by Jemma Bard
When Violet was twenty-two and fresh out of college with a degree in public relations from the University of New Jersey, she’d run into Michael Preston while visiting her aunt in Cape Flower. They had a whirlwind romance and she fell hard…real hard…and she’d said yes to his proposal of marriage just six months later.
That lasted eight years before it…well…didn’t last anymore.
“So what else happened? There has to be more,” Cale asked, jarring Violet from her thoughts.
Violet tapped on the side of her mug. “It’s about Gordon.” She then proceeded to fill Cale in on the inheritance that would come her way in a few months.
“Holy guacamole!” Cale raised an eyebrow. “At least you’ll have the funds to fix up Bubbles Boutique.”
“Really, Cale?” She smacked his arm. “I didn’t win the lottery. A man—a man who was once kind of like family—died.”
Cale raised his mug in the air in a mock toasting gesture. “Still…no matter which way you get it, you’re almost a million dollars richer.”
Sylvia appeared at the side of the table and placed a gentle hand on Violet’s shoulder; she held a pot of coffee in the other. “How you holding up, Violet?”
“Pretty good…considering…” She took a sip of her drink. “I need to get into my shop at some point today to make sure everything’s in order. I can’t afford to shut down for more than a day or so.”
Cale practically spit out his coffee as Violet said those words, knowing full well the money she’d be coming into.
“Do they have any idea who could have done this?” Sylvia asked, she anxiously fiddled with the edge of her marigold-colored apron. A murder in a small community can set anyone on edge.
Violet shook her head. “Not that I know of.”
Sylvia bent over, so only she and Cale could hear her words. “Well, you know I’m not the gossip-y type, but I heard Gordon was stepping out on his wife.”
“What?” Violet’s eyes grew wide. “Stepping out on Jacqueline? With who?”
Sylvia shrugged. “Beats me. But I heard his plan was to leave Jacqueline for whoever it is.”
“Whoa!” Cale shouted. Two customers turned to stare. He waved his hands at them. “Nothing to see here, people…go back to your own coffee and gossip!” The cafe patrons complied.
“Well.” Sylvia raised a finger in the air. “To me, that sounds pretty suspicious. Eloise Prinkett knows more.” She moved to the coffee bar to greet a cute young couple who’d just come in.
“Of course Mrs. Prinkett knows more,” Violet murmured. She turned to Cale to see a giant smirk curl up his face.
“A lover?” he asked, moving his shoulders up and down. “Didn’t think that old fart had it in him.”
Violet felt her face grow hot, an instant reaction whenever she thought of her philandering ex-husband. “Like father, like son,” she spat.
Cale placed a hand on Violet’s. “Oh, I didn’t mean to bring up not-so-pleasant memories of Michael.”
“That’s okay.” She shrugged. “My heartbreak is no secret in this tiny town.” She sighed. “I think the only way to clear my name in this mess is to find out who actually killed him.”
Cale crossed his arms over his chest. “Let that gorgeous specimen of man at the police station do that.” He frowned. “Violet, what you need to do today is get some sleep.” Cale reached across the table and flicked some scone crumbs from the bottom of Violet’s chin. “You’re a hot mess, minus the hot.”
She tapped the edge of her mug—a sunshine yellow one that said Good Morning, Gorgeous. And boy, oh boy, did she feel anything but gorgeous. She had two fresh bags under her eyes, she didn’t even run a brush through her hair, and when she got dressed this morning, she threw on the first thing she saw—a pair of yoga pants she’d worn two days ago and a summer sweater she found draped over her laundry basket. Violet’s appearance had definitely seen better days.
Violet was a disaster who hadn’t slept for more than thirty minutes last night. Cale was right. She shook her head, embracing the hot messiness. “I’ll rest later today, but not before I do two things.”
“Okay…” Cale prompted.
Violet smirked. “Scour my shop for clues. And see if Mrs. Prinkett knows who Gordon’s mystery woman is…uh…was.”
