by Patti Larsen
For a brief moment I almost let it go. Crew was there at the Lodge and would be viewing the clip himself. Surely he’d recognize the person in the video and ask the appropriate questions.
Wouldn’t he?
Only one way to find out. But first, I needed to confirm something I’d been told, something I should trust but wanted to make sure wasn’t misleading or untrue. That led me on an internet hunt for a certain name and ties to a particular family while I tried to convince myself my suspicions were totally baseless.
They weren’t. The information I had was accurate and the damning image of the figure at the maintenance stairs door gave me reason to doubt myself to the core one more time.
At least I had what I needed to hand Crew the case and maybe win me another kiss… as long as I wasn’t misreading him as much as everyone else I thought I could trust. Sigh. I headed for the front door, swinging my coat around me, locking the house behind me. Terrible business practice? You betcha. But I was enough my father’s daughter I couldn’t just sit on the sidelines. Crew was right, I was born for this, like it or not.
I’d deliver my evidence in person. And if he already knew what I knew? Awesome. At least I’d be there to see justice done.
It was a tense, short drive to the mountain, a quick text to Daisy gaining me a reply I ignored as I drove up the winding road again. When I pulled into the parking lot, I hesitated over messaging Crew to warn him and decided against it. Not because I purposely wanted to keep him out of it. But because the sight of a tall, broad shouldered former sheriff exiting his truck with a pink-haired woman at his side, the pair heading for the front doors drew my attention more so even than catching a murder.
I reached Dad as he passed through the glass doors, grabbing his arm and dragging him to the side of the lobby in the shade of a fake plant, glaring up at him while Clara, his companion, seemed to sense this was terrible timing to interrupt and headed off on her own before I could stop her.
“Dad,” I snapped, watching the showrunner disappear into the crowd, heading for the elevators, “where have you been?”
He looked uncomfortable, like he would rather be anywhere other than here with me, facing me like this. I’d accused him of cheating on Mom before, with Alicia, of all people. Turned out she was his CI against Pete Wilkins. And here I was thinking terribly of him again, about this Siobhan Doyle woman and now with a quiver of doubt he’d been with Clara. I obviously still harbored a lot of trust issues over Ryan’s infidelity for my mind to take me to such dark places, knowing how much Dad loved Mom. Still.
He had a lot to answer for, apparently.
“Fee,” he said, shuffling his feet like an errant school boy. “What are you doing here?”
“Weak, Dad,” I snapped. “No deflecting. Where’s Mom?”
He looked even more contrite. “Home,” he said.
“Alone,” I said. “Like she’s been since the morning of the damned show. You’ve been missing a lot, Dad. She needs you.” Never mind my guilt Mom probably needed me, too, and I was just as bad running around investigating a murder I didn’t need to poke my nose into because Crew would recognize the figure in the video—and the purpose of the canister carried on set—and I was wasting my time coming here.
Dad didn’t seem to realize I was judging myself as much as him. He cleared his throat in an awkward kind of way that startled me. My father was the picture of cool cucumbers with a huge dose of stoic silence thrown in to season the mix. So what could possibly make him look like he’d been caught with both hands in a cookie jar that didn’t belong to him?
“Dad?” Now he was making me nervous. Really nervous. Like, was I going to have to kill him after all nervous.
“Fee.” He ran one hand through his short hair before exhaling heavily, shoulders slumping. “I wanted to tell you. I was going to, I swear. I just…”
Please don’t be cheating. Please don’t be cheating. Murder, mayhem, fine, I could live with that. But infidelity?
“Fee, I’ve been working.” Um, holy, what? “For Clara. Since the show arrived.” Working? Doing what? I must have blurted again because he answered that question next. “Investigating Ron Williams,” he said. Dad looked about as guilty as I’d ever seen him, face turning red as he rushed on. “Fee, I got my private investigator license a month ago and I’ve been taking cases ever since.”
