He nodded and put two cartons of ice cream into the freezer. “Nope. No use complaining about it.”
I took another look at him. His blond hair was cut short, and he was clean-shaven. He did remind me of Richard a little. “How are you doing today?”
He shrugged and put another carton of ice cream into the freezer. Fudge brownie. “I guess I’m doing all right. I’m at work, so I can only be so good, right?” He smiled at me.
I laughed. “That’s true. Say, you look so familiar. Have you worked here long?”
He nodded. “I’ve been here for about a year now. I saw you in here the other day, getting some vanilla ice cream.”
He remembered me?
“That’s because I love to bake apple pies, and if you bake an apple pie, then you need vanilla ice cream to put on top of it. This store has the best Granny Smith apples for making apple pie.”
He chuckled. “I didn’t know there was a difference in apples. I thought a Granny Smith apple was a Granny Smith apple.”
“Now that’s where you’re wrong. You obviously don’t bake.”
He shook his head. “No, I don’t bake. Apple pie sure does sound good, though.” He was wearing a heavy coat and gloves to handle the ice cream, and he had what looked like a new pair of expensive name-brand shoes on his feet.
I nodded. “Say, did you hear about Richard Thomas? You remind me of him just a little bit.”
His eyes went wide, and he nodded. “Richard was my cousin. I still can’t believe that he’s dead.”
I made a clucking sound and shook my head. “How awful. I’m so sorry. He got sick at my house, and I feel terrible about it.”
He stopped what he was doing, a carton of ice cream in one hand. “At your house? So it was your wedding reception?”
I nodded. “I felt so bad for him. We did everything we could until the ambulance arrived. I really hoped that he would pull out of it at the hospital.”
He shook his head. “Wow. Messed up your wedding, didn’t it?”
I shook my head. “I was really only concerned about him, and I wish it had turned out differently.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I feel sorry for my aunt. She’s broken up over it.”
“I know his mom, and she’s a sweet woman. I’m so sorry that she lost her son. I know his brother Skip, too, and I also feel bad for him.”
He put the carton of ice cream into the freezer and looked at me. “You know Skip? I know a whole lot about Skip.” He shook his head and picked up two more cartons of ice cream, and put them into the freezer.
“That sounds ominous,” I said, picking up a carton of vanilla bean ice cream.
He nodded. “Yeah, Skip and Richard didn’t get along. They were always at each other’s throats.”
“I hate to hear that. I’m sure it upset their mother.”
He nodded. “Yeah, poor Aunt Mary was always worried about those two. But sometimes you just have to let people handle their own issues.”
“Sometimes that’s best.”
The thing that struck me about Jared as I stood there and talked to him was the fact that he didn’t remind me of somebody that was a drug user. He seemed clear-eyed, and his mood was good. If he was the drug dealer that people were saying, I would have expected him to be a little nervous, or maybe his thought process wouldn’t have been clear. This surprised me. But even Alec had said that he was a drug dealer, so he had to be, right?
I looked over the ice cream on the freezer shelf. “Did you hear what he died of?”
He stopped and looked at me. “They’re saying it’s a murder. I don’t know, maybe it is. But it just seems weird.”
“Weird? What do you mean by weird?” And hadn’t he told Jodi, Lisa, and Della, that he died of a diabetic coma?
He shrugged. “That medication they said he OD’d on isn’t something that people usually use recreationally.” He glanced at me, and now he seemed a little nervous. Like he had said too much, and his knowledge of recreational drugs was showing.
I shook my head. “I don’t know much about recreational drug use, but kids are trying all kinds of crazy things on the Internet these days. I’ve heard about so many different things, and maybe this was one of those kinds of things.”
He picked up two more cartons of ice cream and put them in the freezer, then turned to me. “I suppose it’s possible. But I really can’t imagine Richard playing with something like that. I mean, you’ve got to be pretty stupid to be doing some of the things that those people on the Internet are doing. Richard wasn’t that kind of person.”
“I can’t imagine him doing something like that, either.”
I hesitated, putting the vanilla ice cream back on the shelf and picking up a mint chocolate chip, and putting it into my shopping cart. There were so many things I wanted to ask him, but I didn’t know him, and I knew he wasn’t going to be that open with me. I was surprised that he was saying as much as he was now. “I hope that Richard wasn’t doing drugs recreationally.”
He nodded without looking at me and put three more cartons of ice cream into the freezer. “You never can tell about some people. I don’t know what he was into, but he sure got himself into a mess this time.”
“This time?” I asked, letting the freezer door close.
He nodded and glanced at me and then put two more cartons of ice cream into the freezer. “Sure, when he was a kid in
