Snipped in the Bud (24 page)

Connor was putting a move on me. I gazed into those vivid eyes and wondered why I wasn’t outraged, or at least appalled, but I wasn’t either of those things. What was wrong with me? “Look, Connor, Marco and I are very good friends. No, better than good. Close. Yes, close friends. Dear, close friends.” What a wimp I was.

“So was that a yes?”

I gave a light shrug, leaving it to him to interpret. I felt bad for being so wishy-washy about the matter, but the truth was that I didn’t know how to answer. Were we involved or not? I thought we were, but Marco had never said what he thought.

Connor placed a hand on the car on one side of my body, and I knew what was coming. Clearly his interpretation was that Marco and I were not involved, and I made no attempt to correct him. In fact, I even let him dip his head down and press his lips against mine, liking that he tasted of coffee and smelled of citrus. I was so bad.

Would you want Marco to behave like this with other women?
Well, no, but what was to stop him? We’d never agreed not to see anyone else, although I would if he would. Why was that, anyway? Was Marco afraid to commit? Was I afraid to bring up the subject? Were we both wimps?

Connor broke the kiss and gazed down at me, but I turned my head so I didn’t have to look into those gorgeous green eyes and feel even more doubts. “I have to go, Connor.”

He stepped back as if I’d just told him I never wanted to see him again. “Okay. Sure. I understand. Hey, thanks for the interview. I’ll drop the photo off tomorrow.”

I opened the door and slid inside, then tried to insert the key to start the engine. Why was I shaking? It wasn’t like I had never kissed anyone but Marco before.

Maybe because you liked it a little too much. Maybe because you feel like a heel.

My headache was coming back. I sat there for a moment watching Connor drive out of the lot, then I got out and walked briskly to Bloomers. I felt a strong need to see Marco, but I didn’t want to interrupt his meeting with Jocelyn, so I let myself into Bloomers and went straight back to my place of peace.

Sitting at my desk, I swivelled the chair to take it all in—colors, aromas, the sweetly pungent fragrance of a fresh batch of eucalypti, and spicy paperwhites…. I stretched to reach a leaf that had fallen on the floor and hold it to my nose. Ah-h, mint. Damn, I missed Bloomers. I felt tears sting my eyes and scrubbed them away. Would I ever clear my name so I could come back here without having to slink in like a rat?

Suddenly I noticed an envelope propped next to the computer monitor. Inside was a note from Lottie.

I rummaged in the bottom desk drawer and pulled out the ledger. Lottie did everything the old-fashioned way, including the bookkeeping, which was fine with me since I knew nothing about accounting software anyway. To me, spreadsheets was what I did on Saturday mornings after washing my bed linen.

In a neat column under the heading
September Receipts,
Lottie had recorded all the deposits, leaving a big, fat, in the-black total at the bottom. We were not only solvent, we were making a generous profit! Now, there was something to celebrate.

With renewed enthusiasm I wrote a note of my own.

Then I tackled the order: a twenty-first-birthday arrangement from a best friend.

I practically skipped across the room to the giant cooler. Stepping inside, I gazed with delight at the choices in front of me, then spotted a giant amaryllis—a Grand Trumpet Candy Cane amaryllis with three blooms on it. Perfect. I nestled it in a squat, white ceramic vase and put sphagnum moss over the top. Then I hot-glued a row of red and white candy canes all the way around the pot, added a scattering of brightly colored, cellophane-wrapped candies on top of the canes, and finished it with a rainbow-colored bow.

I was about to wrap it when my cell phone rang. I answered to hear Marco’s incredibly sexy, husky voice. “Hey, Sunshine. Do I have news for you.”

“D
id Jocelyn confess?”

“Can you come down?” he said over the din in the bar. “I’d rather tell you in person.”

It had to be good news. He sounded too upbeat for it to be otherwise. “I’m at Bloomers. Give me ten minutes to finish what I’m doing here. Oh, Marco, do me a favor, please. Call Reilly and let him know I’m here so I don’t walk into a SWAT team ambush.”

I finished the arrangement, put it in the cooler, and locked up. No surprise ambushes awaited outside, so I hurried down the street and into the bar, threading my way through the heavy, Friday-night crowd. Marco was pouring beers behind the bar, casting quick glances around as though searching for me, but he wasn’t watching for a blonde, so for a moment I just watched him, soaking in that swarthy Italian countenance. I raised a hand to catch his eye, and he motioned for me to meet him in his office.

As soon as I was inside, I pulled off the itchy wig and shook out my hair, smoothing it away from my face. The door opened and I swung around as Marco strode in, and for the life of me I couldn’t remember why I had thought Connor attractive. I rushed forward and Marco obliged by opening his arms, which is exactly what I’d hoped he’d do. I slipped my arms around his ribs and squeezed hard.

“What’s this about?” he asked, gazing down at me in bafflement.

I knew this was not the time to start a relationship discussion, so all I could say was, “I’m happy to see you.”

“I’m happy to see you, too.”

“Good.” I smiled up at him, but he only gave me a questioning glance.

“You seem a little flushed. Do you want something cold to drink?”

