Lattes, Ladyfingers, and Lies

by Harper Lin

  His steps grew louder until he appeared in the storage room doorway. Rhonda scooted aside to give him space. That belt really did make him wide. He looked around at each of our faces, pausing a second on Sammy’s. I stole a glance at her and saw her pretty blue eyes twinkle briefly. When he finished scanning the room, he crossed his arms across his chest.

  “Well,” he said, looking at me, “from the looks on all your faces, I’m going to say you already know Fran here has another murder to solve.”

  “What?” I shrieked. “Me? You’re the one with the gun and the badge!”

  “Hasn’t stopped you before, has it?”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think Mike would appreciate it very much if I went poking my nose around again.” Mike Stanton was the head detective for the Cape Bay Police Department and a former high school classmate of mine. For the most part, he’d been tolerant of my amateur detective work, but I knew he’d prefer if I stayed out of things.

  Ryan gave me a sly grin. “Considering you’ve solved his last three major cases, I don’t think he’d mind too much.”

  “I didn’t solve the last three cases.”

  “You didn’t not solve them either.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, well, I’m leaving for Italy in a week. I don’t need to get involved.”

  “Suit yourself.” He shrugged.

  “So it was a robbery?” Sammy asked after a few seconds.

  “Looks that way.” Ryan leaned his broad shoulders up against the doorframe. “Vic had no injuries except the blow to the head. You guys knew about that, right?” He’d been in town long enough to know how the gossip train worked around here.

  “Yes, we did,” I said. “And the ‘vic’ was named Georgina. She was a friend of ours.”

  “Right, of course, sorry.” Ryan looked embarrassed. He was a good guy, but he occasionally forgot he was talking to civilians, not his fellow law enforcement officers. We didn’t deal with crime and death in our everyday lives. At least, we hoped not to.

  He straightened. “Georgina had no other injuries except the one to her head. It was a brick that hit her.” He paused and looked around at each of us, seemingly to gauge whether this was new information. Deciding it wasn’t, he went on. “We don’t think whoever it was even expected her to be there. It was late, long after the store had closed, and all the lights were off. The medical examiner said that, based on the way she fell, she was crouched down behind the counter when the brick hit her. She would have been completely in the shadows. No way the perp could have seen her.” He glanced at me as soon as the word perp passed his lips, as though to make sure I didn’t object to it the way I had vic. The perp hopefully wasn’t a friend of mine, though, and if by chance I did know the perp, I wasn’t particularly eager to hear his or her name in connection with Georgina’s murder, so it didn’t bother me.

  A horrible thought crossed my mind. “She was crouched down behind the counter? She didn’t—did she—?” I struggled to put my thought into words, not wanting to say it out loud in case that somehow made it true.

  Ryan caught on to what I was afraid to ask. He shook his head. “We watched the security footage. Dean has that place wired up. I mean, it makes sense with all the jewelry in there, but man, that’s a lot of cameras. Anyway, we watched it, and Georgina didn’t show any signs of seeing or hearing anything out of the ordinary. She walked out of the back room and over to the counter, totally calm. Never saw it coming.”

  That made it better, I supposed. At least she hadn’t been afraid.

  “Did they take anything? If you’re calling it a robbery, they must have taken something, right?” Rhonda asked.

  “One ring.”

  “One ring? A whole store full of jewelry and they stole one ring? They murdered Georgina, and all they stole was one ring?” She sounded offended at the thought.

  “It was the most expensive thing in the store.”

  Rhonda scoffed and rolled her eyes.

  “Do you think they even knew they killed her?” I asked.

  Ryan hesitated and made a face. I wasn’t sure he wanted to tell us. Slowly, he seemed to make up his mind. “They knew.” I could practically see the cop part of his brain fighting with the normal part as he debated exactly how much to say and how to say it. “Based on where she fell, they would have had to step over her on their way in and out. And they used the brick they threw through the window to smash open the case. Plus, there was a lot of—” He hesitated, apparently seeing the horrified looks on our faces. “—evidence on the floor. They, uh, couldn’t have missed it.”

