Trudy, Madly, Deeply (Working Stiffs Mystery Series) (22 page)

Move on. Nothing to see here.

“Where’s your car?” Steve asked.

“Duke’s,” I said, trying to ignore my blister.

“So, you walked up here?”

Some detective. I stopped in my tracks and fixed my gaze on Steve. “Yes, I went for a walk. Is that okay with you?”

“Those aren’t exactly walking shoes.”

“They’re very comfortable.” At least that had been true an hour ago.

Steve narrowed his eyes at me. “Are you sure you don’t want a ride?”

I’d take a bullet first. “Absolutely.”

I stepped back to the sidewalk. Hoping that he’d get a clue and spare me from looking any more lame than I already did, I picked up my pace. After several painful seconds, I watched Steve turn right at the corner of the next block. Going to Heather’s house for a nice family dinner? How cozy.

A half hour of cursing and two benches later, Duke’s kitchen screen door banged shut behind me.

“
Querida
, you had a good, long walk,” Hector said with a nod of approval. “How do you feel?”

“I’ll have my patty melt now.”

* * *

The second I stepped through my grandmother’s back door, my mother pounced on me like a pit bull on a pork chop. “If you have any plans for Saturday, cancel them.”

Given how today had gone, it was a safe bet that a hot date with Kyle Cardinale wasn’t in my immediate future. “What’s Saturday?”

She blinked at me. “Your grandmother’s eightieth birthday.”

What kind of granddaughter was I? I’d forgotten all about it. “Are we going out to celebrate?”

“Something much better.” She spread her arms as if she were about to break into song. “We’re having a dinner party here!”

Since it had been over thirty years since my mother had risked losing a manicured fingernail in a kitchen, I didn’t need to guess who would be doing the cooking.

“Mom, I have no time to prepare for a big dinner party.”

“It’s not going to be a big elaborate thing. Your grandmother made it very clear that she doesn’t want that. We’re going to have a barbeque.”

“We?”

Her mouth split into a dazzling smile. “You and me and Barry!”

Criminy. Searing flesh with Barry Ferris and my mother. Not at the top of my list of fun party ideas.

I slipped the handle of my tote over the back of a kitchen chair, my mind racing for an escape route out of this culinary disaster zone. “It might rain. Let’s just go out to a restaurant.”

“Nonsense, it’s supposed to be beautiful all weekend, and a private dinner party here will be much more fun.”

“For whom?” I mumbled under my breath.

“We can have all sorts of wonderful barbeque-y things. Some nice salmon, maybe some oysters on the half shell.”

“Oysters? I thought you said Gram didn’t want anything elaborate.”

Marietta’s smile vanished without a trace. “Okay. So, no oysters.” She picked up a notepad and pen from the kitchen table. “There are plenty of other yummy things we can have.”

Looking over her shoulder, I scanned her list of yummy things, and it read like we’d be hosting a wedding reception—and it had better not be another one of hers. “How many people are coming to this soiree?”

“I thought twelve was a perfect number,” she said, flipping the page to a short list of names—mainly family and my grandmother’s close friends. Of course, Barry Ferris was numero uno.

“Fewer would be okay, too,” I said, reading Steve’s name at the bottom of the page. “Like eleven.”

“Oh, no. There’s no symmetry with eleven.”

A barbeque without symmetry. What was I thinking?

“Besides,” she added. “I’ve already prepared the invitations.”

I watched as my mother rifled through a stack of white embossed envelopes and set aside the one addressed to Barry Ferris. She handed me the rest. “If you wouldn’t mind delivering these tomorrow since we’re a little short on time.”

I didn’t have the energy to remind Marietta that she could borrow Gram’s car and deliver her invitations herself, so I chose the path of least resistance. “Fine.”

“One last thing. Let me give you this.” She tore out a page from her notepad and handed it to me. “It’s really just a few ideas for the menu, but that should get you started.”

Either the fat from my patty melt had clogged the arteries to my brain or I’d lost the ability to understand my mother without the Southern accent. “Started with what?”

“Your shopping list for the party, silly.”

