He snapped his folder shut and handed her his card. “In case you have any questions. Call me anytime. Is there anything else you need?”
“No. I think we’re good.”
“Very nice to meet you.” He shook her hand again and made his way back to the front door.
“See you Friday.” Nikka stood in the empty foyer, unsure of her next move. She looked up to the skylight. The stars had just come out, and their silver light flooded into the small room. There were charming details everywhere in this house; the walls probably had a thousand stories to tell.
She should inform Vivienne that she was leaving. What a change forty-eight hours made. Two days ago, she had crept up the stairs as a trespasser, and now she was Lea’s stand-in.
The hallway was dark with only a soft light seeping out from under the door at the end of the hallway. Walker’s room.
She tapped softly. “Vivienne?”
“Don’t move. Be quiet. I’ll be right back.” Vivienne’s tone was harsh behind the closed door.
Nikka’s stomach constricted at the icy coldness.
The door opened just a sliver, throwing a yellow ribbon of light into the hallway. Vivienne squeezed through the opening to face Nikka. “Yes?” Her face had a sour expression, as if she had eaten a lemon and couldn’t wash away the taste.
“I just wanted to tell you that—”
Nikka did a slight double take. Vivienne’s lips twisted downward, and a vein throbbed in her neck. She had read her wrong; her expression wasn’t sour. It was mean. Vivienne was nasty, and Nikka knew with a certainty that was like a hit to her gut that she was unkind to Beth Walker too.
“Yes?”
“That we’re done downstairs. When Lea gets here tomorrow, she’ll take over.”
“Good.” Vivienne slipped back into the room without another word.
Nikka stood in the darkened hallway for a moment, trying to slide this new realization into the pages of how things worked in this house. It didn’t fit.
“I’ve told you a million times, you old bat, get away from the window.” Vivienne’s voice was muffled through the door, but the tone was not.
This she couldn’t walk away from. She tapped softly on the door.
Scuffling came from inside and then complete silence. The door didn’t open.
She knocked again, this time a little louder. “Vivienne? Is everything all right in there?”
Still nothing.
She tried the door handle.
It was locked.
Shit. This didn’t feel right. Beth may be falling into dementia, that much could be true, but no one should be treated like this, especially someone as defenseless as Walker was. Shit, shit, shit! This turn of events did not fit into her plans.
Nikka tried the door one last time and then turned down the hallway. Her heels clicking against the wooden floor told anyone who was listening—and she would’ve bet her bottom dollar that Vivienne was—that she was leaving. Once outside, she pulled out her phone and Lea’s number.
All’s good with the event. She quickly tapped out the text message. Vivienne seems out of sorts. Not handling Walker well. Advice?
Okay, due diligence done. It was Lea’s problem now.
At her car with her hand on the door, however, she turned to take in the house. Walker’s bedroom would be in the back.
No. She forced her hand around the car’s door handle. This wasn’t the kind of opportunity her father was always going on about embracing. She should get into the car and drive away as fast as her Outback would take her.
Sorry, Papa. With a deep, deep sigh she scooted past her car and headed around the garage and into the backyard. Nikka expected the manicured green lawns of the suburbs where she had grown up, not the mess behind the house—thorny bushes, brambles, the forest running all the way up to the house. She fought her way through the brush, tearing her blouse on a sharp branch, until she reached what she thought was Walker’s window.
It was closed. Of course. What had she expected? Bed sheets knotted into an escape rope? Beth Walker hanging from the windowsill by her fingertips? Still, there had to be a reason why Vivienne had told her to get away from the window a million times.
Her heels sinking into the soft ground, Nikka stood there, tossing around ideas and coming up with nothing. Until she looked right in front of her—little roundish things littered the ground under the window. What were they?
Some were yellow and oblong, others round and blue, but all of them looked like pills or some sort of medicine broken into pieces. She plucked a red oval one off a nearby leaf. It was too dark to make out the name stamped into its surface, but it was a medical-grade pharmaceutical, for sure. She grabbed a few more, just for good measure.
