I couldn’t get over the fact that he didn’t seem like a drug dealer. Not at all. How could he be when he needed to be able to show up to work on time every day?
“I heard about that. It caused his mother a lot of heartache. She was sure that he had moved beyond that phase of his life.”
He nodded and put two more cartons of ice cream into the freezer, then let the door shut. “Like I said, poor Aunt Mary sure went through a lot with those two boys of hers. I would never have imagined Richard ending up dead like he did, though. He had gotten his life back on track as far as anyone knew, and now he’s dead.”
I nodded. “It sure is a shame. You say that both of the boys caused their mother trouble. Did Skip do drugs while in high school?”
He hesitated. “Let’s just say that Skip got into his own kind of trouble.” He gave me a lopsided grin. “And like I said, he and Richard never got along.”
I wasn’t sure how to read that. “I guess teenage boys will do that. I hate to spread rumors, but I heard someone was saying he died of a diabetic coma. Did you hear that?”
His eyes widened, and he looked away, picking up a carton of ice cream and putting it into the freezer. “I never heard that.”
If I wasn’t mistaken, his cheeks turned a light shade of pink. “Well, you know how rumors are around here.”
He nodded. “Well, it was nice talking to you. I’ve got to get back to work. The frozen dinners won’t restock themselves.” He chuckled.
“No, they won’t,” I said. “It was good talking to you, too. And I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Don’t mention it? I watched as he pushed the cart the ice cream had been stacked on toward the back room. Was he lying about telling people Richard had died from a diabetic coma? It looked like it to me. Maybe he had been trying to spread that rumor around to take people’s eyes off of him. And maybe, he didn’t want that rumor attached to his name now. Jared Thomas was an interesting character, and I was now sure that he played a bigger role in Richard’s death, regardless of how clean-cut he appeared.
I opened the freezer door and picked up the carton of vanilla bean ice cream again. I was going to make Alec an apple pie for dessert tonight, and he loved vanilla ice cream on his pie. I also needed to pick something up for dinner in case Lucy and Ed showed up.
Chapter Seventeen
“So do you think Della will hire you to make some of her desserts for her catering business?” Lucy asked me as we jogged slowly down the running path. Last year Alec and I had competed in a marathon, and it had worn me out. Since then, I had never quite gotten back into my running routine. I wasn’t sure what the reason for that was. The marathon had been amazing. Well, amazing that I had actually completed it. But it was hard work. All those miles that we ran to work up to it, and then the marathon itself was incredibly hard. I was proud of myself for following through on both the training and finishing the marathon, but I was pretty sure I didn’t want to do another one. Alec had been hinting that we might run another marathon this year, but I didn’t have any interest in that.
I glanced at her. “I don’t know if she will. And honestly, it doesn’t make any difference to me. I’m still making the desserts for Henry’s Home Cooking Restaurant, and that keeps me busy enough. I just wanted to see whether she would eat any of my sugar-laden desserts. And she did.”
She nodded as we plodded along. “It was interesting that she and Jodi are both diabetics,” she said.
I nodded and breathed out hard. “Isn’t it, though? Either of them could have been prescribed that medication.”
“And even if that medication isn’t prescribed as often anymore, they could have had some sitting in the back of their medicine cabinet.”
Lucy had a point. Either one of them could have given Richard that medication. But how had they done it? Did they tell him that it was something else? Was he looking for some drugs? Maybe he had run out of whatever it was that he normally used and couldn’t get a hold of his supplier. That supplier most likely being his cousin Jared. And maybe Della had told him that it was something similar to what he wanted, and so he took a chance on it. Della, after all, hadn’t been as bothered by him selling drugs behind her business as she should have been.
“I’m having a hard time believing his cousin is a drug dealer. He just doesn’t look like one.”
“But Alec said that he was. He said he was dangerous. And if Alec said it, then it’s got to be true.”
“I don’t doubt it one bit,” I said. Alec wouldn’t make a mistake about something like that, so it had to be true. But looking at Jared and taking him at face value, it was hard to imagine him being a drug dealer. But then, I had a hard time believing Richard had been a drug dealer, too.
I looked up ahead and saw a runner coming toward us. I grinned. “Look who’s coming our way.”
She looked up ahead, breathing hard. “I think I recognize that lone runner.”
“Me too,” I said, and we kicked up our pace a notch.
When we got closer, Alec grinned at
