Kernel of Truth (6 page)

Dan shrugged and took another bite of burger. “He acted like he didn't even know anything bad had happened to Coco. It was after we told him there'd been a break-in and that Coco was dead that he pulled out the frying pan. I'm just glad that we can put this to bed. I wasn't crazy about the idea of a murderer roaming the streets of Grand Lake on my watch.”

“Me, neither.” Apparently someone capable of murdering Coco had been wandering the streets of Grand Lake for pretty much as long as I could remember. I shuddered. I'd been alone in the alley countless times when Jasper had come along to pick up the leftover popcorn from me and dig through the trash behind the diner. I shuddered harder when I thought about the times he'd come by when Susanna was alone at the shop. And that was only since I'd moved back! It was crazy to think about how long we'd all discounted
Jasper as crazy, but not dangerous. It was devastating to think about how wrong we'd all been.

Dan waved a hand in front of my face to get my attention. Apparently, I'd been staring into space a little too long. “So be happy it's over. I know it won't bring Coco back, but at least no one else will get hurt.” Dan took another bite of hamburger.

“Wait a second.” I ate another French fry while I figured out what was bugging me. “Do you think Jasper was telling the truth about what time he was in the alley?”

“We're going to be double-checking to see who saw him that evening, but it sounds about right.” He pulled my plate toward him and started eating my grilled cheese sandwich.

“What was Coco still doing there that late? That's not like her.” Coco was pretty much an “early to bed, early to rise” kind of gal. I couldn't think of anything that would keep her at her shop that late.

Dan shrugged. “Working on her books? Planning new truffle recipes? I have no idea.”

I didn't, either. And now we'd probably never know.

*   *   *

Sunday morning is
my morning to sleep in. POPS is a seven-day-a-week prospect at this point, but all work and no play makes Rebecca nearly as homicidal as Jack Nicholson in
The Shining
. So I don't open POPS until two o'clock on Sunday afternoons and I don't get up until I wake up. Unless, of course, my cell phone rings at eight thirty in the morning. Then I roll over and fumble for the phone as it vibrates its way across my bedside table.

“Hello,” I mumbled into it, not looking to check the caller ID.

“Darling, are you all right?” Antoine asked with that hint of a French guttural
R
in
right
that used to drive me wild in
a good way as opposed to the way it was getting on my last nerve at the moment.

“I was all right. I was sleeping.” I checked the time again. If it was eight thirty here, it was five thirty in California. Of course Antoine was up already. He'd probably already been to the farmers' market and the fish market to pick out whatever he would use in tonight's menu at L'Oiseau Gris.

“I have just heard about poor Coco.
Quelle tragedie!
”

I pushed myself up into a sitting position in the bed, careful to keep from knocking my head on the sloping ceiling. There are some downsides to an over-the-garage apartment and I'd learned that one the hard way the first week I'd moved in. Luckily, my head is almost as hard as Huerta's. “How do you know about Coco?”

“It is right here on the front page of the
Grand Lake Sentinel
! How could I miss it?”

“Why are you reading the
Grand Lake Sentinel
? What could possibly interest you in that paper?” Seriously, they didn't even have a Food section unless you counted the recipes they ran in Penelope's Corner once a month, and most of those were for casseroles that involved crumbled up potato chips as a topping. Delicious, I grant you. Haute cuisine? Not so much.

There was a pause. “You interest me, so I am interested in what happens in the town you live in.”

I leaned forward and rested my forehead against my knees and let that sink in for a moment. “Like you were interested in me in Minneapolis, Antoine?”

“Oh,
chérie
, will you ever find it in your heart to forgive me for that?” He sounded sad, but I knew better.

“Probably not.” Once you've been abandoned in Minneapolis in January, you pretty much carry it forever. Antoine had been taping a segment on winter comfort food. As the taping
finished, he'd gotten a call from his agent telling him that he had a gig in Miami the next day. Antoine sent an assistant to get his stuff from the hotel and check out.

I'd left the hotel to go to the Guthrie for the day. I came back to find out I had no hotel room and no clothes but the ones on my back and that my husband had already flown from the frozen wasteland of the upper Midwest in January to go to sunny Florida. He'd forgotten I was even there.

“You have no idea how sincerely I regret that lapse in memory,
mon coeur
, but now we have more important things to discuss. It is not safe for you in this Grand Lake. Your friend, your mentor, your neighbor has been murdered! You must come back to California where I can keep you safe.”

