Sifting Through Clues

by Daryl Wood Gerber

  Pepper whirled around and aimed a finger at him. “You and Darian.” I remembered that searing look. The very first time I’d met her, Pepper had been royally ticked off at me. “When did it start? Tell me the truth.”

  Hank sputtered. “What on earth—”

  “Don’t pussyfoot with me, mister,” Pepper commanded. “I saw the two of you kissing in your car. When did you hook up? Recently? Or has it been going on for a while? I have the right to know.”

  Hank closed the front door, locked it, and refocused on Pepper, his gaze dreary. “A few weeks ago. After a book club at the library.”

  “Why?” Pepper cried. “Wasn’t I good enough?”

  “It wasn’t you, Pepper. Honestly. Darian”—he threw his hands wide—“needed a shoulder to cry on. Her husband has been secretly abusing her.”

  “Professor Drake? But he’s so nice.”

  “Anger boils beneath the surface. He’s dark and brooding. Darian was worried he’d hurt their teenaged son. I listened. I consoled. One thing led to another.”

  Pepper sucked back a sob. “You should have told me.”

  “I’m sorry.” He reached for her.

  She recoiled, wrapped her arms around her body, and edged away.

  “Who is honey, Hank?” I asked softly.

  He faced me, his forehead furrowed. “I’m not following.”

  I told him about the phone call Katie had overheard.

  Pepper rejoined us. “Does honey live in O-hi-o?” She took her time pronouncing the state’s three syllables. “I saw multiple airline tickets on your desk at the house.”

  Hank moaned.

  “You go there a lot. You don’t go for business,” Pepper went on. “So who do you see? Your ex? Do you go there for booty calls?”

  Turning as white as a sheet, he backed up and slumped into the chair that once held his jacket.

  I whispered, “She’s not an ex, is she, Hank? You’re still married.” Only now did I see the pale line on his left hand. He apparently removed his ring whenever he came back to Crystal Cove.

  “You’re still m-married?” Pepper stammered. “How long?”

  “Thirty years.”

  Pepper swooned. I threw my arm around her and escorted her to a second chair. When she found her breath, she said, “You and I were talking about a December wedding. Did you plan on divorcing her before then, or was it all a lie?”

  Hank didn’t speak.

  “Where does she think you go whenever you leave town?” I asked.

  “To see my suppliers.”

  He was the personification of the traveling salesman joke.

  Pepper pressed a hand to her chest. “Does she know about me . . . and I assume there are others besides Darian?”

  He shook his head. “She’s very trusting.”

  “So was I,” Pepper mewled.

  I said, “Hank, did Ivy Beale figure out your secret? Is that the reason the two of you didn’t click on your date?”

  Pepper gazed between us, clearly surprised that Hank and Ivy had dated and irritated that I hadn’t looped her in.

  “Yes, she discovered the truth.” Hank rested his elbows on his knees and lowered his head. “She liked Pepper. She made me swear to leave town. She said if I did, she’d let it slide. I promised I would. I told her I needed ten days to finalize things here.”

  “But then she wound up dead,” Pepper hissed. “How convenient.”

  Hank lumbered to his feet. “I didn’t kill her.”

  “Your alibi is pretty dicey,” I argued.

  “No, it’s not. I mean, yes, I lied about walking in the woods because I was”—he licked his lower lip—“with Darian. I couldn’t say that at the time. I didn’t want to ruin her reputation or give her husband cause to step up the abuse. Call her if you don’t believe me, but please, for her sake, keep it confidential.”

  Pepper paced in front of the shelves of shirts. “I’m going to take the same stance as Ivy, Hank Hemmings. You need to leave town. Immediately. You need to put your business up for sale. And you need to cut Darian loose. If she’s being abused, we have police officers that can address the situation without getting romantically involved.”

  Looking like he’d aged years in the past ten minutes, Hank agreed.

  “And be true to your wife,” she said as a parting snipe.

  On the way back to Fisherman’s Village, tears flowed down Pepper’s cheeks. Repeatedly, she chastised herself for being a bad judge of men. Her tirade made me think of Ivy. Was it possible she hadn’t been a good judge of men, either? Given that she’d eaten a cream puff dosed with a paralytic, I had to believe she’d known and trusted the person who had snuffed the life from her.

