Mission to Murder (9 page)

J
osh appeared to be having a heart attack, his face beet red. He slipped into a chair next to a large rolltop desk I’d been considering for the shop, until I glanced at the sales price. I didn’t want to have to even think about performing CPR on the guy. “Are you okay?”

He pulled an off-white handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his brow. While he pulled himself together, I peeked over at the counter. The folder with the receipts from Craig had been put away. I quickly refocused my attention on Josh. He was nodding, then he glanced up at me. He swallowed, then in a voice sounding like it came from a squeaky toy rather than the heavyset man in front of me, he whispered, “I never thought she’d agree.”

Weird. Then why did he ask me to ask? Pushing the thought away, I took advantage of my upper hand and Josh’s apparent shock. “There are some conditions. It’s a double date. You can’t touch her.” My mind raced, thinking of other stipulations to push the situation. “And I get to see the evidence now, before the deal is set.”

“What’s to stop you from backing out?” Josh narrowed his eyes and watched me, suspicion in his gaze.

“Greg will hold us accountable. No way would he want the mayor to find out he welched on a deal.” Which was only partly true. Greg had made his feelings clear on the subject. I already owed him for the outing with Hank and Amy. However, I’d keep my end of the bargain. But I didn’t trust Josh to keep his once he got what he wanted. “That’s the deal, take it or leave it, I don’t care. But we won’t be having this conversation a second time.”

“Hold on, let me think.” Josh leaned back in the wooden chair and I thought I heard the wood groan under his weight. Apparently either it was common or Josh was deaf when he had on his thinking cap.

While he pondered the deal, I pretended to step closer to the cash register to thumb through a box of vintage
Life
magazines. I slipped the receipts I’d copied back at the shop into my right hand, outside of Josh’s view. All I needed to do was reach over the top of the counter. I inched my arm upward, then jerked back when Josh spoke. The thick receipt paper slipped through my hands. “Okay. But I get to pick the restaurant. And I’m only buying mine and your aunt’s dinner. The two of you have to pay for your own.” Josh tapped the desk with his portly finger.

“That’s fine. Next Friday night, we’ll meet at the shop.” I kicked the papers under the counter and walked back toward Josh. “So what were you going to show the commission?”

“Not
going to
,
am
going to show the commission. Just because Craig is gone”—Josh paused and eyed me like it was my fault Craig Morgan was dead. After a couple of beats, he continued—“just because it’s only me now, doesn’t mean I’m not going to honor his final wishes.”

Even if it burns me in the process?
I wondered. But I bit my tongue. I was making progress with the man, even if it was at a glacier pace.

He nodded to the back. “I’ve got the journal in my office safe.” He pulled himself to his feet and lumbered to the back of the building. I followed, not knowing if I’d been invited or not, but he didn’t stop me, so I must have guessed correctly.

My phone buzzed with a text message. Glancing down, I saw Greg’s quick note:
Heading to Bakerstown, will be back soon. Need anything?

I typed a quick response asking him to stop at the bakery and pick up an assortment of muffins and several loaves of French bread. Okay, so it was a shopping list, but I did text “thanks” at the end. The man knew how to stay on my good side; mostly, it involved food. Fresh loaf bread was one of my favorite things in the world. Besides my boyfriend.

Josh stood behind his desk watching me. When I clicked off the phone and went into the small, dark office, he shook his head. “You need to stop wasting busy people’s time. Anyway, here we are.”

I glanced at the small, leather-bound book sitting on a piece of parchment on the desktop. Carefully, Josh opened the book and went right to the page he’d been looking for. He spun the parchment around so I could see the hand-drawn map. Leaning down, I could make out the ocean and several crude marks. The words weren’t in English.

There in the middle of the page, right where the current courthouse would stand if this was a map of South Cove, was an
X
mark and the words,
Misión de estrellas meridionales.
I glanced up at Josh. “You think this is the mission site? City Hall?”

“I don’t think, I know. The map shows the location of the mission is a good three miles from your house. Maybe your wall is the residuals of a long-ago barn. But it’s clearly not the mission. The mission no longer exists.”

