Lattes, Ladyfingers, and Lies

by Harper Lin

  “Oh, it was. But anyway, what’s up? You calling to check in? You don’t think I’m capable of taking care of the place on my own?”

  “Actually, I wanted to see if you’d be okay with me staying out a little bit longer. I was hoping to talk to someone else before I came back.”

  “No problem. Becky got here a little while ago, and between the two of us, we’re keeping the Bay well caffeinated.”

  “Things aren’t too busy?”

  “Stop it! No. Everything’s fine. We’re a well-oiled machine.”

  “Okay, good. Thanks. I shouldn’t be too long.”

  “Take your time. Like I said, we’re fine here.”

  We said goodbye, and I disconnected the call. I looked at the time on my phone. Latte and I were only about halfway home, and I still had to walk back to the high school. I had a car sitting in my driveway, but Cape Bay was so small, I pretty much walked everywhere. Between growing up in the little seaside town and living for years in New York City, cars to me were only necessary when you were going a long way or carrying a lot of things. The mile or so from my house to the high school was not a long way, and I had nothing to carry, so I’d walk.

  I pulled up Matt’s number on my phone. I hadn’t talked to him all day, and even though I would have been too embarrassed to admit it, I missed him. The phone rang enough times that when it finally picked up, I was startled to hear Matt in person instead of his voice mail

  “Matt Cardosi.”

  “Is it a bad time?”

  “Hey, Franny!” I heard the smile in his voice, and it made my heart flutter a little in my chest. “No, it’s a great time. I’m just getting back to my desk after a meeting. What’s up?”

  “Nothing. Latte and I were just out for a walk, and I thought I’d call and say hi.”

  “Uh-huh, how’s the investigation going? Who’d you leave in charge at the café?”

  “What makes you think I’m investigating?”

  I heard his chuckle. “The sun is up.”

  “I’m not that bad!”

  “No, you’re not. But usually, when you walk Latte during the day, it’s a quick trip around the block, not anything you take the time to call me during.”

  “Maybe I’m turning over a new leaf.”

  “Or maybe you’re walking across town to ask someone some questions and figured you had time to call me.”

  “I’m actually walking Latte back home. Thank you very much,” I said with more indignation in my voice than I actually felt.

  “Oh, so you’re done questioning somebody. Find out anything new?”

  “Yeah, I think I actually have a good lead.”

  “Someone other than Dean or Alex?”

  “Yup, a guy called Sean Donnelly. Do you know him?”

  I heard Matt muttering Sean’s name on his end of the line. “Sounds kind of familiar, but I can’t really place him. He lives in Cape Bay?”

  “Yeah. He’s one of the coaches on the football team. Apparently, he played quarterback in high school.”

  “Ah, now I know who you’re talking about. You think he killed Georgina?”

  “I don’t know yet. I need to talk to him before I make up my mind. Oh, Matty? Quarterbacks—are they throwing football guys or running football guys? Or are those the same?”

  There was a long silence on the other end of the line.

  “Matty?”

  “Yes,” Matt said quietly.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I just—I’m trying to figure whether it’s worse that my girlfriend doesn’t know what the quarterback does or that she calls them ‘football guys.’”

  “Well, what am I supposed to call them?”

  “Football players, Franny. They’re football players.”

  “Okay, football players. But what about the quarterback? Does he throw or run?”

  Matt sighed heavily. “He throws. Why are you asking?”

  “I’m just wondering if a guy who used to be a quarterback would have good brick-throwing skills.”

  “I don’t think it takes much skill to throw a brick through a plate-glass window, Franny.”

  “No? You don’t think so?”

  “You’re just messing with me, aren’t you?”

  “Pretty much. I really wasn’t sure what the quarterback does though.”

  “You could watch the Patriots with me on Sunday, and I could explain it all to you.”

  “That sounds incredibly boring.”

  Matt laughed out loud, and I wondered what his coworkers thought. “At least you’re honest.”

  “It’s the least I can do. Hey, dinner tonight?”

  “You want to go out?”

  “Yeah, that might be good.”

  “Okay, sounds good. Listen, I hate to cut you off, but I have a conference call in a few minutes I have to get ready for.”

  “No problem. I’ll see you tonight.”

  “Okay.”

  There was the awkward pause.

  “Um, bye.”

  “Bye, Franny.”

  I sighed as I slid my phone back into my pocket. One of these days, one of us was going to have to break down and be the first to say, “I love you,” but it didn’t look like today was going to be that day.

  Chapter 13

  It didn’t take all that long to get home to drop Latte off at the house. As soon as I opened the door, he ran straight to his bowl and spent a while lapping up the water then went up the stairs without even casting a second glance at me. Based on previous experience, it was safe to assume that when I got home later that evening, I’d find him sprawled out in his favorite spot on my bed, passed out and drooling without a worry in the world.

  “Okay, bye!” I called even though I knew he couldn’t care less.

