By Cook or by Crook (A Five-Ingredient Mystery) (16 page)

Gunnar reached across the table for her hand. “It wasn’t your fault. He made the choice not to wear a seat belt.”

“When he woke up from anesthesia, he insisted the publisher fire me. I was taken off cookbook publicity and shunted to a corner to do something that didn’t interest me. I quit and came here.” She tossed the remnants of a crab on the pile of shells. “I’ve talked enough about myself. What’s your story? How did you get into accounting?”

“Boring, not worth telling.”

She wouldn’t let him off that easily. “Try me.”

“My father was an accountant at a big company. He always said that when I got certified and had some experience, he’d leave the company and we’d open a business together. When I was in college, I took accounting courses to appease him though I was still deciding on a career. He died before my senior year. My sister needed college tuition. My mother wanted to finish her degree too. I went with accounting. Safe job, steady income.”

A boring story, yes, but it showed he put his family’s needs ahead of his own wishes. “How are your sister and mother doing?”

“Good. My mother’s teaching, my sister’s a nurse. She has two little boys.”

Because of him, two women had jobs helping other people, but had he reconciled himself to accounting?

Lightning flashed, followed seconds later by a loud clap of thunder. Gunnar signaled the waiter for the check.

Val gave the sky a dirty look. How annoying that the storm arrived now when she’d finally coaxed him into talking about himself.

As he signed the credit card receipt, lightning forked across the sky over the water. “We’re leaving just in time.”

Raindrops hit them before they reached the Miata. By the time Gunnar pulled up in front of the Victorian, the downpour had started. They sat in the car waiting for it to let up.

He leaned over and put his right arm around her. His left hand caressed her face and drew it closer. His lips teased around her mouth. A chaste kiss on the right corner, a small nip on her lower lip, followed by one on the upper lip. She smelled his shaving cream, the laundry soap in his shirt, the salt spray in his hair. Their mouths came together. He tasted like sweet crab, spicy Old Bay seasoning, bitter beer, and something else, soft and moist. He tasted of Gunnar.

The rain pounded on the car. She was swimming, or maybe drowning. Long time since she’d felt like that. She pulled away, surfaced, then sank again as he enfolded her in his arms. Was crab an aphrodisiac? No, that was oysters. Whatever.

“Let’s go in,” he said after a long deep kiss.

She knew what would happen if they went in, and she didn’t want it to happen yet. If they had any future together, her first time with him should be special, a choice she made because she knew him and knew herself, not because she’d drunk half a pitcher of beer and stuffed herself with crab. She needed time. To understand him better. To weigh again Granddad’s warnings about him. And to figure out how she felt about him.

She shook her head. “I can’t do this now. Not tonight.”

He leaned back in his seat and shut his eyes.

She felt his frustration. “I’m sorry. I just—”

“The brakes.” He opened his eyes and reached for her hand. “I understand. You’ve had a tough day.”

The brakes. Yes. But not the ones on her car.

Chapter 17

Vroom . . . sputter . . . vroooom.

Val groaned and put her head under the pillow. Good old Harvey next door was using his chain saw first thing Saturday morning. Either some limbs had come down during last night’s storm, or he was retaliating for her car alarm waking him in the middle of the night.

She rolled out of bed and put on a T-shirt and cutoff jeans. The hall phone rang as she came down the stairs. She answered it and heard her father’s voice. Her parents hadn’t called since taking their cabin cruiser from its berth in Florida to the Bahamas. Her father gave her the highlights of their crossing.

Her mother took over the phone after two minutes. “Is the café doing a good business? How’s your grandfather? When is he going to sell the house?”

The triple whammy. Her mother’s interrogation techniques gave new meaning to the term
multiple-choice questions
. Val resorted to a tactic from her school years—answer the easy questions first and hope the clock runs out on the hard ones. “The café is doing well. I’ve even hired a couple of assistants. Granddad went to a baseball game in Baltimore yesterday and stayed over. He isn’t back yet.”

“Tell me what’s going on with the house. You don’t need to mince words since he’s not there listening in.”

“He’s lining up contractors to work on the house.”

“That’s progress. Did Dad tell you we’re extending our trip until the end of July? Will the house be fixed up by then?”

“It’ll take longer than—” The doorbell chimed. “Hold on, Mom. Someone’s at the door.”

Val peeked out the sidelight near the front door. Gunnar stood on the porch. Her heart did a jig. She opened the door wide. “Come on in. I’m on the phone. I’ll be right with you.”

He carried a bakery bag in each hand and a newspaper under his arm. He must have picked up the paper from the porch where the delivery boy always threw it.

She put the phone to her ear. “I can’t talk long, Mom. A friend just came in.”

Gunnar leaned against the banister a few feet away from her. He didn’t look his usual spruce self. His clothes were rumpled, and his face not yet shaved. Well, Tony often skipped shaving on the weekend, and who was she to talk? She certainly looked like she’d just climbed out of bed. Gunnar’s light blue shirt had a spot of yellow and reddish flecks, remnants of last night’s crab feast. She’d never seen him wear the same shirt twice. Maybe he’d packed too few for the trip and run out of clean ones.

