Goody Goody Gunshots (26 page)

I shook my head. “Not really. I went to his office to ask him some questions. Let’s just say he was pretty creative with his answers.”

“Quentin? That surprises me. Dylan really likes him. Me?” Richie held out a hand and wiggled it from side to side. “Not so much. So what were you asking him about?”

At the risk of getting creative with my own answers, I decided that telling Richie the truth in his current condition would be only slightly less public than putting my response on a billboard. “I don’t even remember. It wasn’t important.”

Richie seemed to accept that, but about ten seconds later he whipped around, mouth open, and wagged a hand at me. “I know what it was. You were talking to him about the murder, weren’t you?”

A movement in the hallway behind me caught my eye, and I saw Jawarski coming toward me. Richie had announced his guess so loudly, several people standing nearby turned to look at us. I motioned for Richie to be quiet and lowered my own voice as far as I could and still be heard. “I really don’t want to talk about that tonight, okay?”

“But it was, wasn’t it?”

I tugged Richie toward the kitchen and whispered urgently, “Listen, Richie, this is important. I really don’t want to talk about the murder while Jawarski is here. So will you drop it, please?”

He nodded solemnly. “Well, of course, Abs. Anything for you.” Before I could seal the deal, his face brightened, and he surged forward, arms wide. “Here he is now, the man of the hour. We were just talking about you, Jawarski. Was your nose itching?”

Jawarski tossed a smile in his direction and leaned in to kiss my cheek. I lifted my face and took a breath of the air around him, mentally listing each part of his unique scent before I realized what I was doing. Like it or not, he was becoming important to me.

“How was your day?” he asked as he drew away.

It was an innocent question, but in light of my conversations with Corelle, Marion, and Dwayne, I felt heat creeping into my face. This would be the ideal time to tell him what I’d learned if I hadn’t vowed to avoid the subject.

I smiled and walked slowly toward the makeshift bar Richie and Dylan had set up near the cash register. Dylan stood behind the counter, entertaining a couple of guests. “My day was fine,” I said. “How was yours?”

“Fine. Busy.” He stiffened noticeably, and I realized he’d spotted Marshall. He put his hand on the small of my back, one of those protective gestures I like—unless the guy’s being possessive. I didn’t know how to interpret Jawarski’s move.

He guided me around a couple who’d stopped walking abruptly. “The boys have gone all out tonight, haven’t they?”

I glanced around again and noticed with relief that Marshall had joined a conversation with a couple of other guests. “And they said it was just a casual dinner party.”

“Maybe this
is
casual for Richie.”

We reached the bar. Jawarski asked for a Heineken, Dylan poured me a Chardonnay, and we wandered back through the crowded room making small talk until the crowd and the alcohol made us both long for fresh air. Since neither Richie nor Dylan had made any noises about dinner, Jawarski and I wandered out onto the front porch and stood in the chilly evening breeze looking out at the city.

“Do you ever regret moving here?” I asked after a few minutes.

Jawarski shook his head. “Nope. It’s a good place. It seems to fit me.”

“You don’t regret living so far away from your kids?”

He slanted a look at me. “I miss ’em. No doubt about that. But I think they do better when their mom and I aren’t in the same place.”

“You wouldn’t have to live in the same town. Even if you lived across the state, you’d be closer than you are now.”

Jawarski turned so he could look at me better. “What’s going on, Shaw? Are you trying to get rid of me?”

I grinned and shook my head. “No, of course not. I’m starting to like having you around.” I let my gaze travel down to the street, where a truck rattled past. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just trying to make sure you’re not going anywhere before I let myself get too close.”

We fell silent for a few minutes, listening to the sounds of the town around us and the party through the open doors. A flash of headlights swept the street, and another truck appeared on the road. It rolled past the inn slowly, its bed filled with a tarp-covered load. I started to look away, but something about it made me hesitate.

Jawarski followed my gaze. “Something wrong?”

The truck turned slowly off the street and pulled into the parking strip next to the antique shop. I watched to see if it was going to back out again, but the taillights blinked out, and the truck’s door opened. “A delivery? This late?”

