by Louise Lynn
“I’m starving, and I’m not here to interrupt your date, but hi, Hazel Hart. Celia’s best friend. You must be Marcus,” Hazel said quickly and slumped next to Celia. She didn’t wait for him to speak before she started eating.
“Yes. It’s nice to meet you. You’re the photographer. Celia told me about you,” he said with a smile that looked genuine.
“Coffee. We were talking about coffee,” Celia said and gave Hazel an unreadable plastic smile.
Either Celia wanted her to leave, or she was begging Hazel for help. Hazel couldn’t tell which.
“Her coffee is great,” she said and shoveled a large mouthful of chicken marsala into her mouth.
Celia looked at her, and she could tell her best friend was struggling not to laugh. “How long have you been hungry?”
Hazel waited until she finished chewing to answer. She even dabbed her mouth on one of the crisp white linen napkins. “Hours. The last thing I had was coffee and a bagel, and I’m about to die.”
Marcus laughed, and now that Hazel had a chance to look at him, she saw that Rosalie Parks was right. He was extraordinarily handsome, with smooth dark skin and an elegant profile—princely even. His hair was shorn short, and his brown eyes were warm and inviting, much like Celia’s own.
Why was he single?
Well, then again, Sheriff Cross was single when Hazel met him, so it wasn’t like every handsome guy had some huge personality flaw.
“How do you know the bride and groom?” she asked since she wasn’t sure what else to say.
“I actually helped Monica in an investigation once. She used to do investigative journalism—that’s where she got her start. We busted a company for polluting the Truckee River. I’m surprised she remembered enough to invite me to this since that happened over a year ago.”
That didn’t sound like the bridezilla Hazel had come in contact with the day before, but then, people were also more complicated than they often let on at first. Look at Sheriff Cross. Or even Hazel herself. It wasn’t fair to judge someone on a bad first impression.
Though, sometimes it was hard not to as well.
Since Hazel had finished most of her difficult work, she decided to reward herself with one flute of champagne, and she went to fetch it from the table.
As she was doing so, the bride and groom approached the wedding cake table.
Was it that time already?
Honestly, Hazel couldn’t remember the order weddings were supposed to follow. The receptions sort of blurred together, since she was usually taking pictures and waiting for the key moments.
If they were going to cut the cake, that meant she had to get back to work.
She finished her champagne, searched the crowd for Michael, and motioned him to get ready with her.
The cake cutting went well, and they didn’t shove anything in each other’s faces, though Pablo did hold a slice of the sugar-free cake up for Monica, which she ate daintily. She held a slice of the standard cake for him, which he ate not so daintily.
Monica stuck out her tongue at the taste; the only sign she made that it wasn’t as good as a regular cake would be.
Well, Esther had warned her.
With that taken care of, the bride and groom returned to their table for the speeches, each with a slice of cake on their plates.
That required pictures too, so Hazel and Michael hovered in the background, snapping incessantly to catch as much as they possibly could.
However, in the middle of the best man’s speech, Monica leaned forward, and her hand flailed, knocking over her flute of champagne.
“Monica?” The maid of honor, who was also Monica’s sister, cried out.
Monica didn’t say a word.
She slumped face first into her cake, and the maid of honor screamed.
Chapter 5
“Somebody call an ambulance,” Monica’s mother shrieked, and the wedding party gathered around the slumped bride.
Several people pulled out their phones and were dialing 911, so Hazel didn’t bother. Instead, she called Sheriff Cross. With hands shaking, she pushed through the crowd.
Pablo stood over his wife’s still form and shook her shoulder. “Monica? Come on. Is this a joke?”
“Hazel?” Sheriff Cross said.
“I’m here,” Hazel whispered into her phone. She reached forward and brushed her fingers over Monica’s neck. The woman’s face had gone ashen, even under the pound of makeup she wore, and her tongue rolled out and lolled on the plate. It was a dark bluish purple instead of a normal healthy pink, and foam caked the sides of her lips.