“Oooh,” Cale sing-songed, clapping his hands together. “Aren’t you turning into Cape Flower’s very own Nancy Drew?” He ripped a corner off the scone and tossed it into his mouth.
“Come on, Cale.” Violet smirked. “You of all people should know I think myself as more of a Jessica Fletcher.”
He clinked his mug with hers. “Touché, my toot-sweets. Touché.”
After one more scone, Violet and Cale headed to Bubbles Boutique next door to take inventory of the shop. Apparently, Carol Kincade from forensics, who happened to be Cale’s cousin, didn’t clean up after processing a crime scene as evidenced by the display of bath bombs that had been overturned. Round balls of color had rolled all around, covering over half of her shop’s wood-planked floors.
Violet glanced to her wall of soap. The bars had been picked over, as if each bar were taken off the shelf and then placed back in a random order. The earth-scented soaps were mixed in with the clean soaps, which were mixed in with the musky soaps. Roughly two dozen more bars were strewn across the ground.
“Richard told me they send in a professional cleaning company after processing a scene. Hasn’t Carol said that before too?” Violet asked, kicking some of the bath bombs out of the way to make a clear path to the lotion display. She hung her head in defeat.
“I thought so.” Cale placed a hand to his face. “I can only imagine what your already-disheveled office looks like now.”
Violet frowned and grabbed his hand. “Don’t let me look alone.” She tugged. “You’re coming with me.”
They moved to the back hallway, and Violet took a deep breath, centering herself before opening the door. And if it weren’t for that tiny meditation, she probably would have screamed at the mess in front of her as the door swung open. Desk drawers were flipped over, their contents covering the ground. The drawers that hadn’t been flipped were hanging open, now empty.
Cale slapped Violet’s shoulder and smiled. “On the bright side, this gives you a good reason to tidy up.”
“Hey!” she protested. But he wasn’t wrong. Violet could organize shelves of soaps and luxury bath products like a champ, but she’d never been one to keep paperwork in order. When it came to her office, organized chaos was kind of her motto. To an outsider, Violet’s desk appeared chaotic, but she had a method to her cluttered madness and always knew where she could find the bank statement in the pile of papers, or the purchase orders from a year and a half ago.
Violet bent down, picked up the top center drawer, and set it on her desk. “What do you think Carol was looking for?”
Cale shrugged. “No clue.”
“This just doesn’t make sense.” She scrunched her nose and gestured to the shop. “There’s no way they would have left it like this.” Something felt very off.
Cale reached into his back pocket and pulled out his iPhone. “I’m texting Carol. Right now.”
Violet tisked between her teeth. “Don’t bother her at work.”
Cale arched an eyebrow. “Well, I’m as curious as you are.” He tapped vigorously on the screen.
Within minutes, Carol responded. He held up his screen for Violet to see.
Cale: Hey, cuz. What’s up with the mess you left at Bubbles?
Carol: What do you mean?
Cale: It looks like the shelves threw up bath goods.
Carol: After I processed everything, the cleaning crew scrubbed and organized the shop head to toe, like they always do.
Cale took back his phone, snapped a picture of the boutique area, and sent it to Carol.
Violet looked to the screen, making sure she read everything correctly, and then to the mess in her shop. “They did not clean head to…”
Violet paused mid-sentence, just as Carol’s response flashed across the screen.
Carol: DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING!
“What’s up with the all-caps?” Cale asked.
Violet grabbed his sleeve and tugged him into her office. “Someone else was here.” She poked her head out the door. “And from the mess they left behind, they were searching for something.”
Cale placed both hands on his hips. “I think it’s time to call that hunky police chief of yours.”
“In a minute,” she said, biting the side of her lip, something springing to her memory. “Last night before I found…you know. I thought you’d forgotten to lock the back door again.”
Cale pursed his lips. “After that stray cat getting in the last time, I triple-check that back door.”
“Exactly.” Violet nodded. “And if the doors are locked, there’s only one way to get in the shop—a key.”
