Grounds for Murder (17 page)

‘Great dress, Maggy,’ Amy said, as she and Antonio came up to us. ‘Very chic.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘but I think you have me beat.’

Amy did a little pirouette. She was wearing a short green satin dress and looked spectacular.

‘Thanks. We’re all wearing green as a show of solidarity.’ She pointed over to Levitt, who was wearing a black suit with a forest green shirt and tie combination.

I assumed ‘we’ was EarthBean, and the ‘show of solidarity’ was in response to LaRoche’s speech. But with LaRoche dead, wasn’t the show of solidarity a little insensitive?

I glanced over to Janalee to see if she was feeling uncomfortable, but she seemed just fine. In fact, now that I looked, I saw that she was wearing green, too – an emerald brooch that lent the only hint of color to her black dress. She might be in mourning, but she was also in support of EarthBean, or so it appeared.

‘Where’s Davy?’ Amy asked, glancing around like she expected to see him crawling amongst the tables. Given her considerable experience with Janalee’s parenting, that was understandable.

Janalee laughed. ‘Amy knows that she’s the only person in town I’ll leave Davy with.’

‘Janalee doesn’t trust anyone else with him,’ Amy said with a little smile.

‘I can’t imagine anyone better,’ Antonio said charmingly, looking appreciatively at Amy’s legs.

You know, much as I was partial to Pavlik’s blue-to-gray eyes, Antonio’s dark ones boring into you were enough to make a woman want to pull off her clothes and . . ..

‘My mother came this afternoon to stay with us for awhile, and she’s watching Davy,’ Janalee told Amy.

‘Who’s watching Davy?’ a voice behind me said. When I turned, I saw Kate with her notepad out, and Jerome at her right elbow.

‘On duty, Kate?’ I asked, not bothering to answer her question.

‘I’m a reporter, Maggy,’ she said coolly. ‘I’m always on duty.’

Oh, pleeeze. I saw Penny hovering and took the opportunity to get away from Kate.

‘I don’t mean to interrupt,’ Penny said when I joined her, ‘but could you get everyone to sit down and start on their salads?’

‘Of course,’ I said, looking around for Sarah. I had intended to make her do all the announcements, but she was probably in the electrical closet with the engineer. ‘Is the sound system all set?’ I asked Penny.

‘Yes, and Mike is getting Ms Kingston wired.’

‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised,’ I said, and walked up to the lectern. I came this close to saying, Is this on? but satisfied myself with a simple: ‘Would everyone please take their seats?’

By the time I got back to the table, Kate and Jerome were gone and my group was obediently seated. Three chairs stood empty. Two to the right of Sarah and one to her left, between her and Antonio.

Despite the fact that apparently no one wanted to sit next to her, Sarah was looking pretty pleased with herself.

‘All “Miked” up?’ I asked, taking the seat to her immediate right.

‘That’s beneath you, Maggy,’ she said, but she couldn’t quite keep the grin off her face.

A waiter came over to the table with two bottles of wine – one red and one white. It wasn’t a bad idea, but I didn’t think we’d ordered it and told him so.

‘Compliments of the management,’ he said. ‘In apology for the –’ he consulted a note – ‘little engineering glitch.’

Sarah giggled, a sound not often heard in nature. I followed her gaze and saw Mike across the room. Ahh, the engineer wants her liquored up. Who was I to stand in the way of true love?

‘I’ll take the red,’ I said. One glass and no more, I promised myself. I had to drive home, after all.

Amy declined, as did Levitt next to her. I wondered if there was such a thing as organic wine. Antonio had a glass of the Merlot, while Sarah asked for the white. I figured it was because it looked more like vodka than the red.

‘You don’t drink wine,’ I said to her.

‘You don’t know everything about me.’ She took a sip of the wine and involuntarily grimaced before plastering a smile on her face. The smile had to be for the engineer. She sure didn’t care what the rest of us thought.

‘I’m breastfeeding,’ Janalee was volunteering to the waiter, putting her hand over her glass to prevent him from pouring.

‘Still?’ Sarah said, neatly diverting the subject from herself. ‘Doesn’t that kid have teeth?’

If Sarah’s choppers ran in the family, I could understand her horror. Still, I’d breastfed Eric for a while and started to come to Janalee’s defense. Then I thought better of it. There was something about having a smoky Italian at the table that made one not want to talk about breastfeeding. Or hot flashes. Period.

Antonio didn’t seem to mind, though. ‘I think it’s charming that women breastfeed. Very nurturing,’ he was saying.

