There's Something About Marty (A Working Stiffs Mystery Book 3) Page 5

  Austin glanced up and down the aisle. “Okay, shoot, and make it quick. I don’t need any guff from my manager about being too chatty with the customers.”

  Which sounded to me like this was something that had happened before. That piqued my interest, but wasn’t why I was here, so I cut to the chase. “Since we’re pressed for time, let me ask your impression of how things were going last night prior to when your father-in-law became ill.”

  “My impression?” Austin shrugged. “Everything seemed okay. Marty was in a good mood. The food was great. I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “Just tell me what comes to mind. For example, did everyone there seem to be acting pretty normally?”

  “I’d just met Cameron, one of the guys from the shop, but yeah.” Staring down at the scuffed linoleum under his feet, Austin pressed his lips together as if he were replaying an unpleasant memory. “Pretty damn normal.”

  “Everyone getting along okay?”

  He smirked. “Sure.”

  I didn’t need to be able to read his body language to see he was lying.

  “So, no family drama.”

  He folded his arms, resting them on his belly. “No more than usual.”

  “Like what?”

  He exhaled, blasting me with his stale breath. “Nic getting pissy about me helping myself to her dad’s scotch. It wasn’t like he didn’t offer it to me.”

  I didn’t care what she thought about her husband’s drinking as much as I did about what he had actually consumed. “So you drank some of the scotch your father-in-law received as a present?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How was it?”

  A corner of his mouth lifted. “Smooth.”

  And obviously poison-free since Austin had suffered no ill-effects aside from a possible hangover.

  “Excuse me, honey,” an older woman said as she reached for a pair of the wrist weights I was standing in front of.

  I stepped aside. “Sorry.” At least she’d given me a legitimate excuse to escape Austin’s wine breath blast zone.

  Wrinkling her nose, she sniffed the air and shot me an accusatory glance.

  It’s not me. You’re in the zone.

  I motioned to Austin to join me in front of a pink bicycle with training wheels at the end of an adjacent aisle. “I heard your father-in-law also received a bottle of salsa for his birthday. Did you try any of that?”

  Austin shook his head as he straightened the display. “Not a fan of green stuff.”

  Since he was packing around an extra fifty pounds I assumed “green stuff” included lettuce.

  “Hey, if a list of what I ate and drank is all you need from me—”

  “It isn’t.” I smiled politely. “Austin, a minute ago you gave me the impression that there may have been some underlying tension at the dinner table.”

  Staring at the bike, he shrugged while I waited with my pen poised over my notepad.

  He knew something; he just wasn’t biting.

  “That’s the one,” a little blonde girl said, running down the aisle with her mother trailing behind her, a toddler in tow. “That’s the one I want!”

  The girl hit the brakes and frowned up at me. “Hey, that’s my bike!”

  Trust me kid, I don’t want your bike. I just needed a couple more minutes in private to wrap up this interview, preferably without becoming asphyxiated.

  “Cassidy, don’t be rude,” the kid’s mother said.

  Too late. “Not a problem. I was just looking.”

  “Do you have any questions about the bike?” Austin asked the mother.

  Oh, no, you don’t. “He’ll be back to answer your questions in just a minute.” I pulled him into the next aisle, backing him up to a stack of soccer balls.

  Since I was running out of time and unoccupied aisles in the sporting goods section, I opted for the direct approach. “Any issues that you were aware of between Nicole and any other family members?”

  “Yeah, I suppose you could call it an issue.”

  Okay, now we were getting somewhere.

  “Nic can’t stand to watch Victoria wrap her brother and father around her little finger.”

  Since I had nothing but disdain for one of my former step-fathers, I couldn’t blame Nicole for feeling the way she did. “When you say Victoria wraps them around her finger, what does she do exactly?”

  He screwed up his face. “Hell, I don’t know. She just has a way of getting guys to do things for her. It’s like one minute I’m making myself a drink, and the next I’m helping her make a salad, and it feels like it was my idea. It’s like a Jedi mind trick kind of thing.”