“Maybe later. So tell me what Jocelyn said. Did she kill Reed?

“I don’t think so.”

“Does she know who did?”

“No, but she suspects her husband.”

I gazed up in bewilderment. “We already knew that.”

He
tsk
ed me. “You’re so impatient.” He led me to the two sling-back chairs and we sat facing each other. “When Jocelyn came in with a snoot full of liquor I knew she had something big to unload. Turns out she’d been working up the nerve for a few hours. Anyway, she confirmed that she and Reed had been having an affair.”

So Marco had been right after all. I should have trusted his instincts. “How long had it been going on?”

“About three weeks. He instigated it, by the way. Apparently they’d been meeting for noon trysts, but the sneaking around wasn’t sitting well with Jocelyn. Naturally, she was head over heels for the guy and assumed he was the same, and since she wanted out of her marriage anyway, she decided the right thing to do was to divorce her husband so she and Reed could be together. She told Reed about her decision on Monday morning.”

I shook my head in wonder. Another naive woman. Reed sure knew how to pick them. “I can imagine how Reed took that news.”

“He told her to hold off until after the tenure issue had been settled, claiming it would make him look bad. But on Tuesday morning Puffer made a nasty little comment to Jocelyn that led her to believe he knew about the affair. So she phoned Reed in a panic and told him she thought they should confront Puffer together right away. That’s when Reed told her they had to break it off.”

“Poor Jocelyn. That must have destroyed her.”

“Yes, but not for the reason you’d expect. She thought Reed was trying to protect her from Puffer’s abuse, so she took matters into her own hands and set up a three-way meeting for twelve forty-five Tuesday afternoon.”

“So that’s why Puffer showed up then.”

“Jocelyn then phoned Reed on his mobile to let him know what she’d done, and he told her in no uncertain terms that they were finished. She was so upset that she left the bookstore and drove straight to the school, hoping to convince Reed to change his mind. She got there a little before noon.”

“That’s when I saw her.”

“But once she was inside the law school, she lost her nerve, ran to the women’s restroom, and was violently ill. When she finally went upstairs, Reed was dead.”

“It sounds plausible, but what makes you think she’s telling the truth this time? She lied before.”

“For one thing, the cops found the janitor who cleaned up after her. Besides that, there’s zero evidence linking her to the crime scene. I can usually tell when someone is lying. Jocelyn is hurt and angry and frightened, but I’d bet my last dollar she’s not lying. It took a lot of courage for her to tell me such a humiliating story.”

“Haven’t you ever heard the saying ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned?’ Jocelyn was scorned.”

“Maybe, but think about it, Sunshine. She didn’t have to tell me anything. I’m not the police. Also, I didn’t tell her I had the phone records. She volunteered that information.”

“So why did she come to see you?”

“Because she found something that puts her husband’s alibi in doubt, but she’s afraid to go to the police herself for fear that word of her affair will get out and ruin her good name, not to mention her husband’s reputation—if he isn’t guilty, of course.”

“Get to the good part. What did she find?”

“Let’s start with the alibi. Puffer’s statement was that he was having lunch in the cafeteria from shortly after twelve noon until he arrived back at his office at twelve forty-five. According to Reilly, the cops checked with the cafeteria personnel, they confirmed he was there, and that was good enough for them. But two days ago Jocelyn came across a cafeteria receipt that showed Puffer purchased a sandwich at twelve thirty-five that day. Not exactly shortly after noon, is it?”

“So Puffer could have killed Reed in between my two visits, stopped at the cafeteria to establish his alibi, snuck back into the law school, and waited for someone to discover the body.” I clapped my hands together. “Wait till the prosecutor hears about this. Won’t he be sorry I was ever on that list.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. A receipt isn’t proof. Puffer could come up with any number of reasons for buying his lunch late.”

I sank back against the chair, feeling like someone had just let the air out of my tires. “It’s been almost a week since the murder, Marco. The cops are going to have to make an arrest soon, and we still haven’t figured this thing out. I’m worried.”

Marco reached over and took my hands, squeezing them in his big, strong ones. “Come on, Sunshine. It’s not that bad. We’ll find proof.”

“Yeah, right. I’m beginning to think there isn’t any out there.”

He knelt in front of me and lifted my chin so I’d have to meet his earnest gaze. “We’re going to get you out of this.”

I gazed into those pools of chocolate and wished I could just fall in and be done with it. But I knew neither one of us was the type to give up without a good fight, so I shook off the negative feelings and sighed. “You’re right. We’ll find proof. So what do we do next?”

He put a hand on the back of my head and gave me a slow, gentle kiss that said more about how much he cared than any words ever could. Then, with his nose against mine, he said softly, “For starters, don’t ever doubt yourself—or me. We’re a team, remember?”

Then he sat back in his chair, while I just blinked at him, wondering what he meant. He had to be talking about solving the case. He couldn’t know about that quick kiss I shared with Mackay. Could he?

“Now, onto our next suspect—Bea,” he said. “When I went over the phone records, I discovered something interesting. A call was made from Puffer’s office to Hannah Boyd’s dorm room at twelve twenty-two p.m., Tuesday afternoon, the approximate time Carson Reed was killed. So we have to consider that Bea might have overheard him talking to her niece and confronted him about it afterward.”

