“Girl, what do you want?” I heard Jack ask her. “Talk to me.”
I turned the corner to see Catsy in the middle of the room, squaring off with Jack.
“She wants to eat,” I said. “Otherwise she won’t shut up. Hang on for a quick second.”
In the kitchen, I fed Catsy her special feline breakfast food—“Morning Meals,” with seafood and egg, which smelled a little like ocean-tinged puke—and put on a pot of coffee.
We’d need fortification to get through the next hour or so. How would Vera take this news? I clenched and unclenched my fingers out of nervousness as I waited for the coffee to brew. Frankly, I was glad to have a few minutes alone to compose myself, because I knew my sister would be upset by this news.
I walked back into the living room carrying two mugs of coffee. I handed one to Jack and set the other on the coffee table in front of my sister.
Vera, with her mussed blonde hair, sat on the sofa in her pajamas with a grumpy frown.
“Did you show her?” I asked Jack.
He handed her the iPad. “I was waiting for you.”
She scowled at the screen, then her eyes widened. “Oh my God,” she whispered.
She read part of the story aloud.
“The charges, which were filed in federal court in Orlando, accuse Tyler Carr of paying David H. Smith $10,000 to run as an independent in Wahoo’s city council race.
“The goal of the payoff, prosecutors allege, was to ‘confuse voters and influence the outcome’ of the race.
“Under state law, those charges carry sentences of up to five years in prison if convicted.
“Authorities are still seeking Smith. His neighbors at an apartment complex told the Sentinel that he recently—and abruptly—moved out of his unit two weeks ago.”
Vera let the tablet rest on her lap. Her head flopped back. “Well, now I know why Tyler wanted me to return that money so bad. He probably knew that he’d need it to pay his lawyer.”
I folded my arms. “Here’s what I don’t get. Why did he go to all this trouble to win the race? It’s not like the Wahoo City Council pays a salary and it’s not a full-time job. And he might have won fair and square, given who his father is.”
Jack nodded slowly. “Someone’s probably behind this. Likely someone who had financial interests in getting Tyler on the commission. A lobbyist, perhaps. Someone who needs the commission to vote a certain way, someone unethical.”
“That sure narrows it down in Florida,” Vera said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “I can’t believe how gullible I was. I believed all his crap, everything he said about the environment and wanting to do right by the town. And here he was, paying a guy to be a sham candidate. I still want to give him the money back soon. I don’t want any ties to him at all.”
I sat next to her, thrilled that she’d finally gotten the message about Tyler’s sleaziness. “Of course we’ll pay him back, every penny. But please don’t blame yourself. He sounds like a class A manipulator who took advantage of you.”
She snorted. “Yeah, because I’m single and obviously desperate, so he picked me as a prime example of a loser.”
I lightly tapped her knee. “Wrong. He picked you because you’re gorgeous and smart and he probably wanted people to think that one of the town’s leading voices for the environment was in favor of his stupid candidacy.”
“Maybe,” she muttered.
“We have to just keep our focus on the bookstore.”
“But, Maggie?” She set the tablet on the coffee table and reached for her mug.
“Yeah?”
“This doesn’t clear me as a suspect in Gene’s murder. We have that hanging over us. I’m still worried how that will affect the opening.”
I released a thin breath and looked over at Jack. By the way he was stroking his stubble, I could tell that he was probably wondering the same thing I was.
Was Tyler’s election fraud somehow linked to Gene’s murder? The timing of it all seemed too coincidental for my taste.
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