by J. B. Lynn
Winnie asked. “What?”
“Honestly, most of the workers seem to think that she’d just given up. That working with Matt was just too impossible.” Piper shook her head. “It’s weird. She’d just been at my place the day before, asking questions.”
Amanda looked over as she hung a shirt back on a rack. “What was she asking you about?”
“Where I get my cupcakes. We kind of bonded over why I only bought my cookies from Matt, and I told her that I find him impossible to deal with.”
“You should probably tell Tom about that,” Amanda suggested.
“Well, if he’s the one investigating,” Winnie said. “Otherwise, maybe he doesn’t need to know everything about everything.”
Amanda looked up to see her sister staring at her with undisguised hostility. She was still angry that Amanda had revealed her power to the detective. She understood why, but there was nothing she could do to take it back. It wasn’t like her to not think things out thoroughly, but she’d just acted on impulse when it came to the man. What was it Rupert had said? She got flustered around him…and didn’t think straight. She wasn’t sure if that was because she trusted him, or if her logic was all messed up because of her attraction to him. A knock at the door interrupted her thoughts.
All the women turned to see Hank standing there.
“Let him in,” Bea ordered.
“Why?” Winnie asked. “It’s not like he was any help yesterday.”
“Let him in,” Amanda said. She had some questions for the homeless handyman.
“I’ve got to get back to the shop,” Piper said. “If I hear anything else, I’ll let you know.”
She walked out, and Hank walked in.
Wringing his hands nervously, he faced the Concordia sisters. “I owe you all an apology.”
“You owe us an explanation,” Amanda said, stepping toward him.
He nodded sheepishly. “I do.”
“You were supposed to be guarding this place,” Winnie reminded him. “And we ended up with a guy killed in here.”
Hank nodded. “That was my fault.”
“Did you kill him?” Bea asked.
Amanda stared at her younger sister in dismay. One did not go around asking murder suspects if they committed the crime.
Hank let out a laugh and shook his head. “Of course I didn’t kill him.”
“Then you’re not responsible for there being a dead guy here,” Bea said.
“Just tell us what happened,” Winnie said.
“Harmony needed help,” Hank said.
“That’s what you said,” Winnie said, “but you were gone a long time.”
Hank hung his head. “I’m sorry.”
“What happened?” Amanda asked.
Hank slowly raised his gaze to meet hers. “We got a little carried away.”
Bea chuckled. “You mean…?”
Hank let out a sigh. “Harmony and I are a couple,” he admitted sheepishly.
Bea clapped her hands with delight. “That’s awesome.”
“Wait, so you left Amanda alone here, unguarded,” Winnie began, her voice rising with every word she spoke, “so you could go make out with Harmony?”
“It’s okay,” Amanda said, trying to calm Winnie down.
“It’s not okay,” Winnie said. “You could have been killed.”
“But I wasn’t,” Amanda reminded her.
Winnie frowned, gave Hank a hard look, and ran up the stairs to the apartment.
“Don’t mind her,” Bea said. “How long have you and Harmony been a couple?”
“A while,” Hank admitted.
Amanda wondered why, if they had been a couple for a while, he was still homeless. Was Harmony just using him for his body?
“I let you down,” Hank said, turning toward her.
“All’s well that ends well,” Amanda told him, waving her hand dismissively. She really didn’t want to discuss it anymore.
“It didn’t end well for Richardson,” Bea said.
“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” Hank said darkly.
Amanda heard the animosity in his tone and wondered if Harmony would back up his alibi completely. Had he left her and snuck back to the shop long enough to kill Richardson?
Tom had said that he didn’t believe that Hank should be a suspect. But Amanda, feeling the hatred coming off of the handyman at the mention of Richardson, wasn’t so sure about that.
32
“I promise. I won’t leave this doorway today,” Hank pledged.
“Wait!” Amanda called.
He looked at her curiously.
“That lighter you wanted us to sell for you, the one that you were then accused of stealing from us, along with the cash from the register. Where did you get it?”
“I found it,” he admitted.
“Where?”
“In the alley. I left it there for a couple of days, in case anyone retraced their steps and went looking for it, but no one did. So I picked it up and threw it into my bag. Honestly, I forgot all about it until you had me fix the back door. While I was in here, I saw you were selling a matchstick box,” he pointed to one hanging on the wall, “and wondered if maybe the lighter was worth something.”
Amanda nodded slowly. “So you found it before the fire at Gold’s place?”
“Months before.” Hank frowned. “I told Tom all this when he asked, after I’d been falsely arrested.”
Amanda offered him an apologetic smile. “He never told us.”
“Probably because he believed me,” Hank said with a huff of indignation before stepping outside. Despite being offended, he was true to his word and stood with his back to the front door, guarding them.
“That went well,” Bea drawled.
Amanda shrugged apologetically.
“Winnie’s in a mood,” Bea remarked quietly, glancing upward.
Amanda shrugged. “Probably my fault. I shouldn’t have told Tom.”
“I don’t think it’s just that,” Bea told her. “Ash told me that Jim left town.”
“Why?”
Bea shrugged. “Some kind of family emergency. According to Ash, he asked Winnie to go with him, but she refused.”