Nikka sucked her heels out of the dirt and fought her way through the bushes to the driveway on her tiptoes. Holding the half pill under the car’s interior light, she could just make out a P-e-r on its smooth surface. Percocet? Percodan? Someone—probably Walker—was throwing bits and pieces of pain pills out the window. But why? They had to be prescribed. Hadn’t Lea mentioned there was some sort of accident in Walker’s past? Why wouldn’t she take them if she needed them? Unless…
Three voices rose up in her mind.
“Help me.” Walker’s voice was full of emotion.
“You’re making her upset. You need to go.” Vivienne’s was all about control and malice.
And then the voice of reason. “Can you really live with yourself if you do nothing?”
Nikka closed her eyes and clutched at the pill in her hand. Dammit, that nutty woman was right. I’m going to have to do something.
She looked at her phone. No return text or call. She rubbed her forehead, wondering what to do with this new information.
She opened her briefcase to find paper and pen for a new to-do list. Instead her thoughts ran to warm brown eyes, that touch on her arm outside the bakery, and an energy that suddenly seemed more exciting than crazy. Her stomach rose and fell, leaving a slight fluttering racing through her.
It did seem like the time to ask what the fuck was going on.
But she was thinking about a woman with shaggy bangs, not Walker…
“Yodel-ay-hee-hoo. Yodel-ay-hee-hoo.”
Groaning, Maggie rolled across the bed and away from the woman’s sing-songy voice belting out of her iPhone.
“Yodel-ay-hee-hoo.” It had seemed funny and sweet when George had bought the ring tone for her birthday right after she had free climbed The Nose at El Capitan. Now…not so much. Way too loud for this early in the morning. Maggie opened one eye. Who was calling at the break of dawn? She dragged the phone off the bedside table. “Yodel-ay hee—”
“George, what could possibly—?”
“What the hell, Maggie. You know what just came into the office?”
“No. But I think you’re going to tell me.”
“Your name on a restraining order. Actually, it was reported yesterday. But Frank did me a solid and brought me into the loop. You know how serious this is?”
“Yes, I do.” She sat up in bed and gave him her full attention. “It means I’m on to something. There’s no other reason they’d make me stay away.”
George groaned.
“Have you found anything?”
“Maggie, don’t you get it? You need to give up this ridiculous conspiracy theory about Beth Walker. This is serious. This kind stuff is not going to help you at the hearing to see if the restraining order will stand. And at that point I can’t do anything to help you.”
“It won’t matter if you’ve done your job. Tell me you found something.”
“No. Not one thing. Everything with the law firm is beyond reproach, and that Vivienne woman, bitch though she may be, is up to date on her licenses for custodial care.”
“I’m telling you things aren’t on the up and up out there.”
“I couldn’t find any evidence to that end.”
“Keep looking, please, George. Talk to
Beth, for one.” When she didn’t get an answer, she added, “Just give the investigation some more time, at least until your shift starts.”
“What are you talking about? I’m already on the clock. It’s after nine.”
She swung the phone out. He wasn’t lying. 9:23. Nope, now it was 9:24.
“Holy shit. I gotta go. Keep digging.” She yelled the last part into the phone before hanging up. No time for a shower. Instead, she slipped a brush through her hair and swished once with some old mouthwash on the counter. Darting through the studio apartment, she grabbed a sweatshirt and her bike helmet and rushed out the door.
“Maggie’s here!” Skylar chirped the moment Maggie wheeled her bike through the front door.
Maggie had visions of running her over with the front wheel of the bike.
“So you give me two good days, and then you’re back to your same old—” Lauren called out before she rounded the corner from the back office. “Oh my God. Are you still in your pajamas?”
“I overslept.”
“Well, we don’t have time to talk about this. Right now, you need to get your butt in the kitchen. We just got an order for two hundred cupcakes, twenty each of these flavors.” She handed Maggie a faxed order form. “And we need to deliver by tomorrow.”
