Coconuts and Crooks Page 2

  The man didn’t respond. The three of us walked closer. It was odd to see that the villain in Mom’s stories was just a thin old man sleeping at his desk in the afternoon.

  “Hernandez!” Mom said. And that’s when I noticed the gun on the floor and the blood.

  Normally I find the dead bodies by myself, but this time both Mom and Wenling were with me—just in time for us all to be suspects in his murder. I wondered how being a suspect in a murder worked when you were in a foreign country. I knew it couldn’t be good.

  Looking back, there were a lot of things that we could have done to make us look less guilty. And speaking of looking back, you know that part in the movie where they flash back to earlier? We’re doing that now. Cue the fluttery harps and fade to...

  2

  Goodbyes and Gladiators

  About two days earlier—with the time change and the dateline thing, it’s hard to be exact

  “Admit it. You liked the movie,” I said to DC as we left the movie theater.

  Detective DC Cooper and I had met about a year ago, and we’d gone on about a dozen dates in the last few months. I couldn’t get over how handsome he was. It was a classic, old-school handsome—salt and pepper hair, square jaw, cleft chin. It suited him.

  “It was fun. I’m not big on these movies where everybody’s flying around.” He threw the empty bucket of popcorn that we’d shared into the trash.

  “We can’t see depressing documentaries every week,” I said.

  “Movies about World War II aren’t depressing. It’s history. It’s what really happened.”

  “That’s what makes them so sad.” I noticed DC was giving me a look that was either doubt or disappointment. It struck me that it may be a better idea to say something positive. “They’re educational though,” I said, grasping. “The one about the artist was good, but...”—my mind turned to one of the more gut-wrenching parts of the film—“when she starts to allude to the family members that didn’t survive the war…” I stopped myself. My voice did that thing it does where it quivers a little and gets kind of low. Not the sexy low, more like I’m-coming-close-to-breaking-into-tears low.

  “You’re not really a glass half-full kind of person.”

  “Who’s an optimist about genocide?” I said and instantly regretted it.

  “Fair enough,” he said.

  I swore at myself in my mind for bringing up such a dark subject on our last date together. Well, I hoped it wouldn’t be our last date. I wanted it to be our last date for the time being, but an air of finality seemed to hang around us. My heart still hoped the evening would take a more romantic turn. Even if we didn’t seal the deal on our relationship, I wanted to at the very least have something to remember DC Cooper by.

  Please don’t think I’m some kind of floozy. I’d been divorced for a year, and let’s just say the last couple of years of my marriage were nun-like if you subtracted the peace and goodness.

  DC and I walked to his truck in silence. I wondered if he was thinking about my flight tomorrow as well. We’d planned to spend more time together, but he’d been called away for work and there were so many last-minute details to take care of for my trip with Mom.

  This trip meant a lot to Mom, and I wanted to be by her side and support her. I just didn’t think it would be this hard to leave DC. Sure, we’d only been dating for four months, but it all felt like this relationship might turn into something more serious. He’d had reservations about us getting together. He thought that this would just be a rebound relationship for me.

  I’d half hoped, half assumed that DC was my boyfriend, but we never really had the official conversation. Now that I was going away for an indeterminate amount of time, it seemed like this was an even worse time for us to have that talk. But a part of me wanted to know if he would see anyone else while I was gone. I didn’t want him to, but was that fair?

  “You’re awfully quiet over there,” he said to me as we reached the truck and he opened the door for me.

  “You’re pretty quiet yourself,” I said as I slid into my seat.

  He shut the door and went around the front of the truck to get in on the driver’s side.

  When he got in, I wanted to say something fun and happy. Except I didn’t feel that way. I felt sad, confused, and desperate. Whatever this was between DC and me felt like it could become something, but now that I was leaving, I worried that something might turn into nothing.

  “Did you want to get a slice of pie?” he asked. “Or do you have some more packing to do?”

  “Pie sounds great.” I did have more packing to do, but I didn’t want the night to end.

