A Plus One for Murder, page 6
“New one?” she echoed, abandoning her view of what looked to be chocolate chip cookies and returning her full attention to Big Max.
“The young one who beat him.”
She started to ask for clarification but stopped as Big Max continued. “If Beatrice does go, I’ll stop using jam just to make sure I don’t drop any on her pretty face. Or maybe I’ll just cut out her picture so I can save it. If I do, I can prop it against the sugar bowl so it’s like she’s sitting there having breakfast with me every morning, not just on a newspaper morning.”
His gaze led hers around the room, only to stop and widen as they landed on the face he so clearly sought. “Oh yes, if that happened, I’d quit my grumbling once and for all.” Big Max’s brown eyes scrunched as he paused to consider his words. “Most of it, anyway.”
She’d been so close to following along, but somewhere between mention of the old and new mayors and something about jam, he’d lost her. “I thought you were talking about the new guy who beat out Dalton for mayor.”
“Sebastian Gerard,” Big Max said. “And I was.”
“You were . . .” At his nod, she continued. “And the whole picture-cutting, sugar-bowl-propping thing—that was what again?”
“If Beatrice goes to one of the new mayor’s parties, I’d get to see her in the paper every time I opened it. Because the new mayor’s wife likes to be seen. Though, in my opinion, Beatrice’s brooch is much prettier.”
“Ahhh, okay. I’m with you now.” She thought back to the rolled-up paper Scout had happily retrieved from the bottom of the front steps shortly after Emma had returned home from the gym. The paper, of course, had been covered in drool by the time he’d relinquished it in exchange for a scratch behind his ear, but she’d been so rattled by the deputy’s questions she hadn’t really paid it much mind.
“You ever count them?” Big Max asked.
She shook herself back into the moment. “Count what?”
“How many pictures of them are in the paper each time.” He puffed out his narrow chest. “Because I do. Every time. At first, it was just about him winning—shaking hands with the old mayor, giving a speech, sitting at his desk in Sweet Falls Town Hall, that sort of thing. But they’re still coming. The other day, it was him in the park, him at the ice cream stand, him at church, and him petting someone’s puppy. So if they have a party like Mayor Dalton had, there is sure to be pictures. Though, if Beatrice is gonna be in one, she might want to make sure she does a lot of standing next to the mayor when his wife is around.”
“Why is that?”
“Because if his wife isn’t in the pictures, she’s the one taking them.”
“How do you know she’s taking them?” Emma asked.
“You ever look at the name under all those pictures I mentioned? Every one of ’em is taken by Rita Gerard—Sebastian’s wife.”
And just like that, she was back at Deeter’s, sitting across the table from a still-alive Brian Hill, looking down at the printed image of a woman about her own age—a woman who’d struck her as familiar even though she’d needed Brian to supply the elusive name.
Rita Gerard, he’d said . . .
One of four people he’d invited to the open mic that night that wanted him dead, he’d said . . .
And then, sure enough, he’d up and died. Right there on the stage.
Closing her eyes against the images that followed, Emma drew in a steadying breath.
“Emma?”
Slowly, she parted her lashes to find Big Max, in his fifteen-dollar tuxedo, eyeing her with a mixture of curiosity and concern that anchored her back to the present. “I’m okay, Big Max. Really.”
“You sure? ’Cause you looked like you saw a ghost there for a minute.”
She swallowed. Hard. “Nope, no ghost.”
“You’re wishing you were here with your own fella, aren’t you?”
“Nope.”
“Why? You have a fight or something?”
“Nope. Don’t have a fella.”
Big Max stuck his finger in his ear, wiggled it around for a moment. “Did you say you don’t have a fella?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t have a fella . . .”
“That’s right.”
“No fella . . .” he repeated, yet again.
“Still, no.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You want a fella?”
“One day, sure. If he’s a good one. But until that day comes, Scout and I are doing just fine on our own.”
“Who is Scout?”
“My dog.” Emma followed Big Max’s eyes back to Beatrice and the tall, well-dressed man who’d claimed her attention.
“He’s not wearing a tuxedo,” Big Max said.
Resting her hand atop Big Max’s arm, she waited until his eyes were back on hers so she could lead them to the opposite side of the room and the dessert table, with its rapidly decreasing selections. “How about we grab a cookie or something, and you can tell me whether or not you have a pet.”
“I don’t.”
“Then I could tell you about Scout.”
Again, he looked back at Beatrice and the non-tuxedo-wearing object of her attention and—
“No, I think it’s time I show off my skills.” Grabbing Emma by the hand, Big Max tugged her into the center of the room. “Let’s dance.”
Chapter Seven
Lifting her hand as a shield against the afternoon sun, Emma watched Scout bound down the hill and across the sun-dappled grass in pursuit of the same misshapen tennis ball she’d thrown at least a dozen times over the past thirty minutes. On any other day, she’d have snapped his leash back in place by now, ready for the next stop on their weekly trek around Sweet Falls Park. But it wasn’t any other day and for that she had no one to blame but herself.
