EIGHT

“Well, well, well. We meet again.” He was six-foot-three of imposing bulk wrapped in a gray New York State Trooper’s uniform that showed off his physique to paramilitary perfection. He took off his hat and his mirrored aviator sunglasses, revealing close-cropped dark hair and a pair of midnight blue eyes fringed in enviable long lashes. He hung his hat on a hook by the door.

My heart raced. Last time I’d seen Lieutenant Hawthorne, I’d been sitting in the back of his cruiser, being lectured about not taking investigations into my own hands—and not sure if I was being taken to the county lockup. He’d ultimately dropped me off at the restaurant, though, and there hadn’t been any legal repercussions for me. But every time I saw him, I felt a little off balance, as though I’d done something wrong and was about to get caught.

“Come in,” I gulped. “Can I get you something to drink?” I didn’t really feel like being hospitable, but I could never seem to help it.

He stared down at me. “Something smells good,” he finally said.

What did he want, an invitation? Not hardly. “Dinner for the family. Restaurant’s closed till the weekend. What can I do for you, Lieutenant?” I hoped I sounded confident because I certainly didn’t feel that way.

“I’ll get right to the point,” he said. “Why is it that there’ve been two murders in the Bay in just a few months—and you’ve found the body both times.” It wasn’t a question.

I hadn’t done anything wrong, yet I felt guilty as sin. “Trust me when I say I wish that weren’t true.”

He continued to stare. I tried not to squirm. “So,” he said. “The murder victim is your cousin.” He consulted a small notebook that he pulled from a trouser pocket. “Doreen Webber. Age sixty. Lunch lady at the Bonaparte Bay High School.”

Lunch lady. I hadn’t known that. I wondered how much the lieutenant already knew. I owed Melanie nothing, but I wasn’t quite ready to give her up to the po-po either. “I didn’t find that out until yesterday. I never knew her.”

His chiseled jaw was firm, but a tiny muscle twitched just in front of his left ear. “Are you sure about that? This is a small town.”

What a jerk. I smiled sweetly. “Size doesn’t matter, Lieutenant.”

The corner of his mouth moved up, almost imperceptibly.

“What do you know about Melanie Ashley?”

I debated. Did I tell him about our relationship? He’d find out eventually. Might already know. I really needed to talk to Melanie so we could get our stories straight.

“She came in to the restaurant for dinner last night.” Not a lie.

“And was that the first time you’d met her?”

“Yes.” Also not a lie. Technically, last time I’d seen her, she wasn’t Melanie Ashley.

He gave me a hard look. “I’m going to need you to come down to the barracks tomorrow and give me a statement.”

“Sure. No problem.” Would he never leave? “I’ll come by in the morning, if that’s all right. I have an appointment at noon.”

He tapped a long finger on the dimple in his chin. “Would that appointment have anything to do with Jack Conway?”

I bristled. “I don’t see how that’s relevant, Lieutenant.”

“It isn’t,” he said. “But you might want to be careful who you associate with, is all I’m saying.”

I took a deep breath. What was that about? Jack was as honorable as they came. I had serious doubts about this state trooper, though. A little worm of doubt wiggled into the friable earth of my mind. Lieutenant Hawthorne wasn’t the only person who’d said something like this to me. I felt defensive. I wasn’t wrong about Jack. I knew it.

“If we’re through, I’m expecting my mother-in-law back any moment. She’ll be upset if she sees you here. I’ll be by in the morning.”

He pulled his Ray-Bans out of his pocket and put them on, then took his hat off the hook by the door and placed it on his head, adjusting it till it sat at the perfect angle. The delicious fragrance of the pastitsio wafted our way, and the lieutenant looked toward the ovens. His normally stony expression seemed a bit wistful.

“You do that, Georgie,” he said, and was gone.

*   *   *

“Good morning! How’s my ex-wife?” I found myself wrapped in a bear hug that squeezed a puff of Drakkar Noir–scented air up between us.