  “I think Norm’s is close to here. Is that all right with you?” he asked.

  I nodded as he pulled out of the parking lot and headed for the diner. Fletcher Canyon doesn’t have a movie theater. Our little mountainside town on the outskirts of Los Angeles was way too small. So DC and I had gone to a neighboring city. It was nice to get away for a while and not have everyone in town looking at us while we were on a date.

  “I’m going to miss you,” I blurted out.

  “You said that,” he said.

  My brain played back the reel of me saying that at least four times today. What was missing from the playback was DC saying that he’d miss me, too.

  “You sure you don’t want to get Skype or Facebook?” I asked. “We can talk while I’m gone, and it’s free. Even video chat.”

  “I’m not into that kind of stuff,” DC said, keeping his eye on the road.

  His jaw was clenched, and his forehead wrinkled. We hadn’t been dating each other long enough for me to decipher his facial expressions. As best as I could figure, sometimes he looked happy and every other expression, like this one, seemed like different shades of anger.

  I was sick of this argument. It was sort of like he didn’t want to keep in touch with me at all.

  “Will I even see you when I get back?” I asked.

  “Fletcher Canyon is a small town,” DC answered. “You won’t be able to not see me.”

  He’d been giving me these types of non-answers for weeks. “What is that supposed to mean?” I asked. “Are we still going to be together when I get back?”

  “When are you even going to come back?” he asked.

  “I told you. When we solve the case,” I said, immediately regretting using the word “case.”

  “Case,” he said, shaking his head back and forth and clenching the steering wheel. “I’d expect that kind of talk from your Mom, but you should know better than to encourage her like that. The police said it was an accident.”

  I didn’t want to have this argument again. “Mom says it wasn’t an accident, and you know darn well Mom’s right an awful lot. But I don’t want to have this discussion. I want to talk about us.”

  “So now you’re thinking about us,” DC said. “It’s nice to know that happens from time to time.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “You just up and decide to leave the country on some sort of mission the second you get a good little bit of money together. The whole idea to go was your idea. Jo told me.”

  I hadn’t realized Mom had told DC that. It had sort of been my idea, but only because it had been Mom’s dream. She’d waited ten years.

  DC turned onto Sherman Way. I knew we were only a few minutes from Norm’s. A part of me wondered if he still wanted to even eat pie. He seemed so mad. The day spent grooming for the possibility of ending up at DC’s place seemed like a real waste of time right about now. I should’ve been packing. How could I explain to him why I wanted to leave the country with Mom and why it had to be now?

  “Mom never asks for anything, DC,” I said. “Not for Christmas, Mother’s Day, none of it. She always said stuff like ‘whatever you get me is fine.’ Or ‘save your money.’

  “When she noticed that money was coming in from all the publicity we’d gotten on the news, she asked, DC. She asked me if she ever sa
ved enough, would I come to help her.” I couldn’t even look at him. I stared out my window, not even focusing on anything. “And then I opened up the mail and got that check, and I realized for the first time in my life I could do something for her. She’s been there for me, and I—” I couldn’t finish. It didn’t matter if he understood. I understood.

  He pulled into the parking lot of the diner and shut off the truck. I was afraid to even look over at him. This night wasn’t anything like I’d hoped for. “You’re a good daughter,” he said.

  “But a bad girlfriend,” I heard myself say. And then I immediately regretted using the word girlfriend and turned to see DC’s eyebrows shoot up.

  “Girlfriend?”

  “Or whatever I am,” I said.

  “Girlfriend,” DC said, nodding his head. “So you haven’t been seeing anyone else.”

  “Fletcher Canyon is a small town. You’d know if I’ve been seeing anyone else, but you don’t live in Fletcher Canyon. I have no idea what you’ve been up to,” I said.

  DC smiled, but he didn’t answer the implied question.

  “DC Cooper, have you been seeing anyone else?” I asked.

