Kernel of Truth (23 page)

Once again, cooking became my salvation. Antoine, Garrett, Barbara, Jessica, Coco, Annie, Allen. They all receded into the background while texture and flavor and the balance between salty and sweet took front-and-center stage and danced for me like the beautiful ballerinas they were.

Before I knew it, Sam and Susanna were helping me sweep up and haul out the garbage. “Sit down, Miss Rebecca,” Susanna said. “You look exhausted.”

I was. Owning a shop, starting a business, moving, it had all been exhausting. It would continue being exhausting for some time to come. With the money that I'd had to use to pay back Jessica gone, it would be months before I could afford to hire more help. I'd be at POPS seven days a week for the foreseeable future. I'd be in the kitchen making popcorn bars and popcorn balls and Coco Pop Fudge. I'd be out front at the counter, smiling and taking people's money. I'd be looking for new ways to keep the business coming in. Totally exhausting. But also exhilarating. And satisfying.

Sam and Susanna said good night and headed out arm in arm, Susanna smiling up at him as he whispered something funny in her ear.

As many times as I'd told Antoine no, as many checks as I'd ripped up and sent back to him, I still let him call me and text me. Every time I picked up the phone and heard that French accent or got a text where he said I was beautiful, I was sucked right back into his orbit. And that was all I would ever be around Antoine. Another piece of rock in orbit around a glorious sun. I might be a favorite rock, but I'd still be a rock.

I texted him a message that said, “
Go home
.” Then I selected Antoine's number from my contact list and blocked it.

As I dropped my phone back into my purse, I felt something soft and silky. The lavender sachet. One of the sachets Annie had made for Coco and left on her back porch. One of the sweet-smelling little packets that Coco would never see or hold or smell. I held it to my nose and breathed in the soothing lavender.

And sneezed. Nothing was really working out as planned that day.

I was about to drop it back into my purse when I remembered that it was supposed to be in a drawer in my apartment kitchen. I held it out in my hand and stared at it. Sprocket trotted over to me. “Where'd you get this?” I asked him. “Who did you steal this little thing from?”

Sprocket sniffed it and growled.

Sprocket has always been more of a lover than a fighter. I like to think he's too dignified to get into scrapes with other dogs, but it's possible that he's a chickenshit. Whatever his motivations, there were only two people he growled at who I could think of: Jessica James and Allen Thompson.

I'd been around only one of them that day. Only one of them had been in my car. Sprocket had only had his nose in one of their bags.

The lavender sachets that Annie had left on Coco's back porch were in Jessica's bag. There was only one way they could have gotten there. They could only have gotten there if Jessica had picked them up from the back porch of Coco's Cocoas after Jasper left that night and before I came charging through in the morning.

Which meant Jessica was the one who had shattered the window and faked the break-in. Which meant Jessica was
the one who had pushed Coco hard enough to make her stumble backward and hit her head.

Perhaps the stricken face, the drinking and everything else was guilt instead of grief?

As I stared at the little lavender square in my hand, things started clicking into place. I smelled almonds right before I was attacked. Jessica had to have been making the macarons—one of whose chief ingredients was almond flour—before the attack. They took hours to make. She had to have been making them long before she showed up to give the box to me the next day. Barbara had smelled hazelnuts. The next day Jessica had brought her the time-consuming Nutella-stuffed cookies. Nutella was made with hazelnuts.

Sprocket had growled as we walked into POPS right before someone hit me on the head. Sprocket only growled at Jessica and Allen. Whoever had hit me had had to stand on a chair to smack me over the head. Jessica was ten inches shorter than me.

While I'd found Coco's to-do-list notepad, I'd never found the actual to-do list. If I was going to get rid of a list like that, I'd burn it. Jessica's fingers had been burned and bandaged when she'd gotten to the youth group ice cream social, the social she'd left with plenty of time to get back to Coco's shop, fake the break-in and then set up Jasper.

Could the cookie deliveries to Jasper be because she felt guilty for framing him? Were the cookies for me and Barbara offerings made from guilt over hurting us?

Although, who had hit Jessica over the head, then? Could it be possible she'd done it herself? Nurse Jing Jing had said it wasn't much of an injury. Could Jessica have faked being unconscious? It wouldn't be much of an act after years of faking being nice.

