Pistols & Pies (Sweet Bites Book 2) (Sweet Bites Mysteries)

by Heather Justesen

  I fumbled with the keys as I struggled to find the one to my car. I jumped into my Outlander, dropped my keys on the floor and had to stretch to fish them off the mat. Snatching them up, I jammed the correct one into the ignition. Finally I got the engine to roar to life. My wheels squealed on the asphalt as I peeled out of that parking lot, trying to figure out what to do next.

  How could I protect myself from Sheralyn? All I had were my keys and my Mace. And what about Kat—was she okay? Was she just tied, or had Sheralyn drugged or hurt her? Would she make it?

  And why the construction site? That seemed really odd to me, it wasn’t like Sheralyn was the type to get her hands dirty. I mean, the cement had been poured there, so it wasn’t like they could bury my body in the footings. Maybe it was just a matter of knowing the ground and no one being anywhere around for blocks? No one to hear my scream?

  I felt my throat tighten and my mouth went dry. I knew I was walking into a trap, but for Kat—for Lenny—I would do anything. When I thought my heart was going to beat out of my chest completely, I finally pulled up to the school.

  I got out of my car and walked across the construction site. The moon played peekaboo with the quickly moving clouds as the wind blew, ripping my hair out of its pony tail. Most of the stars were covered and the remaining moonlight was spotty at best. The closest street lights were blocks away. What had I been thinking, coming out here alone, even if Shawn was on my heels? He would have my head.

  And I couldn’t blame him. I thought to turn back to the car and drive away, but I couldn’t take the chance that Kat might really be at risk. And where was Lenny?

  I uncapped my pepper spray so it would be ready to use if I got close enough. I thought something moved between the forest of two-by-fours making up the walls of the classrooms. I heard a growing, humming noise, and realized it was the air compressor I’d seen the other day. Someone had left it on? Marty was going to have a fit. His second in command wouldn’t be much happier.

  I moved toward the sound, hoping it would help camouflage the crunching of gravel under my feet. What was I supposed to do? It wasn’t as if the caller didn’t expect me. And Sheralyn said to go to the cafeteria—where had the guy said that was, again?

  I circled around behind, keeping an eye out for a surprise attack. The moon appeared again for just a moment, full and bright, making everything clearer, except that it deepened the shadows.

  It was no use, I finally decided—I might as well give away my position. I had no idea what I was going into and nothing to ward off attack except my keys—which I’d threaded between my fingers—and my pepper spray—and as that would have my eyes running for hours, it really was a last resort. “Hello, are you there? You wanted me to come. I’m here. Where’s Kat? You’re supposed to release her.”

  I kept seeing the look on Lenny’s face, the utter devastation when he thought she was leaving him behind. I imagined what he would think or feel if she was killed or disappeared completely. Sheralyn had said she could make it so no one found Kat again—with the vast expanses of desert just a few miles away, that possibility was all too probable. The very thought made my stomach tremble. If they could do it with Kat, could they do it with me too?

  I paused to send Shawn a text, giving him directions on how to find me. When I pocketed my phone again, something clicked behind me—like a gun cocking.

  “I sure hope that wasn’t you sending a message to the police. We wouldn’t want you to be the cause of Kat’s death, now would we?” The voice was a little distance away, but still too close for her to miss if she fired the gun. And I had been right about it being Sherlyn. I recognized the voice now that she wasn’t disguising it.

  I turned and stepped away, as if a few extra feet would make me safe from her weapon. I bumped against something sitting on the ground and reached out to catch myself, dropping my pepper spray. Drat. Now what? “Sheralyn. Why are you here? Kat isn’t part of this.”

  “Very good, Tess.” Her tone deepened, the syllables hardening. “Come over here.”

  I still couldn’t see her in the shadows, so I shifted farther back and nearly fell over when I ran into the air compressor. I stumbled, my feet getting caught in the hoses that had been hooked up to the nail gun. “I’m not coming over there until I know that Kat is okay. You have me now. You don’t have to hurt her.”

  “You’re so naïve.” She let out a low chuckle. “She’s seen me. Of course she’s going to have to die too. You shouldn’t get involved in things that don’t concern you. Just like Eric Hogan.”

  I felt a chill go down my back despite the fact that I had started to wonder. “You killed Eric? Because he was going to blow the whistle on your affair with Marty, or was it the property values?” I asked. It hadn’t even occurred to Tingey—as far as I could tell—that Sheralyn might be the killer instead of her husband. But of course, though she might have been quieter about it, she still stood to lose money with the prison coming to town—if it came to town, now that the man pushing for it the hardest was dead.

  “Why should it need to be either/or? The jail proposal did add incentive. But it was more a matter of killing two birds with one stone.”

  The clouds moved again, and there was a glint of light on metal and the outline of my least-favorite shoe designer as she crossed the ground to me. There was a flash of light against her necklace.

  “Eric thought of himself as the morality police. He just couldn’t keep his observations to himself, and he was going to go to my husband.”

  I thought for a moment, while I stepped back and caught sight of the nail gun, still attached to the hoses. The glimpse was fleeting before the clouds shrouded the moon again. Wind whipped hair across my face, and I shifted to crouch behind the compressor, my mind working in two directions at once. “How long have you and Marty been seeing each other?” If I kept her talking, would the cavalry have time to arrive?

  “A while.” Her lips curled in derision. “What tipped you off? Was it the jewelry? Or did that just confirm what you already knew?”

