Rita had thought to pack a cooler before she came that morning, and as we laid out paper plates and took the food out, I remembered our earlier teasing.
“I thought I wasn’t supposed to let you fix the food, in case you’re the killer.” I opened a container of potato salad and sniffed it.
“Shoot.” Rita shook her red tresses. “You caught me.” Sighing, she began putting part of the food back into the cooler.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
“Since you won’t be eating any, I thought I’d put the poisoned stuff back in the cooler so I won’t accidentally eat any of it. I wouldn’t want to kill myself, now would I?” With one corner of her mouth turned up impishly, Rita calmly continued to pack away my part of the lunch.
“I was kidding. Right now, I wouldn’t mind if it was poisoned. I’m too hungry to care.” I grabbed the sandwich Rita was putting away, slid it from its baggie, and took a huge bite. “There. It’s too late now. I’m already contaminated. I might as well enjoy my last meal. Besides, you probably wouldn’t poison me before we find the diary. You need access to Uncle Paul’s stuff.”
Rita laughed and set the food back on the makeshift table we’d made from stacked boxes. We settled onto the floor to eat, and Rita took a bite of her sandwich, chewed, and swallowed.
“Hey, I was joking about poisoning the food. You’re not eating.”
I stopped stirring my fork in the potato salad on my plate. “Can I ask you something?”
Rita put down her sandwich and gave me her full attention. “Sure, what’s up?”
I explained about my run-in with Stan and his gift of a potted hydrangea.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this before?” She leaned in, pinning me with her gaze.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I just wanted to think about it for a while, to make sure I wasn’t overreacting. But I can’t help feeling like maybe there’s something there. Maybe he really did do it.”
Rita shrugged. “There’s always that possibility.”
“I guess so.” I ate a bite of the potato salad then listed my concerns. “He obviously has hydrangea available. But then, so does a huge portion of the world. It’s a popular plant. And he did know about Norman’s murder. I know it’s all over the news now, but it wasn’t on the day after the murder when he talked to me.”
Rita had picked up her sandwich again, and she wiped her mouth before speaking. “Oh, he really does have a cousin who works as a dispatcher. She’s quite the busybody and a gossip to boot. It’s a miracle the newswires hadn’t already picked up the story. The only reason they hadn’t is we’re too small of a town for the TV stations to notice.”
“But would he have known about the secret passages at the hotel?”
Rita nodded. “He was a junior agent at the real estate company that brokered the sale to the hotel. He was very familiar with the plans and was even inside a couple of times while it was being built. Plus he and Barbie were there the night Norman was killed.”
“Hmm.” I ate some more potato salad. I needed to get her recipe. “I guess the brownie and cobbler angle fit too.”
“So that’s why you asked me if he liked to bake.” Rita had polished off the last of her lunch, leaving me with half a plate to go. She grabbed a plastic bag from the cooler and began to put the lunch trash into it.
My brows knit together. “Yeah, I was trying to fit the pieces into something that made sense. But we’ll probably never know if he used sleeping pills for anything.” Whether we found that connection or not, a lot of other evidence was piling up that Stan might have killed my uncle and Norman Childers. “I guess the big question remains: how would he have known about the diary?”
“Who knows? But until we find it and can turn it over to the police, whoever wants it still has you in his cross hairs.”
I ate the last of my sandwich while Rita packed the leftovers neatly in the cooler. We’d just finished as the door at the end of the hall opened and two figures entered, shadowed by the light behind them. I jumped to my feet, relieved when I saw not only Mason Craig but Keith Logan exiting as well. I quickly asked Rita to keep our conversation about Stan private for now. I didn’t want to point a finger at a possibly innocent man simply because he’d been nice enough to give me a potted plant.
“Hi, Jenna, Rita. We thought you guys might need some help.” Mason walked up the hallway with a bounce in his step.
“Sure. We’d love it,” replied Rita.
I looked at Keith, trying to figure out why he had come. I was pretty sure he wasn’t there in an official capacity, so maybe Rita was right about him. I narrowed my eyes. “You do know I haven’t told Detective Sutter about this place yet, right?”
“I know nothing, see nothing, hear nothing.” Keith winked and walked past me into the almost completed unit.