***
Chapter Twenty Nine
He did not just drop a gigantic bombshell in my lap like that without any kind of warning whatsoever. “You what?” How had I not known he was thinking about this let alone gone ahead and took the plunge?
Dad seemed to regain some of his composure, though the almost giddy look of relief that crossed his face told me my reaction wasn’t what he was expecting. “I’ve just been picking at it,” he said. “You actually gave me the idea, and Crew pushed me to do it finally.”
I knew the exact moment he was talking about, the push he mentioned. Had found it so strange at the time it happened, certainly didn’t guess this was the reason for Dad’s explosive anger. When Crew confronted Dad in his office and asked him if he was ready to take a badge, be a deputy again. I’d thought it was insult that drove my father from the sheriff’s station, he was so pissed. But did Crew know what my father was contemplating and did he purposely shove Dad into this idiotic idea he now grinned down at me about like he hadn’t lost his damned fool mind?
If Crew knew—choke, Daisy. She knew, didn’t she? They were both is so much trouble. But it explained why Dad suddenly had my back, encouraged me to investigate Sadie’s death. He’d been contemplating his own exodus into extra-curricular busy body activities, clearly feeling guilty enough about it he’d stopped arguing the case for me to mind my own business. Dad was so far from it himself he had to have been hoping I’d agree to being an accomplice.
He must have finally registered I might not have initially blown my top over his reveal but was working my way up to handing him his butt on a plate because his grin faded, the happy little boy expression disappearing. While I struggled with needing to protect my mother who clearly had no idea because she’d have said something by now. And wanting my father to be happy, this happy, but did he have to do it behind my back?
“It’s just been the odd case here and there,” he said, like it was no big deal he’d started a company and was investigating crimes again but doing it in secret because he knew it was a terrible idea. Right, Fee, as terrible as me poking my nose around in police matters without even a PI license to back me up? Uh-huh, preach to the choir, sister. Besides, who said it was a bad idea?
“Dad.” I blew out the breath I’d been holding and forced myself not to freak out. Wasn’t my life, wasn’t my choice. “Does Mom know?” Ah, there was the kicker, the moment of truth that really burned my socks. From his flinch of guilt she had no freaking clue either. “Okay, so clearly you’ve lost your mind in your dotage and I’m going to have to have you committed.” He scowled at me, but without any kind of weight behind it. “Seriously. You did this and didn’t tell Mom. If I don’t put you in a mental hospital she’ll realize you did this fully cognizant and kill you.” I shook my head. “I won’t be responsible for making myself half an orphan.” If there was even such a thing. “Dad, Mom needs you right now. Way more than Clara Clark.”
He looked agonized, the regret of it flickering over his face. “I know, Fee,” he said. “But I agreed to this case before Ron died. I had no idea things were going to happen the way they did. I was already neck deep and Clara kept calling.”
I didn’t have to say he could have quit the job. He didn’t raise me to quit, either, but honestly. Then again, if it was me? Hell, I was standing here in this place right here and now because I couldn’t mind my own business either.
Who was I to judge? I was his daughter, that’s who.
“It was just meant to be backgrounds on everyone, and some digging into Ron’s cookbook. That’s it.” Dad dug his hands into the pockets of his ski ja
cket, misery descending. “I swear, it should have been quick and easy. Your mother would never have to know.”
“You have to tell her, Dad.” He did. He couldn’t keep this from her.
“Fee, you can’t say a word to Lucy.” Was that panic on his face? Was my big, strapping, gun-toting former sheriff father afraid of my little mom? “Please, especially now. It’ll break her heart.”
Oh, so now he worried about that after the fact, huh? Typical. And I was just as bad, putting this murder ahead of my mother’s state of mind.
Clara had the bad taste to reappear, joining us with a reluctant expression but more frustrated than anything. I glared to try to repel her but apparently she was accustomed to being frowned at.
“John, we need to go.” She nodded to me, more of a passing gesture at politeness.
