Scoop to Kill (19 page)

To everyone’s relief, Alice didn’t put up a fuss. “Oh, all right. You can come, too.”

“Hey,” I said. “You can’t all leave me here on my own.”

It was a Wednesday night, unlikely to be particularly busy, but we had a rule that no one worked the store alone after dark. Even me.

“I can help,” Finn offered.

Bree laughed. “Help yourself to a vat of ice cream, most likely.” We’d all made a conscious effort to tease Finn, to keep him from dwelling too much on the loss of his friend.

Finn drew himself up in mock indignation. “I beg your pardon. I can roll up my sleeves and dip cones with the best of ’em.”

“Mmmm-hmmm,” she drawled. “Something tells me you’ve never done a lick of manual labor in your life.”

He clasped his hands over his heart and staggered back. “You wound me, Bree.” He opened one loden green eye. “Though you are absolutely correct.” He laughed and stood up. “There’s a first time for everything, right, Tally?”

“I guess we’re gonna find out,” I said.

 

Finn worked hard that night. I hadn’t counted on a rush of families following the curtain coming down on the community theater’s production of
Alice in Wonderland
. Wound-up kids and their harried parents swarmed the store, and both Finn and I were up to our armpits in junior sundaes for over an hour.

As the worst of the kid frenzy died down, I sent Finn to the back of the store to take a breather. The minute he disappeared, Rosemary and George Gunderson arrived with another couple. The two ladies tumbled through the door, arm in arm, their heads tipped together in eager conversation, while the men hung back and played the courtly gentlemen.

In their evening finery, the foursome stood out in the sea of golf shirts and jeans: Dr. Gunderson sported a natty tweed jacket and a bow tie, and Mrs. Gunderson wore a beaded satin shell and long velvet skirt, both in a refined wine color. Beauty parlor curls gave volume to her wintry white hair, and pearls the size of garbanzo beans studded her ears. She carried a small gold cake box in one hand and a beaded clutch in the other.

The other couple was also decked out in fancy clothes—he in a brass-buttoned navy blazer and Kelly-green-and-navy-striped tie, she in a peacock blue chiffon-skirted cocktail dress and a towering hairdo of golden-blond curls—but they blended a little better. It’s hard to put my finger on the differences, but the Gundersons just didn’t look like they belonged in Dalliance, Texas. Too much polish, not enough sparkle.

I greeted them with a big smile, and received one from Rosemary in return. George wore his usual dour expression, but I was learning not to take it personally.

“Tallulah Jones,” Rosemary said. “We’ve come to celebrate!”

“I can see that,” I said with a chuckle. The flush on the ladies’ cheeks and the twinkle in their eyes suggested at least one bottle of champagne for the evening.

Rosemary leaned across the counter conspiratorially. “The Grants, Hazel and Jim, have been married for forty years,” she said in a stage whisper.

“Hush, Rosie,” Hazel said. “You’ll have everyone doing the math and figuring out what an old lady I am.”

Rosemary giggled. “Nonsense. You were a child bride, after all.”

The two women laughed delightedly, while Jim and George Gunderson looked on with small smiles of indulgence.

“I’m so glad you decided to celebrate your fortieth with us,” I said.

Hazel stepped back and rested a hand on her husband’s arm. “On our very first date, Jim took me to an ice cream parlor after our movie. One malt, two straws.”

The soft smile on her face as she looked into Jim’s eyes made me melt a little. That one tiny twist of her lips spoke volumes of moonlit walks and gentle teasing and all the thousands of moments of quiet joy that made up a long, happy marriage.

“When Rosie suggested we come here for dessert, the soufflé and tiramisu at the Hickory Tavern lost all their luster.”

“I’ve just heard so many wonderful things,” Rosemary explained, “I finally decided I had to try your delicious ice cream myself. And now that you’ll be providing dessert for the benefit for Bryan Campbell, George here is intrigued, too.”

“The benefit will be an important event for Dickerson,” George intoned.

“Yes, I’ve hardly seen George these past two weeks. He’s been working late at the university every night, just like he did before he got tenure.”

George’s brow wrinkled, but Rosemary gave his arm a little squeeze. “Don’t worry, dear. I know your work is important, and Madeline’s been keeping me company.”

