“When did you get into town?” he asked.
“This morning.” Mother took Wilson’s hand and struggled out of the low seat. “I wouldn’t miss this, would I?”
“Miss wha—” Wilson stopped mid-question when he noticed the rather formal dress I was wearing.
“What the—” But he stopped mid-sentence again when Karen’s van pulled in behind my car. She, Candy, and Peter Harrison hopped out, and Karen leaned into the back for Snowflake’s cat carrier.
“Doesn’t everyone look nice?” Mother asked.
“What the—”
“I asked them to wear yellow,” I explained as my neighbors walked over to greet us.
Karen wore her ubiquitous jeans and work boots, but she had replaced the usual T-shirt for a lovely yellow silk blouse. Candy wore a yellow mini dress with matching stilettos. And Peter sported a yellow tie.
Peter pumped Wilson’s stunned hand, offered me a slight bow, and held an elbow out for my mother. “May I have the honor?”
Mother giggled and took his arm, and they tottered off toward the lawn overlooking Lake Lookadoo.
“What the—” This time Wilson appealed to Candy and Karen.
“It’s Snowflake.” Karen jiggled the cat carrier. “She wasn’t about to miss this.”
“Gosh, no,” Candy agreed. “Especially since she’s already dressed for the occasion. All white and all.” She took Karen’s hand, and together they maneuvered their way up to the porch. They released Snowflake into the care of Bernice and Wally and joined Mother and Peter on the lawn.
“White?” Wilson pointed to my own outfit. “You look nice.” He reconsidered. “You look beautiful.”
I thanked him for noticing, told him he looked handsome, too, and pointed to the driveway. “But look,” I said. “Here comes The Stone Fountain gang.”
Wilson stared aghast at the U-haul truck pulling up.
Matthew and Gina Stone emerged from the cab, and Kirby, Gus, and Charlie popped out of the back. Kirby stood at attention and saluted us, and then got to work helping Gus unload several flower arrangements and quite a few white folding chairs. Karen whistled, and Charlie started carrying said chairs to the lawn.
Matthew and Gina ventured over to us. While Matthew shook Wilson’s hand, Gina informed me the cake had survived the trip over the dirt roads. “And we brought enough food to feed an army.”
“And enough champagne to float the Titanic,” Matthew added.
“Did someone say champagne?” Christopher Rye hopped out of the latest vehicle to arrive.
“What the—”
“It’s your son, Wilson.” I pointed. “And your parents, of course.”
While Chris helped LuAnn—his grandmother and Wilson’s mother—from the passenger seat, Mitchell Rye, Wilson’s father, got out of the back seat and walked over.
I thanked him for making the trip from Raleigh.
“Are you kidding?” He stopped shaking his son’s hand to hug me.
“We wouldn’t miss this for the world,” LuAnn said as she and Chris joined us.
“Way to go, Dad.” Chris high-fived Wilson, and me, and jogged back to the driveway to help with the last of the chairs.
LuAnn and Mitchell joined the group assembling on the lawn.
Wilson blinked at me. “I want Chris to stand up with me. With us.”
“Already taken care of,” I said and pointed to the continuing action in the driveway.
“What the—”
“It’s Frankie and Lizzie,” I said as the silver Porsche came to a stop. I waved to the teenagers, and an SUV pulled up behind them. “And that must be Like, The Lyricals. They’re the girl group Lizzie is now a part of.” I smiled at Wilson. “They do oldies.”
Three young women emerged from the SUV, and with Frankie and Lizzie’s help, unloaded a variety of instruments.
“Lizzie and the Lyricals,” Wilson said. “I like it.”
“No, Wilson. It’s Like, The Lyricals.”
“I do like The Lyricals.”
I told him to never mind, since the poor guy was confused enough. Especially when we heard the sirens.
You guessed it. Two police cars pulled up, and out popped several members of Wilson’s team. Tiffany Sass threw a kiss in our direction as Russell Densmore and his wife emerged from the car behind, and everyone began their trek toward the lawn.
