Snipped in the Bud (21 page)

On my way back to the car, I pulled out my phone and called Marco, hoping to catch him before he left to talk to Jocelyn so I could tell him about the bookstore calls, but all I got was his voice mail. I phoned the bar next and learned Marco had just left, so I parked the car on a side street and headed for Books of Olde. I had no sooner stepped onto Lincoln when I caught sight of Uncle Sam heading my way, handing out his little flags. Afraid he would think I was yet another new face in town, I opened my phone and pretended I was having a conversation.

“So, like, I heard the new Coldplay album? And it’s, like, totally stratospheric? Do you have it? Awesome! Play it for me.” I began snapping my fingers and bobbing my entire body, causing everyone nearby to give me wide berth. My plan was working perfectly until my phone actually
did
ring. “Hey, dog,” I answered, smiling sheepishly at the people around me.

“Halloo?” Grace said. “Good heavens, Lottie, I think someone has nicked Abby’s cell phone. You’d better ring the police.”

“Wait, Grace,” I cried. Catching startled looks, I tried to make it sound like I was rapping. “Stay cool, dude. It’s, like, totally me. I’m walking down Lincoln, glad to be free.”

“You’re under too much stress, dear. You’re simply not sounding yourself. Go home and put menthol rub on your forehead.”

Menthol rub?
I waited until Joe had passed, then I whispered, “I’m fine, Grace, but I’m in disguise and people are around. Is everything okay there?”

“Everything is fine, but we’ve been worried about you. You haven’t called today.”

“I promise I’ll call you later and fill you in, and I’ll be in this evening, too, but right now I gotta go.”

Inside the bookstore, the clerk at the counter eyed me warily, forgoing her usual cheerful greeting, reminding me how much a person’s appearance affected other people’s reactions. I gave her a pleasant smile, then took the center aisle toward the back, checking each row, but I didn’t see Marco or Jocelyn. Had he completed his mission, or had he failed?

Then I remembered the little coffee nook on the opposite side of the store, so I strolled up an aisle, peered around a corner, and there they were, sitting on stools at a tall table, mugs of steaming beverages in front of them. I wandered along the row, pretending to search for a title, but I couldn’t get close without being obvious. Marco glanced my way briefly but apparently didn’t recognize me, because he turned his full attention back to Jocelyn, who was gazing at him as if he were the whipped cream on her latte.

I plucked a book from the shelf, took it to one of the overstuffed reading chairs near the coffee nook, and settled in to read—
advanced calculus?
A shudder of revulsion shook me. Math and I were not friends. We weren’t even strong acquaintances. Sure, I knew the basics—how to balance a checkbook, tally an order, calculate sales tax, and leave a tip that wouldn’t have the waitress chasing me down with a butter knife—but beyond that it was all hieroglyphics. That was one of the many reasons I valued Lottie’s help. She was an excellent bookkeeper.

I flipped through the pages looking for something recognizable as I tuned in to Marco’s conversation. His voice was a low, indistinct murmur, but Jocelyn’s was easy to hear.

“I wish I could offer more help but I really didn’t know Carson Reed all that well.” She paused, staring into the contents of the mug she held in her hands. “I can tell you there has always been an intense rivalry between Carson and my husband.”

Marco spoke to her again, probably trying to get more information about the rivalry, to which she looked him in the eye and replied, “Because my husband is a jealous, bitter man who resented Carson’s higher status and greater income.”

Wow. That was quite a slam. Marco spoke to her again, his deep voice a low, soothing hum, prompting her to reply, “He didn’t leave JAG voluntarily. He was asked to resign. My husband has a knack for making enemies wherever he goes.”

Slam number two. Yay, Marco. There was nothing like witnessing a genius at work. He suddenly leaned toward her, putting a hand over hers, and I saw a blush color her pale cheeks, as if, at a man’s touch, the plain Jane blossomed. She dropped her gaze and said in a voice so quiet I almost didn’t catch it, “Yes, I believe he is capable of murder.”

What an admission! Score a major victory for Marco. Now Puffer was a sure fit for Reed’s killer. I was so excited, it was all I could do not to jump for joy. But Jocelyn’s response to Marco’s next question put a damper on that.

“No, that’s wrong,” she said in a tight voice, as though her throat muscles had gone rigid. “I entered the building shortly before one o’clock.”

Marco must have pointed out that he had it on good authority the police hadn’t let anyone in after twelve thirty, because she suddenly leaned toward him and said in a harsh whisper, “What are you implying? That I had something to do with Carson’s murder? What possible reason could I have to kill him?”