She held up her gold cardboard box. “I hope you don’t mind. We decided halfway through dinner that we should come here, but I’d already ordered my lemon soufflé, and I couldn’t let it go to waste.”

“Oh, of course I don’t mind,” I said. “What can I get for you?”

“What would you recommend?”

“Well, we make our ice cream using a traditional French pot method, so there’s very little air. As a result, it has a dense, velvety texture. It doesn’t really need dressing up. A dish of one or two of our signature flavors would be a good choice. My personal favorites are the raspberry mascarpone, the balsamic strawberry, and the dark chocolate-hazelnut. We also serve sundaes—sauced with brandied cherries, salted caramel, or bittersweet fudge, and topped with fresh whipped cream—milk shakes, and traditional malts.”

“Oh, my.”

A satisfying response. I smiled.

“What do you think, George?”

He removed his glasses and rested the temple piece against his lip, lowered his lids, and hummed thoughtfully.

I take my ice cream more seriously than most, but even I thought his heavy contemplation went over the top. More like Henry Kissinger considering diplomacy in Southeast Asia than a man considering dessert.

“I suggest,” he intoned in a sonorous voice, “we try the raspberry and the chocolate, a scoop of each.”

“Excellent choice,” I said, smiling right through the urge to roll my eyes.

Hazel snuggled up next to Jim. “We’ll have a chocolate malt. Two straws.”

I laughed. “Why don’t y’all take a seat, and I’ll have your ice cream ready in a jiff.”

While Hazel and Jim’s chocolate malt spun on the mixer, I dished up the Gundersons’ ice cream in small pressed-glass dishes and garnished them with complimentary vanilla pizzelles, cookies that looked like small, flat waffle cones.

I could have carried the dishes out in my hands, but I opted to use the tray we kept behind the counter. The mention of the Hickory Tavern reminded me that the Gundersons obviously had some cash to throw around. I hated to be a suck-up, but anything I could do to impress them could ultimately be good for business.

By the time I finished serving the foursome, chatting them up a bit and leaving them happily trading spoons of ice cream like a bunch of kids on their first date, Finn had returned from his break.

“They’re cute together, aren’t they?” he said.

“Who? The Grants or the Gundersons?”

“Both, I guess, but I was talking about the Gundersons.”

I watched George spoon his cherry onto Rosemary’s ice cream. She giggled, and I could see the blush on her cheeks from where I stood.

“Adorable. You know them, right?”

“The Gundersons? Not well.” Finn and I leaned against the back counter, watching the happy chaos of the families enjoying their sundaes and cones.

“I thought Rosemary was friends with your mom.”

“Yes, but just recently. They met in the hospital when Mom had her first stroke. Rosemary was being treated for breast cancer. She still comes to visit Mom every week, like clockwork, but I don’t intrude. Oh, and in between her strokes, Mom had them all over for dinner during one of my visits home. But just once.”

“All? I thought it was just George and Rosemary.”

“And her niece Madeline Jackson. I think the Gundersons are from Boston, but their niece went to law school at the University of Houston. She moved up to Dalliance when Rosemary got sick.” Finn grabbed a dishcloth from the tub of bleach water we kept beneath the counter and began wiping down the dipping wells. “She’s basically a daughter to the Gundersons, spending time with Rosemary every day. That’s how I knew about Kristen Ver Steeg’s practice.”

I stared at him blankly. “Who?”

“Kristen Ver Steeg. Bryan’s lawyer. She and Madeline Jackson are partners.”

Of course. Dalliance had grown over the years, sprawling out from the courthouse square in increasingly wide rings of strip malls and McMansion-filled neighborhoods, but it was still, fundamentally, a small town. You couldn’t sneeze without someone’s cousin saying “God bless.” Now, in the space of just a few weeks, I’d heard about this new law firm three times: they were the firm Bryan had hired to handle his dispute with Dickerson, they were the firm where Crystal’s fiancé, Jason, would be working this summer, and they were connected to the Gundersons.

Before I could comment on the small orbit of Dalliance society, my phone rang. Bree.

“Tally, did you know Kyle was a freakin’ genius?”

“I did not.” I grabbed another bleachy rag and got to work on the ledges of the display freezer.

