Chocolate Dipped Death (18 page)

Karen finally stumbled down the stairs after the third ring and wrenched the door open. With her fiery hair tousled by sleep, a pair of Sergio’s sweats bagging on her bony butt and chicken legs, and a wrinkled nightshirt hanging unevenly from her thin shoulders, she looked only marginally better than when she showed up at my door drunk.

A sort of general irritation at being woken up turned to a very personal irritation with me when she realized who I was. Glaring hotly, she folded her arms tightly across her chest and blocked the doorway. “What are you doing here?”

Good to see you, too.
“We need to talk.”

“Go home. I’m sleeping.”

“After we talk.”

“Later,” she snarled. “I’ll call you.” Moving faster than I would have expected considering the state she was in, she tried to slam the door in my face.

I caught it with one hand and held it open. “I’m not leaving, Karen. Get used to it.”

She raked her fingers through her matted hair. “Why? What do you
want
?”

I decided to start with the easy questions. “I need to know if you’re planning on coming to work this morning.”

“I haven’t decided yet. Frankly, I’m not sure I want to keep working with you.”

The feeling was growing more mutual by the second. “Don’t you think you owe me an explanation?” I said. “Why are you so mad at me?”

Karen gripped the door with both hands and tried again to shut me out. “If you were paying the slightest bit of attention,” she growled as she struggled against me, “you’d already know the answer to that.”

I fought her using my shoulders and hips. “I
am
paying attention. I just can’t figure out what’s going on. Are you really angry with me, or are you just making up an excuse to take some time off?”

Karen stopped pushing abruptly. “What in the hell is that supposed to mean?”

I staggered inside, almost losing my balance in the process. “You don’t have to make yourself angry with me. If you want time off, just say so.”

Her eyes sparked. “What makes you think I have to
make
myself angry with you?”

“Well, it’s just that—” I sensed movement at the top of the stairs and glimpsed Karen’s daughter, Paige, watching us with wide doe eyes. I smiled and tried to look reassuring. Judging by the look on her face, I don’t think I succeeded. I wasn’t going to tell her what Jawarski said in front of Paige, so I skirted around it. “Look, Karen, I know you’re upset with me, but I need you down at the store. Can’t we work out whatever this is?”

An acid laugh dripped out of Karen’s mouth. “You
need
me.”

“Yes, I do—and don’t try to say I don’t tell you that. I tell you all the time. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I’ve got to tell you, I’m worried.”

“Well don’t be. I’m fine.”

“You could have fooled me.” I took a step closer and lowered my voice. “Whatever is bothering you, let’s talk it over. Get the kids off to school, and then let’s sit down together, just the two of us.”

“No. There’s nothing to talk about.”

“I think there is.”

“And I think you’re wrong.” Resigned to having me in the house, Karen shuffled up the stairs toward the kitchen. Paige darted out of sight, and I wondered if Karen was making the kids as nervous as she made me.

“This is Bea’s doing, isn’t it?” Karen shot back over her shoulder. “I heard she helped out at the store yesterday.”

“She was there,” I admitted, “but—” I stopped short when I saw the kitchen. Dirty dishes lined the counters and filled the sink. An empty fast-food bag lay crumpled on the floor, and old soda seeped through the bottom of a paper cup. Karen had never kept an immaculate home, but she’d never let things go like this before—at least not that I’d seen.

Karen didn’t seem to notice. “Well that’s just great. What business is it of hers what I do? That’s what I want to know.”

“She’s concerned about you.” I took another look at the kitchen. “So am I.”

Growling under her breath, Karen set to work making coffee. “Bea doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but she sure likes to stick her nose in everyone else’s business.”

I watched her for a few minutes, taking in her jerky, nervous movements, the irritation that seemed to ooze out of her pores. “What’s going on, Karen? Why are you acting like this?”

She looked at me from behind a veil of tangled hair. “Like what?”

“Like
this
.” I waved a hand to encompass the house, the yard, the neighborhood . . .
her
. “The kids have to be to school soon, don’t they? You’re barely even awake.”

“So?”