“Why?”
It was Bea’s turn to shrug. “I’m guessing it’s because she didn’t want to leave us?”
Amanda nodded slowly. She felt the same way, she would never leave her sisters, considering all that was going on. Still, it was strange to hear. It hadn’t been that long ago, when they’d gathered for Letty’s funeral, that the sisters had barely known each other.
“I’ll go apologize again,” Amanda said.
She slowly climbed the stairs to the apartment, dreading her discussion with Winnie. It wasn’t that she dreaded apologizing, it was that she had no way to explain to her sister why she’d done what she’d done.
“You okay?” she asked softly.
Winnie was lying on her bed, arms crossed over her chest, staring at the ceiling, much as she had done as a teenager. Amanda climbed the rest of the stairs and went and sat on the edge of Winnie’s bed.
“Remember what Letty used to say,” she said. “What’s done is done, unless we choose to let it poison us.”
Winnie nodded. “I remember.”
“So, we have to get past this,” Amanda said. “I know that I offended you, but—”
“You betrayed me,” Winnie said.
Amanda blinked and drew back, hurt by the accusation.
“You betrayed my confidence,” Winnie told her, sitting up.
Amanda nodded. “I know. There’s nothing else I can say or do, except keep apologizing. But that’s not going to help us find out what happened to Letty.”
Winnie swung her feet around so the sisters were sitting side by side. She leaned into her older sister, nudging her with her shoulder. “Remember when I told Miles Creagan that you couldn’t swim and he laughed at you?”
Amanda nodded. The memory still stung. She was sensi
tive about her fear of water.
“You were mad at me for months,” Winnie reminded her. “I’m not going to stay miffed at you for that long,” she teased.
Grinning, Amanda nudged her back with her shoulder and the sisters chuckled.
“You haven’t drawn Suzanne, have you?” Amanda asked. It bothered her, the timing of the TV producer’s disappearance.
“No,” Winnie answered, just as voices began shouting from somewhere downstairs.
Quickly, Amanda and Winnie ran down to see what was happening. They arrived just in time to see Peabody launch his tiny self at Hank, who was guarding the door overzealously.
“Let him in,” Amanda called.
Hank grudgingly stepped aside, and Peabody marched into the store. The quirky man was angry, his face red, they could practically see steam coming out of his ears.
“Hello, Mr. Peabody,” Amanda said carefully.
“Peabody!” he shouted. “Is it really so difficult to call me by just one name?”
“Peabody,” Rupert mocked, “like Cher.”
“Like Madonna,” Pim chimed in.
“Like Bono,” Angus added.
Knowing that Peabody couldn’t hear that he was being mocked, the sisters all swallowed their smiles.
“What’s wrong, Peabody?” Bea asked.
“I understand that you lost possession of my property.”
“The chamber pot?” Winnie asked, barely able to hold back her grin. “We bought that. For our own use.”
Peabody made a face. “You’re using a chamber pot?”
“We’re repurposing it,” Amanda hurried to assure him. “We’ve got your payment set aside.”
“I meant my pirate cutlass,” Peabody said, pulling himself up to his full height, which really wasn’t very impressive at all. “You’ve lost my dagger.”
“No,” Amanda told him. “We know where it is. The police have it.”
Peabody leaned toward them in a conspiratorial whisper. “Was it really used as the murder weapon?”
Amanda nodded. “I’m afraid it was.”
“Do you have any idea how much that adds to its value?” Peabody asked.
“Actually,” Bea interjected. “I do. I looked it up. It does add quite a bit,” she told her sisters.
“Why?” Winnie asked.
“Because we’re going to be able to authenticate the fact it was used to kill somebody,” Bea said. “There are people who will pay a premium for such a thing.”
Winnie shuddered her revulsion.
Amanda didn’t know whether to be horrified or impressed that Bea had even thought to look up whether or not Richardson’s death added to the value of the weapon.
“I want a bigger cut,” Peabody said.
“Your deal with Letty was forty percent of the sale price,” Bea said, leaning forward. “Are you trying to renegotiate that?”
Peabody nodded. “I want more.”
Bea slid off the stool behind the cash register and walked unsteadily toward him, her expression stern. “I thought we had a good business relationship, Peabody,” she said. “It’s not in good faith to renegotiate a contract, mid-transaction.”
Peabody gulped. “But I deserve more money for it.”
“Not unless you killed him,” Winnie muttered.
“You’ll get more,” Bea told him. “You’ll get forty percent of whatever the higher selling price is. That will net you more money, guaranteed.”
“I’m not sure I’m comfortable selling a murder weapon,” Amanda interjected. While she respected her youngest sister’s business acumen, she wasn’t sure that her own ethical concerns were in alignment with her youngest sister’s.
“That’s a good point,” Winnie said. “Do we really want to become known as the place that sells murder weapons?”
Bea shrugged, a moment of frustration passing over her face, and Amanda knew that she hated that she wasn’t going to be able to make a profit. Bea gave Peabody a tight smile. “As you can see, this is a matter that’s going to come up for discussion with my sisters and myself. In the event that we decide not to be the broker for the sale of the cutlass, we will return it to you once we get it back from the police.”
