Lethal Lifestyles (A Headlines in High Heels Mystery Book 6)

by LynDee Walker

  “I was upset! I just lost my only son!” she shrieked.

  Ladies and gentlemen, the Manson family’s answer to Fred and Ethel Mertz.

  Come on, Troy.

  Come on, guys. Someone answer your phone.

  “You seem to forget that was rather your own fault, darling. Now everyone will believe Mr. Parker has run from the law, and he will finally be as hated as he deserved when Mari died.” Richard waved a hand my way. “The maid of honor eloping with the groom is cliché, but I’ll risk it.”

  My eyes widened with every word until they wouldn’t go any wider, my head tossing back and forth between them.

  They had it all figured out. And Maisy would be front and center to tell everyone she knew it all along. I swallowed hard. Panic wouldn’t get us out of here.

  My eyes flicked to Parker. Was he even breathing?

  The mace. I couldn’t reach it with my hands bound, but maybe…

  They were still bickering. Could I?

  If I sprayed her and she dropped the dagger, he might beat me to it. Shit.

  I raised both arms slowly over my head.

  Richard flapped his hands. “Do what you want. If you get caught, I wasn’t here.” I noticed his black leather gloves for the first time as he stepped out of the closet.

  One on one, I could take her. I thought. What did I have to lose?

  I threw my elbows down and back like I was trying to hurt someone on the other side of the wall, just like Kyle taught me. The tape gave and my hand found the canister in my pocket as Annabeth spun back to me. She raised the dagger and I brought my arm up and sprayed her full in the face. Screaming, then coughing, she doubled over, the force of her arm sending the blade through her own leg. She hit the floor and I froze as Burke thumped the door open. “I know there are trees, but we do still have neighbors. Shut her up.” When his eyes fell on his wife’s bleeding leg and swollen face, he whirled for me.

  I stumbled backward, tripping over Parker’s legs and dropping the mace canister as Burke pulled an ornate revolver from his jacket. “They say this once belonged to Stonewall Jackson.” He leveled it at me. “Just like this stadium business. If I want something done, I might as well do it myself.”

  The grim set of his mouth and flat cold gray of his eyes were the last thing I saw as mine fell shut.

  The gun fired, and a thousand pounds of bricks hit me square in the chest.

  Being shot felt a lot heavier than it had last time.

  Burke roared and I opened my eyes.

  Parker.

  Parker was laying on me. Why was Parker laying on me?

  Why was Parker bleeding from the corner of his mouth?

  No.

  Oh, Jesus, please no.

  My eyes pricked with new tears.

  I tried to scream, but I couldn’t get any air.

  “Parker, please be okay,” I whispered. “You have to be okay.”

  I felt his chest try to pull in a breath. “Run…Sleeping…Screaming.” Parker was trying to talk, but I couldn’t hear him over all the shouting.

  Something heavy crashed into my shin, and Annabeth Burke wailed, “Where are you going, you son of a bitch? Don’t you leave me!”

  So much shouting.

  Coming closer. Getting louder.

  Overpowering Richard and Annabeth’s sniping.

  “Parker, hang in there.” I don’t know if I managed to get the words out, but I wanted to.

  Male voices—more than one of them.

  “Back here! I see a light!”

  Was that Aaron?

  “Up here!” I tried to call. Still no air.

  “Freeze, Mr. Burke.”

  Kyle.

  “Nichelle?”

  Aaron.

  The tears spilled over.

  Shoving with everything in me, I righted myself and landed Parker in my lap. Warmth flooded over my thigh, and I watched Parker’s eyes flutter closed.

  I wiped the corner of his mouth with my finger.

  “No. Parker, stay with me.” It was still a scratchy whisper.

  I stroked the hair off Parker’s forehead as his eyelids twitched, then opened. I found some air, and my voice. “Aaron! Kyle! Help us!”

  I cradled Parker’s head, the footsteps not coming fast enough. “Please, God. Please. No.” I sobbed, trying not to think about how much blood there was.

  I felt someone lean over me, heard Kyle curse, and then he and Aaron lifted Parker off my lap, barking orders at windbreaker-sporting ATF agents and uniformed Richmond officers.

  I stayed frozen for half a minute before I jumped to my feet and hobbled after them, my hip screaming with every step. I didn’t have to go far. Kyle was using linen from the canopy to pack Parker’s wound, Aaron yanking the comforter off the bed to use for a stretcher.

  “Don’t let him…” I couldn’t say it, the energy leaving me as I dropped onto the vanity stool.

  “Jesus, what a night.” Kyle shook his head. “I turned my phone on to call Bonnie—your cold case suicide was likely not, says the weird racehorse hormone in the tox report and the teeny nick in the vic’s skull on the x-rays. Bonnie wants the remains exhumed, and I have some work to do before Sammons will answer for it, but your gut was right. I gathered that much before a call from the newspaper beeped in. That intern y’all have deserves a raise.”