“So?”
I stared at her with my mouth hanging open. “Are you sick or something?”

She raked her fingers through her hair again and shook her head. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”

But I was worried about it, and anybody with two eyes and a brain would have been, too. “Where’s Sergio?”

“Gone to work already. Why?”

Why?
I checked over my shoulder to see if Paige was still there, but I couldn’t see her. “Would it have killed him to clean some of this before he left? Or did he leave this mess as ‘punishment’ for you being gone?”

Karen glared at me as if I’d just called her baby ugly. “You’re as bad as Bea. Maybe worse. You haven’t even been around for the past twenty years, and now you’re suddenly an expert on me and my life?”

Her anger floored me. I didn’t know whether I was more angry or hurt, but I did know that I was tired of people flinging my past in my face. “This may come as a shock to you and everyone around here,” I snapped, “but it’s not a crime to live somewhere else for a while. And there’s no law on the books that says people can’t come back.”

“Well you ought to know about the law.” She spat out the last word as if it tasted foul.

“Is
that
what’s bothering you? The fact that I moved away and went to law school?”

“No. What’s bothering me is that you moved away, went to law school, and forgot the rest of us even existed until you needed something. You didn’t have time for us when you were married to Roger, but the minute your marriage fell apart, guess who came scurrying back?”

I opened my mouth to argue, but in a strange and twisted way, she had a point. I finally found a few words and hurled them at her. “That was then. This is now.”

“And what happens tomorrow, Abby? Huh? How long are you going to stick around? Forever? Or just until something better comes along?”

“How should I know the answer to that? Life isn’t something you plan, Karen. Things happen. You meet people. Surprises come along. I didn’t plan to be here now, I didn’t plan to find my husband having sex with his mistress on my bedroom floor, I didn’t plan to divorce him and move back to Paradise—but here I am.”

She snorted and turned away.

“All I can tell you,” I shouted, “is that I don’t
plan
on going anywhere. I
plan
to stick around and run the shop and learn the business and live my life.” I paced in the tiny space that housed her dining table, dodging books and backpacks and countless other things that had been left on the floor. “If you felt this way, I sure wish you’d said something about it before now. This isn’t exactly the best time to have a meltdown, you know.”

Wrong thing to say. I knew it the second the words left my mouth. The spark in Karen’s eyes turned into a raging fire. “Oh? So you can’t plan anything, but I have to plan my ‘meltdowns’ around you? You know what? Go to hell, that’s what. I quit.”

I was too angry to care. “Fine!”

“Fine! Now get out of my house and leave me alone.”

“Gladly.” Seething, I thundered down the stairs and slammed out of the house. The rattle of the glass in the window made me feel marginally better, but only for as long as it took to get back to my car. Within thirty seconds, I started thinking that I shouldn’t have let Karen walk out on me, but I was still too consumed by self-righteous anger to turn around and go back.

If Savannah encountered this kind of attitude when she came back to Paradise, I thought as I ground the Jetta into reverse, she probably
threw
herself in front of that car. At that moment, I didn’t blame her.

 

I was still fuming when I pulled up in front of Sergio’s office building twenty minutes later. I didn’t have time for this, but I had to know what was wrong with Karen, and I needed Sergio to talk sense into her. I just hoped he’d agree.

The parking lot was nearly empty, which I took as a good sign. The more private our conversation, the better. Inside the lobby, I scanned the directory, found the suite number for Vance and Stroud, Attorneys at Law, then hot-footed it up the stairs. I found the right suite with no trouble, but the glass door leading into it was locked tight.

I knocked, softly at first, then louder and longer until an annoyed-looking Sergio came to see what all the fuss was about. When he recognized me standing in the dimly lit corridor, his step faltered. In the next heartbeat, he pasted a broad smile onto his equally broad face and unlocked the door.

When we were younger, Sergio had the sturdy build of a football player. Now all that muscle has turned to something else, and the broad chest Karen used to rave about has sunk to a spot just above his belt. His thick hair is thinning, his hairline receding, and the pepper is liberally streaked with salt. Don’t get me wrong—he’s a great guy. I like him a lot. But he’s not exactly what you’d consider a stud, and I had a hard time picturing Savannah being interested enough to jeopardize her marriage over him.

