Final Sentence (9 page)

THE CAFÉ WAS
an easygoing place with simple wooden tables and chairs and a few brown leather booths. Sepia pictures of what Crystal Cove looked like in the early twenties hung on the walls. The sweet aromas flooding the restaurant would make even the most devout sugar-hater dive into a sweet. I eyeballed the glass case filled with homemade goodies, and my stomach grumbled. When was the last time I had eaten? My version of Bobby Flay’s guacamole the night before? I had skipped breakfast. The trail mix my aunt gave me sat unopened in the pocket of my shorts. I ordered a glass of milk and a chocolate scone drizzled with orange icing, and I headed to J.P.

Families with beach gear crowded the booths. J.P. sat at a table by himself, his bare arms and face gleaming with perspiration.

“Join you?” I said.

He took a long swig from a bottle of water. “It’s cool.”

I took that as a
yes
and settled into the chair opposite him. The noise in the café was much more subdued than at The Cookbook Nook. Only the folks behind the counter spoke above a whisper. I sipped my milk. “I’m sorry about Desiree.”

J.P. gawked at me, his eyes red-rimmed and moist. Had he come to a popular place to flaunt how distraught he was? I scolded myself for being a cynic. Premature death of a spouse will change a person.

“You look upset,” I said, stating the obvious.

“Oh, man, I adored her. She’s dead. I’ll”—he pushed the bottle of water to the center of the table—“never see her again.” His response, even the pause, sounded rehearsed. Had he been an actor before becoming a director? A number of our commercial directors at Taylor & Squibb had acted. The director on the Daily Dose of D campaign confided that learning the craft gave him an edge up when dealing with actors’ quixotic natures.

“I saw you outside my store,” I said. “You manhandled Sabrina.”

“No way.”

“You wrestled her purse from her. You snatched something from it.”

“No, I didn’t.”

Okay, that response established that he was a liar. At least I knew the kind of person with whom I was dealing.

We sat in silence for a moment, J.P. sucking down water, me sipping milk and nibbling on my scrumptious scone, until he slammed the empty bottle of water on the table.

I snapped to attention.

“You were always jealous of her,” he said.

“What? No.”

“Sure you were. She told me. You said she was the pretty one, and you were the stable one. The guys always liked her best.”

“Stop it. You’re twisting things. Yes, I was jealous of her, but not in a bad way. I wanted to emulate her.” People in the café were staring. “I loved Desiree. She was a lifelong friend.”

J.P. sank into himself. After a long moment of silence, he muttered, “I heard you found her body.”

“Yes.” I didn’t add that Pepper Pritchett had accused me of murder. I wondered if, by now, she was spewing rumors at the
Crystal Cove Crier
. Would that reporter, Tito Martinez, run with the story? Would my face be plastered on the front cover of tomorrow’s paper? Headline:
Hooked on Murder: Widow Questioned in Quirky Twist of Fate
. As an ad exec, I’d had the task of coming up with catchy loglines. “Let’s start over, J.P. I’m Jenna Hart.” I offered a hand. He didn’t shake. “What’s your last name?”

“Hessman.”

“You said you come from Florida.”

“Yeah, that’s where I started out.”

“Doing what?”

“I was a cable TV director.”

Not an actor.

“I had aspirations of becoming the next Martin Scorsese.” He honked out a laugh and sucked in a huge gulp of air. “I had dreams. Big dreams. Making films that mattered. Films that spoke to people. Films that would stand the test of time.”

“But that didn’t work out.”

“‘Never was so much owed by so many to so few.’”

I gaped. He was quoting Churchill. Though I was an art history major in college, I knew the phrase because we had used the quote for a Bentley commercial that starred Peter O’Toole. Had I judged J.P. by the number of tattoos and underestimated his intelligence?

“And never was so much denied to so many others,” he added.

I settled back into my chair. The latter was not Churchill. J.P. wasn’t bright; he was egotistical.

