Page 11 of The Beachside Cafe 6
“You shouldn’t make fun of your mother,” Jaymee teased. “Now you are making me a victim.”
They all laughed louder this time.
“Do you think Amanda is going to get life for the murder, Mom?” Cheyenne asked, reaching out to pour herself more wine.
“Well, capital punishment is legal here in California. So they might give her that.”
“I doubt it,” Cameron said, shaking his head and shifting in his seat. They all looked at him.
“What makes you say that?” Jaymee asked, curiously.
Cameron cleared his throat. “Well, to begin with she was Doug’s victim. It wasn’t really self-defense but that’s probably how she’s going to try to portray it. He was blackmailing her, after all. Her secrets would have been exposed and she was driven to think her only way out, the only way out for her and the rest of them, was to kill him.”
Jaymee pulled her eyebrows together. “It sounds like you think she isn’t guilty of Murder One.”
“I don’t know if the courts will decide that. I don’t know all the facts of the case. As much as I’ve kept in touch with the detectives, I don’t know all the evidence they have. I only know what evidence we came up with. Does that make sense? After getting Carmine down, if it was up to me, she would get death. I just don’t think they will give that to her. I think it’s more likely it will be life.”
“I have to agree with that,” Alex said, taking a similar stance to Cheyenne with his arms folded on the table in front of him. “Especially because women are more emotional than men and the truly evil ones, like our dear Amanda, are more psychopathic than men who are being blackmailed. Look what happened to Carmine. You didn’t see him finding a way to kill Doug. He didn’t even try to get back at him.”
“Amanda isn’t-”
Jaymee’s words were cut off by the sound of her phone vibrating violently on the table next to her plate.
“Mom, I thought no phones allowed at the table.”
Jaymee grinned at her daughter. “That was when you were a baby. Now I have a business to run and I don’t like to be out of the loop if I’m needed.” She looked down at her phone. “And it’s Russo. Just a text. That’s why I keep it on vibrate, though.”
She tapped the buttons on her screen until his message came up. It was without punctuation and was only two sentences.
Trouble at the café. Come immediately.
Jaymee shot to her feet, knocking her chair backwards.
“What is it?” Cameron asked in alarm.
“We have to get to the café. Now!”
EIGHT
Jaymee’s heart slammed in her chest on the drive over to the café. It wasn’t too far but it felt like a million miles. She jumped out of the car before it came to a full stop, much to Cameron’s dismay.
Despite the text, the outside of the café looked peaceful. She heard music coming from the veranda but couldn’t see it from the front parking lot.
Jaymee dashed to the entrance, stopped a moment to compose herself for what she might see and glanced over her shoulder to see where Cameron was. He was almost to her, so she turned back and pulled the door open.
That was when she saw the trouble Carmine was talking about. There were a dozen people all standing around. Several of them were police. Tables had been knocked over. It reminded Jaymee of a knock-down, drag-out fight at a saloon in the Wild West.
Some of the people were yelling at each other. Some were pointing. They all had horrible looks on their faces.
At the very moment they entered, it seemed all Hell broke loose. People began scuffling with one another, even with the police, who were calling out orders for people to get themselves in check.
“What’s going on?” she heard Cameron say in a low voice directly into her ear.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “But it doesn’t look good.” She was about to shout as loud as she could when someone in the group screamed.
Jaymee and the others became aware that a gun had been spotted. Jaymee thought about the pistol she kept under the register behind the counter. It wouldn’t do her any good, even if she had it. She didn’t know who had a gun or even who had originally seen it.
The scuffling and wrestling continued until the terrifying sound of a gunshot rang out and the crowd in front of her scattered. When they separated, Jaymee was able to see clearly what was going on.
