Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
Stiffening my back and my resolve, I tromped quickly through the Color Gallery toward the back of the house and took a left, Joe silently following behind me.
After a few minutes, we were walking down stone steps and into the glass-paned solarium, which didn’t seem to have been properly cared for in the months since Mr. Finch’s death.
Only the innermost rows of plants, the succulents, remained alive, while every potted plant by the windows was either completely gone with brown stalks proceeding from dry dirt, or struggling between life and death.
The familiar spider design of the archways rose above us, the structure like eight legs meeting in the center of a giant arachnid. The moon was bright and streamed through the high windows between the arches, and several old-fashioned lamps hung from the ceiling.
I stepped into the center of the room, where two chairs faced one another. As I nudged one chair, Joe passed behind me and I bumped into him. Because he was several inches taller than me, my shoulder wedged him in his rib cage.
“Watch it.” Joe scowled at me.
As he took a seat, I could see all the different versions of Joe I’d known over the years: the six-year-old who’d rescued a bird, the class clown in middle school who couldn’t keep out of trouble, the boy I’d really liked for about three ridiculous weeks in high school, and the wanderer who couldn’t seem to get his life together.
“You watch it,” I told him, falling back into our childish dynamics.
Perhaps it was a defensive instinct, a response to the fear of being alone with him, or perhaps I was just finding my courage.
Regardless, I was determined to get answers in the next few minutes.
This guy was guilty of something, and I wasn’t about to let Lacy—or anyone else—take the fall for a crime she didn’t commit.
“What’s your problem with me?” Joe asked, leaning forward to place his elbows on his knees.
“Besides the fact that Brett Brinkley died after drinking a cocktail you made him?”
Joe shook his head and settled back into the wicker chair. “I didn’t kill Brett.”
That’s what a murderer would say.
“Whatever,” he breathed, as if he could read my mind. “I’m exhausted and need to check our inventory in the kitchen before getting a few hours’ sleep.”
“I was in there earlier, talking to my aunt,” I said, not mentioning the fact that I’d gone through his things and taken a CD. “I noticed that you had a pretty big order of rhubarb.”
He squinted at me, likely trying to figure out what I was playing at. “Yeah, so I over-ordered. I’ll use it for a couple of pies tomorrow and throw out the rest.”
“The roots and the leaves are poisonous. I saw a bunch of stalks with leaves still attached.”
“Everything is poisonous in large enough quantities. Apple seeds, peach pits, tomato leaves.” Joe listed them off on his fingers as he kept his eyes on mine.
“That doesn’t mean that I somehow used a giant pile of rhubarb to…
what? Kill Brett?” He almost laughed as he realized what I’d been thinking.
He inched closer to me. “Is that what you suspect me of? You think maybe I dried out the leaves, ground them up, slipped a fine powder into his drink when he came to the bar? He ordered two or three drinks, so maybe I’d been slipping it in all night until it finally took effect. ”
I squirmed uneasily. I didn’t like this Joe. I much preferred the one who would down an entire bottle of ketchup on a dare.
Joe was just getting started though, his eyes widening as he mocked me. “Maybe I even made sure that my bartender would call in sick, so I would have to fill in for him. That way I could act surprised that I needed to be on bar while I did my deadly deeds.”
Joe looked like he was about to issue a maniacal laugh just to make fun of my line of reasoning, but when he saw how uncomfortable his words were making me, he pulled back. “Look, I don’t know if you’re jealous that DeeDee’s been helping me with the business or—”
“You think I’m jealous?” I couldn’t believe his nerve. So what that my aunt had been helping a young entrepreneur get a start? So what that I was flailing about what to do when I graduated and hadn’t even broached the topic with her?
A rush of heat crept up my throat. Shoot. Was Joe right? Did I want my aunt to be helping me? Did I want her to work by my side to get a practice up and running? I hated that Joe might be more aware of my motives than I was.
