Éclair and Present Danger (24 page)

“I'm going to. I just want to think on it a little longer. In case I'm wrong. I mean, maybe he moved the coin somewhere else. Maybe he sent it off to be cleaned.”

“He polished it himself,” Renee offered. “He even showed me
how
he cleaned it two block parties ago.”

She felt the sag of her shoulders and glanced back at the oven.

Three minutes . . .

She didn't know what to say.

Renee, of course, wasn't afflicted with that problem. “Sounds like someone knew what Bart was sitting on.”

She returned her gaze to Renee. “So you think he was killed for the coin, too?”

“It's missing, right?”

“Yes.”

“And it's worth seven point five mil, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then I think it's a no-brainer.”

“But who could possibly know what that thing was worth if Bart never told anyone?”

“That's simple,” Renee said as the timer beeped and she made a beeline for the freezer and the chilled chocolate pieces. “A collector.”

S
he was halfway through her lasagna when she realized Greg had barely touched his Penne alla Bolognese. In fact, not only was he not eating, he'd stopped talking, too.

“You don't like it?” Winnie pointed her fork at the man's plate and then directed it back to her own. “Because mine is
amazing
. Truly,
truly
amazing.” (Okay, so maybe the second
truly
was a bit much.)

“It must be considering you haven't said anything since the waiter brought it to the table.”

She racked her brain for some sort of fun retort but gave up when she realized he wasn't kidding. “I—I'm sorry. I guess I was just hungrier than I realized.”

“Busy day?”

Resting her fork on the side of the plate, Winnie reached for her water glass and took a sip, his gaze narrowing in on her face as she did. When she was done, she set the glass back down and wiped her mouth on her cloth napkin. “We only had two rescues today, but the second one involved a slightly more complicated recipe.”

“I see.”

“Between
that
and not sleeping terribly well last night, I guess I never really gave much thought to eating until now.”

“So it was the lack of sleep that had you saying very little before the food showed up, too?” he asked, not unkindly.

She looked down at her plate and then back up at her dinner companion, her ravenous hunger suddenly not so ravenous anymore. “I'm sorry, Greg. It's just . . .”

The sentence fell away as Jay Morgan walked past the restaurant's front window. Dressed in a simple pair of jeans and a Henley-style shirt, the business teacher seemed distracted as he crossed the span of the window and disappeared from her sight.

“You know that guy?”

She kept her eyes on the window, hoping Jay had forgotten something and would have to double back just so she could see him again . . .

“Winnie?”

When he didn't return in a reasonable amount of time, she reengaged eye contact with Greg. “I'm sorry, did you say something?”

“I did. But it doesn't matter. It's obvious your mind is somewhere else.”

His voice was matter-of-fact, but still, she caught the hurt it was unable to mask. Realizing she was the cause, she pushed her plate of lasagna off to the side and leaned forward a smidge. “Greg, I'm sorry. None of this—
of me
—is your fault. I shouldn't have agreed to this date in the first place. I'm just not interested in a relationship right now. I'm too focused on trying to make this new business a go.”

“I appreciate you going easy on my ego, Winnie, but I saw the way you looked at that guy just now.”

At a loss for what to say, Winnie pulled her plate back in front of her body and took another bite of her dinner.
Maybe if she concentrated on eating again, they could get back to the whole silence thing . . .

“What's his name?”

She considered ignoring the question or simply stuffing a piece of bread in her mouth to avoid answering, but since she hadn't had the courage to turn Greg down before he wasted his evening, she went the route of courtesy. “Jay. Jay Morgan.”

“What's he do?”

“He's a business professor at Silver Lake College.”

“He's a lucky guy.”

Slowly, she looked up from her plate. “Lucky guy?”

“To have your interest.”

Once again, she gave up on her dinner. Only this time, she did so with a mixture of sadness and disgust. “Greg, I'm so sorry about this. You were so nice showing me your ambulance and answering all my questions last week. I—”

He cut her apology off with raised hands. “Look, I get it. You're not the kind of girl who relishes turning a guy down. So you opt for nice even when it catches you up. It's okay. I get it. Really.”

She searched his face for any sign of sarcasm or insincerity, but there was none. Rather, there was simply concern. For . . .
her
?

