pavilion I could see a vein jumping at his temple. I knew him well enough to know he was furious, and trying not to show it. “Carnegie, the party’s breaking up. I came out to tell you.”
“Thanks.” The word caught in my throat. How could I possibly explain the scene he had just witnessed, without betraying Zack? I settled for a feeble smile. “We were just going to—”
“Save it,” he snapped. “I can guess what you were just going to do. Good night.”
“Will… will I see you in the morning?”
“Oh, right, our breakfast date.” Aaron glared at Zack, then at me. “I think I’ll pass.”
“But—”
But Aaron was already striding off into the fog. Instead of returning to the lodge, he headed out to the far end of the parking lot where he’d left his yellow Bug. I’d seen it there when I parked my tin can of a rental car.
“Damn,” I groaned. “Damn, damn, dammit.”
“Carnegie?” Zack looked blank at first, then the light dawned. “Oh, I get it. Aaron’s, like, mad about us being here together.”
“Aaron is, like, royally pissed off,” I said. “And now he’s not going to help me figure this out.”
“Figure what out?”
“The murder,” I told him. “Because if you didn’t kill Mercedes, then who did?”
Chapter Eighteen
I SLEEP NAKED. EVEN AS A KID I FELT STRANGLED BY PAJAMAS, and as an adult I go without, keeping a big fuzzy robe on a chair by the bed in winter. So when Aaron knocked on my door early Saturday morning, I threw off my flannel sheets, threw on the robe, and rushed through the kitchen to let him in, grateful that he’d relented and eager to explain away, somehow, the awkwardness of the night before.
Except it wasn’t Aaron. It was Zack, standing on my doorstep with a huge grocery bag and a carrier tray of takeout espresso cups. He was still in his cords and green sweater from the party, and clearly still riding high on the news I’d given him. Even in the half-dark of a November morning, Zack was radiant with happiness.
“I brought you breakfast,” he announced, “since Aaron cancelled on you. I didn’t know what kind of coffee you drink, so I got, like, four different ones.”
I should have sent him away. I knew that. But the aroma of coffee, life-giving coffee, rose up through the chilly air and addled my brain. I opened my mouth to tell him “Thanks anyway, but—” and heard myself saying, “Is one of those a double latte?”
Zack radiated even brighter. “Yeah! Right here—oops!”
As he proffered the tray, the grocery bag slipped from his grasp and spilled its contents at my bare feet. I rescued the coffee and backed into the kitchen, while he gathered up his treasures and piled them on the table: a half-gallon of orange juice, a cardboard supermarket box holding a dozen syrupy cinnamon rolls the size of my head, a baton of somewhat dented French bread, a big tub of cream cheese with chives, an even bigger jar of orange marmalade, and, retrieved from where it had rolled up against the stove, an entire pineapple.
Zack frowned uncertainly at the pineapple, then set it on the table, where it rolled again and knocked over the marmalade. “Do you, like, eat fruit for breakfast?”
“All the time,” I said, hiding a smile in my latte. How many men, far more mature than Zack, turned into clueless adolescents in the supermarket? “But there’s enough here to feed me and everyone I know!”
“I guess I got carried away.” He gazed at me earnestly. “But I just wanted to do something for you. I mean, I want to help you figure out about Mercedes, too. I couldn’t really think straight last night.”
That was an understatement. Zack had floated back to the party with me, said his good-byes in a kind of oblivious daze, and only looked a little crestfallen when I packed him off to Seattle with Valerie Duncan instead of taking him myself. He’d ridden to the Salish with Aaron—a favor that would probably not be offered in the future.
“I heard Valerie offering you your job back,” I said, setting my coffee safely out of his orbit. “Did you take it?”
“Yeah.” Zack’s all-too-easy blush surged up from his throat to wash across his fair-skinned cheeks. “She said I was doing totally great stuff for them. I want to keep going with the Made in Heaven web site, too. I couldn’t really, like, concentrate, before.”
“I understand. Here, have one of these rolls.