  It must have been if Victoria had him in close proximity of vegetables.

  “So I stay away from her,” Austin said, blasting me with his stinky breath. “I get in less trouble that way.”

  “I take it then that you two didn’t spend a lot of time at her father’s house?”

  “No more than absolutely necessary.” Austin’s feet inched toward the kid and the bike he wanted to sell her. “Now, if there isn’t anything else—”

  “One last thing. When your father-in-law became violently ill last night, why did it take so long for someone to call nine-one-one?”

  “Hey, I suggested it,” Austin said defensively. “I know something about puke.” He met my gaze with a derisive smirk on his lips. “This wasn’t normal puke, so I told Nicole we should call for an ambulance. But Victoria thought it would be better to drive Marty to the hospital.”

  “But that never happened.”

  “Stubborn bastard refused to leave the house. Said he’d be fine once he got everything out of his system.”

  Which was pretty much what Victoria had told me. Jeremy and Cameron, too.

  “That didn’t happen either,” I said, thinking aloud.

  Austin shook his head.

  “What do you think caused Marty to become so sick?”

  “My guess—food poisoning. But I never heard of that killing anybody before.”

  That made two of us.

  Chapter Six

  “Well, shoot,” I said, finding another typo in the report I’d been working on for the last three hours. If I was going to inform Frankie that three of my interviewees thought Marty McCutcheon had suffered from some sort of food poisoning, I needed to at least spell poison correctly!

  As for the notion that it was done by the hand of a black widow, Frankie would have to make that determination herself, because I’d found nothing in the former Victoria Pierce’s history to indicate foul play.

  Husband number one, an insurance executive—so some money there—had died from a brain aneurysm after taking a bad fall. Her second husband, a restauranteur, died from an apparent heart attack while jogging, which didn’t compel me to pull on my running shoes anytime soon, but it also didn’t strike me as suspicious.

  “Have a nice weekend, Char,” Karla called to me as she headed down the hall.

  “You, too,” I responded automatically, listening to sirens wailing in the distance. It sounded like someone’s weekend was off to a bad start.

  I glanced down at the time on my computer screen. Five-thirty-seven! The start of my weekend would suffer the same fate if I didn’t hightail it home to my grandmother’s house, where Steve would be picking me up in less than an hour.

  After I emailed Frankie my report I shut down my computer and raced downstairs, making a mental list of everything I needed to do to get ready for my date.

  As soon as I opened the door of the Jag I saw the two plastic bags on the passenger seat—the reminder I’d left myself to deliver Estelle Makepeace’s yarn order on my way home.

  “Too late now,” I told myself as I started the engine and glanced at the dashboard clock. She’d be on her way to mahjong, and I now had forty-nine minutes to get home and get my sexy on.

  “Sorry, Estelle. I’ll stop by tomorrow.” When I wasn’t in need of a presto change-o kind of minor miracle.

  Forty
-seven minutes later, I was in my grandmother’s upstairs bathroom, applying another layer of Bronze Goddess, a lipstick from the line of cosmetics my mother repped. The stuff didn’t look nearly as good on me as it did on her, but….

  I gave my flat-ironed hair another shot of hairspray and then took a step back for a longer view of my reflection. Not bad considering the amount of time I had to transform myself from desk jockey to sexy. Well, as sexy as I could get in a cheap black dress two sizes larger than I used to wear.

  I loosened the cinch at my waist to deepen the V neckline and expose a bit more of the girls to focus Steve’s attention away from everything that jiggled in my southern hemisphere.

  “Okay, I’m as ready as I’m going to get,” I said, dashing down the stairs with my stilettos in one hand and the beaded black clutch bag I’d borrowed from Gram in the other.

  I was done skulking around with Steve, done with hiding our relationship from public view. Tonight was the night we’d stop by Eddie’s Place, the watering hole owned by our friends, Roxanne and Eddie Fiske, and tell them that we were a couple.

