“I’ve got to get going.” Terry stood. “I wanted to check in and make sure you were doing okay. It sounds like Max and Dixie have you taken care of, but if you need something, give me a call.”
“Thanks, Terry.”
Max walked Terry to the door. I could hear them talking but couldn’t quite hear what they were saying. When Max came back, he picked up my plate and carried it to the kitchen.
“Can I get you anything else?”
“No, to tell you the truth, I’m wiped out.”
“You have my cell number; call if you need anything.”
“You’ve already gone above and beyond, Max.”
He gave me a careful kiss and reiterated the offer.
They were all acting like I was an invalid and while I appreciated their concern, I intended to get back to work tomorrow.
But first a nap.
Chapter Sixteen
The next morning, I arrived at the office early. Getting dressed had been a little difficult. Nurse Jamie had been right: I had more sore spots than I had that first day. I was glad Greer had offered to keep Frenchie another day because walking the frisky pooch would have been challenging.
I started the coffee and unlocked the front door.
As I waited for my morning cup of sanity to be ready, I sat down at my desk and booted up my computer before I remembered that I hadn’t asked Dixie about all our materials from the Arbor family cookbook project. I didn’t know if she’d remembered to get them or not in all the excitement the day of the mailbox bomb.
I got up and poured a cup. She should be in shortly and I’d ask her then.
I heard the bell over the door ding. I walked out front, expecting Disco in search of an afternoon snack, or Harry Harrison in search of signatures for his petition.
Instead it was Jezzie Arbor née Carr. It was hard for me to think of her as anything but Arbor because with all the siblings, and with her in particular, those family roots went deep. Or at least the company roots did.
As always, she looked like she’d just walked out of a board meeting. Apparently, none the worse for her close call.
“So, this is the center of the Sugar and Spice Cookbook operation?” she asked.
Was she being snarky? I searched her perfectly made-up face, but didn’t see signs of an implied put-down, just interest.
“Yes, it is.”
“Those are amazing photos. Done by your photographer friend?”
I nodded.
She crossed the room and walked up close to the oversized prints of Max’s work that we’d hung on the largest of the walls. They were photos from our very first cookbook for the St. Ignatius Founders Day Celebration. Max had had them enlarged and framed. She was right—they were amazing.
Gallery-quality amazing. You weren’t sure it you were looking at fine art or food, but in any case, you got hungry just looking at them.
I could tell she was picturing what Max could do with all the dishes from Arbor Foods, but I wouldn’t give out Max’s info without asking him first.
“But…” She sighed and walked back to where I stood by the counter, her heels clicking on the tile floor. “That’s not why I’m here.”
I waited.
“You and your partner have done an excellent job with our family cookbook project.” She paused to reach inside her handbag. “But I’m afraid we can’t go forward with it.”
“We’re nearly done with—” She cut me off.
“Here’s a check.” She held it out to me. “For all the work you’ve done.”
“But—”
“With the death of that unfortunate girl…” Jezzie ran manicured fingers along the smooth surface of the counter.
I’m sure she meant the unfortunate death, not that Colette was unfortunate. But was the transposition a Freudian slip?
“And now the mailbox bomb, I’ve been shot at, and all of these death threats,” she continued. “None of us can even think about anything but staying safe while we figure this out.”
And sorting out the PR nightmare, I finished in my head.
I wondered if the sheriff was any closer to who might want to harm members of the Arbor family.
I looked down at the check. It was nearly double our cancellation fee. “Jezzie, I can’t take this. It’s too much.”
“No, we discussed it.” She extended it again. “And we feel this is right.”
“But—”
“Sugar, you could have been badly injured by that mail bomb.”
“But I wasn’t.” I put the check down on the counter.
Was that what this was about? Did they think that I might sue over the incident?
As much as I hated abandoning a project that we’d invested a lot of time in, one that was almost complete, and more importantly one that had such potential, it was clear they’d made up their minds. And the amount they’d offered in payment would allow me to pay Max, Liz, and others who had already provided services.
“I understand where you’re coming from and I’m sure Dixie will too.” I swallowed, feeling more attached to the project than I’d realized. “Promise me, once this is all sorted out, that if you think about resurrecting the cookbook idea, that you’ll give us a chance again.”
“You’ve got it.” Jezzie reached out and shook my hand. A good, firm business grip. And then she took her exit.
I felt like I was crossed off her to-do list for the day.
I was still sitting at the counter when Dixie arrived. I could hear her putting things away and knew she’d stopped off at the store on her way.
“Hey,” she called. “I see you made it okay.”
“Hey,” I answered.
“What’s going on?” She came out from the back. “That didn’t sound like a happy ‘hey’.”
“We’ve been fired.” I handed her the check. “The Arbor family doesn’t want to go forward with the cookbook.”
She eyed the check and I could tell when she spotted the amount. “This is too much.”