“To become one of the elite . . .” He waved a hand. “What does it matter, huh? I didn’t succeed. To make ends meet in L.A., I took a gig at a game show. Hated that. I ended up at the Food Channel. I like to eat. That’s where I met Desiree.”

“And you fell in love.”

“And now she’s gone. Gone. It’s so not cool.” He rested his forehead against his fingertips.

“I’m sorry. I miss her, too.” If only I could extract the insidious doubt that had wormed its way into my soul.

I glanced out the window, hoping to find my calm in the happy-faced passersby, and was startled to see Sabrina climbing out of the passenger side of a black minivan. Desiree’s masseur, Mackenzie, offered a hand for support. Sabrina looked shell-shocked. Beyond them I saw Cinnamon Pritchett on roller skates. She made a figure eight, avoiding a few pedestrians, and pulled to a stop. She wasn’t in uniform. Was she tailing Sabrina or simply out for a spin?

Mackenzie spotted us and guided Sabrina toward the café window. J.P. caught sight of them and snarled. Mackenzie winked then whisked Sabrina away. Cinnamon resumed skating.

“You and the masseur don’t like each other,” I said, stating the obvious.

“He’s a jerk.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“He picked apart a couple of Desiree’s recipes in her current cookbook. He thinks he knows how to cook. When he said the chicken breasts in cream caper sauce lacked salt, Des got blazing mad. He made her cry.”

“Are he and Sabrina an item?”

“He’s into himself, the egotistical . . .” J.P. rubbed his forearm hard. “Des talked about you,” he said, switching topics. “A lot.”

“She did?” Did she happen to tell J.P. the truth about David and her?

Hold up, Jenna, hearsay
, I could hear my father warn. As an analyst, he never let my siblings and I assume anything. Not to mention, Sabrina had started the rumor. What if Sabrina lied to me to stir the pot? What if she had some gripe with Desiree? What if Desiree told Sabrina not to date the masseur? I flashed on the confrontation between J.P. and Sabrina in the parking lot and wondered if J.P. had a thing for Sabrina and not Desiree. What if Desiree found out, accused J.P., and he lashed out?

“Um, yesterday,” I said, steering the discussion in a new direction, eager to pin down J.P.’s alibi at the time of the murder. “You and Desiree went out. Did you come here to eat? See, I’m new to town. Well, not new. I grew up here. But I’d been living in San Francisco for years. So many unique places have cropped up in Crystal Cove since I left for college. This scone is fabulous. Is the regular food any good?”

“No,” he said.

“No, it’s not good or, no, you and Desiree didn’t come here?”

“I don’t know about the food. We went to the Crystal Cove Inn.”

“And checked in, of course.”

“Yeah.”

Except I had called there before giving up my search for Desiree, and the clerk said they hadn’t checked in. J.P. was lying. Again.

“Actually, we didn’t register right away,” he said. “We went to the courtyard restaurant, the one where you can see the ocean.”

“A View with a Room?”

“That’s it. Des said she needed to decompress before tomorrow’s”—he coughed—“
today’s
soiree.”

I didn’t have the courage to tell him that Desiree’s fans were flocking like vultures to the store. He hadn’t seemed to notice during his quarrel with Sabrina.

“Des held high hopes for this new cookbook,” he went on. “The reason she wanted to launch it in August was to promote the upcoming season of our show. Our ratings fell flat last season.”

I ran my finger along the rim of the coffee cup. “What did you do after you ate?”

“That’s when we checked in to the hotel. Des was dog-tired. Me, I was wired. I took one of Des’s sleeping pills so I could get some shut-eye, but Des got a call, and she left.”

“A call from whom?”

“I don’t know. I asked her, but she wouldn’t say.” He scraped his fingers through his Mohawk. “Man, I should’ve gone with her.”

“Did you think she was meeting some guy?”

“Nah.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Even if she was, it was cool. I trusted her. She loved me.” His defensive pose would have made a prosecuting attorney squeal with excitement. Jealousy was a powerful motive for murder.

“When did she return?”