“I—I don't know what to say.”

“Just say we can be friends.”

“Friends?” she parroted.

“You forget I've only been here a few months, Winnie.” Greg forked a piece of penne pasta and held it just shy of his mouth. “Trust me, I can use a good friend here every bit as much as I can use a romantic relationship.”

Winnie smiled through the tears she felt pricking the corners of her eyes. “A good friend, I can be. But don't give up on the notion of finding a little romance, either. You are, after all, known far and wide as Master Sergeant Hottie.”

The second Greg started coughing around his noodle, she knew she should have waited to share his Silver Lake–wide nickname, but hindsight was called hindsight for a reason. Instead, she retrieved his glass from the table and handed it to him. “If this doesn't work, you'll have to put your arms up in the air so I can come around the table and smack you on the back the way my parents always did when I was choking.”

He took a sip of water, coughed, and then took another sip. “No . . . that's . . . okay.”

“Sorry about unleashing that nickname on you. I guess I just figured you knew by now.”

“No. I had no idea.”

“Bridget, the one who wrote that article on you when you first came to town, coined the phrase.”

“The old lady?” he asked, still coughing a little.

She started to bristle and willed herself to keep it light. “She's eighty, if that matters.”

Returning to his dinner, he took a few bites and then gestured toward the window with his fork. “So are you dating that guy?”

She felt the lightness drain out of her as her thoughts traveled back to Jay. “No.”

“But you like him?”

She smoothed the napkin across her lap and then fidgeted her hands along its narrow hem.

“Does he know?”

“It doesn't matter.” She played with the cloth square for a few more seconds and then crumpled it up and laid it on the table beside her plate. “He has a daughter. That needs to be his primary focus.”

“He said that?”

“No.”

“So you're assuming this?”

“He's a single dad. The ex-wife took off years ago and has nothing to do with the daughter. He's all she has.” She
traced her finger along a slight crease in the tablecloth and then pulled it back as she became aware of Greg's concern. “Them against the world, that sort of thing.”

“He said
that
?”

“No. Caroline, his daughter, did.”

Dropping his fork onto the side of his plate, he pushed back from the table just far enough to rest his ankle across his opposite knee. “I was that way once, too.”

“I don't understand.”

“My parents got divorced when I was twelve. The second my dad moved out, I appointed myself the man of the family. It was my job to look after my mom and keep her safe.” A wry smile crossed his lips as his focus drifted to a place far from Silver Lake, Ohio. “When I think back on those first few guys who tried to date my mom, I realize what a little creep I was. I was worse than any father I met during my own dating years. Only instead of talking about guns to scare them off, I caused so many problems they went running for the hills.”

She wasn't sure what to say, so she simply nodded.

“Then Doug came along.”

“Doug?”

“My best friend.”

“Your best friend?” she repeated.

“Well, technically he's my stepfather, but he's become my best friend, too.” Greg took another sip of water and then focused his attention completely on Winnie. “He made my mom happy in a different way than I did. It took me a while to see it . . . to
want
to see it, I should say. But it got to a point where I realized my denying her that happiness was just me being selfish. So I stopped.”

“You're a good son.” It was a simple statement, but certainly one that appeared to be accurate.

“Doug was a good guy. Once I got over myself and let it happen, I realized my mom wasn't the only one he made happy.”

“Hence, you calling him your best friend,” she mused.

“Exactly.”

More than anything, she wanted to believe she could have a chance with her Mr. Right. But she just couldn't block out the things that Caroline had said in the park or the way the teenager's face had twisted in horror at the sight of the Dessert Squad ambulance parked in the lot. Jay must have said something that put Winnie on the girl's radar . . .

“I don't know, Greg. I'm not sure my skin is thick enough, you know? And that's even assuming Jay has any genuine interest in me in the first place.”

“He'd be a fool if he didn't.”

Again the sting of tears was back, only this time the smile that had accompanied them before was a bit harder to come by. Still, she found one along with a thank-you just as the waitress reappeared with two dessert menus in her hand.

“Do you eat other people's desserts?” he asked.

“To twist your words just a bit, I'd be a fool if I didn't.” She ran her finger down the dessert options and settled on tiramisu. “Everything I eat is a potential springboard to something better.”