She should’ve taken Scout for his walk when she got back from the dance, made a sandwich for supper, and then lost herself in the pages of a book before calling it a night. She had several novels she’d been wanting to read and all of them had been sitting on her nightstand, waiting.
But nooo . . . Instead, after Scout’s walk, she’d been propelled by a desire to forgo the ease of a sandwich and instead whip up a batch of tacos she then proceeded to eat in front of the television. One sitcom had led to another, and another, and another; right up to the opening montage of the eleven o’clock news. She’d yawned . . . She’d slid her hand between the cushions in her nightly hunt for wherever Scout’s nose had pushed the remote . . . And—wham! The anchor’s lead story had left her reeling.
Brian Hill’s death had officially been ruled a homicide.
And just like that, all thoughts of donning her favorite pajamas and spooning with Scout until morning had been gone, replaced instead by a less-than-pleasant reunion with her evening meal, and what appeared to be an actual door-to-window-length path worn into her bedroom carpet from hours of mindless pacing. At first, the need to be moving had been all about trying to slow her breathing. Once she’d accomplished that, her aimless trek was merely a backdrop to a string of self-placations (You saw nothing), shocked murmurings (Murdered . . . really? No . . . ), and the occasional attempt to soothe Scout’s concern (I’m okay, boy).
She’d probably still be there, doing the same thing, if not for Scout’s tail having knocked her open purse off the bed he’d finally jumped into when it became apparent their nightly spooning session wasn’t going to happen.
Out came her wallet . . .
Her keys . . .
The travel pack of tissues she always had but never used . . .
The napkin-wrapped cookie half Big Max had managed to procure for her a mere second before the volunteers tasked with post-dance cleanup had descended on the picked-over dessert table. . . .
And the impossibly crinkled paper she wished she’d never seen in the first place, let alone taken from what was now, according to the perky news anchor, a murder scene.
Yet she had.
She, Emma Westlake, had left the scene of a crime. With what was very likely a significant—if not the only—piece of evidence.
It hadn’t been intentional, of course. She’d truly chalked the piece of paper up to the ramblings of a man who loved creating chaos, and his death to natural causes.
But it wasn’t natural causes.
And, because of that, a case could be made by the police that she’d stolen—
“Will he fetch sticks, too?”
Startled back into the moment, Emma dropped her hand onto her bent knees, only to reclaim it as the sun shield she needed in order to see anything other than a tall shadow approaching her from the left. When her efforts failed to bring enough clarity to make an identification, she added her other hand and a tilt of her . . .
Uh-oh.
“Or just a bouncing ball?” Early Riser No. 1 (aka the sheriff’s deputy with the name she was suddenly too flabbergasted to remember) closed the remaining gap between them with two long strides and a deliberate repositioning of his ball cap to show more of his face. “Jack. Jack Riordan. We met yesterday at the gym.”
Nodding, she straightened her legs back down to the grass and took advantage of the moment it gave her to find her breath. “He likes tennis balls best, but he’ll chase and bring back anything I throw.”
“My kid would love a dog like that.”
Grateful his chosen words weren’t the You’re under arrest her overactive imagination anticipated, Emma looked back up at Jack and managed a half smile. “You could get one . . . The shelter just outside of town has lots of good dogs looking for homes.”
“Is that where you got him?” he asked, his blue eyes tracking a rapidly approaching Scout. “The shelter?”
“It is.”
“Any regrets?”
“Not a one.”
Like the horrible guard dog he was, Scout made a beeline for the tall (and maybe not hulking, exactly, but impressively built), cap-wearing stranger, dropped his misshapen tennis ball on Jack’s shoes, and sent his always wagging tail into overdrive.
“His name is Scout, right?” Jack asked as he squatted down (thereby blasting her face with sunlight again) to Scout’s eye (and tongue) level.
“That’s right.”
“Well, hello, Scout.” Jack’s blue eyes disappeared momentarily as Scout’s tongue found its way from the deputy’s chin to his forehead, unearthing the suspected left cheek dimple in the process. “He’s a friendly one.”
“That he is.”
“Any protective instincts at all?” he asked, reclaiming his face from licking territory.
“Not really, no.”
“Retriever, right?”
“Mostly. The vet thinks there might be a little lab in there, too.”
Scout dropped into the grass and rolled onto his back, his tongue lolling to the side as Jack’s hand took the bait. “You didn’t get him as a puppy?”
“Nope. He was four.”
“Why’d the previous owner give him up?”
“New baby, I think. Maybe a move. Might’ve been both. I didn’t really ask for too many details. I just knew, the second I saw him, that I wouldn’t be leaving without him.” Pulling her knees back up to her chest, she wrapped her arms around them and gave in to the smile Scout’s utter joy in that moment demanded. “If you’re wanting to find reasons not to get your kid a dog, Scout and I can’t help you.”
He gave Scout’s stomach one last rub, and then lowered himself all the way to the ground. “No worries. I’ve got the only one I need, unfortunately.”
“Oh?”