No matter how Hazel searched, she couldn’t find the woman’s pulse.
“I think you need to get down here. To the inn. There’s been an accident.”
Sheriff Cross was silent on the phone for a mere second. “Is there a body?” he asked, almost resigned.
“Yeah,” Hazel said.
Her eyes met Pablo’s as she looked up.
His face had gone equally ashen, and he slumped in the seat. “She’s…gone?” he asked slowly.
Hazel could do nothing but nod.
By the time the ambulance arrived, only minutes before Sheriff Cross himself, it was obviously much too late. Whatever had killed Monica Lopez had done so quickly.
Only, no one knew what killed her. Though, looking at her tongue, Hazel had a sneaking suspicion.
What was once a joyous occasion had devolved into whispers among many of the guests and cries of grief from others. Monica’s family gathered around the Sheriff as soon as he arrived, demanding to know what had happened to their daughter and sister, and Pablo’s new wife. And why the paramedics weren’t trying to save her.
The groom himself sat next to her, staring at his plate as if he might find an answer to this terrible tragedy in Esther’s beautiful cake.
Hazel felt her mouth go dry, and was about to step back to the table with the champagne, when she heard a familiar questioning meow.
She blinked and looked around, then spotted her black cat, Anthony Ray, trotting toward her.
Sheriff Cross must’ve brought him, and accidentally let go of the leash at some point, because it dragged on the floor behind Anthony Ray. As soon as he got to her side, he butted his head into her leg and purred.
Hazel reached down and scratched him behind the ears, then lifted him into her arms. He snuggled there, trilling contently and letting her know just how happy he was to see her—even if she had abandoned him for the day.
“Oh, you’re the sweetest boy, aren’t you,” Hazel whispered into his fluffy black fur.
His only answer was more loud purring.
Hazel ducked herself into a corner of the tent as the deputies and paramedics started coordinating their efforts. She frowned at the beautiful cake with only one piece missing, and the multiple tiers of cupcakes. She hadn’t tried one yet, and now it would be rude to indulge with a dead body in the room.
This was supposed to be the happiest moment of their lives, and now, for Pablo, it would be a tragedy.
As she got closer to the cake, Anthony Ray wiggled out of her arms and leapt onto the table.
Eyes wide, Hazel reached for him. “Get back here this instant,” she hissed.
Anthony Ray glanced at her, then bent to sniff the sugar-free cake. He twitched his nose, put his ears back, then reached a paw to swat it as if it were deeply offensive.
Finally, he jumped off the table, and Hazel grabbed the end of his leash.
Strange. Usually he didn’t act that way around food. Quite the opposite, in fact.
If Anthony Ray thought something was odd, it was often worth checking out.
She bent and looked at the cake.
The consistency was denser than Esther’s regular cake, which was famous around town for being beautifully light and fluffy. And the color was off. The standard cake had been white, yet this one had a very pale lavender tinge to it. Was that the sugar substitute or something else?
She leane
d forward and gave it a quick sniff. Maybe the offensive odor would be obvious to her nose like it had her cat’s.
Sure enough, there was a scent completely unlike cake and more like bitter almonds. It didn’t smell like the fake sugar substitute either; not from what she remembered. She took a step back and scanned the room for Sheriff Cross.
She spotted him straight away, since he’d extracted himself from the family and was speaking with one of the paramedics.
Then, he turned to address the room.
“Listen, I know this is unfortunate, but my deputies are going to have to talk to everyone here, and you need to keep your seats and remain calm. We think the bride was poisoned.”
Of course, even after he told them to stay calm, a number of gasps filled the tent and people started throwing each other horrified looks.
Several people stood up and spoke all at once.
“Poison? Are we all gonna die?”
“What was poisoned? I ate everything.”
Not to mention the worried glances the restaurant owners threw each other. There was a lot food at the wedding—a lot of things that could’ve been poisoned.