Wonderful. Spiro, Inky, Dolly, and Marina had joined me for dinner last night. We opened a couple of bottles of retsina, not my favorite wine with its faint pine-tree flavor but I drank it anyway, and played a few hands of Pitch at a nickel a point. Sophie scooped her big pile of coins into her hand, then into her pocket. We should have just given her the money in the first place, without even bothering to play cards. She always won. She said good night to us and headed upstairs with her winnings. Spiro and Inky dropped Marina off at her home, then left for their digs over the new restaurant. I went to bed early too. I’d slept fitfully, and I was dreading going to give my statement to the police, so my attitude was none too peppy this morning. I took a sip of my coffee.

“I’m not your ex-wife yet, Spiro.” It wouldn’t be long now, though. We’d be free of each other—legally anyway—by Christmas. I didn’t know how I was going to feel about it when it did happen. Sad, because twenty years of marriage was down the toilet? Happy, because I could finally live my life the way I wanted, a life that might include Jack? Afraid? What if Sophie threw me out? Or maybe I’d just be relieved, now that I was no longer living a lie. We’d have to wait and see.

“Oh, poor Georgie,” Spiro’s partner, Ignatius “Inky” LaFontaine, said, dropping a kiss on top of my head. “Spiro, you should try to be more sensitive. Georgie’s finding dead bodies again.”

Spiro helped himself to coffee and dropped into a chair near the waitress station. I brought over my cup and sat down, followed by Inky.

“You’re not expecting breakfast, are you?” I couldn’t think why they’d be here this early in the morning unless it was in the hopes that I would cook for them.

“No, no,” Spiro said. “We went out to the Family Diner this morning. I don’t know why Marina doesn’t open during the week. There’s nowhere else to get grilled cinnamon rolls.”

“You know why.” I resisted the urge to shake my head. “Same reason we only open on weekends this time of year. The tourists have gone home.”

Inky patted my hand. “We know. He’s tired. We’ve been working to get Spinky’s up and running and it’s meant a lot of long days.”

I just about blew coffee out my nose. Spinky’s? And yet, it was kind of catchy. The cute name, plus the casual burgers and sandwiches they’d told me they planned to serve, would fill a restaurant void in the Bay. I wondered if they’d keep the big old wooden ship’s anchor that sat outside the front door and had been there all through the time Big Dom DiTomasso had owned the place. Before he died.

“Good morning, Sophie,” I said as my mother-in-law approached. “Can I get you anything?” She looked from Spiro to Inky then back to Spiro, before taking the fourth seat at the table.

She wore a pale green sweater, the color of a luna moth, embellished with sparkling crystals all across the shoulders. I detected Dolly’s influence in this fashion choice. The color brought out little flecks of green in her eyes, and the effect was quite flattering. Her short hair, which she dyed a deep purplish burgundy, looked a little flat in the back. My guess was that she was off to the Hair Lair for a fresh set and bouff.

“Later,” she said. She stared at Spiro, and he began to squirm almost imperceptibly. “Why you here so early?”

“Can’t a man come to visit his own mother without getting the third degree?” he said.

Inky’s expression was carefully neutral.

Sophie’s eyes narrowed. “You never get up so early. Maybe this guy”—she nodded to Inky—“is good influence on you?”

Spiro seemed to relax. Inky smiled. Sophie had accepted their relationship quite gracefully once it was presented to her as a fait accompli. I think it was a relief to her to finally have everything out in the open. Now if I could just come clean with her about Jack, we’d all be one big, painfully honest family.

“So . . . how’s everybody here?” Spiro asked. Once he’d moved in with Inky, he’d only been back to get his clothes.

“We’re fine,” I said. He was up to something, I just knew it.

“Where’s Dolly? I’d like to say hi.”

Hmmm. Curiouser and curiouser. “I imagine she’ll be in later. She’ll want to get a start on prep for the weekend.”

Inky was studying a fingernail.