Mason grinned. “I had to stop by the store to pick up my jacket, and he was looking in the windows.” He gestured toward Keith. “I told him we were closed on Mondays, and he asked if I knew where you were today. I figured it was the place with the heat and air.”
“Don’t worry,” Keith interrupted. “He swore me to secrecy.”
“Won’t you get in trouble if someone else official shows up and catches you here helping me? Isn’t this a conflict of interest or something?” I crossed my arms and tilted my head.
“Nah,” Keith replied, his face serious. “I’ll tell them I was patrolling and caught everyone here, and I’m arresting you all.”
My breath caught in my throat, my stomach tightened, and my knees sagged.
“I’m kidding.” Keith helped me sit on a box. “I swear. I’m so sorry. I didn’t think.”
Rita punched him on the arm. “Well, think next time.”
I stopped her before she could chastise him further. “I’m okay. It brought back a few memories I’d rather not have.” I pushed away thoughts of handcuffs and jail cell bars, breathing slowly and thinking instead about what plants I’d put in the bright windows in the apartment.
Keith knelt in front of me, taking one of my hands into his own. “I really am sorry. I promise.”
“I’m fine.” I squeezed his hand softly. “Why are you really here?”
Keith grinned boyishly. “I wanted to take you up on your offer of helping me find a good book to read.”
Uh-huh. Sure. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt that maybe he wasn’t there undercover to help Sutter prove his case against me. “I have several thousand you can choose from.” I rolled my shoulders and forced myself to relax. “Care to join us?”
“I’d like nothing better.” Keith helped me to my feet.
“Boy, it’s as big a mess down here as it was at the store.” Mason had stepped to the second unit, and he whistled low and shook his head.
Rita spoke up in Paul’s defense. “It wasn’t always this bad. Not until Jenna got ahold of it.”
Way to throw me under the bus! I shoulder-bumped her. “Hey, remember you helped with a great deal of this mess. I’m trying to make sure we go through each book to see if the diary’s hidden in another book jacket.”
“Oh.” Mason surveyed the mess. “I guess it’s like the ‘You’ve got to break a few eggs to make an omelet’ thing.”
Rita threw a wadded paper towel at Mason, making him duck. “You behave, or you’ll be kicked out of the fun of going through all these boxes of books.”
“Okay, okay.” He grinned and grabbed a box. “No need to be pushy.”
I pointed out what I’d already gone through and showed them how I wanted things restacked, and we got to work. After five hours, we’d gone through the rest of the first unit and much of the second.
“I give up.” Rita placed her current box with the others we’d completed.
“Me too.” Mason sank to the floor and leaned against the wall. “I’m worn out.”
“We’ve been at this a long time.” I dusted off my hands, feeling as frustrated and clueless as I had that morning. “I guess we should call it a day.”
“Let’s regroup here tomorrow morning and go at it again,” Mason suggested, a hopeful look on his face.
I hated to pop his bubble, but it couldn’t be helped. “You’ve got to run the store tomorrow and go through the books in the back room.”
“And I have a date to help a group of rich women learn how to primp, early-1900s style.” Rita looked about as excited as someone announcing an appointment to have a root canal.
When I looked over at him, Keith raised his hands in surrender. “Don’t look at me. I have to work a double shift starting at six in the morning.”
“I guess it’ll be little ol’ me here tomorrow,” I said more cheerfully than I felt. “But I swear I’ll let you know if I find anything.”
“Jenna, one more thing.” Keith caught my arm before we got into our cars, a look of worry etched on his face.
My heart fluttered at his warm touch. “What’s that?” Good God, I sounded like a breathless teenager. Maybe I needed to stop hanging around Rita. She was putting goofy ideas in my head.
“Promise me you’ll keep an eye out while you’re here alone.”
There was no way he was interested. I was a suspect in a crime. He was only being nice. “I promise. I don’t want to get this close only to be caught unaware by the police.”
“I wasn’t thinking of the police.” Keith squeezed my arm gently then let go. “I’m worried about whoever wants the diary badly enough to kill for it. They’ve already threatened you and seem prepared to kill someone else to get what they want. I don’t want that someone to be you.”