Jawarski’s posture stiffened. “Seems a bit odd, doesn’t it?”

Before I could answer, Ginger Ames came into view two floors below at street level. She must have seen the truck coming and let herself out a service door in the basement. “Must not be anything to worry about,” I said to Jawarski. “She’s the shop’s owner.”

He let out a heavy breath, and his shoulders relaxed again. “Good. I’m not in the mood to work tonight.”

I heard Richie call everyone to dinner and turned away just as the truck’s driver hopped from the cab. This time I knew exactly what made me stop. “That’s Dwayne Escott,” I said, and all the suspicions I’d entertained while I was in his garage turned into reality. I wondered if Ginger knew what he was doing and hoped like hell she didn’t.

“Who’s Dwayne Escott?”

Still determined not to talk about the murder, I said only, “I’ve known him since we were kids. His grandmother and my mother knew each other. I haven’t seen him in years, but he’s back in town and living with his grandmother about two miles out of town on Motherlode.”

I wondered if Jawarski would make the connection with Hammond Junction, but he didn’t say anything, so neither did I. “According to Marion, he’s refurbishing secondhand furniture and selling it to bring in a few extra dollars, but I was out there this afternoon, and I think he’s creating phony antiques. I think his grandmother is so used to protecting him, she can’t even see what he’s up to.”

I didn’t want Dwayne to see me, so I moved a couple of steps to the right, behind a cluster of scrub oak. When a second door slammed and Kerry Hendrix came around the back of the truck, I was very glad I’d followed my instincts.

Jawarski looked away from Dwayne, Kerry, and Ginger long enough to glance at me. “You were out there this afternoon?”

“I promised to take Marion some caramels.”

“And you took advantage of the opportunity to check out Dwayne’s operation?”

“I talked to him for a few minutes.”

“Because you thought he was creating fake antiques, or because you thought he had a connection to Lou Hobbs’s murder?”

I hesitated, torn between my vow not to discuss the murder tonight and the urge to tell Jawarski what I knew. I liked to think I was a woman of my word, but I’d made that promise to myself before Dwayne Escott came rolling down the street, bold as brass, with a truck full of phony goods.

“Because I knew he had a connection to Lou Hobbs,” I said with a sigh. “I don’t know if he’s connected to the murder.”

Jawarski wagged his head from side to side. “Apparently, feeding you information isn’t a real deterrent to this compulsion of yours.” He watched as Dwayne began unhooking the clamps keeping the tarp in place. “All right. What’s his connection to Hobbs, and when were you planning to tell me about it?”

“I was going to tell you in the morning—and the only reason I planned to wait that long is that I didn’t want you thinking that I only like you for your murders.”

Jawarski took a second to digest that before asking, “And his connection to Hobbs?”

“He was with Hobbs when Hobbs rented the room from Corelle Davies. According to Corelle, Dwayne guaranteed that Hobbs’s rent would be paid.”

“She told you all of this?”

“Only after she found out that I’m related to Aunt Grace.” Across the street, Dwayne pulled the tarp off the load in his truck. We weren’t close enough to see the furniture in detail, but I could tell that he’d stuck a couple of small pieces in with one large highboy dresser.

“And I suppose you asked Dwayne about the rent arrangement while you were touring his workshop.”

“Yes, but he denied it. And he didn’t take me on a tour. In fact, he did everything he could to keep me from seeing what he was doing.” Dwayne lowered the truck’s tailgate, and I frowned. “Do you think Ginger knows what Dwayne’s up to?”

“She’s meeting him after hours to accept a shipment of furniture,” Jawarski pointed out. “I’d say it’s a safe bet to say that she does.”

“So are you going to do anything?”

“About what? Right now, neither of them is doing anything illegal. As a matter of fact, you don’t
know
that Dwayne is actually faking antiques, so what I have right now is a great big pile of nothing.” He held up a hand to stem the protest he must have sensed coming. “And yes, I’ll check into it. If they’re scamming the public, we’ll take care of it.”

“But—”

“If the antiques are fake, and she tries to pass them off on the public, we’ll get her,” he said again. “Now come on, let’s go eat. I’m starving.”