  The four of us looked at our shoes, the walls, the floor, anywhere but at each other, as we each tried to process—or not—what Ryan had just said. Our silence was broken by Sammy’s sob. I looked over at her. She had her hands covering her face, and her shoulders shook. I moved to wrap my arms around her, but Ryan moved faster. He held her as she cried into his shoulder. The thought crossed my mind that it was a good thing his uniform shirt was black, or he’d have some nasty mascara stains to deal with and then immediately felt guilty for thinking about something so shallow and frivolous when Georgina was dead.

  I caught Rhonda’s eye, and she tipped her head toward the door. I followed her lead, and we both walked out into the café to give Sammy some time to regain her composure. I kicked the doorstop on my way out so she wouldn’t feel self-conscious about people hearing her cry.

  “Wow,” Rhonda said as we both stood behind the counter.

  “Yeah.” I scanned the café for anyone who needed help or any tables that needed bussing, anything to keep me busy so that I wasn’t just standing there, thinking about Georgina. At least if I was doing something, I could pretend she wasn’t front and center in my mind. I knew, though, that I wasn’t going to be able to stop thinking about her until her killer was found. I was so chilled by the coldheartedness of someone just stepping over her like that and leaving her there to die.

  “So are you still planning to stay out of it?” Rhonda studied my face like she was trying to find some clue to my intentions.

  I was torn. I was sickened by Georgina’s death, but I wasn’t a police officer or a private detective. I was a normal, average, everyday citizen who was leaving on the vacation of a lifetime in a few days. I knew what I had to do. “Yes. I’m going to stay out of it.”

  Chapter 4

  Later that night, I was alone as I got ready to lock up the café for the night. Sammy had left earlier in the afternoon, shortly after we found out about Georgina. She was understandably upset, and she’d opened that morning, so I sent her home. Ryan politely offered to escort her. Rhonda and I exchanged mischievous glances but didn’t say a word.

  Rhonda wasn’t scheduled to work that day, but Amanda had called in sick, so Rhonda stayed and helped me out until she had to leave so she could get dinner ready for her husband and two boys. I didn’t mind working alone. There was the usual after-work surge of customers, and then things died down. I waited until the last person left and started cleaning, even though it wasn’t quite closing time yet. Matt was making me dinner, and I was looking forward to a long, quiet evening with him and Latte, my sweet little Berger Picard dog.

  Once the place was clean to my perfectionist standards and everything was ready to go so Sammy wouldn’t have to scramble in the morning, I set the alarm and left out the front door, locking it behind me. Briefly, I stared at the large plate-glass windows covering the front of the café. I’d never thought before about how easy they must be to break. It was a little scary to think about. At least we didn’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars of jewelry sitting around. And more importantly, none of my employees were inside. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to one of them in my café. I’d be devastated. Poor Dean.

  I glanced down the street and saw Howard Jewelers all lit up. Every light must have been on—every light except the Howard Jewelers sign over the door. That was out, a subtle-but-clear sign that the store was closed. I thou
ght about going by to see if Dean was there and if he needed anything, but I knew Matt probably had dinner almost ready, and I didn’t want to keep him waiting.

  My cell phone rang in my jacket pocket. I pulled it out and looked at the caller ID. Matty.

  “Hello!” I sang into the phone.

  “Hey, Franny. You still at the café?”

  I cringed. He probably had everything ready, the table all set, the wine glasses poured, and I was still at work. I hurried down the sidewalk toward home. At least it wasn’t a long walk. “I’m just leaving.”

  “Oh, good.”

  Maybe he didn’t have dinner ready after all.

  “I had a meeting that ran late, and then I had to finish up some stuff. I’m getting packed up. I’m really sorry. I’ll be home in about half an hour.”

  “Do you want me to pick something up for dinner? You can cook another night?”