“He’s not going anywhere,” I said. “You knew Ron Williams’s cookbook was plagiarized and you didn’t do a thing about it.”
The shock on her face, on Dad’s, was about as satisfying as it was telling.
“It what?” Clara looked like she was going to throw up.
“Gloria Kingsley,” I said. And saw the understanding dawn across her expression in a rush of emotions from shock to horror to resignation.
“That bastard,” she whispered. “He would have ruined me.”
“How so?” I glanced at Dad who didn’t comment, his normal quiet focus returned.
“My name was on that book as an endorsement,” she said. “If he went down, I’d be going with him. He did this on purpose.”
“Because you were going to kick him off the show,” Dad said.
Well now, that was a shift in perspective according to what she’d told me.
Clara’s face scrunched. “That was supposed to be confidential, John.”
“You said he told you he was getting his own show.” What else had she lied about?
Clara huffed a sigh, tossed her hands. “I guess it doesn’t matter anymore. Fine, I lied to you, John. It was the other way around. Ron was trying to leave me and without him my show was over.” She was on the verge of tears again.
“You realize I can’t help you if you’re going to keep things from me,” Dad said, grim tone disappointed. Hey, he had it perfected, too, just like Crew. Must have been a cop thing.
“Who cares?” Her face puckered with the battle for control over her emotions. “He’s dead, the book is a sham and I’m never going to get another show.” Her voice climbed in volume and whininess until she shuddered and covered her face in her hands, crying again at last.
“Why were you with him the night he died?” I pushed her heartlessly and it worked.
“I told you,” she said. “I was fighting with him about Janet. I didn’t want her there. No one did. The cheating had to stop.”
“But you bullied Molly to cheat,” I said.
“It was all going to hell anyway.” Clara pulled herself together with a visible shake and swallowed. “When I told him Molly said know he dropped his exit on me, and that he was taking the book with him. Something about a producer wanting to turn it and him into his own series.” So it wasn’t just the publisher’s advance luring him into moving ahead with the book? That offer had to have been why he’d risked publishing plagiarized material. He’d proven to me he wasn’t forward thinking enough to consider there might be consequences.
“What producer?” Did we have another suspect in play? If said producer found out about the copyright issues…
“Julian Parker,” she said while I started in surprise. Wait, he was Willow Pink’s manager. Since when did the arrogant ass dump his favorite starlet to be a producer? While we weren’t besties or anything, I’d stayed in touch with the superstar. She hadn’t mentioned anything about Julian leaving her. Was she behind this move? Maybe shifting out of acting on screen and to behind the scenes? At least I could check Julian off the suspect list. If he had shown his face in Reading again, I’d have recognized him immediately. “This is terrible,” Clara interrupted my train of thought. “I need to call my agent.”
“If your name is on the book,” I said, “does that mean you get a cut of the profits?”
Clara flinched, but she didn’t cry again, angry this time. “Don’t try to turn this on me,” she said. “I get a cut, but it’s a small percentage. The real beneficiary will be Bonnie.”
“Did she know about the recipe theft?” I’d have to ask her, but it was worth prodding Clara.
“I have no idea,” she snarled. Paused. “Molly’s on the show. Gloria’s granddaughter.” Her eyes widened as she made the connection.
Ding ding. Though I wasn’t happy she’d made it, honestly. The fewer people who knew the better. “How much did she know about the cookbook?”
Clara shook her head, dazed now. How did she not have a migraine from crashing through emotion after emotion like that?
“Look,” she said, “the show is done, and the book will either implode and burn or skyrocket, I don’t care which. I’m over it.” She glared at Dad. “You call yourself a detective. Your daughter knew more than you did. You’re fired.” She stomped away, muttering to herself, on her phone again as she left us there.
I turned to Dad, heart in my throat, but he didn’t seem angry, more amused than anything.
“My kid,” he said. “Way to one-up the old man, Fee. What else you got?”