“I don’t have a clue. I fell asleep. When I take a pill, I’m Rip Van Winkle.”

Call me crazy, but I d
idn’t believe him.

Chapter 6

A
S I LEFT
the coffee shop, I thought about Desiree’s phone call. Truth or fiction? If it was the truth, who had called her? Did Desiree meet that person and end up walking on the beach, only to be strangled?

And buried . . .

A queasy feeling coursed through me. I tamped it down and urged myself to think logically. Desiree’s purse hadn’t been tucked beneath the sand with her, and the deputy hadn’t discovered it with the sand tools. Where was it? Was her cell phone in the purse? Maybe the call list would reveal the killer’s name.

Eager to find out, I returned to The Cookbook Nook, which was still jammed with people clamoring for Desiree’s recent release, and sneaked into the office at the back. I perched on the corner of the laminate desk and telephoned the precinct. While waiting for the clerk to connect me to Chief Pritchett, I inspected cookbooks that Aunt Vera had set aside for me to take home. To the few she had selected earlier, she had added
The Best One-Dish Suppers
,
Gourmet Meals in Crappy Little Kitchens
, Betty Crocker’s
Dinner for Two Cook Book
, and Mark Bittman’s
How to Cook Everything: The Basics
, which was a hefty book
.
“Each recipe is so easy and simple,” Aunt Vera said of the stack, “even a child could manage the dishes. Not that you’re a child. You’re an adult. A mature, responsible adult.” So why didn’t I feel like an adult right now? Why did I feel like stuffing myself into a file cabinet under the heading:
To be opened at a later date?
A golden oldie that used to rouse my mother to sing, full voice, played through my mind: “Don’t they know it’s the end of the world ’cause you don’t love me anymore?”

I heard a click through the telephone receiver.

“Miss Hart,” Cinnamon said. Formal. Brusque. “What’s up?”

Without stuttering, which pleased me no end, I told her what J.P. had said about the late-night phone call to Desiree.

Cinnamon said, “What do you think you’re doing? Why are you questioning suspects?”

“So Mr. Hessman is a suspect?”

“Right now, everyone is a suspect.”

Including your mother?
I wanted to snipe but kept mum. I did not need to aggravate the chief and have her lock me up simply because she could. Besides, I liked her. She seemed direct and to the point—my kind of people.

In an unthreatening, composed voice, I said, “Did you happen to find Desiree’s purse?”

“We did not.”

“Which means the killer might have taken it.”

Silence.

I cleared my throat. “Can you look up her cell phone records?”

“I’ll put it on my to-do list. I’ve got to go. Thanks for being a concerned citizen.”

Concerned
didn’t do my angst justice. I wanted the chief to like me. Trust me. Believe I was innocent.

As I hung up, Tigger snuggled up to my ankles. I lifted him and pressed his face against my cheek. “Hey, sweet boy,” I cooed. “What do you think of the activity in the shop?” He purred. “Yes, I agree. Pretty darned overwhelming. So many people. Desiree would have been—” A pang jabbed my heart. Proud. She would have been proud. And she would have teased me and told me none of this would have happened without her. How true. Celebrity did create a draw.

“Jenna.” Katie paraded into the office, her chef’s toque atilt, her white apron stained with something that I hoped was wine, catsup, or blueberry jam. “Got a sec?” She crooked a finger.

“I’d better check with Aunt Vera to see if I need to spell her at the cash register.”

“I already did. And she doesn’t. She’s in seventh heaven.”

I set Tigger on the floor and followed Katie through the shop and restaurant and outside to the patio that overlooked the ocean. The view captivated me. The roar of the waves crashing against the rocky shore beneath the patio made me catch my breath. My mother used to say that God talked to us through the waves. I never heard His voice, but I was certain she did.

Katie settled into a chair at one of the wagon-wheel-style tables, removed her hat, and set it in her lap. She folded her hands on top of the table. “I’m sorry about Desiree. You found her, huh? With that . . .” She mimed a hook.