Final Sentence (29 page)

Sabrina swayed with Mackenzie, her head planted on the masseur’s chest, her palms resting on his shoulders.

“They look pretty intimate, if you ask me,” Katie said.

She wasn’t kidding. Mackenzie’s right hand massaged Sabrina’s back. At the same time, his left hand cupped her firm rear end. I speculated about the extent of their relationship. Only days before, Sabrina had seemed distraught that her boyfriend had broken up with her. Had Mackenzie made a play for Sabrina, hoping she might inherit her sister’s estate? Had he, as Bailey had suggested earlier, conspired with Sabrina to kill Desiree?

I scanned the place and spotted the bartender, a woman with Cleopatra’s luscious eyes and asp-like black tendrils trailing down her cheeks. She shimmied a martini shaker with the gusto of a Mix Master. Up for an impromptu interrogation, I excused myself from my friends and made a beeline for the woman. I settled onto a seat between two empty stools and slipped a twenty-dollar bill onto the counter. Rays from the blue lights overhead gave the bartender’s unblemished skin an otherworldly glow.

“What’ll it be?” she asked.

“What’s good?”

“The margarita. It’s my mother’s recipe.”

“Perfect.” As she twisted to get the fixings, I said, “Before you go, could I ask you a couple of questions?”

She eyed the twenty-dollar bill. “Friend or foe?”

“Curious local.”

“A local gets three questions, but make them good.”

Three limited my options, so I started with a couple of statements. “Desiree Divine died last week. She was my friend. She was seen talking with a man for quite a long time.” I described Anton. “Did you catch any of their conversation?”

“No. Next question.” She put a pinky on the twenty and drew the bill toward her.

“Did you see Desiree argue with anyone that night and, if so, with whom?”

“That’s two questions.”

“It’s one, all phrased within one parenthetical.”

Cleopatra wrinkled her nose. “What are you, an English teacher?”

“A recovering advertising exec.”

Without letting go of the twenty, Cleopatra polished the bar with a dry towel. “Yes, she argued with a couple of people.”

A couple? I was thinking that if Desiree had left Anton to have it out with J.P., maybe she had caught him before he left the bar. Who was the other? “Can you describe them?”

“Yes.” She didn’t offer more.

I glowered at her. “C’mon, not fair. I’m not an attorney.”

“Maybe you need one.”

“Very funny. Please describe them.”

Cleopatra leaned forward and rested her elbows on the bar, a move that emphasized her ample cleavage. “One was a pretty thing, dark and short with eyes as black as arrowheads.” I peeked at Sabrina. The bartender winked, indicating I had hit the mark. “Your friend was ticked off to the max. She met Short Stuff at the door. They wrestled. Your pal pulled something out of Short Stuff’s purse. A bottle of pills, I think. Shortie snatched it back. When your pal was done ranting, she tried to make a call on her cell phone, but apparently it wasn’t charged, so she made a beeline for the telephone down the hall.” Cleopatra tilted her head in that direction. “Later, she met up with that guy with the Mohawk.”

A chiseled guy farther down the bar said, “Hey, babe, getting thirsty here.”

Cleopatra tucked the twenty-dollar bill into her bra and mouthed, “Be right back.” She sambaed to the far end of the bar to pour a martini for the customer.

I blotted the bar in front of me with a cocktail napkin and studied the other customers. A couple of casually dressed men down the bar ogled me. I offered a blasé smile—not interested.

A flash of light caught my eye. A door in the hall beyond the bar opened. Even from a distance, I made out the figure of a man with a Mohawk exiting the restroom. J.P. In a flash, I realized that the bartender had tried to alert me to his presence. What would J.P. do if he found me nosing around? I hunched forward over the bar and, out of the corner of my eye, glimpsed him heading straight for me. A queasy feeling flooded through me as I spied a tumbler with an inch of weak brown liquid and melted ice on a cardboard Chill Zone coaster to my right. Was it J.P.’s? Shoot.

