Death on the Coast, M Comley [book club books TXT] 📗

pasta. She took it, but instead of walking away, he dipped a finger into the sauce of her plate and held it to her lips.

“You should have married someone else,” he muttered. “Sometimes, I wish I had.”

4

Lucy squinted to adjust her eyes to the sun. The forecast called for a nor’easter, but the sun revealed the truth. She wasn’t fooled; she’d lived there long enough to know that Mother Nature was a capricious magician who could pull sixty-foot waves and hurricane winds out of the backside of a cloud bank. She threw back her covers and headed for the shower. Mark had already left for work. She dressed in dark colors out of respect and made her way to Sal’s Sweets, snagging a copy of the paper on her way. As she’d expected, Len had made her story the predominant headline.

Sal handed over her regular order. One chocolate mocha muffin and a cup of mocha decaf. She loved the combination of flavors, and making it her breakfast seemed to be the safest compromise.

The conversation was muted, most people choosing to read the Journal instead of indulging in the local gossip. A few people looked up as Lucy entered, nodding with mixed responses. She took a seat at a table on the far side of the room.

Seconds later, Cecilia slid into a chair across from her. She wasted no time. “I’ve got Patch. Brendon brought him to me. What am I supposed to do with him?”

Lucy eyed her over her muffin. “Good morning to you, too, Cecilia,” she said pointedly.

“Oh, cut the crap and answer me,” Cecilia blurted, her tone abrupt. She wasn’t known for her tact.

“I’m not sure I’m the one you should be asking, truth be told. Patch doesn’t belong to me. My guess would be that Christine would inherit him along with everything else, but I imagine that’s up to the lawyers.”

“Which lawyers?” Cecilia was, if anything, persistent. She threw down the rest of her coffee, apparently waiting for a definitive response.

“You should ask Brendon, not me, Cecilia.”

The woman slammed a paper on the table. “Sounds like you’re quite an authority on Angie’s death. Thought you knew everything.”

Lucy flinched. “I’m just a reporter.”

“Weren’t you her friend? Says right here that you were,” she argued, jabbing at the paper with her finger.

“I suppose you could say we were, as much as anyone who patronized her salon. But that doesn’t mean I knew much about her personal life.”

“Pshaw. Everyone knew her personal life. If you didn’t, you weren’t paying attention. Remember that the next time you write something about a murder victim. Got it?” She got up, tucked her chair under the table, and left the bakery.

Lucy was left wondering what had blown through.

A noise caught Lucy’s attention, and she turned. Jenny Carter approached in her wheelchair. She hoped it wasn’t going to be another adversarial encounter. One a morning was quite enough.

Jenny smiled. “Hi, Lucy. Got in the line of Cecilia’s fire, did you?”

Lucy smiled with relief. “Did I do something wrong?”

Jenny shook her head and folded her hands in her lap—the only independent movement she was still capable of these days. She’d been badly injured in a car accident that nearly took her life. Now, she was partially paralyzed and relied on the wheelchair to get around. Like many, she was a regular at Sal’s Sweets. “I wouldn’t pay any attention to her. You know she gets upset when a pet is involved. My guess is she wants to keep Patch and is looking for whoever can give her that permission.”

Lucy held up her hands. “Fine with me. She needs to talk to Christine, though.”

Jenny took a napkin from the dispenser on the table and wiped at a spot on the surface. She neatly folded it and fiddled with it for a few seconds. “You know, I may be way out of line here, but Angie and Cecilia weren’t on the best of terms.”

Lucy sensed something critical coming up. “No? How so?”

Jenny checked behind her to see if anyone was listening and lowered her voice. “It was about Patch, naturally. You see, Angie adopted him from Cecilia’s shelter. I guess he was quite a handful, and Angie tried to return him, but Cecilia put her foot down and refused to take him back. From what Angie told me, Cecilia went into one of her famous tirades about community responsibility for abandoned dogs and shamed Angie into keeping him. He really was a handful, you know. I didn’t blame Angie. She had a salon to run, and he was out of control. Marked the shop and even a customer’s leg once.” She stopped and smiled, holding back a harder laugh. “I don’t think that went down too well.”

“No, I don’t suppose it did,” Lucy agreed.

Jenny appeared thoughtful for a moment. “Tim Granger, the butcher, had a crush on her, you know.”

“No, I didn’t. Tim never acted on it, did he?”

“No, I think he’s far too shy for that. I could feel it, though. You could see it in his eyes when she walked into his store. And she and Kathy Simpson were friends, but something happened, and that was the end of their friendship. Of course, Angie was never the same after her husband left her. It’s a shame, really, when people don’t get along in a village. There aren’t many of us, and we need to be able to depend on each other. I don’t know where I’d be if I didn’t have all of you,” she said, staring down at her motorized chair.

“It’s not all their doing, you know. It’s who’s in that chair that counts,” Lucy said gently.

“One more thing.” Since Jenny’s accident, she’d begun to receive images and feelings about other people—psychic sort of activity. At first, she’d been too shy to mention it, but a time or two when it came in handy, she’d been brave enough to speak up. The villagers agreed it was compensation for her physical loss and