  I nodded, my eyes not leaving Parker as the uniforms led Richard and Annabeth Burke from the room in handcuffs. Sammons wouldn’t get away with killing his sister. But right then nothing mattered except that my friend was bleeding and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do.

  “Troy? He’s a good kid. Bring him to the wedding,” Parker’s voice rasped.

  “Parker!” I shot to my feet.

  “Hey there, Superman. Keep talking,” Kyle said, pressing harder on the wound.

  “Whatever you’re doing hurts like a bitch, Miller.”

  “I’d apologize, but it’s probably saving your life, man.”

  They rolled him onto the comforter and lifted him, and I followed them outside. The back of the house was lit like a runway, an ambulance backing down the drive to meet us.

  “I’m going with him,” I said, and Kyle lifted me into the back of the bus. I grabbed his hand and squeezed. “Get my phone from that closet and call Mel.”

  He nodded and slammed the doors, rapping on the back as the driver rolled forward.

  “Clarke.”

  I leaned over Parker, tears streaming from my cheeks onto the blanket over his chest. “You scared the shit out of me,” I sobbed.

  “Three more times and we’re even.” He tried to smile. “I can’t believe I was dumb enough to go with her. She was there when I came back up from my run this morning. She said she wanted to apologize, that she knew I didn’t have anything to do with Mitch’s death and they were having a press conference at nine to let everyone know that. Told me she missed Mitch and Mari, and wanted me to have something of Mari’s as a wedding gift.” He paused, wincing. “Hurts to breathe.”

  “Try to be still, sir,” the paramedic, who was attempting to set an IV needle, said.

  I squeezed Parker’s free hand. “It’s not stupid to want to see the best in others. Even when you get burned.”

  “I’d rather stay clear of this particular heat source.” Parker rolled his eyes. “Melanie?”

  “Safe.” I squeezed. “You guys need another couple weeks of honeymoon.”

  “Secrets, murder…how hard can married life be after all this?”

  I laughed and wiped at my eyes. “For you two? Piece of cake.”

  40.

  Happily ever after?

  Fairy dust? Check. Heart-shaped bubbles? All over it.

  We even had an early nightingale serenade blending with the harpist’s music into soaring notes that were nothing short of magical.

  Since everyone had read the entire ridiculous saga of the past week in the morning paper and Parker sported a very suave sling our crafty features editor had f
ashioned from a cut-up tuxedo vest, there wasn’t a dry eye in a five-mile radius by the time he and Mel finished the I do’s.

  Bubbles flew, cameras flashed, and Tony Okerson boomed an enthusiastic introduction to Mr. and Mrs. Grant Parker.

  The bar was stocked far beyond what had been paid for, a gift from Hulk, who was running the Calais show now that Sammons was sitting in jail awaiting a trial almost a decade overdue. No statute of limitations in Virginia for murder charges meant Jolene’s death wouldn’t go unpunished, after all.

  Bonnie’s cold case Nancy Drew work and Kyle’s SuperCop smarts had the case pretty neatly sewn up: Tests on the exhumed remains confirmed that Jolene had been stabbed with a dirty needle and injected with the oxycodone—a refill of a prescription her father had for his favorite mare, which Dale signed for at the pharmacy the morning of Jolene’s death.

  In the middle of the revelations about her mother and her uncle, Celia broke down and confessed to blackmailing Alexei with her Google evidence that he’d been in trouble for poisoning someone back home. She wanted some kind of quasi-Montezuma’s revenge on Mitch, so she told Alexei to spike his favorite dessert with pokeweed berries when he came to meet Sammons for lunch the day before he died. Alexei didn’t do it, but Celia didn’t know that until Richard Burke was arrested, because Alexei was afraid she’d rat out his youthful indiscretions. Celia told the sheriff she took the siphon from the barn to throw it out because it had Chateau de Burke run through it and she was afraid the men would all forget.

  Jinkerson saw the news coverage of Richard and Annabeth’s arrests and came back. He’d tried to fink to me on Sammons and thought better of it, then taken off when he got the idea that Mitch Burke’s death was related to the Cacciones (who he owed a small fortune to that he’d borrowed from loanshark.com at forty percent on Friday morning) and wondered if he’d be next.

  Hulk made national wine headlines Friday when he bowed out of the Governor’s Cup—Sammons made an employee who was dating Fulton’s granddaughter wheedle her out of his magic seeds, which produced the plants Kyle had noticed on Tuesday. And the amazing Riesling. As soon as Hulk was in charge, he set about making it right.

  The same judge Kyle had badgered his warrant out of Wednesday no-bonded Richard and Annabeth both on account of flight risk, and Bob had refused to run the exclusive I wrote while Parker was having a three-hour surgery to remove a minnie ball from his left lung and sew up his back until Andrews not only offered me my job back, but gave me a raise and apologized.

  I caught Shelby’s eye on the other side of the dance floor and forced myself to return her smile. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with her little secret.

  I was, however, certain it would come in handy someday.