Chill out,
I urged myself and suddenly erupted in giggles.
Chill out. At the Chill Zone Bar.
More giggles. J.P. drew nearer. I could make a run for it, but why should I? All I had to do was play innocent. I was a single girl out for a night on the town with her friends.

Trying to act natural, I slung one leg over the other and gave my hair a shake. Oh, yeah, real natural.

As J.P. settled into his stool, Cleopatra returned. I ordered a margarita with salt, and overemoting like a ham actor, I did a double take at J.P. “Hey, fancy seeing you here. How are you doing?”

“I’m cool.”

Cool.
In the Chill Zone Bar. More giggles. Silently, I threatened my lungs with brute force
.
The giggles subsided. “Buy you another drink?” I pointed at the nearly empty tumbler in front of J.P.

His world-weary gaze took me in head to toe. He didn’t seem impressed with my performance. If only I had thought to wear an electric blue spandex dress . . . which I did not own and never would.

“Another Black on the rocks?” the bartender said and winked at J.P. flirtatiously. She offered me a wry glance.

“Sure.” J.P. said.

“This is my first time here,” I said like an awestruck tourist. “It’s some place.”

“It’s okay if you enjoy the dark.”

“Is this your first time, too?”

“Nah. I’ve been here a couple of times. The concierge at the inn recommended it.”

“I’ve wanted to check it out, but I hadn’t found the time until now. Day off,” I added, as if that explained my sudden presence.

“Cool.”

The bartender set down our drinks. I pulled a second twenty from my purse and pushed it toward her. She didn’t make change.

“How are you holding up?” I asked J.P.

“I’m cool.” He ran his finger around the lip of his tumbler. “Real cool.”

So much for an extensive vocabulary.

“Sabrina and Mackenzie are here,” I said. “Did you come with them?”

“Yeah. We’re the Three Musketeers.” J.P. squinted toward the dance floor. “They’re into each other.”

“Seems so. I hear they hooked up the night Desiree died. You must have seen them.”

“Where?”

“Here.” I licked the rim of my margarita glass and took a sip. The concoction was good. Nice and tart.

J.P. flinched. “Why would you think—” He glowered at the bartender.

“She didn’t tell me,” I said, not lying. She and I hadn’t finished our conversation. “Anton d’Stang did.”

J.P. cut a hard look at me. “That buffoon.”

“You came here,” I continued.

“Yeah, so what?”

“You lied to me about hanging out in your room that night. You said you took one of Desiree’s sleeping pills. But you didn’t, did you?” I stabbed my finger on the bar. “Did you think no one would notice you? If not Anton, then Sabrina or Mackenzie or any number of regulars? Have the police asked you about this?”

“You’re the first to mention it.”

“You were jealous.”

“Dang right I was.” He growled. “Jealous as all get-out. Wouldn’t you have been? Desiree took a phone call and she nearly ran out of the room. Did she think I wouldn’t find out that she was meeting her former lover? The man jump-started her career. Des was feeling insecure with the ratings. Anton’s timing . . .” J.P. lifted his beverage, almost jabbing me with his left elbow, and slugged back the entire drink in one gulp. He slammed the glass on the bar and pushed it away. “Suffice it to say, Des was primed to repeat bad habits. D’Stang was a Svengali. He could mesmerize her. What was I? A two-bit director. I had nothing on him.”

“You sat at the bar and dialed her repeatedly. She didn’t answer. Why didn’t you confront her?”

“I wanted to see if she’d text me a lie. That way I’d have proof. Physical proof.”

“Jealousy is a powerful motive for murder,” I said. “You were drinking. Alcohol can—”

“I was downing club soda that night. Ask her.” J.P. tilted his head at the bartender. “Five bucks for a lousy club soda. Highway robbery. Anyway, I gave up. I needed to ponder my options.”

“What options?”

“If Desiree was going to quit and go back to Anton, I needed to get my résumé in order. Pronto.”

“Anton didn’t ask Desiree to come back to him. He asked her for a loan.”

“No lie?”

“He said when Desiree left him, she was headed back to the room to talk with you.”

“I . . .” He worked his tongue inside his cheek. “I never saw her. Look, I’m not proud of it, but after I left here, I hit the mini-bar in the room.”

