Scoop to Kill (6 page)

“What did you think of Reggie?” Alice asked as we made our way through the crowded parking lot.

“Alice, baby,” I said as I unlocked the passenger door of my big ol’ GMC van, “I’ve got my fingers crossed that you’ve got better taste in men than your mama and me.”

After meeting Reggie, though, I was afraid poor Alice had inherited the family curse: a penchant for males who didn’t make good mates.

M
onday morning, Alice and Bree decided to spend some quality mother-daughter time opening the A-la-mode. More precisely, Bree wanted a chance to pry into her daughter’s romantic interest in Reggie Hawking and Alice didn’t get a say in the matter.

Either way, it meant I got to enjoy a few moments of peace at the house. Alice, Bree, and I all live in a crumbling Arts and Crafts bungalow in Dalliance’s historic district, just a few blocks from the downtown courthouse square. The house is technically mine, a huge chunk of my divorce settlement from my husband of seventeen years, Wayne Jones. But Alice and Bree are family; they make it a home.

That day, I decided to savor the downtime before my hellishly busy summer got into full swing. I camped on the living room sofa, snuggled beneath a patchwork quilt Grandma Peachy made me when I was five, and watched an ’80s romantic comedy on cable. My adolescent orange tabby, Sherbet, perched on the couch cushion behind me, purring loudly and occasionally chewing on my hair.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when the doorbell rang. Sherbet simply yawned and stretched out a paw.

“Who’s that, Sherbet?” I slid out from under the quilt, grateful that I’d bothered to change from pajamas into sweats, and shuffled my sock-clad feet across the hardwood to the front door. I peeked out the side-light window.

Finn Harper stood on my doorstep, dark hair and white oxford both deliciously rumpled, a foil-covered pan in his hands. He spotted me, smiled his crooked smile, and gave me a little wave.

I grabbed Sherbet off the couch and draped him over my shoulder, so he wouldn’t bolt, and then pulled open the wide wooden door. “Finn.”

“Morning, Tally.” He held up the pan. “I brought banana cake. With cream cheese frosting.”

Finn’s a wiz in the kitchen, at least when it comes to baked goods. I kid you not—he looks like a movie star and bakes like a pastry chef.

I snatched the pan out of his hands and stood aside so he could come in. With Sherbet over my shoulder, I led the way to the kitchen. “Watch out for the crap on the floor,” I warned.

“Are you folks moving?” Finn asked.

“Ha ha ha. No, Grandma Peachy finally gave up the farm and moved into one of those assisted-living places, so we’ve just inherited another houseful of stuff.” I pointed to a heap of plastic shopping bags mounded against the kitchen island. “Like thirty-five years of unfinished craft projects. And we’re working like a million hours a week, so none of us has had the energy to start sorting and pitching.”

“Ah. Is Peachy okay? Did something happen?”

Finn had moved home the year before after his widowed mother had her second stroke. As her only surviving child, he had shouldered the responsibility for her care. She’d been in a holding pattern for nearly a year, not getting worse, but not really improving. I knew it bothered him more than he let on.

“No,” I assured him. “Peachy’s healthy as a horse and ornery as a fried toad. She just got tired of feeding the animals and rattling around in that house by herself. At the home, she’s got people she can torment.”

Finn laughed.

I dropped Sherbet next to his kibble, washed my hands, poured us mugs of still-warm coffee, and sliced the banana cake. The cake had a dense, moist crumb, yellow flecked with black, and the scents of vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg made my mouth water. Technically, it was a little early in the day for cake. But it would have been rude not to have a slice, right?

Finn shifted stacks of Grandma Peachy’s old bank statements aside so we could sit at the kitchen table.

“I know better than to look a gift cake in the mouth, but I have to think you’re here for a reason.”

Finn looked up at me through his sinfully long lashes as he tucked in to his cake. “Guilty,” he mumbled around a mouthful of silky cream cheese frosting. He swallowed, took a sip of his coffee, and then got down to business.

“I want to talk to you about Emily. What do you think of her?”

“She’s nice,” I offered. Sherbet leaped up onto the table, and I shooed him off before he could get his teeth into my cake.