“I like that.” He, too, consulted the menu, and then called the waitress back to request their desserts. When the woman left, he rested his elbows on the edge of the table. “So this guy and his kid, and you not wanting to hurt my feelings because of them, is why you seemed so distracted when you walked in here at six o'clock?”

“No. I mean, partially, I guess. But only the part about you. I really wasn't thinking about Jay until he walked by the window just now.”

“Then? What's up? What's the other part?”

The other part . . .

Meaning, the part she hadn't been able to shake since two o'clock in the morning . . .

“What do you know about a rare coin from the 1930s?” she finally posed.

“Nothing. I'm not a collector. I have a thing for old ambulances, sure, but I'm not a collector.” He finished off his last sip of water and then leaned back and smiled at Winnie. “But Chuck would probably know.”

“Chuck?”

“Yeah. You remember, he tried to eat all the kids' cookies at the school the other day . . . Average build. Red hair. He's why I was at that reception for your deceased neighbor.”

“Yeah, I know who you're talking about,” she said. “I just don't understand what he has to do with an old coin.”

“I told you at the restaurant on Saturday. Chuck collects baseball cards. Has since he was a little kid, from what I gather. He's real active in the Silver Lake Collectors Club. That's how he knew your neighbor.”

“And how he knew my neighbor's coin was worth millions?” she whispered.

C
huck . . .

For not the first time since the EMT's name was mentioned across a white linen-draped table, Winnie felt a cold shiver take root in her chest and spread its way across her body. Only now, instead of having to cover her reaction with a sip of coffee or a bite of (highly average and way too chewy) tiramisu, she could verbalize her thoughts aloud and know that they were safe within the confines of Gertie's ambulance.

Peeking into the rearview mirror, she saw Greg still standing on the sidewalk beside her now-empty parking space looking as if he wasn't sure what to do with the rest of his night. Part of her still felt bad for crushing his hopes for a real date, but another part of her—the part that valued honesty and despised games—knew she'd done the right thing.

She truly wasn't interested in a relationship with Greg, Lance, or anyone else Renee or Mr. Nelson had subtly (or
not so subtly) tried to foist on her. But adding them to her friend base? That she could do.

Especially when they hand me a brand-new name for my suspect list . . .

Yet even as the redhead took center stage in her thoughts once again, Winnie found her brain at war with itself.

Chuck Rogers was an emergency medical technician. He'd picked a career that was focused on saving people, not killing them. So the notion that he'd suffocate an elderly man to get his hands on a coin didn't really mesh.

Then again, she'd be willing to bet that money—especially to the tune of seven and a half million dollars—had converted its fair share of previously upstanding citizens throughout history.

At the far end of Main Street, she turned right and then left, the not-so-quiet whir of the fifty-plus-year-old engine providing just the right amount of background noise with which to think. There was no denying the fact that Chuck had knowledge of the coin prior to Bart's death. Greg, himself, had filled in that little detail at the repast.

Add in the fact that the baseball card collector had been seen looking at Bart's house within days of his passing and—

“A criminal always returns to the scene of the crime!” She pulled into the driveway, cut the engine, and sighed with relief at the sight of Mr. Nelson and Bridget waving at her from the front porch. Pushing the driver's side door open, she stepped onto the pavement and returned the wave.

“How'd it go with Master Sergeant Hottie?” Bridget called from her spot on Winnie's favorite rocking chair.

“
Pastor Lotty
?” Mr. Nelson shook his head with obvious disgust. “I thought that fella was married.”

Even in the gathering dusk, Winnie could make out Bridget's exasperated eye roll and her downstairs neighbor's confusion as she stepped onto the porch and made her way
over to the rattan chair positioned within arm's reach of the chessboard. She pointed at the pile of black pieces to the left of the board and eyed Mr. Nelson. “So you lost? I mean . . . won?”

“He put himself in checkmate about thirty minutes ago. I'm surprised you didn't hear the crowing from wherever you were eating on Main Street.”

“We were at that new place, Luigi's—dinner was good, dessert was average. Mario's is still better.” She swung her gaze from Bridget to the man sitting in the opposing rocking chair, happily stroking Winnie's brown and white tabby cat. “Well, you certainly gave yourself quite a run, Mr. Nelson. What did that game last? Two, three days?”

