Free Final Sentence by Daryl Wood Gerber Page A

lifelong friend.”
    J.P. sank into himself. After a long moment of silence, he muttered, “I heard you found her body.”
    “Yes.” I didn’t add that Pepper Pritchett had accused me of murder. I wondered if, by now, she was spewing rumors at the Crystal Cove Crier . Would that reporter, Tito Martinez, run with the story? Would my face be plastered on the front cover of tomorrow’s paper? Headline: Hooked on Murder: Widow Questioned in Quirky Twist of Fate . As an ad exec, I’d had the task of coming up with catchy loglines. “Let’s start over, J.P. I’m Jenna Hart.” I offered a hand. He didn’t shake. “What’s your last name?”
    “Hessman.”
    “You said you come from Florida.”
    “Yeah, that’s where I started out.”
    “Doing what?”
    “I was a cable TV director.”
    Not an actor.
    “I had aspirations of becoming the next Martin Scorsese.” He honked out a laugh and sucked in a huge gulp of air. “I had dreams. Big dreams. Making films that mattered. Films that spoke to people. Films that would stand the test of time.”
    “But that didn’t work out.”
    “‘Never was so much owed by so many to so few.’”
    I gaped. He was quoting Churchill. Though I was an art history major in college, I knew the phrase because we had used the quote for a Bentley commercial that starred Peter O’Toole. Had I judged J.P. by the number of tattoos and underestimated his intelligence?
    “And never was so much denied to so many others,” he added.
    I settled back into my chair. The latter was not Churchill. J.P. wasn’t bright; he was egotistical.
    “To become one of the elite . . .” He waved a hand. “What does it matter, huh? I didn’t succeed. To make ends meet in L.A., I took a gig at a game show. Hated that. I ended up at the Food Channel. I like to eat. That’s where I met Desiree.”
    “And you fell in love.”
    “And now she’s gone. Gone. It’s so not cool.” He rested his forehead against his fingertips.
    “I’m sorry. I miss her, too.” If only I could extract the insidious doubt that had wormed its way into my soul.
    I glanced out the window, hoping to find my calm in the happy-faced passersby, and was startled to see Sabrina climbing out of the passenger side of a black minivan. Desiree’s masseur, Mackenzie, offered a hand for support. Sabrina looked shell-shocked. Beyond them I saw Cinnamon Pritchett on roller skates. She made a figure eight, avoiding a few pedestrians, and pulled to a stop. She wasn’t in uniform. Was she tailing Sabrina or simply out for a spin?
    Mackenzie spotted us and guided Sabrina toward the café window. J.P. caught sight of them and snarled. Mackenzie winked then whisked Sabrina away. Cinnamon resumed skating.
    “You and the masseur don’t like each other,” I said, stating the obvious.
    “He’s a jerk.”
    “Care to elaborate?”
    “He picked apart a couple of Desiree’s recipes in her current cookbook. He thinks he knows how to cook. When he said the chicken breasts in cream caper sauce lacked salt, Des got blazing mad. He made her cry.”
    “Are he and Sabrina an item?”
    “He’s into himself, the egotistical . . .” J.P. rubbed his forearm hard. “Des talked about you,” he said, switching topics. “A lot.”
    “She did?” Did she happen to tell J.P. the truth about David and her?
    Hold up, Jenna, hearsay , I could hear my father warn. As an analyst, he never let my siblings and I assume anything. Not to mention, Sabrina had started the rumor. What if Sabrina lied to me to stir the pot? What if she had some gripe with Desiree? What if Desiree told Sabrina not to date the masseur? I flashed on the confrontation between J.P. and Sabrina in the parking lot and wondered if J.P. had a thing for Sabrina and not Desiree. What if Desiree found out, accused J.P., and he lashed out?
    “Um, yesterday,” I said, steering the discussion in a new direction, eager to pin down J.P.’s alibi at the time of the murder. “You and Desiree went