Margaritas, Marzipan, and Murder Page 4

  “To be honest, finding out the police were investigating a dead body kind of put a damper on things, so this was a good distraction,” Sammy replied.

  “For me, too.”

  We said our goodbyes and headed for the front door. We would normally have gone out the back instead of making our way through the darkened store, but we could tell by the spotlights still shining in through the plate glass windows that the police were still set up outside, so the alley would be closed.

  Dawn and I had just stepped into the darkness of the store when Mary Ellen reached out and touched Sammy’s arm.

  “Oh, Sammy!” she said. “I have something for you.” She turned to Dawn and me. “You two go on ahead. Just turn the bolt to unlock it. You know how to do it, Fran. It’s the same as yours.”

  Dawn and I went ahead and waited on the sidewalk for Sammy. The entire CBPD was still milling around. Flashes of light came from the alley, where one of the officers was still taking pictures. A couple of the others were taking notes as they talked to people in the crowd. Mike and Ryan were huddled together near one of the police cars. I realized with relief that the ambulance was gone, along with the man under the sheet.

  Sammy emerged from the store as Mary Ellen held the door open for her.

  “Thank you again, ladies!” Mary Ellen called out with a wave. “Be careful going home.” She waved again as she closed and locked the door then disappeared toward the back room.

  “What did she have for you?” Dawn asked.

  Sammy raised her hand to her throat and held out the sparkly bauble dangling there. It was a tiny three-dimensional heart made of intertwined silver-and-gold filigree, with the twisted silver-and-gold chain emerging from the center as though it were two strands. It was obviously one of Marti’s pieces and one of the prettiest things I’d ever seen.

  “It’s called ‘Full Heart,’” Sammy said. “Mary Ellen said she wanted me to have it as a reminder that my heart is whole, even without Jared.”

  “That’s so sweet,” I said.

  “It’s gorgeous. I’m jealous!” Dawn bumped her shoulder into Sammy’s with a smile.

  Sammy smiled back, looking the happiest I’d seen her since the breakup. I knew her well enough to know it wasn’t the gift or its value that made her happy but the sentiment behind it.

  We lingered for another minute or so, admiring Sammy’s necklace and Mary Ellen’s generosity, then made our way down the road toward Sammy’s and Dawn’s apartments.

  They both lived in apartments above shops on Main Street. When I’d first found out they were best friends but didn't live together, I was a little surprised, but as I got to know them both better, I came to understand they were probably smart to live apart. They loved each other, but they wouldn’t have lasted long sharing a living space.

  We left Dawn at her apartment first then headed for Sammy’s.

  “Are you going to be all right walking home alone?” she asked when we reached her door.

  “Sure, I’ll be fine,” I assured her.

  “Really? I can drive you if you want.”

  “No, I’ll be fine. Promise.”

  “Okay, if you say so.” She hugged me. “Thanks for a good night.”

  I laughed. “I don’t know if I really did much to make it a good night.”

  “You were there. That meant a lot.”

  “I’m glad I could be there for you.”

  I watched to make sure Sammy got in okay then headed for Matt’s house on a road off Main Street. The street lights were shining, but after the brightness of the police spotlights outside Mary Ellen’s, the road seemed dim and shadowed. Once I got onto my street, where the lights were spaced farther apart, I found myself walking a little faster.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” I told myself. “It was a suicide, not a murder. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” Still, the shadows seemed ominous.

  Chapter 5

  By the time I turned onto Matt’s front walk, I was barely able to keep from breaking into a jog. I should have taken Sammy up on her offer to drive me home—if only so that anyone who happened to be looking out their window and saw me scamper by wouldn’t think I had lost my mind. But then I remembered that Matt and I were the two youngest residents on a street mostly populated by people a generation older than we were.

  Our neighbors seemed to go to bed at nightfall, so no one was likely to see me rushing by. That thought made me even more nervous, and I ran the last few steps to Matt’s door. I rapped quickly on the door then grabbed the knob. It was locked, so I knocked again.