Chapter Nineteen

Planning Gram’s birthday party with Marietta was making my molars hurt, so after I changed into a pair of faded blue jeans and a navy slouch shirt, I grabbed my car keys and drove to the Red Apple Market to find my happy place with a bag of peanut M&Ms—just a small one since I was on a diet. I also grabbed a loaf of whole wheat bread. I didn’t want to look like a fat chick desperate for a candy fix.

“That’s not dinner, is it?” Steve said, standing in line behind me.

Shit.
“No.” I glanced down at the box of Cap’n Crunch and the six-pack of Budweiser in his hands. “Is that yours?”

I regretted the question as soon as it popped out of my mouth, especially since he was probably on his way home from Heather’s.

A smile played at his lips. “It’s more like dessert.”

Knowing Heather hadn’t served him dessert registered a blip on my joy meter, not that I should care.

After an uncomfortable silence, I carried my groceries to the door and waited to find out if Steve was heading home. I needed an opportunity to tell him everything I’d learned about Jake Divine and this was as good as any.

“How are you doing?” Steve asked as he approached, glancing down at the raw skin on my big toe.

I should have hidden the evidence and not worn my flip flops. “It’s nothing.”

The automatic door swung open and he followed me to the parking lot. “Doesn’t look like nothing. Would it feel better with a beer?”

That sounded like an opportunity to me. “It wouldn’t feel any worse.”

After I followed Steve home, I parked the Jag in Gram’s driveway and met him at his front door.

I hadn’t been inside his house since before his mother had remarried two years ago and moved to New Mexico. It seemed like déjà vu following him to the same sunny yellow kitchen with gingham curtains and white appliances, only this time for a beer instead of his mother’s oatmeal cookies.

I noticed that the hardwood floors still needed refinishing and the solid oak dining room table hadn’t moved more than an inch since the last time I’d seen it, but that’s where the familiarity ended. Gone was the damask pattern wallpaper behind the table. Instead, a solid brick red accent wall extended from the dining room to the living room where a nubby area rug in bold earth tones separated a chocolate brown leather sectional from an overstuffed chair and ottoman the color of cherry cola. Woven wood blinds replaced his mother’s pleated curtains, leaving little doubt of the masculine taste of the new owner.

Steve set the grocery bag with the beer on the white tile counter, and I glanced up at the chicken-themed French country wallpaper bordering the kitchen. “You don’t really strike me as a chicken kind of guy.”

“Their days are numbered,” he said, handing me a beer. “I’m just a little busy right now.”

I had some strong opinions about how he’d been spending his time, but given why I was about to suck down one of his Budweisers, it wasn’t in my best interest to appear critical of my host.

Wandering into the living room, I noticed that other than an antique kerosene lamp on one of the old cherry wood end tables and a set of soapstone coasters, there wasn’t a knickknack in sight. It was clean, uncluttered, unlike my grandmother’s front room—a dust magnet with her collection of blue Depression glass.

“I like what you’ve done in here,” I said. “It suits you.”

He took a seat on the far end of the leather sectional and rested his beer bottle on his knee. “It’s okay … for now.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant. Since my thoughts went to a woman in his life who might have some different decorating ideas, I directed my attention to the framed black and white photos on the wall. “These are nice.” I recognized the barn from the old Hansen farm where Gram used to buy her eggs. “Local artist?”

“Yeah. Me.”

I turned, facing him. “Since when are you a photographer?”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

True. We had history, but we’d barely scratched the surface of the past sixteen years of our lives. I didn’t know why he’d left Seattle Homicide to come back to Port Merritt. I also didn’t know why he’d broken up with his old girlfriend. Last I’d heard from Rox, they were talking about getting married, then I came back home and it seemed he had started up again with Heather.

“I have no doubt of that,” I admitted.

His eyes darkened as his gaze locked on mine. “What do you want to know?”

Everything.

I sat in the overstuffed chair while a revolving door of questions I dared not ask swung through the recesses of my mind.

I considered my options. Yes, Steve had presented me with an open invitation to satisfy my curiosity, but there had always been a line in our relationship I knew I mustn’t cross. It could make things between us complicated, and the last thing I needed was another complication.