“Who has keys to Bubbles?”
Violet furrowed her brow. “Other than the two of us, my landlord.”
“Which was Gordon Preston,” Cale said. “And he’s dead.”
Right. “So here’s what I’m thinking. Gordon came down into town to talk to me last night about my inheritance, maybe. He decided to use his key to come in the back door as he usually does. He heard the commotion of the Bubbles and Bubbles event, or maybe he even saw Jacqueline, and decided to come back another time. When he left, the killer was waiting for him in the alley.”
Cale huffed. “That seems too easy.”
It was Violet’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “But isn’t the easiest explanation sometimes the closest to the truth?”
“I don’t know,” Cale said, “let’s get back to the problem at hand…who has your key?”
A shiver ran down Violet’s spine as she said, “The killer.” She looked around the disaster of a shop once again. “That means the killer was here this morning, and the fact they destroyed my entire business tells me they didn’t find what they wanted.”
Violet pulled out her phone. Now it was time to dial Chief Richard Odoom.
Chapter 7
“Although no forced entry, this is definitely a break-in, Violet.”
Violet stood in the center of her shop just ten minutes later, once again being questioned by Chief Richard Odoom while Carol Kincade collected evidence and dusted for fingerprints.
“Was anything taken that you know of?” Richard asked, his gentle amber eyes urging Violet to speak.
She played with the chipping pink paint on her fingernails. “Not that I can tell. I mean, why would Gordon Preston’s murderer want luxury soap products?”
Richard tilted his head to the side. We don’t know it was Gordon’s killer who did this, Violet.”
“But the key thing!” she exclaimed. She’d already explained to him her theory. “And you said it. There was no forced entry.”
“We don’t even know if a key was used, Violet.” Richard kicked his head back and chuckled. “Why don’t you let me do the detective work? You had a difficult night. We need to process this as a separate incident.”
She crossed her arms. “Well, obviously it’s related.”
Carol chimed in. “All we do know for sure is that whoever did this did so after the forensic cleanup crew left at four a.m. and before you and Cale entered the shop at eight.”
“I bet they were looking for the murder weapon,” Cale said.
Richard sent him an irritated stare. “I told you this could have been an isolated incident.”
“What?” Cale asked, hands up in surrender. “Just a thought.”
Violet quirked an eyebrow. “So you don’t have a murder weapon yet? For some reason I just assumed you found it somewhere out back.”
Richard’s jaw clenched. “We didn’t,” he said tersely.
She swallowed down the lump that suddenly formed in her throat. “That means there’s a crazy killer still out there with some sort of knife just waiting for his next victim?”
Carol chuckled and muttered, “Except it wasn’t a knife.”
“Carol,” Richard’s voice boomed. He sucked in some air then let it out as calmly as possible. “You do realize Violet is still a suspect, don’t you?”
She stopped dusting the lip-balm display on the checkout counter and turned. “You know as well as I do Violet had nothing to do with Gordon’s murder. Everyone hated the guy.”
A number of people had motives to kill Gordon. As much as he rubbed pretty much the entire village of Cape Flower wrong, for some reason, he’d always had a soft spot for Violet though. When his son cheated on her, it was Gordon Preston who’d paid for Violet’s attorney. And even if they hadn’t spoken much over the past two years, Violet felt it obvious by the money he left that the soft spot had still remained.
“I never hated Gordon,” Violet admitted, and it was true. “His son, maybe, but not Gordon.” She turned toward Richard and met his eyes. “And as for the money, you know as well as I do that I knew nothing about my little inheritance until you told me last night.”
Richard stepped closer to her and bent down so she could smell the Green Tree soap. He whispered, “I do know that.”
Violet sniffed as casually as possible as he pulled away, his eyes meeting hers once again. Her heart picked up speed and she had to take two more deep breaths to slow it down.
Stupid Richard and his stupid amazing smelling soap.