Wilson waved to Russell in particular. “I want Densmore—I mean, I want Russell—to stand up with us also,” he said, and I told him that, too, had already been arranged.
“Did you arrange for better plumbing?” a voice said from behind us.
We turned in time to see Loretta Springfield emerge from the woods that separated her property from Wilson’s.
“Not yet,” I said, but Loretta assured us her bathroom facilities were in working order if the water stopped working at Wilson’s.
“But we almost always have running water,” I said optimistically.
“We?” Wilson asked me as Loretta wandered off.
“And you must be Snowflake,” she said as she passed the porch. She waved to the three cats and made her way toward my mother.
Tessie had busied herself introducing everyone—whether she knew them or not—to everyone else—whether she knew them or not.
Wilson considered the gathering crowd. “Is that it?” he asked me.
“Oh, heck no. We couldn’t forget Louise.”
“Heck no,” Wilson said, but he was drowned out by the voice of Geez Louise Urko.
“Fantasical, fantastical, and beyond fantastical!” she shouted as she emerged from Roslynn’s car. Louise managed about a hundred more “fantasticals” before she and Roslynn landed in front of us.
“This is so, so, so romantic!” she said. “The whole nine yards of romance! How do you think of these things, Jessica!?”
“It’s that imagination of hers,” Roslynn suggested, but Louise of the limited attention span had caught sight of my mother.
“Tessie!” she shouted and hurried away.
Roslynn looked back and forth between Wilson and me. “Fantastical,” she said quietly and followed in the footsteps of Geez Louise.
“Is that it?” Wilson asked again. He may have sounded a bit desperate.
“Heck no,” I said as the Channel 15 News van pulled up.
“No!” Okay, now Wilson definitely sounded desperate. “Please tell me no.”
“No can do!” I waved to Jimmy Beak and Joe the cameraman. “Remember that deal I made with Jimmy?”
Wilson may have whimpered.
“Jimmy agreed to my showdown with Alistair,” I continued. “And I gave him an exclusive on this occasion.”
“The public has a right to know,” Jimmy called out. He gave us a thumbs up as he and Joe started setting up their equipment at the far end of the seating area.
Wilson began squeaking.
“Don’t worry,” I told him. “Jimmy promised only a very positive, two-minute segment on the Weekly Wrap Up. And Joe is going to give us all the photos and film. Isn’t that nice?”
“You’re a little scary. You know that?”
“Speaking of which.” I pointed to what I promised would be the last car.
“Yikes!”
I nodded in agreement as I beckoned to Gabby and Gordon Yates. “Believe it or not, Superintendent Yates is a justice of the peace in her spare time.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“Because nothing surprises you, Captain Rye.” Gabby gave me a hug, but continued addressing Wilson. “When Jessie told me what she had planned, I told her she was missing one key person. Me!”
“You.” He scowled at the legal-looking documents Gordon held.
I waited until Wilson looked up and made sure I had the full attention of the baby blues. I took a deep breath. “What do you say, Wilson? Let’s just do it.”
A slow grin made its way across his face. “I think the proper response is ‘I do.’”
“Actually, it�
��s ‘I will,’” Gabby corrected. “But follow my instructions, and you’ll do fine.” She took the paperwork from the hapless Gordon. “Come along,” she ordered.
Chris and Russell, and Candy and Karen had already taken their appointed places in front of the gathering.
“The rings?” Gabby asked, and Karen and Chris tapped their pockets.
Candy handed me a yellow rose, I nodded to Gabby, and she addressed the crowd. “If I could have everyone’s attention please. We’re about to get started.”
Wilson squeezed my hand, and together we stepped forward.
My new friend Gabby was right of course. Wilson and I were indeed, about to get started.
The End
Never fear! Jessie and Wilson may live happily ever after, but Adelé Nightingale predicts more adventures along the way. And once she figures out another convoluted plot and implausible murder, she’ll be sure to let you know. In the meantime, be on the lookout for Unbelievable, the first book in a brand new series by Cindy Blackburn. The Cassie Baxter series begins soon!
