“I’m not sure yet, but to be safe, you need to forget about it, at least for the moment. Eleanor, there are some elements that might try to use my friends against me, and you’re high up on their list.”
“Me?” I asked, shocked by the idea. “Why would anyone feel threatened by me?”
“I’m afraid that our relationship has been noticed in particular circles. For the time being, we can’t be seen together, and I’m not at all sure that it’s safe for us to communicate in any way. We are going to have an apparent rift in our friendship, at least as far as the world is concerned. It pains me to do this, but it’s a necessary step for your safety.”
“You’re not trying to ditch me, are you?” I asked. “I have plenty of friends, but I’m not in the mood to lose any of them, especially you.”
“Your loyalty is without reproach,” he said. “This is just something that we have to do. Maddy cannot know, nor your boyfriend or her fiancé. It must be a complete break if it’s going to work at all. Will you do this, no matter how distasteful it seems, as a favor to me?”
“Fine, but you should know something. I care more about you than this murder investigation. If I’d had any idea I was getting you in hot water, I never would have asked for your help.”
“You can always feel free to request whatever you need from me,” Art said. “I’m just not certain that I can always acquiesce.”
“Got it.” I noticed that we were back in front of the Slice, and I started to get out. “Call me as soon as you can,” I said.
“Good-bye, Eleanor,” he said, and his driver quickly drove away.
I walked back into the Slice and realized that I could find a way to tell Maddy what was happening without coming right out and saying it definitively. Art’s tone had spooked me, and I wasn’t afraid to admit it, even if it was only to myself.
“What did he have to say?” Maddy asked me the second I neared the door. “Did he have another clue for us about Vivian?”
“We’re not going to see each other anymore,” I said. The sadness I felt as I said it, even if it was only temporary, was real enough. Art Young and I didn’t exactly have any standing times or dates when we got together, and I never knew when I was going to see him, but knowing for sure that I wasn’t going to talk to him for the foreseeable future was pretty unpleasant.
“What happened?” Maddy asked, the concern clear in her voice.
“I can’t talk about it,” I replied, which was true enough. “Apparently, Vivian has something to do with it, and Art warned me that approaching her again anytime soon would be dangerous.”
“Dangerous? Seriously?”
“If you’d heard his warning, you wouldn’t doubt it for one second.”
“So, what do we do?” Maddy asked. “She’s not in the clear, by any means. I don’t care if the police believe her or not.”
“For now, we put her on the back burner,” I said. “We’ve got plenty of other folks to investigate at the moment.”
“Like who?” Maddy asked.
“Well, we can track down that man Grant was talking to in the shadows last night, and we can also find out where the people in that band live. That gives us three right off the bat, and who knows where all of that might lead?”
“I don’t like this,” Maddy said.
“Which part of it? The fact that we have only three suspects, or that somebody might be coming after us because of what we’ve done?”
“None of that, actually. We both know that we’ve started with less in the past, and threats have never bothered us,” she said. “I just can’t imagine Art Young dumping you like that. You’ve stood by him in the past when everyone else in town thought you were crazy. It just doesn’t make sense.”
“Maddy, I’ve told you all that I can right now. Let’s just drop it, okay?”
“Sure, Sis. That’s fine with me, if it’s what you really want.”
“It is,” I said, thinking about how stern Art had been when we’d spoken. “What do you say we finish our pizza prep for the day and get on with our lives?”
“That sounds good to me,” she said. “What about the rest of the things we found at Grant’s, though? We’re still going to dig into those, aren’t we?”
“You bet we are,” I said. “I’m more determined than ever to find out who killed your ex-husband, no matter what it takes.”
After the dough was finished and put in the fridge, Maddy had the veggies and meat chopped up for the day’s customers. I was cleaning off the counter when Maddy brought out the papers we’d removed from Grant’s place.