For a moment, Hazel mentally went through everything she’d ingested. But, if it was poison, it seemed to have killed Monica rather quickly. Unless it wasn’t a food item, but something else she’d taken, like a pill of some sort.
She narrowed her eyes and looked at the bride’s plate.
Then she approached Sheriff Cross, who was now dealing with all of the questions.
When he was finally done reassuring everyone they weren’t going to keel over, though they didn’t look all that reassured, she tapped him on the arm. “What did the bride eat?”
Sheriff Cross drew his brows together and shrugged. “I’m just trying to get a timeline, so we haven’t gotten to that point yet but–”
“She had one glass of champagne and a piece of cake,” Pablo said in a very quiet voice. “Because of her diabetes, she was on a really strict diet, so she didn’t eat anything here. For breakfast, she had some steamed carrots and chicken breast she brought from home. She doesn’t like butter or oil to touch her food. So, the fact that she even ate some of the cake was kind of surprising. I thought she decided to treat herself and now… this.”
Sheriff Cross ran his fingers through his hair, and Hazel felt the weight of his gaze land on her. At least he led her away from the grieving groom before he asked what she knew he would.
Hazel frowned and spoke first. “Okay, Esther made the cake but she didn’t poison it.”
Colton narrowed his eyes. “I never accused your sister of doing anything, and we don’t even know if the cake poisoned her. It could’ve been something else.”
Hazel worried her bottom lip. “I think there’s something you should see.”
She led him to the cake, the cat on their heels, and explained what Anthony Ray had done.
Sheriff Cross took his own sniff. As he pulled back, he made a face. “Smells bitter. This purple, look at how it’s distributed. It’s not evenly mixed in. It looks almost like it was put in after the fact,” he said and looked around the cake carefully.
Hazel bent over to join him since she’d be able to see it better. “Put on your glasses or you’re not going to notice any of the fine details,” she said with a wan smile.
Sheriff Cross did as he was told, though he gave her a withering look before slipping on his wireframe glasses.
“I could sure use that magnifying glass from the Nancy Drew kit Ruth loaned me,” she said.
The quip surprised a snort out of him. “It probably wouldn’t hurt.”
“Actually,” Hazel said and got out her phone. She’d purchased a model with one of the best cell phone cameras on the market, and Violet had taught her how to use it in macro mode, which is pretty cool.
She ran it over the cake slowly, and caught something her eyes hadn’t. Several tiny pinpricks marred the frosting, so small they were nearly invisible.
“Look at this,” she said and snapped several pictures.
She showed them to Sheriff Cross, who furrowed his brow. “They look like pinpricks, or needle pricks. I don’t suppose your sister fills cakes with needles, does she?”
Hazel shook her head. “I think you need to have that tested.”
Sheriff Cross nodded, and motioned for one of his deputies to come over and gather a sample.
Hazel didn’t even need to be asked to get to work photographing Monica’s body and the cake itself, though she did go to her truck to get the Pentax.
She also didn’t need Sheriff Cross to say the words to know exactly what he was thinking.
If someone poisoned the sugar-free cake—the cake that Monica would eat since she was the only diabetic at the wedding—it meant the bride had been murdered.
Chapter 6
“My cake killed someone. You can’t possibly know what that feels like!” Esther cried.
She sat on an upturned bucket in what had to be a cleaning supply closet. Hazel had no idea how she got the key, she hadn’t bothered to ask, and Violet huddled next to her, an arm draped over Esther’s shoulder.
“Oh really? One of my prop guns murdered someone, or did you forget about that? Listen. Your cake was used to kill someone, but the sheriff doesn’t think you did it. I promise.” Hazel hoped she could keep that promise.
Sheriff Cross was usually pretty forthcoming when he thought one of her family members was a murderer.
“It’s just as bad,” Esther said, as tears welled in her eyes. She quickly swept them away with the back of her hand.
