Scoop to Kill: A Mystery a La Mode - By Wendy Lyn Watson Page 0,57
Hickory Tavern reminded me that the Gundersons obviously had some cash to throw around. I hated to be a suck-up, but anything I could do to impress them could ultimately be good for business.
By the time I finished serving the foursome, chatting them up a bit and leaving them happily trading spoons of ice cream like a bunch of kids on their first date, Finn had returned from his break.
“They’re cute together, aren’t they?” he said.
“Who? The Grants or the Gundersons?”
“Both, I guess, but I was talking about the Gundersons.”
I watched George spoon his cherry onto Rosemary’s ice cream. She giggled, and I could see the blush on her cheeks from where I stood.
“Adorable. You know them, right?”
“The Gundersons? Not well.” Finn and I leaned against the back counter, watching the happy chaos of the families enjoying their sundaes and cones.
“I thought Rosemary was friends with your mom.”
“Yes, but just recently. They met in the hospital when Mom had her first stroke. Rosemary was being treated for breast cancer. She still comes to visit Mom every week, like clockwork, but I don’t intrude. Oh, and in between her strokes, Mom had them all over for dinner during one of my visits home. But just once.”
“All? I thought it was just George and Rosemary.”
“And her niece Madeline Jackson. I think the Gundersons are from Boston, but their niece went to law school at the University of Houston. She moved up to Dalliance when Rosemary got sick.” Finn grabbed a dishcloth from the tub of bleach water we kept beneath the counter and began wiping down the dipping wells. “She’s basically a daughter to the Gundersons, spending time with Rosemary every day. That’s how I knew about Kristen Ver Steeg’s practice.”
I stared at him blankly. “Who?”
“Kristen Ver Steeg. Bryan’s lawyer. She and Madeline Jackson are partners.”
Of course. Dalliance had grown over the years, sprawling out from the courthouse square in increasingly wide rings of strip malls and McMansion-filled neighborhoods, but it was still, fundamentally, a small town. You couldn’t sneeze without someone’s cousin saying “God bless.” Now, in the space of just a few weeks, I’d heard about this new law firm three times: they were the firm Bryan had hired to handle his dispute with Dickerson, they were the firm where Crystal’s fiancé, Jason, would be working this summer, and they were connected to the Gundersons.
Before I could comment on the small orbit of Dalliance society, my phone rang. Bree.
“Tally, did you know Kyle was a freakin’ genius?”
“I did not.” I grabbed another bleachy rag and got to work on the ledges of the display freezer.
“Well, he is. I don’t know what kind of weird voodoo he worked, but he managed to crack into that i-Cash system in about ten minutes flat.”
“Lord-a-mercy.” I didn’t even want to think about the sorts of mischief that boy could get into on the Internet. Identity theft, credit card fraud . . . it gave me chills.
“Yep. Turns out that Landry fella was telling the truth. He used his ID card to buy an egg-white omelet and dry rye toast at ten fifteen a.m. on the morning Bryan was murdered, and then he bought a double-chocolate lava cake at eleven thirty. Both at the faculty club, which, according to Alice, is a good twenty-minute walk across campus from Sinclair Hall.”
“Huh.” The bell above the store door rang as another family filed out. The evening was winding down. As soon as we got the place cleaned up, I could head home and do my reading for class.
Oy. Homework.
“But that’s not all we found,” Bree continued. “On a whim, I suggested Kyle look at Emily Clowper’s card use. Turns out that she used her ID card to buy a soft drink from the vending machine in the basement of Sinclair Hall at eleven fifty-six on the night she died.”
I straightened so fast, I knocked my head on the inside of the display freezer.
“Ow. What?”
Bree chuckled darkly. “You heard me, sister. Emily Clowper went to campus between the A-la-mode and home.”
“But she wasn’t allowed on campus,” I said.
“Well, that didn’t stop her. Whatever she was up to, it must have been important if she risked getting caught in her office when it was off-limits. Wanna bet that whatever she did or whoever she saw there got her killed?”
chapter 22
Where Emily Clowper’s house had been pristine to the point of barrenness, her office looked like raccoons had been living in it.