I glanced from one to the other. Of course. I should have guessed sooner.

“So,” I said, fixing my gaze on Spiro and forcing the issue. “How’s the staffing coming along at Spinky’s?”

“Spinky’s? Dumb name.” Sophie aligned the silverware so that it was perfectly oriented parallel and perpendicular to the edges of the table. Despite the fact, of course, that we’d have to reset this table anyway, now that we’d all been sitting at it.

“Well, you know how it is,” Spiro said. “Most of the experienced people in town want their winters off.”

And one experienced person who wouldn’t be averse to a year-round job might also happen to be one of the best cooks in the Bay. And might also happen to be my cook right here at the Bonaparte House—one Dolly Riley.

The same thought must have gone through Sophie’s head because she let loose on Spiro in Greek. They began to argue, and knowing them, it would take some time for them to hash it out. “Come on, Inky,” I said. “Let’s go make another pot.”

He followed me out to the kitchen. “Sorry,” he said. “I told him it was a bad idea to try to steal your cook away from you.”

“I appreciate that.” I fiddled with the coffeemaker and got it going. The cooler yielded part of a pie made of wild blackcaps—in other parts of the country these little dark gems are called black raspberries. They’re common here, but labor intensive and somewhat hazardous to pick because of their sharp thorns. And of course the pickers have to compete with the bears and the turkeys. This pie represented almost the last of the berries I had frozen this summer.

Pie for breakfast? Why not? I offered Inky a slice, but he declined (thank goodness). So I squirted on some whipped cream and took a bite. Tart, sweet, and with a flavor like no other, the tiny seeds crunched between my teeth. The crust, despite having been refrigerated, was still flaky, crisp yet tender. And made by Dolly. Nope, I wouldn’t give her up. If she needed a raise to stay, I’d give it to her gladly. Besides, I considered her a friend.

“But we do need a cook. And, well, a full wait and kitchen staff. No bartender yet—the liquor license hasn’t been transferred. So if you know of anybody looking for a job, let me know.”

I would get on that immediately. The sooner I found Spinky’s some employees, the sooner I could rest easier about Dolly. “Let me make some calls for you.”

“You’re a doll,” Inky said. “You sure you don’t want to come in for a tattoo? I’ll do it for free.”

“Uh, no. I could never decide on a design I could wear for the rest of my life.” I was destined to remain a tat-virgin and that was okay by me.

Inky looked thoughtful. “You know who might have made a good short-order cook? Doreen. Too bad she’s dead.”

I was taken aback. “Did you know her?” Why hadn’t he mentioned this before? Doreen’s body was found out behind his restaurant and had been there for at least a day, according to Chief Moriarty. No, no way was Inky a murderer. I refused to believe it. And yet . . .

“She had a tat done a week or so ago. I remember we laughed because she’d come from work at the school cafeteria and she’d forgotten to take off her hairnet.”

I frowned. “Why didn’t you mention you knew her when the paramedics carried her body out of your backyard?”

“I didn’t get a good look at her as she went past, and it was dark.” True. “I heard it was her later.”

My curiosity got the better of me. “Did you two talk about anything while she was getting inked?” My thoughts shot back to Lieutenant Hawthorne. I was in for another lecture if he found out about this. The argument between Spiro and Sophie was still going strong in the other room.

“Let’s see.” Inky’s brows drew up in concentration. “She came in, said it was her first tat and she wasn’t sure what she wanted. She wasn’t wearing her lunch lady uniform, but it was about two o’clock on a weekday so I figured she’d come straight from school. She smelled like turkey and gravy, and I got a little hungry.”

Not surprising. Inky was always hungry. He clearly had a lightning-fast metabolism and/or worked out a lot—probably both—because his lean frame didn’t seem to carry an ounce of extra fat. Jealousy doesn’t become you, Georgiana Gertrude, I admonished myself, and took another bite of my pie. “Go on,” I prompted. “What else happened?”

