“It’s like you said before.” I glanced over at her for a moment. “Leila’s accident, Erin believing Mac had something to do with that and then doing a complete one-eighty. Her showing up here saying she needed to talk to him and then a few hours later she’s dead.” I blew my bangs off my face. “C’mon, even a bad movie of the week couldn’t get away with that many coincidences.” I couldn’t keep the frustration out of my voice.
“So we go over everything again,” Rose said. “And again if we have to. Maybe we missed something, something so small that we didn’t realize its significance. We’ll figure it out.”
I nodded, but I kept my eyes on the road. I had an idea about what that something small might be.
We stopped for lunch at a little diner about halfway between the salt works and North Harbor. Liz gave me directions and I could tell she was getting a kick out of telling me where to go.
“This place better be good,” I said as we got out of the SUV.
“Would I steer you wrong, child?” she asked.
“You steered us down a one-way street,” Rose said from in front of us.
“And we were only going one way so I don’t see the problem,” Liz replied.
Rose looked over her shoulder and sent a withering look Liz’s way.
Liz linked her arms through mine. “We’ll have lunch. We’ll regroup and we will figure this out,” she said, her voice low. “We’re not going to leave this cloud over Mac’s head. That’s a promise.”
The restaurant she had steered us to was a tiny building with a back patio overlooking the water. A young woman wearing denim shorts and a Red Sox T-shirt greeted us at the door. She leaned around Rose and her smile got wider when she saw Liz. “Hello, Mrs. French,” she said.
“Hello, Kelsey,” Liz said. “Could we have a table outside, please?”
The young woman nodded. Her blond hair was piled on top of her head in a loose knot that bobbed when she moved. She led us through a screen door to the wooden deck and took us to a table near the railing, where we could look out at the water but still be sheltered by a trellis entwined with purple clematis. “Your favorite table,” she said.
“Thank you.” Liz gave her a warm smile.
“Iced tea?”
Liz nodded and held up three fingers.
“I’ll be right back.”
“I’m not sure I wanted iced tea,” Rose said.
“Iced tea, lemonade, water. Those are your choices.” Liz ticked them off on the fingers she was still holding up.
“We don’t have menus,” Rose continued.
Liz leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. “There are no menus. Your choices are fried clams, fish and chips or lobster roll. We’re having lobster rolls.” She opened her eyes.
“That’s fine,” Rose said. Her chin had come up a little. “I was just asking.”
Liz closed her eyes again and Rose rolled hers at me.
“I saw that,” Liz said.
“Well, now, it would have been pointless for me to do it if you hadn’t seen it, now, wouldn’t it?” Rose said. She tipped her face up to the sky like a sunflower.
“You know her,” I said, pointing toward the building.
Liz nodded. “She’s studying business. She won the Jack French scholarship.” Jack French was Liz’s second husband.
Kelsey came back with three tall glasses of iced tea that I knew from the first sip hadn’t been made from powder in a can.
“This is lovely,” Rose exclaimed.
Kelsey smiled at her. “Thank you. It’s Mrs. French’s favorite.”
The lobster rolls came about five minutes later with roasted corn salad and kettle chips and I actually moaned as I took the first bite—and the second and the third.
“Why didn’t I know about this place?” I finally asked Liz when there was one lone potato chip and a few stray kernels of corn left on my plate. I couldn’t remember ever having a lobster roll that tasted so good and I’ve been eating them every summer since I was a kid.
“That’s a very good question,” Rose said, adjusting her glasses on her nose, the lenses darkened because of the sun.
“I have to have a few secrets,” Liz said. Her gaze didn’t quite meet mine so I knew she was hedging for a reason.
Kelsey came back then, smiling as she collected our plates.
“How were the lobster rolls?” she asked. The smile on her face told me she knew the answer.
“Absolutely delicious,” Rose said.
The young woman’s smile got a bit wider. “You’ll have to come back and try our clams.” She looked at Liz. “You and your friend are coming back for one more feed before I head back to class, right?”
Rose and I exchanged a look.
“When do your classes start?” Liz asked.
Kelsey named a date less than three weeks away. They talked for a minute about what courses she was taking and then she said, “I’ll get your check.”
“Who’s your friend?” I asked, putting a little extra emphasis on the word “friend.”
“I already told you Kelsey won Jack’s scholarship,” Liz said. “Were you not listening?”
“Yes, we heard that,” Rose said, lacing her fingers and resting her hands on the table. “We mean the friend you had clams and chips with.”
“Nobody said I had clams and chips with anyone,” Liz said. “Kelsey asked if we were coming for clams and chips before the prime season is over.”
I folded my own hands, tenting my index fingers like a church steeple and leaning my chin lightly against them. “No. Not we, meaning us. She asked if you and your friend were coming. Friend. Singular. Kelsey strikes me as a very smart young woman. I’m sure she can count.” I raised an eyebrow. “Who is it?”
“None of your damn business,” Liz said.
Rose and I just looked at her without speaking. I knew it would drive her crazy.
“Channing Caulfield,” she snapped. “Are you happy?”
Rose and I tipped our heads together. “Ooo,” we cooed like a pair of giggly teenagers.
“It was foundation business,” Liz said. “There were documents I wanted him to look at.” Her gaze darted to me for a moment and it occurred to me that those documents probably had something to do with Michelle’s father.
Rose and I continued to smile at her. She leaned back in her chair again and crossed her arms over her chest. “This is exactly why I didn’t tell you,” she said. “There is nothing going on between Channing and me.”
I believed her, but I knew the former bank manager had carried a torch for Liz for a long time. He’d helped on a couple of the Angels’ recent cases and I suspected no matter how much she protested, Liz liked him a little more than she was admitting.
I straightened up and reached for the last of my iced tea. “You wouldn’t tell us if there were,” I said.
“No, I would not,” she agreed. “I don’t need my business discussed all over town.”
“So how come you’re allowed to meddle in my love life?”
Liz made a snort of contempt. “You don’t have a love life.”
“We don’t meddle,” Rose said. She actually looked aghast at the suggestion that they did. “We simply give you the benefit of our experience from time to time.”
“Well, Liz always says a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle,” I said.
“No one is disputing that, dear,” Rose said. “It’s just that sometimes you get tired of swimming around by yourself and when that happens it’s nice to have a bicycle.”
Across the table Liz gave me a triumphant smile. The topic had been successfully changed from her private life to mine and I had no clue how to answer Rose’s comment.
I glared at her and resisted the urge to stick out my tongue. “We should get back on the road,” I said.
“Do you have plans tonight?” Rose asked. She held up her hands. “I’m not meddling. I’m just asking. It is Saturday night.”
“I have plans to get back to the shop,” I said. I reached for the check but Liz beat me to it. She had surprisingly fast reflexes.