Chapter Thirty-Two
“Are you napping?”
“I’m not!” Juliette said, bolting upright and surreptitiously wiping at her mouth for any telltale drool trails. Although apparently it wasn’t surreptitious enough, because Veeta’s eyes shone with glee from Juliette’s office doorway.
“You were napping, weren’t you? Oh, you must be furious with yourself for getting caught.
Remember that time you caught Jeremy passed out in the break room?
You made the entire intern cohort call him Nappytime Boy for the rest of the semester.
He stopped showing up after fall break. He really hated you. ”
“He should have hated himself for showing up hungover and being unprofessional,” Juliette muttered.
The truth was, she might have dozed off a little after a very upbeat marketing department session from Kennedy insisting that they could in fact promote their fall line on half the budget from the previous year.
Spending two thirds of the night introducing Charlie to her bedside table of tricks had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now in the unforgiving light of day she realized there wasn’t enough coffee in the building to keep her sentient.
Not that she could bring herself to regret it.
“What do you want?” Juliette said, rubbing the grit from her eyes. She could swear her skin still smelled like him, like the warm contours of his lips where he put them all over—
“Simon called another all-hands meeting this afternoon,” Veeta said with a grimace, dousing the little tendrils of heat with icy cold reality.
“Again?” Juliette groaned, too tired to keep up her professional decorum.
“I think he thinks his pep talks bolster our spirits,” Veeta said, chewing on one thumb thoughtfully. “Though the well is running pretty dry. I’m ninety-six percent positive that last one was from an episode of Friday Night Lights.”
This was the slow, ignominious death of a once-thriving enterprise.
Juliette had never watched a business fail from the inside, but she had assumed it was a lot more Wolf of Wall Street and a lot less dwindling snack options and denial.
She could have prevented all of this if she’d only insisted that Warren let her take a peek at the manuscript that night.
At least then she could construct something from memory.
She wasn’t Kate, but she bet she could write a decent salacious tell-all when the occasion called for it.
“Oh, and Detective Marks called,” Veeta said. “Again. He’s still insisting he needs to ‘talk’ to you down at the station.”
As if Juliette’s day could get any worse.
He’d left a few messages for her on her personal phone before upgrading to hunting her down on the main office line, but she’d gleaned enough from what he hadn’t said in those messages to understand what he wanted to “talk” to her about.
The Piedmonts had both alibied out for the time of Brad’s death, and while they admitted to drugging Warren’s whiskey bottle, there wasn’t enough evidence linking them to the electrical short in the microphone, and they were both present during Warren’s speech at the time the AED was discharged.
The police were still looking into all avenues—like Troy Pham—but it was obvious that she was still suspect numero uno in Brad’s death.
And Detective Marks was being awfully tight-lipped about the developments in Warren’s case.
This is what happened when Juliette let herself have a night off. Chaos ensued.
“Call the detective and tell him I’ve fled the country,” Juliette said. “Tell him I booked a one-way ticket for Tahiti. At least if he’s going to insist on hounding me to the ends of the earth, he can fit in a vacation while he’s at it. The man needs it.”
“And we could use more time for our investigation,” Veeta added.
“We are not investigating anything,” Juliette said severely. “I told you and Kate to stay out of it.”
Which was when Kate poked her head into Juliette’s office like a genie without a lamp, giving Juliette a shit-eating grin. “Goooood afternoon! Someone looks like they had a late night. Do tell. But not too much, because Charlie’s basically my brother now.”
“Don’t start,” Juliette said severely. “I was just kicking Veeta out.”
“No, she wasn’t,” Veeta said chipperly, taking a seat instead. “We were just about to talk about the investigation.”
“Ooh, I’ll grab Kennedy!”
“We’re not talking about the investigation!
” Juliette said, throwing up her hands. But her screen was filled with about a thousand tabs on Troy Pham’s culinary career, Brigitte’s surprisingly lean modeling portfolio, and Brad Ellingham, as well as the autopsy results from Warren and the booking page for the band that played at the party.