  Chapter 28

  Back at the shop, I was surprised to find only my aunt and Bailey tending to customers. No Tina. Apparently, she had gone home sick. I called to check on her. She promised she was okay. She claimed she had the sniffles. Despite protests, I told her I was ordering chicken soup from the Nook Café and having it delivered, and added that if she didn’t answer her front door, I was coming over personally to spoon-feed her. She sighed and promised she’d rise to the challenge. Deciding she was young and capable of handling heartache for a night, I made the to-go order and then set thoughts of her aside.

  Pepper, however, was a different matter. I stewed over her plight. Hadn’t the poor woman faced enough sorrow in her lifetime? I called the precinct and asked for Cinnamon, but she wasn’t in. Instead of leaving a voice mail message, I texted her. I wrote that I needed to talk to her. It was urgent. She didn’t respond.

  An hour passed. Two hours. No word from Cinnamon.

  I slipped into the café and picked up egg salad sandwiches for my aunt, Bailey, and me. We took shifts eating. When I came back from lunch—I could only eat half; my appetite was quashed—I checked my cell phone. Still no response from Cinnamon.

  For the next few hours, I chatted with customers, rang up sales, and straightened shelves.

  After placing our last three copies of The Art of Cooking with Lavender alongside a new title, Edible Flowers: From Garden to Palate, and adding an array of silk lavender in a decoupage pot as decoration, I settled at the computer to review email orders. When I was done, I intended to track down Cinnamon one way or another.

  As I always did, I hit Return to bring the screen to life. Out of nowhere, the computer bleated. Then the screen went wonky. Blocks of pink, blue, and black made the Word file that emerged look like a redacted spy document. What the heck?

  “Bailey!” I shouted.

  She hustled to the sales counter. “What’s wrong?”

  “You tell me.” Like a gunslinger, I shot two fingers at the computer. The bleating was making my insides jittery. “Did I destroy the computer? What’s going on?”

  On the screen an animated skeleton came into view and uttered a promise to annihilate our computer.

  At the same time, my aunt joined us. “Oh, my.”

  If it had been Halloween, I might have thought it was a prank. But it was spring. We were being hacked.

  Bailey clicked a key and said, “Vera, hand me that notepad.”

  My aunt complied.

  Bailey jotted a note but kept her focus trained on the computer and keyboard. The skeleton vanished, but the redacted-looking document did not. She tried to close it; it wouldn’t obey. She made another memo on the pad then dragged the mouse arrow to the spot where she could quit the application. No words were visible.

  “Bailey . . .” I began.

  “Shh. I can do this,” she assured me. “Breathe.”

  She wasn’t talking to herself; she was talking to me. I did my best.

  My aunt began rubbing her amulet. “We have backups, right?”

  “Did it yesterday, not to worry,” Bailey said, though perspiration beaded on her upper lip. She clicked on the computer’s icon and dragged the mouse arrow down the column. She tapped on a blank space. “Gotcha,” she said. As the computer started to shut
down, she scribbled another series of notes. “I’ll run the malware program and remove any vestiges of the virus and reboot. And then reboot and reboot and reboot.”

  Relieved that Bailey had it under control, my aunt said, “I need tea. Anyone want a cup?”

  Neither Bailey nor I did.

  “If you change your minds . . .” Aunt Vera strode to the stockroom and disappeared.

  “Jenna”—Bailey beckoned me closer—“do you remember what you did before this happened? Which keys you tapped?”

  “All I did was bring the screen to life.”

  “You weren’t working on the Word document?”

  “No. Maybe Tina was viewing it before she left for the day.”

  “Okay, relax. Go outside. Give me a little space. You’re wound up after the ordeal with Pepper.”

  I was more wound up from not hearing from Pepper’s daughter. What about urgent didn’t Cinnamon understand?

  As I edged from behind the sales counter, I glanced at Bailey’s notes. Though they were Greek to me, they reminded me of the notes Tina had jotted about the cost of school. That image made me recall the notepads at Ivy’s house. According to Cinnamon, Ivy’s email had been hacked. Maybe she had suffered a computer snafu, too, and, like Bailey, had jotted notes to address the problem, except all of hers had started with a pair of initials and were followed by round numbers. Despite the fact that there were no dollar signs and no commas, could those have been cash amounts? Maybe Ivy had been worried about what the snafu might cost her.

