“But I don’t understand. Why were you at the séance, Terah?”
Terah shrugged. “Meredith invited me. She had no idea that I was having an affair with her husband, and I think she genuinely wanted to reconnect. Little did she know I’d harbored murderous thoughts about her for years. I found her approach quite amusing, and the séance was the perfect opportunity to pop her off. We hit on a plan to eliminate Meredith so that we could move on. We’d already wasted too many years because of her, and she would never have left us alone. She was vengeful and hateful and would have followed us and haunted us for the rest of our lives. We had to be rid of her once and for all, no matter the cost. Charles agreed, didn’t you, Charles?”
Charles started to pant. Beads of sweat poured down his face, and he dabbed at them with his perfect, white handkerchief. However, he said nothing. It was as though he was as much under Terah’s spell as the two dogs now appeared to be.
“You two are sick.”
“And you’re dead.” Terah’s voice hardened as she edged up closer, nudging the dogs out of her way, the gun still pointed at Roxy. “You’ve been playing with fire, Roxy Reinhardt, talking, and questioning, and investigating. People who do that? Well, they get burned.”
They were a few feet away from each other, but not so far apart that Terah would miss if she fired her gun. Roxy felt like a target at a shooting range. In the distance, she could hear the wail of sirens and imagined the spinning blue light atop the police cars.
“The police are coming for you,” Roxy said evenly, her voice trembling only slightly. “You’re not getting away with this. You’re not going to kill me, you’re going to rot in jail for the rest of your lives.”
“Terah…” Charles looked panicked.
“Shut up, Charles,” Terah said.
“No!” Charles took off, running as fast as he could back to the Mercedes. Roxy didn’t take her eyes off Terah as Charles receded in her peripheral vision. The dogs, sensing the heightened tension of the situation, started up again, barking, bearing their teeth, strings of drool hanging from their gums.
Terah dropped their leashes. “Go!” She pointed at Roxy.
Backed into the corner of the cul-de-sac, Roxy’s eyes grew wide. Her hands scrambled at the surface of the building behind her. Panic began to overwhelm her. Instinctively, she half-turned to shield herself from the onslaught that was about to be unleashed upon her. She closed her eyes tight, crouched over, and threw her arms around her head. Every muscle in her small body fired, they were as hard as concrete, as she waited...
“Down! Down! Sit! Sit!” It was Terah. She was pleading. “Please.”
Roxy opened her eyes just slightly and peered out the corners of them. Instead of attacking her, the dogs had turned their menace on Terah. The two dogs circled her. Terah had dropped her gun and put up her arms to protect her face as the dogs jumped at her, growling. Strong and heavy, they succeeded in knocking her over. She curled into a fetal position as they stood over her, snapping their teeth, dominating, and intimidating just as a patrol car squealed and skidded to a stop across the end of the cul-de-sac. Roxy jumped up and down, waving her hands like a maniac. It was Johnson!
“I thought you were off duty!” Roxy cried.
“I thought you were in a jail cell!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“READY?”
ROXY WAS standing at the entrance to the loft. Sam was behind her, his hands over her eyes. It was good to be so close to him, to take in his smell and his comforting, strong vibe even if she couldn’t see him.
She heard a clattering behind her followed by voices—Dr. Jack, Elijah, George, Nat, Evangeline, and Sage.
“Oh, hi guys.” Sam didn’t sound quite as cheerful as he had a moment earlier.
“We’ve come to see the unveiling.” Nat’s voice.
Privately, Roxy didn’t get what all the fuss was about. Sure, Sam had stained the floor and installed the light fittings and mirrors, but there was no furniture in the room, so it was hardly worth all this unveiling and covering her eyes and all. Frankly, it was a little embarrassing, but she decided to be a good sport about it.
“Okay, ready. Let’s do this,” she said.
Sam lifted his hands away from her eyes. Roxy opened them. She gasped.
The loft was finished! Completely finished. The walls were a beautiful, crisp white. The floor was so deeply navy blue that it looked like an ocean beneath her feet. Even better, Sam had installed a crystal chandelier that cast down sparkling splinters of light that made the floor look as though the sun was glittering upon waves. There was a large four-poster bed, complete with white and blue linens, and a white antique armoire and a white closet. Light blue velvet curtains were draped at the windows while white nightstands with brass lamps and blue shades finished off the look.
On top of one of them was a beribboned basket of custom cookies that on close inspection had been decorated with the Funky Cat logo, a cat wearing a trilby hat at a jaunty angle and holding a saxophone. Even Nefertiti matched the decors as she curled up on the white fluffy rug, so well camouflaged that there was a real danger of stepping on her.