“Okay, I’ll stay as long as it takes tonight.” She wheeled her bike into the kitchen and leaned it up against the back wall.
“I guess that’s something.” Lauren followed her into the space and ran a critical gaze down to the blue polka dots on her legs. “Jesus, Maggie.”
Maggie worked like a dog for the rest of the morning, even though the storefront was a madhouse and she had to listen to Skylar, the tattletale, call out her cheery greeting every few minutes. At one point, she poked her head out of the kitchen.
A line snaked all the way out the door.
“What’s going on? Why’s it so crowded?”
“It’s happening all over town from what I hear.” Lauren got up from her office to join her. “I think people are descending because of the press conference tomorrow. Crazy, huh? In twenty-four hours this place has practically become Beth-a-palooza.”
They both looked at the long line.
“Whoever is putting this press conference together is pretty damn sharp.” Lauren nodded.
“Lea Truman,” Maggie said under her breath.
“They’re sure playing up the lesbian Hollywood angle. What big-time star did Beth Walker sleep with? People are coming out of the woodwork to find out. You know how everyone wants to be a part of everything these days.”
“You’re not kidding. Look.” Maggie pointed to a young woman at the counter with a cherry blossom tattoo on her shoulder.
“Hey, do you know where Beth Walker happens to live?” Tattoo woman grabbed her red velvet cupcake off the counter.
“Out on Fern Drive. Behind a big black gate.” Skylar nodded repeatedly. “You can’t miss it.”
“I better put a stop to this.” Lauren jumped in behind the counter.
Maggie stepped back into the kitchen and returned to the gargantuan task at hand. Two hundred cupcakes was doable. It was the ten flavors that gave her pause. She picked up the first lemon in a long, orderly line on her workstation. Her life was almost always in a state of chaos, but her stations were consistently neat and tidy, every ingredient and tool in its place. She ran the zester over the fruit, and its peel came away in long, yellow strips. The kitchen smelled like a citrus grove, and she took the fresh smell deep into her lungs. She smiled. Like her brother, she could always count on a Lemon Lover to lift her spirits, no matter what stage it was in.
“Psst.”
Maggie looked around.
“Over here by the door.”
Nikka Vaskin’s head jutted in through the half-opened back door. “Sorry, to bother you. I know you’re working.”
How could anyone’s hair be so shiny?
“Do you have a second?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Maggie waved a hand. “Come in.”
“Thanks.” She scooted in through the opening, but once inside, she bit her lip and furrowed her brow.
Maggie somehow knew she was wrestling with coming at all. Normally, she liked to move forward as quickly as possible—a rolling stone, no moss and all that—but now she welcomed the pause. She was enjoying the view. Another silk blouse. This one a deep maroon, which brought out both the gray and blue of her eyes. Her black skirt, thankfully tighter than the one the day before, hugged her hips. Yesterday, Maggie would’ve sworn that Nikka was slim to the point of being boyish, but today, the skirt exposed the truth. She had curves in all the right places.
“It smells really good in here.” Nikka broke the silence.
“Essential oils.” Maggie held up the lemon still in her hand.
Nikka bit her lip again, but before the silence took over, Maggie added, “Interesting fact. There’s ten times more vitamin C in the peel than there is in the juice, and you know, the peel is full of D-Limonene, which is thought to fight cancer and—”
“Can we talk?” Nikka looked around her.
“Yeah, sure.”
“Maybe somewhere a little more private.”
“Okay, where do you want to go?” Maggie placed the lemon carefully back into line and moved toward the back door.
“Ah, somewhere here? It might be better.”
Of course. The lawyer couldn’t afford to be seen with the crazy woman.
Maggie glanced around. She edged to the big metal door of the walk-in cooler and swung it open. “I guess we can talk in here.”
“You’re not going to lock me in there, are you?” Nikka smiled thinly, but a note of concern had entered her voice.