I picked up the phone and called Garrett's office. I got
Pearl's voice telling me the office was closed for the day, but I could leave a message. I tried his cell and got his voicemail. I glanced at the clock. Five thirty. I knew precisely where Garrett would be. He'd be running along the lake.

I snapped on Sprocket's leash. “Let's go, boy. We've got some 'splaining to do.” I hoped Garrett would help me explain it all to
Dan.

Sprocket and I
got to the lake. There was only one car in the parking lot. I did a double take. It was Coco's white Buick. Goose bumps prickled my skin. As I walked on, I saw the door of the lighthouse was open. Of course, it was Friday. The historical society would be meeting. Jessica would be setting up. She must be driving the Buick since she wrecked her Civic.

I looked around. No Garrett in sight. He hadn't made it to the lighthouse yet. He'd be here soon enough, though. I looked down at Sprocket. “How about we ask Jessica some questions, boy?”

He growled. I took that as a yes. We walked to the lighthouse and stepped through the open door into the dim interior. Jessica turned around as we walked in. “What do you want now, Rebecca?” she asked.

“I wanted to ask you about this, Jessica.” I held out the sachet. I pulled back on Sprocket's leash to get him to sit. His
growl had gone from something low and soft to something loud and frightening, a sound I'd never heard from him before.

“You showed me that before, Rebecca. I told you I didn't know anything about it.” She continued setting out food on the folding table.

“This isn't the same one, Jessica. The one I showed you is back in my kitchen. This is another one. Another one that I think Sprocket might have taken from your purse.” I took another step into the lighthouse.

She stopped rearranging the cookies on the platters and turned around. “Oh, that,” she said. She reached into her purse and took out a gun. I felt like time stopped. I'd been expecting her to pull out another sachet. Or a tissue. Or a cookie. But a gun? I didn't know what to do. Unfortunately, Sprocket thought he did. He lunged at Jessica and she shot him.

For a second, I couldn't move. I couldn't believe what I'd just seen. Tiny little Jessica holding a perfectly tiny but lethal-looking gun.

I lunged at her, too, but she swung the gun around to point it at me. “Uh-uh, Rebecca. You stay right where you are.”

I knelt next to Sprocket, trying to staunch the bleeding at his shoulder with my hands. There was so much of it so fast. “You shot my dog!”

“You threw out my Snickerdoodle!” she shouted back.

“What?” I pulled off my jacket and pressed it against the wound. Sprocket whimpered at the pressure.

“The Snickerdoodles I took Jasper. You took one bite and threw out the rest. You might as well have thrown it in my face. You practically spit out my Nutella-stuffed cookie that I brought Barbara, and don't think I didn't see your face when you bit into my macaron.” Her eyes were wild.

I looked up and stared at her, trying to connect what she
was saying. “You're going to kill me and my dog because I didn't want to eat cookies that hadn't been made properly?”

“Oh, you and your fancy cooking education.” She started talking in a singsong voice. “This is proper. That is right. This is wrong. That's not good enough. Judge much, Rebecca?”

That stung. I did judge. I judged Jessica all the time and Jessica always came up wanting. It was reason enough to hate me, but it damn sure wasn't reason enough to kill Coco. “That's why you did it? That's why you killed Coco? Because I don't like the way you bake?”

She rolled her eyes and sighed. “Don't be an idiot, Rebecca. Although that's your fault, too, you know?”

I clamped my mouth shut, not sure if I could say anything without the hot rush of tears that had flooded into my eyes spilling out, and I didn't feel like giving Jessica the satisfaction. When I finally spoke, my voice came out low and menacing. “How could it possibly be my fault that you killed your aunt, Jessica? How?”

“It was that damn business plan. That had you and your fancy cooking-school ways written all over it. I went to see Coco and I saw her to-do list. Item number four, Rebecca. Item number four was change her will. She was going to give you the fudge recipe. All I'd get was the stupid store. I didn't mean for Aunt Coco to fall. It was only a little push . . .” Jessica's face crumpled.

I took my chance and lunged forward to try to get the gun, hoping my longer arm length would give me an advantage.

It didn't.