She caught the tail end of her mother’s latest question and responded. “My car? Still running okay. It’s getting some minor repairs.”

Gunnar turned his mouth into a big O. Val grinned at his pose of disbelief.

“Tell your grandfather we’ll call him later today,” her mother said.

“I’ll do that.” She’d also tell him to keep quiet about the murder and especially about suspicions surrounding Monique. No need to worry her parents. “Have a great trip, Mom. Love to both of you.”

She hung up and eyed the bags Gunnar held. “It looks like you bought out the bakery.” She kissed him briefly. “I’ll make coffee. How about breakfast on the front porch? Last night’s rain must have swept in cooler air.”

“The weather’s good, but your neighbor’s disturbing the peace with his chain saw.”

“Then let’s eat in the kitchen. Granddad’s taken over the dining room table.” She gestured toward the piles of her recipes on the table.

Gunnar put the bakery bags on the kitchen counter.

She started the coffeemaker and arranged his purchases on a platter—muffins, croissants, and cheese Danish. “I was on the phone with my folks when you came to the door. They’re in the Bahamas. They’re having such a good time, they decided to stay longer.”

He took the newspaper and the pastry platter to the glass-topped breakfast table. “Why not join them? Take your grandfather. Fly to the Bahamas.”

Huh? Last night he hadn’t acted as if he wanted to get rid of her. “What, you want to house-sit for us?”

The corners of his mouth turned up. “Listen, I’m serious. It’s not safe here. In the last few days, someone you know was murdered, you were run off the road, and your brakes failed.”

“Bad week.” Not as bad as her final weekend in New York. “Dibs on the blueberry muffin. How do you like your coffee?”

“Black, please.” He sat at the table. His feet tapped a muted rhythm on the floor. “I called the garage while you were showering yesterday. Your car had no brake fluid left in it. A dashboard light is supposed to tell you when the fluid’s low.”

She set two coffees on the table and sat across from him. “I didn’t notice a warning light.”

“It wasn’t working. Brakes and warning lights fail, but”—he leaned forward, eye to eye with her over the small table—“it’s possible someone tampered with your car.”

Tampered.
The word crashed into her like a wave. Sabotage had crossed her mind yesterday, but only as a remote possibility. Now he’d made it real. “You think someone messed with my brakes. Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”

“I tried to, last night at dinner, but you didn’t want to talk about your car.”

Her shoulders bunched with tension. She had antidotes for anxiety—think positive, analyze the situation, and bake something. This morning, she’d need all three.

“Old cars have problems. The wire or fuse, or whatever the warning light uses, could have jiggled loose when I went off the road.” So much for positive thinking. Now for analysis. “Did the mechanic say if the damage to the brakes was deliberate?”

“He won’t even look under the car until Monday. You can call the police. They might light a fire under him or even look at it themselves.”

“I’ll call the chief after breakfast.” She nibbled on her muffin. It tasted like sawdust. She crossed to the refrigerator and took out two eggs.

“You’re cooking eggs?”

“I’m letting them warm up before I use them to make macaroons. But if you want eggs, I can—”

“Nope. This will do me.” He pointed to the croissant and a cheese pastry on his plate.

She returned to the table. A headline in the newspaper caught her eye—
MURDER FOLLOWS HATE CRIME.
She snatched up the paper and read the lead.

Val flipped to the page where the article continued and scanned the rest of it. No mention of Monique’s name. Whew. The phone rang in the hall. A computer-generated voice came through the phone’s speaker and announced the caller’s ID: Mon-i-qwey Mott.

No one had taught the voice to pronounce a French name.

Val tossed the newspaper on the table. “Sorry, I have to answer this.” She zoomed to the hall phone.

“Did you see the
Gazette?
” Monique’s voice, pitched higher than usual, sounded on the verge of breaking.

“Don’t worry about it. You’re not named in the article.”

“But everyone will read it and talk about it. I don’t think I can handle that. I’d rather not go to the memorial service.”

Wrong approach. “If you want to keep the rumors down, you have to go to the service. With Maverick standing next to you.”

Her cousin said nothing for a moment. “If you’ll stand with me too.”

“Of course. I need a ride there anyway. My car broke down.”

“We’ll pick you up. I wonder who leaked that story to the newspaper. Maybe it was that horrible sheriff’s deputy.”

Val doubted it. If Holtzman had leaked the information, the chief would have his hide. “Forget about the article. Just put on a good face. I’ll see you later.”

After Monique hung up, Val dialed the police station and asked to speak to Chief Yardley.

“The chief’s not in this morning. Would you like to talk to one of the officers on duty?”

Which officer? The one who’d given her driving tips, the one who’d threatened to ticket her for her car alarm, or Holtzman? She pictured his sneer. If she filed a report without proof that someone had tampered with her car, he’d probably blame her for not maintaining her vehicle. At best, her complaint would go on a back burner. With a murder on their hands, the police wouldn’t rush to investigate an incident involving no injuries.