  Matt pulled open the front door, and I flung myself into his arms.

  “Matty!” I exclaimed, my childhood nickname for him bursting from my lips.

  He hesitated for a moment then hugged me close.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, clearly confused. “Are you okay?”

  Latte poked his nose at me, trying to figure out where my hands were and why they weren’t scratching his head. Giving up, he popped up on his back legs and leaned his front legs against me. I released Matt and reached down to rub Latte’s ears. Matt leaned out the door and looked around.

  “You just miss me that much?” he asked after determining there was nothing outside.

  I nodded, suddenly feeling silly for letting imagination run away with me. “Yeah, you and Latte. Latte mostly.”

  Matt cast another glance outside then closed the door. “How was your girls’ night?”

  “Okay.” I walked into the dimly lit living room, with Latte following along. Matt had one of the late-night talk shows on TV. I walked to the kitchen and flipped on the light before glancing at the back door to make sure it was locked. I decided it was overkill to cross the kitchen and turn on the bathroom light just for the sake of soothing my overactive imagination. Instead, I grabbed a glass from the cabinet and went to the sink to pour myself a glass of water.

  “Just okay?” Matt asked, standing in the entryway to the kitchen.

  I nodded as I chugged the water then put the glass on the counter. “A little short.”

  Matt made a face and looked at the clock over the sink. “It’s after midnight.”

  “Yeah, well…” I stopped and sighed.

  Matt looked at me with his eyebrows raised. Tiny Cape Bay didn’t have its own news broadcast, and the one from Boston had things to report other than the goings-on of a little resort town over an hour away. News travels fast in a small town, but mostly during daylight hours. Matt had no way of knowing about the interruption to Sammy’s celebration.

  “They found a body,” I said.

  “They what?”

  “That’s right—dead body.”

  “Who? Where?”

  “I’m not sure who. In the alley next to Mary Ellen’s store. Mike said it was a suicide.”

  “Mike was there?” Matt asked.

  “Of course he was. You think no one called the police about a body in an alley?”

  Matt shot me a dirty look. “Smart mouth,” he muttered.

  “You sound like my mother.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  I rolled my eyes. He always could get the better of me.

  “Is that what you’re so spooked about?” he asked.

  “Spooked? I’m not spooked.” Now that I’d had the chance to calm down in the bright light of Matt’s kitchen, my earlier panic was starting to feel silly.

  Matt’s lips twitched, and his eyebrows rose. “Oh really? So you were just that happy to see me?”

  “Mm-hmm.” I nodded.

  Matt shook his head. He knew I was trying to brush off my anxiety, but he was a good enough guy that he let me.

  “You want to talk about it?” he asked.

  I shook my head, shrugged, then nodded. “Maybe.”

  “Glass of wine?”

  “Please.”

  Matt crossed the tiled floor and grabbed two wine glasses out of the cabinet. He pulled a bottle of red wine out of the rac
k. I handed him the corkscrew, and he popped the bottle open. He poured out two generous glasses and handed one to me.

  He wedged the cork back in, picked up the bottle with one hand, took his wine glass in the other, and gestured toward the living room. I followed him, and Latte followed me.

  Matt sat down on the far end of the couch, putting the wine bottle on the end table. I kicked off my shoes and curled up on the opposite side. Latte settled in between us, resting his paws on my feet. Though Latte obviously loved Matt, I never doubted that he was completely devoted to me.

  “So somebody killed themselves in the alley next to Mary Ellen’s store,” Matt said.

  I nodded.

  “Weren’t you going out for margaritas?”

  I nodded again.

  “Those two places are at least half a mile apart. How did a body at Mary Ellen’s mess up your night out at Fiesta Mexicana?”

  “Dawn.”

  Matt’s forehead wrinkled. I could tell he was trying to figure something out, and I finally realized what it was.

