A High-End Finish(25)
Putting down my pencil, I took a deep breath and let it out. We were taking action and I felt . . . relieved. It was the first time I’d felt that way in days.
? ? ?
At Emily’s tea shop the next morning, my friends enthusiastically accepted their assignments from Jane.
“This is going to be fun,” Lizzie said, practically bouncing in her chair. “It’ll be good to do something positive after all the negativity that’s been going around town.”
Marigold stirred her tea. “I just received a new shipment from Lancaster County, so I have an excuse to call Susan, the woman I told you about. After we talk business, I’ll ask her if she heard the news about Jerry’s murder and see what she says.”
Emily was eager to help, too. She was friendly with Luisa’s father and brothers, who operated a pizza kitchen on the other side of the town square. “We have our restaurant-association lunch this Thursday, so I’ll chat them up and see what pops.”
“I’ll talk to Penny at the bank,” I said. “She told me she worked with Jerry on some home loans, so she might know something about his business connections.”
“Good,” Jane said, checking another name off the list.
“I’ll talk to Joyce Boyer, too,” I added. “And Stan. I want to find out why he lied to me on the phone.”
“Just be careful,” Lizzie said.
I felt a cold chill and realized I’d forgotten to say something important. “Promise me you’ll all be careful. One of us might be confronting a killer.”
“We’ll be fine,” Emily said, trying to sound lighthearted as she glanced around the table. “We’ll approach it as though we’re having a wee chat. Sharing a bit of gossip. Nobody will be the wiser.”
“That’s right,” Lizzie said. “Just having a friendly conversation. I’ll run over to the Cozy Cove later and see if Cindy knows anything.”
“Good idea,” Jane said, making a note.
“Thanks, everyone,” I said. “I’m beyond grateful.”
“Don’t be silly, love,” Emily said, squeezing my arm. “You’d do the same for any of us.”
What she said was true, so I left it at that.
Jane brought up the subject of Police Chief Eric Jensen and everyone made happy noises. So it was true. He was super nice to everyone in town but me. Didn’t that just figure?
“He’s got a bug up his very attractive butt about Shannon,” Jane said. “He doesn’t know her, so I suppose he can be forgiven for thinking she actually could’ve killed that horrible man. But as soon and as often as possible, we all need to let him know how wonderful Shannon is and how she wouldn’t ever dream of killing a single soul.”
“Even if I did threaten to do so,” I muttered.
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Jane insisted. “We all know you never would have carried out the threat.”
“People talk like that all the time,” Marigold put in. “Just yesterday I heard Hazel Williams threaten to murder little Stevie Johnson if his ball landed in her garden again. Nobody takes those kinds of threats seriously.”
“Except Chief Jensen,” I muttered. “He doesn’t trust me.”
“He doesn’t know you,” Lizzie said. “Once he does, he’ll realize that you could never hurt anyone like that.”
“Well, now, she did kick the man in the bollocks,” Emily said.
“I didn’t,” I insisted, then laughed shortly. “Thanks for that, Emily.”
“Just keeping it real, love,” she said with a wink.
Later, as everyone was leaving, Emily pulled me aside. “Come to dinner tonight.”
“Here?” I asked, glancing around the tea shop.
“No, no. My place. I’m trying out a new luncheon recipe. Scottish-style beef stew.”
“Sounds wonderful. What makes it Scottish?”
“An extra bottle of ale.”
I laughed again. “I can’t wait. Thanks, Emily.”
She pushed my hair back from my forehead like somebody’s mom would and gave me a tight hug. “Stiff upper lip, m’dear.”
I nodded firmly. “You bet. See you tonight.”
From the tea shop I drove out to Sloane’s Stones, the huge brickyard where I liked to buy the floor tiles and granite or marble slabs for my clients’ kitchen and bathroom counters. Sloane’s yard was massive, at least five acres, and filled with every type and color of brick and tile ever made. If I couldn’t find it here, they would happily order it from anywhere.
Growing up with a contractor father, I had great childhood memories of my sister and me dashing wildly across the brickyard, playing hide-and-seek among the huge stacks of bricks and slabs of marble, and exploring the different showrooms with their gorgeous wall murals created from thousands of bits of colorful mosaic tiles. We would invariably come home covered head to toe in dusty redbrick powder.
We always had good times when Dad took us somewhere on business. One of our favorite destinations was the landfill, where he would dispose of truckloads of demolished house parts. I shuddered now to think of the dump as another of our childhood playgrounds, but we’d always had fun. These days, though, I let my guys take care of running stuff out to the landfill. Some memories were meant to stay in the past.