Peabody looked from one sister to the next, to the next, and then scurried out of the shop wordlessly.
“You’re right,” Bea said, turning to face her sisters. “I didn’t think about what a reputation we would get by selling the thing. I just got curious about how much more it would be worth.”
“He certainly seemed to know,” Winnie mused. “Do you think maybe he killed Richardson? Trying to increase the value of his dagger?”
Amanda blinked. She hadn’t even considered the possibility.
“He doesn’t strike me as a killer,” Bea said. Then she turned to Amanda and asked, “What do you think?”
“I don’t get a killer vibe off of him,” she said finally. Not that she had enough experience with her new gift to even recognize a killer vibe.
33
“I’m going for a walk,” Winnie announced. She still really wanted to search for Nutmeg.
“You can’t go by yourself,” Bea said worriedly.
Winnie frowned. “It’s the middle of the day, what do you think is going to happen to me?”
“Richardson was killed during the middle of the day,” she reminded her.
Winnie shook her head. “I can’t stay cooped up in here all the time. I’ll be fine.”
Before her sisters could offer any more objections, she hopped out the front door.
“Keep an eye on the place, Hank,” she said, striding purposefully away.
She glanced over her shoulder a couple of times to see if Amanda was following, but her older sister never appeared.
Ash, seeing her go past his shop window, came outside. “Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” she told him. “I just needed some fresh air.”
“Do you need company?”
She shook her head and continued on her way. She really wanted to be alone for a while. Or, barring that, she really wanted to be alone with Nutmeg. She strolled a little further, and Harmony met her at the door to her shop.
“Where are you going?” the older woman asked.
“For a walk,” Winnie said, resenting the idea that she had to explain herself to anyone.
Harmony shook her head. “I told you, you have to do it together.”
“We don’t have to do everything together,” she retorted sharply. “Sometimes I just need to do things on my own.”
She walked away, leaving Harmony muttering behind her.
She stopped in at PerC Up to buy a coffee. Piper seemed surprised to see her, but at least she had the good sense to not remark on the fact that she was alone. Instead, she filled her order and said, “No Suzanne yet.”
Winnie glanced around the store and realized that a couple of the patrons, sitting at the back table, were people working on the TV show. She’d seen them wandering around for the last couple of days.
“So, what are they going to do?” she asked, sipping the coffee Piper had handed over.
“According to those guys, they’re going to send out somebody else to finish the job.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Winnie said.
“It makes sense, but also, according to them,” Piper said, leaning across the counter and whispering so that only Winnie could hear, “they’re not going to be able to do it.”
“Why not?”
“They’re having trouble,” Piper said. “With the recipe. That explains why Suzanne was asking me about where I get my baked goods from. She was probably looking for a substitute baker.”
“I thought Matt was an award-winning baker,” Winnie said, confused.
Piper shrugged. “Maybe his wife deserved more credit than anybody knew.”
“That’s interesting,” Winnie mused. Before she could discuss it any further with Piper, three customers walked in. She raised her cup in a toast to th
e barista and strolled out, but first grabbed a cookie. “Put this on my account,” she said.
Piper nodded.
Winnie didn’t particularly want the cookie, but she thought that if she encountered Nutmeg, that he might.
She strolled further down the street, around the corner to the bar, where she’d gotten help when Bruce Gold had been attacked. It bothered her that no one had identified who Gold’s attacker had been. Everyone assumed it seemed to have been Richardson, but Winnie had not heard any definitive information about that. She walked past a tattoo parlor and another bar, before reaching the end of the street.
She stood at the corner, looking all ways, trying to spot the little dog. But he was nowhere to be seen. “Nutmeg,” she called quietly. Not that the dog could have heard her, but she felt like she had to do something.
Sighing heavily, she began to break the cookie into tiny little pieces, leaving a trail of crumbs for the dog to follow back to One Woman’s Junk. As she passed Bruce Gold’s burnt out shop, she hesitated, staring at the destruction. Harmony and Hank had almost died in there, and Bruce had almost died in front of it. It felt like a cursed space.
“It’s quite the mess,” a voice said from behind her. Startled, she turned to find Jacob Gold, Bruce’s son, standing behind her.
“It certainly is,” Winnie agreed. She wasn’t used to having conversations with murder suspects. And Tom had told Amanda that Jacob Gold was an official suspect.
She looked at the young man, unable to see anything about him that suggested he could have killed Richardson. Not that she knew what killers looked like.
“My dad wants to rebuild,” Jacob said. “But with Perkins gone, it’s a mystery what will happen with the insurance.”
Winnie nodded, unsure how else to respond.
“I think he’s crazy,” Jacob said, “but he’s always been fanatical about this place.” He turned to Winnie and gave her a searching look. “Did your parents ever expect the impossible of you?”
Looking away, Winnie swallowed the familiar lump that rose in her throat. “My parents died when I was five,” she said. “I think that they just wanted me to make it through kindergarten without wetting myself.”
“I’m sorry,” Jacob said. “I didn’t know. My mum died when I was six, so I sort of get it.”
