Kernel of Truth (13 page)

I didn't see
the black SUV on my way into POPS the next morning. I'd started watching for it. It gave me an itchy uncomfortable feeling. I did get a few knowing comments about my troubles with the law from some of the breakfast regulars. The
Sentinel
had run the story of my second arrest. I didn't know how they'd heard about it so fast, but I suspected it was Jessica. She'd want everyone to know anything that made me look bad. She always had.

By noon I'd received another set of texts from Antoine. He was certain I needed some kind of legal assistance and he would be happy to pay for it. He suggested that perhaps also I would like to return to California to avoid getting three strikes and being put in prison in Ohio for life.

I didn't respond to any of them.

That evening, Haley and Dan were taking Evan to a Trout Fishing in America concert. I'd been invited to attend but had passed. Having been treated to “I Think I'll Need a Bandaid” on a loop in the minivan on a trip to Cleveland
the previous month, I was pretty sure that I'd stick something in my eye if I had to listen to them again. It had actually been a really funny cute song the first fifteen times I heard it. It had started to sour on repeat number sixteen. By repeat number twenty, I'd been done, but Evan had only been getting started. Ah, to be three.

But then when I closed the shop, there didn't seem to be any reason to head back to the apartment, either. No Haley. No Evan. No Dan. Just Sprocket and me. It seemed like a better idea to hang out at the shop and get a little paperwork done.

Paperwork is my downfall. I'd never really had to do it before I opened POPS. When I was a teenager, it was Haley's problem. When I was in school, it was the Institute's problem. When I was cooking, it was the chef's problem. When I got married it was Antoine's problem.

Now it was my problem and no one else's. Coco and Annie had helped me set up a system, but the problem with systems is that a person had to actually then use the system to make it work. Somehow making the system work in the office was low on my priority list, so there was a stack of filing to be done teetering on my desk like an unstable chocolate fountain.

I made myself a toasted cheese sandwich and then I made a second one to share with Sprocket, who had looked at the dry food I kept for him at the store and then at me and sighed heavily enough to rattle the blinds. I settled down at my desk and started working from the left side to the right side, filing whatever I came across that needed to be kept, throwing out the junk and making a significantly smaller pile of stuff that needed me to do something.

I'd gotten a good rhythm going when I heard the sound of a car door shutting in the back alley. Not slamming.
Shutting. Gently. Like whoever was shutting it didn't want to make a lot of noise.

The hair on my arms stood up. Jasper's words came back to me. If he didn't do it, Coco's murderer was still on the loose in Grand Lake. Criminals liked to return to the scene of the crime. We still didn't know why anyone would have broken into Coco's Cocoas when she was there alone working at night and now I was here working alone in POPS. Then I thought about that black SUV that always seemed to be cruising around wherever I was, looking dark and mysterious and dangerous.

I hit the switch and turned off the lamp on my desk. All the rest of the lights were already off. I slid out of the room I used as my office, keeping close to the walls. Sprocket looked up at me, head tilted to one side in as plain a doggie question as I had ever seen. I held my finger up to my lips. He settled back to the floor.

I slipped along the hallway to the kitchen. Annie's back porch light was on, casting its glow into the shadows of the alley. It didn't light up much, but it lit up enough for me to see Allen Thompson walking down the alley. His walk was like his door slam. Quiet. Clandestine. He stayed close to the shadows and kept looking over his shoulder.

I craned my neck a little. The jerk. He'd parked in Coco's spot. It galled me. The flowers hadn't even wilted yet on her grave and he was parking in her spot and scoping out the properties around her business.

That thought stopped me. Why would he be scoping out the other businesses? He owned everything on the block except for Coco's. Her place was the only thing he should be sniffing around.

I waited until he had shadow-walked past POPS and slipped out the back door, not shutting it behind me. I stayed
in the shadows of the porch and watched while Allen stopped by Annie's Dumpsters. I held my breath as he looked up and down. Good thing I was wearing black.

