by Fiona Grace
“I’ve heard that from some other people too,” Ali said. “The woman next door said he’d hassled her over her lease?”
The girl rolled her eyes. “Same. Such a freak. Weirdos like him will come up with any excuse to stare at girls.”
Ali didn’t mention the fact that Preston genuinely only came in because he wanted the store.
“So he came in here a lot?” she pressed.
“At first,” Bikini Woman replied, shrugging her golden-tanned shoulders. “Like the first week I opened, maybe. But after I told my landlord about it, he stopped. Next thing I know, he washes up dead on the beach.” She leaned closer to Ali and whispered conspiratorially. “I heard it was the new store owner who killed him. I’m not surprised. There are some people whose buttons you just don’t want to push.”
Ali hoped she could get out of here before Bikini Woman realized she was the subject of the rumors.
“Did you hear he was pushed off the pier?” Ali prompted.
“Yes. Like OMG. Can you even imagine?” The woman mimed pushing someone. “You’d have to be so big to push a fully grown man over the railings, right? Big or mad.” She chuckled. “Or both.”
It was a good point. Bikini Woman didn’t have any visible muscles on her thin frame. The only way she was pushing anyone off the pier was if she head-butted them like a bull with a run up. Which seemed highly implausible to Ali…
“I was literally on the pier on the night he was pushed,” Ali told her.
“Shut up! No way!” the girl cried, grabbing her arm tightly in her tanned hand. “That is totally scary. I’m so glad I was at home at the time. I was supposed to be on a date, but he canceled like ten minutes before, so I just watched TV and ate like, a kilo of frozen yogurt.” She patted her non-existent belly fat.
“Was it the dragon show?” Ali asked.
“Yes!” the girl squealed with delight. “Do you watch it, too?”
“Oh yeah,” Ali lied. “The last episode was a real tearjerker.”
Bikini Woman pressed a hand to her heart and pouted exaggeratedly. “I know, right. Poor Raquel.”
Raquel? Ali thought. The dragon was called Raquel? What kind of stupid show was this?
This was useless. Unless Bikini Woman and Jenna from Bookworms had colluded, neither of them had anything to do with Preston’s killing.
But something Bikini Woman had said had piqued her curiosity.
“You said your landlord spoke to Preston for you. To scare him off?”
The woman nodded. “He was pretty angry about it. He said the same thing happened when he opened up his pizzeria, that Preston wouldn’t leave him alone.”
“Pizzeria?” Ali repeated. “Your landlord isn’t one of the Italian twins, is it?”
“No, no, no,” Bikini Woman said with a laugh. “My landlord’s Fat Tony. He owns a bunch of restaurants and pizzerias in Willow Bay. Actually, I think my store is the only one of his that doesn’t sell food.”
She laughed and tossed her golden hair over her shoulder, as if completely oblivious to the very obvious reasons someone might break their own rules to lease a store to someone like her.
“Your landlord is called Fat Tony?” Ali repeated, raising an eyebrow.
The woman laughed. “I know. Sounds like he’s in the mafia. But he’s a gentle giant really. After I spoke to him about Preston, the guy never came in to hassle me again. Plus, he gets pizza and cannoli delivered to me from his restaurant for lunch. For free! Not exactly the actions of a mafioso…”
Ali found the conversation very illuminating. It seemed the two other new store owners in Willow Bay had indeed received the “Preston Lockley treatment.” But that didn’t get her any closer to solving his murder.
Ali decided that Fat Tony was the next person she should speak to. But despite Bikini Woman’s assurance he was a gentle giant, Ali didn’t feel particularly enthused about seeking him out. He sounded like trouble to Ali.
Suddenly, Ali’s grumbling stomach reminded her it was lunch time. She had to get back to the store to open it up in case of any lunch customers. Her search for Fat Tony would have to wait.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Ali hurried to the bakery. When she made it back, she discovered Marco and Emilio outside their respective pizzerias, having a very animated argument across her storefront.