Richard stood up straight and cleared his throat. “I’m just following procedure, Miss Oleander,” he said professionally and loud enough for Carol and Officer Wells to hear.
Violet made a mental note to find out from Carol what type of weapon was used. She’d add that to her sleuthing to-do list.
“Violet?” Richard said, snapping his fingers in her face and breaking her from her thoughts.
She shook her head, the lack of sleep starting to catch up with her. She wondered if maybe she should have taken that nap like Cale suggested.
Richard gestured toward the back of the shop. “I know you were already in your office, but can you please go back there and double-check everything’s as it should be? That nothing’s missing?”
She nodded. “Sure.”
He gestured to the young, pimply Officer Wells, who didn’t even look old enough to have a beer. “Can you go with her?” Richard asked.
Violet threw a hand on her hip and shot Richard an I-don’t-need-a-babysitter kind of glare. Her look softened when he said, “Procedure,” in his calm, smooth voice. As handsome as he was, Richard infuriated her at times.
“Fine.” Violet spun around, with Officer Wells directly on her heels.
Violet got into her office and sighed. In all honesty, there wasn’t anything worth stealing in here. The only thing of value was a box of unopened Deep Steep hand lotions, and she was sure whomever broke into the shop wasn’t looking for bath goods.
But what were they looking for?
Violet rifled through her overturned drawer of stationary and writing utensils, then decided to see if anything was amiss in the back storage area. She moved through the piles of boxes that lined the walls leading to the back exit—boxes filled with pumpkin-spiced lotions, cinnamon face masks, and other fall pampering goodies.
“Everything looks in order here,” she said, turning toward Officer Wells. “Do you mind if I start organizing some of this inventory?”
Officer Wells, whose first name Violet suddenly realized she didn’t know, leaned on the wall beside the vat of soap that had solidified overnight.
“Ugh!” Violet moaned. With the whole Gordon situation last night, she’d completely forgotten about the batch of soap she started yesterday morning. Her plan was to let the mixture solidify overnight in soap molds, but for obvious reasons she didn’t get around to it. Now she’d have to re-melt the soap, mix it again, and then start the molding process.
Violet moved to the large stainless-steel vat and turned the burner on high, hoping the saponification would happen again, making the batc
h salvageable. Just as she moved away though, something odd caught her eye. Yesterday afternoon, she had added mica to the mixture to give this particular batch a soft lavender hue. But as it began to melt down now, the color turned muddy brown.
“What are you cooking over there?” Officer Wells asked, moving beside her.
“Before I tell you, you need to answer a few questions for me.” Violet pursed her lips at him and raised an eyebrow. “What is your first name?”
Officer Wells beamed, his eyes wrinkling in the corners. “Ben, ma’am.”
“And how long have you been working here?”
He pulled his lips to the side. “About two weeks. And I like it here so far. I mean, there’s already been a murder, and that’s more than I saw where I came from.”
Violet opened her mouth to ask where that was, but he kept talking.
“I came from the sweetest place on earth—Hershey, Pennsylvania. My girlfriend lives here in Cape Flower, so I moved here to be closer to her. We met in college, two years ago. She graduated and moved back home while I went the police academy. It’s been a ride for sure.”
Violet tucked a few pieces of dark hair behind her ear and nodded. He shared information she hadn’t asked for, but she was happy he shared nevertheless. Violet could tell by the way he rambled on he was thrilled someone asked about him, about something beyond police business.
“Okay…now I’ll tell you what I’m cooking.” Violet gestured to the boxes of bathing goods strewn around the room. “Even though I have vendors who supply most of the products I sell at Bubbles Boutique, I make a number of the products here in my store—soap, scrub, balms, lotions, the works.” She pointed toward the giant crockpot in front of her. “There are a few methods of making soap, and I like to use the hot process. I started this batch of lavender soap yesterday morning and forgot all about it after…” Her widened my eyes. “You know…”
He nodded, and peered into the pot. “Seems like fun.”
“Soap-making is more than fun. It is really an art, Ben.”