flickered.
“Tell me what Oscar saw on your phone. That’s why you attacked him.”
“He didn’t see anything. Not one picture. Nada. He wanted to chat to his girlfriend, that was all.”
Talking about Chip’s cell phone made me remember mine. Chip had stuffed it in my pocket, not my purse. I started to remove my wet gloves.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“These are soaked. I need to warm my hands. I’m going to put them in my pockets. Do you mind?”
He shrugged.
I tucked the wet gloves under my armpit and slipped my hands into the pockets. With little movement, I was able to switch on my cell phone’s mute button. Chip might hear the phone vibrate if someone called me, but he wouldn’t hear me summon the first person on my speed dial—Jordan. I prayed for him to pick up. Maybe Jordan could tell what was happening by listening in.
To drown out Jordan’s voice if he answered, I scuffed my loafers on the fake grass, like I was trying to warm myself up, except the scuffing wasn’t loud enough. I needed to do something more.
In the angriest tone I could muster, I said, “I know what Oscar saw!” The American Theater Wing would never award me a Tony for my overly dramatic performance, and Grandmere would have a hissy fit that I was telegraphing to the audience, but I could live with her disapproval. At least, I hoped I would live long enough to find out.
“Be quiet,” Chip warned.
“Or what?”
He wheeled back with the hockey stick.
As he did, a notion hit me like a telephone book. Cell phones kept lists of the most recent telephone calls. I backed off with my tone but not my words. “Oscar saw a phone call from you to Kaitlyn the day she died.”
“You’re wrong.”
“You called her the day she was in The Cheese Shop. She threatened to ruin you.”
“Didn’t happen.”
“Then why are you holding me hostage?”
Chip stalked me. He tossed the stick from hand to hand. “So what if I called her? We were partners. I called her a bunch of times every day.”
“She threatened to ruin you that day. Why?”
A heavy silence fell between us. Finally he said through gritted teeth, “Do you really want to know? Huh? Do you?”
“Yes.”
He set the blade of the stick on the grass and flicked it with vengeance. “Kaitlyn lured me into her bizarre scheme with the promise that I would be a honeybee farmer, and in a year, I’d own my own restaurant. You saw the contract. That’s what it said.”
I hadn’t read it, but I nodded to appease him.
“When I discovered that she didn’t want a honeybee farm at all … when I discovered what she was truly up to, I lost it. You know how I am when I get shoved against the wall.”
Yes, I did. He was one of the feistiest in a hockey brawl, hence the divot in his chin.
“I caught her in her office with plat maps spread out on her desk, as well as blackmail agreements signed by Arlo and others. Do you know why she was blackmailing them?”
“To get their property.”
“Bingo.” Chip tapped the hockey stick on the fake grass. “She wanted to own the whole upper north side.”
“To build strip malls and megastores.”
“Double bingo.” Double tap. He growled like a caged animal. “She was going to raze the countryside. Tear down the trees. Widen the roads.”
My biggest fears realized.
“I told her, ‘No way.’ I wasn’t going to be part of destroying Providence. I wanted out, but she wouldn’t budge. She said she needed someone with my pedigree to be the face of her project.
Lots of people in town were natives and had what people would call a Providencian pedigree, but Kaitlyn had selected Chip because he was as gullible as he was egotistical. Realizing the truth must have knocked him for a loop.
“That night I went to Rebecca’s cottage and I pleaded with Kaitlyn. I told her my family name carried no weight in town, not since I walked out on you, but she wouldn’t release me from my contract.” He jammed the blade of the hockey stick into the grass again. “I knew I’d never win you back if I went along with her plan.”
“Win me back?”
“I love you, Charlotte. I made a mistake. I never should have left.”
“Hold it.” Something wasn’t ringing true. “After Kaitlyn died, you begged Georgia to honor your contract.”
“In its original form. I would run the honeybee farm, and in a year I’d get my restaurant. No promoting. No endorsing. But good old Georgia”—he blew a long stream of air out of his mouth—“she said she would do exactly what her mother intended. She’d snatch the land and develop it. She’s a—” He stopped himself. “She’s a big-city witch eager to turn the rest of America into a parking lot. They were a real pair.”
“So why didn’t you kill Georgia, too?”
“I didn’t kill Kaitlyn. It was an accident.”
Chip snarled. “I was an idiot. He said he wanted to call all the girls in my little black book, but he was onto me, same as you. He didn’t think my alibi was solid.”
Silly me, thinking I was the only one taking the investigation a step further. Did Urso know everything I did? He had said he had an idea who the thief was. Did he have an inkling that it was Chip? Was he trying, at this very moment, to drum up evidence? Where was he, or one of his deputies? Wasn’t somebody missing me by now? Hadn’t anybody seen the umbrella Chip dumped outside and wondered who had abandoned it? What I wouldn’t give to have brought Rebecca along on this wayward side trip. Safety in numbers and all that.
I said, “Oscar took your phone, but you needed it back. He didn’t give it to you that night, did he? The next morning, you went to his house wearing a ski mask, like the one in your pocket.”
Chip looked ready to deny-deny, but he didn’t.
“You attacked him because he’d seen more than your little black book. He’d seen your call list, hadn’t he?” I went on. “And not simply one call to Kaitlyn. Like you said, there were dozens. But all the calls ended the minute you killed her.”
“It was an accident.” Chip whizzed the hockey stick in a figure eight. “Will you get that through your head?”
“You took Ainsley’s hockey stick with you.”
“To scare her.”
“It’s malice aforethought.”
“She laughed at me. It was her fault I lost it. I was so angry. I swatted the pillows off of Rebecca’s couch.” Chip swiped the hockey stick; it swooshed through the fake grass. “That only made Kaitlyn laugh harder. To scare her, I knocked more things to the ground.” Another swipe. Another swoosh. “When a box of cheese hit the floor and started to roll, my days as a hockey player came back to me in a flash. I righted the cheese box, reeled back, and slapped that sucker.” He acted out his story. “It soared into the air and hit Kaitlyn smack in the throat. Bam!” He paused. “I was never that good a shot.”
People who had seen him play in his heyday would beg to differ.
“It wasn’t on purpose. I was just so—”
“—mad. Got it.” The bamboo fibers from the cheese box had lodged in Kaitlyn’s skin. “Then what happened?” In case I lived to tell the story, I might as well get a full confession out of him. If I didn’t, I hoped Jordan was listening in.
