Chapter 10
“Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.”
—Meyer Wolfsheim in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
On the way back to Feast for the Eyes, feeling edgy and hungry, I swung by Ragamuffin and picked up a trio of pita sandwiches packed with curried chicken salad.
When I walked into the bookshop and announced I had lunch, Chloe blessed me and jumped off the rolling ladder.
Noeline had stopped in earlier with sixteen-by-twenty framed quotes from The Great Gatsby.
Chloe was posting them. Tegan was too busy slamming cabinets to notice my entrance.
I hurried to her, plunked the bag with our lunches on the counter, and grasped her arms. “Stop!”
She wriggled free and smacked a few more cabinet doors.
“Really, stop,” I ordered. “You’ll scare the customers.”
“We don’t have any.”
“We will in five, four, three, two …”
The door to the shop opened, and the pair of women I’d stood ahead of in the queue at the coffeehouse entered. They’d told me their destination.
“Welcome!” I cried.
They waved and made a beeline for the romance aisle, paused, and looked back at me.
“We swapped shelves,” I informed them. “For a change of pace. Third row for romance.”
They smiled and disappeared down that aisle.
I said to Tegan, “Why are you so mad?”
“Because I’m ticked at my mother for wanting to purchase another property. She’s in over her head. And getting older.”
I smiled. “She’s not old. She’s sixty, which is the new forty.”
“What does that make us? The new ten?”
“You’re acting like it.”
She shimmied off her anger. “What happened with Reika?”
“Zach showed up and curtailed my conversation. He wasn’t pleased to see me.
I’m sure he thought I was inserting myself into his investigation.
Which I wasn’t. I was merely gathering evidence to share with him, but knowing he wouldn’t believe me, I lied and told him I was there about the tea Reika had hired me for on Thursday. ” I groaned.
“Why did you make that sound?”
“Because I lied.” I plucked three sandwiches from the bag, handed one to her, kept one, and placed the last one and empty bag on the counter. My stomach gurgled in anticipation as I unwrapped the top half of my sandwich and bit into it. Around a mouthful, I added, “To Zach.”
“OMG. Chloe!” Tegan shouted.
Chloe scuttled to us. “What?”
“Alert the press. Allie lied.” Tegan sniggered.
“I don’t lie.” I huffed. “I never lie. I hate liars.”
“And I hate that you might be framed for murder.” She handed the third sandwich to Chloe and bit into her own. “Perfection.”
As I enjoyed the curried goodness, Finette strolled into the store in a black pantsuit and a silver-gray silk blouse fitted with a bow. Why had she put on such a somber getup? Had she heard the news? She’d liked Jason. Was she in mourning? She glanced in my direction and frowned.
If looks could kill. Ouch! Did she know I had found Jason’s body and was a suspect?
“I got your message, Tegan,” Finette said, ignoring me.
“I’m here to pick up my copy of The Great Gatsby.
” She perused the few quotes Chloe had hung up.
“That’s one of my favorites.” She pointed to the one above the fiction endcap and recited it.
“‘Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.’” She faltered.
Her face drained of color. “Oh, no!” She covered her mouth.
Her eyes brimmed with tears. “I … I … I’m sorry.
How insensitive of me to utter those words aloud when Jason Gardner’s dead. You must have heard he was murdered.”
“Yes,” Tegan acknowledged as she wrapped Finette’s copy of the book and inserted it into a shopping bag.
“I will truly miss him.” She pulled a tissue from her purse and dabbed her eyes.
“He and I were as close as brother and sister. We thought the same way. We spoke with the same cadence. Each of us was an Internet nerd. We loved history. And books. And building things from the ground up. K’nex kits were my favorite toys as a kid, and they were his, too.
Can you believe it?” She sighed. “The mall he wanted to build was going to be fabulous, filled with gadgets and interactive experiences, and now”—her face pinched with anger as she balled the tissue in her fist—“I suppose the vultures are salivating to offer a bid.”
“Couldn’t the town council choose not to allow anyone to build on the historic properties?” Chloe suggested.
“Yes.” I was glad she’d come up with the idea and not me. “Those houses are representative of the town’s first homes. The preservation society would like to offer a tour—”
“We shall see,” Finette interrupted. “We shall see.” She teared up again.
“Why were you and Jason so close?” Chloe asked. “He’d been here such a brief time.”
“On this trip. True.” Finette sighed dramatically. “But I met him months ago, when he made a previous trek to scout out Bramblewood. He was quite the talker. I discovered so much about him. He had to earn everything himself, as did I.”