  “Sammy’s friend. Dawn…” I paused while I tried to think of her last name. I still couldn’t come up with it. “Dawn, Sammy’s friend. Not sunrise dawn.”

  “Ohhh,” Matt breathed, realization setting in. “Oh,” he said again, this time in the same tone Mike had used. I had a feeling a lot of people used that tone when they realized Dawn was involved in something. It was remarkable how just telling people that I’d been with her explained how the whole night had gone off in an unanticipated direction.

  I sipped my wine as he paused for a minute.

  “So, she overheard someone talking in the restaurant about the police finding a body and then dragged you and Sammy over there to check it out?” he asked. I wasn’t sure if he thought that was the most logical or most ridiculous possible course of events, but with Dawn, the most ridiculous was probably also the most logical.

  “Yup, that’s it.”

  “Really?” Matt asked. Apparently, he had been leaning toward the ludicrous end of the spectrum.

  “Well, almost. We never did find out who found the body. Just that it was found.”

  “Semantics. I’m still right.”

  “Of course you are.” I took another sip of my wine.

  “I wonder who did find the body.”

  I shrugged.

  “You said it was in the alley? Behind a dumpster or something?”

  “Nope. Just in the middle.”

  “So you saw it?” Matt looked confused.

  “Well, it was covered by a sheet. There wasn’t much to see, except—” I remembered Dawn saying she thought she saw blood.

  “Except?” Matt prompted.

  I shook my head. “Nothing. There wasn’t much to see.”

  “But you talked to Mike?”

  “Yup.”

  “I bet he was happy to see you.”

  “You could say that,” I said, trying not to choke on my wine or spit it across the couch at Matt.

  His eyes twinkled. It didn’t take any great imagination for him to guess how Mike felt about seeing me anywhere near a dead body.

  “What did he say?” Matt asked.

  “Just told me to stay out of it,” I said. “But it’s a suicide. There’s nothing to stay out of.”

  “And they thought my dad’s death was natural.”

  I narrowed my eyes and looked at him. “What are you saying?”

  He shrugged and sipped his wine. “Just that things aren’t always the way they seem at first.”

  “You want me to get in trouble with Mike, don’t you?” I poked at him with the foot Latte wasn’t lying on. Latte snuggled closer to me.

  Matt laughed and batted my foot away. “No, I’d actually prefer you didn’t. I was just saying.”

  “Just saying what? Huh? Huh? Just saying what?” I kept poking at him determinedly.

  He kept swatting my foot away. “Just saying you should stop doing that before I spill my wine all over the couch!”

  I pulled my foot back and tucked it under me. “Good point. That would be a terrible end for good wine.” I took another sip. “This is good wine, by the way. Where’d you get it?”

  He told me, and we debated for a few minutes which places nearby had the best selection. After we’d come to a consensus, Matt topped off our glasses.

  “So did Sammy enjoy the part of the girls’ night she did get to have?”

  “She seemed to. I mean, she’s still feeling kind of sad, but I think she’s starting to cheer up a little.”

  “The breakup was her idea, right?”

  “Well, I think it was Dawn’s idea, but Sammy’s the one who did the actual breaking up.”

  “Dawn.” Matt shook his head.

  “Sammy actually said it was partly me, too, because I asked her why she was still with him if he treats her so poorly.”

  “Fran,” Matt said in the same tone he’d used earlier, shaking his head again. I poked him with my foot. “Remind me to never take you go-karting for our anniversary.”

  “Remind me not to date you for ten years with no sign of commitment.”

  “Oh, that might be a problem,” Matt said. “I wasn’t planning on showing any signs of commitment until I’m at least forty.”

  “That’s only six years away.”

  “Are we that old?” he asked.

  “Yup, thirty-four,” I replied.

  “Wow, when did that happen?”

  “Almost a year ago.”