“Just ask the chief to call me when he can.” She hung up and was surprised to see Gunnar studying the DVDs on the shelves flanking the sitting room fireplace. From there, he could have overheard her on the phone.

He gave her his winning smile. “I couldn’t help noticing your film collection when we walked by the shelves. A lot of my favorites from the 1930s through the ’90s.”

Did he leave the kitchen to study the movie collection or to listen in on her phone calls or both? “Actually, those are my grandfather’s. He used to have a video rental store. I’ve watched a lot of them in the last few months, and enjoyed them.”

She went back to the kitchen and cracked the eggs into a bowl. They hadn’t warmed up long enough, but sometimes a baker had to compromise. She turned on the oven to preheat.

Gunnar sat at the table. “Aren’t you going to finish your muffin?”

“Later. Right now I need to beat something.”

Little by little she added sugar to the beaten eggs. Meanwhile, Gunnar read the newspaper and finished his cheese Danish.

He looked up from the paper. “I read the article that upset you. Did Monique burn the racket?”

Val bit her lip. Should she lie? She folded the coconut into the egg-and-sugar mixture.

“Don’t ever take up poker, Val.”

Forget lying. She couldn’t even manage bluffing. “Monique didn’t kill Nadia. The police are wrong.”

Gunnar got up, refilled his coffee mug, and positioned himself across the island counter from her. “They don’t arrest people without evidence . . . usually. But let’s say they make a mistake. If she didn’t do it, a halfway decent lawyer will get her off.”

Val stopped mixing. “You know what people will think? That she beat a murder rap by paying some hotshot lawyer. How’s she going to live here then? The old-timers would remember how her father broke the law by evading the draft. Monique might as well follow in his footsteps and go into exile.”

Gunnar leaned on the counter until his eyes were level with hers. “You have more reason to worry about yourself than her. You’ve had two close calls this week. Can you think of any reason someone would want to harm you?”

Trying to find a murder suspect other than Monique made a good reason, but Val didn’t want to tell Gunnar that. “Like what? What would make me a target?”

“Hanging out with the wrong sorts.”

She suppressed a laugh and smacked her forehead with her palm. “The guys with chains and handcuffs at the biker bar. They’re after me.”

“I love your sense of humor, but this is serious. Any fishy people at the club? Staff, tennis players, bodybuilders?”

Luke had talked about lowlifes at the club as a joke. Gunnar wasn’t joking. Did he believe the club attracted dicey types? How would a tourist and soon-to-retire government accountant arrive at that idea?

She looked straight into his blue eyes. “Okay. I’ll be serious. I met a man at the club recently who’s pretty shifty. My grandfather warned me not to have anything to do with this guy, but I didn’t listen. Maybe I should have.”

“Are you talking about me?” He pointed his index finger at his chest near the spot of sauce on his shirt, the badge he’d earned by cracking crabs.

“I want to know the real reason you’re here.” She covered a cookie sheet with parchment paper. “You said you were going to hang up your shingle as an accountant, but you don’t act like it. People launching their own businesses are obsessed. They talk about nothing but their plans. You mentioned your venture once or twice in passing.”

He turned his hands palms up. “I didn’t want to bore you with my plans.”

“You need a fire in the belly to start a business. You don’t have it.” She dropped rounded spoonfuls of the macaroon mixture onto the cookie sheet and waited for his response.

He took a deep breath. “You got me. I never had a fire in the belly for accounting, as I told you last night. I do it because it pays the bills. When I heard about Aunt Gretchen’s legacy, I decided it was time for a change. Her money will give me the chance to do what I’ve always wanted to do.”

“Which is . . . ?”

“Acting. I’ll take classes, get some unpaid experience in community theater. Someday I may be able to eke out a living at it. Meantime, a small accounting practice that doesn’t demand too much of my time, along with Gretchen’s money, should be enough to live on.”

Val filled up the cookie sheet. Accounting. Acting. As if he picked careers from an alphabetical list. Next up, acupuncture?

She should react to his revelation. Make it light, but not too flippant. “You’re taking up acting now? What are you gonna do for a midlife crisis?”

He grinned. “This is it. A little early.”

He went to the table and stuffed a chunk of croissant into his mouth. A French pastry gag to keep him from revealing any more about himself?

She felt as if she’d nibbled around the crust of his real story, not getting to the center of it. She joined him at the table. “You put on a good performance as a lowlife Saturday night at the docks. You even fooled my grandfather. So you must have some acting talent. Go for it.”

His eyes locked on hers. “The last time I ran this idea by a woman, she said I was a flake and broke off our engagement.”

The matter-of-fact words didn’t match his constricted voice. Maybe he still loved that woman, which would explain his reluctance to open up to Val and his token attempts at romance. She too reined in her emotions after her experience with Tony. Last night she and Gunnar had both lost control, but only briefly.