“Of course it’s not a coincidence!” Marco was screeching. “There is no way you thought of fennel sausage topping ‘coincidentally’ at the same time I thought of fennel sausage topping! You stole my idea!”
“Because the concept of sausage on pizza is so unique I couldn’t possibly have thought of it independently to you?” Emilio yelled in response.
Ali approached cautiously, looking back and forth from one handsome, angry Italian twin to the other.
“Guys… what’s going in?” she asked.
Emilio put his hands on his hips. “Marco is accusing me of copying his idea for a topping!”
“It was the NEXT DAY!” Marco screamed, adopting the exact same posture as his brother. “You saw my sign advertising it, and the next thing I know you’re, selling it too!” He looked at Ali and reiterated, “The NEXT DAY!”
Ali held her hands up in truce. If it hadn’t been for the murder investigation hanging over her head, she might’ve found this amusing. But right now, it was the last thing she needed.
“I don’t want to get in the middle of warring brothers,” she said, though the romance books on her shelves suggested otherwise. “And do you think you guys might be able to keep it down? I know people aren’t exactly clamoring to buy my butterscotch beignets, but you two shouting across my door isn’t going to help matters.”
To Ali’s surprise, the brothers immediately ceased. She was so used to being the youngest of three siblings that getting her own way was a novelty.
“Your store is neutral territory,” Marco said.
“No-Man’s-Land,” Emilio added, quickly.
“The demilitarized zone,” Marco bounced back, frowning at him.
“Switzerland,” Emilio hissed, his matching dark brows furrowing.
Ali rolled her eyes. So much for getting her own way.
“I just asked you not to argue in front of my store,” she said, “and now you’re arguing over who can come up with a better name for the truce?”
“Sorry,” Emilio said sheepishly.
“Sorry,” Marco mumbled.
Ali wasn’t sure why they’d so quickly deferred to her request, but she was grateful all the same. She really could do without two warring people either side of her, to add to all the other crap she was dealing with.
“Hey, did you guys know Preston? It seems like he pestered just about every store owner on the boardwalk. What about you?”
“No,” they said in unison, hurrying to be the one who spoke first.
“I opened my pizzeria before he started coming around,” Emilio said.
“As did I,” Marco added. “I opened my store before even Emilio.”
“That’s not true,” Emilio contested. “I opened my pizzeria in May, and yours was in June.”
“But I got the property first,” Marco replied. “I just took my time decorating, unlike you.”
“Speaking of your pizzerias,” Ali said loudly, drowning out their petty bickering and steering the conversation back to the issue at hand. “Do either of you lease your stores from Fat Tony?”
“No,” they said in matching horror.
“We would never do business with a man like him,” Emilio said.
“He’s bad news,” Marco added.
This, it seemed, was something they could agree on.
“Anyway, ours are family businesses,” Emilio explained. “Inherited.”
“Well, mine is,” Marco interjected. “They had to buy Emilio his store because he refused to share.”
“I didn’t refuse to share!” Emilio cried. “You were the one who said the store should be yours!”
“Because I’
m older!”
“By two minutes!”
They descended into another argument. Ali was getting nowhere with the two of them. She headed inside her bakery. She needed a strong coffee after the morning she’d had.
She hadn’t made it to the counter before the sound of the bell over the door interrupted her. She swirled around, excited for the briefest second that she may have a customer. But it was just Teddy.
Just Teddy? What was she thinking? It was Teddy! Her favorite person!
She ran to him.
“Teddy-bear,” she cried, clinging to him like he was a life raft and she was adrift in the ocean. “I am so glad to see you!”
“And I’m so glad you’re not dead,” Teddy replied.
Ali let go and peered up into his eyes. “You heard about the murder?”
Teddy looked at her sternly. “Yes. I heard about the murder. Why the heck didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s all been a bit of a blur, to be honest,” Ali said, meekly. “I can’t remember who I have and haven’t spoken to about it all.”
Teddy did not look convinced.
