Stiff in the Sand Read online

  “How am I supposed to refuse you both?” he asked. I had the feeling he wasn’t as irritated as he pretended to be. Maybe he liked seeing the two of us on the same team. “All right. I’ll make a phone call. But don’t expect miracles.”

  “I won’t,” I promised, even as my hopes soared.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  After popping a container of Holly’s sauce—gravy, as she called it—in the microwave, I set water on to boil for pasta. Part of me felt a little guilty for eating Holly’s cooking, knowing how much Mom still missed Dad even if she didn’t like to admit it.

  And I could never tell Darcy. Never, ever. Not until she got over the sense that Dad was somehow being unfaithful to Mom by moving on with his life.

  But Holly meant well, really she did. Dad loved her, even if she was his polar opposite. She brought him happiness. The least I could do was test her sauce and come to dinner.

  It was Thirsty Thursday to those members of the human race with social lives, and I heard a handful of people laughing as they crossed the street beneath my window. Deke’s question of whether I had friends my own age tugged at the back of my mind, and I wished Raina wasn’t living in Manhattan and always jetting off to fabulous locations so she could write about her travels and accommodations.

  Maybe I did need some more friends. Nobody could replace Raina, naturally, but I couldn’t spend my life alone when she was busy with a life of her own. Texting wasn’t the same as having somebody to get a drink or see a movie with.

  Now that nearly three weeks had passed since the break-up, it was time to start getting myself back together. I would reach out to old friends and let them know I was alive and well, that they didn’t have to avoid me like I carried a contagious disease.

  Just having this on the horizon was enough to pick up my mood.

  So, too, was the ringing of my phone as I poured rigatoni into salted, boiling water—not so much the ringing, but the knowledge of who was calling.

  Not that Deke made me happy in any way, shape, or form. I was just glad to hear from him because we were supposed to get together to look over his pictures again. “Tell me you came back early,” I begged, stirring the pasta.

  “Hello to you, too. Miami is beautiful. Thanks for asking.”

  I growled. “You’re still there.”

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you missed me. But I most definitely know better.” He chuckled. “Sorry to disappoint you. But I did wanna check in since it’s been a couple of days. Knowing you, you’ve managed to get yourself into trouble at least once.”

  “I did not!”

  “All right. If not trouble, at least a sticky situation.”

  I hesitated, eyes squeezing shut. “Nope. I haven’t.”

  “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”

  “It wasn’t such a big deal. And actually, I wanted to tell you about it.” I gave him the rundown of what I’d learned about the resort opening. “So it looks like things are gonna move ahead. A little later than originally planned, since it was supposed to be open to guests this week, but still.”

  “Maybe Haute Cuisine will give the go-ahead to keep moving, then,” he suggested.

  “I left a message for Marsha earlier today and am just waiting for her to get back to me. I’d imagine she wants to verify, make sure I’m not pulling her leg.”

  “Of course.”

  “I think my dad’s going to arrange a visit with Robbie.”

  “Oh, Emma.”

  “What?” I demanded. “Are you going to tell me it’s a bad idea, too? Because I’m pretty sure if his girlfriend hadn’t pestered him for me, he would never have agreed.”

  “He’s a smart man.”

  “Robbie’s my friend. Or he was. Wouldn’t you want to see a friendly face if you were in such an awful position?”

  “Sure, especially if that person was only there to be friendly. But you and I both know you’re not just being friendly.”

  “I want to see if he’s okay. And yes, fine, sure. I wanna ask if he’s thought of anything since Friday that might cast a new light on things. I mean, he was probably in shock. Who can think clearly after something so terrible happens? Now that he’s had a few days to process the event, he might have come up with a bunch of information nobody wants to listen to.”

  “You have a way of infuriating people, you know that? And not because you’re unlikable. Just the opposite. I wish I didn’t like you, so I wouldn’t care.”

  I blinked, going still with a wooden spoon in my hand. “Huh?”

  “What?”

  “You said you like me?” It was barely a squeak.

  “Well, I don’t hate you. Did you think I hated you?”

  “You were pretty rude at first.”

  “That’s not the first time I’ve been called rude,” he admitted, sounding rueful. “I don’t mean to be. When I’m in the zone, camera in hand, I tend to forget everything around me. It isn’t intentional. And it’s not personal.”

  “Good to know.” I couldn’t get my pulse under control. It was all fluttery and uneven. He liked me? No, not like that. Right?

  “Like I was saying,” he went on after clearing his throat, “I don’t want to see you walking into something that might cause you grief. Even if Robert’s innocent, what if you never find something to prove his innocence? What if the murderer thought of everything?”

  “There’s no such thing as a perfect murder,” I reminded him. “There’s always a slip-up somewhere. The killer always makes a mistake.”

  “And you know that because…?”

  “Because everybody knows that, of course.”

  “So why are there so many unsolved homicides on the books? A detective’s daughter should know that. A criminal justice student should know it, too.”

  I was about to boil over like the pasta water, which I took off the heat before draining in the sink. “Okay, okay. I should’ve known I would get an attitude. But don’t think you can dissuade me from stalking you until I get another look at your photos. There’s gotta be something. You took so many.”