Hazel sighed and carefully crouched down. When had she become the most practical of the two of them? It was usually the other way around—Hazel having an issue and Esther being the calm, rational one. “I know it feels terrible, but it looks like somebody tampered with the cake. So, who had access to it after you finished making it? And Violet, you’re not a suspect either. I don’t think you had motive to kill Monica Lopez.”
Violet’s chin trembled. “We brought it over here this morning at about seven a.m.. Then it was sitting in that room for hours. Anyone could’ve gone in there. It wasn’t locked.” Her eyes also filled with tears.
Hazel hadn’t brought any Kleenex, which she should have thought to do. “Anything you can tell me about someone lurking around the cake is helpful.”
“So you’re investigating this one too?” Esther asked in a small voice. “It would really make me feel better if you were.”
Hazel hadn’t even discussed that with Sheriff Cross yet, but after the last few investigations, she thought it was par for the course that she was an unofficial part of his investigation. They did work well together, seeing things the other may have missed.
“I am. I mean, I think I am. Did you see anybody sneaking around?”
Esther slowly shook her head. “Honestly, I was frantic this morning. I get nauseous before these things, you know? And I was trying to make sure everything was perfect for the table setting. Then I had to run back to the shop to get an extra cupcake tier because we didn’t bring enough.”
From the way Violet worried her bottom lip, Hazel had an idea the girl had seen something.
“Violet?” Hazel asked.
The girl swept more tears from her dark lashes. “I don’t know if it was anything, but several people dropped by. This one guy with glasses popped in and was asking about the cupcakes. He said he wanted one because he was hungry, but I told him there were bagels on the patio, so he left. Then this blond guy with really white teeth came in and was really rude.”
Blond guy with white teeth? Hazel had seen him too, and he hadn’t been happy with Monica at all. “What did he do?”
Violet glanced at Esther and took a deep breath, as if she were steeling herself for something. “He was insulting the cake. He was going on about how gaudy it was, and how they shouldn’t have gone with a local decorator because she could’ve gotten something so much better in Reno. And he was saying
the little cake was probably for Pablo and the big one was for Monica, because it matched her ego, but I told him that wasn’t right. That the big cake was the normal one and the little one was for Monica, because she was diabetic. Then he got this horrible look on his face and left. It was weird.”
Yeah, Hazel agreed that was weird. The guy with the white teeth had also been with a woman who hadn’t been happy with Monica. Were they suspects?
Possibly, though she didn’t know their names. But they were guests of the wedding, and she supposed they’d been at the ceremony even though she hadn’t paid attention enough to notice them.
“Did any women come by?” Hazel asked.
“If they did, I never saw them. But the groom came by more than once. I mean, he came and gave Esther money and stuff, and then when she was taking the cupcakes to the table. I came back to get the bride’s cake; he popped in and was asking if he could taste test it, just to be sure. And I told him no because then it would be ruined. So he just smiled and left.”
Taste test it? That was weird too. But Hazel wasn’t sure if it meant anything. And if he poisoned it, why would he want to taste it?
She gave them both a strained smile. “I think your Uncle Colton will appreciate it if you guys write down everything you can remember and give it to him. And if you see or hear anything else, let me know, okay?”
They both nodded, and Hazel stood, her legs cramping.
“Are you going to spend the rest of the time in the broom closet?” she asked Esther.
“Just a little bit longer. I’m afraid if I go out there, I’ll be tarred and feathered.”
Hazel understood how she felt, and gave her sister one last tight smile and slipped out with Violet on her heels. She left Anthony Ray snuggled in Esther’s arms to keep her company.
“Are you here to help me find the guys you mentioned?” Hazel asked the teenage girl.
The tears had dried on Violet’s cheeks, and she gave a determined nod. “I was useless with your last investigation, and I feel bad for causing trouble. So, I want to help with this one, if I can.”