  “No, no, I’ll do it. It won’t take me long.” I could hear him breathing heavier as he walked out to his car.

  “Okay, if you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  I suspected he was so adamant about it in part because he didn’t want me paying for takeout. It was a long-running battle between us: who would pay for dinner. Matt had gotten pretty devious—handing his card to the hostess on the way in, calling ahead at our favorite places and giving them his card number. Once, I’d even caught him slipping the waiter a fifty when he handed back his menu at the beginning of the meal. I managed to pay that time, but Matt was winning overall, partly because, working in another town, he could pick up dinner on the way home and surprise me with it.

  “Okay, so, I’ll see you in a little bit then. Drive safe.”

  “Walk safe.”

  There was a pause for a few seconds. We hadn’t yet said, “I love you,” even though I was ready, and I suspected he was too. As a result, lately, every time we got off the phone, there was an awkward pause where we each wanted to say it but couldn’t quite do so.

  “Um, bye then.”

  “Bye.”

  I disconnected the call and slid my phone back into my pocket. I looked back down toward Howard Jewelers. The lights were still on. If Matt wasn’t going to make it home for half an hour and still had to make dinner, I should have plenty of time to go check on Dean. My mind made up, I headed for the jewelry store.

  I stopped outside the store and surveyed the interior. Normally stocked full of pretty, sparkly bracelets, necklaces, and rings, the cases were empty. From where I stood, I saw that the case in the back corner, farthest from the door, the one where Dean kept all the most expensive baubles, had a gaping, roughly brick-shaped hole in the top.

  At the opposite corner of the store, one of the windows facing the side street was boarded over with plywood. Beneath it, a blue tarp was spread out across the floor. I looked away quickly and hurried around to the back of the store. An SUV I thought was Dean’s was parked in one of the three spots. I pushed the buzzer next to the back door and looked up toward the camera with the glowing red light above it. If I were Dean, I’d certainly be cautious of people trying to get into the store through anything but the front door.

  After a couple of minutes, I heard the locks click, and the door opened. Dean looked tired and older than he had the last time I’d seen him the week before. “Hey, Fran.” He leaned against the doorframe and propped the door open with one hand.

  “Hi, Dean.” I waited a few seconds to see if he would invite me in. “Can I come in?” I asked when he didn’t.

  “You planning to steal anything?”

  “Nope.”

  “Come on in then.” He pushed off the doorframe and held the door open for me.

  The storeroom was stacked with bins and boxes I suspected weren’t usually there. They covered the shelves, the table, and most of the floor. The couch was wedged into the space under the stairs leading to the apartment on the second floor.

  “I’d offer you a chair, but…” Dean’s voice trailed off as he waved at the disaster that had taken over the room.

  “That’s okay. I don’t plan to stay long… unless you want me to, of course.”

  “No, I’m about done here.” He sighed heavily and ran his hand through his hair.

  “How are you doing?”

  He shook his head the slightest bit. “I’ve had enough here to keep my mind off things today. Tomorrow—I don’t know.”

  I nodded sympathetically.

  “It’s my fault.”

  “What?” Had Dean done something to cause Georgina’s death?

  “I feel like it is, anyway.”

  “Why? What did you do?”

  “I left her here alone. I left that ring out in the case instead of locked up in the safe. I could have had bars on the windows. I just never thought we needed them. In all the years we’ve been here, we’ve never had them. They seemed like something you’d see in the big city, not in Cape Bay. Stuff like this doesn’t happen here.”

  “You’re right. Stuff like this doesn’t happen here. That’s why you can’t blame yourself. You never could have seen this coming.”

  “That’s no excuse. I should have been more prepared.” He rubbed his face with his hands. “I feel so guilty.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I repeated, hoping that hearing it enough times would make him believe it.

  He rubbed his face up and down a few more times then ran his hands across his hair. “That damn ring. It’s been more trouble than it’s worth since the day I bought it. And trust me, it’s worth a lot. A lot.”

  “How much?” I asked, even though I knew I probably shouldn’t.