  “Which you made a snide remark about at the time.”

  “I’ll take it all back if you have something on that memory card that proves someone else drugged James.”

  He sighed softly. “You’re impossible. I’ll be back on Saturday. I can drive in to see you, if you want.”

  His choice of words stirred something in my core that I didn’t want to be stirred up. But there was no helping it. “Yeah. Okay. Give me a call then and we’ll set a time.”

  “Great. In the meantime, be good.”

  I stuck my tongue out, even though he couldn’t see, before tossing my pasta with some of Holly’s sauce. “Holy cow, this is terrific,” I said to no one, my mouth full.

  I definitely could not tell my sister about this. It would kill her to know Holly was good in the kitchen.

  The phone rang again, and this time it was my dad.

  “Whoa, Dad,” I said, taking another bite even though it was rude to do so while on the phone. “I’m amazed by this sauce! And I’m definitely coming for dinner soon if it means getting more.”

  “Aw, sweetie. That’ll make Holly so happy. She really wants to be friends with you girls.”

  I grimaced. “Well, she might have to wait a little while for Darcy to come around. I’ll try to warm her up as best I can.”

  “Your sister’s a stubborn kid,” he murmured. “She needs time, I guess. Even if it’s been two years since I got together with Holly.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I promised. “Especially if you tell me you got permission for me to speak with Robbie.”

  “He’s not supposed to be seeing anybody but his lawyer and his wife right now,” Dad reminded me, and the sauce went sour in my mouth. “But I got you ten minutes with him tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Dad! You’re the best!”

  “That’s ten minutes, young lady. No more. Ten. You can’t pass him anything, you can’t b
ring him any gifts. You’ll have to go through a metal detector.”

  “Sure, of course.” My head was already spinning. Ten minutes. I’d have to come up with the right questions in advance so as to not waste time.

  “And don’t be upset or disappointed if he doesn’t want to speak with you.”

  That knocked me for a loop. “Why wouldn’t he want to?”

  “Think about all the strain he’s been under, honey. He’s frightened, I’m sure. Confused. Wondering how this happened to him. Embarrassed, more than likely. I’ve seen it happen more times than I can count, and I’ve watched family members and close friends weeping because they don’t understand why their loved one won’t see them. Sometimes, it’s a way to protect the ones they care about.”

  “I get it.”

  “Sure, you get it now. But you might feel differently in the moment. I’m just trying to warn you not to get your hopes up too high.”

  “It seems like everybody shares that opinion lately,” I confessed.

  “Maybe if enough people warn you, you’ll listen.” He snickered. “Then again, I know who I’m talking to.”

  “Ha, ha.”

  “Two o’clock tomorrow.”

  “I’ll be there. Thanks, Dad.”

  “Don’t thank me. Not entirely.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your buddy, Detective Sullivan, gave the green light. You should thank him. I’m sure his superiors are breathing down his neck.”

  “He’s not—” No, that wouldn’t sound right.

  My father would jump on my insisting I clarify that we were not, in fact, buddies. He might not have been the well-meaning busybody Mom was, but he knew how to embarrass his daughter when he put his mind to it. A dad superpower.

  I settled for grunting. “Hmph. Okay. I’ll thank him when I see him.” Since something told me he’d make a point of rubbing in my face that he was the big hero, anyway.

  It didn’t matter. I had to focus on getting the most out of my time with Robbie as possible. There were so many things I wanted to know.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Why won’t you tell me where you’re going this afternoon?” Mom insisted on shadowing me around the café. That’s what I got for offering to help her out, to make up for cutting out early on Sunday.

  Though as far as I was concerned, I’d more than made up for that by fielding questions for an hour at her house during Book Club.

  When it doubt, deflect with tales of baked goods. “Did I tell you I made excellent lemon bars over the weekend? I think they’d be a great addition to the spring menu.” I was already mentally calculating the number of lemons we’d need while carrying a pan of dirty mugs and plates to the kitchen.

  Even the promise of tart-tangy-sweet bars kissed with powdered sugar did nothing to dissuade her, as she followed me straight to the sink. “Emma!”

  “Mom!” I mimicked with a grin. “It’s not that important. I just need to leave around one-fifteen. That’s all. I have an appointment.”

  “Oh, no.” She fell back, one hand over her chest. “You’re sick. That’s what you don’t want to tell me. There something wrong with you, and you’re trying to spare me.”

  “Mom. I’m fine. There is absolutely nothing wrong with me, I’m in perfect health” Then, something even worse than being hounded over meeting with Robbie occurred to me. “Please, do not say a word about my being sick to anybody in the café. Promise?”

  By the time I got home, there would be a candlelit prayer vigil taking place on the sidewalk outside the pizza shop. Maybe Mr. Angelo would see a nice boost in business from it, but he’d be the only one benefitting.

  “So long as you promise you’re being honest with me about being healthy,” she sniffed.

  The woman was mad as a hatter, but I loved her. I gave her a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek. “I promise. You have the wrong idea entirely.”

  She followed me back out into the dining area, cornering me behind the counter. “So? Why won’t you share? What could possibly be so important that you couldn’t share it with your mother?”