“I promise,” Ali insisted. “Seeing a dead body screws with your head a bit.”
Her brother’s eyes bulged. “You SAW the BODY? Okay. Get me a coffee and a croissant. We need to talk.”
Ali obliged, and they sat in the window seat with steaming mugs of coffee and baked goods.
“I came here straight from an audition,” Teddy told her. “I saw the story on the news that a body had washed up on the beach at Willow Bay and almost had a heart attack. I thought it might’ve been you. That your first day without customers had gone so badly you’d thrown yourself off the pier.”
“Teddy!” Ali exclaimed, smacking his arm. “That’s not funny. Don’t joke about that sort of thing.”
“I’m not joking,” Teddy said firmly. “You know what Hannah’s like when she spirals. She gets all secretive and stops letting people in. I don’t want you to do that when things get hard, okay? You know I’ve always got your back. You just have to keep me in the loop.”
He sounded like her father. Or what Ali imagined her father would sound like if he was still in her life to give her stern admonishments-cum-pep-talks.
“Fine,” Ali said. “You want the loop. Here’s the loop. Preston Lockley, a forty-year-old man who lived with his mother and was obsessed with balloons, washed up dead on the beach with a big blow to his head. The cops suspect foul play. He was obsessed with opening his own balloon store on the boardwalk, so harassed everyone who opened a new store. The police suspect one of the newbies was the perp, and since I’m the only one who doesn’t have an alibi and stupidly placed herself at the scene of the crime, I’m the one they’re focusing on.”
Teddy looked horrified. “Oh, Ali-cat. What a mess.”
“I guess you could call it that,” Ali said glumly.
Teddy tapped his chin as he pondered. “We need to think out of the box. Who would want to kill him? Did he have a maid? A butler? You know, some kind of disgruntled staff member who wanted his money?”
Ali rolled her eyes. “Teddy. You’re just listing telenovela tropes. This is real life. No one has butlers anymore.”
“They’re tropes for a reason, Ali-cat. Because the most obvious suspect is usually the correct one. So. Was he rich?”
Ali thought of the shabby decor in the Lockley’s household. “Nope. I mean, the houses up on the hill are obviously a little fancier than the little cottages down here, but I’d hazard a guess that maids aren’t in their budget. Nurses, yes. Maids, no.”
“Nurses?” Teddy queried.
“His mom has Alzheimer’s. She has a visiting nurse.”
Teddy raised his eyebrows with skepticism.
Ali considered the Asian nurse for a moment, recalling the diminutive woman sitting in her oversized green scrubs, her legs dangling over the couch edge as she munched on apple pie.
She shook her head. “No. It wasn’t the nurse. She was way too small to push Preston off the pier.”
Teddy munched thoughtfully on his croissant. “I assume he didn’t have a wife, if he lived at home. But what about an ex? Lovers and former lovers are always the most likely suspect.”
“His main passion in life was balloons,” Ali said. “He spent his spare time making a Claymation documentary about the Hindenburg disaster. What do you think?”
Teddy shrugged a shoulder. “There’s someone for everyone, Ali-cat.”
She gave him a look.
“Okay,” Teddy conceded. “So no ex-lover.”
Ali slumped back in her seat, feeling defeated. “Let’s just face it. The most obvious suspect is me.”
“No,” Teddy said firmly. “There has to be someone we’re missing.”
But Ali couldn’t be cheered from her feeling of desolation.
“He was harassing me the night he died, and there are a whole load of witnesses,” Ali said. “That gives me a really clear motive. I’m a new person who admitted to being on the pier the night he was killed. That gives me the opportunity.”
“What about the means?” Teddy said, completing the triad with a hopeful tone.
Ali shook her head glumly. “The pier itself provided the means, doesn’t it?”
Teddy’s grin faded. “I guess that does look kind of suspicious.”
“You’re right,” came a formidable voice from behind. “It does sound suspicious.”