“Nice? Em?” Finn laughed. “Emily Clowper is many things, but she sure as heck isn’t nice. In fact, she’s quite a pill.”

“But you like her,” I insisted.

“Sure. She’s smart and honest and passionate.” I felt the heat rising in my face, and Finn chuckled. “I mean she lives with a sort of intensity. Like everything she does, she does it with her whole self. She’s just
real
.”

“Oh.”

Finn’s lips twisted in a rueful smile. “In that sense, she reminds me of you.”

“Oh?” I couldn’t imagine someone seeing a common thread between me and Dr. Emily Clowper.

“Yeah. But I’m getting a weird vibe from her now.” Finn took a turn at batting away Sherbet. “She’s jumpy and more moody than usual and there’s this restless energy to her, like she wants to do something or say something and is trying to physically hold herself back.”

“Like she’s got a secret?” I offered.

“Exactly. Maybe she’s just being freaked out.”

“She has a right to be,” I said. “It sounds like her job’s in jeopardy, and whether she liked Bryan or not, she worked closely with him. He died violently and she saw the aftermath. I know it’s been eating away at Alice, and I have to think Emily is equally distraught.”

“Mmm-hmmm.”

“But you think it’s something more,” I said.

He nodded somberly. Silence stretched between us, and we both watched Sherbet turn his attention away from our cake and begin to rummage through the grocery bags full of Peachy’s old craft supplies. After rooting his nose around in a half-dozen bags, he emerged triumphant with the tangled remains of a skein of green yarn.

He dropped the yarn on the floor, crouched down low, and pounced on it. Soon he captured a good-sized knot between his front paws and buried his back legs deep in the snarl of wool, kicking frantically, trying to disembowel his imaginary prey.

“I can’t even imagine what she’s hiding, though,” Finn finally said. “I realize you don’t know Em as well as I do, but I wanted to see what kind of read you’re getting from her.”

“Why me? I’m not exactly the best judge of character. I mean, I spent seventeen years married to Wayne Jones while he was running around like an ill-mannered alley cat and I didn’t have a clue.”

Finn smiled. “I still trust you, Tally. Right now I trust you more than I trust myself. Emily and I haven’t been romantically involved in years and years, but we parted on good terms. I still consider her a friend, and I might be biased.”

And I wasn’t? Really? Did he really think I could look at Emily Clowper, Finn’s ex, without green-tinted glasses? Or that her relationship with my niece didn’t set my teeth on edge?

“I don’t know, Finn . . .”

“Come on, Tally. Give it to me straight.”

As I marshaled my thoughts, I watched the cat. He paused, mid-freak-out, and looked up at me with bloodlust in his eyes, his needly fangs showing beneath his velvety whisker biscuits. My sweet kitten would gladly rip a bunny in two if given the chance. Bottom line, we’re all just animals, slaves to our instincts: to protect our children, to protect ourselves, and sometimes to kill.

“There’s something hinky about her,” I finally said. “I know you think she couldn’t possibly have sexually harassed Bryan, but I get the sense she’s hiding something. And I just can’t imagine a guy making allegations like that—publicly—and going to the extent of hiring a lawyer just because a teacher failed him on a test.”

Finn sipped his coffee. “I’ve done a little digging about the whole thing with Bryan.” He shrugged sheepishly. “I know it’s not very loyal to snoop behind her back, but Emily really is legally precluded from talking about the situation.”

“Well? Don’t keep me in suspense.”

“Apparently there are two phases to getting a Ph.D. First, you take classes. Then, after two or three years of courses, you take a comprehensive exam. Which is exactly what it sounds like: you answer questions to demonstrate your mastery of your field. At Dickerson, your committee—the three professors who will oversee the writing of your dissertation—grades your exam. You need to get them all to pass you on this exam so you can move on and write your dissertation and, eventually, graduate.”

“And that’s what Bryan failed?”

“Exactly. Bryan’s committee included Jonas Landry—”

“The department chair?”

“Yep. It was Jonas Landry, George Gunderson, and Emily. I don’t know how Landry and Gunderson voted, but Emily failed Bryan. It was the second time Bryan had taken the test. If you fail twice, you get thrown out of the graduate program.”

I whistled. “Wow. This was a big deal.”