  “Go,” Bailey repeated.

  “I’m going.” I stepped outside and drank in the fresh air, then stretched my arms overhead and bent to touch my toes. Tigger orbited my ankles and nuzzled my nose.

  As I picked him up, a car door slammed. I whirled around. A woman got out of a car. Not Pepper. The Closed sign on her shop was still in place. I wondered whether I should check on her but decided against it. If she needed to wallow, I’d let her, like I would let Tina. Twenty-four-hour pity parties could be therapeutic. On the bright side, maybe Pepper was consulting with Cinnamon, which would explain why I hadn’t received a response from our illustrious chief of police.

  My stomach growled. A half hour ago, Katie had brought in beautifully iced cookies shaped like flowers. I’d nibbled on one and had set it aside. Luckily, Rhett had invited me to an early dinner at Mum’s the Word diner. I could use a hearty meal.

  With Tigger in tow, I checked on Bailey, who was diligently trying to find the source of the problem. She told me she had it under control and ordered me to go home. She and my aunt would close up. I didn’t argue. I sped to the cottage, dropped off Tigger, grabbed a sweater for the evening, and drove to the Pier.

  Rhett was walking out of Bait and Switch as I arrived.

  “Perfect timing,” he said.

  I wrapped my hand around the crook of his elbow, and we sauntered along the boardwalk, drinking in the restful sound of the surf and the excited chatter of people who’d come to have fun. Neither of us talked about our future. We would. At dinner.

  As we neared the diner, I noticed a long line of people waiting to enter Theater on the Pier. The marquee boasted a new comedy written by a local playwright with a perfect title for the Spring Fling: Flowers Make Me Sneeze.

  I nudged Rhett and said, “We should get tickets to see that.”

  “Good idea.”

  The smack-smack of feet pounding the boardwalk startled me. I pivoted to see who was running and in the nick of time dodged Yung Yi.

  “Yung, you klutz,” his wife, Suji, cried. She drew up short, gasping. “Jenna, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Sorry, but we’re late for the play.” Suji held up two tickets. She was quite a beauty. Deep brown eyes. Perfectly formed lips. Unlike her husband, she didn’t have a hint of an accent. She had been born and raised in San Francisco and preferred cookbooks featuring Italian food.

  “You’re right on time.” I pointed. “The theater hasn’t opened yet.”

  “True, but it’s first-come, first-seated. We always have to sit at the rear because my sweet husband can’t get his act together.” She mock-frowned at him.

  “I could not get our bassett hound to do his business in a timely matter. Sue me.” Yung threw up his arms.

  Suji laughed. “That dog has you wrapped around his little paw.”

  “And you are immune?”

  Her cheeks tinged pink.

  “Yung, how are you doing?” I asked.

  “Why?” His brow furrowed.

  “The other night. My fiancé and I”—I gestured to Rhett—“saw you with Oren Michaels chatting outside the Pelican Brief. Your poor hat,” I said leadingly, making light of what he’d done to it. Knowing what Yung and Oren had discussed might solve all sorts of puzzles regarding Oren.

  “What happened to your hat?” Suji asked.

  “I threw it on the ground.”

  “You what?” She shook her head. “That hat is expensive. You know how tight things have been. We can’t replace it if—”

  “It is not damaged, sweetheart. It was all an act.”

  “Why were you acting?” Suji tilted her head.

  “I was not acting. I was being dramatic. To goad Oren. Oh, look, the line is moving.” Yung pecked her on the cheek and said, “Go inside. Find us a table. I will be right in.”

  Obediently, she joined the line, but before disappearing inside the theater, she glanced worriedly over her shoulder, which reminded me of the fretful way she’d reacted after her tarot reading with Aunt Vera the other day.

  “If you must know,” Yung said, “I was reaching out to Oren for advice. He is a friend. We used to be sailing buddies before I had to sell my boat.” A smile pulled at his lips. “You know what they say about boats? The happiest day in your life is the day you buy your boat. The second happiest day is—”

  “When you sell it,” Rhett finished.