  As my best friend since the age of nine, Rox wouldn’t be happy with me for keeping my relationship with Steve a secret for the last five weeks. Heck, she would probably challenge my sanity for crossing the friendship line with him, and after twenty years of keeping my stupid schoolgirl crush to myself, she had every right to. But I couldn’t continue hiding the truth from her, couldn’t keep coming up with excuses not to go out with the guys that she and our buddy, Donna, kept trying to set me up with.

  Tonight was the night.

  I slipped on my stilettos and stood at the door to wait for the very punctual Detective Sixkiller’s arrival, which according to the clock on my cell phone should happen any second.

  My phone started ringing with Steve’s name displayed as the caller. No! “You’d better be calling to tell me that you’re on your way. I swear if you cancel on me again—”

  “Sorry, I’m in the middle of an accident investigation. Give me a half hour.”

  “A half hour. Not a problem.”

  “See you then.”

  “You’d better!” I said, but he’d already disconnected.

  Twenty-five minutes later, I was back upstairs in the bathroom, trying to create the instant cheekbones my mother crowed about in her Glorious Organics infomercial, when my phone rang.

  I glared at Steve’s name on the display as I answered the call. “Why do I have the feeling that I’m not going to see you on my doorstep tonight?”

  He sighed. “Sorry. I think the only way that’s going to happen is if I’m bringing over a pizza in a few hours.”

  Pretty much the way all of our dates had gone the last few weeks.

  “I’ll make it up to you,” he added.

  I’d heard that before, too. “Uh-huh.”

  “Call you later?”

  “Sure.”

  “I am sorry, you know.”

  “I know. Do what you have to do and I’ll see you later.” I disconnected and shut the cosmetic sample box since cheekbones were no longer high on tonight’s priority list.

  “Well?” I asked my reflection in the mirror. “Looks like you’re all dressed up with no place to go.” And with my grandmother out for an evening of mahjong with the girls, no one at home to have dinner with.

  So much for my plan to make tonight the night I came clean with Rox.

  Or could this plan be salvaged?

  Really, did I need Steve by my side to do this?

  Nope. In fact, it could be easier to talk to Rox if I were by myself.

  I could even order a pizza for later. Not a bad plan B, assuming that I could get ten minutes alone with her.

  No, check that. I wasn’t going home until we talked.

  Tonight was absolutely positively the night!

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Entering the renovated red brick warehouse that Eddie and Rox had transformed into the go-to gathering place for the best pizza in town, I heard a loud clatter of pins in the adjoining eight-lane bowling alley. Judging by the whoops and hollers that followed, someone must have thrown a strike. I took a deep breath and hoped that would be the only kind of hollering I heard after I told Rox my news.

  “Hey!” she called out, smiling at me from behind the bar. “Look at you! Somebody must have a big date tonight.”

  I took a seat at the far end of the well-polished oak bar, two unoccupied barstools separating me from four middle-aged men in matching bowling league T-shirts. Not exactly the most private location to have a heart-to-heart, but between the din of the crowd and the seventies music blasting through the overhead speakers, it would be next to impossible for anyone to listen in. “Yeah, I had—”

  “Is he meeting you here?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Rox’s attention shifted to one of the bowling league guys who wanted a refill. “I feel a story coming on. Hold that thought and I’ll be right back.”

  “I have a story for you, all right.” I swallowed the growing lump in my throat as I listened to Billy Paul singing about having a secret thing going on with Mrs. Jones. I glared at the speaker perched eight feet from my head. “Not helping.”

  “Is this seat taken?” Without waiting for an answer, Kyle Cardinale slid onto the barstool next to me.

  Criminy. This was so not the way my evening was supposed to go.

  I forced a smile. “It is now.”

  His gaze raked over me. “You look very lovely tonight.” His whisky brown eyes widened as if he’d committed a public gaffe, and he pushed away from the bar. “Sorry, I’m intruding. You’re obviously on a date.”