I felt a twinge. Life with Antoine had definitely been easier. I hadn't had to work unless I wanted to. Doors opened for me magically, if for no other reason than someone behind the door wanted to get to Antoine. I hadn't had to worry about paying bills or calculating sales tax or how to take a day off. I also hadn't been very happy.

I considered all the various responses possible to me. I settled on, “No,” and hung up the phone.

Coco's Cocoas stayed
dark Sunday afternoon. There was no sandwich board on the sidewalk advertising whatever Coco had picked to feature that day. There were no lights on in the window. No fudge set out on doily-covered crystal platters in the window. It would have been disrespectful for Jessica to open the shop so soon, but my heart twisted uncomfortably in my chest anyway when I saw the dark windows. Jessica had already made an overture to Allen about selling the shop. She might never open the shop again. I wasn't sure she should. She'd never be able to do Coco's recipe honor. She didn't have the kitchen sense.

Kitchen sense, however, was pretty much the only decent sense I had. I certainly didn't have good sense in picking men. Or life paths. Sense and cooking muscle memory led me through my prep in POPS's kitchen. Well, sense and Sprocket occasionally nosing me to break me out of staring into space.

Grief sucked.

Everything was almost ready. I flipped the sign on the door from Closed to Open and flicked the switch that lit up my window display. I was still putting popcorn balls on display trays when Janet Barry came in, pushing her double stroller.

“I wasn't sure you'd be open,” she said as I held open the door for her. It wasn't easy getting one of those land cruiser strollers through a door on your own. Her two-year-old, Lucas, was asleep in the back of the stroller, one chubby arm flung up over his head, the other dangling a woolly stuffed sheep over the side. The one-year-old, however, was wide-awake and banging his
Yo Gabba Gabba!
teether on the front rail of the stroller like he was auditioning as a drummer for Yo La Tengo.

“I wasn't sure I would be, either,” I admitted. “Was there something in particular you wanted?”

“A tiny bag of the caramel cashew?” She said it as if she were asking for a little bag of crack, all whispery and furtive.

“If you give me a second. The fresh batch is almost ready. It's best when it's warm.” I patted little Jack on the head and turned to go into the kitchen.

He pointed the teether at Sprocket and said, “Bow wow wow!”

Sprocket replied with something along the lines of “Aroo roo.”

Jack laughed with such an open mouth that I could see all four of his teeth. Then he pounded even harder on the stroller. Sprocket crept closer and sniffed his tiny sneaker. The baby giggled.

“I'll be right back.” I'd barely made it into the kitchen when Sprocket dashed past me to his bed in the corner of the kitchen and wailing started in the shop.

Poodles have notoriously soft mouths. It comes from back
when they were hunting dogs. Sprocket apparently likes to show this off by stealing toys from babies or items out of purses or, really, whatever he thinks he can get away with. It's not nearly as useful as carrying a duck without leaving any teeth marks, but he was still darned proud of it. Right now he was carrying the woolly sheep toy that I'd just seen in the hands of the sleeping Lucas.

I stood in front of Sprocket, hands on hips, and looked directly into his eyes. He sat.

“Drop it,” I said.

He did.

Lucas was wide-awake and screaming. Janet was trying to console him.

“I'm so sorry,” I said as I handed the toy back to Janet after rubbing the dog slobber off on my jeans.

She took it from me between her thumb and index finger like it had been dipped in Ebola rather than a little dog spit.

“The popcorn's on me.” I turned to go back to the kitchen.

“Never mind,” Janet said. “I'll come back later.” She trundled her way out of the shop, Lucas still screaming and Jack still banging with his teether and yelling, “Bow wow wow wow wow.”

I turned to give Sprocket a dirty look. “You keep losing me customers and I'm going to start buying the generic dog food for you.”

He lay down and put one paw over his eyes.

The door jingled and Susanna came in. “What'd the beast do this time?” she asked, going to get her apron.

“Stole a toy from a baby.” I shook my head in disgust.

“Again?” She shook her head at Sprocket. He sunk lower and put his other paw over his eyes as well. “Well, at least he feels bad.”

“He's faking it. Don't be taken in by those big brown
eyes.” I headed into the kitchen to finish getting the caramel cashew popcorn ready in case Janet Barry actually did come back.

When I came back out, Sam Vander sat with his ridiculously long legs stretched out and propped on the chair opposite him. “Sam, get your shoes off the furniture.”