“Oh, so you don’t want us to share what we dug up on Troy Pham?” Kate asked innocently, looking at Veeta. “Because while some of us were playing doctor, the rest of us were doing the real PI work.”
“Turns out we’re very good at snooping,” Veeta said.
“So good!” Kate enthused. “Should we just quit these jobs and open a PI business?”
“Yes, do that,” Juliette said. “Now. Preferably somewhere else.”
But Kate only helped herself to the other open chair across from Veeta, leaning in with shining eyes.
“I’m also happy to have a good old-fashioned girl chat if you’d prefer.
I won’t say I told you so, but I will think it loudly at you with my eyes.
When are you seeing him again? Should we be planning a double date getaway?
Because I’ve been trying to convince Jake to do a weekend drive to Vancouver for months now. ”
“Fine,” Juliette said loudly. “I will talk murder. Or literally anything else to move off of this topic.”
“Hey, no murder talk without me,” Kennedy said as she popped into the office, completing the three-headed sleuthing dog at Juliette’s desk. “Have we gotten to Brigitte Ellingham yet? Because I’ve got some really juicy intel on her from my Rotary Club.”
“Just close the door,” Juliette griped. If she couldn’t get them to shut up about the investigation, she could at least make use of whatever information they’d dug up. She could add it to the murder board later, when she was alone. Juliette pointed to Kate and Veeta. “What have you got on Troy?”
“Well,” Kate started, having the nerve to prop her feet up on the glass edge of Juliette’s desk, “I’ve got a friend who actually is a PI—well, he’s less of a friend and more of a contact I made while researching the second Loretta book—”
“Sometime today, Kate?” Juliette said.
“Right, yes. Just saying, if you need to track down a cheating husband or an accountant who skipped town with your tax payment, I’ve got your guy. Turns out, our boy Troy had quite the rap sheet in his youth.”
“Really?” Juliette said, leaning forward and fully alert now. “That’s great. I mean, not for society, but for me, specifically. What kind of crimes are we talking here?”
Veeta pulled a manila folder from under their arm, flipping it open and spreading out some pages.
“Vandalizing, underage drinking, a couple of possession pops before Washington legalized weed. One assault charge that got reduced down to a misdemeanor for disturbing the peace, since apparently the other party was his friend and they got into it over a girl.”
“Boring and cliché,” Juliette said. “Though the assault angle is helpful. When was that?”
“That’s the less exciting part,” Kate said, flipping through a couple more pages. “It was almost ten years ago, when he was twenty. Apparently, part of the plea deal was that he go into this court-appointed experimental rehabilitation program.”
“It was called Culinary Crooks,” Veeta said. “It was like Le Cordon Bleu for criminals.”
“I guess that’s where he learned to be a chef,” Juliette mused, sifting through the admittedly impressive dossier they’d compiled on Troy. “How did he end up in Warren Ellingham’s orbit?”
“Warren ‘discovered’ him at a fundraiser for Culinary Crooks, who also did the catering for the event,” Kate said, pulling an old news article from the Seattle Times. “He was impressed with Troy’s modern take on classic Vietnamese street dishes.”
“So, Warren locks a dumb kid with limited employment options into a long-term contract that ultimately pays Warren far more than Troy.”
“Like Taylor Swift and her first record company,” Kennedy said seriously.
“But Warren was planning on letting Troy out of his contract early,” Juliette said. “He was even the primary investor in Troy’s new restaurant. Brad was planning to renege on the agreement, which is what they were arguing about at the luncheon.”
“When Troy sucker punched you,” Veeta added.
“Unnecessary detail, but yes, thank you, Veeta. Now with Brad dead, Brigitte becomes the primary investor. Clayton said she’s basically set up camp at the restaurant and is doing most of her business out of their kitchen. The question is—why?”
“That’s where I come in,” Kennedy said, brightening up. “This is fun. Should we start a business to do this?”
“We said the same thing!” Kate said. “We could call ourselves the Perky PIs. Or does that sound too much like a Hooters knockoff?”
“Brigitte Ellingham,” Juliette said. “If we could all just spend five minutes staying on track. Ken?”