Dee pulled open the gym door. “Nugget,” she hissed. “Down, boy! Down.”
She finally got the dog’s attention and gestured for him to lie down. He ignored her. Fortunately, the woman Shawn pegged as the gossip headed off down the block. Thwarted in his quest to get busy with the poodle, Nugget released a grumpy bark and returned to a prone position.
Dee turned back to the trainer. “Thanks for alerting me to Nugget’s doggy hashtag-me-too moment. The last thing I need is for him to knock up some unsuspecting local’s pooch. Although that’s not really possible, thank God, because I made sure Nugget was fixed.”
Radinsky muttered something unintelligible and focused on his computer screen, sending the message he was done dealing with Dee. She, however, was not done with him. “I heard you were friends with our late guest Michael,” she said, soldiering on. “I know there’s a feeling in this town that as his hosts, we bear some responsibility for his demise.” She spoke formally on purpose, hoping it put distance between the motel and Michael’s murder.
“I don’t care if you offed him yourself.” Radinsky shrugged, stretching the grimaces on the faces of the matching Joker tattoos on his shoulders. “I haven’t seen Mike in about a year. Not since I helped him move a bunch of stuff to a storage facility in West Camp after he sold his parents’ place on Lake Goldsgone.”
Dee picked up an edgy undercurrent to his delivery, just like with Liza. Michael’s Goldsgone fan club didn’t seem to include any of the people Elmira listed as his actual friends.
She was about to press the trainer for more intel on his relationship with the writer, when a fit-looking older man, dressed in a track suit embellished with the gym logo, emerged from the door leading to the workout space. Dee recognized the man as the gym owner, from a framed headshot touting him as such hanging over the community bulletin board. “Radinsky, you’re late wiping down the gym equipment,” he growled at the trainer. “The bathrooms could use a wipe too.” The owner noticed Dee and instantly changed his tone to almost fawning. “Well, hello there. Welcome to Gym Dandy. How can we help you?”
“I’m all set, thanks to Shawn, who’s been wonderful,” Dee said. She laid it on thick, hoping it would score a few points with the beleaguered employee/ex–Michael Adam Baker amigo. The tactic didn’t work, earning her a flushed glare instead of a grateful smile.
Dee knew a dead end when she saw one. She entered the training session into her phone calendar, politely thanked Radinsky, and left the gym. After waking up Nugget, who lay snoring on the sidewalk, the duo headed to the side street where she’d parked her car. They passed the Church of the Forty-Niner, a lovely edifice built of redwood in the nineteenth-century Carpenter Gothic style. Gingerbread trim painted white adorned the church entry, as well as all the windows, even framing the stained-glass triptych above the entry.
A man who appeared to be in his late thirties handed plastic letters to an older woman, who inserted them in an announcement on the message board, which sat front and center on the church’s small, but verdant, front lawn. The letters were big enough for Dee to read. Her heart sank when she saw they announced a memorial service for Michael Adam Baker.
The woman finished adding the letters and wiped her eyes with a ribbon dangling from her bonnet. The younger man gave her a comforting pat on the back, but Dee couldn’t help noticing the dark expression on his face didn’t match the gesture. He helped the woman to her feet. As she adjusted her starched white apron, she glanced toward the sidewalk. Dee froze. She recognized the churchwoman as the nasty clerk from Verity’s gift shop.
She and the woman briefly locked eyes. Dee unfroze and broke eye contact. “Come on, Nugs,” she said to the mutt, who was busy sniffing a questionable pile left by another animal. She tugged on his leash. “We have to go.”
“Miss! Oh, miss!”
The woman waved to Dee. Caught, Dee gave a weak wave back. “Howdy!” She gave Nugget’s leash another pull, but the dog stubbornly refused to move.
“Wait! Please.”
Trapped, Dee stood there, bracing for a Goldsgonedian tongue-lashing from another Baker acolyte. The woman lifted her skirt above her ankles, revealing an anachronistic pair of Skechers Go Walks. She made her way down the lawn’s slight hill to Dee.