I wasn’t paying much attention, though, because I had just seen a familiar face enter the room.

‘Pavlik?’ I said, under my breath.

‘What about Pavlik?’ Sarah asked, gingerly taking another sip of wine. ‘And when are you going to call the guy by his first name?’ She hesitated. ‘What is it again?’

‘It’s Jake,’ I hissed, ‘and he’s here.’

‘Here?’ Sarah looked around. ‘So he is. Think he’s going to arrest someone?’

‘Hope so,’ I said, trying to feign unconcern. ‘Then we can cancel this damn banquet.’ I took a healthy gulp of wine, as I watched Pavlik thread his way through the tables.

Sarah pulled out her puffer and took a hit. ‘Especially awkward if it’s you,’ she said.

Which was exactly what I was thinking, of course. Pavlik had seen the tape from the hall outside the competition room. And he had seen me on that tape. He was coming to get me.

I stood up and started toward him, figuring I’d save myself the humiliation of being handcuffed at the head table. The sheriff just waved me back and kept coming. He was wearing a dark suit. Not his usual arresting attire.

‘Sorry to be late,’ he said, giving me a kiss on the cheek.

‘Maggy,’ Sarah said archly from beside me. ‘Where are your manners? Introduce Sheriff Pavlik to everyone.’

‘I think the sheriff knows everyone,’ I said. ‘You know, from the, um . . .’

‘Not everyone,’ Pavlik said. He stuck out his hand to Antonio. ‘I’m Jake Pavlik.’

Antonio stood up. ‘A pleasure, Sheriff. I am Antonio Silva.’

‘You’re The Milkman,’ Pavlik said pleasantly. ‘Maggy has mentioned you.’

In fact, I hadn’t. Ever. I prefer to keep my fantasy lovers compartmentalized. Pavlik in the ‘a real possibility’ box, Antonio in the ‘fun to think about’ box.

So what was Pavlik up to?

He was smiling at Janalee. ‘Good to see you out, Mrs LaRoche.’

Had to hand it to him. Pavlik’s statement didn’t have a whiff of ‘Why are you partying the night after your husband was killed, you unfeeling bitch.’

Still it won him an explanation.

‘I told her she needed to be with her friends,’ Amy piped up.

Janalee smiled. ‘And you were right, Amy.’ She turned to Pavlik. ‘The coffee community is a very small one, and we depend on each other to a much bigger degree than even we realize.’

‘Really?’ By now Pavlik was seated on my right, next to Levitt. He waved over the guy with the wine.

‘It’s true,’ Levitt said, nodding. The wine guy, thinking he was nodding to him, filled his glass. ‘Oh, no, I meant . . .’

He picked up the filled glass, trying to get the man’s attention. Failing that, he set it back on the table and pushed it away from him before he continued.

‘What I meant was that Janalee is right. Store owners –’ he nodded at Janalee and me – ‘and suppliers like Antonio do well when specialty coffee does well.’

Pavlik glanced over at me. His eyes were dark, nearly black, with the look he gets when he’s extremely focused. At first I thought it was directed toward me, then he turned to Levitt.

‘Surely, that can’t be true of you,’ he said. ‘EarthBean is a watchdog group. Though I suppose a case could be made that you wouldn’t have a job without people like LaRoche.’

‘My job, quite honestly, would be much easier without people like . . .’ He broke off and raised his hand apologetically to Janalee.

Janalee shook her head. ‘It’s all right, Levitt. I know that Marvin double-crossed you.’

She turned to Pavlik. ‘You see, Marvin had promised his support toward a program providing a living wage to coffee-growers in Central America.’

‘What happened?’ Pavlik asked.

‘He withdrew his support.’ Levitt was running his thumb and forefinger up and down the stem of the wine glass. Amy, apparently fearing he was going to spill it, made a stab at moving it away from the edge, but Levitt ignored her. ‘It was bad enough that LaRoche didn’t come through, himself, but he also incited other people to do the same.’

‘In his opening speech?’ Pavlik asked.

Levitt took a swig of his wine. ‘That’s correct.’

‘So was that what you were arguing with him about on Friday night?’

Levitt looked up sharply. ‘Where did you hear that?’

I’d been so busy worrying about the camera I was afraid I’d been caught on, that I’d forgotten about the one that Levitt certainly was on. Jerome’s.

‘Oh, look,’ I said brightly, ‘they’re bringing dinner!’

‘Chicken,’ Sarah murmured in my ear. I didn’t think she was talking about the entrée.

‘I didn’t just hear it,’ Pavlik was telling Levitt, ‘I saw it. On tape.’