He swung the door open, and his thick brows beetled over his broad nose. “Abby? What are you doing here?”

I pushed inside without waiting for an invitation. “We need to talk.”

“Now?” He shot a glance over his shoulder and frowned back at me. “This really isn’t a good time.”

I ignored him. “I just came from the house. I want to know what’s wrong with Karen.”

“You came from
my
house?”

I nodded. “She’s a wreck. I woke her up. The kids aren’t ready for school, and she’s slumping around in your old sweats and a stained T-shirt. What’s going on?”

Sergio glanced behind him again, then reluctantly jerked his head as a signal for me to follow him. He led me into his office, a large sunny room dominated by a U-shaped desk, and shut the door behind us.

I sat in one of the burgundy leather chairs facing the desk, Sergio settled behind it and linked his hands on the blotter. “What did Karen say to you?” he asked, his accent slightly more pronounced than usual.

“Nothing that made any sense. She’s mad at me, that much I know. I’m just not sure why.” Or maybe I didn’t want to know. I crossed my legs. Uncrossed them. Hitched myself to the edge of the chair and sat back again. “She resents me for inheriting the shop, doesn’t she?”

Sergio wagged his head slowly. “Don’t read too much into this, Abby. It’s not what it seems. She’s just . . . in a mood.”

“Well it’s quite a mood.” I almost let it go at that, but I couldn’t. I’d spent two solid years skirting the truth in my marriage, and look how well that had worked. I didn’t want to make the same kind of mistake now. “I need you to tell me the truth, Sergio. Karen wanted the store, didn’t she? She thought Aunt Grace was going to leave it to her.”

He shrugged one broad shoulder and sat back in his chair, but he didn’t look any more at ease than I felt. “She’s fine with the way things turned out, Abby. Just relax, okay? You’re upset by everything that’s been happening the past few days, and that’s understandable. Karen’s upset, too. There’s a lot to be upset about.”

I would have given almost anything to believe the answer was that simple. “I won’t argue with you,” I said, dredging up a half smile from somewhere, “but it’s more than that. She seemed fine the day of the contest, but since then every time I see her it’s like I’m talking to somebody I don’t even know.”

Sergio’s gaze faltered. Landed on his pencil holder and stayed there. “She’s under a lot of stress lately.”

“What kind of stress?”

“Stress.” He stood and turned his back on me, staring out the window at the cars pulling into the parking lot, but I had a feeling he wasn’t really seeing anything. “It’s just the normal, everyday stuff,” he said after a lengthy pause. “Nothing to get all worked up over.”

He was lying to me. I could see it in his eyes, I just didn’t know what to do about it. I switched gears to see if I could jar something loose. “What happened between you and Savannah the other night? How much stress did that put Karen under?”

Sergio’s eyes flew to my face, and color flooded his cheeks. “Nothing happened between me and Savannah.”

“Are you sure about that? A little thing like a cheating spouse can put a whole lot of stress on a woman.”

His expression turned to stone. “I have never cheated on Karen.”

“Well . . . except that one time,” I reminded him. It was harsh, but I didn’t care. Playing softball wasn’t working with anyone.

“We weren’t even married then.”

“No, but you were dating, weren’t you?”

He let out a heavy breath and mopped his face with an open palm. “Leave it alone, Abby. We were kids. We’ve moved way past that.”

“Maybe you have, but I guarantee that the minute Savannah Vance set foot on Paradise soil, time shifted backwards. Everything Karen felt then, she feels now.”

He slid down in his seat and loosened his tie. “Nothing happened that night.”

“So why were you with her?”

“I wasn’t
with
her,” he insisted. “I ran into her. I was looking for Karen.”

“And stopped looking when Savannah walked in.”

“It wasn’t like that.” Looking utterly miserable, he drummed the fingers of both hands on his desktop for a minute. “I was looking for Karen. She called and told me that she was taking Evie Rice out for a drink, and I got worried.”