Untitled (22 page)

   "Hello." Unlike Eve, whose life is full of passion and grand emotion, mine has always been on a pretty even keel. I do not like uncontrolled feelings, mostly because I don't know what to do with them, at least not without looking like a complete idiot. If I needed proof, I had only to recall the way my marriage disappeared in a
poof
of smoke. Now, remembering the last, angry words Jim and I had, my stomach bunched.

   Don't worry. I handled the situation like a grown-up. I held my head high and walked out of the kitchen.

   The restaurant was a mob scene, but Heidi and Eve looked like they were taking it all in stride. I can't say the same for myself when I saw that in the two days I'd been gone, a sort of transformation had taken place. More of Uncle Angus's stuff was up on the walls. A (very bad) oil painting of the queen had joined Granny's cottage, Grandpa's walking stick, and the autographed photo of Mel Gibson in blue face paint. One of our beautiful sandalwood screens was nearly lost under the green and white tartan kilt that had been thrown over it. There was a yellow flag emblazoned with a red lion hung in a place of honor on the opposite wall.

   "It's a thing of beauty, you know?"

   I hadn't realized Larry, Hank, and Charlie were squeezed together at the far end of the bar until Larry spoke.

   I turned to him. "You're not talking about our decorating scheme, are you?" I asked.

   "Sure." Hank finished the last of his beer and slid off his barstool. The people waiting at the door sensed there would be open seats soon, and the crowd surged forward. "Good to see Jim hasn't completely abandoned his roots," he said. "There's hope yet for the boy. Now all he has to do is get rid of this snooty crowd so there's more time for us to visit."

   "And get the old menu back," Charlie piped up. "When you gonna add a hot dog special of the day?"

   More big points for me. Like the grown-up I am, I did not say,
When hell freezes over.
Instead, I scooted out of the way so Larry, Hank, and Charlie could leave and scooted even farther back when three ladies with big jewelry, big fur coats, and big attitudes nearly knocked me over in the effort to take their places before anyone else could.

   Once they were finally settled, I had a clear path to my office, but before I could get there, Jim walked out of the kitchen.

   Remember all that talk about being a grown-up? My maturity flew out of the window the moment I saw what he had in his hand. It was a potted thistle plant. Faux silk, of course, and all the more ugly for it. He plopped it down behind the bar and turned to me, an unspoken challenge glinting in his eyes.

   Can I be blamed for taking up the gauntlet?

   "What are you doing?" I made sure to keep my voice down. "Why are you ruining our decorating scheme?"

   "Arugula," he said, and while I stood there, baffled and trying to translate what he meant, he disappeared into the kitchen.

   I was still mulling over this curious turn of events when Eve motioned to me from the other side of the restaurant.

   "Annie, look who's here." She was standing near a table by the window, and she gestured to the woman seated there. It was Renee, one of Sarah's coworkers. I said hello and asked how she was doing. I didn't mention that I'd seen her just recently at the senator's fund-raiser, but I did remember how upset she'd been at the funeral luncheon.

   Renee had a mouthful of cheese and grilled vegetable omelet, so Eve answered for her. "Renee stopped by to see us," she explained. "She wants to talk. About Sarah."

   We decided that after Renee finished eating, she would come to my office. Until then, I grabbed hold of Eve's arm. Once we were inside the office, I shut the door.

   "No way is this a coincidence," I said.

   "You mean Renee? Of course not." Eve looked as pretty as a picture in black skirt and a gold silk blouse, but she was fiddling with her string of gold, black, and pumpkin-orange beads. "I called Renee and asked her to come by. Remember what Doug said at the luncheon," she added, and before I could ask how she and the senator were suddenly so friendly, she went right on. "He said that Sarah considered Renee a friend. I was thinking about it last night, and I decided that's exactly who we needed to talk to, one of Sarah's friends. A friend is going to know way more than anyone else about Sarah's personal life."

   I had to admit it, Eve was right. "And let me guess," I said. "You lured Renee here by promising her a free meal." Eve didn't answer. She didn't have to. And honestly, I didn't mind footing the bill. Not if it meant we might get some information in return.