“Yes, Ms. Rebecca.” There was something about Sam's tone of voice. I was never sure if he was being sincere or being so incredibly sarcastic that it sounded sincere. He gave me his full smile now and I decided it didn't matter as long as he got his feet off the chair, which he did.

“And you have to get up if we get real customers,” I added.

“I'm not a real customer?” Sam scratched Sprocket under the chin. Sprocket's back leg thumped the floor in appreciation.

“No. You're not.” What Sam was was Susanna's boyfriend. Maybe. They certainly spent a lot of time together for two kids who didn't have a lot of spare time. Susanna had lacrosse and youth group at the church and, of course, her job at POPS. Sam, who had a wingspan that could almost rival Michael Phelps's, could stand in the goal and block soccer balls all day while barely moving his feet. Plus he went to the church youth group meetings, too, and, come to think of it, spent an awful lot of time at POPS as well.

I went back into the kitchen and got two popcorn balls that had come out more like popcorn amoebas and gave them to Sam. He ate the first one in two bites. Honestly, it was like watching a snake unhinge its jaw to swallow a goat. “I think you might be the shop garbage disposal.”

He laughed. “That's what my mom says about me, too. And coach. And Miss Jessica sometimes.”

“Poor Miss Jessica,” Susanna said. “She's not doing so hot.”

“Grief is hard.” I knew that all too well. “What's going on with Miss Jessica? Something in particular?”

“She feels so guilty about not checking on Ms. Coco. She kind of collapsed at church this morning. Mr. Meyer had to drive her home,” Susanna said.

I did not roll my eyes and I did bite back the twenty-seven sarcastic remarks that were on the tip of my tongue even if swallowing them down was harder than swallowing a dry scone. It was like Jessica was going all over town making sure people saw how much she was grieving. “We all feel guilty about not checking on Ms. Coco. Annie feels terrible. She was on the back porch to drop off sachets and didn't go in. I feel awful, too.” I wasn't collapsing publicly and making it all about watching me have appropriate emotions, though, was I?

“Yeah, but Miss Jessica was out. It wouldn't have taken her more than a minute or two to check on Miss Coco,” Sam said.

I smiled. Ah, the egocentrism of teenagers. “I'm not sure I'd call running the ice cream social for the youth group being out. What time did you finish up?”

“I helped Miss Jessica carry the last few things to her car at about nine fifteen. She was going to the store to buy some bandages for the burns on her fingers and then going home.” Sam ate the second popcorn ball and then let Sprocket lick his fingers clean.

I made a face. “Wash your hands, Sam. That's pretty precise recollecting.”

He grinned. “I didn't have to be home until ten and neither did Susanna.”

Nine fifteen. Just a few minutes before Jasper would be looking in Coco's back window, breaking it and then killing Coco for a few hundred dollars and some truffles. No wonder Jessica felt guilty. If she'd driven by, she'd have caught Jasper in the act. I felt another twinge of sympathy for her.
I'd never forget her red eyes and pale face at the shock and horror of finding her aunt dead. I shook myself. She didn't check on her aunt. She hadn't seen Jasper and Coco was dead. No wonder she was falling apart all over town.

I told Sam to stop tilting his chair back before he broke it and went back to the kitchen to make more popcorn.

*   *   *

Sprocket and I
were getting ready for bed when I heard Dan tear out of the driveway on Sunday night. I texted Haley:
What's going on?

A few seconds later, my phone chirped with Haley's return text:
Another break-in.

Me:
Where?

Haley:
Granny's Nooks and Crannies

Crap. That was only a block from POPS. It was run by Barbara Werner, one of Coco's closest friends and another fiercely independent little old lady. I texted again:
Is Barbara okay?

Haley:
Still breathing.

I pulled on my Ugg boots, threw on a fleece jacket, snapped on Sprocket's leash and we flew down the stairs and into the night. The streets were empty. No one was out. A little fingernail slice of moon hung over the lake. As I hustled along, streetlights made the trees cast shadows that felt as if they were reaching out to grab me with gnarled fingers. I kept a tight grip on Sprocket's leash and pulled my jacket tighter around me. The fleece didn't keep out enough of the cold. I'd need a real winter coat this year, something with down or wool or both. The only other moving thing I saw was an SUV gliding down Marina Road as Sprocket and I sped by on foot. Whoever was driving didn't stop. By the time we actually made it to Granny's, I'd started to calm
down only to have my heart rate ratchet back up again when I saw the ambulance with its flashing lights parked in front of the store.