  “I’m getting old, man. No wonder I’ve been getting so sore from all that working out I’ve been doing. See? This spot, right here.” He slid the sleeve of his T-shirt up on his wine-holding arm to show me the increasing definition of the muscles there. “All those weights I’ve been lifting are hard on an old body.” He’d been going to the gym lately and liked to point out its effects to me.

  I liked to tease him and downplay it. “I don’t think lifting a wine glass from your leg to your lips counts as lifting weights.”

  “It does if you keep it as full as I do.” He poured more wine into each of our glasses. “So what was it that had you so spooked earlier?” he asked after we spent a few minutes watching the late night show’s new host interview some B-list celebrity about his awful-looking movie premiering that weekend.

  I shrugged as I debated whether I should ’fess up or keep playing it off. Matt probably wouldn’t let it go until I told him the truth, so I decided to get it over with. “It’s stupid,” I said, then waited to see if he would pursue it.

  He did, of course. “When I was six, I got scared because I found my dad’s car doors locked. I was scared of locked car doors. Since my dad never locked his doors, I was convinced that meant there was somebody hiding in the trunk who had locked them to throw us off. You can’t tell me that whatever scared you was stupider than that.”

  “You were a kid. Kids are allowed to be stupid.”

  “It was five years ago.”

  I laughed even though I was pretty sure I actually remembered that happening when we were kids. Unless it was an oddly persistent fear, I doubted it had happened that recently. Still, it made me feel a little bit better.

  “I’m not really sure why I was so on edge,” I said. “I think it was just seeing the body and then walking home alone in the dark. The streetlights aren’t very bright out there. There’s no one out on the street. Most of the time, it’s great how quiet Cape Bay is. When you get scared about something, though, suddenly every shadow seems sinister, like there’s someone lurking where you can’t see them. At least in New York, there were enough people around that you could pretend someone would come help you if you were attacked.”

  Matt laughed.

  “You said you wouldn’t laugh!”

  “I never said that,” he replied. “But I wasn’t laughing at you being afraid. I was laughing at you not even trying to pretend someone would actually come help you in New York.”

  “It’s true.”

  “I kno
w it is. That’s why it’s funny.”

  I shook my head and turned my attention back to the late night show. There was some band on I’d never heard of. Based on how they sounded, I wouldn’t have minded never hearing them. They sounded like a lot of loud noise. I felt very old.

  “Man, these guys suck,” Matt said.

  “You’re not kidding.”

  “Apparently, they’re very popular with the preteen girls, though.”

  I turned my head slowly from the TV to Matt, and my eyebrows shot up about as far as they could go. “I was not aware you spent a lot of time with preteen girls.”

  “A guy I work with took his daughter and a bunch of her friends to one of their concerts. He said he could barely hear the next day from all the high-pitched screaming in his ears.”

  “Was that from the girls or the band?” I asked as the lead singer launched into the screeching falsetto of the song’s chorus.

  “You know, I’m actually not sure,” Matt said, rubbing his ear.

  The song and the show finally ended, and the next one came on. I pretended to pay attention to the host’s monologue, but my mind kept drifting back to the body in the alley. Something about it—besides the obvious—was bothering me, but I couldn’t quite figure out what.

  “What?” Matt asked, staring at my face intently.

  “What?” I asked back.

  “You look like you’re trying to solve the Hodge conjecture.”

  “The what?”

  “Never mind, it’s a math thing. You look like you’re thinking about something.”

  “Nothing in particular,” I said, turning back to the TV. Well, nothing I could put my finger on, anyway. Whatever it was that was bothering me was still lurking at the edge of my brain, just beyond what I could consciously comprehend. I tried not to focus on it.

  Just as the monologue ended and the band broke into the generic glorified hold music they all played, it came to me. I inhaled sharply.

  “What?” Matt asked, looking at me as though he thought something was wrong.

  “Matty, I don’t think the man in the alley killed himself.”

  Chapter 6

  “Franny!”

  I wasn’t sure whether Matt was annoyed or amused by my declaration. He was clearly surprised.