Chapter 11 #2
They chatted for another thirty minutes, occasionally sneaking peeks past the chalkboard to check on Raina.
As the sky grew darker, tall lamps flickered on, brightening the rooftop.
A perimeter of string lights contributed very little to the illumination, but did a lot of heavy lifting for the general ambiance.
“Ooh, bathroom trip,” Ziya said, leaning back in her seat as she looked across the roof. “It’s Raina and two other girls.”
They both ducked their heads as the women walked behind them toward the bathrooms.
“I’ll get her attention when she comes back,” Amie said, straightening.
Her drink was long gone, and though she appreciated having a clear mind, her nerves were jangling in a way that made her want something stronger than a watermelon mocktail.
After a few minutes, she felt the need to occupy her mind by listing her objectives while counting on her fingers.
“Okay, game plan. I need to find out if she talked to the police about David, how she feels about Madeline buying the bookshop, what’s her relationship to Benny—”
Ziya put a hand on Amie’s. “You need to have a normal conversation. If you try interrogating her point by point, she’s gonna get scared off.”
“I wasn’t going to interrogate her,” Amie protested. “I just need the bullet points to know what I’m supposed to say.”
“You already know what you’re supposed to say.” Ziya once again committed the unforgivable sin of removing her hand from Amie’s. “Go with your gut. If she starts to seem suspicious, I’ll give her a compliment shower.”
“Your compliment shower distraction tactic isn’t as subtle as you think it is,” Amie said wryly. “I was very aware of it any time you used it to avoid taking out the trash.”
“The point isn’t subtlety. The point is distraction. And did I ever end up taking out the trash?”
“No.”
“And why was that?”
Amie fought a smile. “Because of the compliment shower.”
“Exactly,” Ziya said, smug. “I should really get the compliment shower trademarked. ‘Hello, Sharks—’ ”
“Here she comes!” Amie whispered urgently, nearly toppling out of her chair with how fast she sat up. She lifted a hand to wave at Raina as the woman reemerged onto the rooftop.
“Hey!” Raina called, a huge smile splitting her face. She abandoned her friends, who spared only a passing glance as they returned to their table.
Raina’s cheeks were flushed pink as she hugged Amie, who had not been expecting a hug and therefore spent the duration of it with her arms pinned to her sides.
“So good to see you again!” Raina exclaimed, releasing Amie. She narrowed her eyes playfully. “Are you following me?”
Barking out a laugh, Amie said, “No! No, of course not. I’m not following you. No.”
Ziya cut in. “Hi, I’m Ziya. I love your top. Ooh, and your shoes! So cute.”
Amie winced inwardly as Raina responded with enthusiasm. She hadn’t taken long to need saving.
“You’re Amie’s girlfriend, right?” Raina was asking as Amie tuned back into the conversation. “I work at Shelf Starter. I remember you two coming by a few times.”
Amie and Ziya immediately spoke over each other with different variations of “no, we broke up.”
“Ah, sorry.” Raina shuffled awkwardly. Then she brightened. “Nice that you can still be friends, though!”
“Can we buy you a drink?” Ziya asked, shifting over one seat and patting the now-vacant chair between them. “We saw you’re with your friends, but I know I’d need a break from all the activities if I had the week you’ve had.”
Amie raised an eyebrow. If Ziya had a boss who’d been murdered, she would definitely be out doing as many activities as she could to keep her mind off of things.
Raina glanced over at her friends, hesitating briefly. “Ah, sure,” she said, climbing onto the chair. “Not like I’m the maid of honor. And everyone’s too drunk to play the trivia game I planned, anyway.”
“It looks like a fun party,” Amie offered as Ziya waved down the bartender. “You did a good job.”
“Thanks,” Raina said, smiling sheepishly. “I’m sure I sound so bitchy complaining about the maid of honor thing. I’ll get over it. What’s important is that the bride has a good time, right?”
She leaned forward to study the menu as the bartender took Ziya and Amie’s orders. A silent conversation took place behind Raina’s back as they waited for the newcomer to decide on her drink.
It’s going well so far, Ziya communicated with raised eyebrows.
Could still fall apart at any moment, Amie responded with a grimace.