Marco talked to her until she calmed down, then he gave her his card, thanked her, and left. I waited until Jocelyn had moved to another section, then I put the book back on the shelf and took off. When I stepped outside, Marco was already halfway across the courthouse lawn, heading back to his bar. It was only half past twelve, and our meeting wasn’t until three o’clock, but since I was eager to share my news with him, and hungry besides, I followed.

When I arrived several minutes later, the place was jammed with lunch customers and Marco was pouring drinks, so I found an empty table and put in an order for a turkey on rye with a side of potato salad. Gert didn’t recognize me, so to have a bit of fun, when the food came I said to her in my best Valley girl voice, “This place is like totally trashy? So I was thinking maybe my dad could rent it out for my birthday? That would be so awesome and I could, like, totally freak out my friends? So, like, who do I have to talk to?”

“Mr. Salvare,” Gert grumbled, huffing over the insults I had just heaped on the place that had employed her for most of her life. “I’ll get him.”

I forked a bite of potato salad and slid it into my mouth, smiling to myself. I was getting pretty good at this disguise bit. Then I saw Marco saunter toward me in that way males have perfected when meeting an unknown female, and my mouth went dry. Had I been a college girl, I would have, like, totally drooled all over myself.

Like, totally?
Had the black wig cut off circulation to my brain?

“Hi, I’m Marco Salvare,” he said, offering a hand.

I quickly wiped mine on a napkin and stuck it out while I polled my brain for a name other than the highly unimaginative Jane Smith. My gaze lit on the rows of bottles behind the bar. “I’m Rye Daniels,” I said in a high, breathy voice.

“Rye. Interesting name,” Marco said, clasping my hand. He gave it a low-key shake, holding it a moment too long. What was that about?

Watching me with those sexy bedroom eyes, he turned a chair backward and sat across from me, his arms resting on the seatback. “I understand you have questions about renting the bar for a party. One thing you should know up front: I only rent to friends.” His gaze raked over me, causing tingles of excitement to careen around inside my stomach and various other organs. Then he added suggestively, “Close friends.”

The tingles turned to cinders. So this was how he behaved around other women? How dare he come on to a stranger! Or was he pulling my leg? “So how do I become your close friend?” I asked on an exhale that left me slightly light-headed.

His mouth curved up at the corners—the famous Marco smile—making me burn with jealousy over…myself? He rose and wiggled an index finger, signaling for me to follow, then headed toward his office.

One of us was going to get a surprise.

M
arco shut the door behind us and locked it. Why hadn’t he ever done that with me? The real me, anyway. He stepped up close, put his hands on my shoulders, and said huskily, “You’re sure you want to be my close friend?”

At my nod, he slid his hands down my back and gazed lustily into my heavily smudged, black-rimmed eyes. He was too close not to recognize me, because if he seriously didn’t know who I was, I would have to kill him.

All at once, he pressed me up against the door and leaned into me for one long, wanton, mind-blowing kiss. I mean a straight-from-the-movies, too-hot-to-handle melding of the lips that made me consider wearing that wig permanently. Wow! I finally understood the meaning of the word
swoon
.

His kiss deepened, intensified, leaving me so weak-kneed I wrapped my arms around his neck to hold myself up—and to make it easier to kiss him back. Our tongues fenced, swirled, and teased until I was nothing but melted taffy inside. Then, suddenly, it was over, and all I could do was try to sound sultry, not stupefied, when I asked, “Was that close enough?”

“Not quite.” With one sly quirk of his mouth, he put a hand on the back of my neck, prompting me to close my eyes and pucker up for the next one. But he merely plucked the wig off my head and tossed it over his shoulder. “Hello, Sunshine.”

“You tricked me!” I cried.

“Says who? Rye Daniels?”

“It was the best I could come up with on the spur of the moment.”

With a wicked grin, Marco pulled me into his arms again, his lips moving down my throat and up along my jaw to the tender point in front of my ear, sending ripples of pleasure up my spine and banishing all traces of huffiness. “You were one hot number in that wig.”

With those teasing nibbles on my nape, I was so completely into the moment that his words didn’t register—at first. But like most females, I eventually registered every word a man uttered, and not usually in his favor. So when Marco said I was sexy
in
the wig, what I heard was that I wasn’t sexy
without
the wig. And hadn’t he made that same comment when I wore the scarf? So, basically, what he was telling me was that the regular Abby was
boring
. Was that why our relationship had stalled?

Marco broke the kiss. “What is it? You’ve lost your concentration.”

I couldn’t admit to this mouthwatering male that I knew he thought I was boring. How
boring
would that be? So I resorted to another typically female response. “It’s nothing.”