  A glass of wine appeared in my face, and I turned to find Kyle, looking positively dashing in his last-minute honorary groomsman tux, smiling at Parker and Mel, who waltzed with dreamy grins that belied the half-dozen stitches up the left side of his spine. “They look happy.”

  “To be fair, the kazillion milligrams of Demerol are probably helping on his part.” I smiled.

  Larry circled the dance floor, snapping photos, until Mel waved for everyone to join them for the last notes of “Save The Best For Last.”

  “Though I suppose when the ‘’til death do us part’ nearly beats the ‘I do’s,’ you’re happy just to be here,” I added.

  Kyle nodded. “Observant as always.”

  Maisy, who’d told Sheriff Rutledge she was after emails and texts to prove I was messing around with Parker when she tried to hack into my laptop, glared at me from the bar. I raised my glass in her direction and flashed a fake smile. My eyes lit on Troy, who had Bob and Tony Okerson laughing at something he was saying.

  Parker’s cousins were either standing around drinking or hitting on single women. They’d taken it easy with the antics in light of their cousin’s brush with mortality, thankfully. A plastic skeleton in Parker’s shower to start the day was it so far—and even I giggled when Mel told me that story.

  I blew out a slow breath. “Everything as it should be.”

  “Down to the last detail.” Kyle took my glass and nodded in the direction of the doors to the deck.

  I furrowed a brow as I spun to face them.

  And forgot to breathe.

  Joey raised his chin, stepping around the curtains. I let out a little squeal and met him in the middle of the dance floor.

  “May I, beautiful?”

  I nodded, stepping into his arms as the band struck up “You Look Wonderful Tonight.”

  “What happened to being afraid of questions?” It came out in a hoarse half-whisper.

  “When the woman I love nearly gets herself filleted trying to help out a friend, I figure a room full of cops and reporters isn’t the scariest thing I can think of.”

  The woman he loved. Me. And having him there murmuring in my ear in front of all my friends wasn’t even a blip on my scary radar anymore.

  I tipped my head back and caught his eye. “It’s nice to have you here.”

  His shoulders rose under my hands with a deep breath. “It’s nice to be here.” He kissed the tip of my nose. “It’s nice to be wherever you are. Every second that I can. So nice that I might’ve looked at an apartment on the river this morning.”

  Um. My lips wouldn’t work. “Joey—I—what exactly are you saying?”

  “Princess, I’m saying simply that I’ve lost the ability to contemplate living without you. All the air goes out of the room when I think about it.” He tightened his arms around me and rested his chin on my hair before he moved his hands to my shoulders, barely swaying to the music as his eyes met mine. “I’m not sure what comes next, but I’m damned sure I want you to be part of it.”

  My knees went all watery.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking,” he whispered, resting his forehead against mine.

  My friends chattered and laughed around us. Parker was fine. Bob and I were fine. And Joey was here, swaying to the song with me, just like I’d daydreamed.

  My eyes filled—with tears and love both—as I smiled.

  I adored my life. Murderers, craziness, and all.

  “I’m thinking that I’m well and truly in love with you, Mr. D’Amore.” I moved my cheek to his shoulder, putting my lips close to his ear. “And I can’t wait to see what’s next for us.”

  About the Author

  LynDee Walker’s award-winning journalistic work has appeared in newspapers and magazines across the U.S. Her debut novel, Front Page Fatality, was nominated for the Agatha Award for Best First Novel. LynDee adores her family, her readers, and enchiladas. She often works out tricky plot points while walking off the enchiladas. She lives in Richmond, Virginia, where she is either playing with her children, working on her next novel, or admiring beautiful shoes she can’t wear.

  The Headlines in High Heels Mystery Series

  by LynDee Walker

  Novels

  FRONT PAGE FATALITY (#1)

  CLICK FOR FRONT PAGE FATALITY

  BURIED LEADS (#2)

  CLICK FOR BURIED LEADS

  SMALL TOWN SPIN (#3)

  CLICK FOR SMALL TOWN SPIN

  DEVIL IN THE DEADLINE (#4)

  CLICK FOR DEVIL IN THE DEADLINE

  COVER SHOT (#5)

  CLICK FOR COVER SHOT

  LETHAL LIFESTYLES (#6)

  Novellas

  DATELINE MEMPHIS (in HEARTACHE MOTEL)

  CLICK FOR HEARTACHE MOTEL

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  Henery Press Mystery Books

  And finall
y, before you go…

  Here are a few other mysteries

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  Between volunteering for the annual pumpkin festival and coaching her girls to the state soccer finals, high school teacher Tj Jensen finds her good friend Zachary Collins dead in his favorite chair.

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  Read all about it and/or grab the book from Amazon

  CLICK FOR MURDER ON A SILVER PLATTER

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  Just when she thinks she’s reached the bottom of the rain barrel, Megan and the town’s hunky veterinarian discover the local zoning commissioner’s battered body in her barn. Now Megan is thrust into the middle of a murder investigation—and she’s the chief suspect. Can Megan dig through small-town secrets, local politics, and old grievances in time to find a killer before that killer strikes again?