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“WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?” I asked, as Sophie Halperin and I crossed Main Street, heading for the entrance to the Rose Bookshop. Twenty or so people stood lined up on the sidewalk, waiting to get in, undeterred by the damp cold or the gray, swollen sky that presaged more white stuff to come. The snowstorm had ceased around daybreak and the town had plowed and sanded the roads, but it was a bleak day, too bleak to be standing outside waiting for... what?
The line continued inside the shop, snaking through the section that actually sold books and into the middle room, which was an offbeat café that also hosted musical performances and book signings. Beyond that was a large third room that sold children’s books and toys. The Rose, which had occupied the same storefront since 1946, had survived, when so many other independent bookstores had not, by adapting.
Sophie and I were headed to the café for lunch and a long-overdue gab session. We hadn’t seen each other since Allison’s funeral reception nearly two weeks earlier, and we hadn’t really had a chance to talk then.
“Don’t hear music,” Sophie said as we bulled our way through the crowd, exchanging greetings with friends and neighbors along the way. “Some celebrity must be signing books.”
If there was a poster in the window advertising the signing, it had been obscured behind the line of people standing in front of the place. I wondered who had enough clout to get the Rose to agree to a weekday signing. They were usually reserved for evenings and weekends.
“Maybe we should have gone to Patisserie Susanne,” I said, with visions of chocolate croissants cavorting in my cranium.
“Eh, I’m there all the time.”
And little wonder. The patisserie was located on the ground floor of the Town Hall. Mayor Sophie Halperin’s office occupied the fourth floor of the historic building, a onetime hotel that had housed not one but two speakeasies during Prohibition. Her office had, in fact, been a gambling den and saloon back then.
“Make way for the damn mayor!” Sophie bellowed in her brusque, good-natured way. “I don’t have all day.”
I wondered how long Sophie would hold the office. She was up for reelection in March, and it was well known that Nina Wallace intended to unseat her. Nina did not fight clean, as had been amply demonstrated during her successful bid for the presidency of the Crystal Harbor Historical Society. Sophie was popular and she was tough, but was she popular and tough enough to prevail against Nina’s penchant for mudslinging and dirty tricks? Fervently I hoped so. Crystal Harbor did not need Nina Wallace at the helm.
At last we made it into the crowded café, with its heavenly mingled aromas of coffee, grilled sandwiches, and new books. The food-service counter was at one end of the room. There were a few small tables, all occupied. At the other end of the room, a young woman arranged stacks of hardcover books on a cloth-draped table while a middle-aged man I recognized as a store employee assured those at the front of the line that the signing would commence in a few minutes and counseled patience.
“Got one!” Eagle-eyed Sophie launched herself at a table whose diners were just beginning to rise, establishing squatter’s rights by plopping into a chair before its previous occupant had fully relinquished it. To me she said, “Get me the eggplant and goat cheese panino. And some of their good potato salad. And a peach iced tea.”
“You got it.” For myself I ordered a chicken panino with tomato, arugula, and asiago, along with the café’s yummy signature coleslaw and store-made raspberry soda. I ferried everything over to our table in two trips.
As I was peeling the paper off my straw, I heard, “Jane!” I looked around to see who’d called my name as excited squeals and a scatter of applause erupted from the crowd awaiting the book signing.
“Think I just lost my appetite,” Sophie groaned.
I followed her disgruntled gaze and saw a woman hurrying toward me, enveloped in a cloud of outrageously expensive French perfume. She looked about forty years old, but I knew her to be fifty, the beneficiary of extensive plastic surgery, weight-loss surgery, and a head-to-toe makeover.
Leonora Romano, in the flesh.
“Hello, Lee,” I said, as she yanked an unoccupied chair from a nearby table without bothering to ask whether it was taken, swung it around to our table, and deposited her trim bottom on it. Said bottom was encased in a royal-blue pencil skirt, which she’d paired with a peach bouclé jacket and matching silk blouse. My gaze zeroed in on her brooch, a big, glittery leopard—diamonds and sapphires, and I’d bet anything they were real—snarling over its shoulder as it crawled up hers. As always, her feet were shod in lethal-looking designer stiletto heels. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a neat chignon. More diamonds and sapphires adorned her ears.