“I owe you an apology,” she said, much to Dee’s surprise.
“I’m sorry I was so rude to you when you stopped by the gift shop where I work. I don’t know what got into me.”
“I do,” said her companion, who had followed her from the message board. “Verity Gillespie.” He said with with a sour expression. “The Wicked Witch of Goldsgone.”
Finally sensing an ally in the time warp of a town, Dee brightened. She glumly dismissed this as wishful thinking when the man introduced himself. “I’m Brian Oakhurst and this is my mom, Millie.”
Dee recognized the duo as Michael’s idolized English teacher and her son, friend to the late writer. “If you didn’t like me before, you’ll like me even less now.” Worn out by the morning of subterfuge, Dee went with total honesty for a change. “I know how much Michael meant to you. Everybody in town thinks either I didn’t do enough to save his life or I killed him myself. Same goes for my business partner at the Golden, Jeff. We didn’t. But until we can prove that, I’ve come to accept that everyone in Goldsgone is going to hate us.”
She waited for the Oakhursts to confirm this, adding their voices to the chorus of haters. Instead, Brian said, “I don’t think you or your partner friend killed Mike. But if either of you did, you probably had a good reason to.”
Millie clutched the high, ruffled neckline of her eyelet lace white blouse. “Brian Oakhurst, what a terrible thing to say. Poor Michael is gone. Show him respect and move on from whatever happened between you in the past.” She addressed Dee. “I apologize for my son. He hasn’t been the same since his friend died.”
“Former,” her son couldn’t keep himself from muttering.
His mother ignored him. “I’m sure Deputy Sheriff Aguilar will track down whoever did such a horrible thing to Michael. But in the meantime”—she shifted position, an uncomfortable expression on her face—“it’s probably best you don’t come to his memorial.”
“Understood,” Dee said, relieved beyond belief at the decent exchange between her and the Oakhursts. But missing the memorial meant missing out on an opportunity to scrutinize potential suspects all gathered in one place and suss out possible clues in their reactions and interactions.
She exchanged civil goodbyes with the duo. They returned to the church, and she finished the walk to her car, made leisurely by Nugget’s frequent greeting of other dogs and occasional sexual attraction to them. As the two strolled, Dee used her nascent director’s eye to analyze her conversation with mother and son Oakhurst. Regarding Michael’s murder, Dee noted Millie Oakhurst carefully framed her response in a way that didn’t absolve either Golden Motel proprietor of murder: “I’m sure Deputy Sheriff Aguilar will track down whoever did such a horrible thing to Michael” wasn’t a ringing endorsement of either Dee’s or Jeff’s innocence.
But two other snippets of the conversation struck Dee as more telling. Millie had excused her son’s behavior by saying he hadn’t “been the same since his friend died.” Brian couldn’t resist spewing out the qualifier “former,” as in a former friend. His mother insisted he needed to get over the past and move on.
Which begged the question: What happened in the past that Brian Oakhurst was so obviously unable to move on from?
CHAPTER 15
Upon returning to the Golden, Dee found Jeff at the kitchen counter in her apartment, intent on whatever he was doing on his computer. His eyes were shadowed, and his lightly freckled skin was paler than usual, if that was even possible.
Dee felt for her friend. “Hey,” she said softly.
Jeff started, which startled Dee. She yelped. Nugget barked his concern.
“Sorry,” Jeff and Dee said simultaneously. They acknowledged the moment with a shared rueful laugh.
Dee went behind the counter and removed a water bottle from the mini fridge, where they stashed them for guests. She then took a seat on the kitchen barstool next to Jeff.
“How did the interview go?”
Jeff grimaced. “Bad. O’Bryant was doing that thing I saw a lot on the cop shows I watched to prep for the interview. He tried to wear me down so I’d confess to killing Baker.”
“Didn’t the sheriff deflect any of that?”
“Aguilar? He wasn’t there.”
Dee mentally cursed the Goldsgone law enforcer for being a no-show and vowed to confront him on it.