He gazed down at me with lowered eyebrows. “Now I’m worried.”

“No, really. There’s so much going on, it’s hard to keep my focus.”

That killed his mood. “Thanks,” he muttered and went to sit at his desk. The male ego was so fragile.

“Trust me, Marco. It’s not you.”
It’s just boring old me.
“Besides, I’ve got so much to tell you—new information on Puffer and his wife, and Bea and Hannah—and I’m dying to know what Jocelyn said.”

“You mean you didn’t overhear enough?”

“You recognized me at the bookstore, too? What gave me away?”

“Your perky little nose—among other attributes.” He wiggled an eyebrow. Marco was the only male who could get away with making a comment about my bra size, only because he was one of the few men who looked me in the eye when we talked, and not in the boobs.

“You go first,” he said, pulling out his legal pad.

“One second. I left a sandwich out front.” I had my priorities, after all. I darted out of his office, picked up my plate, and hurried back, settling into one of the sling-back chairs. In between bites I told him about Hannah Boyd’s affair with, and alleged engagement to, Carson Reed, and how Bea had learned of it on the morning of the murder.

Marco was stunned. “Hannah and Reed? I’ll be damned.”

I gave him a full account of my conversation with both Hannah and Bea, then paused for a bite of potato salad while Marco digested the information.

“So, prior to Reed’s death, Bea found out her beloved niece was not only involved with a playboy, but believed she was going to elope with him. That smells like a motive to me.”

“The thing is, I still can’t imagine Bea committing a murder. She’s a kind person, Marco, and she’s always in control.”

“You said yourself she’s very protective. Put yourself in her shoes. What if Hannah were your niece and you thought some playboy was about to ruin her life? What if you believed there was no way to stop him? Isn’t it possible that you might lose control?”

“Me? No way.”

Marco gave me a scowl. “She stays on the list.”

“Okay, fine. She stays—with much reluctance. Write that down. Now here’s what else I learned today.” I gave him my report about finding Puffer digging in Reed’s office, and about the letter recommending he be turned down for tenure. I described my meeting with Puffer afterward, and how he’d reacted when I told him I knew what he’d found in Reed’s files.

Marco rubbed his forehead, gazing at me from beneath his brows. “You
told
him you saw him going through Reed’s desk?”

“Okay, I probably shouldn’t have done that, in case he is the killer, but here I am, safe and sound, so let’s move on to the part about Puffer being denied tenure—again. You have to admit, that’s a strong motive.”

“It doesn’t hold up, Abby. Puffer found the letter
after
Reed died, not before.”

“But Reed could have
told
him before.”

“Then why did Puffer look for the letter?”

“To find out if Reed had told him the truth.”

“Pure speculation on your part. We need solid facts. Puffer is still in the mix, obviously, but I’m not as convinced of his guilt as you are.”

“But why would he keep pointing to me as the murderer if not to take the heat off himself?”

“Maybe because he doesn’t like you. Or maybe he thinks you
are
the killer.”

I was still sure Puffer was our man, but there was no sense arguing about it, so I moved on, telling Marco about the mysterious phone calls from Books of Olde. “It might have been nothing more than misdialed numbers—
or
it might have been the married woman with whom Reed had an affair. And what married woman works at Books of Olde? Jocelyn, for one.”

“My gut feeling from the start was that Jocelyn and Reed were having an affair, and after talking to her I can tell you she would be an easy target for a smooth player like Reed. She’s starving for male affection and Reed is a predator. He’d spot her neediness in a second. But again, this is all conjecture.”

“You’re right,” I said with a frustrated sigh. “Plus, I’m still having a hard time imagining the two of them together. She’s so not his type.”

“If Reed had a reason to use her, type wouldn’t matter. Maybe he just wanted to cuckold his rival—his private joke on Puffer.”

“Not to mention the tenure issue. A double whammy. I could see Reed doing that. So let’s suppose that was his intent. And let’s suppose Jocelyn fell hard for him and assumed he felt the same. Can you imagine how his ending it would devastate her? Finally, someone is kind to her, pays attention to her, then suddenly it’s bye-bye, baby. Maybe she called him at the office to beg him to come back, and when he said no, she decided to try to talk to him in person, and that’s why she came to the law school on Tuesday.”

Marco didn’t look convinced. “She’d go see Reed with her husband right next door? That’s awfully risky.”

“She’d be distraught; she wouldn’t be thinking straight.” I was on a roll now. “Besides, Puffer is always out of his office over the noon hour. What better time to visit the school? If she confronted Reed and he rejected her, I’ll bet she’d snap like a twig.”

