“Doing?”
The vision of a petite blue-eyed redhead swam easily in his head. “Delivering a lot of bread baskets,” he deadpanned.
The detective didn’t look amused.
Jay sighed. “I served food. Cleared away plates. Poured coffee. You know. Waited tables at a birthday party.” Avoided getting caught on camera when that news crew arrived after the balcony collapse.
He pushed away the thought.
“The day before I was helping out in maintenance. The day after, I was off.” As was most everyone else, which the detective knew perfectly well since Jay was pretty certain the man had already questioned everyone who worked at Hotel Fortune, from the owners on down to the lowliest of low—which included Jay Cross.
Just simple Jay Cross.
“One of your coworkers stated that you were seen outside the hotel prior to the balcony collapse.”
“Yes. I’d escorted one of the guests and her nephews—” he figured the description was close enough since Brady Fortune, the boys’ guardian, had been hired as the hotel concierge and gossip had it that he was in the process of adopting them “—outside so the two little boys could get some fresh air.”
“It was early January.”
“And the weather was beautiful,” Jay returned, exasperated. He shifted on the hard chair and spread his hands, palms upward. “Come on, Detective. Do you have kids? These two boys had energy to spare and had been behaving through an entire dinner. I showed them a back way down to the first floor and outside so they could run around a little.”
“Near the balcony.”
“The entire back side of the hotel is near the balcony,” he pointed out. “What possible reason would I have to be involved in that collapse?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it, Mr. Cross?” Detective Teas leaned back on two chair legs, seemingly oblivious to the danger that his generous girth presented to them. He tapped a pencil eraser against the tabletop. “You’re aware of the food tampering incident during the Give Back barbecue at the hotel just last month.”
If the guy expected Jay to blink, he would be disappointed. “I worked the barbecue. Like usual.” Except there’d been a news crew on the premises that day, too. Not to cover a disaster—though they’d gotten that in the end—but to promote the community event. Jay had spent more time finding excuses to be out of sight in the kitchen than out in the open where the reporter and cameras were.
He hadn’t thought it was all that likely he’d be recognized. Not the way he looked now. But he hadn’t wanted to take any chances, either. He was already living proof that life could change on a dime. And if it could happen once, it could happen again.
“Running food back and forth from the kitchen to the buffet line,” the detective said with a goading little smile. “Any period of time when you were alone?”
Detective Teas undoubtedly already knew the answer to that, too. “Yes, but not for very long.”
“Do you know how many people had adverse reactions to the food?”
Jay sighed faintly. “It wasn’t the food. It was the pepper powder someone—not me—sprinkled on it.” He also knew that everyone had recovered. That, in fact, the one individual caught on camera having an allergic reaction to the pepper had set off more of a panic among the crowd than anything, and Nicole Fortune, who was the chef of Roja, had worked very hard to prove there’d been no mismanagement.
The damage was done, though.
Like all things caught in the media, sensationalism was more popular than truth. And this—the latest of the mishaps to hit Hotel Fortune—had everyone in town, including those who actually worked there, wondering if the new hotel could even survive.
For Jay, losing the job would be an inconvenience. Rambling Rose didn’t exactly offer the plentiful job opportunities that Los Angeles did, but he’d find something. He was nothing if not adaptable.
If the people looking for him, however, found out where he was, it’d cause a lot more than mere inconvenience.
“What brought you here to Rambling Rose?”
Teas couldn’t really be reading Jay’s mind, but he showed an annoyingly uncanny sense of timing.
“My grandmother.” Jay’s words were true. They just weren’t exactly the truth. But since that had nothing to do with this situation, Jay still intended on keeping silent on the matter.
In fact, the only time he’d come close to telling someone the truth had been in January. When he’d been staring down into the otherworldly blue eyes of Arabella Fortune. Strangely enough, he’d wanted her to know all about him. Everything.
The good. And the bad.
“Your grandmother. Speaking of.” The detective’s voice was like a boulder dropping in the center of the image in Jay’s mind, sending it rippling away. The man made a point of looking at the yellow notepad he kept to one side of him as if he didn’t want Jay seeing what had been written on it. “You’re living with her. Sweet deal. Sponging off an elderly woman.”
Jay snorted. “Have you lived in Rambling Rose a long time?”
The pencil eraser missed a beat. “Long enough.”
“Then you’ve probably met her. And if you’ve met her, you ought to know nobody sponges off Louella O’Brien.” Jay forced a smile. “Elderly or not, she sells her homemade jam every weekend out at Mariana’s Market. Rain or shine.” Much to his mother’s chagrin. Sandra Cross wanted Louella to move to Houston. To give up the ranch—it hadn’t been a working ranch since Jay’s grandfather died twenty years ago—and move closer to her and Jay’s dad. To give up her gardens and her jam business and behave the way she figured a nearly ninety-year-old woman ought to behave.
Not surprisingly, Louella was having none of it. With Jay living out at the ranch, his mother had given the subject a rest. At least with Louella. Unfortunately for him, instead of calling her mother every day to nag her about moving,