“Three days.” Mr. Nelson smiled proudly at Winnie and then reached into his front pocket and extracted a five-dollar bill. “I won five dollars.”

“It's not winning when you give it to yourself, Parker.”

Mr. Nelson hooked his thumb in the direction of Winnie's rocking chair and scrunched his face tight. “Anytime I find myself wonderin' why I didn't get married, Winnie Girl, all I have to do is look at our next-door neighbor here. Bingo—mystery solved.”

She readied herself for a war of barbs between the pair, but it was for naught. Any offense Bridget might have taken from the man's words was pushed aside for what really mattered.

“Parker said you left at six for your dinner with”—Bridget turned a disapproving eye on Mr. Nelson and enunciated loudly and clearly—“
Master
Sergeant
Hottie
and yet, here it is, seven thirty, and you're already home. No movie? No after-dinner walk?”

“No. Just dinner.”

“People in his line of work
do
have crazy hours,” Bridget mused. “Maybe next time he'll have a bigger window.”

“It was
my
choice to wrap it up when we did, Bridget.”

“Oh? Did it not go well, dear?”

“It went as well as can be expected considering our very different mind-sets.”

Bridget stopped rocking. “Meaning?”

“Meaning he went wanting it to be a date, and I went knowing I didn't.”

“I was wondering why you didn't dress up more . . .”

She looked down at her soft black jeans and white short-sleeved sweater and tried not to take offense. It was a nice outfit, but certainly not anything that screamed “date,” much to Renee's (and now, obviously, Bridget's) chagrin. Even her hair was in its normal workday ponytail.

“I happen to think my Winnie Girl looks pretty as a picture.”

“Thanks, Mr. Nelson.”

Bridget scowled at the man and then turned her attention back on Winnie. “Did you fight, dear?”

“Pastor Lotty is a man of the cloth. He shouldn't be fighting,” Mr. Nelson said, as he, too, brought his chair to a standstill. “And he shouldn't be dating if he's married.”

Bridget reached across the space between their chairs and turned the dial in Mr. Nelson's ear. Then, shouting loud enough to be heard by just about anyone with an open window in a one-block radius, she said, “
Hot
-tie. Not
Lot
-ty. Good heavens, Parker, you could drive a teetotaler to drink.”

Mr. Nelson looked across the porch at Winnie. “Hottie? You went out with a fella named Hottie?”

“His name is Greg. Greg Stevens. You've met him. He's the one who came over last Sunday to see the Dessert Squad.”

“He seemed like a nice fella. A little stiff, maybe, but nice.”

“He's former army,” Bridget interjected. “And so handsome.”

“So what went wrong?”

“Nothing went wrong, Mr. Nelson. I'm just not interested in him as anything more than a friend.”

And potential case solver . . .

Abandoning Mr. Nelson's chess chair, Winnie moved around the porch, stopping every few steps to collect her thoughts. When she was ready, she crossed to the portion of railing directly in front of the rocking chairs and faced her friends. “I want to run something by the two of you.”

“Is this about the Dessert Squad?” Bridget asked, resuming a slow rock. “Because a buzz is growing, dear. Growing fast.”

She couldn't help but smile at the news. “I hope you're right. We've had a decent first week so far, all things considered, but there's going to need to be a lot more business to keep us running. Especially if I'm going to be able to keep Renee on the books.” Leaning her back against the railing, she settled in for what she knew could be a lengthy talk. “But no, that's not what I want to run by you.”

Ever the competitor, Mr. Nelson quickly matched and surpassed Bridget's rocking pace. “Is it a plan to win over that little girl?”

“Little girl?”

“The one that goes with that fella you
are
interested in.”

Bridget brought her rocker to a brief stop, her focus flitting between Mr. Nelson and Winnie. “There's a fella with a little girl?”

She breathed in the lingering scent of bacon (Mr. Nelson's favorite food regardless of the time or meal) still wafting from the man's open front windows and imagined herself eating a piece instead of having to tiptoe through a verbal minefield. Say the wrong thing, and it would be midnight before she got to bed . . .

