Poisoned Prose (A Books by the Bay Mystery)

tell me something? Perhaps convince me that you didn’t kill Violetta? Because I’m prepared to listen. I’m still your friend, Flynn.”
    “Are you?” His voice was heavy with booze and fatigue. “You’d think I’d have learned to distrust women by now, but apparently, it hasn’t sunk in because here I am.”
    Olivia was tired of waiting for Flynn to reveal the purpose of his visit, but she wasn’t about to invite him inside. She shifted on her feet and said, “Start at the beginning.”
    “It was a Wednesday afternoon in the late spring,” Flynn said. “Back then, she didn’t slink around in the night like some kind of vampire. When we first met, she wore this hat with a really low brim. It covered most of her face, but not all. It was only some old straw thing, but I thought it was glamorous. Mysterious. She and Mabel came to sell plants together, but Vi always waited outside.” He rolled a pebble around his palm. “For a while, I didn’t care that she didn’t come any closer. Mabel was pretty enough. She and I were the same age, and we flirted like crazy. I kissed her a few times, but eventually, I began to wonder why her sister wore that hat and kept her distance. I started daydreaming about Vi until one day, I snuck up on her.”
    “Where was Mabel?”
    Flynn shrugged. “Probably collecting the money we owed her for the plants.” A little smile played at the corners of his mouth. “I stole around the building so I could come up behind Vi, and when I said, ‘There you are,’ she didn’t jump or scream like most girls would. No. Not her. She didn’t make a sound. Just slapped me across the face.”
    Olivia laughed. “Atta girl.”
    “Yeah, I deserved it. I would have let her hit me again and again if it meant more time with her. She didn’t wear concealing makeup then—she couldn’t afford it—and I thought she was the most remarkable creature I’d ever seen. Her blue skin, those electric eyes, that black hair. She was like something out of a storybook. A nymph. A siren. Something magical. Exotic. Utterly unique.”
    “What did she think of you?”
    Flynn shook his head. “I have no idea. After the slap, she just walked away. I yelled after her that she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever laid eyes on and that I’d do anything to see her again, but she didn’t turn around.”
    “That’s a pretty good line.”
    “It wasn’t a line. I meant every word. The next time she came, I asked a friend to stall Mabel while I brought Vi a bag of peaches. She still didn’t talk. Just grabbed the bag and took off running. For months, I offered her little treats like that. The first words she ever spoke were to tell me how much her brother loved the bubble gum I’d given her. And then she smiled, and man, I was a goner.”
    Olivia could tell that Flynn was miles and years away.
    “She started telling me stories about her life,” he continued. “We never had much time, so this all happened over a long period, though I’d fallen in love with her the moment I saw her. The more I got to know her, the stronger my feelings grew. Vi worked so hard and had experienced so little in the way of pleasures. The rest of the girls I knew were shallow and silly. Not Vi. She was as deep and unfathomable as a cave lake.”
    “You became lovers?”
    Flynn nodded. “We were together when Elijah died. Vi might have married me if that boy had lived. My whole life would have been different. Damn her father. Damn that man to hell.”
    Olivia kept her gaze on Flynn’s clenched fists. Very gently, she said, “What happened?”
    “I don’t know exactly. Vi came to me a few weeks after the funeral and totally broke down. She didn’t just cry. She wailed. She raged. Chunks of her hair were missing, and there were scratches on her cheeks and chest. When she calmed down enough to speak, she said that her daddy had a treasure hidden away—one that could have saved Elijah. A treasure so valuable that it could have given them all a different life, but her father wouldn’t touch it. He said that Elijah’s fate was in God’s hands, not man’s.”
    Now Olivia was certain that the treasure was real. Violetta wouldn’t make up a story in the midst of such intense grief. “What was so valuable?”
    Flynn grunted. “All I know is that she didn’t have it. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have asked me for a loan. I gave her everything I had. She promised to explain why she needed the money when she came back