The Game Changer, стр. 62
I shook my head. “Not anymore. Any chance this was coincidence?”
He shrugged one shoulder while he re-wound a section of tape that he’d just finished winding only for it to get caught in the wind again. “Awfully big coincidence, don’t you think?”
“You think someone was just trying to shut her up?”
He lowered the tape and stared at the spot where Evangeline had just been lying. “If so, it may have worked.”
The Hibiscus was known for a lot of things, and one of them was their hot chocolate, which was thick and chocolaty and piping hot and dolloped with a huge mound of homemade marshmallow cream. Cold after leaving Evangeline’s street, it was all I could think about.
I shivered my way back into town and stopped in for a cup, noting nervously but gratefully that Daisy’s van was parked in the lot. We needed to talk.
She was pulling Brant out of the muffin case when I walked in. “I’ve told you a thousand times, mister. Stay out of Mommy’s muffins.” Brant was putting up a pretty good fight, clinging to the edges of the case with both hands and feet. He saw me and smiled and pounded on the glass with the flat of his hand. Daisy grunted and yanked.
“Hollis!” Esther crowed when she saw me come in. Her apron was extra fluffy today, pastel floral with a wide ribbon of lavender lace edging it. It looked home-sewn—the kind of apron that family would keep in kitchen drawers for generations to come.
Daisy’s head snapped up, giving Brant just enough time to renew his grip. He burrowed back into the case and grabbed a muffin. Immediately, he crammed it into his mouth. Daisy gave a frustrated groan and went back in after him.
“Sit, sit!” Esther patted the counter at the stool where I usually sat. “You look chilled to the bone. You should be wearing a jacket, young lady. Coffee or hot chocolate?”
“Hot chocolate, extra marshmallow, please.” I would worry about the consequences to my waistline later. “Are those pumpkin muffins?”
Daisy turned her attention to me again. “I was burnt out on lemon,” she said.
“So is pumpkin going to be the new theme? Because I love a good pumpkin bar with cream cheese icing.”
Daisy started to answer, but a muffin sailed through the air and hit a man in a nearby booth, then landed in his soup. “Hey!” the man said.
“Brant!” Daisy yelled, and went back to her wrestling match.
I still wasn’t sure where we stood.
Esther brought me a cup of hot chocolate, then reached around Daisy and snuck out a muffin. She placed a paper doily on a plate, balanced the muffin on top of it, and slid it over to me. “So what’s new with the podcast?” she asked, but stepped away from the counter before I could answer. Obviously, Daisy had been filling her in on what was new with the podcast, and Esther, unable to stand the thought of two friends fighting, was trying to bridge the conversation toward working out differences. I was grateful for that.
I took a sip of my hot chocolate. I could feel the warmth slide its way all the way down into my belly. I licked the marshmallow off of my top lip. “Perfect, as usual, Esther.” I began the process of pulling the paper off the muffin and splitting it in half so I could smear a pat of butter on it.
“I’m glad you enjoy it, honey. Just wait until you try the muffin. Sublime.” She gave a worried twitch toward Daisy, then scurried to the other end of the restaurant.
“You’re the one on that show,” said a voice behind me.
I turned to three men who were sitting at a nearby table. “I’m sorry?”
One of them stabbed a huge forkful of waffle into his mouth. “That murder girl. You’re her.”
Well, at least if Daisy left the podcast for good, I had a new name for it: That Murder Girl. I sipped my chocolate again and smiled. “Yep, that’s me! The Knock ‘Em Dead podcast. Thanks for listening.”
“That whole coach thing,” he said, bouncing his knife in the air. “That’s a heck of a story. It’s got everybody listening. Everywhere I go, someone’s talking about it.”
“What coach thing?” one of his friends asked, and the man launched into the story of Coach Farley’s death, throwing out Paulie’s name, even though I hadn’t. I felt sick. Oh, boy. Just because I’d talked about the hit-and-run, people had started suspecting Paulie because they thought he was a troublemaker. And he was—no doubt about it—but troublemaker was a far cry from murderer. It hadn’t been my intent to drag his name through the mud, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t been dragged just the same. I had some damage to undo.
I turned back to the counter and took a nibble of the muffin. My eyes rolled back in my head. No matter what else happened, I could not let Daisy quit the show.
More than that, I couldn’t let her quit me.
“You really think that kid did it?” the man asked.
I swiveled again. “No,” I said. “I’m sure now that he didn’t.”
He licked his knife. “So you got a new suspect?”
“I’ll record new details tonight,” I said. “You should listen. There are some big developments.”
His face clouded over. “You’re not even gonna give us a hint?”
I shook my head, mostly because I hadn’t thought yet what I was going to say. Which reminded me…
I leaned to one side, pulled the crumpled paper from the scene of Evangeline’s hit-and-run out of my pocket, and pressed it flat on the counter, smoothing out the edges. It was a receipt. Nothing terribly exciting about it. It was faded, but looked like a pretty standard restaurant receipt. I had a dozen just like it in my purse. All it proved was that Evangeline bought herself some dinner at some point.
Except…
I leaned in further, my heart speeding up in my chest. “Holy…”
Daisy, who had won the muffin case