The Cue Ball Mysteries by Cindy Blackburn: Because Jessie and company can’t seem to stay out of trouble.
Book One: Playing With Poison
Pool shark Jessie Hewitt usually knows where the balls will fall and how the game will end. But when a body lands on her couch, and the cute cop in her kitchen accuses her of murder, even Jessie isn’t sure what will happen next. Playing With Poison is a cozy mystery with a lot of humor, a little romance, and far too much champagne.
Book Two: Double Shot
Jessie Hewitt thought her pool-hustling days were long gone. But when über-hunky cop Wilson Rye asks her to go undercover to catch a killer, she jumps at the chance to return to a sleazy poolroom. Jessie is confident she can handle a double homicide, but the doubly-annoying Wilson Rye is another matter altogether. What's he doing flirting with a woman half his age? Will Jessie have what it takes to deal with Tiffany La-Dee-Doo-Da Sass and solve the murders? Take a guess.
Book Three: Three Odd Balls
A romantic vacation for…five? This wasn’t exactly what Jessie and Wilson had in mind when they planned their trip to the tropics. But when Jessie’s delightfully spry mother, Wilson’s surfer dude son, and Jessie’s rabidly hyperactive New York agent decide to tag along the fun begins. What kind of trouble can these three oddest of odd balls possibly get into? Take a guess.
Playing With Poison – Sneak Peek
Chapter 1
“Going bra shopping at age fifty-two gives new meaning to the phrase fallen woman,” I announced as I gazed at my reflection.
“Oh, Jessie, you always say that.” Candy poked her head around the dressing room door and took a peek at the royal blue contraption she was trying to sell me. “Gosh, that looks great. It’s very flattering.”
I lifted an unconvinced eyebrow. “Oh, Candy, you always say that.”
“No really. I hope my figure looks that nice when I’m old.”
Okay, so I took that as a compliment and agreed to buy the silly bra. And before she even mentioned them, I also asked for the matching panties. To know my neighbor Candy Poppe is to have a drawer full of completely inappropriate, and often alarming, lace, silk, and satin undergarments.
I got dressed and went out to the floor.
“Temptation at Twilight giving you trouble?” she asked as she rang me up. Candy hasn’t known me long, but she does know me well. And she’s figured out I show up at Tate’s whenever writer’s block strikes.
I sighed dramatically. “Plot plight.”
“But you know you never have issues for very long, Jessie.” She wrapped my purchases in pink tissue paper and placed them in a pink Tate’s shopping bag. “Even after your divorce, remember? You came in, bought a few nice things, and went on home to finish Windswept Whispers.” She offered an encouraging nod. “So go home, put on this bra, and start writing.”
I did as I was told, but wearing the ridiculous blue bra didn’t help after all. The page on my computer screen remained stubbornly blank no matter how hard I stared at it. I was deciding there must be better ways to spend a Saturday night when a knock on the door pulled me out of my funk.
“Maybe it’s Prince Charming,” I said to my cat. Snowflake seemed skeptical, but I got up to answer anyway.
Funny thing? It really was Prince Charming. I opened my door to find Candy Poppe’s handsome to a fault fiancé standing in the hallway. But Stanley wasn’t looking all that handsome. Without bothering to say hello, he pushed me aside, stumbled toward the couch, and collapsed. Prince Charming was sick.
I rushed over to where he had invited himself to lie down and knelt beside him. “Stanley?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Candy,” he whispered, and then he died.
He died?
I blinked twice and told myself I was not seeing what I was seeing. “He’s just drunk,” I reassured Snowflake. “He passed out.”
But then, why were his eyes open like that?
I reached for his wrist. No pulse. I checked for breathing. Nope. I shook him and called his name a few times. Nothing.
Nothing.
The gravity of the situation finally dawned on me, and I jumped up. “CPR!” I shouted at the cat.
But Snowflake doesn’t know CPR. And I remembered that I don’t either.
I screamed a four-letter word and lunged for the phone.