After he'd satisfied himself that no one was around, he walked briskly across the alley, up the steps to Annie's back door and directly into her shop. I bit my lip to keep from shouting out. Just because he owned the building didn't mean he could march in and out at his pleasure.

Then another thought occurred to me. A darker thought. Annie could be in there alone. A whole scenario played out in my head. Allen coming to talk to Coco about selling her shop. Her dismissing him. Words being exchanged. Then him shoving her and her falling backward and hitting her head. An accident, like Dan had said.

Then what if Allen had discovered that he liked it? He enjoyed watching the light go out in Coco's eyes. I'd always felt the man had no moral compass whatsoever. Maybe he was a real sociopath and Coco was the first of what would be a string of murdered single women shop owners. Maybe Allen had been shamed by a woman shop owner as a child and now he was going to exact his revenge on the businesswomen of Grand Lake.

I ran down the steps of the porch and over to Annie's. I tried the door. Locked. Damn it. Allen must have let himself in with his own key. Good thing I had my own set with the spare Annie had given me in my jeans pocket. As I dug the keys from my pocket I heard a noise. Not a noise, a voice. A woman's voice. Inarticulate. Moaning.

My hands shook so hard it took me three tries to get the key in the lock. I charged into the little house, heading toward the noise. Allen had Annie backed up against her potting counter and she was making a noise unlike any I'd ever heard her make before. Without pausing, without
thinking, without considering, I picked up one of the clay pots from the back wall and bashed Allen on the head with it, yelling, “Get off her, you monster!”

It was about then that I stopped to wonder why Annie had had her legs wrapped around his waist.

*   *   *

“What. Are. You.
Doing?” Annie panted as she scrambled to rearrange her clothes.

I looked down at the cracked pot in my hand. Allen had a heck of a hard head. He and Huerta ought to have some kind of competition. “I thought I was saving you from being murdered.”

Annie crouched down next to where Allen lay on the floor. “Allen, honey, are you all right?”

He moaned. “What happened?”

“Rebecca happened.” Annie stood up. “Let me get you some ice.”

I followed her into the kitchen. “Do you want to explain what was happening back there?”

She shoved a couple of handfuls of ice from the freezer into a bag. “Rebecca, if you don't know what that was after eleven years of marriage, I don't really want to be the one to explain it to you.”

My face got hot. “I know what you were doing. I want to know why.”

Annie started to laugh as she wrapped the bag with a towel. “Do you really need me to answer that, either?”

No. I didn't. I got that part, too. “Okay. I guess what I mean is, why him? I thought we hated him.”

Now it was Annie's turn to blush. Finally. Apparently getting caught with your legs wrapped around the mayor in the corner of your potting room wasn't blush-worthy.
Getting caught with your legs wrapped around a mayor you supposedly hated was another story. “It's complicated.”

“I have time.” I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned against the counter.

She shook her head and went back to the potting room. Allen was sitting up now, propped up against one of the cabinets. “Give me one reason I shouldn't call the police and press charges against you for assault, Rebecca. Just one reason.”

“Just one?” I pretended to think. “Okay. Annie's reputation. How about that?”

Allen pressed his lips together so hard they pretty much disappeared. “Fine.”

At least he was a gentleman and at least I wouldn't have to explain to Dan why I'd had the cops called on me for a third time in the space of a week. Although I suspected he might have been happy to have an excuse to leave the Trout Fishing in America concert.

Annie crouched down and pressed the ice against the back of Allen's head. He winced and shrugged away. She made a clucking noise and he settled back down.

“How long has this been going on?” I asked.

They glanced at each other. “Since the chamber of commerce meeting about the snow-plowing contract,” Annie mumbled.

“The snow-plowing meeting? The one where you stood up in front of the whole town and accused Allen of using city contracts to line his own pockets? That meeting?” It had been an epic Norma Rae moment. Annie standing in front of the council, her hair a graying halo around her face, laying out exactly how Allen's proposal for snow clearance was going to end up profiting him and costing the town.

“Wasn't she amazing?” Allen looked up at Annie and smiled. She smiled back.