  My nerves were thin enough after a long night spent going over everything I wanted to ask my old friend, then fretting that he wouldn’t want to speak to me at all. This was not the time for my mother to be dancing the cha-cha on the last nerve I had left.

  “Mom, no offense, but you have a tendency to blow things out of proportion,” I whispered as gently as I could.

  She gasped like I had just insulted her double chocolate chip cookies. And I would never, ever, do such a terrible thing because they were iconic.

  “Me? Blow things out of proportion?”

  “I find it ironic that you’re practically swooning over this. Don’t you see the irony? Look at it from my perspective.” I chuckled to myself, turning my attention to rearranging the baked goods in the case so they look a little more attractive. The early morning rush had already come and gone, and now all that was left was cleaning up after the madness and settling in for the usual, steadily busy day ahead.

  “I don’t think this is funny. You always want to laugh at me, or make me out to be silly or frivolous, but I truly worry about you.”

  “Mom, there’s nothing to worry about!”

  “That’s easy for you to say. After you were at an event last week where a murder took place.”

  I looked across the café to one of the pastel tables currently occupied by a young mother and her two children. The kids hadn’t heard, but their mother had. And she did not look thrilled.

  “Mom,” I whispered, nodding toward the trio.

  Mom grimaced embarrassment, shrugging, mouthing her apologies.

  Then she turned back to me, whispering now. “I don’t see how you can expect me to pretend everything’s all right when something terrible could’ve happened to you that night. You were in a room with a murderer.”

  “I know. But nothing did happen to me, and nothing is going to.”

  “It’s going to bother me terribly if you don’t at least hint at what you’re doing today. Wouldn’t you feel terrible if something happened while you weren’t here? What if I had an accident? What if the last thing you never did was upset me?”

  “Oh, please. Can we not get into this right now? I’m not sure I can stand the guilt.” One of the timers went off in the kitchen, and I had never been so glad to have an excuse to go back there.

  She followed me anyway, even if there were guests currently seated out in the dining room. “Since when do we keep secrets from each other?”

  I paused in the act of removing two pans of blueberry muffins from the oven just long enough to roll my eyes. “That’s the problem, Mom. I tell you things, and you end up telling half the town. You should know better by now.”

  “I do not!”

  “No? For instance, you told Frankie Pierce that Deke was my gentleman friend. That’s not true. In fact, we’re not even friends in the platonic sense. We’re colleagues, nothing more. Now, everybody thinks I moved on from Landon too quickly, and I’m dating somebody else. Do you know how uncomfortable that makes me? I would think that after watching me being grilled on Tuesday, you’d have a sense of what you put me through. I know you don’t mean to do it, but it happens.”

  Her eyelids fluttered. “Does this mean you won’t tell me anything anymore? Is that it?”

  I gave her another hug. “Of course not. But you have to forgive me if certain things need to be kept private. I need to have some semblance of my own private life. It’s not easy, growing up in a town where everybody knows you.”

  The bell jingled over the front door, and Mom made a hasty exit to greet a new customer. I was glad for a momentary reprieve, the chance to take a breath and remind myself that healthy boundaries were a good thing. I needed more of them in my life.

  Starting with keeping certain parts of my life to myself. Clearly, reminding my mother not to spread my business around did nothing. No matter what I told her, she insisted o
n doing her own thing.

  It didn’t help that the first person who came to mind was Joe Sullivan. Hadn’t he accused me of something like that on Tuesday? With that little crack he made about my being inebriated, and that maybe I would listen better under the influence since I didn’t when I was sober.

  Now, I sounded just like him. It was almost enough to make me stress-eat a blueberry muffin. Good thing they were piping hot and would probably burn my mouth.

  “Emma! There’s something out here for you.”

  I poked my head out the swinging door to find Trixie Graham chatting with my mother. She was somewhere between the ages of thirty-five and sixty. I never could quite pin her down. She and my mother were thick as thieves, and along with my Auntie Nell were troublemakers, to put it mildly.

  She waved a small, white envelope in the air, removing a big pair of sunglasses which she thought made her look like Jackie Onassis. They did not. “Yours is the pink Bug outside, isn’t it?”

  I nodded, holding my hand out. “What, was that under the wiper?”

  With her free hand, she tapped her forefinger to her nose. “I thought that was your car. I was afraid perhaps someone had dinged it on the way past and left their information, but I didn’t see any damage.” Yes, and knowing Trixie, she would’ve gone over it with a magnifying glass. She had a nose for news, a reputation she enjoyed as one of the senior reporters for the Times.

  At least the envelope was sealed, telling me she hadn’t tampered with it. Not that I believed her to have anything but the best intentions, but she was the biggest snoop in town. Always trying to get the scoop. No doubt she had already grilled my mother outside my presence.

  I turned my back, opening the envelope and unfolding the slip of paper inside. What did I expect to find? I hadn’t considered it.

  Which was why I was completely unprepared for what was inside, written in block letters.

  WATCH YOUR BACK

  I took a glance over my shoulder, where my mom and Trixie were, of course, pretending not to be deathly curious over what I’d just opened. At least they weren’t reading along with me. “I have to make a phone call.”