  “Why would I be crazy enough to see anyone but you?” he asked, and then leaned across the bench seat of his old truck and kissed me.

  It’s an interesting thing about men: they know that if they kiss you they’ll scramble your brain enough to not really ask any questions. But as we were walking into the restaurant to get pie, it struck me that he hadn’t specifically said that he wasn’t seeing anyone else. I learned from my shady ex-husband that questions not answered directly aren’t reliable.

  “To be clear,” I said. “You have not been seeing anyone else, yes or no.”

  “You know, your talents are lost on this amateur detective/catering thing. You should’ve been a lawyer,” DC Cooper said.

  DC and I slid into the orange booth across from one another.

  “What kind of pie are you going to get?”

  “I think I might go with the classic apple pie ala mode,” I said.

  “Good choice.”

  The waitress came and DC ordered apple pies for us both.

  I laughed, but after we sat down and ordered pie, I realized he still hadn’t answered my question.

  The conversation was finally rolling again, and we talked about everything but the fact that I was leaving the next day. He still hadn’t said he missed me, and I wasn’t sure if I was the only girl he was seeing. But I didn’t dare ask a third time, because I thought it would make me look insecure. And he really did imply that he wasn’t seeing anyone else, right?

  DC leaned back after he finished his pie, his right arm on the back of the booth in that casual yet masculine way. I couldn’t help but stare at how handsome he was. DC noticed I was looking at him, and he winked at me.

  “Do you have to be up early in the morning?” he asked.

  “No, we don’t leave until the late afternoon,” I answered, my heart jumping into my throat. Could this mean what I think it might mean?

  DC smiled at me. The waitress came and asked if we wanted refills. I did what I almost never do. I declined a free refill on my diet soda. DC didn’t ask for a top up on his coffee. The suspense was killing me.

  “I got a new fish tank,” DC said.

  “That’s nice. I didn’t know you were into fish,” I said, not understanding why we were suddenly talking odd hobbies.

  “I thought I might like the company while you’re gone,” he said. He stared at the table. “A cat or dog wouldn’t work for me with the job. It’s not fair to leave an animal for a long time. They need to be fed. “

  “Don’t you have to feed fish, too?” I asked.

  “The guy at the store says they’ll be mostly okay,” DC said. “Although I don’t know exactly how long they can go in between feedings.” DC’s forehead furrowed, and I regretted bringing up the possible death of his fish. He looked kind of upset at the idea.

  “Do you want to check out my aquarium?” he asked.

  Oh! That’s why we were talking about fish! “Yeah, I love aquariums,” I lied as I downed the rest of my soda and gobbled the last bit of my pie.

  Within minutes we were out of the restaurant and standing beside his truck.

  DC unlocked the door and opened it for me. I turned to look up at him. He looked down at me, and my knees actually felt a bit weak. I thought for sure he was going to kiss me, but instead he leaned closer and just looked at me.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said. And he said it in just the right tone that in that moment, I felt beautiful. Those moments are rare.

  Then he kissed me.

  DC Cooper had that masculine manly kiss thing down. His hand swooped down to the lower part of my back and pulled me just close enough to feel held but not too tight to feel trapped. It was both romantic and gentlemanly, with a lot of sexy thrown in.

  The kiss lasted almost forever, and I would’ve been fine if it never ended.

  But when it did, he nodded for me to get in the truck. I climbed in, and he shut my door. There was a big bounce of the step as he walked over to the driver’s seat.

  Fish tank here we come!

  DC slid into the driver’s seat and of course, his phone rang.

  “I hope this is urgent,” DC said, putting his cell phone to his ear. He shook his head as he listened. It was heartening that he was as disappointed as I was, but my heart was breaking. It was our last night together. I wanted to be able to say goodbye. He ended the call and looked over to me. “Christy, I’m sorry.”

  “Should I use my app to get a ride?” I asked.

  “I can drop you off,” he said.

  He gave me a quick kiss, but I could see he was already in work mode. I pretended I wasn’t too upset.

