A Parfait Murder (11 page)

She sniffed, and pulled away. “Maybe that’s what he deserves.”

She turned and stormed away, my pleas to her to stop so we could make amends falling on deaf ears.

I quickly fell back to scooping with Kyle, but when Beth arrived to spell us for dinner, Kyle tugged on my sleeve.

“That lady’s full of crap,” he said.

“What lady? And don’t say ‘crap.’ ”

We shared a smile at the absurdity of me telling him to watch his language. “Sorry, Miz Tally,” he mocked gently. “That lady who was talking about Mr. Gentry.”

“Eloise?”

“Yeah. Mr. Gentry is a nice guy. And he’s got a girlfriend who’s doing mission work in Peru. She’s older than him, too.” He said this last as though it were beyond comprehension, that a man might date an older woman. I decided to let it slide.

“How do you know so much about Tucker Gentry? You don’t go to One Word, do you?” I was pretty sure if Kyle Mason stepped foot inside the One Word Bible Church, they’d launch a flash exorcism.

“No, but my buddy Matt’s in Mr. Gentry’s youth group. He talks about Mr. Gentry and his girlfriend all the time. I think Matt’s going to go on some mission trip with them at Christmas. If he can convince his new secret girlfriend to go with him.”

Despite myself, I was intrigued. “Secret girlfriend?”

Kyle snorted. “Matt’s kind of a dork. He’s real romantic.”

I’d seen the way Kyle looked at Alice. If being romantic was dorky, Kyle’s cool cred was gone.

“I confess, Kyle, I’m surprised you hang out with someone in an evangelical youth group.”

Kyle grimaced. “Matt’s okay. He’s straight-edge.”

“Straight-edge?”

“He’s in a rock band, really hard-core, but not into drugs and stuff. Like ‘punk rock for Jesus.’ He’s got all these tats and piercings, but he won’t drink caffeine.”

“And that’s okay with the One Word folks?”

“I don’t know about the rest of them, but it’s okay with Mr. Gentry. He even gave Matt’s band a place to practice.”

“I guess that is pretty cool.”

“He understands the kids. Cuts ’em slack when they mess up. On that spring break trip? Those Methodist kids all got loaded at some bar called Juan McCool’s. Tequila slammers. That Dani girl threw up all over the inside of the van they rented. Mr. Gentry lost the deposit.”

“Dani Carberry got drunk on tequila? She’s not even eighteen!”

Kyle looked at me as if I were the biggest nerd in the world. Which, I suppose, I was. Just because kids couldn’t get booze legally didn’t mean they couldn’t get booze. Especially cute girls on spring break.

“Well, didn’t she get arrested?”

“No. Like I said, Mr. Gentry’s a cool guy. Not cool like I’d want to hang out with him, but okay. He didn’t turn in the kids to the cops because he knew that it would make it harder for them to apply for scholarships and stuff.”

I wasn’t sure Tucker showed the best judgment in letting the kids off so easy, but it made me wonder why Dani Carberry and her mother would be so dead set against a man who had actually done Dani a big favor.

A
few hours later, Kyle and Beth were taking care of business at the fair while Grandma Peachy and her girls—me, Bree, and Alice—spent some quality time at the A-la-mode. Peachy had decided the ladies’ room needed repainting, so she and Alice were in ratty shorts and T-shirts, do-rags tied around their heads, and paintbrushes in their hands.

Peachy’s scrawny legs, the skin tissue-paper thin and traced with dark veins, sticking out from the hems of her saggy cargo shorts, made me want to hug her tight. It reminded me how very old she was, something I tended to forget because her mind (and her temper) was still so sharp.

“You missed a spot, little girl,” she snapped, stabbing her paintbrush at a spot above Alice’s head where the original white still shone through the robin’s-egg blue Peachy had chosen.

“Cut me some slack, old woman,” Alice quipped back. “I’m shorter than you.”

Peachy cackled in delight. Peachy’d raised us to be feisty, and it pleased her that Alice had a little vinegar in her.

The bell at the door rang, and I hushed Peachy and Alice. Their good-natured sniping was fine for family, but I didn’t want them scaring off customers.

But it wasn’t a customer coming to visit. It was Cal McCormack. And by the grim set to his mouth, he wasn’t popping in for a milk shake.