  “Relax. He had to cancel.”

  Kyle settled back down on his barstool. “Must be something in the air. My date had to cancel, too.”

  “Bummer,” I said, looking past him at the delighted expression on Rox’s face as she approached.

  She tossed two coasters in front of us. “Good evening, Doctor. What can I get you?”

  “That depends on the lady.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but the Adonis next to me was short-circuiting my brain with the smoldering look in his eyes and nothing but a squeak came out.

  His gaze traveled south, lingering at my cleavage. “I have dinner reservations for seven at the Grotto.”

  One of the spendier restaurants over thirty miles away on the Port Townsend waterfront. Either he’d wanted to impress his date or Dr. Cardinale had expensive taste.

  And since that date wouldn’t be arriving, I saw danger signs flashing between us—danger that I needed to diffuse. “I—”

  “Then you’d better get going or you’re going to be late,” Rox interjected, gathering up the coasters.

  I tilted my head at her. Sheesh, way to be subtle, girlfriend.

  She beamed with satisfaction. “Have fun.”

  Kyle stood, offering me his hand. “Shall we?”

  Again, not the way my evening was supposed to go, but I slipped my hand in his, all too aware of his gentle touch. “Why not?” It was just dinner.

  Releasing me to hold the door open, he kept his hands to himself as we stepped outside. “I was just about to cancel my reservation and order a pizza to go when I saw you at the bar.”

  The breeze off Merritt Bay blew wisps of hair into my face, every one of them sticking to my painted lips as if I were wearing flypaper. “You can still do that,” I said, shielding myself from the wind and further hair damage with his broad-shouldered body. And after he left with his pizza I’d lay my soul bare to Rox, preferably following a shot or two of liquid courage.

  Kyle turned to me. “Why would I want to do that when I could have the pleasure of your company?”

  Standing eye to eye in the parking lot thanks to my four-inch stilettos, I had no answer for him, especially since he was looking at me like he might want to play doctor later.

  Loose gravel crunched under our feet as we headed toward the rear of the parking lot. “My car’s b
ack here.”

  I had no idea which of the twenty or so cars in the lot was his, but I hoped we’d get to it soon because my shoes weren’t made for traversing rocky terrain. “Okay.”

  “How’re you doing in those shoes?”

  “Fine.” I wasn’t about to admit that my feet were killing me.

  “I don’t see how you girls walk in them.”

  “Very carefully, especially in gravel parking lots.”

  Kyle took my hand. “Wouldn’t want to have to fit you for a cast later.”

  He pulled me closer and my traitorous heart quickened.

  Damn, what was with me and Italian men? Being unceremoniously dumped by Christopher Scolari after seven years of marriage should have hardened my heart. But no, mine was racing like a school girl’s on her first date.

  “Here we are,” he said.

  I screeched to a stop, staring at the vintage cherry red Jaguar parked next to a beater sedan.

  “This is your car?”

  “Yep.”

  I’d seen it a couple of times at the marina where Kyle lived, but I’d assumed it belonged to some rich yacht owner, not an attending at the hospital who was starting to remind me way too much of my ex-husband.

  “Nice.” Was this supposed to be a joke? The chance encounter with Kyle a set up? I looked behind me to see if Rox were watching us from the kitchen door. Nope. Of course, she wasn’t. Roxanne Fiske didn’t have a cruel bone in her body. This had to be dumb luck, the universe having a chuckle at my expense. And tonight of all nights.

  Not funny, universe.

  He opened the passenger door for me. “It was my dad’s. He gave it to me when I graduated med school.”

  No way.

  I shivered as an eerie sense of déjà vu washed over me. It was almost the same story I heard when I met Chris in culinary school. The oh shucks, it was a graduation present from my dad delivery of their lines was even the same.

  Jeez Louise, just when I thought I’d gotten my ex out of my system, he was back—just repackaged with a doctor upgrade.

  “It’s a sweet ride.” Kyle smiled as if I needed some encouragement to get in the car.