“That’s what I said.” I stood, needing to move around. “Jezzie said they’d talked about it and felt this was an appropriate amount.”
“They’re just hoping you don’t file a lawsuit over that mailbox bomb.”
“I wondered about that.” I walked around the counter, peering at the lower shelves. Sometimes Dixie stashed baking experiments there. “But she didn’t ask me to sign anything or even verbally promise anything.”
“Still, I’ll bet that’s part of it.”
“I agree,” I said from where I crouched.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m trying to find where you’ve stashed the treats,” I replied. “I’m hungry.”
“They’re right here.” She opened one of the compartments and pulled out a plate of lemon bars.
“Wow, those look yummy.” I plucked one off the plate and took a bite.
“You look like you’re feeling better,” she noted, taking a bar for herself. “You’ve got some color today.”
“I do feel better, but I’m really disappointed about the cookbook.” I took another bite. “And my step-tracker thinks I died. It keeps sending me messages, because it can’t figure out how I went from ten thousand steps to fifty.”
Dixie laughed. “There’s plenty of time to get back to your walking.”
“Well, I’m going to get some steps in this morning after I take care of a few things.” I grabbed a paper towel and wiped off my fingers. “As soon as I answer a few emails, I’m going to the sheriff’s office to sign my statement about the mailbox bomb.”
“Do you want me to take you?” she asked. “I need to sign mine as well.”
“Sure, if you need to go anyway, we could go together.” I didn’t want to confess, but I’d only been there once and I wasn’t exactly sure how to get th
ere. St. Ignatius was small, but I’d been known to lose my way a time or two.
“Okay, let me know when you’re ready.”
I made short work of the emails, closed out the Arbor family account, and made out a deposit for Jezzie’s check, then I wandered into the kitchen where Dixie was taking a couple of loaves of banana bread out of the oven.
She sat them on hot pads to cool and looked up. “Are you ready?”
“I’m ready,” I answered. “Are you vying with Hilda for the best banana bread?”
“No,” she corrected. “I’m using Hilda’s recipe. We’ll see if it’s as good.”
“Let’s get this over with.” I went back to the office to collect my keys and handbag.
“Do you want to drive or just give me directions?” I asked.
“Why don’t you let me drive?” She held her hand out for the keys. “It will be quicker.”
“Not going to argue with that.” I handed over the keys and climbed into the passenger seat.
It was a short trip to the sheriff’s office though it was near the edge of town. We got out and Dixie pushed the remote to lock the Jeep.
It seemed like you shouldn’t need to lock your car in the parking lot of the county sheriff’s offices. It would be pretty dumb to break into a car with that much law enforcement around, but I suppose criminals aren’t always smart.
The Jameson County Sheriff’s Office was a newer brick building and I reached to open the heavy plate glass door. It opened way too easily because someone was on their way out.
The someone was Libby.
“You,” she huffed when she spotted me.
I wasn’t sure why she was so mad at me, unless the sheriff had shared the fact that it was me who had noticed the necklace she wore.
Dixie moved forward and put her arm protectively between Libby and me.
“I guess you’ve been to see the sheriff?” I asked.
She nodded, her expression still angry.
“You knew Colette, then?”
“Her name was Amy.” She touched the necklace she wore and her face suddenly crumbled. “Her name was Amy and she was my sister.”
“I am so sorry for your loss.” I touched her arm.
She jerked her arm away. All at once, Angry Libby was back.
“Don’t get me wrong. I hated her.” She swiped at tears. “But I didn’t kill her.”
She pushed between us, headed across the parking lot.
Dixie and I looked at each other.
“Wow.” I finally broke the silence. “I’m not sure which part of that is harder to wrap my brain around.”
“Our mail bomb statements will be pretty anticlimactic after that, huh?” Dixie held open the door. “After you.”
Sheriff Terry was tied up at the moment, the young deputy at the front desk told us. We offered to come back but he asked us to take a seat. In a few minutes, Terry came out with two deputies in tow. They would be working with us. We could write up our accounts of the mail bomb incident and sign them and then we were free to go.
“We ran into Libby on our way in,” Dixie mentioned as she stood.
“Ah.” I could see the realization in his eyes. “We’ll talk about that later. Right now, if we could get the statements out of the way?”
“No problem.” We followed the two deputies back through the offices and to their interview room area.
The older female deputy showed me to a room and the younger one escorted Dixie to a different room. I could see that it would be helpful to hear the accounts from each of us with our own memories of what happened.
It didn’t take long and we got done about the same time, Dixie a few minutes before me. The two deputies walked us back through the offices and to the front. They must have let Sheriff Terry know we were finished because he showed up at the front desk.
“I’ll walk out with you.” He punched in a code to open the gate that separated the counter from the reception area.
It was a short walk to the Jeep and he didn’t speak until we got to the car. “As you know, Libby Black came in today and we interviewed her about the woman you knew as Colette.”