“What!” Roxy said. “Am I dreaming? How did you do all this, Sam?”
Sam looked at her innocently.
“Sam?” she warned.
Sam put his hands in the air. “Okay, okay, I admit it, Nat and I hatched a cunning plan behind your back.”
Roxy spun around. “You!” she said to Nat.
Nat grinned. “Well, I had to do something while I wasn’t cooking. It was easy-peasy. Sourced the furniture at the flea markets and painted it all white. Bought a few trimmings to pull the look together, Elijah made the cookies, George and Sage blessed the space, and voilà!”
“My goodness,” said Roxy, walking all around the room. “This is really special.” She turned to her friends. “You guys!” She felt a little tearful. “This is incredible!”
Nat wrapped her up in a hug. “We thought you deserved it. We wanted to take a load off your mind.”
“It looks fantastic, cher,” Evangeline said. “Even better than when it was full of ma ole junk.”
“It has great energy, Roxy,” George said.
Elijah nodded. “You work so hard, Roxy. You deserve it.”
“You do,” said Sage.
Dr. Jack stood next to Sage. They were holding hands. “I want to give you something, too, for all your help.”
“You don’t need to give me anything, Dr. Jack,” said Roxy. “Honestly.”
“Well, it’s a little too late for that,” he said. “I put in a call to the police department.” He gave her his phone. “Someone wants to speak to you.”
“Huh?” Roxy, dazed with surprise, took the phone. “Hello?”
“Hello, Roxy, Officer Trudeau here.”
“Hello. Are you okay? Is your leg healing well?”
“Yes, thank you,” he said. “I’ll be back to work in a couple of weeks.”
“That’s good,” said Roxy.
“You’re probably wondering why we’re on the phone.”
Roxy laughed. “You could say I’m curious.”
“Well, Detective Johnson and I have been talking, and the New Orleans Police Department would like to award you a medal for your bravery in the capture of Terah Jones and Charles Romanoff.”
“What?” Roxy said. “No way!”
“Yep. You did an outstanding job helping us catch them, Roxy. You were right all along. It wasn’t Dr. Jack.”
Roxy looked over at George. “I’m just so glad Dr. Jack is off the hook and that you and George are okay. Solving the case is just the filling in the beignets.”
“All thanks to you,” came Trudeau’s reply.
“You helped!” Roxy said.
“Well, yes, but that’s my job. So will you accept the award? Johnson will be mightily annoyed if you don’t.”
Roxy laughed. “Suppose I better had, then.”
“I should say so.”<
br />
“Thank you, Officer Trudeau.”
“Call me Newman,” he said. “Here, Detective Johnson wants a word with you.”
Roxy winced and bit her thumb. “Okay.”
Johnson came on the line. “I just wanted to say, um, thanks. And glad you didn’t get hurt. Yes.” Johnson cleared his throat. “That is all.”
“I’m sorry about impers…” Roxy began.
“Let’s not talk anymore about that, lady. It all came right in the end.” There was a pause.
“All right, Detective Johnson. Bye then.”
“Goodbye, Roxy.” She ended the call.
Roxy?
“Woo-hoo! I think we should have a drink to celebrate!” said Nat. “Everyone downstairs for some champagne!”
“I second that!” said George. The skin on his face was a little raw from where he’d been gagged with duct tape but aside from that, he had recovered well from his ordeal.
Soon they were all down in the lounge, sipping on champagne. Sam prepared to play his sax as Elijah passed out mini pastries and Funky Cat cookies. “They’re made with real Louisiana strawberries and pistachios, people!” Nefertiti snuggled on Roxy’s lap.
“You know, George, I thought it might be you when you disappeared with Charles. I thought you might be in cahoots,” Roxy said.
George hung his head. “I think I deserved what I got, honestly. I started thinking all kinds of bad things about Meredith. I attracted the situation to myself. When Charles came in that back room, he punched Royston, imagine! Then he put a gun to my head and got me to climb out of the window. I should have run when he was climbing through the window after me, but I was so shocked. I couldn’t believe what was happening!
“He took me to that warehouse and tied me up. Then Terah appeared and demanded I tell her what I knew. But I didn’t know anything! She said she was going to shoot me and leave my body for the rats to feed off. No one ever went to that warehouse anymore, she said. Charles never said a word and then suddenly just ran away. I think he knew that killing me would spell a very bad future for him in the spiritual realm. The spirits would not appreciate him killing me. He did tell me once that he thought Meredith was a complete charlatan, but he wasn’t so sure I was a fraud.”
Roxy shuddered. “It sounds awful.”
“I’ll get over it.”
Nat patted him on the shoulder. “You’re stronger than you think, George.”