“Don’t forget, the murder happened in her husband’s office. Would she be so distraught she wouldn’t think how that might implicate her husband?”

“Obviously,” I said with a heavy sigh, “you’ve never been dumped.”

“Or maybe,” Marco said, ignoring my comment, “she
wanted
her husband to be blamed.”

“I hadn’t thought of that. Did Jocelyn stick with her alibi about going to the school to have lunch with Puffer?”

“Yes, but she wouldn’t look me in the eye when she said it. Another point. She kept referring to Reed by his first name, as though she knew him personally.”

“She’s older than Reed. It would sound kind of formal to call him Professor.”

“Not if she didn’t know him well. And once I told her I was investigating everyone who’d been at the scene, she suddenly became more than willing to talk about her husband.”

“If Jocelyn
is
the murderer, it would make sense to steer us toward Puffer.”

“Jocelyn was definitely going through some kind of inner turmoil, like there was this boil of resentment just beneath the surface that only needed to be probed a little to burst—and I think I know how to do it.”

I put down the last bite of my sandwich. The boil image had killed that for me.

Marco sat forward and began to write. “We’ll need a record of calls made to Reed’s office and to his mobile number. If they show what I think they will, I’ll need to have another chat with Jocelyn.”

I gasped, startling Marco. “I almost forgot to tell you. When I found Reed’s body in the chair, there was a black handset in his lap, as if he’d been talking to someone when he was murdered. When Reilly interviewed me, it completely slipped my mind, and now it might be too late for him to check it out, because Puffer has a new phone.”

“I wonder what happened to the old one?” Marco mused as he jotted down the information. “I need to touch base with Reilly anyway, so I’ll tell him about it.”

“Ask him about his search for the petnappers, while you’re at it.”

“Let’s just stick with the murder for now.” He glanced over his notes. “The only suspect we haven’t discussed is Kenny Lipinski.”

“I thought about his being the killer, but there’s no motive. I asked Kenny if any of the other applicants might have gone off the deep end because they’d been turned down for the federal clerkship, but he said no one else had been informed. Bea basically told me the same thing.”

“She knew for sure that Kenny had been chosen?”

“Well, no. She said she wasn’t surprised that he’d been chosen. Apparently Reed thought highly of Kenny.”

“So everything we know about Reed bestowing this clerkship on Kenny comes from Kenny.”

“That’s true, but it should be easy to verify. I’ll check with Bea on that.”

Marco tapped his pen against his lips. “On the day of the murder, you said he came right away when you called for help. How do you know he was in the computer lab?”

“I checked the computer log and it showed he had signed in at ten o’clock that morning but hadn’t signed out. Once the police arrived, we had to stay in the secretarial pool area, so he wouldn’t have had a chance to log out. But the monitor should be able to confirm it.”

“Are you sure there was a monitor that morning?”

“I’ll check it out.”

“As it stands,” Marco said, looking over his notes, “we have solid motives for Bea, Puffer, and Jocelyn, with a question mark by Kenny.”

“Can we cross Hannah off our list?”

“From what you learned today, I’d say so.”

“That’s still three strong suspects, Marco. Who do we focus on first?”

“Puffer. I’m still supposed to ambush him at the country club tonight, before that wonderful dinner with your family, right?”

Yikes. How could I have forgotten the Friday Knight dinner? Oh, right. I’d blocked it.

“I’ll pick you up at six.” Marco held up a hand. “Don’t say it. I know. In the alley.”

He was not dumb, that man.

“What am I going to wear?” I whined as I stood in front of my closet at four o’clock that afternoon. “I need something classy but not boring. Whatever else it is, it can’t be boring.”

Jillian sat on my bed, combing her fingers through the black wig. “How did you get this so tangled?”

“It’s a long story. Never mind that. Help me.”

“How about a peasant look? It’s very hot right now.”

“I’ll be at the country club, Jillian, and this is Marco’s first time there. I want to look like a confident, exciting
babe,
not a fortune-teller.”

With an impatient sigh, Jillian left, returning minutes later with an outfit. “Here you go.”

An off-white suit with loads of pizzazz. And best of all, it wasn’t boring. “It’s perfect.”

“Of course it’s perfect. Clothes are my business. Now you have to do me a favor.”

I felt my stomach preparing to tie itself into a tiny knot of stress. The last time Jillian asked me for a favor, I had to watch her fiancé’s ninety-year-old grandmother during their wedding reception, which wouldn’t have been all that terrible if Grandma Osborne hadn’t managed to lose me long enough to find a dead body. It was a wedding no one would ever forget.