He saw the dish of strawberry ice cream. “Having one of your ice cream dinners, huh? What happened to Mason?” There was a subtle dig in his tone.
I explained the wedding mess and his confab with his family. “And he didn’t include you?” Barry said. “Since your job is to put on events, you’d think he’d want your help.” Even though I’d never exactly told Barry that Mason kept me separate from his family, detective Barry had figured it out and knew it bothered me.
Barry brought the two cups of tea to the table and pulled out the bench and sat down. I didn’t want to get into a discussion of Mason, so I changed the subject. The segue was easy. Barry had brought up that I planned events and so I told him about the latest one at the bookstore.
“It’s kind of last minute, but Mr. Royal thought it would be a good idea to have Kelly’s brother sign a book that has a segment on him. Stone Thomasville is a world-class surfer. I guess that’s why he moved to Hawaii.”
“All that and adorable, too,” Barry said with distaste. Then he changed subjects. “How’d it go with your search for the real estate agent?”
“It didn’t. Nobody had any notepads. I don’t think there was any real estate agent.” There was something on my mind that had been bothering me. I shouldn’t have said anything, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. “Eric is giving Adele all kinds of inside information on Kelly’s murder, like where the body was. You always said you couldn’t tell me anything.” I looked at him directly. “So what gives?”
Barry used taking a sip of the tea to pause, then he blew out his breath. “I only had the best of intentions. I wanted to keep you out of trouble.” He chuckled. “Not that it did much good.” He paused while something computed in his head. “Hey, I made the suggestion about the real estate agent and I told you Heather was looking for the murder weapon.”
“Do you know anything else?”
Barry’s eyes went skyward. “No, and I don’t want to discuss it anymore.” I made a face at him, which he found highly amusing.
“Too bad because I was going to tell you something I found out.”
“That’s different,” Barry said. “You’d be withholding information. Maybe you’d even be interfering with a police investigation. I think you better tell me what you know.” His smile had faded, but I was pretty sure he was just teasing with the threats. At least I certainly hoped so, but I told him that both Dan and his neighbor claimed to barely know each other and I knew it wasn’t true.
“And how is it that you know that?” he asked. “Any breaking and entering involved?”
“No,” I said indignantly. “It was all out in the open. You can ask Jeffrey.” I regretted saying his name as soon as it was out of my mouth.
Barry’s eyes narrowed. “What does Jeffrey have to do with it?” He stopped and his expression got a little pointed. “You didn’t get him tangled up in your crazy investigations, did you?” Barry had his eagle eyes trained on me as he went into interrogation mode. I tried looking away, but quickly swiveled my head back toward him. Looking away was a sure sign you intended to lie. I didn’t intend to lie, I just intended to give out as few details as possible.
I started out by trying to say nothing, but he saw right through that.
“I’ve got all night, Molly,” he said. “I just live down the hall.” He pointed toward his room as a reminder. “I already heard from Eric that Jeffrey tried to get in the scene they were shooting. I suppose you helped him with that.”
I rolled my eyes in response. “Jeffrey just happened to be riding his bike past the Donahue house and he saw Dan and his neighbor Nanci Silvers acting kind of friendly in her garage.”
Barry narrowed his eyes. “You’re leaving something out. Why does Jeffrey even know who these people are or where they live?”
The question hung in the air. I didn’t want to get Jeffrey in trouble, but Barry had me in a corner. I mentioned that Nanci was Autumn’s mother. I tried to leave it at that, but Barry was unrelenting. No wonder he got so many confessions.
“Okay, Jeffrey wanted to ask her when Autumn was coming home from camp.” I took a sip of my tea,