Page 160 of Summers at the Saint
“Just getting ready to cross the causeway. See you soon.”
She found Whelan and Felice in the kitchen, unloading the takeout cartons he’d brought. Felice was still dressed in the scrubs she’d been given at the hospital.
Whelan lifted the lid on one of the containers, handing it to Felice. “Shrimp fried rice?”
“Love it,” Felice said.
“From the Chinese place across the street from my apartment in the village,” Whelan said. “Not a ton of choices in this town that might suit a chef like yourself; we’ve got pizza, barbecue, Mexican, Chinese, and Southern fried.”
“I miss decent Chinese food,” Felice said. “We had our pick back in Miami.”
“I don’t know that you’d call this decent,” Whelan said. “More like sub-mediocre. But I brought some egg rolls, potstickers, some crab Rangoon, and beef and broccoli. Hopefully, something for everyone.”
Traci placed dishes, napkins, and cutlery on the table and they served themselves buffet style, with Felice awkwardly using a spoon to feed herself.
Afterward, Felice picked up a paper bag and spilled half a dozen fortune cookies onto the tabletop.
Whelan took one and opened it. He read it aloud: “Make yourself necessary to someone.Deep, huh?”
Felice handed her cookie to Traci. “Can you open that for me, please? These mitts aren’t good for much right now.”
Traci pulled the paper slip from the cookie and read. “Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the conquest of it.I’d say that’s pretty apt in the light of the last twenty-four hours.”
Whelan handed Traci a fortune cookie. “Let’s see what yours says.”
She opened the cracker, read it, blushed, and crumpled the paper in her fingertips.
“What’s it say?” Felice asked. “Come on now, we read ours.”
“It’s silly and meaningless,” Traci said, but before she could discard it, Whelan reached over and pried it from her fingertips.
“Fair is fair.” He cleared his throat and roared with laughter as he read Traci’s fortune out loud. “The one you love is closer than you think.”
“Oooh, Mrs. E,” Felice said, waggling her eyebrows. “Looks like you made a love connection. Wonder who that could be.”
Traci started to clear the dishes in an attempt to distract her dinner companions.
“What did the fire marshal say when you met with him?” Whelan asked.
“The fire marshal is a woman. Named Dahlia Diaz. The fire was started in the gas dryer. KJ and Garrett loaded it with towels, sprinkled it with kerosene, and then set the dryer on high, creating, essentially, a firebomb. Then they sprinkled more towels with kerosene and put them outside the girls’ bedrooms. Then Garrett put some kind of pick in the doorknobs to keep the girls locked in.”
“The fire marshal told you all that?” Whelan asked.
“No, she told me that it was arson. KJ Parkhurst told me the rest.”
“How did that come about?” Whelan asked, startled.
“That sheriff’s deputy, Shapley, called me. They apprehended KJ, hiding out in the carriage house behind his grandparents’ place here. He refused to give them a statement, said the only one he’d talk to was me. So I went to the jail this afternoon and met with him.”
“You believe anything that fool tells you?” Felice asked.
“He freely admitted most of what I just told you. He also copped to the thefts from the hotel, but of course, he said it was all Charlie’s idea, and that Garrett was the one who did the dirty work. KJ claimed the two of them blackmailed him into going along with everything by threatening to out him to his family.”
“Whose idea was it to kill Parrish?” Felice asked. “Satan?”
“KJ wouldn’t talk about Parrish’s murder. At all. Just kept saying it was a big mistake.”
“A mistake? What do you think he meant by that?” Whelan asked, leaning forward with his elbows on the table.