No way was he getting out of the trouble he was in complimenting me. “Nice try,” I said. “You have an appointment with your wife, Fleming. Now.” He hesitated while I did my best not to drag him physically from the lobby. “Or I tell her for you.”
The unhappy look on his face as he sighed and nodded didn’t make me feel better. Not even a little bit.
***
Chapter Thirty
I was never going to learn to mind my own business. Not even when it meant preventing hurting the people I loved the most in the world. I should have listened to Dad when he tried to reason with me all the way to his truck while I marched him to the door.
“This is terrible timing,” he said. “It’s not going to go well, Fee. Let me find the right time to tell her, please.”
I should have stayed out of it, let him sort out how he was going to do the big reveal without sending Mom into a spiral. While my blood boiled with the need to drive him to his house myself to ensure he got there in one piece so Mom could take him apart personally for lying to both of us.
Yeah, should have just backed off and focused on murder.
Didn’t.
Which meant, fifteen minutes after pulling out of the parking lot behind Dad’s truck and following him all the way home in a rather self-righteous mood, I stood in their living room with my heart on the floor and my dad next to me with his head hanging. While my mother—my normally kind and thoughtful mother—shrieked at him at a volume and intensity that made it almost impossible to make out the individual words she was saying. Probably for the best because the few I did catch weren’t nice at all and could be misconstrued as serious threats to his safety and cast doubt on his parentage.
Killing off any doubt I’d made a horrible, drastic and crippling mistake.
Dad took her audible assault for about a minute before he seemed to swell into this towering volcano of pending explosion and then he was shouting, too, his deep voice echoing through the house while Mom’s counterpoint banshee wailing cut through my eardrums like a hot knife through butter.
I backed slowly away from the pair of them while they shouted profanities, accusations and the kinds of private things I really, really didn’t need to know about their personal life, wishing I could take it all back. Just rewind time and not run into Dad at the Lodge, not let Mom enter the stupid damned TV show, protect her from Vivian’s vitriol, just never come home to Reading after all.
Does it make me a coward I fled without trying to stop the fight? In all fairness, there wasn’t anything I could do that wouldn’t put me at risk of bodily harm. Okay, I’m going a bit far.
I was about 99% positive Mom wouldn’t hurt Dad and 100% the opposite, so it wasn’t like they were going to really murder each other or anything. No, it wasn’t their physical wellbeing at risk. I stood on the front porch a long moment, aching inside, kicking myself mentally over and over as the house echoed from the sound of their continuing fight.
I’d never, ever in all my years ever witnessed them argue. Yes, they discussed things and at times Mom could get cutting with words, Dad a bit harsh. But a fight? A real, honest-to-goodness shouting match of epic proportions, the likes of which carried on inside right now?
Never. And if someone told me they’d had this fight and I wasn’t here to witness it? I’d have laughed in their face and told them to present video evidence or it didn’t happen.
I was so lost for what to do, how to help, I finally left, stumbling to my car, getting behind the wheel while tears trickled down my cold cheeks. I barely felt the chill in the air, registered I was driving before I found myself back on the highway to the Lodge, needing a distraction, anything to help me forget I may have just caused a giant rift between my parents.
No, wait. Not me. I would not claim this guilt as purely my own. I didn’t sneak around behind Mom’s back, lie to her, hide things from her. That was all Dad. Still, there had to have been a better way to drop this on her than in the middle of her own identity crisis.
Way to go, Fee. Nice job.
My phone rang, the cheery sound making me feel ill. I answered hands free, tapping the screen and letting it talk through my car speakers, barely registering who it was on the other end in my misery.
“Fee, it’s Molly.” She sounded nervous and when I finally paid attention, I remembered why I was going to the Lodge in the first place. The shadowy figure with their hands full of what I was pretty sure had to be gelatin-laced something for Janet’s kitchen, sneaking on set just before Ron Williams was killed. “I need to see you. Can you meet me at the stage? I have something to show you.”