His reassurances should have made me relax, but they didn’t. Trying to figure out who killed Lou Hobbs was starting to feel like a game of Six Degrees. I was becoming convinced that everything going on in Paradise was connected; I just didn’t know how. But somewhere out there was a piece of the puzzle that would link Lou Hobbs, Ginger Ames, Quentin Ingersol, Kerry Hendrix, and Dwayne Escott together.

All I had to do was find it.

Chapter 33

“The two of you certainly seem to be getting along
well,” Richie said a couple of hours later. As if I couldn’t figure out what he meant, he grinned suggestively and nudged me with his shoulder.

I was standing over a sink of hot, soapy water, up to my elbows in bubbles, but the heat that crept into my face had nothing to do with the crystal I was washing. In the other room, Jawarski was helping Dylan clean away the dinner mess and get the dining area ready for the breakfast crowd. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure he wasn’t going to come in and catch us gossiping like a couple of teenagers before I nodded. “Yeah, I think we are.”

“Well, I, for one, couldn’t be happier.” Richie carried a tray filled with dirty glasses across the kitchen and slid it onto the counter beside me. “It’s about time we saw you smile.”

I gaped at him. “I smile.”

“Not like this, you don’t. And don’t go getting all embarrassed and everything,” he warned. “You’ve been such a loner since you came back to Paradise. It’s about time you came out to play with the rest of us.”

The urge to argue with him rose up inside of me, but it was an old habit I was trying to break—especially when the other person happened to be right.

“You know,” Richie said as he went after another cluster of glasses, “if the two of you ever want to stay here, Dylan and I would give you a terrific deal. I know you probably don’t want to spend the money on a place right here in town, and I understand that. But the offer’s there, just in case.”

“That’s really generous, but I don’t think that’s going to happen—at least not for a while yet.”

Richie stopped walking and spun around to gape at me. “You don’t mean to tell me that the two of you haven’t—”

“I don’t
mean
to tell you anything,” I said with a laugh. I was growing more comfortable with having friends to confide in, but I hadn’t quite reached the point of talking about my sex life—or lack thereof.

“Are you serious?” Richie came closer and leaned on the island that stood between us. “What are you doing hanging around here then? Go on. Get out of here. Drag that handsome hunk of a policeman home and have my way with him.”

I laughed and shook my head. “When the time is right— and it’s not right yet—I’ll have
my
way with him, not yours. And
that’s
the end of that discussion.”

Richie made a face and dumped a handful of trash into the can. “All right. Fine. What do
you
want to talk about?”

I didn’t hesitate to ask the question that had been on my mind all through dinner. “How much do you know about Ginger?”

“Ginger? From the antique store?” Richie came around the island and picked up a towel, waiting for a glass to dry. “Not much. Why?”

“Do you think there’s any chance she could be connected to the guy who was murdered the other night?”

“Is that a serious question? I want to talk about sex, and you want to talk about murder. Girl, you have some real issues.”

Grinning, I handed him a dripping crystal goblet. “That’s old news, I’m afraid. And yes, it’s a serious question.”

“I have no idea if she’s connected to him. Why?”

“I don’t know. Just a hunch, I guess. Do you remember seeing a man with a limp hanging around her store?”

Richie thought about that for a second, then shook his head. “Not while I was there, but that doesn’t mean much. I don’t care what Dylan tries to tell you, I haven’t been at the shop
that
much.”

I smiled and washed another glass. “I believe you. It’s just that there have been several strange things going on in Paradise lately, and I’m starting to think they’re all connected. I just can’t figure out how.”

Richie’s smile faded slowly. “What things?”

I shook soap and water from my hands and slid two more glasses into the sink. “I thought I saw the dead guy get shot, out by Dwayne Escott’s house a few nights before he was actually killed. And in between, I saw him hanging around Kerry Hendrix’s truck. And someone else saw him getting into a car with Quentin Ingersol. I saw Kerry and Dwayne arguing the other night, and tonight they’re working together to unload a truck. There’s a connection between all four of them; I just don’t know what it is.”