Since I’d left him at my house, Pavlik couldn’t have tracked Jerome down for the tape, watched it, and still had time to change clothes and get here to crash the party. The sheriff was on a fishing expedition. And I had provided the bait.

Under Pavlik’s scrutiny, Levitt was getting serious about his wine. ‘I told him that people were starving. That they were living in poverty.’

‘What did he say?’ Pavlik asked.

‘He said, “If everyone took care of their own, we wouldn’t need groups like EarthBean to hand out charity.”’

‘Didn’t Ebenezer Scrooge say something like that?’ Sarah said in my ear.

I rubbed at the ear. ‘Eat your chicken,’ I whispered back, as my keynote speaker downed the rest of his wine and signaled the waiter for another.

Amy jumped in. ‘That’s ridiculous. EarthBean doesn’t hand out charity, we―’

Levitt waved her down. ‘It makes no matter what the truth is, Amy. If the perception of the industry—’

‘And LaRoche speaks for the industry?’ Pavlik asked.

‘No. LaRoche spoke for LaRoche.’ Levitt was getting loud and no longer sounding much like a southern gentleman. Or a gentleman of any kind. ‘The bastard had a big mouth, and he was goddamn power hungry. People like that make themselves heard. They lead the people who are too weak or too stupid to find the way themselves.’

Levitt had said the last bit seemingly at the top of his lungs and the people at the tables surrounding us were turning. I glanced around for Kate. She and Jerome were just three tables away and she was whispering in his ear and pointing. Probably instructing him to go paparazzi on us. When Kate saw me looking, she gave a little wave and a smile.

Meanwhile, Levitt had drained his second glass and was working on Pavlik’s wine. I couldn’t put this guy on the podium.

I turned to Sarah beseechingly. She nodded and stood up. ‘I’ll take care of this.’

Sarah stepped to the lectern. Hesitating for a second, she glanced off into the far corner of the room and nodded. Mike the engineer must have been letting her know the Lavaliere microphones were working.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, not bothering with the fixed mic on the lectern. ‘I know we’re all anxious to get on with the evening, so I thought we’d start as you finish eating.’

Jerome had hustled up to the front of the room and fixed his camera on her.

Sarah smiled into it. ‘I’m Sarah Kingston, and I’ve been asked to say a few words about the chairman of this year’s Java Ho: Marvin LaRoche.’

She cleared her throat and waited for the little buzz that had started at the mention of LaRoche’s name to settle down. ‘Some people loved Marvin LaRoche –’ she nodded to Janalee – ‘and some people hated him.’ The buzz grew.

Sarah waved it down. ‘But the fact is, people, he’s dead. Get over it.’

Aww geez, could this get any worse?

‘And now, here’s our keynote speaker, Levitt Fredericks.’

What was Sarah doing? She was supposed to be getting me out of this fix. If Levitt got to the lectern in his condition, it would be a nightmare. A really long, rambling nightmare.

I tried to lean across Pavlik to tell Levitt to stay where he was, but the gray-haired man was already getting up.

Then a higher power – in this case, duct tape – intervened. As Levitt scooted his chair back, the legs caught on the duct tape that pieced the carpet together. The chair toppled backwards, Levitt in it.

‘Oh, thank God,’ I said, before I could stop myself. Even Sarah looked shocked. I was going to hell.

Or maybe we were already in hell, because right then Levitt – his Lavaliere mic now live – let loose with a string of curse words, the likes of which I’d never heard. And I had a teenage son.

On the bright side, under the overturned chair was a yellow sticker. Guess who was taking home the centerpiece.

Chapter Nineteen

‘What in the world were you two thinking?’ I said, setting down my glass of wine.

‘Who two?’ Pavlik asked.

We were in my living room on the couch. It wasn’t nearly as cozy as it sounds.

‘You and Sarah,’ I said. ‘You questioning Levitt in a public place, surrounded by the people involved – including the victim’s wife, for God’s sake. Isn’t that against the rules or something?’

‘What rules?’ Pavlik asked mildly.

‘I don’t know what rules,’ I said, tucking my feet up under me. ‘Interrogation Techniques 101?’

‘I thought it was pretty effective.’

I punched him. ‘And who invited you anyway? Walking in there, acting like you were my date,’ I muttered.

‘I wouldn’t have had to act if you’d invited me.’ His eyes were bright blue and dancing. I would have taken advantage of those eyes under any other circumstances. Not to mention the curly black hair and the pecs under the dress shirt.

‘You used me.’