“Yes. But she was exposing your greedy and corrupt ways while she was being amazing. Isn't that a problem for you?” This was all so confusing.

He laughed. “A problem? No. A challenge? Absolutely. Do you have any idea how long it's been since someone has really challenged me? It was . . . exciting. Enervating. Got my blood boiling in ways it hadn't boiled in years.” He pulled Annie toward him and kissed her right on the mouth.

I shook my head. “And you? What's your explanation?” I asked Annie.

She arched a brow at me. “Not that I owe you any kind of explanation, but . . . Well, I forgot my umbrella at city hall that night. When I went back to get it, Allen was the only one there. We started arguing again and then, well, we weren't arguing anymore. That line between passion and anger can be very thin sometimes.”

Allen reached up, took her hand and brought it to his lips. “You have such fire. I don't know how any man can resist you.”

I felt like I'd been dropped down a rabbit hole. “But you two have been mortal enemies for as long as I can remember.”

Annie shrugged. “Imagine we're like Rock Hudson and Doris Day in
Pillow Talk
except I don't have those awesome hats.”

“And I'm not gay,” Allen chimed in.

“So all the times I've seen you prowling around the alley you were coming to meet Annie?” My theory casting Allen as Coco's murderer and Barbara's assailant was rapidly disintegrating.

Allen nodded and then winced again. “We weren't quite ready to go public. You're not the only one who's going to be surprised. My chamber of commerce friends are going to have a hard time getting used to Annie being at our cocktail mixers.”

“And imagine what my master gardeners' group is going to think about having Allen for tea!” Annie giggled. “We've been meeting at the store so no one sees us at each other's houses. I didn't think you were going to go all Nancy Drew on us.”

I turned back to Allen. “So you weren't looking for evidence you might have left behind when you murdered Coco?”

“When I what?” Allen squawked and started to stand up, then winced and sat back down again. “You thought I did what?”

I looked down at my feet. “I kind of thought you might have murdered Coco.”

“Why on earth would I do that?” He looked honestly confused.

“To get her property. I know Jessica is planning on selling it to you. Annie told me.” It finally dawned on me how Annie probably knew. Pillow talk, indeed. Ewww. I felt double dirty.

“Of course she is. I'm offering a good price so that I can consolidate my investments here downtown,” Allen said.

“And Coco wouldn't sell. I thought maybe you'd killed her because you knew Jessica was an easier mark.” A greedier mark, I corrected in my head.

Allen struggled to his feet and over to one of the cane-back chairs Annie had scattered around. “Look. I like business. I like buying and selling. It's like a game to me. Monopoly, but the board is real. I would no more murder someone to get access to a property than I would spit into the wind.”

“I also thought maybe it might have been an accident. You argued and pushed her and she fell and then you tried to make it look like someone broke in.” I sat down on one of the chairs. I felt tired all of a sudden.

“Please tell me you didn't share your theories with anyone,” Allen said plaintively.

“I maybe mentioned them to Dan.” I winced. “Sorry.”

“And what was his reaction?” Allen asked.

I looked down at my feet. “He told me I was crazy.”

“Good man. I'm going to see about getting him a raise.”

*   *   *

The next morning
on the way to POPS, Sprocket and I were walking up Tulip Lane when we saw the black SUV go through the intersection ahead of us. I hurried down the street to see if maybe I could get a license plate number to give to Dan, but then a green Honda Civic turned onto the street. Well, the driver tried to turn onto the street, but somehow turned too hard and jumped up onto the sidewalk. After bumping up onto the sidewalk, the driver clearly tried to correct, but overdid that as well. The Civic bumped back onto the road and headed directly toward a white PT Cruiser parked on the other side of the street. The driver corrected again, but sideswiped the Cruiser, screeching along the length of the car with that awful metal-on-metal sound that everyone knows heralds no one any good.

Sprocket surged forward, barking at the out-of-control automobile. I pulled back on his leash. Who knew where that crazy-ass car was going next? One place it wasn't going to go, however, was over my dog. Not unless it went over me first.