Daisy and I exchanged I wouldn’t be so sure about that glances.
“Did you catch his name?” Daisy asked.
The neighbor shook her head. “No, but he was really handsome. Young guy. Dark hair, lots of muscles, really blue eyes. I think he’s new around here.”
“Is that so?” Daisy asked, turning slowly to me. She was grinning like the cat that ate the canary, one eyebrow raised. I could see her inner matchmaker stirring once again.
“I wonder who that could have been?” she asked. But neither of us needed to say it aloud.
Chapter 16
I dropped Daisy off at her house, where Mike and Mudd were sitting on a blanket in the grass, having a tea party with little Willow. They all wore big, floppy wicker bonnets and held tiny plastic teacups with their pinkies out.
“We recording tomorrow?” Daisy asked, opening the car door.
“I have plans.”
“Oh, that’s right. Your dinner date with the adorable deputy.” She fluttered her eyelashes. “The one who was waiting for you at the Farley house.”
“It’s not a date. It’s a make-up information-sharing meeting. And he wasn’t waiting so much as stalking.”
“Uh-huh. Don’t forget to bring along some breath mints. In case your information gets…close.” She made kissing faces, so I leaned over and shut her door. “Bye.”
I wished I had time to just think about dinner—it wasn’t a date, was it?—but I had an assignment to take care of first. Today was the new bank’s grand opening. I drove toward the new branch, thinking about Kermit the whole way.
Had the police gotten as much out of him as I had? Did he show them the video? If so, what did they make of it? And what exactly had they taken from Farley’s desk? I wished with everything I had that I’d been the one to go through the things on his desk instead of mistakenly going through Kermit’s and then just blindly grabbing stuff off of Farley’s. Yes, Kermit had the playbook, but now that I’d heard his explanation, that didn’t seem like much of a find.
Daisy was the one who had found Kermit’s letter of intent, which had seemed huge at the moment, but now seemed like it could be just a coincidence after all. Either Kermit was innocent, or he was a good liar. And an excellent video editor. Maybe I could ask him how to cut things from our podcast.
I pulled into the bank parking lot and went inside.
Francine Oglethorpe was pacing in front of her office, waiting for me. She was wearing a blue power suit this time, her blonde hair yanked into a tight bun.
“Oh, good, you’re here. Let’s go,” she said, plucking a purse out of the air and nearly hip checking me into a rack of wilted brochures in her haste to get out the door. “I’ll drive myself.”
“I thought we could ride tog—” But she was already halfway to her car before I could finish. “Okay.”
I followed her through town. She nearly bumped Wickham Birkland’s car at the corner of Tutor and Oak, leaving him shaking both fists in the air. Soon we got to the site of the new bank building. A large ribbon had been strung across the front entrance and the mayor was standing next to it, checking his watch. Several customers came in and out of the bank, and were having to duck under the ribbon, looking annoyed.
“Why haven’t you cut the ribbon?” I asked as we approached the building.
“We were waiting for you,” she said. “I wanted the photo to look authentic.”
“What photo?” I asked, but before she could answer, a man came out of the bank, looking at his phone, and plowed right through the ribbon, knocking the mayor off balance. The mayor grabbed a sconce to keep himself from falling to the ground, and accidentally ripped it off the wall.
“Watch where you’re going!” Francine snapped, and the man sulked away to his car. “Okay, okay, let’s do this. Where’s your camera guy?”
“I don’t have a camera guy,” I said. “I have a phone.” I rummaged through my bag, searching for it.
“Well, then,” the mayor said, before I could even pull up the camera app. He put down the sconce, grabbed a giant pair of scissors that had been lying on the ground next to him, snipped the ribbon in two, and walked away wordlessly.
Francine pulled out a confetti popper that looked left over from July 4th out of her purse and pulled the string. A small amount of confetti and a few paper ribbons flew out and landed on my shoe. I shook them off.
I pulled out my notepad and pencil, trying to look as official as possible.
Francine’s face brightened as a woman got out of her car and walked toward us. “Oh, look! A customer! You can interview her. Hello, customer! Thank you for your business. Maybe you’d be interested in talking to this lovely reporter here.”
The woman skirted us warily and disappeared into the bank wordlessly.
Francine’s shoulders slumped. “I would say business has been surprisingly good,” she said. “You even got to meet a customer. You can write that down.”
“Oookay,” I said and took notes. “What would you like to point out that makes this branch special?”
“It’s on the other side of town from the original bank,” she said.
I paused, waiting for her to say more, but she didn’t. I wrote down nothing special—it’s a bank.
“And, as bank manager, will you be moving your office here, or staying at the flagship branch?” I asked.
“I’ll have an office at both,” she said. “Win-win!” She flung her arms wide, and in that instant, I felt once again