“There is a man that I like, Bridget. But he has a daughter—a teenage daughter, as a matter of fact.” She captured the ends of her ponytail with her right hand and brushed them across the palm of her left hand. “But I'd rather talk about that another time. Right now, I just want
to toss around a theory pertaining to Bart and the person I think may have killed him.”

Both rockers stopped in unison as their respective occupants leaned forward. “You know who killed Bart?” Mr. Nelson and Bridget asked together in matching tones.

“Possibly.”

“
Who
?” Mr. Nelson and Bridget echoed together.

“Now hear me out.” She released her ponytail and flicked it back over her shoulder. “I could be way off base here, but it fits. Or, at least, I
think
it fits.”

“Tell us,” Bridget prodded.

She inhaled sharply and then let her theory serve as its countering exhale. “I think it's Chuck. The EMT.”

Again, Mr. Nelson tried to adjust his hearing aids but found that they were already on full volume. “That red-haired fella in the uniform?”

“Yes.” She kneaded her temple with her fingertips in an attempt to ward off a headache she felt brewing just under her skin. Tension, no doubt. “He came to the repast with Greg, remember? And when Greg explained why they came, he said it was because Chuck had known Bart from a collectors club he's been in since he was a boy.”

“I know that collectors club. Been meeting one Saturday a month for decades,” Mr. Nelson said. “Bart started it. In the beginning, they met at the old coffee shop. But after a few months, they moved to a meeting room at the Presbyterian church on the corner of Oak and Timber.”

Those were details she hadn't known, but they certainly helped set the stage. “Apparently, Chuck started going with his dad when he was a kid. The dad, if I remember from what Greg said on Saturday, collected Lionel trains. Chuck was into baseball cards.”

“He still has that collection,” Bridget chimed in, “or did when I ran a who's who profile on him when he started with the ambulance district.”

“So what's this got to do with Bart?” Mr. Nelson asked. “Other than they were in the same club together?”

It was a variation of the same self-argument she'd had off and on throughout dessert with Greg. If Chuck had known about Bart's coin all these years, why kill the elderly man now?

Because, with Ethel gone, he only had to kill one of them . . .

It was, of course, her leading theory and one she was eager to finally bounce off her neighbors.

“Do you realize that Bart's coin was worth seven and a half million dollars?” It was a rhetorical question, really, because it didn't particularly matter if they did or didn't. What mattered was the fact that Bart's coin was missing and there was every reason to connect that fact with the man's murder.

Still, Mr. Nelson's gaped mouth and Bridget's near-deafening intake of air told her they hadn't known.

Their reaction wasn't a surprise. Most people wouldn't know what a 1933 gold double eagle coin was worth. Unless, as Renee had surmised, they were a collector, too.

Like Chuck.

“You think that fella killed Bart for his coin?” Mr. Nelson asked, the shock in his voice still evident on his face.

Winnie nodded.

“But Mark buried Bart with that coin!”

“No. He didn't.”

“He didn't?” Mr. Nelson echoed.

“No.”

“But—”

“Mark told me he didn't, Mr. Nelson.”

“Then what'd he do with it?”

“Nothing. He didn't even know it was missing until I told him.”

Mr. Nelson's eyes widened, but it was Bridget who held up her index finger like a teacher silencing her students.
“But if this young man came into the kind of money you're talking about, Winnie, why would he be looking at
Bart's
house? I mean, we have a beautiful street, but the houses by the lake are far more la-di-da. And he wouldn't have to remember suffocating an old man to death every time he walked into his kitchen to toast a bagel.”

It was a good point, and one she'd not really considered until that moment.

“Unless his looking at the house was a ruse.”

Bridget turned a sharp look in Mr. Nelson's direction. “How would looking at Bart and Ethel's house be a ruse?”

“To see if he left behind any evidence that could implicate him in the crime.”

“Exactly!” Winnie hadn't meant to shout, but it was validating to hear someone else give voice to the thoughts that had been nibbling at her brain since Greg unknowingly forged a connection between Chuck and Bart. At least now, if she was way off base, she wasn't alone.

“Well, there's only one way to know if he's a viable suspect, isn't there?” Bridget leaned forward, retrieved her purse from the floor beside her rocker, and shoved her wrinkled hand inside. Seconds later, she pulled out her phone, scrolled through her extensive contact list, pressed a button, and held the phone to her ear.