I approached him cautiously. “Hey, Cal. What’s up?”

“Is Bree here?” he asked softly.

“In the back.”

He glanced over my shoulder to the propped-open door of the ladies’ room. Inside, Peachy and Alice were flicking paint at each other. I was going to have to pay Kyle overtime to clean up the mess they were making.

Cal cleared his throat. “Let’s mosey back there and have a chat with her.”

I shot Cal a questioning look, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. That was bad news, indeed.

We found Bree in the back, whistling softly as she poured a batch of cinnamon-scented custard base into a whirling vertical batch freezer. She set the empty plastic tub on the floor and, with a practiced move, lowered the long, screwlike blade into the freezer.

She grabbed the tub and turned to toss it in the industrial-sized sink, but she froze when she saw us.

Some silent exchange passed between Cal and Bree. Even knowing my cousin as well as I did, I couldn’t read all the emotions that flitted across her face. But in the end, she sighed.

“Really?” she asked.

“‘Fraid so,” Cal replied. “I’m not gonna use the cuffs, and we can go out the back so Alice doesn’t see, but . . .” He shook his head. “Listen, I don’t want to do this, but better me than someone else.”

“It’s okay, Cal,” Bree said with a sad smile. “If I’m gonna be arrested, it may as well be by a tall, handsome lawman. Like in a romance novel.”

At her backhanded compliment, Cal’s neck colored above his buttoned collar. “Look, this isn’t a question, Bree, and I don’t want you to say a word without a lawyer, but I want you to know. We pulled your phone records from the night before Kristen was murdered, looking for that call you said you got. According to the phone company, only one number called your home line. And that’s a cell phone listed in the name of Alice Anders.”

“What? My daughter didn’t—” Bree began, but Cal cut her off with a sharply raised hand.

“Not a word. You hear. That was just information.” He shot me a meaningful look.

Holy guacamole, but I thought Cal McCormack, who’d spent much of the last year trying to convince me to mind my own beeswax, was encouraging me to meddle.

“I gotta do the official stuff now.” He cleared his throat again. “Bree Michaels, you are under arrest for the murder of Kristen Ver Steeg. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say. . .”

I listened to Cal reciting the words I’d heard on the TV so many times before, my whole body numb as I watched Bree nod calmly to indicate she understood.

“Do you understand these—”

“Mama, Gram just wrote a dirty word—”

Alice tumbled into the back room just as Cal was finishing reading Bree her rights and as he was taking her gently by the arm to lead her away.

“What’s going on?” Alice demanded.

“It’s okay, honey. Aunt Tally will explain everything.”

Dear heavens, I’d rather explain anything in the world to the girl—sex, quantum physics, politics—than why Cal was taking her mother to jail.

“Mom!” The note of panic in Alice’s voice made her sound even younger than her seventeen years. Made her sound like a child. A child who needed her mommy.

“Hush, Alice,” Bree soothed, even as Cal held open the back door for her. “I’ll be home soon.”

As the door whooshed shut behind her, I rushed to Alice and wrapped my arms around her to support her.

“It’s okay, Alice,” I said, praying I was telling the truth. “It’s just a mistake. We’ll get it straightened out soon.”

 

Cal must have pulled some serious strings, but he managed to get Bree booked and arraigned within a few hours. Bail was set at a staggering figure we couldn’t possibly afford to cover, but Finn—whose mother had transferred the deed to her house to him before moving into the nursing home—put up his suburban house as collateral on her bond.

“We’re family,” he explained simply. “That’s what we do.”

As a result, Bree was back in the bosom of her family by dinnertime.

For the first time since we’d opened, I actually shut down the A-la-mode without notice. Just posted a sheet of paper on the door that read COME VISIT US AT THE FAIR, where Beth and Kyle were holding down the fort.

The family, Finn included, gathered at the house, a pan of hastily prepared spinach lasagna, garlic bread, beer, and a plate of Peachy’s butterscotch bars providing sustenance.

“What I don’t understand,” Bree said around a mouthful of garlic bread, “is why Kristen’s call isn’t showing up on the phone company’s records. I swear she called me.”

“Did you get any other calls that night?” Finn asked.

“That’s just it. Cal said that I did get a call—from Alice. But Alice didn’t call. Did you, baby?”