  “Fifty.”

  Fifty. It took me a second to realize what he meant, and when I did, I almost choked. “Fifty thousand?” I could buy a car with that. I could buy two cars with that.

  “Yep. Most expensive thing I ever bought, and it’s sat in that display case ever since. Once in a while, some bride-to-be comes in wanting to look at it, but it’s still just sitting there. Lot of capital tied up in that thing.”

  “Was it insured?”

  “Are you kidding? Of course it was insured! I may have been stupid for buying it, but I’m not that much of an idiot.”

  I thought for a second. There was something he’d said that I wanted to know more about. Then I remembered. “You said it was more trouble than it’s worth. Because no one’s bought it or something else?”

  “It was everything. Let me tell you.” He folded his arms across his chest. It was a little intimidating, but there was no reason he’d want to intimidate me. “First, I bought it at an estate auction. I actually got a pretty good deal on it, but right after the auction ends, one of the family members gets all up in arms because she claims she didn’t know the ring was being sold. So I end up having to fork over some extra cash to make her happy. Funny how an extra thousand suddenly makes it not such an important family heirloom.”

  I couldn’t really relate.

  “This is back when my dad was alive. I bring it back. He barely glances at it, says it’ll never sell. It’s going to sit on the shelf. I shouldn’t have wasted all of that money. All of his money. When I own the store, I can make the decisions. He wanted to put it up for auction again right away. Someplace fancy. Christie’s, Sotheby’s, something like that—it was that good. I said no. He put me in charge of buying. I bought this. We were keeping it. He never really forgave me for that. Every time money got tight, he’d bring up the ring. ‘We oughta sell that thing, you know.’ But that would prove him right, and I couldn’t let him win. After he died, I thought about finally selling it at auction, but I couldn’t do it. It’s too noteworthy now. Everyone in the area knows I have it. If I just sold it at auction, people would start to think that I needed the cash or something—that the store wasn’t doing well. They’d start to suspect that maybe our quality wasn’t the best. They’d stop coming here and start going someplace up in Boston. Can’t do it. Can’t do it. Damn thing costs me more in insur
ance money every month than the entire rest of the store.”

  He finally stopped to take a breath. While I didn’t quite know if his logic was totally sound, I sympathized with how strongly he felt about it. If I thought the survival of Antonia’s depended on something, I would fight for it, even if it cost me a fortune.

  “You think someone knew how valuable it was, and that’s why they stole it? To sell on the black market?” I didn’t even know if the jewelry black market was a thing, but it seemed like it probably was. “Or do you think someone wanted it and couldn’t afford it?”

  “Neither.”

  “Neither?”

  “I think the robbery was a cover-up.”

  “A cover-up?”

  “I think they came to kill Georgina.”

  I gasped. Sweet, kind Georgina? It was bad enough to think she was killed accidentally, but on purpose? Who would do that? And why?

  Dean saw my reaction and nodded. “I think they came to kill Georgina, and the robbery was just a cover-up. I mean, think about it. Why would a robber take just one thing? Why wouldn’t he take as much as he could?”

  “Because the ring was all he wanted?”

  “That’s a sweet idea, Fran. Real romantic. But guys don’t break into jewelry stores because they want something. They break in so they can fence the stuff and get the money.”

  “Fifty thousand isn’t enough money?”

  “You don’t get full price on the black market, Fran. No, a real thief would have taken everything he could get his hands on. Smash and grab. Maybe aim for the ring, if he knows it’s here, but take everything around it. But this guy didn’t do that. This was no robbery.”

  “Why would someone kill Georgina?”

  “Because he hates her. Or loves her and doesn’t want anyone else to have her.”

  He said it with such intensity I took a step back.

  “No, not me. Her ex-boyfriend, Alex. He couldn’t get over her breaking up with him.”

  “Is he a violent guy?”

  “He didn’t beat her up or anything, but he was the jealous type. Couldn’t stand her not being with him anymore.”