Janet Evanovich - Foul Play

“A digital recorder, of course. I have one at home. I’ll just put it in a purse, and no one will know. Then we’ll have a recorded confession.”

An hour later they pulled into Veronica’s parking lot. Even before they cut the engine, Amy and Jake could hear the shouting in Veronica’s apartment. A window flew open and a big stuffed bear came sailing out, landing face first in the grass.

“And I don’t want your stupid bear!” Veronica shouted.

Brian Turner rushed out and picked up the bear. His face was florid and his lips were pressed tightly together in a bloodless slit in his face.

“That does it,” he shouted back, flinging the bear into his car. “Only a heartless woman would throw Good-luck Bear out the window. You’re a monster, Veronica. Do you know how to spell that?”

Veronica’s face appeared in the window. “B-R-I-A-N,” she replied sweetly.

“Very funny.” He ducked a tennis racket and got hit in the head with a tennis shoe.

“I don’t want any of your junk,” Veronica told him, tossing an armful of clothes out the window into the shrubbery. “You and your big ideas, telling me I was going to be a television star. Some television star. You had me playing straight man to a chicken. Now there’s no chicken, and you’re telling me I’m fired. Lulu the Clown didn’t have a chicken. Why do I need one?”

“Lulu the Clown had talent,” Turner said.

Veronica’s eyes narrowed. “You’re slime, Turner. You’re scum and gunk and doo-doo. You have no sensitivity, and you killed that poor chicken,” she cried. “You fiend.”

Amy’s eyes widened at the whirring recorder. “Son of a gun,” she whispered. All those hours watching crummy television shows paid off. She’d actually gotten incriminating evidence.

“Me?” Turner screamed. “I didn’t kill that Frank Perdue reject. I gave him his big break, and he blew it. You’re the one who killed him. Feeding him pizza and jelly doughnuts and keeping him up until all hours of the night watching David Letterman.”

“He liked the stupid pet tricks.” Veronica’s bright-red lower lip trembled. “And I didn’t kill him. What a rotten thing to say.”

Turner crawled through the azaleas retrieving socks and shirts. He found a black lace garter belt and stared at it for a moment. “This is yours,” he said, dangling the garter belt from one finger.

“You gave it to me,” Veronica sobbed, “and I never want to see it again.”

“Well, you gave me this tie.” Turner pulled his tie over his head. “Take it back.”

“Never. I don’t want a tie that’s been wrapped around your scrawny neck.”

Turner stomped into the apartment with the tie clutched in his fist. “I said take the tie back!”

“No, no, no!”

There was a deathly silence. Jake and Amy exchanged anxious glances. “You don’t suppose he’d hurt her?” Amy asked.

They crept to the open door and peeked inside.

“Holy cow,” Amy whispered.

“You were right,” Jake said. “Veronica Bottles doesn’t waste time on preliminaries.”

They backed away, quietly closing the door. “This probably isn’t a good time to question Veronica,” Jake suggested.

Amy slunk down in the passenger seat of the car. “I need a glass of lemonade.”

Jake grinned, putting the car in gear and heading for Amy’s house. “I’ve noticed squeezing lemons has a calming effect on you.”

Amy pressed the stop button on her recorder. “What do you make of that conversation? They accused each other of murdering Red, and then they both denied it.”

“I don’t think either of them killed the bird,” Jake said, disappointment obvious in his voice. “I’m having serious doubts about my theory.”

Amy listened to the recording. “They might not have killed him, but they obviously think he’s dead. Notice how they accuse each other of murder rather than bird-napping.”

“Uh-huh,” Jake said, cruising down the street, distracted by a van parked in front of Amy’s house. “Are you expecting company?”

Amy squinted at the van. “There’s someone in the front seat… with a camera.”

Jake pulled into the driveway and helped Amy from the car. The cameraman got out of the van and walked toward them. He was short and very young. His blond hair was tied back in a ponytail.

“Ron Grosse,” he said, extending his hand. “I’ve been sent by Local News to do a follow-up interview with Lulu the Clown. This is Dan Flyn…” He motioned to a second man, joining them from the van. “We do a Sixty Minutes -type show, except it only lasts twenty minutes.”

“I don’t think I feel like being interviewed today,” Amy said coolly. “I don’t have much to say about all this.”

“Aren’t you the veterinarian?” Dan Flyn asked. “This is a coup. We didn’t expect to find the two of you together. Are you… um, you know, an item?”

Jake leaned forward slightly, stopping inches from Flyn’s nose. “Excuse me? An item?”

Flyn stood his ground. “There had been rumors of this being an inside job, or at least a coverup.”

Jake set his jaw. “That does it. I’m going to rearrange your face.”

“No,” Amy shouted, grabbing Jake by the arm. “Lord, what will my neighbors think? Cameramen and vans and men fighting on my front lawn. You can’t do this sort of thing in suburbia. And besides, we just cut this grass, and now you’re standing on it and bending it. Shoo,” she said to the twenty-minute news team. She made go-away motions with her hands. “Shoo.”

She pulled Jake into the house. “Shame on you. Rearrange his face. Good grief.”

Jake locked the door and closed the drapes. “I’m pretty tough, huh?”

Amy rolled her eyes and reached for the lemons.

“I was surprised you didn’t give an interview. I would have thought you’d want to tell your side of the story.”

“I know those two,” Amy said, slicing lemons. “They aren’t interested in the truth. They just want something juicy. I wouldn’t dignify them with an interview.”

Jake put the cooler on the kitchen counter. “We have a couple chicken salad sandwiches left. What say we eat them for supper?” He set two placemats and plates on the little kitchen table and doled out the sandwiches.

Amy took a bowl of potato salad and a container of pickled beets from the refrigerator. “I have some leftovers.”

“I know this sounds strange, but you make me homesick. My mom is a great cook… just like you.” Jake tasted the potato salad and sighed.

“This is just as good as my mom’s. When I was a kid we had potato salad all summer long. And there was always cold fried chicken. I have two brothers, and I can’t tell you how much chicken we went through during the month of July. My mom is a seasonal cooker. In the winter she makes homemade chocolate pudding. I’d come home from school and walk into the house and almost get knocked over by the smell of that pudding cooking.”

Amy gave Jake his lemonade and sat across from him. “Sounds like you had a nice childhood.”

“I guess it was average. I was always fighting with my brothers, but we really liked each other.” He wolfed down his sandwich and looked enviously at Amy’s.

Amy got the chicken salad from the refrigerator and made Jake another sandwich. “Did you always want to be a vet?”

“Yup. I collected baby birds that had fallen from their nests, and rabbits that cats had maimed, and rescued turtles from the middle of the road. My mom was terrific. She put up with a lot. I had fish and hamsters and lizards and never cleaned my room.”

He took Amy’s hand in his. “I’d like you to meet my family. My brother Nick lives in East Stroudsburg. He has a wife and two kids. My brother Billy lives in Wind Gap with his wife and three kids. And my parents are just down the street from Billy.” His eyes had turned warm, and his thumb stroked across her wrist, causing her to lose interest in chicken salad.