Yvonne was in prison for murder. I’d hoped it would take a few months to get around, but no, it wasn’t even twenty-four hours. How on earth . . . um, are you okay?”
Marina was leaning against the kitchen counter, her face in her hands. “Oh, no. Oh no oh no oh no.”
I was getting a bad feeling about this. “What did you do?”
She mumbled some words into her hands and I reached over to pull her arms down. “Again. This time in English.”
Her eyes darted left and right and up and down and everywhere but at me. “I had to tell CeeCee Daniels.”
I stepped away so I couldn’t give in to my urge to shake her silly. “Had to?” My voice echoed around the kitchen. I shut my eyes for a second, then started again, cool, calm, and somewhat collected. “Could you have picked a more inappropriate person to tell?”
“Cindy Irving,” she said instantly.
My irritation zipped up, then came back down again. “Okay, Cindy would have been worse.” Cindy did landscaping and janitorial work for city hall and a number of downtown area businesses. She probably talked to more people in a day than walked into the bookstore in a week. “But why did you tell anyone?”
“I didn’t want to,” she wailed. “CeeCee was here one day and Yvonne stopped in and they hit it off, and the next day CeeCee calls asking if I thought Yvonne would be okay babysitting her kids. I said sure she would, she’s great with rug rats. Half an hour later CeeCee’s in here about ready to roast my gizzard. She’d looked Yvonne up on Google and there it was, all bright and shiny. Convicted of murder. CeeCee didn’t read anything after that. I tried to explain, but I don’t think she heard a word I said.”
It all made a Marina-based sort of sense.
“CeeCee must have told Claudia, and who knows who she told? I’ll call Yvonne tonight and apologize,” Marina said. “I should have known what would happen, it was stupid, and I am really, really, really sorry.”
She certainly looked apologetic. The word “contrite” didn’t begin to cover the drooping eyes, the slumped shoulders, and the overall attitude of dejection. It was so unlike her that I couldn’t stand it. I poked her shoulder with my index finger. “Well, everyone’s entitled to one mistake a decade. Too bad you used up yours so early.”
Her smile came a moment after mine. “Yeah,” she said. “Too bad. I’d better be on my best behavior the next few years. Think I can do it?”
“Not a chance.”
Five minutes later we were seated at her kitchen table, our bright red plates laden with meat, potatoes, and a small heap of beans. It was just the two of us since Marina’s young son, Zach, was staying overnight at a friend’s. After her earlier behavior, I wasn’t about to ask what her DH might be doing. We’d slid into the habit of Friday night dinner and a movie soon after Richard and I separated. The evenings had been a lifeline in those first lonely months, and it would take a thousand years to repay what she’d done for me.
“So with Richard joining the ranks of the unemployed, what does that do to you?” Marina stuck a fork into a piece of pork that had the faintest of pinkish hues in the center. “Did he get a bag of gold or a boot out the door?”
“His severance package is generous.” I tried to sound unconcerned. “We’ll be fine for a long time.”
My attempt at nonchalance didn’t fool Marina a bit. “Long being what?” she asked. “Weeks? Months? Years?” As in, you have a mortgage payment affordable only via child support payments, so how long are the severance bucks going to last, because foreclosure is an ugly thing?
I didn’t want to think about this. I wanted us to laugh ourselves silly over nothing and then pop a huge bowl of popcorn and chomp our way through
“Well,” Marina said slowly, “that’s kind of a long time.”
“Absolutely.”
“And he has all sorts of skills. Like . . .” She pursed her lips and stared at the ceiling. “Well, he can do lots of things, I’m sure. There are probably companies calling him about a job already.”
“You could be right.”
“You bet I am.” She banged the butt of her knife on the table. “This will turn out just fine. Heck, Richard will probably find a better job with more money and massive benefits.”
“Um . . .”
She ran over my hesitation. “And you said just the other day that business at the store was picking up. You’re going to be rolling in—” She stopped and peered at the expression I thought I’d kept off my face. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t give me that.” She pointed her fork at me. Unfortunately, it was laden with green beans, which fell to the table with a small plop. That didn’t faze Marina. She speared each bean one by one and popped them into her mouth. “What’s up?”
Maybe I could be vague. “Sales at the store have been falling off a little.”
“At this time of year?”
Rats. Marina hid her capabilities beneath a swirl of personality and fractured quotations, but I knew better. Rather, most days I knew better.
Now I had to decide what to say. The truth would not only make her feel guilty, it would also spur her clever mind to the creation of great business-building feats, and I was quite sure I lacked the energy for any scheme she might dream up.
“Tell me, or I’ll be forced to take drastic measures.” Marina held her spoon in catapult mode, the spoon’s bowl filled with potato.
Though I had no memory of finishing my meal, there was only a small scrap of potato peel for ammunition, not nearly enough to defend myself. Besides, I’d never actually participated in a food fight. I was probably a very poor shot. “Mrs. Tolliver says she won’t come into any store that hires convicted killers,” I said, “especially when there’s a killer on the loose.”
Marina’s spoon clattered to the table. “But Yvonne’s innocent! How can she say such a thing?”
“I didn’t get a chance to explain. Mrs. Tolliver came in, made her pronouncement, and walked out.”
“That’s not fair!” Marina’s hair was flying away from her head in a thousand different directions; she looked like a red-haired Albert Einstein.
“There’s not much I can do about it.”
“There is one thing,” Marina said.
I shook my head. “I’m not going to let Yvonne go.”
“Don’t be silly. Your innate—and borderline obsessive, I might add—sense of justice eliminates that option. No, the thing to do is clear.”
“It is?”
“And this time we have experience!”
She didn’t mean . . . she couldn’t mean . . . “No,” I said. “You can’t mean
“Yup. We need to find Sam’s killer.” She nodded sharply.
“Not a chance.”
Marina’s cheeks were flushed with . . . well, I didn’t want to know what. I didn’t want to think it was excitement that was getting her riled up. I’d had enough of that last year when we were trying to figure out who killed Agnes Mephisto. I’d come to care deeply about bringing the killer to justice, but the fun and games had ended abruptly when my children had been threatened.
“We did it before, we can do it again,” Marina was saying. “Thanks to us a killer is behind bars.”
“The police would have figured it out,” I said. “They have procedures to follow, so it takes them a little longer, that’s all.”
“Procedures, my aunt Fanny.” Marina
“Yes, procedures. You know, the laws of the land? Local, state, and federal? We have them for a reason.”
But as private citizens, Marina and I weren’t hampered by the myriad rules and regulations. We would be free to follow hunches. We could poke into people’s coat closets and medicine cabinets, no warrant required.
