Page 11 of Murder By the Millions
“Allie Catt you take a joke?” She chortled.
“Ha ha. Groan. What’s up? Why are you here?”
She perched on a stool beside the island, shifted her cross-body purse to the other side, and pulled her cell phone from it. “I did some digging.”
“About?” I regarded her.
“Jason Gardner.”
Vanna was mixing dough by hand. She paused, her curiosity piqued. “What did you learn? Did you find it on the Internet? You know you can’t believe everything you read there.”
“No.” Tegan tapped the cell’s screen. “I’m referring to my phone because I made notes. Patrick Hardwick filled me in.”
“Patrick?” I waggled my eyebrows. “When did you run into him?”
“He stopped by the shop for the copy ofDunewe put on hold. A little birdie told him it was in.”
I said to Vanna, “I’m the birdie. I bumped into him at Ragamuffin.” I turned back to Tegan. “So … fill us in. Don’t keep us in suspense.”
“Until recently, Jason was living in California.”
I said, “I overheard Iggie Luckenbill say Jason was a bigwig in Hollywood, but then he reneged on building a mall and came here.”
“True. Partly.”
“What happened? Did he run out of funds? Come up against an adversary?”
“Nope. It seems he was in love with a woman named Delilah Brenneman, but she married someone else thirteen years ago.” She swiped to a page in her notes and showed it to me. “This is her.”
Delilah had beautiful blond curls, a Cupid’s-bow mouth, and arresting eyes.
“She’s quite pretty in a delicate way,” I said.
“Yep. Apparently, he was so heartbroken, he abandoned all the projects he had in the works.”
“Thirteen years later?” I shook my head. It didn’t make sense. I could see how losing the love of one’s life in the present might make one’s interest wane … but thirteen years later? Something didn’t add up.
“Patrick didn’t have an answer,” Tegan said.
“How much of the mall had been built?”
“The foundation and framing.”
“So it’s a shell.”
“Yep.”
“How sad,” Vanna said. “Why did the woman Jason loves marry someone else?”
“Patrick wasn’t sure.”
“Why does he know so much about a newcomer to town?” I asked.
Her mouth quirked up on one side. “Because Patrick is miffed Jason is here, so he did a deep dive into his past.”
“Why is he miffed?” I started scooping the apple-rosemary muffin batter into the pans I’d lined with cupcake liners. “It’s not like his renovation business is competitive with a builder who creates malls.”
“He says he’s worried the mall won’t be eco-friendly. He loves Bramblewood and doesn’t want to see the landscape tarnished.”