Huerta shepherded the EMTs out of the store. Sprocket barked twice and Huerta looked up. “Rebecca, what are you doing here?”

“I heard there was a break-in. Is Barbara okay?” My breath made puffs of steam on the cold night air.

Huerta looked down at the gurney being pushed by the two EMTs. I looked, too. Barbara's face was as white as bleached flour, but the side of her head was dark with matted blood. “I'm fine, Rebecca,” she said in a voice that sounded anything but.

“What happened?” I walked over and took her hand. It was even colder than mine.

“I don't really know. Whoever it was came up from behind and clonked me but good.” She grimaced.

“I can see that. Why?” It seemed so unnecessary.

“Cash register's cleaned out,” Huerta said, by way of explanation.

“Like Coco's?” I asked.

He nodded. “Just like Coco's. Right down to the back window being smashed in.”

“I don't know why I didn't hear it.” Barbara shook her head and then winced. “Didn't even have to do it, for that matter. I hadn't even locked the door yet.”

“Ma'am?” one of the paramedics said.

I looked around and then realized he was talking to me. “Yes?”

“We'd really like to get Ms. Werner here to the hospital to get more thoroughly checked out, if you don't mind.” He gave me a look that said his tone might be polite, but it wouldn't stay that way if I didn't get out of the way.

“Sorry. I'll stop by tomorrow, Barbara,” I called as I stepped back and they loaded her into the back of the ambulance.

Her hand fluttered at me, and then she was gone.

“Jasper's still locked up, right?” I asked Huerta.

He nodded. “I still gotta ask, though, Rebecca. Why are you here?”

I opened my mouth to answer and then realized I didn't have a good response. “I'm not sure. Haley told me there'd been another break-in and I guess I wanted to see for myself. Barbara was good friends with Coco. I suppose I was feeling a little protective.”

Huerta muttered something into the walkie-talkie thing on his shoulder and in a few seconds Dan was out on the sidewalk, too. “Go home, Rebecca,” he said without preamble greeting or anything. He didn't look even remotely happy to see me.

“What?”

“I said go home. There's no reason for you to be here. Go home, lock your door and go to bed. This isn't your concern.” His face was grim in the flashing lights of the police cruiser and the ambulance.

“Excuse me, but business owners in the neighborhood where I own a business are being clubbed over the head in their stores. I think it might be my concern.” Maybe I would be next.

He shook his head. “Don't start with me. This isn't a joke. Coco is dead and Barbara is lucky that she's still alive. Go home and let me do my job.” And the person he'd arrested for Coco's murder had an airtight alibi for the attack on Barbara. He didn't say that part, but it couldn't have been far from his mind.

Sprocket was already tugging at his leash back in the direction we'd come from. He was such a traitor sometimes. “Fine. I'll go.”

*   *   *

I did. But
that didn't mean I didn't stop by on my way to work the next morning.

Huerta was right. Barbara's back porch looked exactly like Coco's had. Like, too exactly, especially since Barbara had said the back door wasn't even locked. Of course, part of the resemblance was that a lot of the little bungalows in this area had all been built at about the same time by the same builders and had pretty much the same floor plans. Even given that, though, the similarities were startling. The burglar had broken in the lower left-hand pane of the back window in both places, I guessed to reach in and open the door from the inside.

That's when I froze. It was kind of a long reach from that windowpane to the doorknob. I walked up onto Barbara's porch. Someone had taped cardboard over the broken pane, for what good that would do. It was a matter of a couple of seconds' work to peel that back. I reached my arm through and reached for the knob.

I couldn't reach it. It was on the opposite side of the door. I pulled my arm back out, snagging my favorite blue sweater as I did it. “Damn it,” I muttered. I tried to inspect my elbow, not exactly the easiest thing on the planet to do. It would have to wait until I got to the shop and could take it off to see how much damage I'd really done. I glanced at my watch and realized how late I was running. I put a little more hustle in my step and Sprocket and I got to the shop by six forty-five. It would be enough time to have everything made, fresh
and ready, when I opened the doors at seven thirty, but only barely. As I unlocked the front door, I heard the sound of a car in the alleyway. Annie didn't usually get in this early unless she had a big order. I went through to the kitchen to see if it was her and got there in time to see Mayor Thompson's Lexus pull out.