Down Home and Deadly (17 page)

Well, then. If Lisa wasn’t going to be at the club pretending to work, I’d be glad to help out. “Carly just hired a new waitress
,
so I was planning to cut back on my hours here anyway, Bob.” I stuck my pad in my apron pocket. “I can work if you need me. I’ll stop by tomorrow and pick up a key.”

Carly was just grabbing her keys to head out the door when I finished the
noon
shift. As we walked out together
,
I told her about Bob asking me to work.

“Would you mind if I cut my hours back so I can help Bob out?” I glanced over at her. “Be honest.”

“No, of course not. I don’t blame you at all.” She stopped beside her car. “But are you sure you’re not letting your sympathy put you back in a bad position?”

I shrugged. “I’m not sure, but I just feel so sorry for them.” I stopped. “You know I’ve really enjoyed working at the
d
iner. More than I ever thought I would.” I opted for total honesty
. “But I guess I didn’t realize how much I’d miss the club.”

“I understand. Of course you miss it.”

“By the way
.
 
.
 
.
” I glanced around to make sure no one could overhear me. “I found something else out today that I need to tell you.”

“What?” She looked around the crowded parking lot.

I lowered my voice. “Remember the other day when
Marco
was talking about how broke he was and how much it cost for his school?”

She nodded.

“Well
,
today Bob said that Lisa fired
Marco
for stealing from the cash register at the club.”

Carly gasped. “I can’t believe that.” She shook her head. “He seems so trustworthy. Are you sure this isn’t another of Lisa’s ‘stories’?”

“I’ll ask Gail if she knows what happened. If anyone would know, she would.”

“Let me know what she says.”

*****

Dave
, the personal trainer and weight room manager,
was working the desk when I walked into the health club. When he said Gail didn’t come in until three, I headed back to the pool room. After some relaxing laps, I was about to head for the sauna, when the steamed
-
up glass doors opened and Gail walked in.

“Hey, girl, Dave said you’re looking for me.”

“Guilty as charged.” I grabbed a couple of towels and wrapped one around my hair and another around my body. “Do you have a minute to talk?”

She nodded. “Sure. My shift doesn’t start for another ten minutes. What’s on your mind?”

I sat down in a white deck chair and
waved
her to the one beside it. Déjà vu. Just call me Amelia.
I hoped
I hadn’t motioned Gail as imperiously as Amelia had me a few days ago.

When we were seated, I smiled at her. “I need to talk to you about
Marco
.”

Her eyes widened. “Why? What about him?” she asked. She looked so alarmed that I faltered. Had I been wrong about
Marco
?

“Bob mentioned
that
he was fired from the club for stealing. Is that right?”

She relaxed in her chair and snorted. “That’s the excuse Lisa gave. But it isn’t true.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“Not to speak ill of the dead or anything
,
but J.D. was a jerk. And Lisa just followed him around like a puppy dog. I know it made Bob sick to watch them.”

“What do you mean? I thought Bob liked him.”

“Ha. No way. Bob couldn’t stand him. Actually, that’s what started the whole thing with
Marco
. I heard Bob tell Lisa that since membership enrollment was down, we’d have to let someone go.” She raised an eyebrow at me. “When you left, so did members.”

I felt my cheeks grow hot at the implied praise. No doubt the mass exodus of members was more because of Lisa’s inept management than because of the absence of my amazing management skills. “Go ahead.”

“Anyway, he told her to get rid of one employee. No matter what Bob intended, he should have known she wouldn’t fire her man. So she and J.D. cooked up this little story to get
Marco
fired.”

“How do you know it isn’t true?”

“I counted the cash in the register that night. Then I checked with the bank to see how much the deposit was. Every penny was deposited.”

“Wow. So do you think they wanted to get rid of
Marco
specifically? Or just any employee so J.D. could stay on?”

“I think they picked on
Marco
because they knew he wouldn’t fight them on it. Plus, he hadn’t been here as long as the rest of us. I’m so glad you hired him at the diner.”

“Me
,
too. So you weren’t a fan of J.D.’s?”

“Nope. He and Bob had some kind of history, too. Did you know that?”

“No. What kind of history?”

“I’m not sure. I just heard him say something about telling Lisa about ‘our shared past.
’
I was under the impression that he may have been holding something over Bob’s head.” She shrugged. “You know, threatening Bob. But I can’t imagine why.”

“Me either.” But I was certainly going to find out.

When she left, I retired to the sauna.
In the steamy quietness, I sat for a minute and mulled over the life and death of J.D. Finley. When he drove to the Dumpster, did he have death on his mind? Did he have an appointment with a murderer? Or had it been a surprise attack?

I rolled up a towel for a pillow and stretched out on my back on the hot wooden bench. Closing my eyes, I worked my way down my mental suspect list. Even though Lisa owned the murder weapon, why would she have done it? Had J.D. proven hard to shake as a boyfriend? That seemed a flimsy excuse for murder. More in keeping with Lisa’s personality would be if J.D. w
ere
the one trying to get out of the relationship. I could see her, in a fit of anger, using her toy gun to take care of the pr
o
blem. But I couldn’t see her keeping it to herself and playing the innocent so well. She really didn’t act guilty at all. What if someone really had stolen her gun? The more I thought about it, the more likely that seemed.