It will definitely fall apart with that attitude, expressed Ziya with an eye roll.
Okay, okay, you’re right, Amie agreed with hunched shoulders.
They snapped to attention as Raina finished ordering her drink and sat back in her chair with a heavy sigh.
“How’ve you been holding up?” Amie asked, interpreting the sigh as an open invitation to ask about Raina’s emotional state.
“Just stressed,” Raina said. “Weddings are exhausting, and …” She glanced at Amie, realization shaping her features. “Oh. Savannah.”
“I mean, I was asking in general, but … yeah.”
“Yeah.” Raina folded her hands on the countertop, shoulders slumping. “It’s been tough. When I left the store on Monday, I didn’t think that’d be the last time I’d ever see her.”
“You left the store before she did?” Amie asked, already knowing the answer. She caught Ziya’s eyebrow twitching at the interrogative nature of the question, and hurriedly added, “I just ask because I know Andrew was wondering if Savannah had forgotten to lock the door to the shop when she left.”
“You talked with Andrew?”
“We’re neighbors,” Amie explained. “He’s having a rough time, understandably.”
“I feel so bad for him,” Raina said with a sad grimace.
“He asked me that, too. About Savannah locking up. So did the police. She’d told me I could leave early, and that she would close up.
I shouldn’t have gone. She seemed preoccupied with something.
I should’ve stayed to make sure everything was okay. ”
“You spoke with the police?” Ziya asked.
Nodding, Raina said, “They just asked me where I’d been, how Savannah had seemed when I left, if anyone suspicious had been hanging around the store, all of that.”
“Did they happen to ask you about David?” Amie asked.
Raina frowned, trying to remember. “No, I don’t think they did. Why?”
Amie was too occupied with her disappointment to answer right away, so Ziya stepped in.
“The cops found out that Savannah and David had a big argument earlier that day,” she explained. “We’re trying to figure out who told them about it.”
“Oh, right,” Raina said, her eyes widening. “Savannah was complaining about it for most of the afternoon. I never thought to mention it. She was always picking fights with people; it wasn’t even her first fight with David. It didn’t seem out of the ordinary.”
Her expression went solemn. “You guys don’t think … you don’t think that David killed her, do you?”
“No!” Amie and Ziya protested in unison.
“We think someone might have been trying to frame David,” Amie explained. “He’d never do that.”
Raina looked unconvinced, and Amie regretted even putting the thought into her head. Thankfully, Ziya took over the reins of the conversation.
“Do you know what’s going to happen to Shelf Starter now?” she asked as the bartender delivered their drinks. “We heard you don’t have a lot of staff left.”
“Andrew went in today to give me some time off,” Raina said. “I really don’t know what’s going to happen.” She picked up her glass and took a long drink.
“We were at the bookshop the other day during the memorial,” Amie said, giving Ziya a look of appreciation for setting her up to address another one of her bullet points. “I heard you talking to Madeline about her possibly buying the store. Is that something you’d want?”
“You heard that?” Raina asked, lowering her glass.
Amie smiled apologetically. “Sorry. I was on the other side of the shelf, and I just—”
“No, it’s okay.” Raina shook her head, scoffing with self-deprecation at the memory. “I wish I hadn’t told her to talk to Andrew that soon. He lost it as soon as he saw her.”
“He sounded upset,” Amie said.
“He was. Madeline’s been wanting to buy Shelf Starter for a while. Andrew wanted Savannah to sell. I thought he’d be happy to talk to her about it.”
Raina sighed. “But it was too soon. I should’ve known it was too soon. Now he won’t even let her in the store. He won’t talk to her at all.”
“I assume you want her to buy the store,” Ziya commented.
Raina grimaced. “I was really against it before Savannah died. I don’t know why—maybe it was Savannah’s stubbornness rubbing off on me.
I wanted the store to survive on its own.
But I know Andrew doesn’t want to run a bookstore.
Yesterday was the first time he worked at the store in years.
I figured Madeline was his best bet for selling it. ”
“No one ever tried to buy the store other than Madeline?” Amie asked. “What are the chances he’d find someone else?”
Raina hesitated, thinking. “There was another person,” she said. “Jonathan Oakland.”