“When’s the last time you spoke with Brett?” I asked, shifting the focus back to him.
“Is this an interrogation?” Joe huffed out air and reclined in his seat, already tired of talking to me—and probably realizing that he was under no actual obligation to do so. “Because I’ve already answered the sheriff’s questions.”
I crossed my arms. “I’m sure Charlie will have more.”
“Okay.” Joe laughed darkly. “In addition to sleeping with him, you speak for him now, too? I wonder how his pretty new deputy feels about that?”
That was a punch to my gut, and he seemed to know it.
Joe’s lip curled. “Your life and everyone else’s in Aubergine has been practically perfect.”
I started to interrupt him, to correct him, but he stopped me. “Comparatively perfect,” he clarified. “Do you know where my dad was on the night of our graduation?”
I swallowed hard. This wasn’t the direction I’d wanted this conversation to take.
“He was at the hospital because he’d OD-ed the night before. Someone found him passed out behind the wheel on Drake’s Road. At first they thought he was drunk, but when the ambulance arrived, they realized he’d given himself so much oxy that his pulse was practically nonexistent.”
The words hit me hard, mainly because I hadn’t realized that I was the kind of person who could be that oblivious to the pain of someone so close to me.
I guess with the pranks and the crude humor, I hadn’t registered what Joe had been dealing with, but this was exactly what Aunt DeeDee had been talking about.
His eyes were glassy now, but I could tell it wasn’t from drinking.
He was on the verge of tears. “Before we went to the after-grad party, Brett stopped by the hospital with me, said that he wanted to see with his own two eyes that my dad was okay since he used to coach us both in peewee football. Brett was a good friend – at least, I thought he was until…” Joe’s voice trailed off and he sniffed.
“Until what?”
Joe shook his head as if trying to rid himself of painful memories and said simply, “We had a falling out in our first semester at college.”
I braced myself for his reaction to my next question, but I had to ask it. “Did he get you kicked off the football team? Out of college?”
Joe blinked at me several times, his jaw clenched. “I think we’re done here.” He made as if to stand, but I put out a hand.
“Please.”
Joe forced out a big huff of air but he sat back down, though this time on the edge of his seat as if he might leave any second.
“Brett put steroids in my locker, which was the one and only thing that could actually get you kicked off the team and out of school. It sent my entire life in a different direction. No more football. No more scholarship. I never forgave him. Is that what you want to hear?”
It was. Kind of. I stayed quiet, hoping he would keep talking.
“Brett apologized, tried to throw me a few bones here and there. Job opportunities, girls he didn’t want to sleep with anymore.
” Joe’s face contorted into a grimace. “When we were kids, I had no idea how selfish he was, how he used people, how he was using me.” He lifted a hand and pointed at his own chest. “Did you know that I trained him? I spent hours on the field, throwing the ball with him, trying to get his arm in shape for college try-outs. It didn’t come naturally to him, and he barely even made it on the team.
After he got me kicked out of school, he quit the team, said he wanted to focus on his studies.
But it was because I wasn’t there to compete with anymore.
He just wanted to make sure I didn’t succeed, and once I was back home, ashamed of something I hadn’t even done and my college prospects ruined, he felt free to go his own way. ”
“When’s the last time you spoke to Brett?” I asked, gentler than I’d been moments ago, in part to encourage him to keep talking but also because hearing his story brought out compassion that I didn’t know I had for this guy. “I mean, before tonight?”
Joe hung his head and sighed, a sort of resignation settling across his face. “He called me last week to tell me that he was bringing Presley. He asked if I had a date, and I told him I’d be working.”
“He didn’t know you were catering tonight?”
“Not as far as I know.” Joe shifted in his seat. “He probably called just to remind me that he was dating this amazing woman, and I have…” Joe didn’t finish the sentence, so I waited. “No one. Not really.”
“Except you’re staying next door to Presley and got an extra room key for her.”
Joe sighed but didn’t deny the fact. “It’s complicated.”