***
Twenty minutes later a Clarence police officer was standing in my living room, hovering over me, my couch, and Candy’s dead fiancé. I stared down at Stanley, willing him to start breathing again, while Captain Wilson Rye kept repeating the same questions about how I knew Candy, how I knew her boyfriend, and—here was the tricky part—what he was doing lying dead on my couch. I imagined Candy would wonder about that, too.
“Ms. Hewitt? Look at me.” I glanced up at a pair of blue eyes that might have been pleasant under other circumstances. “You have anywhere else we can talk?”
Hope drained from his face as he scanned my condominium, an expansive loft with an open floor plan and very few doors. At the moment the place was swarming with people wearing plastic sheeting, talking into doohickeys, and either dusting or taking samples of who knows what from every corner and crevice. Unless Officer Rye and I decided to talk in the bathroom, we were doomed to be in the midst of the action.
“I’ll make some tea,” I said. At least then we could sit at the kitchen counter and stare at the stove. I glanced down. A far better option than staring at poor Stanley.
“Ms. Hewitt?”
“Tea,” I repeated and pointed Officer Rye toward a barstool. I turned on the kettle and sat down beside him while the plastic people bustled about behind us, continuing their search for dust bunnies.
“Let’s try this again,” he said. “What was your relationship with Mr. Sweetzer?”
“We had no relationship.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“No, really. He was Candy’s boyfriend. She lives downstairs in 2B.”
The kettle whistled and I got up to pour the tea. Conscious that this cop was watching my every move, I spilled more water on the counter than into the cups. But eventually I succeeded in my task and even managed to hand him a cup.
“How do you take it?” I asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Your tea. Lemon, cream, sugar?”
“Nothing, thank you.” He frowned at the tea. “So you knew Sweetzer through Ms. Poppe?”
“Correct.” I carried my own cup around the counter and sat down again. “She and I met a few months ago.”
“Where? Here?”
I sipped my tea and thought back. I had met Candy in the bra department at Tate’s of course. It was the day after my divorce was finalized, and she had sold me a dozen bras spanning every color in the rainbow. Candy had even mentioned it that afternoon.
“Ms. Hewitt?”
“We met in the foundations department at Tate’s.”
“The what dep
artment?”
So much for discretion. “The bra department,” I said bluntly. “Candy sold me some bras.”
Rye’s gaze moved southward for the briefest of seconds, and I remembered the brand new, bright blue specimen lurking beneath my white shirt.
My white shirt.
If there had been a wall handy, I would have banged my head against it. Instead, I mumbled something about not expecting company.
Rye cleared his throat and suggested we move on.
“Candy and I got to talking, and I told her I was in the market for a condo, and she told me about this place.” I pointed up. “I took one look at these fifteen-foot ceilings and huge windows and signed a mortgage a week later. We’ve been good friends ever since.”
“And Stanley Sweetzer?”
“Was Candy’s boyfriend. He had some hotshot job in finance, and he was madly in love with Candy.”
“So what was he doing up here?”
Okay, good question. I was trying to think of a good answer when one of the plastic people interrupted. “Will someone please get this cat out of here?” she called from behind us.
I turned to see Snowflake scurrying across the floor, gleefully unraveling a roll of yellow police tape. I quick hopped down to retrieve her while the plastic people sputtered this and that about contaminating the crime scene.
“She does live here,” I said. They stopped scolding and watched as I picked her up and returned to my seat.
Snowflake had other ideas, however. She switched from my lap to Rye’s and immediately commenced purring.
Rye resumed the interrogation. “Did you invite Mr. Sweetzer up here?”
“Nooo, I did not. I was working. I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business, when Stanley showed up out of the blue.”
“You always work Saturday nights?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Do you?”
Rye took a deep breath. “You were alone then? Before Sweetzer showed up?”
“Snowflake was here.”
More deep breathing. “Did he say anything, Ms. Hewitt?”
“He looked up when he hit the couch and whispered ‘Candy.’” I shook my head. “It was awful.”
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