Punch, Pastries, and Poison by Harper Lin (ebook reader for pc and android .txt) 📕

When I sat back down, I searched on my phone for the number for Todd’s Gym and tapped it.

“Todd’s Gym, this is Karli! How may I help you?” Karli sing-songed into the phone.

“Hi, Karli, this is Fran Amaro from Antonia’s. How are you?”

“Oh.” Her voice lost its professional cheeriness immediately. “What do you want?”

“Um, I, um—” I hadn’t really made a plan for the call, thinking I’d just engage in some friendly chitchat until I could direct the call the way I wanted, but Karli’s coldness threw me off. “I just wanted—”

“Oh my God,” she muttered, her annoyance clear in her voice.

I’d had enough of her. It wasn’t worth trying. “Could I speak to Todd, please?”

“Does your boyfriend know how much you like to talk to Todd?”

Before I could formulate a response, I heard hold music. At least she hadn’t hung up on me.

“This is Todd.”

I stammered out a greeting and asked him how he was.

“Better than I was, that’s for sure,” he said, chuckling. “Whatever was in the punch was brutal! How about you? I heard about what happened to that girl who worked for you—what was her name? Emmy? Are you holding up okay?”

My stomach twisted in a knot. “I’m—I’m okay. It’s a lot to deal with. It’s—”

“Hang on a second, Fran.”

There was a clatter that sounded like Todd putting the phone down on his desk.

“What’s up, Kar?” I heard him say. There was a pause and then a sigh. “You know I don’t like you doing that.” Another pause. “I know, I know.” Whoever he was talking to was far enough from the phone that I couldn’t hear what they were saying, only Todd’s responses. “No, I know. Look, I just wish you wouldn’t, okay?” A sharp exhale. “Okay, fine, just try not to be gone too long, okay? Yeah, I’ll cover the desk as soon as I’m done talking to Fran.” After another heavy sigh, his voice came back louder on the line. “Sorry about that, Fran, where were we?”

“Everything okay?” I asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, just—” He groaned. “Between you and me, Karli started vaping, and I hate it. It’s a bad look for the gym to have her standing outside, sucking on a vape pen. Not to mention it’s terrible for her. But her excuse is always that she’s a grown woman and can do what she wants. How can I argue with that?”

I could think of a few things, but I wasn’t sure any of them were in line with what Todd was thinking. Instead, I said what I was thinking. “Todd, are you and Karli seeing each other again?”

There was a long pause, during which I was sure I had offended him. Then, finally, “Don’t tell her parents.”

That sounded like something that would come out of the mouth of a sixteen-year-old rather than a thirty-six-year-old. Of course, sixteen was far closer to Karli’s age than thirty-six.

“Why on earth would I tell them?” I asked.

“I dunno,” Todd mumbled, again sounding more like a high-schooler than a successful businessman. “They’d just be furious if they found out.”

“I won’t breathe a word,” I said.

I gave him a few more assurances and then managed to get off the phone. I wasn’t sure what I had been trying to achieve with these phone calls—a spontaneous confession, maybe?—but so far I’d been chattered at by an elderly woman and then depressed by a middle-aged man. I still had a few names on my list, but I wasn’t sure if it was worth hoping that those calls would go any better than the ones I’d already made.

Common sense (in other words, Matt and Mike) would probably tell me to give up, but common sense was something I was lacking in, so I used my phone to do an internet search for lawyers in Barnstable named Paul. Unfortunately, a name and a job weren’t much to go on, especially when I wouldn’t have recognized him in a picture. I gave up after about ten minutes.

I looked at the rest of my list and decided to call Melissa. She was fun and pleasant. A call to her would, if nothing else, boost my flagging spirits. Unfortunately, when she answered, the first words out of her mouth were that she was headed into her obstetrician’s office. I let her go and continued down my list.

As I made my way through it, I refined my explanation for calling. I wanted to check in, see how they were feeling, thank them for coming to the party. Everyone was warm and pleasant, and to my chagrin, no one spontaneously confessed.

I was down to one name. Dean Howard. I’d been putting off calling him because of how unpleasant our last interaction had been when I bumped into him at the café and almost spilled his coffee on him. I pulled up his number, took a deep breath, and tapped the green button.

“Howard!” he barked through the phone.

I put a smile on my face. “Hi, Dean, this is Fran Amaro, I just wanted to call and—”

“And what? Ask if I had gotten over the nasty case of food poisoning you gave me yet? Yes, I have. No thanks to you, of course.”

I would have preferred to have all these conversations in person, but I was glad Dean couldn’t see my face now. I had a feeling my smile had turned into a snarl. “I know, I’m so sorry about that—”

“And now the place is shut down again because someone died. Is that right?” Dean had always been a little rough around the edges, but now he was being surprisingly abrasive.

“Well, yes, but—”

“You know, maybe it’s a good thing your little café is shut down. It seems like it’s a dangerous place to be right now.”

My mouth dropped open. I was stunned speechless.

“So, if you’re not calling with an apology for all my lost time, I’m gonna go. I have more important things to do than chitchat with you.”

He hung up before I could splutter that I’d just apologized. And