Walking down the street toward the diner, my thoughts swirled around Josh’s evidence. I’d taken several shots of the page with my cell phone until Josh protested the light from the flash might damage the paper or ink. What should I do with the photos? Greg could send the photos to his university professor friend to verify the wording. I could go to Frank and press him to speed up the certification, but what if Josh turned out to be right?

Then my wall would go back to being a garden wall and I could go back to running my business. Maybe even put up a hammock out near the site for a reading cove.

But what if Josh was wrong, and Frank didn’t find out in time? Then a national historic site would have been ignored and destroyed. I couldn’t just leave it to someone else to decide. I’d come to love the little stone wall. Stupid, I know, but it meant a lot to me. And if it was the original mission site, it had a right to survive.

Besides, Craig couldn’t be right. Not this time. I pulled the door open to the almost full restaurant, waved at Lille behind the counter, who responded with a dirty look. Great, this should be a fun breakfast. When Lille was in a mood, the entire dining room knew it. Often people from town came into the shop for dessert after being run out of the diner by the grumpy owner. I wasn’t complaining; bad customer service that threw business my way was good. I felt bad for Lille. Most of the time, her bad moods were caused by one thing. Or, more accurately, one man—Ray Stewart.

I slipped into the booth across from Amy, who was on her cell. She air-kissed me while still talking to Hank.

“A drive down the coast sounds perfect.” Amy grinned. “Sure, we can take my truck. I’ve been meaning to get it out anyway.”

Amy was a California girl through and through. She reeked granola. Her Datsun truck was a 1970 something and had fewer miles on it than my aunt’s leased sedan she traded in every couple years. I played with my fork, waiting for her to finish her call.

“Look, Jill’s here. I’ll see you in two hours?” Amy giggled as she listened. “Okay, an hour. But I might be late. Girl talk takes time, you know.”

Gag me,
I thought as I refolded the paper napkin. How in the world was this guy turning my surfing-loving friend into his Stepford girlfriend?
Keep your mouth shut
was going to have to be my mantra for the next hour. Amy finished her call.

“Sorry about that. Hank and I are taking a drive up the coast.” Amy closed her phone and laid it on the table.

“Sounds nice,” I said, trying to mean it. I asked another question, just to seem interested. “What else are you doing?”

Amy sighed. “I guess he has a friend who has to move out of his apartment.”

I’d taken an unfortunate sip of water right then and I coughed the water out of my nose. Grabbing my napkin, I stared at her. “Your big date is helping someone move? Using your truck?”

“Don’t act like that. It’s sweet he wants to help out a friend. It’s a good trait in a person.” Amy studied her menu, avoiding my stare.

“Sometimes I think you’re too nice for your own good.” I leaned forward, ready to tick off the long list of why Hank wasn’t the one and why Amy should run while she still had a chance. A cup crashed in front of me. Jumping back, the steam from the coffee pouring into the cup in front of me felt like it had been brewed on the sun. “Hey, watch it.”

Taking my napkin, I wiped up the spilled coffee and looked up into Lille’s face. Her eyes burned. “Sorry,” she barked. She leaned close to me. “Look, you stay away from Ray, you hear me?”

I frowned and shook my head. “Lille, I’m not interested in Ray. I’m dating Greg. The police detective?”

“So you’re using my Ray to make your man jealous? That’s mean.” The coffeepot in Lille’s hand shook, and I saw Amy move closer to the edge of the booth, preparing to run.

“I’m not using Ray. Look, the guy stopped me on the street twice. I told him to go see you and leave me alone. He’s the problem, Lille, not me.”

Her face turned even redder, if possible. “So you admit to being with him.”

“I talked to him. The day Craig was killed, he was outside Josh’s shop, listening to their fight. Then yesterday when I walked home, he drove by and talked at me through the truck window. I am not seeing him or even nice to him when he talks to me.” I put up my hands in surrender. “What do you want me to do? Ignore him? Tell Greg he’s bothering me? What?”

Lille looked like she wanted to roast me over a slow fire and eat me for lunch. “Oh, you’d like that. Getting your man all up in Ray’s face—going white knight for you. Stop the games, missy. I’m on to you.”

I watched Lille storm away from the table. I felt the eyes of everyone in the restaurant focus on me, trying to see how I would react. Great, now I was Mata Hari trying to steal away husbands and boyfriends from the good women of South Cove. Of course, everyone, except Lille, knew what a jerk Ray was, so maybe I’d be fine.