Jessica drew back and smacked me upside the head with the gun. I reeled to the side, stunned.

“Stay back, Rebecca. Stay back or I swear to God I'll shoot.” Her voice shook, but her hand was steady.

“And say what? That a stranger shot me?” She couldn't possibly think she would get away with shooting me in cold blood in the Grand Lake Lighthouse.

“Why not? Everyone thinks that Coco's murderer is still roaming free. Why couldn't it be the same person? You ever so conveniently cast doubt on Tom Moffat the other day. Maybe he did it. I sincerely doubt he has an alibi.”

I almost smacked myself on the head this time. “It is the same person, Jessica. It's you. You're the murderer and you would be the one who shot me. Everyone would be right except the part about it being Tom Moffat.”

Jessica made a noise of disgust in her throat. “I cannot believe you're arguing that kind of stupid detail with me at a time like this. You never can see the big picture.”

I was about to point out that it didn't seem like I'd have any other time to argue with her, what with the whole part where she was about to shoot me like she'd shot my dog, when I saw him. Just outside the lighthouse door. Just a little flash of well-muscled thigh.

Jessica was still talking. “You know, Jasper's arrest was your fault, too. Dan would never have gone over there if you hadn't said he was going to pick up your stale, nasty popcorn.”

“You planted evidence at his house. You framed him, Jessica. That's why Dan arrested him.” I edged a little more toward the center of the lighthouse so Jessica would adjust and her back would be more toward the door.

“I only planted the evidence as a precaution. Then I felt terrible. That's why I had to break into Barbara's place so it would look like whoever broke into Coco's was still on the loose and Dan would know it couldn't be Jasper.” She edged a step or two toward the door.

“Jessica, you were the one who broke into Coco's. You
were still on the loose. You didn't need to make it look that way. It was that way.” Jessica never had been one to take responsibility for her own actions, but this was ridiculous.

“You know what I mean!” she shouted.

And that's when he came barreling into the lighthouse. Except it was the wrong he. It wasn't Garrett, here to save my hide. It was Antoine.

“Rebecca, why will you not answer my calls?” Antoine said, not even noticing Jessica or the gun. If he'd ever been that focused on me before, we'd probably still be married.

“Seriously, Rebecca?” Jessica said. “Now you're going to make me kill Antoine Belanger, too?”

“Kill who?” Antoine swiveled, now fully taking in the situation. “Why is this little person pointing a gun at you,
chérie
?”

“She killed Coco,” I explained. “It was an accident. Everything that's happened since has been her trying to cover it up.” I turned back to Jessica. “Drop the gun, Jessica. If you explain, everyone will understand. You didn't mean to hurt Coco, and afterward you panicked. No one will blame you.”

“Everyone will blame me!” she shrieked. “That's your fault, too! Why did you have to tell them all I was selling the shop and the recipe? You turned the whole town against me.”

“Uh, because you filed a lawsuit against me. I was defending myself.” The turning the town against her had been an added bonus, one that I wasn't nearly as pleased with as I thought I'd be. “Think of it as my way of biting your knee.”

“I lost everything, Rebecca. Everything. Everyone's whispering behind my back. Everyone's talking about me.” She stamped her foot.

“Sucks, doesn't it?” I said wryly.

If Jessica recognized the irony of how often she'd gotten
the town to turn against me, she wasn't acknowledging it. “Yes. Yes, it does.”

She looked back and forth between Antoine and me. “This will be better, though. This can be a lover's quarrel. Antoine shoots you and then commits suicide.”

“What?” Antoine squawked. “I do what?”

“You first, Rebecca.” She brought the gun around toward me again, legs apart, both hands on the gun. She looked like she'd practiced.

“Jessica, wait,” I said.

Antoine took that moment to bolt for the lighthouse door. Jessica turned toward the movement and as Antoine hightailed it out of the way, Garrett barreled in and tackled Jessica to the floor. Her hand released the gun as it hit the ground and it skittered away.

I collapsed onto my bleeding dog in relief.