Focusing on the label of my beer bottle, I beat a quick retreat from that line. “You know, the meaning of life. Why nice people are dying at the hospital—little stuff like that.”

He blew out a deep breath. “Char—”

“Don’t
Char
me. We need to talk about this.”

Steve drained his beer bottle and pushed out of his seat. “We have talked about it, but one of us appears to have selective hearing.” He tipped his bottle toward me. “Want another one?”

I shook my head. “I need to tell you something.”

“As a friend or a cop?”

“Both.”

“Is this going to piss me off?”

“Not if you keep an open mind.”

“Shit,” Steve muttered, stalking to the kitchen. “I don’t like the sound of this already.”

“I haven’t even said anything yet!”

“Then get on with it.”

“Fine! I discovered something today.”

He fired a squinty-eyed glare at me from the kitchen.

“While I was in Port Townsend to serve that subpoena, I stopped at Jake Divine’s parents’ house and spoke with his mother.”

“Dammit, Char!” Steve barked, crossing the room. “What part of ‘stay out of this’ do you not understand?”

“I understand plenty, including the fact that you’re more pissed off than surprised that I talked to her.”

Glowering, he sat back down and twisted off the bottle cap like he wanted to wring someone’s neck. I didn’t have to guess whose.

I sighed. “Okay, so you’re not happy that I took a side trip after I got that latte.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“I know.” I leaned closer. “There’s something going on at the senior center.”

I studied Steve’s face for a reaction, but the tic above his jaw line only confirmed what I already knew. I needed to tread lightly if I didn’t want to witness a major explosion.

Even at my pre-divorce weight I wasn’t very light on my feet, so I braced myself. “And I think Jake Divine is right in the middle of it.”

No explosion. Instead, Steve blinked. “What makes you say that?”

“For one, he’s going by a different name. It’s like he’s trying to reinvent himself here in Port Merritt.”

“Since you recently changed
your
name, I don’t think you should make too much of that.”

Okay, he had a point. I had dumped Christopher Scolari’s last name the day my divorce was final. “But unlike Jake or Jack—as everyone
used
to call him—a guy who appears to depend upon the generosity of older women, I didn’t attend the knife fight that placed him five blocks away the night of Howard Jeppensen’s death.”

Steve’s dark gaze sharpened. “How do you know about the knife fight?”

“Shea, the girlfriend of the defendant in that case, placed him there.”

Steve slowly nodded. I didn’t know if it was because of what I knew or what he had just found out.

“It seems awfully convenient that Virginia Straitham got Jake Divine that job at the senior center,” I said, watching Steve, “and when you add in the fact that his buddy Wesley has access to prescription drugs to do Grandma’s bidding …”

I spotted a flicker of a frown but nothing to indicate surprise. I wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know.

“… the three of them are probably up to their eyeballs in these murders,” I added, anticipating a reminder that this wasn’t an official murder investigation.

Nothing. Instead, he took a pull off his beer bottle.

After several exasperating seconds ticked by, I couldn’t take any more of the silent treatment. “Well? Aren’t you going to say anything like stop jumping to conclusions, and Howard’s death doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with Trudy’s?”

His jaw tightened. “I’d say you pretty much covered it.”

Lie.
He was holding something back, the poker face firmly in place while he played his cards close to the vest.

I leaned back in my chair and folded my arms. “In other words,
you
aren’t going to say anything on this subject.”

“I can tell you this much.
If
you’re right, and
if
Trudy’s death becomes a coroner’s case, there will be an official investigation.”

Duh.

“In the meantime,” he said, sounding like he was conducting a lecture, “you don’t want to force anybody’s hand by trying to flush them out like a bird dog, or by speaking to their mothers. Mothers tend to call their sons when a strange girl shows up on their doorstep.”

“I didn’t use my real name.”

“Like his mother wouldn’t be able to describe you with that big game hunting outfit you were wearing today.”

“So, stay out of this, Char,” I said, mimicking him. “You don’t want me to get hurt. That’s what you’re saying, right?”

The corners of his lips curled into a humorless smile. “You have been listening.”

“I wish you’d take this more seriously. At least five people have been killed.”

The frown line between his brows deepened. “I never said I wasn’t taking this seriously.”