Maybe.

Carrie stepped up to the booth. “Man, you’ve got Lille worked up. If you ask me, Ray should be locked up for being sleazy. Everyone knows he’s involved in some shady business.” Carrie glanced back at her boss, who was fighting with the cash machine. It appeared the register was winning. Carrie sighed. “Well, everyone but Lille. She has too good of a heart. She’d take in a devil in red and believe it when the guy said he was going to a costume party.”

Lille, kindhearted? Not my vision of the woman who’d chewed me up and spit me out with a warning to stay away from her man. God, I felt like I was living a country-and-western song.

“Look, can we order? My boyfriend needs some help today so I’m on a tight schedule.” Amy tried to move the conversation back to business.

“Sure, honey. I’ll even watch your food so Lille doesn’t poison you.” Carrie pulled out her pad. Seeing what must have been shocked looks on both of our faces, she laughed. “Joking, guys. Man, doesn’t anyone on the coast have a sense of humor?”

“Sorry, Carrie.” I ordered a mushroom and Swiss omelet along with a short stack of French toast even though my appetite had disappeared. Best new diet around, have someone yell at you twice before breakfast. Three times for lunch. And if you even see another person before dinner, you’ll be cringing under your bed and lose weight in no time.

Amy gave Carrie her order, then glanced at me. “Boy, you have her going.”

“Wrong.” My voice came out louder than I’d planned. I lowered my voice and said, “Ray has her going. I can’t believe the slime even told her about him hitting on me. Of course, in his version, I must have been the aggressor. Me. Right.”

“Sometimes it’s hard in a relationship. You never quite know what’s going on even if they say they’re telling you the truth.” She glanced at the phone.

I held my breath, waiting for her to crack the door open a bit more before I told her Hank was a swine. Then her face brightened and the moment was gone. “So did you talk to the ghost Esmeralda says is trying to reach you?”

I shook my head. Taking a sip of the excellent coffee, I wondered how long, if this Ray thing kept up, that my shop would be the diner’s bean source. Lille had a temper and I couldn’t afford to be on her bad side long. I paused. “I went out to the wall where Emma’s been pointing for the last few days. Nothing. I even did the
woo-woo
open-yourself-up-to-the-cosmos thing. Nada. Not a niggle.”

“Maybe you’re not sensitive to the other world,” Amy mused, stirring cream into her coffee, a habit I’d never see her do before.

“And maybe I was an idiot to listen to Esmeralda.” Before we could get into a full-blown discussion of the reality or not of the other side, Carrie came back with our food.

“Here you go. The kitchen has its money on you, by the way.” Carrie smiled at me. “The wait staff is backing Lille. Sorry, but she does have the weight advantage.”

I salted my omelet. “What are you talking about?”

“The cat fight over Ray. The cooks think you can take her in less than three minutes. Nick even joined in the pool. He’s supporting you.” Carrie grinned. “Can I bring you anything else?”

“Like a gun?” I smiled. Then her words hit me. “Hey, how’s Nick doing? He been showing up for work lately?”

Carrie frowned. “Not sure why you’re asking, but yeah, he’s been consistently on time. I think his mom read him the riot act. Probably threatened to take away his computer time or something.”

I thought about the kid skateboarding down the street yesterday. He’d seemed lighter without the truck Sadie had taken away. Easygoing. Maybe he was thinking being a kid wasn’t a bad thing after all.

Too bad his heart would be broken when he found out about his girl.

When Carrie went away from the booth, Amy and I ate in silence, not wanting to say something to make the other feel bad. Finally a safe subject popped into my head.

“Greg and I are going on a double date next Friday.” I played with the cheese on my plate. For the first Sunday in forever, I didn’t feel like eating.

Amy’s eyes brightened. “Toby has a steady girl?”

“Is the moon blue?” I laughed. Toby liked his relationships short and sweet. With no ties to bind him. The man was in love with falling in love. “Actually we’re going with Aunt Jackie and Josh.”

Amy set her fork down. “Your aunt is going on a date with Josh Thomas?”

I kept my head down, sure I’d burst out laughing if I saw Amy’s face. “Yep.”