Софи Райан - Telling Tails

“The body, of course.” She looked at all three of us. “Why else do you think I was hit over the head? I saw it.”

“What on God’s green earth are you talking about?” Liz asked, moving around the bottom of the bed to Rose’s other side. “Whose body did you see?”

Rose looked at Liz, irritation evident in the set of her mouth. “Well, Jeff Cameron’s, of course. He’s dead.”

Chapter 2

“Jeff Cameron is dead?” I said, feeling dumbfounded by the direction the conversation had taken.

Rose nodded. “Yes.”

“And you know this how?” Liz asked, sitting down on the green vinyl chair by the bed. “The police didn’t find any body. All they found was you and some plastic tube thing by the side of the road.”

“It wasn’t a plastic tube thing. It was a boat fender. And you haven’t been listening to a word I’ve been saying, have you?” Rose cocked her head to one side as she studied her friend, and then flinched at the motion.

“I’m listening,” Liz said, leaning forward in the chair. “You’re just not making a hell of a lot of sense at the moment.”

I covered Rose’s hand with my own, which caught her attention, exactly as I’d intended. “You saw Jeff Cameron’s body.”

She nodded again.

“At his house.”

Rose pressed her lips together for a moment. “Yes,” she said. “That has to be why I was hit over the head.” She held up her bandaged hand. “And before you all start in on me, I don’t have a concussion, I’m not a feeble old woman and I know what I saw.”

I knew that tone of voice and set of her jaw. Rose wasn’t going to be swayed from what she believed she’d seen.

Liz and Mr. P. both spoke at the same time.

I held up one hand. “Hang on,” I said. “Just hang on a minute.”

They both stopped talking.

I put my arm around Rose’s shoulders again, shifting on the noisy vinyl mattress. “Start at the beginning,” I said. “Start from when I left you with Jeff Cameron.”

“We don’t have time.”

“Yes, we do,” I said. “A dead man isn’t going to get any deader.”

Rose nodded. “I guess you’re right.” She tugged at the sheet over her legs and Mr. P. immediately pulled the cotton blanket up over her. She smiled a thank-you at him. Then she sighed softly and began. “I told Mr. Cameron that I would make sure his wife got his gift. He said that he didn’t want me to get in any trouble. I said that you would come around.”

I raised one eyebrow but didn’t say anything. Rose’s cheeks grew pink, and she looked down at the nubby blanket for a moment before looking up at me again. “It wasn’t a lie, Sarah,” she said. “I thought I could make you change your mind if I really had to.”

Liz made a small snort of skepticism, but I ignored it.

“Rosie, why didn’t you tell me what you were planning?” Mr. P. asked. There was no recrimination in his voice.

Rose stretched out her hand to him. He caught it, giving it a gentle squeeze before letting go again. “I’m sorry, Alf,” she said. “I probably should have; it’s just that you would have tried to talk me out of it.”

“Yes, I would have,” he agreed.

“That’s the problem,” she said, looking from Mr. P. to me. “Sometimes I get tired of being treated like I’m made of glass and might break.”

“After that whack on the head you took, it’s pretty clear your head, at least, is made of something other than glass,” Liz commented dryly. She reached forward once more and laid her hand on Rose’s leg for a moment. “And I’m glad it is,” she added. They exchanged smiles.

“Keep going,” I nudged.

“We were working out the details of the delivery when you came in.” Rose looked at Liz.

“I remember.” Liz leaned back in her seat, crossing one leg over the other.

“Avery was in Augusta, remember?” Rose said to me. “With some kids who had been in her history class. Their teacher organized the trip.”

After some problems at home, Avery had come to live with her grandmother and attend a progressive alternative school that had only morning classes. She worked afternoons for me. Now that it was July, she was spending more time at the shop.

I nodded. Liz raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.

“And she may have had my phone with her.”

“May have?” I asked.

“All right, she did have my phone. It ended up in her bag by mistake.”

Things were getting more complicated by the moment. “And that would be because . . . ?”

“I was showing Avery a video on my phone because she only has text and calling—no data on her own phone.” Rose’s gaze shifted over to Liz.

“Avery has a perfectly good computer at home with Wi-Fi,” Liz said. “She doesn’t need data on her phone because she spends too much time with her head bent over it as it is.”

Rose sighed. “You sound like you’re a hundred and six when you say things like that.”

Liz made a dismissive gesture with one hand. They’d had several versions of this conversation before.

“What happened after that?” I asked, reaching for the glass of water on the table next to the bed and handing it to Rose.

She took a sip before answering. “Liz wanted me to take her phone. I told her I’d be fine without a phone for one night and she left.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Liz nod.

“I think Mr. Cameron may have heard us talking,” Rose continued. “When I went back to the counter he said he needed to get going, so he gave me his cell number and asked if I’d call him about four thirty and he’d be able to tell me then when his wife would be home.”

“So that’s what you did?”

Rose nodded once more. “I had the address, and it just seemed easier to call a taxi and go over there myself. It wasn’t a lot different from having the gift delivered.”

“The driver didn’t wait?” I asked.

“I told him not to, so don’t get on Tim’s case.”

I cleared my throat for a moment and looked up at the ceiling. There were no answers up there. I looked at Rose again. “I’m assuming you had a good reason for not getting the driver to wait.”

“No, I had a stupid reason,” she said calmly.

I’d crossed the line, I realized. “I’m sorry,” I said.

She smiled and patted my hand the way she often did when she was humoring me. “I thought after I gave Mrs. Cameron her gift—her first name is Leesa, by the way—I’d walk down to Sam’s, call Alfred, and see if he wanted to join me for pizza.”

“Yes, I would have,” Mr. P. immediately said.

“I’ve been wanting to try the sausage and mushroom pizza ever since Sam told me he was getting that all-natural sausage from that little place in Lisbon Falls,” Rose said.

We were about to get way, way off track. “We’ll get one on the weekend,” I said.

“That’s a lovely idea,” Rose said. “We should see if Nicolas and Charlotte are free. And I could teach you how to make Caesar salad.”

Mr. P. cleared his throat. They exchanged a look and Rose gave an almost imperceptible nod. “Or maybe apple-carrot salad would be a better choice?” She looked over at Liz and I saw her eyes dart, briefly, in my direction.

She was still trying to play matchmaker between Nick and me. They all were—Rose, Liz, Charlotte, who was also Nick’s mom. Even Mr. P. apparently. That was why Rose had nixed the Caesar salad; the garlic would derail any romance, at least in her mind.

I rubbed the space between my eyes with the side of my thumb. We were officially off track into the conversational bushes.

Rose caught the gesture. “Do you have a headache, dear?” she asked. “I can just press this little button and have the nurse bring you a couple of Tylenol. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”