Ali gasped and turned. Standing in the open doorway was Detective Elton.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Ali immediately felt panicked as Detective Elton paced inside the store. She leapt up from the window seat like she’d been caught doing something illegal, and hurried for the counter.
“Are you here for your free coffee?” she blathered as she took her place behind it.
But it was quite obvious from the detective’s demeanor that she was not.
“No,” Detective Elton said, darkly. “I’m here to ask you why you chose to omit from your statement the fact you argued with the victim the day before he was found dead on the beach.” She pushed her sunglasses onto the top of her head and peered at Ali with suspicious eyes. “In our first conversation, you said you didn’t know him.”
“Because I didn’t,” Ali said weakly. “I had only met him that one time. If you’d asked me if I’d met him before, I would’ve said yes. But at the time he washed up on the beach, I didn’t even know his name.”
“Ah. It’s an issue with semantics,” Detective Elton said through her tightened jaw. “Let me say this as clearly and precisely as I can. CCTV cameras show you at the entrance of the pier going in, and not coming out again for a fairly substantial amount of time. A period of time that just so happens fits with our pathologist’s time of death.”
Ali swallowed the lump in her throat. How could she explain what she’d been doing that night in a way that would satisfy the detective? Staring at the ocean and thinking of her missing father hadn’t gone down particularly well last time…
“I was taking a long stroll,” Ali said. “Unwinding after a long day at work. It was my opening day, you see, and it hadn’t gone as well as I’d hoped it would.” Her chest sank with disappointment all over again at the disaster her first day had truly been.
“That’s interesting,” Detective Elton said, leadingly. “Have you always taken long strolls alone to unwind from your day at work?”
Ali frowned. She couldn’t tell where this was going but she had a suspicion it wasn’t anywhere good.
She shrugged. “No, not really. I had a boyfriend to vent to back then.”
Detective Elton nodded once. “I see. That’s a shame. Perhaps if you’d gone for one of your meditative evening strolls instead you wouldn’t have been fired for assaulting a customer.”
Ali’s eyes widened with alarm. How the heck did the cops know about her crème brûlée smooshing antics? They must’ve contacted her old boss, Russell, for a character statement. Which meant she was
pretty high up their list of suspects.
Ali pictured Russell reveling in that phone call, relaying what a terrible employee she’d been to Detective Elton, reinterpreting the crème brûlée smooshing incident as an assault. Her heartbeat accelerated, fast enough for her to hear the whooshing in her ears.
Teddy leapt up from the window seat and hurried to her aid.
“That was her one discretion,” he told Detective Elton. “Ali’s a saint.”
The female detective peered at him. “Who are you?”
“I’m her brother,” Teddy said confidently. He offered his hand for her to shake. “Teddy.”
Detective Elton looked at his proffered hand, then back up at Teddy. “Teddy Sweet? What was wrong with your parents?”
Teddy’s mouth opened with offense. He let his hand fall back to his side.
Detective Elton looked back at Ali. She smiled without emotion. “It won’t be long before we learn just how saintlike Ms. Sweet really is. You may put up such an innocent front but I for one don’t trust you. You may have Callihan and the rest of the men fooled, but you can’t fool me.”
She turned and headed for the door, but paused and turned back at the threshold.
“One last thing,” she said.
Ali gulped. “Yes?”
“How much are those cannoli? The pistachio-flavored ones?”
Ali blinked in surprise. “Two dollars each. Or two for three dollars.”
Detective Elton let a beat pass, nodded, and marched out the door.
The moment it shut, Ali fell forward onto the countertop, deflating like a balloon, and buried her face in her arms.
Teddy came around the back of the counter and rubbed her back supportively. “That detective was a horrible human. Although, was it just me or did it sound like she secretly wants to buy your cannoli?”
Ali smacked him. “Teddy. Stop joking around. Didn’t you hear what she said? She called Russell. About me. And he happily divulged to them that I’m violent. Add that to the CCTV footage of me lingering for too long on the pier, and I’m utterly screwed.”