She and Sophie exchanged chilly greetings.
I was about to ask Lee what had brought her to the Rose Bookshop at lunchtime on a Thursday when the answer smacked me upside the head. I took in the eager patrons queued up out the door, the excited whispers, the adoring stares directed at Lee.
“Oh,” I said. “You’re the one signing books today.”
She laughed. I’d like to tell you it was a friendly, teasing laugh. I’d also like to tell you I’m a Nobel-prizewinning lingerie model, but I cannot tell a lie. Except when it’s necessary for some greater moral purpose or, you know, really convenient.
“You just realized that?” she said. “I used to think you had decent observational skills, Jane.”
Despite claiming a loss of appetite, Sophie was making headway with her lunch. Over a mouthful of potato salad she said, “Don’t you have some books to scribble in, Lee? The natives are getting restless.”
“Let them wait.”
Her tone said, I’m a star. I wish I could say it was all attitude and no substance, but the weird truth was that Leonora Romano was indeed a star. The onetime chef and restaurateur now hosted The Romano Files, a sensationalist “news” TV show that had little to do with actual news and everything to do with Lee’s abrasive personality and talent for eviscerating any individual or organization she deemed worthy of public humiliation
The network had offered her the show several months earlier in the hope of enticing viewers away from the loathsome Ramrod News, hosted by the loathsome Miranda Daniels, which aired in the same time slot. They’d sweetened the deal by giving Lee a second show in which she eviscerated—yeah, more evisceration, it suited her—restaurants’ signature dishes and taught their chefs how to do it right. She was uniquely suited to this starring role as well, being both a world-class chef and meaner than the proverbial junkyard dog. With rabies. And a really bad case of fleas.
Both shows had done extraordinarily well, quickly soaring to number one in their respective categories and turning Leonora Romano into the household name she’d been determined to become. As much as I disliked the woman, I had to admire the laserlike sense of mission that had turned her from a homely nobody into a genuine celebrity, one the viewing public couldn’t seem to get enough of.
The book-buying public, either. I know you’re wondering what kind of book she’d written. All those fans were lined up to purchase a copy of Leonora’s Kitchen, a slick, hefty cookbook with a price tag to match. This wasn’t Lee’s first signing at the Rose. Last fall she’d sat behind that very same table, pen in hand, without scrawling her signature in a single volume. Now she had hordes of people waiting outside in the cold for the privilege of forking over forty bucks for a signed copy of Leonora’s Kitchen. I wondered how many of these fans would actually read any of the recipes it contained, much less haul out a saucepan and attempt to replicate her famous arrabbiata sauce.
I pointed to the young woman arranging Lee’s books in aesthetically pleasing stacks, angled just so. “Who’s that? I’ve never seen her here before.”
“Oh, my publicist assigned her to me,” Lee said with a negligent flick of her manicured claws—the same pretty peach hue as her jacket and blouse. “She keeps the line moving so I’m not sitting there all day. Good grief, the way some of my fans prattle and gush, you’d think I was the Second Coming.”
Lee could pretend to be irritated by the attention, but everyone at that table knew this was precisely what she wanted, what she’d spent years working for: to be recognized and revered by the public at large.
“And of course I have to be in the city in a few hours to tape the show,” Lee continued. “Somehow they managed to squeeze this signing in, but it’s tight. Thank God the limo has a fully stocked bar.”
I swallowed a bite of my sandwich and forked up some slaw. “So what do you want, Lee?” I ignored her affronted look. She had to want something. We had a history, she and I, and that history had not turned us into gal pals, no matter how loose your definition.
After a few moments she gave up the pretense of friendship. Glancing around and lowering her voice, she said, “I want the Zaleski story.”
Sophie and I exchanged a look. Neither of us liked where this was going.