  DC didn’t have time to walk me to the door, which was just as well. I knew I’d need to hide my disappointment about the early ending of our date to Mom. She’d been worried that the trip would interfere with our relationship. I’d convinced Mom to let me help pay for this trip and help her go. I’d pledged to not let the possibility of new relationships interfere with the relationship I’d been building with Mom as adults.

  I’d already turned away from the closeness I’d had with my family when I embarked on my unsuccessful marriage. I wouldn’t make that mistake again. If things were meant to be with me and DC, some time away wouldn’t change that. Heck, maybe there was a chance he’d miss me so much, things would be even better than when I’d been there.

  “You’re home early,” Mom said. She was sitting on the white couch in the living room playing with her new cell phone.

  “I wanted to make sure everything is ready for the trip,” I lied. “What are you doing on your new phone? Getting organized?” I wanted to distract Mom from asking me too many questions. She was too good at sussing out lies.

  “I downloaded the Facebook and Instagram apps to keep in touch with all of our fans,” Mom said.

  She called our customers fans. In a way, they were. Most of our new clients had heard of us through the news. We’d been written about in our local paper after we solved our third case, which in turn brought about an interview on our local news after we solved our fourth case. Word spread fast across the internet about our amateur sleuthing, and our website for Mom and Christy’s Catering began to get a lot of traffic.

  Mom had me write up our cases and post them on our website. We changed the names and a few details for privacy reasons and called the fictionalized accounts “based on real-life events.” And we sent cakes mail-order throughout the country, the most popular being Mom’s mango cake, which was the title, but I named our first case. Mango Cake and Murder.

  People seemed to like the way but I wrote about our cases, and I sort of really felt like that lady in Murder, She Wrote, but hopefully perceived to be slightly younger.

  We also hosted murder mystery parties, and Wenling had taken two different people on tours of Fletcher Canyon showing them
where we hung out to solve our cases, and the places where some of the dead bodies had been found. It all sounds kind of macabre, but actually it was pretty fun.

  “So are people on our page excited about the case?” I asked Mom.

  “Everyone says it’s like in the movies,” Mom said. “This time it’s personal.”

  I tried not to think too much about this case being an investigation into a death in the family. I’d never met my Aunt Lalaine so it was easier for me to pretend it was just another case. Mom seemed to being doing a good job approaching this like any other case, but it couldn’t be easy for her.

  “Do you want to go over the case, or did you need more time to pack?” Mom asked me. Did everyone know that I’d waited to the last minute to pack?

  “Let’s go over the case,” I said, leaving out any mention about needing to pack. I’d been waiting for her to brief me on the case, but we’d been so busy getting ready for the trip.

  “I’ll get my file,” Mom said, setting down her phone and rushing off to her room.

  I thought she was going to bring the briefcase that she had brought from the Philippines a long time ago, but I discovered it in the closet of the guest room. Mom appeared with a slim folder.

  “I compiled the dossier on each of our suspects,” Mom started as she sat down next to me on the couch. She opened up the file and handed me the first piece of paper with the name “Judge Hernandez” written at the top. “This is the judge that my sister said she found out something about, just before she died,” Mom explained. “He’s the one that we think Kim Lim—

  “Wait, who’s Kim Lim?” I asked.

  “He’s the landowner. His real first name is Alejandro, but everyone calls him Kim.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “He’s the one who owns the land that Lalaine and I should have our shares in. He bought it from our brothers and sisters, and Auntie Chooney,” Mom said.

  Mom had explained to me that when her parents died, the land that was in the family was left to her and her twelve brothers and sisters. Her brothers had lived on their portion of the land, but had wanted to sell it. The thing is that in the Philippines if the land isn’t parceled, all the heirs to a property have to sell their shares. Mom had already left for the United States. The brothers and sisters sold their shares and were told that Mom had agreed to sell hers. Except Mom hadn’t agreed. The owner had just assumed Mom wouldn’t ever come back from the United States.