  The walk over to the high school didn’t take long. Even though it had been fifteen years, I felt like I could practically walk there in my sleep. I smiled, remembering how Matt and I had walked to school together every day for four years. We’d been close friends growing up, but only that. We flirted a lot, but there was never anything between us until I came back to Cape Bay after my mother’s death. I wondered if I’d missed out on almost twenty years of a good thing by not getting together with him sooner. I certainly would have saved myself some of the heartbreaks I’d acquired over the years if I’d been with him.

  I sighed, thinking about what things might have been like if we’d gotten together in high school. We might have gotten married after college, bought a house of our own, had some babies. I probably never would have spent ten years working in public relations for high-profile clients. Would I have become the same person I was if I hadn’t had those experiences? I decided it was better not to spend too much time thinking about what might have been when what I had right now was perfect. Who knows? I might not have ended up with Matt at all.

  My arrival at the high school snapped me out of my reverie. It still resembled the school I’d gone to, but there had been so much remodeling and new construction, it was hard to see the old building in there. I wondered if the football field was still in the same place. Only one way to find out.

  I headed around the back of the school. Yup, there it was, right behind the building. I remembered sitting in my senior English class and looking out the window as a big machine aerated the field. I also remembered sitting on the bleachers after the school was evacuated because somebody called in a bomb threat, wondering if we’d really be safe there if the school exploded. Even as an adult, I was pretty sure we wouldn’t have been.

  The football team was out on the field, running back and forth, tapping their hands on the ground each time they turned. It would probably actually make a good fitness class. If boot camp classes were so popular, why not a football camp class? Maybe I should mention it at the gym. And then as the players started running up the bleachers, I questioned why I would even want to suggest new ways for them to torture us. Perhaps football camp was an idea best kept to myself.

&nb
sp; I walked over to the first person I saw, a boy who looked about twelve years old, but who I figured was probably a high school student. I didn’t remember the boys looking so small and young when I was in school. I’d have to get my old yearbooks out to see if Matt and Mike looked like little babies when we were that age.

  “Excuse me.” The boy looked up. “I’m looking for Sean Donnelly?”

  He pointed wordlessly across the field and took a slug from his water bottle.

  “Thank you.”

  He grunted.

  I headed across the field to where the man he had indicated was talking to another one of the players. He held a football in his hand and made throwing motions. Throwing. I knew Matt had said that it wasn’t exactly hard to throw a brick through a window, and part of me agreed with him, but another part of me felt like it was still a bit of evidence. Sean Donnelly had experience with throwing things long distances and accurately. Of course, he’d hit Georgina in the head when he probably—I hoped—hadn’t intended to, but still. It was circumstantial evidence at best.

  They didn’t even look in my direction as I approached. I waited a minute or so to see if they would acknowledge me, but apparently, I was rendered invisible by the siren’s call of the football. “Sean?” I asked finally.

  They looked up.

  “I’m looking for Sean Donnelly.” I looked at the older of the two. “Is that you?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  “Um, me?” Wow, this guy and Sabine made a pair with their attitudes. There was a term for Massachusites who acted like that, but after the time my grandmother had laid into me after hearing me say it, I’d never been able to bring myself to let it pass my lips again. Of course, my grandfather had laughed uproariously at his nine-year-old granddaughter calling a particularly unpleasant customer that, but I’d still kept it out of my vocabulary.

  “And who are you?” the man asked.

  I decided to stick to the same story I’d given Sabine, just in case they compared notes. “I’m Francesca Amaro. I’m friends with Dean Howard from the jewelry store. I’m assuming you heard about the robbery?”

  “The one where the girl died?” the boy asked.

  “Yes, that one.” I smiled at him, though it felt like a weird subject to smile over. Still, he might be a useful ally.

  “Get out of here, Lawson.” The man waved his hand at the boy. The boy took off jogging across the field, helmet dangling from his hand. It crossed my mind that it might not have been wise to approach a man who might be a murderer all on my own. “What do you want?”

  “Are you Sean?”

  “Yeah, who else would I be?”

  I don’t know, any other coach on the team? I kept that to myself. “Just making sure.” I plastered what I hoped was a pleasant smile on my face. He didn’t seem impressed. “Anyway, Dean asked me to get in touch with some of his customers—”

  “I’m not a customer,” Sean interrupted.

  “No? You were in the notes Dean gave me as having been in recently about an engagement ring.” I wished I’d brought a notebook along so I could pretend to refer to it.

  “Yeah, I can’t afford that thing.”

  “Oh, Dean said you’d been negotiating.”

  “That guy doesn’t negotiate. He strong arms. He wouldn’t let me work out a payment plan on it or anything.”

  “Hmm, I guess maybe the notes he gave me were a little out of date.”

  Sean didn’t respond. I needed to push harder.

  “So you weren’t still in the market for a ring?”

  “I was in the market for a ring, just not that one.”

  “Because you didn’t want it anymore or—”

  “Because I couldn’t afford it, lady! Don’t you listen?”

  “Sorry.” I forced a laugh. “I—the notes—” I needed to find a different approach. “Just so I can make sure I have it right when I tell Dean, you are not interested in the ring at all anymore?”

  “I was never interested in it. My girlfriend was. It’s kind of hard to be interested in something that costs more than I get paid in a year.”

