A High-End Finish(29)

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Thanks to my brilliant, nosy pals, motives for killing Jerry began to spring up all over town. Jane even went to the trouble of making up a detailed spreadsheet of all of them to give to Chief Jensen. I hoped he fully appreciated her diligence.

Marigold’s customer Susan had called Jerry selfish, narcissistic, and manipulative. And those were nice terms compared to what some of the other people had used to describe him. Susan had confessed to Marigold that she had bought into his song and dance and succumbed to his questionable charms. He’d been rather cruel afterward, but she refused to go into detail, despite Marigold’s less than subtle questioning.

It was alarming to discover just how many women were being serviced by the phenomenal Jerry Saxton, many of them concurrently. The women were married, single, old, young, rich, poor—you name it. Jerry was an equal-opportunity womanizer.

If the number of Jerry’s sexual encounters was shocking, something equally alarming cropped up in our investigations. Through one of Lizzie’s business connections, we found out that several unwarranted home foreclosures had occurred as a direct result of Jerry’s allegedly shady dealings.

I remembered on the night of our date, Jerry had talked about some of the property deals he’d handled in Lighthouse Cove, but I hadn’t realized there were so many. And I’d certainly never thought he might be doing anything illegal with them. Then again, I didn’t really know the man at all.

I was beginning to think it might be easier to find someone in town who didn’t have a motive to kill Jerry.

By the end of the week, there were still too many questions in my mind. But now I knew exactly who to talk to in order to get some answers.





Chapter Six


Friday night I finally showed my face at the pub. Jane and Emily flanked me as I walked inside and was greeted by many of the friends and neighbors I’d been avoiding all week. There was plenty of good-natured ribbing, but nothing too outrageous. Jerry’s death had clearly put a damper on any teasing I might’ve received for kneeing him that night on the beach.

We left our name with the hostess and found a spot at the bar to have drinks while we waited for a table. I glanced around to see if my dad was here, but didn’t spot him. I saw plenty of other people, though. Penny was sitting in a booth with two people I recognized from the bank. Joyce and Stan Boyer sat across from each other at one of the bar tables, talking animatedly while they drank cocktails and shared an order of French fries. I would’ve loved to get close enough to listen in on their conversation, but they would probably notice and shoo me away.

Police Chief Jensen stood at the far end of the bar, talking to Tommy and another cop. I figured the three of them were off duty, given that they all had beer bottles clutched in their hands.

Jane waved to Chief Jensen, who grinned at her and then acknowledged me with a somber nod. I smiled at Tommy just as Whitney approached him and whispered something in his ear. He chuckled at whatever she said and gave her a sweet kiss on the cheek. She turned and looked directly at me, smiling smugly. I rolled my eyes and gazed in another direction. The woman was relentless in her need to prove to me how much Tommy adored her. I simply didn’t care, but I would never be able to convince her of that.

A minute later Whitney was joined by Jennifer Bailey and their friend Trina, another member of their rich-girl posse from high school. All three women were overdressed for a night at the pub, but that was typical. Whitney wore a sleeveless baby blue beaded top to show off her tanned, perfectly toned arms, along with white skinny jeans and terrifyingly high stiletto heels. Her sleek dark hair was tucked coquettishly behind her ears. The other two women were both dressed in shimmering black from head to toe, including the requisite stiletto heels. Tommy ordered drinks for the women, and when the cocktails arrived the three of them moved away from the cops to talk more privately.

“She’s still a piece of work, isn’t she?” Jane murmured, shaking her head.

“Yeah.” I glanced down at my clean blue jeans, navy sweater, and black ankle boots and wondered briefly if I should start wearing clothes with sparkles on them. I’d probably get laughed out of the pub.

“She’s scared to death that Tommy is still in love with you,” Emily said.

I blinked at her. “That’s crazy.”

“No, it’s not,” Jane said. “It makes perfect sense.”

“Except for the fact that Tommy is deliriously happy with both his marriage and his family.”

“That may be true,” Emily said, “but she’s too insecure to see it.”

I glanced over my shoulder at Whitney, then turned back to my friends. “Possibly,” I hedged.

“Let’s change the subject,” Jane said. “How’s your chef hunt going, Emily?”

Emily regaled us with the disastrous results of her search for a second cook for the tea shop. “Needless to say, the past few days have been a complete fiasco. But I have prospective cooks coming in every day next week, so please pray that none of us gets food poisoning or a knife shoved into her gut.”

“That’s a lovely picture,” Jane said, laughing.

I shivered at the thought. I guess it was too soon for me to find jokes about murder funny.

I took a sip of my wine and gazed across the room in time to see Wendell Jarvick saunter imperiously into the bar and collide right into Whitney. Her drink, some cranberry-and-vodka concoction, splashed all over the front of Wendell’s crisp white dress shirt and dripped down his perfectly creased khaki pants.