“Well, she looked through my design books. There was no one else in the shop, so I sat down with her to flip through the pages. The scent of turkey was strong—like an entity floating around the room! Finally, she let out a huge laugh. She had one of those dry, wheezy kinds of laughs like she’d smoked for years then given it up. ‘That’s the one,’ she said, and pointed to a picture.” He paused for dramatic effect.

I took the cue. “And? What did she pick?” I found myself caught up in the story.

He leaned back against the counter. “A stylized dollar sign.” He smiled and a dimple appeared in his lean left cheek and the snake that was inked up onto his shaved scalp twitched with the movement. “Which she wanted me to put right around her belly button. Then she changed her mind and put it on her arm so more people would see it.” Inky reached over with a tanned hand and broke a piece of crust off my pie and popped it into his mouth. “Wow, this is good. Spiro wasn’t kidding.”

“I’ll find you a cook,” I said absently. My mind was racing. Why would a sixty-year-old cafeteria worker suddenly decide to get her first tattoo? And why a dollar sign? That seemed an odd choice. Of course, I had no idea what Doreen’s financial situation had been, but she couldn’t have made much more than minimum wage at the school. She lived outside of town at the family farm (I winced. That was my family farm too, even though I’d never been there), so her taxes were probably low, but it would cost an arm and a leg in the winter to heat an old farmhouse. “Did she end up getting the tat? Did she say anything else?”

Inky continued to eye my breakfast, then shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans, presumably to keep from picking anything more off my plate. I walked to the cooler, pulled out the last piece of pie, and handed it to him with a fork, regretfully. He forked up some berries, then looked at me. “Where’s the whipped cream? She said she was going to come into a pile of money in a few months, then retire. She was celebrating early.”

Interesting. My thoughts turned again to the jewels and the priceless table I’d found upstairs. Had Doreen thought she was somehow entitled to some of that money through her heretofore unknown relationship with me? Had she been planning to blackmail me perhaps? I tried not to snort. My life so far had hardly been interesting enough to engender blackmail. Sure, my husband preferred men, but that was out in the open. I’d thought long ago about having an affair, but that had been short-lived. I couldn’t reconcile being the mother of a junior high school kid and being involved in a secret affair simultaneously, so I’d ended it almost as quickly as it had begun, choosing to be able to look my daughter in the eye at the dinner table over potential sex with somebody I didn’t love. I’d liked the guy, and he’d liked me, but the fireworks were noticeably absent.

“Did she say where the money was coming from?” Another thought struck me. Maybe it wasn’t me she’d been planning to blackmail. Maybe it was Melanie. In fact, maybe she’d already made her demands on Melanie and that was why my long-lost mother had decided to reappear in Bonaparte Bay. To try to stop her. What if Melanie had agreed to meet Doreen, and it had gotten physical? What if Melanie snapped and strangled Doreen in an effort to silence her, then showed up here at the Bonaparte House as if nothing had happened? A cold lump formed and twisted in the pit of my stomach.

“Georgie?” Inky’s voice brought me out of my thoughts. “You okay, honey? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I shook my head to clear it. “Uh, yeah. Just remembering finding Doreen, that’s all.”

“Such nastiness. And she wasted all that money on a tat that she barely got to enjoy.” He finished off the pie and set the plate in the big stainless steel sink. “You know what else is a piece of nastiness? We got a shipment of stuff in from the restaurant supply house in Watertown, you know, dishes, silverware, utensils? Well when Spiro and I went to put everything away, the roll of plastic wrap had been opened and almost half of it was gone.”

I sucked in a breath. Doreen had been strangled with a rope made from braided plastic wrap. I studied Inky’s face. He wouldn’t have seen the murder weapon that night because it was too dark. He didn’t seem to have made the connection between his missing wrap and Doreen’s death, which was obvious, so it was clear he had not heard what the murder weapon was.

“And not only that,” he continued. “But the key we keep under the back mat was missing too.”