“What story?” I asked. “Allison Zaleski’s death was a tragic—”
“Accident. Right. Until some startling new fact comes to light and it turns out to be something juicier.” She leaned forward. “And if that happens, I have no intention of letting that talentless hack Miranda Daniels beat me to the story.”
Juicier. As if a bright, creative, beloved young woman dying at the hands of a murderer amounted to nothing more than a swell way to boost ratings in the six p.m. time slot.
Sophie must have sensed me struggling to control my temper, because she responded for me. “What new facts, Lee? You know something about Allison’s death the authorities don’t?”
“Don’t be deliberately obtuse, Sophie,” she said. “It doesn’t become you. It’s the responsibility of any good journalist to be suspicious.”
And to sell more cornflakes and drain cleaner on behalf of her network’s sponsors, I thought.
“And I’m suspicious about Allison’s death,” Lee continued. “It’s a gut feeling. Something about the whole thing stinks.”
I wasn’t about to tell her she might be right, much less to share what little I knew. Lee had described herself as a good journalist. As much as I hated to admit it, she did indeed possess some of the personality traits required of effective investigative journalism, including doggedness, skepticism, and distrust of authority.
I said, “If there is anything more to her death, what makes you think I’d know about it?”
“Well, you discovered her body,” Lee said, as if stating the obvious. “I don’t doubt you’ve been in touch with the authorities. And then there’s the grisly way you make a living. Who knows what juicy little tidbits you’re keeping under wraps?”
There it was again. Juicy. Before I could tell her where she could stuff her juicy tidbits, Sophie came to my rescue.
“I’m the mayor of this damn burg,” she said. “Don’t you think if there were anything to know about Allison’s death, I’d know it? Why aren’t you pumping me for info?”
Another dismissive flick of the talons. “You’re a puppet, you don’t know anything.”
I jerked my thumb toward Sophie. “Aren’t you concerned about burning off a valuable contact with that kind of talk?”
“This ‘valuable contact’ will be out of office after the March elections.” Lee turned to Sophie. “I hope that doesn’t come as too much of a shock, Mayor, but it’s common knowledge. You’d be wise to prepare yourself.”
I saw Sophie stiffen. Now it was my turn to step in for my friend. “You seem to think you know everything that goes on in this town, Lee, but—”
“Not everything.” She rose and smoothed her skirt, lowering her voice further still. “I don’t know all the facts about Allison Zaleski’s death. If you can supply verifiable information that it was more than a simple accident, the show is prepared to make it worth your while. We’re talking about a very generous honorarium.”
Honorarium, huh? Well, la-di-da. “Forget it, Lee, I—”
“Don’t say no yet. You have my number.” And then she was off, striding through the crowd, accepting handshakes, hugs, and breathless declarations of devotion on her way to the signing table. Her obsequious fans did everything but kneel and kiss her ring.
Sophie pushed away her half-eaten meal. “Now I really have lost my appetite.”
“Me too.” Plus I had no desire to sit there and listen to Lee’s fans fawn all over her while her publicist’s assistant tried to hurry them along.
“Let’s meet for a drink soon.” She got to her feet. “I’m buying.”
“I’ll hold you to that. Go,” I told her, knowing she had to get back to her office at the Town Hall. “I’ll bus the table.”
After I’d deposited our trash in the bin, I started for the exit, stopping when I spied Detective Cookie Kaplan waiting at the counter for her order. Today’s earrings were red-and-black glass ladybugs.
After we exchanged greetings, I said, “I hope you’re not thinking of trying to eat here.”
“No, just picking up takeout. What a zoo.”
“Lee Romano is a real draw,” I said.
“Not for me.” Cookie accepted her change and a white paper sack from the young man behind the counter.
I was glad to hear it, though unsurprised. Cookie Kaplan didn’t strike me as a Romano Files kind of gal. “Listen,” I said, “do you have a moment? I was thinking about giving you a call.”
“Sure. Let’s find someplace quieter.”