“A dog like this needs time—something I don’t always have. Not the way I’d want to, anyway.”
“How old is your kid?” she prodded. “Caring for a dog is a good way to learn responsibility.”
“Tommy is responsible—probably more than he should have to be at eight years old. But that’s par for the course with kids of divorce, I guess.” He pulled up a piece of grass from the hillside beneath him, and turned it around and around between his fingers. “I’d actually want to get him a dog so he could be more of a kid, but my ex isn’t a dog person.”
“You could have a dog at your place for when Tommy is with you.”
“Yeah, but it’s all that time when he’s not with me that makes it so I can’t.”
Sensing he’d gotten all the belly rubs he was going to get from Jack, Scout flipped over and nosed his way over to Emma. “I know you’re a deputy and all that, but lots of working people have dogs,” she countered. “You could hire someone to walk it in the middle of the day or just do it yourself at lunchtime. It’s not like Sweet Falls is all that big.”
“True. But it’s not just about the workday. It’s about driving out to Hartville to see Tommy one or two nights a week, it’s about needing to catch up on sleep when I’m moving between shifts, and it’s about spreading myself a little too thin the rest of the time.”
“Maybe one day, then.” She snapped her fingers and Scout’s attention back to his ball and, when he brought it over to her, threw it back down the hill. Like a flash, Scout was gone, his boundless energy on full display once again. “In the meantime, if you’re ever at the park with your son on any given Saturday, we’re either in this exact spot doing this exact thing, or over by the pond scaring as many ducks as we can before heading home. Scout will play fetch with anyone, anytime. Especially an eight-year-old boy who just so happens to love dogs as much as Scout loves making new friends.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She watched Scout pick up the ball, drop it, smell the ground a few times, and then return to the ball for his trot back up the hill. Grabbing his leash from its resting spot atop the grass, she waved him over, clicked it into place on his collar, and stood. “Well, we should probably move on to the ducks or I’ll be here until dark.”
Jack, too, stood, his lean yet muscular body blocking her intended path. “How come I’ve never seen you at the gym before yesterday?”
“Because I’ve never gone. Before Scout, I was too busy with work. And since Scout, he has become all the exercise I could ever need.”
“So why the gym yesterday, then?”
“Oh. That.” She waved at the air. “I was there for work.”
“For work . . .”
“Yes.”
“Your new work or your old work?” he asked.
The uneasiness was back. “My new work.”
“You mean your Friend for Hire business?”
She swallowed. “Yes.”
“So the cat killer hired you to be her friend?”
“More like an accountability partner, I guess.” Emma tightened her hold on the leash. “Anyway, Scout and I should really be going. We spent way more time playing fetch than we should have.”
Jack fell into step with them. “You seemed really distracted before I finally came over just now.”
“Finally?” she echoed. “Does that mean you were watching us?”
“I was.”
Thrown, she stopped. “Um . . . why?”
“You looked more troubled than a person should when they’re playing fetch with a dog.”
She urged Scout to walk a little faster, only to find that Jack was more than happy to match their pace. “I’m just tired, that’s all. I didn’t sleep all that much—or, really, at all—last night.”
“Oh?”
More than anything, she wanted to take off in a run. But considering the fact he was a deputy and he was already watching her, it probably wouldn’t bode well for her. Instead, she stopped, pulled Scout alongside her legs, and lifted her gaze to find Jack’s waiting. “The woman on the news last night said it’s a done deal—Brian was murdered.”
“That’s right.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. I was right there.”
“We’ll know more when the toxicology reports come back.”
“Toxicology?” she parroted.
“That’s right.”
Her thoughts scattered as Scout began to sniff the grass around her feet. “But if he was into drugs, that wouldn’t be murder, right?” she asked.
“If they were taken willingly, no. But if they weren’t, or if it was some sort of poison . . .”
She knew his mouth was still moving, sensed she should probably be paying attention, but really, in that moment, the only thing she could think about—could truly see—was Brian and the plate of mushrooms that had been waiting on the table when he’d accompanied her into the restaurant.
Was it possible?
Could someone have—
“Emma?”
Tightening her hold on Scout’s collar once again, she abandoned her crazy thoughts in favor of Jack’s inquisitive eyes.
“Is there something you’d like to tell me?” Jack asked. “Something—”
She thought back on the four faces depicted on the paper Brian had insisted she keep and did her best to hide the growing tremble in her hands. Part of her wanted to come clean in that moment—to tell him about the paper and beg for mercy. But another part of her was afraid.
Afraid of being arrested . . .
Afraid of leaving Scout to fend for himself while she was remanded to prison for obstruction or hampering or whatever the charge for holding back evidence would be . . .
Afraid of retaliation from—
“I know, from the research I did on Mr. Hill before meeting him that night, that he had a reputation for being difficult,” Emma managed to blurt out.
“You researched him?”
She shrugged. “Of course. I was meeting a man I didn’t know.”
He looked at her with such intensity she had to fight off an answering shiver. “Do you research all of your clients?”
“He was the first one who didn’t come via a friend’s recommendation.”