   With that in mind, I shooed Eve back out into the restaurant and plunked down in my desk chair. A lot of paperwork had accumulated in the days since I'd last been there, but I wasn't worried. Oh, a few short weeks earlier with my old, mind-of-its-own computer, it would have been impossible to accomplish everything I needed to get done without a little angst and a whole lot of swearing. But fortunately and thanks to Charlene, things were looking up. At least in the computer department. There was, after all, a spanking-new computer in Sarah's apartment, and when Eve cleaned out the place and donated Sarah's clothes and furniture to a women's shelter as Charlene had requested, she'd also remembered that Charlene had said we could keep anything we wanted.

   "It's for a good cause," Eve had said, and as the QuickBooks program I'd installed the last time I'd been at the restaurant opened without a glitch and without the grinding of gears and whatsits I knew I would have heard from my old computer, I was grateful. With a cooperative machine, I'd have a big chunk of my work done before Renee finished eating. As long as I was paying for her meat, I wanted to be able to give her my full attention and find out all I could.

       Renee was a quick eater or maybe she was polite (or just easily pressured) and the fact that other folks were waiting for her table hurried her along. Within a half hour, she tapped at my door. I was in the middle of updating the Bellywasher's checking account, and I minimized the screen.

   "It was so nice of you to ask me to stop by." Renee's comment was pleasant enough, but she was, after all, used to working in the halls of power. She glanced uncertainly around my teensy-weensy office. Eve stepped inside, too, and once the door was closed, there wasn't much room for any of us to move. I motioned Renee toward the chair next to my desk, and she sat down. Eve stood with her back to the door.

   "We've been worried about you." I realized that my body language—sitting forward in my chair, bent toward Renee— was too patronizing. Slowly, I sat up and back. "Of all the people at the funeral luncheon, you were the most upset. Sarah was our friend, and we know she was your friend, too. We figured we should try to get through this together."

   Renee opened her purse and plucked out a package of tissues. She pulled one out and dabbed at her eyes. "I know I should be over the crying part by now, but I just can't help it. Anytime anyone talks about Sarah, the waterworks start."

   "That's understandable." Before I even realized I was doing it, I was leaning forward again. This time, I didn't make the correction. There was nothing condescending or insincere about the way I was treating Renee. I looked concerned because I was concerned. "She was your friend."

   Renee sniffed and nodded.

   "Which is why we wanted to talk to you." Even though

Renee's sudden appearance at Bellywasher's had caught me off guard, I knew what Eve had been thinking and why she'd invited her. It was a brilliant idea, really, just what we needed to help nudge our investigation along. At the same time I scolded myself for not thinking of the strategy myself like a real detective would have, I tried to ease quickly into the topic of Sarah and Dougy and the cruise. Eve was in the room—I knew if I waited too long, she'd say something she shouldn't.

   "Because you were Sarah's friend . . ." I gulped down my mortification and reminded myself that if I was ever going to be a real detective, I had to get over my reluctance to poke my nose into people's private business. "We figured you'd know about her personal life. You know, about the man she was going on that cruise with."

   Renee was a middle-aged woman with doughy features. Under the heavy coat of hide-the-wrinkles foundation she was wearing, her cheeks turned red. "Oh, I don't know." She scooted back in her chair. Just as I understood my own body language, hers was loud and clear.

   "You're not dishonoring her memory," I said, jumping in before Renee could convince herself that there was no way she was going to talk about this. "In fact, you might be helping."

   "That's right." For all her social skills, there was nothing subtle about Eve. She nodded enthusiastically. "You see, we don't think Sarah killed herself."

   "You can't think Dougy—" Renee hadn't meant to let the cat out of the bag. Her eyes bulged. The color in her cheeks drained and left her chalky.

   "It's OK," I said with an understanding smile. "We know about Sarah and Dougy. We know they were going on a cruise together."