Amie perked up. “He wanted to buy the store?”
“Yeah. It’s funny, I’d actually forgotten about him until yesterday. I found his business card while collecting some of Savannah’s stuff in the back room of the shop for Andrew.”
“Who is he?” Ziya asked.
“Some old rich guy who likes buying small businesses, I think. He stopped by a couple months ago and left his card. I didn’t think Savannah gave his offer a second thought, but she did keep his business card, so …” Raina shrugged.
The mention of a business card brought up a fuzzy memory. There had been a business card among the pile of things that had been dumped onto Andrew’s kitchen table. She couldn’t recall the name on it, but—
“Did you give the card to Andrew?” Amie asked.
“Yeah. Told him exactly what I told you about Oakland.” She fidgeted with a corner of the napkin that sat under her glass. “If Andrew won’t sell to Madeline, maybe he’ll sell to him. I think Savannah would’ve wanted that.”
“You do?” Amie asked, doubtful. From everything she had heard, it hadn’t sounded like Savannah wanted to sell the store at all. Though she probably hadn’t considered what she’d want to happen to the store in the event of her untimely death.
“Well, I know she didn’t want it to become an extension of Eons.
” Raina rubbed her arm in a self-soothing motion.
“I felt a little guilty encouraging Madeline, like I was dishonoring Savannah’s memory.
But she kept Oakland’s business card. Maybe she would be okay with him buying it, wherever she is now. ”
Ziya looked pointedly downward behind Raina’s back.
“Would you want to buy the store?” Amie asked before Raina could notice Ziya making her best guess as to where Savannah ended up.
Raina looked startled. “Oh, no. No, no, I couldn’t afford it.”
“I only ask because I was talking to Grayson,” Amie continued. “He seemed to think you might take over the store one day.”
Raina’s expression went dreamy, her eyes focused on nothing as she stared across the bar. “I might’ve liked to own the store one day. Save up. Have Savannah appoint me as her successor. She felt the same, I thought.”
“You thought?”
Raina turned to Amie, the unfocused look leaving her eyes. “Well, Savannah wasn’t really the affectionate type. But we worked together well, and my presence didn’t seem to grate on her as much as most other people’s did, so … I had high hopes for the future.”
She gently pushed her glass away as her expression soured. “But that’s all ruined now.”
“We’re really sorry for your loss,” Amie said softly.
“I should get back to my friends,” Raina said, sliding off the chair. “Thanks for the drink.”
Amie’s mind had returned to her bullet points. She still hadn’t asked about Benny. She had to be natural about it, like Ziya said. Just follow her gut and casually bring up—
“Benny!” Amie blurted out as Raina moved to leave.
Ziya covered her mouth, poorly hiding her wince (or her laughter—was she laughing? At a time like this?).
Raina paused. “Sorry?”
“Do you … know him?” Amie asked haltingly.
“I know of him,” Raina said, brows furrowing. “He’s the Harlows’ landlord.”
“Yes,” Amie confirmed, nodding perhaps too emphatically. “Do you know if he and Savannah had … issues?”
“Savannah had issues with everyone,” Raina said flatly.
“Right, right.” Amie’s mind raced as she tried to wrangle the conversation back in her favor. “But do you know if Savannah … I don’t know, was, like, blackmailing him or anything?” The end of the sentence came out in a rush as Amie grasped how poorly she was handling this shift in their exchange.
“What are you talking about?” Raina asked, looking unsettled.
Amie looked to Ziya for help, not sure if a compliment shower could work in this situation.
Instead, Ziya said, “We think someone was blackmailing Benny because he was cheating on his girlfriend—now ex-girlfriend. Savannah, or maybe her husband. Some people think it could be her husband.”
“Ziya thinks that,” Amie clarified.
“We thought if Savannah was the one doing the blackmailing,” Ziya continued, “or if Benny even thought she might be doing the blackmailing, that he could have potentially killed Savannah because of it.”
Raina stared blankly at them for several long seconds. Amie could almost see the gears rotating in her head as she processed this information.
Then, without warning, her neutral expression crumpled, and she covered her face. “She was blackmailing him,” she said through her hands, her voice shaking. “And it’s my fault. It’s all my fault.”