“But she was really Amy Black,” I blurted out.
“Right.” He shook his head. “Do you have my office bugged?”
“She spotted us going in,” Dixie explained. “We talked to her.”
“She said Amy was her sister and she hated her but didn’t kill her,” I added.
“Pretty much what she told us too.” He let out a sigh.
“Do you believe her?” Dixie asked.
Terry wiped a hand over his face. “Funny thing is, I do.”
“I do too.” I couldn’t say why, but I did. I also had a sense that while she said she hated her sister, there was more to it than that.
Terry didn’t move to leave.
“Was there something more?” Dixie asked.
“Just before you got done with your statements, I got a call from J.J. at Arbor House.”
“And?” I held my breath. What now?
“And, they had a break-in this morning, or sometime during the night. Both the downstairs study and the upstairs library had been ransacked. Completely trashed.”
“How did the person get in?” Dixie asked.
“They’re not sure. Maybe the back door wasn’t locked. You’d think they’d be more careful.” Terry scuffed at the ground. “But that’s not the worst of it. Lucinda is missing.”
“What?” I gasped. “Has she been kidnapped?”
“We don’t know.” He shook his head. “I’ve got a team up there right now. With the threats, we’re concerned that…”
He didn’t finish the thought, but we got it.
* * * *
The drive back to the office didn’t take us long and we were both quiet, lost in thoughts of these new developments.
Their mailbox bombed. One of them shot at.
And now, a break-in. And Lucinda missing.
“I can only imagine how the sheriff is going to feel having to break that news about Colette’s real identity to Theo and the rest of the Arbor family,” Dixie said, as we went through the back at the Sugar and Spice offices. “I wonder how they’ll react. All this has to be connected in some way.”
“We’ll never know,” I said. “Because we’re fired.”
“Hard for you to let this one go, huh?”
“It is,” I answered. “We don’t usually spend this much time with our clients. Or get to know them this well.”
“That’s true.” Dixie headed toward the kitchen.
“Remind me to not ask any of the backstory of the sorority sisters or the Mississippi River people on these next projects, okay?” I said as I dropped off my bag in the office and went to unlock the front door. “No personal stuff. Get the recipes. Make the cookbook.”
“Right. Like that’s going to happen,” I heard from the other room.
When I got back to my desk there were a couple of slices of fresh banana bread on a saucer in the middle of my paperwork.
“You are the reason I have to walk so many miles every day.” I said it loud enough I was sure Dixie could hear me.
“If you don’t want it, just toss it,” she called back.
“Like that’s going to happen,” I muttered as I took a bite.
* * * *
We worked for a couple of hours on our own. Me in the office and Dixie in the kitchen.
I heard a growl and realized it was my stomach. Glancing up at the clock, I realized we’d worked right through lunch, probably in part because of the banana bread. I picked up the saucer and looked at it. Nothing but crumbs there and only a few of those.
“How was it?” Dixie stood at the door of the office.
“Amazing,” I answered. “But now I’m hungry and it
’s past lunchtime.”
“Want me to bring you something?” she asked. “Or we can run over to the Red Hen?”
“I don’t think I’m up to the interrogation just yet.” I made a face. I knew word of the mail bomb had to have reached St. Ignatius and I’d been a little surprised we hadn’t had visitors today. “If you’re going to be stopping someplace where you can bring me something, that would be great.”
“You’ve got it.” She slung her purse over her shoulder. “Any preferences?”
“None.” I was hungry. And not picky. “Surprise me.”
“I won’t be long.” She went out the back.
Dixie hadn’t been gone more than five minutes when I heard the bell ding out front.
I’d spoken too soon on our absence of visitors.
I set aside my paperwork and walked out front, expecting Disco or maybe even Lark from next door, but not expecting the mountain of a man who walked in.
He strode across the floor and held out a beefy hand. “Hello, I’m Glue Man.”
Well, sure you are.
Several thoughts went through my head.
First off, he must have a real name. I mean, his driver’s license surely doesn’t say First name: Glue. Last name: Man. Right?
Secondly, I couldn’t imagine he was the man they glued to the steel beam to demonstrate how strong the glue was. I still hadn’t seen the ad, but they surely had to use some skinny guy. This guy, no way. His bright green T-shirt and crisp overalls gave new meaning to the big and tall sizes.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Sugar.” I held out my hand and hoped he didn’t hurt me.
“Why, it could not be lovelier to meet you.” His handshake was firm but not crushing. I guess when you looked like him you had nothing to prove.
“I didn’t know you’d moved in already.” I’d thought nothing was happening until the first of next month.
“Oh, no,” he boomed. “I haven’t. I’m just here meeting people.”
“I see.” Though I wasn’t sure I did.
“I understand there has been some trepidation about my business coming to town.” He lowered his voice as if it were a secret.
I could assure him there was nothing secret about it. Harry Harrison had been very vocal about his concerns.
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