Alice stopped chewing midbite. She grabbed for her glass of water and washed down the lasagna that had apparently gotten stuck in her craw.

“Oh, Mama,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

“What for?” Bree looked as lost as I felt.

“I lost my phone.”

“So? It’s just a cheapie. We’ll get you a new one.”

“No, I mean I lost my phone that night. The night Dad—Sonny came back to town.”

“Help me out here,” Bree said, a note of impatience creeping into her voice.

Pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place, and I jumped in. “After the big confrontation between you and Sonny at the fairgrounds, after you told Alice her daddy was back in town, Alice borrowed Kyle’s Bonnie and took a little spin. Right?”

Alice nodded, miserable. “Yeah.” She reached a hand out toward her mother, letting it rest on the dining table between them. “I know I told you I didn’t care he was back, that I didn’t want to see him, but I did. I didn’t want to talk to him, exactly, just see him. You know?”

Bree closed the gap and settled her hand on top of Alice’s. “I know, baby.”

Poor Alice cleared her throat. “I drove around looking for him. I heard he was driving a nice car, a shiny red Lexus. I finally spotted it at nearly ten that night, parked at the Dutch Oven.”

“Sonny always loved their pancakes,” Bree muttered.

The Dutch Oven had once been a national chain pancake house, but the franchisee had gotten tired of paying money to some big corporation. He’d changed the name, painted the restaurant’s A-frame roof from blue to red, and planted a windmill he’d bought from a defunct mini-golf outlet in the parking lot. I don’t know how much he changed the chain’s recipe, but he’d managed to avoid a lawsuit.

“I parked the Bonnie right next to the Lexus, figuring I’d wait for him. But it was hot, so I got out and sat on the hood. I saw him inside, sitting with these two ladies—one blond, one redheaded. I pulled out my phone because I’d scanned that picture of him from my baby book—the one where he’s holding me and smiling?—and I had it saved on the phone. I recognized him from that picture.”

Lord. No little girl should have to recognize her daddy that way, by seeing the resemblance between him and a grainy Polaroid picture.

“I was sitting there waiting, trying to figure out what I’d say, when the blond lady came out. She asked me who I was.” Alice looked down in her lap, ashamed. “I said some ugly things. I don’t even remember what. But I told her that the man she was having coffee with had abandoned his wife and child. That he was a horrible human being and she must be horrible, too, if she was hanging around with him.

“I slid off the hood of the Bonnie. I’m not sure whether I was going to leave, or whether I was going to storm into the Dutch Oven and pick a fight with him. But the blond lady grabbed me by the arm.”

Alice swallowed hard. She kept calling the woman “the blond lady,” but we all knew it was Kristen Ver Steeg she’d met in the parking lot. I wondered briefly whether depersonalizing her helped Alice cope a little.

“The lady told me that I was right. Sonny wasn’t a good guy. But she knew about bad guys, and she’d take care of it. I pulled away from her, climbed in the Bonnie, and took off.

“I pulled into the Mickey-D’s parking lot just down the highway, planning to call Kyle, but my phone was gone. I must have dropped it in the parking lot.”

Bree nodded. “And Kristen picked it up. That’s how she got the number for the landline in my bedroom. And that’s why the phone records only show one call that night, from your phone.”

“I’m sorry, Mama! I should have told you I saw her that night. I should have told you I lost my phone. But I didn’t know you’d get arrested because I screwed up.”

Bree slid off her chair and knelt at Alice’s side, pulling her daughter into a brutal hug. “Honey, you didn’t screw up. And you didn’t get me arrested. Cal made it clear the prosecutor got the indictment based on the physical evidence at the fair. They didn’t even have the phone records when they went to the grand jury.”

Finn, Peachy, and I had been silent observers during Alice’s bleak confession, but Peachy finally chimed in.

“That Sonny Anders is up to no damn good. I wish I knew what dirty piece of business brought him slithering back to Dalliance and into our lives.”

Finn piped up. “Funny you should mention it. Mike Carberry told me that Sonny had invited a select group of Dalliance businessmen to the Parlay Inn tonight. Said he wanted to present them with a proposition.”

“A deal with the devil?” Peachy asked.

Finn grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze. “What do you say, kiddo? Want to go see what Sonny Anders has to offer the good people of Dalliance?”