“I could see her confronting Reed, but not killing him. Besides, Reed couldn’t have been talking to Hannah in her dorm room. She was in the library.”

“Do you know that for sure? Could she have just not answered her door?”

“Bea’s name wasn’t in the dorm’s register. If she’d gone up to see Hannah, she would have had to sign in.”

“I think you should meet with Bea again, and this time see if she knew about Reed’s relationship with Jocelyn. If she did, that could have further impacted her reaction to finding out about Hannah’s affair with Reed.”

“What do we do about Puffer?”

“For now, let’s try to eliminate the others. Do you want to talk to Kenny?”

“Sure. That reminds me, my mother dropped off some newspaper clippings and one was of me at the protest march with Reed and Marvin Brown. Behind them were two guys that I swear looked like Kenny and his friend Dustin. But you know how grainy those black-and-white news photos can be, so I arranged to get a glossy print of the photo from Connor Mackay. I don’t know if there’s any connection to the murder, but Kenny told me he’d never met Marvin Brown until Reed’s memorial service. If that
is
him in the photo, then he lied to me. I know it’s thin, but because of the connection with Professor Reed I thought I’d check it out.”

Marco’s eyebrows lifted in acknowledgment. “Good thinking, Sunshine.”

I beamed with pride until he clasped his hands behind his head and peered at me through half-closed eyes. “So tell me. How did you get Mackay to agree to get you the glossy?”

“I agreed to give him an interview.”

“You don’t need the photo that badly. I’ll talk to a friend of mine who works at the paper.”

I gave him a sheepish shrug. “Too late.”

“You didn’t.”

I checked my watch. “I did. About forty minutes ago.”

Marco made no reply, so I sincerely hoped that was the end of that discussion, because my head was killing me. But when he began to massage his temples, I figured I should try to minimize the damage. “Before you say anything, I gave Connor only the information I wanted him to have. I even got a plug in for animal rights. It’ll be okay, Marco. I had everything under control—most of the time.”

“Most of the time?” He jumped to his feet and headed for the door. “I need a drink. Do you want anything? A brain transplant, perhaps?”

I cradled my pounding head. “Do you have aspirin handy?”

Saturday could not go by fast enough. Luckily Nikki was off work and willing to help me pass the time. We drove to an outlet mall in a nearby city and spent the day shopping for the perfect pair of jeans, which, as any woman knew, could be an all-day affair if not a lifetime event.

On Sunday I awoke with renewed determination to find the proof I needed to clear my name. I fed Simon, settled at the kitchen counter with a bowl of wheat flakes and toast, and opened the Sunday newspaper to a big, bold headline that read:
SUSPECT READY TO NAME PROFESSOR’S KILLER
. The byline was Connor Mackay.

A bite of toast nearly stuck in my throat. That headline was about me!
I
was the suspect ready to name the killer. Why had he printed that? I pushed aside the rest of my food. Dave was going to kill me. And if he didn’t, Marco would. I didn’t even want to think about my parents’ reactions. And wouldn’t Reed’s murderer enjoy waking up to that little gem of information?

Boy, did I want a piece of Connor. But first I had to get the photograph. I read through the article and felt somewhat better. At least the rest of the story was accurate.

Before the calls started pouring in, I switched on the answering machine, then wrote a note to Nikki telling her I had to go to work. I stuck it on the face of the newspaper, then donned my Bogie coat and hat and left. I would have gone to church, but the thought of wearing a disguise and sneaking into a house of worship felt all wrong, not to mention risky, so instead I said a long prayer as I headed for Bloomers and hoped that would cover me.

Only five orders had come in overnight, but that was enough to take my mind off the murder. Surrounded by roses, lilies, mums, sphagnum moss, and wet foam, with Enya playing in the background, I whipped up one gorgeous arrangement after another. I was in seventh heaven—until questions started to creep in, and then my stomach knotted with anxiety.

Was Puffer guilty, or did I just want him to be? Was Jocelyn telling the truth, or was Marco being naive? Was there a connection between Kenny and Marvin Y. Brown, and if so, did it have anything to do with Reed’s death? And most of all, would Bea commit murder to protect her niece?

It was that last question that preyed on my mind the most.
“The one you least expect is the one you’ll overlook,”
Marco had warned. But would Bea lose all control because her niece thought she was in love with Reed? I decided to be bold and ask her, straight out. Her machine answered on the fifth ring, so I left a message saying that I needed to talk to her as soon as possible and would she please ring my cell phone?

No sooner had I hung up than a call came in. “Why are you at work?” Jillian asked. “It’s Sunday morning.”

“Because no one expects me to be here so there are no protesters or reporters out front. I suppose you saw the newspaper headline.”

“I haven’t read the paper yet. I need to get that white suit from you. I have a client coming over tonight, and it’ll be perfect for her.”

Yikes. I couldn’t let Jillian sell her client a grass-stained suit. “Jillian, I—um—want to buy that outfit.”