Roxy looked at them for a moment—the deeply warm and affectionate way they looked at each other. She wondered what was in store for them. They said they were just friends, and she believed them, but Nat had been very cagey. Roxy had found her wiping her eyes in the kitchen that morning, and suspected George leaving for home later that day had something to do with it. Nat had blamed her sniffles on the onions she was cutting up.
“How do you feel about Meredith now? Are you mad at her?”
“No,” said George. “Whether or not she made up some schtick, she was still exacting and perfectionistic and brilliant and talented. She had high standards. At some level, she had a gift. And I owe her for showing me mine. I will say, though, that I’m glad Royston doesn’t hold the part I played in that deal against me. Had I known that I was being asked to bring harm to another spirit, I wouldn’t have done it.”
“Hey, why don’t we toast Meredith?” Roxy suggested. “She was a person, a human being who didn’t deserve what happened to her.”
“Absolutely.”
“To Meredith!” Roxy said, raising her glass in the air.
Nefertiti chimed in, “Miaow!” and made everyone laugh.
Later, Roxy climbed up to the loft. She wanted to look it over at her leisure without anyone else in the room.
“Oh!” she cried when she opened the door. Sam was there.
“Hey, Roxy. Just admiring my handiwork.” Sam smiled.
“You did a fantastic job. Thank you so much.”
“You are very welcome. Are you sure you don’t want to make it your own room?”
“Well, hmm, what do you think? It is lovely, but I feel a little guilty for taking it over, not making bank from it. You’re my co-owner, what do you think?”
They stood side by side looking up at the wheel window at the end of the room. Sam put his arm around Roxy’s shoulders. Sparkles shot through her body at his touch. “I think you absolutely should move up here. I would be honored if you would.”
“You did this with me in mind?”
“Sure I did.”
“And you got Nat to furnish it like this, for me?”
“Uh-huh.”
Roxy thought about the things she knew about Sam—his kindness, his attractiveness, his compassion, his work ethic—and she weighed it up against what she didn’t know—his money dealings. Math wasn’t her strongest suit, but she understood probability and risk assessment. Although in the past, she had avoided uncertain situations at all costs, she was now much more willing to throw the dice. If things worked out there were big rewards to be gained.
Roxy had changed. She was bolder, more forthright, less complicated. She used her intuition. She’d thought that a girl should never make a move on a boy, but she also used to think she should not stare down murderers, or impersonate police officers, or get arrested. Now she had done all of those things.
Roxy looked up at Sam. He was over six inches taller. She couldn’t reach him unless he bent down. Bolder than she had ever felt before, she tugged at his shirt and said, “Come here, big man.” As soon as their lips touched, Sam lifted her up and passionately kissed her as she flung her arms around his neck, her feet a foot off the floor. She may have been a charlatan, but Meredith Romanoff had been right about something. The universe had aligned just so, and Sam and Roxy did make an attractive couple. The future was theirs to make. Together.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2020 Alison Golden
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Mesa Verde Publishing
P.O. Box 1002
San Carlos, CA 94070
Edited by
Marjorie Kramer
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THANK YOU
Thank you for taking the time to read this box set. If you enjoyed it, please consider telling your friends or posting a short review. Word of mouth is an author’s best friend and very much appreciated.
Thank you,
BOOKS IN THE ROXY REINHARDT SERIES
Mardi Gras Madness
New Orleans Nightmare
Louisiana Lies
ALSO BY ALISON GOLDEN
FEATURING INSPECTOR DAVID GRAHAM
The Case of the Screaming Beauty (Prequel)
The Case of the Hidden Flame
The Case of the Fallen Hero
The Case of the Broken Doll
The Case of the Missing Letter
The Case of the Pretty Lady
FEATURING REVEREND ANNABELLE DIXON
Death at the Café (Prequel)
Murder at the Mansion
Body in the Woods
Grave in the Garage
Horror in the Highlands
Killer at the Cult
FEATURING DIANA HUNTER
Hunted (Prequel)
Snatched
Stolen
Chopped
Exposed
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alison Golden is the USA Today bestselling author of the Inspector David Graham mysteries and Reverend Annabelle Dixon cozy mysteries. A
s A.J. Golden, she writes the Diana Hunter thriller series.
Alison was raised in Bedfordshire, England. Her aim is to write stories that are designed to entertain, amuse, and calm. Her approach is to combine creative ideas with excellent writing and edit, edit, edit.
Alison is based in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and twin sons. She splits her time between London and San Francisco.
For up-to-date promotions and release dates of upcoming books, sign up for the latest news here:
https://www.alisongolden.com/roxy.
For more information:
www.alisongolden.com
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Roxy Reinhardt Mysteries Box Set Page 51