“Very. The school let Bryan stick around until his complaint against Emily was resolved, but he was living on borrowed time.” Finn winced. “Okay, poor choice of words. But you know what I mean. He was about to get the boot from the school.”

I broke off a corner of my cake with my fingers and popped it into my mouth, chewed contemplatively, and then licked the frosting from my fingertips. “I guess Bryan, given what was at stake, did have a motive to lie about Emily. Of course, he might have had a motive to lie and still have been telling the truth.”

“I just can’t see it,” Finn insisted.

I held up a hand. “Let’s assume Bryan was lying about Emily coming on to him. That still put her job in danger. That still gave her a motive to kill him. Even more of a motive if he was lying, because he was persecuting an innocent woman.”

“Oh, come on. You’ve met her. Can you even fathom her beating some guy’s head in with a stapler?”

I had to admit it was hard to picture Emily doing something so messy. But whether Finn could see it or not, there was a quiet rage simmering just beneath that woman’s placid exterior. I looked at my cat, continuing to wage primal war on his yarn. I could absolutely imagine Emily doing whatever it took to protect her livelihood and her life from a malicious liar.

“Look, you asked my opinion, and I gave it to you. I think just about anyone could commit murder if pushed hard enough.”

“Fair enough,” Finn said. “But who else was Bryan pushing?”

“Finn, I have no idea. And I’m not really sure I want to know.” I took another bite of cake. “At the funeral, Cal accused me of meddling in a murder investigation. I assured him I was doing no such thing. And I meant it. I didn’t much enjoy being in the middle of that investigation last year, and I hope to never be in that position again.”

Finn smiled, a secret smile that brought to mind
all
the positions in which I’d found myself last year.

“I get it,” he said. “I’ll leave you in peace. But can we still meet at the A-la-mode?”

I shot him a glare, but with no real heat behind it. “It’s a free country.”

He laughed. “Softy. Oh, and . . .” He paused, a sheepish look on his face. “This may be asking too much, but Emily could really use a distraction from her troubles and she doesn’t have many friends here yet.”

Yet? The woman had been in Dalliance for almost five years. How could she not have friends yet?

Finn grimaced. “I was thinking it might be good to get her out of the house, so I thought we’d go to karaoke night at the Bar None on Wednesday.”

If Emily Clowper sang karaoke, I’d swap suppers with Sherbet.

“You don’t need my permission, Finn,” I said, embarrassed by the testy tone of my reply.

“I know. But I thought maybe you and Bree would come along.” I never thought I’d see the day, but Finn Harper actually blushed a bit. “Underneath that tough-cookie exterior, Emily’s an emotional girl. I want to be there for her, but I don’t want her to get the wrong impression.”

“Geez, Finn, we’re not in high school anymore.”

“I know. Maybe it’s stupid, but I’d feel better if you came with us.”

I sighed. “Oh, all right. Bree will be at karaoke night anyway, and I wouldn’t mind a night on the town before we get slammed with summer customers. As long as we go late. I want to get the A-la-mode locked up and Kyle and Alice safely home before I head out.”

Tension drained from Finn’s body and his slow grin spread across his face. “Deal,” he said. “So I’ll see you Wednesday?”

“Guess so,” I replied, leading him to the front door.

I swung open the door to let Finn out, and found Cal McCormack standing on my front porch, fist poised to knock.

Cal’s military background showed in his dress: his dark green shirt was tucked evenly in his jeans, the tail of his belt had been slipped through the loops, and the toes of his boots shone with a fresh coat of polish. But that morning, there were signs of wear in his demeanor. His close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair stuck up all higgledy-piggledy on one side of his head, and dark circles around his cerulean eyes stood out in his drawn face.

“Hey, Cal,” Finn drawled, amused.

“Finn.” Cal’s expression betrayed no emotion at all.

“I’ll see you later, Tally,” Finn called over his shoulder as he sauntered down the walk.

“Come on in, Cal,” I said, stepping out of his way.

He walked in, but stopped awkwardly just inside the door, like he wasn’t sure if he was really welcome. Sherbet, always interested in new visitors, came trotting into the front room with his yarn trophy clamped in his tiny jaws. Cal crouched down and scratched the cat behind the ears, then stood and faced me.