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“I’ve read that you need some body fat, Laura. Don’t restrict yourself.”
“I won’t. I’m trying not to. If you could have seen the meal we ate last night—prime rib, lobster, shrimp cocktail. I felt like a pig.”
“You didn’t have pork, though,” Lisa replied, and they roared laughing. “So, what did you want to talk to me about?”
Laura handed her a mug of coffee and a paper napkin. “I wanted to hear what Alan had to say.”
“Oh, that. He asked me the standard questions.”
Even though she’d expected Alan Stone, seeing him at her doorstep had sped up Lisa’s blood pressure. She had no idea why he’d want to talk to her because she’d never been seen in public with Lily, and as far as she knew, Lily had never divulged to anyone that she was seeing Lisa romantically. But Alan didn’t beat around the bush.
“The only reason I’m talking to you is to find out if Lily ever confronted you about your relationship with Ryan.”
“She did,” Lisa decided to admit, just in case there was an email lingering with the accusation. “She accused us of incest, and I begged her to let it be. Then she showed up at our house and pushed her way in, nosing around. But that was it.”
“What excuse did she give you, coming to the house like that?”
“She didn’t really give one, come to think of it. We knew she was curious about us; that was obvious. But she flirted with Ryan and generally tried to make us as uncomfortable as she could.”
Hearing this, Alan cringed, and Lisa didn’t miss it. Did Alan have something to hide?
“I promise you, I didn’t murder her,” she said. “I wouldn’t even know how to do it if I wanted to.”
He rose and turned to the door. “Thank you for seeing me. If you can think of anything that would help with the murder investigation, please call me.”
He handed her his card, which was unnecessary, but she took it. “I’ll call you if I think of anything, for sure.”
Watching Alan leave, Lisa didn’t feel guilty that she’d effectively thrown Lily under the bus. A silent witness, Lily could no longer hurt Ryan with what she knew.
Chapter 6
After spending the summer together, Shelly and Alan had taken a fall trip to Martha’s Vineyard, where he’d proposed and given her a diamond ring. Dr. and Mrs. Markham were overjoyed, their only daughter, finally getting married.
“Are you going to be okay with a party?” she asked Alan, after discovering he was not antisocial, he was pathologically asocial.
“I’m okay with anything your parents need to do for their daughter. I’ll look like a jackass standing in the corner, but as long as they’re happy, I can suffer through it.”
The engagement party was held at a lavish venue, with photos in the SundayNYTshowing Alan on his best behavior, smitten with his fiancée. In every picture, he looked at her with adoration.
The Sunday paper was on a table at the café when Lily came to work Monday morning. She saw it and felt it had purposely been left there, opened to the engagement page, for her. But no one knew; they couldn’t know. She’d been more secretive with Alan than she had with Lisa. Unless Hocus, the palm reader, suspected and had left it there for Lily to find.
Back in the kitchen, she read the article with shaking hands. She closed her eyes, the tears coming hard and fast. She’d never felt such a deep sense of betrayal, even knowing from the beginning that he wasn’t going to leave Shelly for her.
Staying at work and baking would be the best thing for her. If she left now, there would be no telling what she was capable of. All she could think of was the first time Alan had come into the coffee shop. He was so handsome. She’d waited on him, but he hadn’t even noticed her.
Then the next time he came in, she’d found the courage to engage him.
“You’re a detective, right?” she’d asked. He finally made eye contact with her. She stuck her chest out and smiled. “I have an issue I need to talk to someone about. You might know my former boyfriend, Dan Chua?”
“I know Dan,” he said. “So, you’re Lily, right?”
“Right. Do you have time to talk? I can take a break if you do.”
Alan didn’t even try to hide his interest, staring at her breasts the entire time she spoke to him, bits and pieces of information Dan had shared about Lily surfacing, including that she was a freak. Nothing was forbidden in her repertoire of sexual acts.
“Well, do you have time?” she asked, waiting.
He had forgotten where he was for a minute, remembering one piece of gossip Dan had shared about Lily that made Alan’s balls ache in the middle of the village coffee shop. Lily liked girls. At forty-two, Alan was still at the adolescent stage of sexual awareness, where voyeurism ranked high, and fantasizing about Shelly having sex with a woman was a big turn-on.
