“Sure.” I set the water pitcher down on the dining room table and Jake followed me in there.
“And is she a taxi driver or heroin dealer or kleptomaniac or something else this time?”
“Be nice,” I said. He’d brought the plates with him and I took the stack, dealing them out around the table. “All I know is she’s apparently a singer.”
His mouth twitched. “For his band, no doubt.”
“Yes. Babette’s Insane.”
“How do you know? You haven’t even met her yet.”
“No, that’s the band’s name,” I corrected. “However, it is also her first name.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “Okay. Great. I assume you spoke to him today and this is how you gleaned all of this info?”
I told him about his showing up in the parking lot at 4-H. By the time I finished recounting our encounter, Jake wasn’t smiling.
“Are you kidding me?” he said, frowning. “He’s telling us what’s best for those kids? From a guy who can count the minutes he spends with them on his fingers and toes?”
“I know,” I said. “I set him straight. He backed off pretty quickly.”
Jake shook his head, still irritated. “Yeah, well, good for him. The next time we need parenting advice from him will be never. And you can tell him that. Or I will.”
I’d gone back into the kitchen and grabbed a potholder off the counter. “And now who’s overreacting?”
He waved a hand in the air. “Entirely different thing.”
I chuckled, opened the oven, and pulled the glass dish out off the rack. I closed the oven door and set the dish on the stove top to cool. “You say so.”
He opened the fridge, pulling out a beer this time. He yanked the top off of it, taking a long pull from it. He took a deep breath and exhaled. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” I smiled. “Thornton has a knack for driving us both i
“Still.”
I took the beer from him and took an equally long drink. I handed it back and hugged him. “It’s okay.”
He grunted, but hugged me back.
“I went to see Olga again today.”
“Olga?”
“Olaf’s sister,” I reminded him.
“Right. The mortician.”
“Yes,” I said. “I saw her work on a body today.”
“Really?”
I pressed my ear to his chest and listed to his heart thump. “Really.”
“And did she make that poor person look like a clown? Maybe that’s what she specializes in.”
I smiled and shook my head. “You know, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I didn’t even want to stay in the room while she worked. But…she was like a magician.”
“Yeah?” Jake’s voice mirrored the surprise I’d felt while watching her.
I nodded. “She was so…careful with this woman. So tender and loving. Like she really cared, you know? It was one of the nicest things I’ve ever seen.”
“Nice, huh?” Jake digested this for a minute. “But still a little creepy?”
“A little,” I admitted.
His free hand rubbed my back. “And what did Olga the mortician have to say?”
I pressed into him and arched my back, trying to maneuver his hand where I wanted it to be. “Well, nothing new really. But I think I’ve been going about this all wrong.”
“What is all this and what was wrong?”
I pulled away so I could see him. “All this is Olaf. And I was looking at it from the wrong angle.”
He smiled. “Do tell, Sherlock.”
I swatted at his chest. “Stop. I mean I think I’ve been focusing on the wrong thing.”
“I’m still not following because I don’t think this is the part where you tell me I was right for asking you to not play private investigator.”
“I’ve been focusing on who killed Olaf,” I said. I opened the freezer door and dug around for a bag of mixed vegetables. I found it and took it over to the counter and cut through the plastic with a pair of kitchen shears. “What I should be focusing on is who would want to make it look like I was the one who did it.”
“Okay,” he said. “But I didn’t know you had an archenemy.”
“I don’t.” I dumped the vegetables into a small glass bowl and carried it over to the microwave. “At least I don’t think I do.”
Jake raised his eyebrows. “Be weird if you find out you do.”
“I didn’t know Olaf well,” I said, ignoring him. “So trying to figure out who might have wanted to hurt him is next to impossible. But I could easily figure out who might want to cause me trouble. Or at least think about reasons people might be upset enough with me to make me look bad.”
He set his beer down and eyed me. “Okay. So like who?”
I tapped the number pad on the microwave and pressed the start button. “I honestly have no clue.”
“Mom!” It was Will yelling from upstairs. “Is dinner almost ready?”
“Five minutes,” I called back. I turned to look at the casserole cooling on the stove. It was a simple pasta bake, penne noodles and sauce and a variety of cheeses and spices mixed together. Something Will would actually eat.
Jake spoke again. “Or maybe you were just an easy target.”
I touched the sides of the casserole dish, testing it. The ceramic had cooled a little so I grabbed the handles and quickly carried it to the table. Jake was ready with a hot pad and slid it underneath. “What do you mean?”
“Well, it seems as if everyone in town knew about your date with Olaf,” he said. “Except me, of course.”
I frowned at him.
“So let’s say whoever killed Olaf knew about that date,” Jake explained. “And they wanted to make it look like someone else killed him. If they knew you had a connection to him, that would’ve made you a good cover.”
I thought about that. It made some sense. I did have a connection to Olaf, no matter how miniscule. I didn’t have a motive to kill him, but we’d had dinner and everyone apparently knew about it. I couldn’t hide it.
“Maybe we had a common enemy then?” I said, grabbing a spoon from the drawer. “Someone who had something against both of us?”
Jake shrugged. “It’s a possibility.”
The microwave dinged, signaling the vegetables were done, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was another sign, too. A bell literally going off, telling me I was finally looking in the right direction.
THIRTY FOUR
Making a list of one’s enemies is a humbling chore.
I had to think of all the things I’d done over the years that might piss people off, no matter how small.
But the truth was, I couldn’t think of a single person who might be angry enough with me to try and set me up for murder. I always tried to be nice to people I met. I was always the first one to volunteer for something when no one else was willing. I was the one piling kids in my car to run them home when their parents had somewhere else to be. I was usually the one trying to placate everyone when tensions grew.
It didn’t mean I didn’t ever rub people the wrong way or have people irritated with me. I immediately thought of the real estate agent Thornton had hired to sell our McMansion. Bambi Riggs. Thornton had thought her name was cool; little did I know he’d also been dating her. She’d produced black and white brochures riddled with misspellings and refused to correct them; she then tried to get us to sell to the first person who put in an offer—at thirty percent below our asking price. I’d told Thornton that if he didn’t fire her, I would. It had been tense, but I didn’t think Bambi had the intellect to concoct something as complicated as framing me for murder.
I thought harder. There was the Wal-Mart greeter who constantly asked to see my receipt when I bought unbaggable items like toilet paper and giant jugs of orange juice—and who I always refused. The school nurse who flew off the handle when she saw I’d exempted Emily from the chicken pox vaccine. The homeschool moms who constantly invited me to Bible Study and my kids to youth group, and who we’d politely turn down. There were always frowns and shaking heads when we said no, over and over again. Emily’s English teacher this year, with whom I’d exchanged several curt emails as I struggled to understand why, in Honors Lit, they still hadn’t read a novel and it was already well into the second semester.