like kicking when the doctor hit your knee with the rubber hammer.

  “So you felt she was looking at you.” Dan jotted down a note.

  “Yeah. Like I said. I’m used to it. Then about six months ago, she started giving me extra assignments. Shooting extra B roll for segments. Asking me to archive old clips. Stuff that kept me around the office for extra hours.” He turned to his wife. “You remember right? I started working a lot of overtime.”

  Marisela nodded. “I remember.”

  “And what did you do?” Dan asked.

  “I did the work. First of all, time and a half does not suck, my man. Am I right?” Jason held his hand out in a fist bump. No one bumped him back. After a few awkward seconds, he let his hand drop. “So the extra money was nice. Marisela and I are thinking about starting a family soon. Babies cost money.” He looked over at Marisela, who looked down at her hands, but not before I saw a glisten on her cheeks.

  “And?” Dan prompted.

  “And what?” Jason asked.

  “You said first of all. That im
plies a second point. Maybe a third.” I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard Dan use that kind of condescending tone when talking with anyone.

  “Second, I wanted to be known as a team player,” Jason continued. “A go-to guy. If we have a baby, I’m going to want to be around more, cut down on the travel. One way to do that is to take on more responsibility. Maybe be the guy who schedules stuff and edits tape instead of the guy who’s out shooting all the time.”

  Dan pressed his lips together and nodded. “I see. So how’d that work out for you?”

  Jason slumped again. “Not so great, man. Not great at all. At first, Melanie just wanted to talk. I think she was lonely.” That fit with her boyfriend dumping her and her cat dying. “She’d kind of hang around and talk at me while I did stuff. No big deal.”

  “But then?” Dan bumped his chair down solidly on the floor. “It did become a big deal?”

  Jason didn’t glance over at Marisela now. He kept his eyes studiously on Dan. “One night she opened a bottle of wine. Champagne, actually. It was a leftover bottle from the segment we did on how to pair sparkling wines with everyday foods. Antoine served that one with smoked oysters.”

  I knew that Antoine trick. It was a good one. The sharp sparkle of the wine cut through the oiliness of the oysters. Add a tiny touch of horseradish and a California sunset and it didn’t get much better than that.

  “So Ms. Fitzgerald had champagne,” Dan prompted.

  “Champagne doesn’t store well. You really need to drink it once it’s opened. She didn’t want it to go to waste and she didn’t want to drink a whole bottle by herself. Or, at least, that’s what she said.” Jason’s voice was laced with disgust.

  “So you made the huge sacrifice of drinking champagne on company time with an attractive woman?” Dan asked.

  “See? That’s why I want her here.” He pointed at me again. “You see how he twisted that?”

  “You did kind of give it a turn there, Dan,” I said. Clearly Jason was one of those people who Dan disliked pretty much on sight. There weren’t many of them.

  Dan glared at me. “It’s called interrogation.”