  “Amen.” Yung groaned. “What a money pit.”

  “Was Oren able to give you good advice?” I asked, seeing as he’d been dishing out a lot of it lately.

  “He did.” Yung lowered his voice. “I was being extorted. Someone sent me an email that said he knew what I did and that I needed to pay up or else. Oren suggested—”

  “Was the email from someone named Goodguy?” I cut in.

  “How did you know?”

  “It’s bogus.”

  Rhett eyed me curiously. I mouthed: I’ll explain.

  “But I did do something,” Yung went on. “A month ago.” He blinked rapidly. A flush of embarrassment ran up his neck. “It was an accident.”

  “What happened?” Rhett asked.

  “I hit a young man on a bicycle in Santa Cruz. Late at night. I had been drinking, and my depth perception—” He waved a hand. “He swerved to the right and fell to the ground. I stopped to help him, but then he got up, cursed at me, and rode away. I . . .” He licked his lips. “I thought it was over and done. No harm, no foul, as you say. Until I received the email. The incident occurred at an intersection. There must have been street cameras.”

  “Was the blackmailer specific? Did he show you proof?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “I’m telling you it’s a scam. A shot in the dark.” I repeated what Bailey had said about phishing cons and how blackmailers saturate the market with threats. “Don’t pay.”

  “I cannot risk it. The bank”—Yung mewled—“is owned by a private family. Everyone has to sign an ethics clause when hired. If someone in human resources found out I had been involved in an accident when I’d been drinking, I would lose my job. You heard my wife. We are on a tight budget. I did not tell her about the shakedown. I did not want to lose face. So I confided in Oren.” He hesitated. “He was extorted, too. About two months ago. He paid the demand and never heard from the blackmailer again. He told me to do the same. I did not like hearing that. That is when I threw my hat on the ground.”

  “A reasonable g
esture given the circumstance,” Rhett said.

  “Later that night, after more thought, I took Oren’s advice.”

  I sighed. “You paid?”

  He bobbed his head. “I worry every night that the blackmailer will contact me again, but so far he has not. I used a special fund, one I set aside for rainy days so my wife would not discover my disgrace.”

  Rhett placed a reassuring hand on Yung’s shoulder. “If I were you, I’d tell your wife. You’re a team. You make decisions together. She’ll understand.”

  Yung nodded glumly. “She will be furious.”

  “And she’ll get over it,” I said, betting she’d already figured out what her husband had done, given her session with my aunt.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I appreciate your opinion. Good night.”

  After he slogged into the theater, Rhett and I went into Mum’s the Word. A waitress seated us at one of the aqua-colored booths and within minutes took our order, the specialty beef stew as well as two sparkling waters.

  When she left, I leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Time for me to confess. I got one of those emails, too.” I held up a palm to prevent Rhett from interrupting. “I didn’t pay it. I haven’t done anything wrong as far as I know. The email wasn’t specific as to my crime. Unlike Pepper’s.”

  He blinked. “She received one, too?”

  “Yes. A photo was attached to hers.” I told him the rest. “I haven’t informed Cinnamon, but not for lack of trying. I’ve left her a couple of voice messages; she hasn’t responded. I didn’t tell you because I put Bailey on the case. Granted, she hasn’t been able to drum up any leads, so we don’t know for certain if Pepper’s and my emails are scams, but for now, Bailey’s advice is to sit and wait.”

  “Sweetheart, that’s not proactive. The police need to be informed.”

  “Is it possible . . . ?” I placed my hand on his as a notion came to me.

  “What?”

  “With this many Crystal Cove residents receiving emails, do you think someone we know could be the blackmailer? A local. Not just some random hacker in Timbuktu.” I held up my palms. “Hear me out. I noticed something when I did the walk-through with Z.Z. at Ivy’s.” I told him how Jake Chapman, thanks to my father and aunt, had enlisted me for the job. “There were a couple of notepads with initials and numbers in the thousands beside them. What if the initials represented people being scammed and the numbers represented dollar amounts? One of the sets of initials was YY. Possibly Yung Yi.”