“So you did drink.”

“Yeah, I drowned my sorrows, and I passed out.”

“In the nude.”

“How do you know that? Ah, who cares? I paid for my sins the next day. Ask Sabrina. She said I smelled like a still.”

I flashed on J.P. and Sabrina meeting in the parking lot outside The Cookbook Nook. He had yanked something from her purse. Perhaps Sabrina had taunted him with a less-than-flattering snapshot of him drunk that he wouldn’t have wanted made public.

J.P. rubbed a hand along the top of his Mohawk. “You have no idea how guilty I feel. If I’d stayed sober, if I hadn’t left the bar, maybe Desiree . . .” He twirled his tumbler, which spun out of control and careened over the bar. The glass shattered in a metal sink. The bartender raced toward our end of the bar. J.P. raised his hands in apology. “Eighty-six me. I’ll pay for the glass.” As Cleopatra cleaned up the mess, J.P. continued. “If you ask me, Anton’s lying. He killed her. I mean, c’mon, why was he in Crystal Cove? For a loan? Give me a break.”

“He’s a gambler. He claims he’s in debt up to his eyeballs.”

“Cock-and-bull story.”

“You think he’s making it all up?” This from a guy who had bald-faced lied to me about where he was the night Desiree was murdered.

“Anton had issues with Desiree. He couldn’t let her go. He wrote her love letters. When Desiree continued to snub him,
he wrote her hate mail.”

“Do you have any of those?”

J.P. shook his head. “Desiree burned them.”

Chapter 22

W
HEN I RETURNED
to the booth, the music at the Chill Zone Bar was blasting so loudly I could barely think.

Bailey and Katie leaned forward in their seats. “Well?”

Raising my voice, I told them what J.P. had said about Anton sending hate mail to Desiree.

Bailey patted the table. “You’re not safe with Anton on the loose.”

I disagreed. “I think he’s long gone.” In fact, I felt so sure about that, I fetched my cell phone and dialed the precinct. I asked to be put through to Chief Pritchett. I reached her voice mail. Quickly I reiterated that I believed Anton d’Stang was the killer. “Not only did Anton lie about his alibi and blackmail Gigi Goode to corroborate that lie, and not only did he start his career as a baker of large-sized cakes, as I stated in our previous conversation at my shop”—I flashed on my initial meeting with Anton at the diner and added—“a left-handed baker, by the way.”

Katie whispered, “How can you be so sure?”

“He held his coffee cup in his left hand.”

“Circumstantial,” Bailey said.

I waved them off and continued my message. “But if Anton is to be believed, he dunned Desiree for money because he’s a gambler. In addition, I just learned from J.P. Hessman that Anton sent Desiree hate mail, but she destroyed it. You might wonder how I know all this? I tracked down Anton d’Stang at his hotel. There were some thugs with him.” I described Mr. Big and his cohort in brief detail and recapped my conversation with Anton. “While he and I were talking, he ran off. I think you should—” I paused. I wasn’t sure what I thought Cinnamon should do. Find Anton. Book him. Solve the puzzle. She knew what she had to do; she didn’t need a directive from me. “I think you should call me if you need anything further.”

As I aimed my finger at the cell phone’s End button, I heard a click, and then Cinnamon said, “Miss Hart, why do you continue to act as if I don’t know what I’m doing?”

I blanched. The sneak had been listening in. Bailey and Katie mouthed,
What?
I said, “Hi, Chief Pritchett.”

“I’ve got this handled,” Cinnamon said. “I need you to take a backseat.”

“You’ve got to bring in Anton d’Stang.”

“And I will.”

“For all we know, he’s going to flee to France, where he’ll find—”

“Stop this. You’re going to make yourself sick. Investigations take time. We don’t solve crimes in a matter of days. That only happens on TV. Why, last month, there was a Southern California woman who was arrested following a five-year investigation. She swore she accidentally shot her husband with his pistol. It took the police all that time to prove it was murder. People have to go on with their lives. Stop nosing around in this case and get on with your own.”