   Renee nodded. She still had a tissue in her hands and she shredded it in tiny pieces. A few bits of debris floated off her lap and to the floor. I controlled the urge to sweep them up and concentrated on Renee. "We don't think Dougy had anything to do with Sarah's death," I told Renee, not that I was certain of it, but because I knew it would make her feel better. "We just want to understand everything that happened. We figured Sarah's relationship with Dougy is a good place to start."

   Renee's eyes glistened with unshed tears. "Nobody else knows this so please don't spread it around. I'm not supposed to know it, either, but Sarah, she was feeling a little guilty early on and one night when we went out for drinks, she told me. Sarah and Dougy had been seeing each other for a few months. Since you know about the cruise, you probably know that, too. From what Sarah told me, neither of them meant for it to be anything more than a fling. But then they got close. They loved each other. Truly."

   "Even though Dougy had to keep cleaning up the mistakes Sarah made at the office?"

   Renee, apparently, was an unrepentant romantic. "It didn't make any difference. Not in Sarah and Dougy's relationship."

   "He told us he didn't know there were any problems with Sarah's work."

   "He was being kind. Of course he knew." Renee rolled her eyes. "Jennifer had to clean up the messes, and Jennifer isn't quiet. About anything. No way Dougy didn't know. He just wanted to protect Sarah's memory. You understand."

   I nodded. "So what was the problem with Sarah's work?" I asked.

   Renee shrugged. "I never understood it. She had always been so thorough and so careful. Then, suddenly, everything just fell apart. Her information was scanty, her sources were unidentified. It was as if she couldn't hold it together any longer."

   Affairs of the heart were, after all, Eve's bailiwick. She pushed away from the door. "We heard it was because she was upset about her breakup with Dylan Monroe."

   "Then you heard wrong." Renee looked from Eve to me. "See, Dylan didn't break up with Sarah. She broke up with him."

   "But he told us—"

   Before she could say any more, I put up one hand to stop Eve. Once again, our investigation—and our suspicions—had come around to Dylan. We didn't need to broadcast them. Not in front of a woman who was practically a stranger.

   "Sarah broke up with Dylan because of Dougy," Renee said.

   "Was Dylan angry?" I countered.

   "Not that Sarah ever said. She cared for Dylan, but she wasn't in love with him. Not like she was with Dougy. It was really hard for her to tell Dylan there was someone else in her life, but once she did, he understood. He knew they could never be happy together."

   "Then Dougy was the one who made it possible for Sarah to live the way she did."

   Renee looked away. "You mean the fancy apartment and the dog and the clothes. I don't think so. Dougy's wife, Lorraine, she keeps pretty tight control on him. At least when it comes to finances. No way he could have been spending that kind of money on another woman without her knowing about it and no way she knew about it. Lorraine's one tough lady. She'd never put up with a cheating husband."

   "Then didn't you wonder where the money came from?"

   Another shrug from Renee. "I thought maybe Sarah had sold some of her photographs. You saw them, didn't you? In her apartment? She loved to take her camera out on her lunch hour and roam around taking pictures. Some of them were pretty good, too, and I figured she'd found a gallery to sell them. Then there was that story about her aunt, too. You know, the one who she said left her all that money."

   "But you didn't believe it?"

   Renee gave another shrug. I wondered if her shoulders were getting tired. "It was none of my business," she said. "I figured if Sarah wanted to talk, she'd talk. If not . . . well, then I guess she had nothing to say. But now you're saying . . ."

   She thought back over everything she'd learned since she walked into my office. Her dark brows dropped low over her eyes. "You think someone killed her? You think Dylan Monroe . . ." Renee dismissed the idea with a little laugh. "Come on, you've seen the guy. No way could he ever murder anyone. He's too good-looking."

   I wasn't sure what handsome had to do with hateful, but before I had the chance to argue, Renee checked her watch and popped out of her chair. "I've got to get moving. I hope you understand. I've got tickets for a concert at the National Gallery this afternoon." She sidestepped her way between my desk and Eve, who had automatically moved away from the door. Her hand already on the knob, she stopped and looked back at us.