*   *   *

Antoine did one
thing right. He called 911. Dan was at the lighthouse almost before Garrett and Jessica hit the ground. Eric Gladstone was approximately two minutes behind him. There were a couple of minutes of confusion because I was covered in blood. Once I explained it was Sprocket's and not mine, things went a lot more smoothly. It wasn't exactly standard operating procedure, but Eric took Sprocket to the emergency vet hospital in his ambulance with me riding shotgun.

I didn't even get to thank Garrett for saving my life. Eric hustled us out of there that fast.

Sprocket's wound was what the vet called a through and through. It passed through Sprocket's body without hitting any major organs. He had a bad night and the recuperation would not be a picnic for any of us, but he was going to live.
Even so, it was almost noon the next day before I got home. I dragged myself up the stairs to the garage apartment, took a shower then lay down on the bed and let myself have a good long cry.

Sometimes a good cry is the only remedy.

Jessica was in custody. No one would be preying on the women shop owners of Grand Lake anymore, unless you counted Tom Moffat's occasional verbal attacks. After being hit on the head and almost shot, I didn't count it. Sticks and stones and all that. He could yell at me all he wanted.

*   *   *

I didn't open
POPS for a few days. I knew it wasn't smart business. It doesn't do to disappoint regulars. Still, I didn't have the heart to go back right away. Plus, Sprocket needed me. He was healing well, but a gunshot wound is a gunshot wound. Seeing him in pain without understanding why was one more reason that I didn't think I'd ever be able to forgive Jessica.

Then, of course, there was the press. It wasn't every day there was a shooting in a historic lighthouse involving a celebrity chef, an officer of the court, a standard poodle and a fudge recipe. According to Dan, there were probably at least ten different news outlets with vans and cameras and giant microphones camped in front of the store. To Dan's relief, I listened to him and used his advice as one more excuse to stay home. A few days of no story and they took their curiosity and their resources elsewhere.

The days were up, though. It was time to go back. Sprocket had healed to the point that he could walk down the stairs from the granny flat. Have I mentioned how much fun it is to carry a fifty-pound dog up and down even one flight of steps? Probably not, because it was really no fun at all.

There was no way he could make the walk. Besides, I was still having a little trouble walking anywhere in the dark without hyperventilating. So I loaded him into the car and we drove through the darkened streets of Grand Lake. I parked in the alley. The back window of Coco's shop had been repaired. It looked like it was waiting for her to show up and open for the day. I wasn't sure which was worse: seeing it boarded up and looking deserted or seeing it look so expectant.

Both sucked. Grand Lake without Coco sucked. The fact that I was more than a small part of the reason that she'd never open Coco's Cocoas again made my heart hurt.

I went in anyway. What else was there to do? I turned on the lights and let the kitchen soothe me. I started coffee and fresh popcorn. I measured and stirred and chopped and combined. I stopped to taste test because Jessica had been right all those years ago with the chocolate mousse.

There was butter and salt and honey. The water boiled, the steam condensed, the ingredients greeted one another and mingled like good friends at a reunion. This was what Coco had given me. Work that made all my senses sing, as it had done for her. I went out to the front of the shop, ready to see an empty sidewalk when I flipped the Closed sign to Open and turned on the lights.

Instead, Janet with her double stroller stood there looking anxious and tired. “You're opening?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Is there coffee?”

I smiled and held the door open for her.

A few minutes later, Annie poked her head in. “You opened!”

I nodded and poured her coffee.

Ten minutes after that, Eric Gladstone and another
paramedic showed up wanting post-shift breakfast bars. Apparently they go as well with beer as they do with coffee.

It started like that. A trickle of customers when I opened the doors. The trickle became more of a stream at about nine. When coffee-break time hit at ten, the stream grew that much more. When I finally hit a lull at lunchtime, I realized I'd better get the fudge ready for the afternoon. When that was done, I collapsed onto a chair in the kitchen only to be confronted by the binder that contained the business plan Coco had mapped out for the two of us.

Annie slipped in the back door and sat down across from me.

“I'm not sure I can do this,” I said.

“Of course you can,” she said.

I tapped the binder. “If I hadn't come back, she wouldn't have written this and she'd still be alive.”

“I don't think that's the only way to look at this.” Annie pulled the business plan over and started leafing through the pages. She sighed. “Damn, she made a nice pie chart, didn't she?”

“What other way is there to look at it?”