“Well, he is. I don’t know what kind of weird voodoo he worked, but he managed to crack into that i-Cash system in about ten minutes flat.”

“Lord-a-mercy.” I didn’t even want to think about the sorts of mischief that boy could get into on the Internet. Identity theft, credit card fraud . . . it gave me chills.

“Yep. Turns out that Landry fella was telling the truth. He used his ID card to buy an egg-white omelet and dry rye toast at ten fifteen a.m. on the morning Bryan was murdered, and then he bought a double-chocolate lava cake at eleven thirty. Both at the faculty club, which, according to Alice, is a good twenty-minute walk across campus from Sinclair Hall.”

“Huh.” The bell above the store door rang as another family filed out. The evening was winding down. As soon as we got the place cleaned up, I could head home and do my reading for class.

Oy. Homework.

“But that’s not all we found,” Bree continued. “On a whim, I suggested Kyle look at Emily Clowper’s card use. Turns out that she used her ID card to buy a soft drink from the vending machine in the basement of Sinclair Hall at eleven fifty-six on the night she died.”

I straightened so fast, I knocked my head on the inside of the display freezer.

“Ow. What?”

Bree chuckled darkly. “You heard me, sister. Emily Clowper went to campus between the A-la-mode and home.”

“But she wasn’t allowed on campus,” I said.

“Well, that didn’t stop her. Whatever she was up to, it must have been important if she risked getting caught in her office when it was off-limits. Wanna bet that whatever she did or whoever she saw there got her killed?”

W
here Emily Clowper’s house had been pristine to the point of barrenness, her office looked like raccoons had been living in it.

The room—if I can be so bold as to call it that, since it was about the size of my walk-in freezer—held a battered metal desk and two dented filing cabinets. The middle drawer of one of the cabinets was wedged open, a spray of paper bursting from its depths, and a drift of still more paper littered the floor. Utilitarian shelves mounted on metal L-brackets lined one wall, their lengths packed with stacks of books, manila file folders, and mismatched three-ring binders. A poster from the Stratford Shakespeare Festival hung in a plastic frame on another wall.

And, mysteriously, a stuffed rooster—the sort you find in truck stops and flea markets across Texas, with a foam body covered in real chicken feathers and a red felt comb—perched on a corner of the desk, staring balefully at intruders.

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” I said.

Finn wrapped his arm around my shoulder and gave me a brief squeeze. “I can. Let’s face it, Tally. You can’t resist a little snooping.”

“This isn’t ‘a little snooping.’ This is crazy. Last time we committed a B and E, we got caught, remember? But that was just Wayne’s place.” Finn, Bree and I had broken into my ex’s office the year before, but we’d managed to talk him out of pressing charges. “I don’t think the Dickerson security guards will be so forgiving.”

“Relax. No one will catch us. It’s a Sunday afternoon. The guards are all probably holed up in the student center watching the Rangers game.”

Finn made himself at home behind Emily’s desk, and I perused her shelves.

“Are you going to be able to get into her computer?” I asked.

“Uh-huh,” Finn muttered. “The system requires a log-in, but Emily always used the same password for everything. Bella.”

Her childhood dog.

A renewed sense of anger welled up in me, a desire to punish whoever had ended Emily’s life so early. Whoever had prevented her from getting the dog she wanted so much.

“Huh.”

“What did you find?” I moved around behind Finn so I could see the computer screen.

“It looks like the last file she had open was a spreadsheet. It’s titled EmilyGrant.”

I leaned in for a better look. “Sure, she was applying for a grant to go out east to work on her book. Remember, Alice brought her a copy of the proposal on her little key-chain thingamabob.”

“This spreadsheet was modified the night she died,” Finn said. “If Alice brought the files to Emily, why would she come in here to work on it? She could have gotten in trouble if she’d been caught on campus. Why risk it for a file she already had?”

He hit a button on the computer and the spreadsheet disappeared. In its place was a window with little labeled images.

“This is the folder EmilyGrant was saved in.” He manipulated the cursor so that it sat on one of the images. “Look, here’s another spreadsheet file. Grant_ Calc_Temp.”

He double-clicked on that image, and another grid of numbers popped up. Another click, and the first spreadsheet appeared side by side with the second.