  I forced another laugh. “I get it. So I guess what I’m asking—again, just so I don’t mess it up when I tell Dean—you weren’t still looking for ways to get it for your girlfriend?”

  “No, lady, I wasn’t. I knew I was never going to be able to get it for her. She’s the one who made me keep going in there to ask if I could get a discount. She’s the one who couldn’t get her mind off of it. I was done thinking about that. If she doesn’t want to marry me because I couldn’t buy her the most expensive ring in the state, that’s her problem, not mine. I got no problem staying single.”

  I wasn’t sure if I should ask my next question, but I did it anyway. What was the worst that could happen? He probably wouldn’t haul off and kill me with a football to the head—if that was even possible. “So you wouldn’t steal it for her?”

  Sean stared at me for a minute, not saying anything. “What’d you say, lady? Are you accusing me of something? You think I killed that girl?”

  “No, no, not at all. I’m only asking questions. Dean’s a little worked up about the robbery and the girl dying and all. He’s going to ask me if I asked you, and I’m a terrible liar, so he’d know if I didn’t but said I did.” When all else fails, blame someone else.

  “A’right, well, whatever. I can’t stand around talking to you all day. I got a football practice to get back to.”

  “Okay, no problem. Thanks for talking to me,” I said as he started across the field toward everyone else. “Um, one last thing!”

  He turned around and faced me, looking pretty disgusted.

  “Where were you Monday night?”

  Now he looked really disgusted. I thought he was going to swear at me, but he didn’t. “I was at home with Sabine. Now get lost.”

  After that conversation, I was more than happy to oblige.

  Chapter 14

  I picked up burgers and fried oysters from Sandy’s Seafood Shack on my way home after closing up the café. If I was going to buy him dinner, I had to be sneaky about it.

  “I brought dinner!” I called as I walked into my house.

  Matt sat on the couch with Latte, watching ESPN. “I thought we were going out!”

  “I lied.” I dropped the paper bag off on the coffee table. The grease from the oysters had already made significant progress soaking through the bag. “Has Latte eaten?”

  “According to me or him?”

  “You.” I laughed. I didn’t have to ask to know what Latte’s opinion would be.

  “Yeah, he ate.”

  I grabbed some paper plates, a bottle of red wine, a corkscrew, and two glasses and carried them into the living room.

  “Classy.” Matt eyed what I had in my hands.

  “I didn’t have any disposable cups. Hey, don’t feed him that!”

  Latte snatched the fried oyster off of Matt’s outstretched hand. “It’s okay for him to have one,” Matt said. “I looked it up.”

  “It’s fried. It’ll make him sick.” I plopped down on the couch next to Matt.

  “That’s okay. I’ll clean it up.” He leaned around me, and I thought he was going to grab the bottle and corkscrew since we’d established that that was his job, but instead, he put his hand on the side of my face and kissed me so long and soft I almost forgot about dinner. Just before I did though, his hand dropped from my cheek down to the bottle and corkscrew. “Okay, let’s eat!”

  I stared at him, my mind too muddled to think of any response that would be considered remotely clever or romantic, until he winked at me. Then I giggled. He popped the bottle open and filled our two glasses, far beyond the point that wine experts say you’re supposed to. He took a paper plate for himself and handed one to me before digging in the greasy bag for our burgers.

  “Sorry, boy,” he said as Latte eyed the fried oyster Matt was popping into his own mouth. “Mom said no.”

  “Don’t pit
my dog against me!”

  “He already knows you’re no fun.”

  I swatted at him. He grinned and ate another oyster.

  We were almost done eating and what seemed like an eternity into some show where two men yelled at each other about draft picks when Matt nudged me. “So how’d it go today?”

  “At the café? Fine.”

  He gave me a look. “Your investigation.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Well, I talked to it seemed like everybody today. Dean, Mike, Sabine, Sean—”

  “Sabine?”

  “Sean’s girlfriend.”

  “And Mike?”

  “Stanton? You know, the detective? We grew up with him?” I wondered if he really didn’t know who I meant.

  “Yeah, I know who Mike is. I was asking what you talked to him about.”

  “He gave me a lecture. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  “Okay, go on.”

  “So I talked to a bunch of people today, and I learned a lot, but I don’t really know if I’m any closer to knowing who did it than I was this morning.” I slouched down in the couch, turning the day’s events over in my mind.

  “Really? You didn’t get any useful information?”

  “No, I got a lot of useful information. I just don’t know who it points to.”

  “I see.” He ate the last fried oyster.

  “I mean, Dean still seems… I don’t know, off somehow. There’s something wrong with what he’s saying and how he’s acting, but I can’t tell if he’s lying to me or just hiding something.”

  “Aren’t those kind of the same? Lie of commission versus lie of omission?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” I sighed.

  “So you think he did it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s your gut telling you?” He poked me in the stomach.

  I squirmed away from him. “That dinner was really greasy.”

  He laughed and pulled me back over to him. “What else? You talked to that Sean guy, right? What did you think of him?”

  “I’m not interested in socializing with him and his girlfriend anytime soon. That’s for sure.”