And who better than her husband
,
who seemed like a raving maniac when I’d seen him at the club the other day. And he definitely knew where the gun was. Any man who would beat his wife might also kill her lover. How closely were the police looking at Larry?

My eyes fluttered as I suddenly remembered what Gail had just told me about Bob. It sounded like my ex-boss had motives of his own for getting rid of J.D. The only thing that didn’t add up there was him letting his precious princess take the fall.

I sat up and punched my rolled
-
up towel a couple of times to fluff it again and stretched back out. I wasn’t having much luck with the relaxing part of this little sauna visit.

So many people were acting weird. Debbie, even Carly—not that I thought hers had anything to do with the murder—and of course,
Marco
. He seemed flustered so much of the time
,
and often he acted like he didn’t want to leave the diner. I’m not sure what was wrong about that, but it just felt odd.

On the other hand, he’d hardly had the opportunity to commit murder unless he’d excused himself to go to the bathroom and slipped out back, shot J.D.
,
then slipped in to work without anyone noticing. Which was possible, yes. But probable, no.

And what about motive? He obviously resented J.D. getting him fired, but was the soft
-
spoken mild-mannered student capable of cold-blooded murder? And framing Lisa for his actions? I didn’t think so. And since I’d had a hard time believing he would steal, and from what Gail said, I was right, I tended to go with my gut feeling
about
Marco
.

*****

*****

Lettin’ the cat out of the bag is a lot easier’n puttin’ it back in
.

Closing time. Finally. Carly had sent Debbie and Susan home already
,
and
Marco
and I were gathering the last of the garbage. Since the night
Marco
told Carly how badly he needed hours—and proven how well he could clean the men
’
s bathroom—he’d helped clean up.

“You know my new rule. I do not, under any circumstances, take out the garbage.” I twisted the tie and set the full bag by the door. “Just let me close this other bag
,
and you can carry them both out.”

As I pulled the black bag out of the metal can
,
I noticed a flash of light. It almost looked like a flashlight had come on inside the bag. I donned some heavy cleaning gloves from under the sink and stuck my hand in to fish it out. When I reached for it, I saw it was my cell phone. It must have fallen out of my apron pocket when I was cleaning and landed in one of the garbage cans.
I was thankful that
when the side buttons get bumped, it lights up. Otherwise I’d have lost it forever.
I wiped it off with a paper towel.

“What do you think? Some of these are pretty sturdy.” I showed it to Carly. “Even though it looks like it’s on, I don’t want to mess with it while it’s so nasty. Do you think it will still work after I take it apart and clean it off? I was just learning how to use it.”

“Not to mention all that music Zac said he put on it for you.” Carly hung her dish
towel on the towel rack. “It might be worth cleaning it and trying it
out
.”

Marco
picked up the bags and headed out the back door while I took the back off the phone and cleaned the outside of it with a damp paper towel. The inside still looked good as new. I put the battery back in, hit the power button
,
and was rewarded with the little orange man doing cartwheels across the screen. “Y
ea
!
It still works.”

I hit the envelope for text messages to see if Alex had messaged me while I was at work. The first received message said
,
“
W
aiting
for you out back.
”

“
How
in the world
c
ould he be waiting for me out back?” I held up the phone where Carly could read the message.
“His plane left this morning.”

“No idea.” She shrugged. It hit us both at the same time. The last time someone was waiting out back
.
 
.
 
.
Was a murderer waiting for me out back? But why would he warn me?

We both jumped up. “
Marco
!” we screamed in unison. I ran toward the back door with Carly on my heels. We screeched to a halt at the door and looked at each other. Would we find his body on the ground behind the diner?

I pulled the door open and peeked out. “
Marco
? Are you okay?” No answer. Carly gave me a little shove.

I held on
to her sleeve and dragged her out on the back porch with me. “
Marco
!” I yelled louder. “Where are you?”

Marco
strolled up from the side of the diner. “What is wrong, Jenna? You sound upset.”

“Where were you? I was worried that something may have happened to you.” My voice trembled.

“I went to get my phone out of my van. I forgot it there.” He held up a cell phone. “I was going to call Gail.”

“Oh.” While the two of them were with me, I felt brave eno
u
gh to look all around the back alley that adjoined the diner parking lot—from the safety of the back porch, of course. As far as I could see, there wasn’t a car or another human in sight.

Marco
walked into the diner ahead of us. I tugged on Carly’s sleeve. “I don’t think this is my phone.”

“Why?”

I told her quickly about the phone mix
-
up with Debbie when we were remodeling. As soon as we got back into the light, I checked the outbox. There were several sent messages. None looked familiar. I occasionally sent texts
,
but I hadn’t sent these. The most recent ones said
,
“Did you leave?” and “Why won’t you answer?” There were several that sounded about the same. I hit the button to bring up the address book. Only one number. Very strange. It was listed as “Me.” The same thing the screen had said when I’d used her phone the last time I’d gotten it by mistake—
“
Connected to Me.
”