“You came to me, remember? The lock doesn’t even engage.” When Nikka didn’t move, she jiggled the handle on the other side of the door. “This isn’t the movies.”
“Okay.” Nikka made her way over with small, cautious steps.
The cooler was jammed full of the fresh ingredients for the cupcakes and looked like a study in modern art. Red strawberries, yellow lemons, and orange carrots washed the shelves in color, but the room was cold, and as soon as they entered, Nikka wrapped her arms around herself.
“You better talk quick.” Maggie laughed and instantly wished she had chosen somewhere warmer so this encounter might last longer.
“You might be right.” Nikka jumped right in. “I was out at Walker’s last night, and something’s going on. I found this outside her window in the bushes.” She opened her palm and revealed something small and white. “It looked like someone was throwing them out the window.”
Maggie took a closer look. One of the pills from the bedside table! Maggie did something between a hop and a dance, and she had to bite back a whoop and a “I knew it!” One look at Nikka shivering in the cold made her clamp her mouth shut. Her head was slightly downcast, and she wasn’t meeting Maggie’s gaze. Clearly, it had taken a lot for her to come here, and if Maggie was reading her right, even now, she wasn’t too sure that it was the right decision.
“Just that one?” She marveled that her voice sounded as calm as she had hoped it would.
“No, a whole mess of them.”
“She clearly didn’t want to take them if she was throwing them out the window. Do you think she was being forced to and she needed to hide that she’s not taking them?”
Nikka’s brow furrowed. Was she always this cautious before she spoke?
“Maybe. But that sounds crazy, right?”
“She said to the woman who just had a restraining order slapped on her.” Maggie had meant to be funny. She raised her eyebrows and got ready to chuckle along with Nikka, but in the cold of the room, she felt the heat rise off Nikka before she saw it spread to her face.
“Look, I’m sorry about that—”
“No. Me too. I was joking.”
“I didn’t come from me. It came from…” Nikka pursed her lips shut.
She was a careful one. Ma
ggie tucked that fact away.
“I’m not even sure,” Nikka continued slowly, “why I’m here. I guess… I hoped you might have some real answers. It seemed that yesterday, when you were out at the Inn…”
“I do. I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve a theory. You want to hear it?”
Nikka stomped her feet and blew on her hands to ward off the cold. “Probably not. But go ahead.”
Despite the cold, Maggie felt warm all over. Finally someone had opened the door and invited her and her theories in. Maggie wasn’t a fool. She knew Nikka wasn’t going to embrace what came next—no one ever did. But she was looking at her with a clear, open gaze not already filled with preconceptions, and that was good enough for her.
“Excellent.” Maggie angled her body closer. “Beth has always been a recluse. No one knows why. Her brother, who never amounted to much, managed her affairs, brokered the deal for the house, which for some reason she just had to have. He was the go-between with her and the businesses here in town. Then a year ago he died. There was no other family, and somehow Lea Truman swept in. Things went on as always, or so we thought.”
Maggie scanned Nikka’s face. Still clear. So far so good.
“Then I became her personal chef and saw how it really was out there. Vivienne, that she-witch, practically has Beth under lock and key and never lets anyone see her. When I started asking questions, Lea fired me. I knew I was on to something. And a restraining order on top of that? It seemed a little extreme. But I couldn’t figure out why.”
Okay, pause. You’re sounding a little hysterical.
“You think it has to do with the story and the press release?” Nikka asked.
“What else could it be? The two stories will make Lea and the publishing company very rich. I was in the way of all that, and now I’m not.”
Nikka nodded. “Okay, but what makes you think Beth doesn’t want this?”
“Nothing. I got nothing really. Except a gut feeling, weird timing, and now a bunch of pills thrown out a window.”
Nikka sighed deeply. It wasn’t the usual get-me-away-from-this-nut-job sigh that Maggie almost always heard at this point. Nikka’s read more like a shit-you-may-actually-have-something-there sigh.
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