No, he didn’t, if what Jason had told me at dinner was correct. His father had been a successful businessman, meaning Jason had probably inherited much of his wealth when his parents died in the avalanche.
“My parents didn’t have any pull,” Finette continued. “They couldn’t get me into the finest colleges. Couldn’t help me secure my first job. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t mind starting at the bottom. I made peanuts, but it built character. Jason said the same thing.”
Interesting how he’d cozied up to her with a comparable story. Had lying been his way of courting a favor from her?
“As a child, I never regretted not having money, because my parents were such good people. They gave readily to charities. They took in my great-aunt when her husband died. They made me proud.”
That would explain why she was selflessly helping her great-aunt now. To carry out her parents’ wishes.
“Did Jason’s parents donate to causes?” Tegan handed Finette the bag and accepted her credit card for payment.
“He didn’t mention it, but he and I often talked about the similarities of our youth.
The way we had to create our own identities.
Actually, he likened himself to Jay Gatsby, saying he’d been misunderstood all his life.
” Finette fixed her gaze on me. “Allie, I heard you discovered the body, but Zach let you walk out scot-free.”
Scot-free? No wonder she was staring daggers at me.
“I didn’t kill him,” I said. “When I got there—”
“Allie is innocent.” Tegan handed Finette her credit card and a receipt to sign.
Finette waved her hand dismissively. “Zach has his favorites, of course.”
I bridled at the implication that it was purely a matter of time before he realized I was guilty.
“What has he discovered so far, Allie?” Finette asked while signing the receipt and pocketing the card. “Seeing as you have his ear.”
I didn’t have his ear. I wasn’t even sure I had his friendship any longer. “It’s his investigation. He hasn’t shared any clues. I’m sure he’ll follow wherever the trail of evidence leads.”
“Mm-hmm,” she added sarcastically.
My left eye started to twitch. I rubbed it with a finger. What was up with her? Why was she being so nasty to me? Had she been in love with Jason, and not Zach, as I’d presumed? Was she suffering, because she was unable to utter the words out loud, and taking her sorrow out on me?
“Who do you think did it, Allie?” she asked. “You’re the murder mystery expert.”
“No, I’m—”
“You solved Marigold’s murder.”
Solved was a stretch. Helped solve was more accurate. “I don’t have a clue.”
“Did anything stick out to you at the crime scene?”
“Not that I can share.”
“Good for you,” she said. “Zach would want you to keep mum.”
Yes, he would. He’d also like me to butt out, truth be known.
The door to the shop opened, and Lillian swept inside carrying a dress bag.
“I have costumes,” she trilled. She was so buoyant, she must not have heard about Jason.
I was reluctant to tell her. “Finette, hello, sugar.” She joined us at the sales counter and slung the dress bag over a ladder-back chair. “How is your great-aunt doing?”
“Not well.” Finette’s eyes brimmed with tears again.
“She’s so frail, she can barely take care of herself.
With Mom and Dad gone and my older sister living in Arizona, it’s all falling on me.
I have to consider whether to ask a judge to appoint me my great-aunt’s conservator, so I can force her to move into a retirement facility before she falls and hurts herself.
Did you know I had to take her car and keys away last year? ”
“No,” Lillian said, a fervent audience.
“She was livid.”
“I’ll bet.”
“She can be so intractable,” Finette went on.
“Like all the women in my family.” She made a dismissive sound.
“I saw her last night to discuss other possibilities, but of course she won’t even remember I was there, reading to her until midnight.
I read her favorite book, too. Great Expectations.Why she loves the story astounds me. ”
“But you do it,” Lillian said.
“Yes, I do it because …” Tears leaked from her eyes. She swiped them away. “Because I love her.”
“It’s tragic,” Lillian said. “We shouldn’t have to outlive our due date, should we?”
“Ooh, Lillian!” Finette squealed. “How could you be so callous?” She pressed the wadded tissue to her eyes, collected her bookshop bag, and hurried out.
Lillian watched her go and turned back to us. “What did I say?”
“Jason Gardner is dead,” Tegan said.
“What!” Lillian exclaimed.
“Murdered,” I added. Before his due date, I thought morosely.
Chloe jutted a hand toward Finette’s retreating figure. “She’s taking it very personally.”
“Who killed him?” Lillian asked.
We filled her in with as much as we knew, each of us providing a piece of the story.