Evening Bags and Executions(59)

Oh my God, had I turned into some sort of pariah?

Ty had broken up with me, Jack was treading lightly, Shuman was consumed by the death of his girlfriend—whom he’d actually broken up with—and Cody turned tail at the first sign of a problem.

Only . . . why was there a problem? Who would have approached Cody in my parking lot and told him to back off?

Jack Bishop.

It had to be him.

I guess that had been him a few nights before, speeding out of the parking lot when Cody and I had gone upstairs to my apartment. He’d been hanging out, watching for me, spying on me?

Who could it have been but Jack?

I didn’t know whether to be mad—or flattered.





CHAPTER 18


“In two Beatles films ice-cream cones can be seen,” Rigby said. “Name the films.”

Eleanor had told me my quiz questions would get more difficult, but this was ridiculous.

I was in the drive-through at Starbucks because my afternoon definitely needed a boost. My name had come back to the top of the list in the L.A. Affairs’ rotation, so I was headed to Altadena to consult with a client. Mindy had been vague about just what sort of event this would be. I just hoped it wouldn’t be another doggie birthday party.

“All the Beatles movies were really great,” I said, hoping that somehow the right answer would come to me.

Nothing came to me.

“Everybody has a favorite,” I said. “Which is your favorite?”

Rigby hung up.

Crap.

I was going to have to buy either a second cell phone so I could look up the answers to Eleanor and Rigby’s questions on the Internet while I stalled them or a Beatles trivia book—and then actually read it and learn the material.

I hate my life.

But thankfully Starbucks was here for me. I got my mocha frappuccino and headed east on the 134.

Traffic was light—plus my frappie gave me a great brain boost—so I settled into the drive to Altadena and let my thoughts wander. Immediately, murder came to mind.

This thing with Shuman being on leave from the LAPD was putting a crimp in my investigation of Lacy Hobbs’s murder. If he was on the job I could tell him about Heather Pritchard, the runaway bride who’d complained about the wedding cake Lacy had made for her, and he could investigate her supposedly impromptu trip to South America.

But since he wasn’t available—not that I blamed him, of course—I was on my own. The only thing I could think to do was talk to Heather’s mother, Sasha, and hope that she’d let something incriminating slip.

I didn’t really think that would happen, though. Sasha would be protective of her daughter.

Just like my mom would be of me.

Jeez, I hope she’d be protective.

Anyway, I hadn’t found any new info about August, the guy who owned Fairy Land bakery. Though I’m sure he was glad to no longer have Lacy Cakes as competition, I didn’t see any real motive for him to kill her. I figured I could mark him off my suspect list until I found evidence that would implicate him.

Belinda seemed to have more reason to want Lacy killed than anyone else—but it didn’t seem like that much of a reason at all. Some old argument from back in the day, a squabble over concert tickets and, apparently, years of Lacy talking trash about her to their family didn’t seem like much of a motive to walk into the workroom at the bakery, pull out a gun, and open fire.

I mean, jeez, if Belinda was going to murder Lacy, why do it now? All that stuff had been going on for years.

Darren came into my thoughts as I transitioned onto the 210. He’d resented Lacy for decades. She’d left him to manage their parents and the family business, and if what he’d said was true, she’d had little contact with them. He’d been really ticked off when he learned how much she was making at the bakery but hadn’t sent any of it home.

Maybe he’d had enough of Lacy’s callous disregard for the family. I had no way of knowing when he’d actually arrived in L.A.—it could have been days before Lacy was murdered—or whether it was true that he didn’t really know what kind of income Lacy made from her cakes. Maybe he’d found out. Maybe he’d figured that either he or his parents would be named in her will. Maybe the years of resentment had gotten the best of him.

Paige popped into my mind. I couldn’t help but think that starting work at Lacy Cakes just a short time before Lacy was murdered wasn’t a coincidence—especially after she’d told me that she was trying to buy the bakery. She’d downplayed borrowing the money from her dad, so I wondered if it was a lie. For all I knew she had plenty of money. She probably hadn’t wanted to start a bakery from nothing and spend years building a reputation when it was so much easier to step into Lacy Cakes, the most successful one in L.A.