We ended up in a small room in the back of the book section of the store, which had been turned into a sort of mini greeting-card shop, with hundreds of unique and artistic cards arranged in racks. We were the only customers in that area, and the relative quiet after the pandemonium of the café went to my head like wine.
I jumped right in. “It’s about Allison Zaleski.”
She pushed her glasses up her nose. “How did I know you weren’t finished with her?”
I felt my face heat. Last Saturday I’d asked Cookie and Howie to stop questioning people about Allison, which they’d only been doing as a favor to me.
“I don’t want you to do anything. I just have a question, and I’m thinking you might know the answer.” I’d decided to approach Cookie with this because the two of us had hit it off so readily, and she seemed a bit more flexible than Howie. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve known Howie a long time, I’m one of his biggest fans, but he can be a little too by-the-book. There are times when by-the-book doesn’t really work for me.
The level look she gave me wasn’t unkind. “It was an accident, Jane.”
“I know. I know that.” At this point I knew no such thing, but it would do me no good to share my unformed suspicions with her. I didn’t want to be branded as a total kook this early in our friendship. Borderline kook was bad enough.
And what did I know anyway? That Skye and Brenda had been acquainted last June. More than acquainted—Skye had been inside Brenda’s home. Which meant she and Allison’s stepdaughter must have known each other fairly well before pretending to meet for the first time during Allison’s funeral reception.
I supposed it was possible Allison had introduced them, but her video diary seemed to suggest that she and Mitchell had seen his daughter and her family only on the occasional holiday or birthday. These were, by her account, uncomfortable get-togethers and certainly not occasions when she would have brought along tiresome hanger-on Skye.
And in the unlikely event Allison had introduced Skye and Brenda back then, why the playacting when they met after her death? It didn’t add up.
Cookie said, “Didn’t Allison’s mother ask you to stop looking into her death?”
I nodded. “I’m not, you know, doing that. Um, looking into her death.” You could have fried an egg on my cheeks, they felt that hot.
“Uh-huh,” she said.
Yeah, I was lying to a detective, and doing a miserable job of it.
“I’m just curious about something,” I said. “Do you know whether they found Allison’s camera on her? After they, um, retrieved her body from the lake?”
Cookie looked like she didn’t want to answer. Probably didn’t want to encourage my delusions. But something tipped the equation in my favor, because she said, “After our conversation at Murray’s, I read through her files. She had a few personal items in her pockets, but no camera.”
“I’ve been told she always carried one,” I said. “I mean, when she was anywhere she might want to take pictures. She definitely would have had one in the woods that day.”
“Then it’s at the bottom of the lake.”
“Maybe. I know she packed two cameras for her trip.” At Cookie’s questioning look, I added, “It was in those videos she made. Remember, I told you about them?”
“Oh. Right. About those videos. How did you get your hands on—”
“One of the cameras,” I quickly interjected, “was small. Compact, you know? A Fuji point-and-shoot, she called it.”
“That was found in her luggage,” she said, “in the trunk of her car.”
“The other camera she was bringing on the trip was a Nikon. It had a neck strap, which she would have been using because it’s a substantial camera, a lot bigger than the Fuji.”
Cookie was already shaking her head. “We only found the Fuji.”
“Then she almost certainly had the Nikon with her in the woods.”
She shrugged. “Bottom of the lake, like I said.”
“Even with the neck strap? I mean, I know she would have been struggling, trying to get out of the water and back onto the ice.” I couldn’t stand to think about it. What a terrible way to go. The panic. The desperation. “But unless she deliberately removed the camera from around her neck—and why would she waste precious seconds doing that?—I’m thinking it would have remained with her body.”
“You’re wondering where it is and what images are on it,” Cookie said.
“Well... I’m curious, like I said.” I didn’t add what I’d been thinking, which is that a second person—her hiking companion, perhaps?—could have forced her to relinquish the camera before chasing her onto the thin ice.
“Nothing wrong with curiosity.” The look she gave me was too knowing. “As long as it doesn’t cause the curious to do something stupid.”