  “It brought everything together. The funny thing is, I wasn’t looking at you, Sheralyn. I was looking at your husband. Just as you wanted me to when you sent that first email.” I fumbled in the dark as the hose for the nail gun nearly knocked me on my backside again.

  “Yes. And you were so nice and helpful. But it didn’t get my husband arrested for murder after all. I suppose it would have been too smooth if it had worked. But it diverted your attention for a while.”

  “You wanted Gary to go to prison for a murder you committed?”

  “Divorce would have been no problem once he was incarcerated, and he was working in that jail not too long ago. The other inmates wouldn’t have gone easy on him. A portion of the property sales would have been set aside for him when he got out—if he managed to get out alive—and I’d get everything else. And with all the time I spent conferring with Marty about the building here, no one would be the least surprised when we got together after a while. Especially as he’d have to comfort me in my grief.” Her voice turned nasty. “He and Jessica are over; she just hasn’t figured it out yet.”

  Why was it that so many women believed cheaters when they said that? “Where is Kat?” I asked. I’d had about enough of this back and forth. I knew Sheralyn was planning to kill me the first clear shot she got, and a glance at the sky said the next patch of clouds would reveal the moon in a matter of seconds—almost no time to act. I thought of the nail gun at my feet again. The air compressor had still been running, so it should have pressure, but how far would a nail fly? I tried to remember everything Jerry and Chance had shown me about the stapler in Honey’s back yard. Would it work the same?

  I touched the nail gun, trying to find the latch and ran my fingers down the row of nails that had been loaded in it. Sheralyn hadn’t answered, but I had to know. “Where’s Kat?”

  “In my car. Where you’ll be soon. Stand up and turn around so I can cuff you.” She chuckled. “T
here are advantages to being married to a former officer. He had spare sets of cuffs at home. They sure do come in handy.” She moved closer, until she was only eight or ten feet away.

  “I thought you’d just kill me here.” I groped in the dark for the air compressor trigger, panic making me clumsy. Where was it?

  “Then I’d have to clean up a bloody mess, and drag your body across the ground. A trail of evidence isn’t going to keep me out of prison. I should have waited to kill Eric until I could get his corpse out of sight too. But I don’t make the same mistake twice. Much easier to do it where I plan to bury you instead.”

  The sound of her voice helped orient me and I stood quickly, fumbling with the safety latch. I swung the front of the nail gun around, reaching for the safety and yanking it back just as the moon burst through the clouds again.

  I fired as her pistol banged. Pain tore through my left arm, but I pulled the latch again as I heard her screaming.

  The crunch of car tires sounded, though there had been no lights announcing its arrival. At the same time, a man jumped out of the shadows at Sheralyn from a few feet away, tackling her to the ground. He ordered her to stay down and I recognized Shawn’s voice. He must have done 120 all the way to town to get here so quickly.

  My heart pounded with adrenaline and I felt suddenly weak. I slid down to sit on the air compressor, trembling from head to toe as he read Sheralyn her rights.

  “Are you okay, Tess?” he called.

  “I’m fine. Thank goodness.” Dropping the nail gun on the ground, I arose unsteadily hoping my legs would hold my weight. I still had to find Kat. I stumbled around the periphery of the building, searching for Sheralyn’s car, spotting it just as the police car pulled into visitor parking.

  The moon glinted off the window of the car as the door opened and I worried that it might be Marty this time. Maybe he and Sheralyn were in this together. Was the danger not over?

  Someone hurried out of the vehicle, and in the moonlight, I thought I recognized Detective Tingey. Still, I didn’t move until he called out, “Tess, where are you? Shawn called and said he got Sheralyn.”

  Relief poured through me as I recognized his voice and I ran over to the silver Mercedes where I hoped Kat was still alive. “See if Kat is in that car,” I called to him. The doors were locked, but before I got all the way around, Tingey was there, shining a light in the window. We didn’t see her inside, so he pulled out his slim Jim and opened the door, popping the trunk. Kat lay inside, semi-conscious, a bruise forming on her forehead.

  We roused her and helped her climb out of the trunk, where Tingey used his key to remove her cuffs.

  “Do we need one ambulance, or two?” Tingey asked. “Are you hurt?” He shined his light over me. “There’s blood.”

  The light hovered over my arm and I looked at it in surprise, still dazed. I remembered the pain when I’d been shot, but it had dulled to a sting and in the search for Kat, I hadn’t thought much of it. When I moved, the pain grew worse—but maybe that was partly because he’d mentioned it.

  Another car came careering down the street in our direction. I glanced that way, wondering what was coming next.

  I checked the inside of my arm, pulling the shirt back to expose where the bullet had grazed it. I glanced back at Tingey. There was quite a bit of blood, but the wound didn’t look bad. “I don’t think it’s serious, but Sheralyn might need some help. I think I hit her with one of the nails. Maybe two. Shawn has her now. He was cuffing her when I walked over here.” I felt dazed and more than a little confused.

  “You said you weren’t seriously hurt last time, either,” Tingey said, but radioed in for the ambulance to come forward. He radioed to someone else to bring in Gary for questioning.

  “Gary had nothing to do with it.” I said. “And it’s not about the property value.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  I started to feel like the ground was rolling beneath my feet and must have swayed because Tingey grabbed my arm, making me sit in the dirt beside Kat. “Sit before you fall over.”

  The car came to a stop beside the patrol car and a man emerged. “Is Kat here? Tess?”

  “Lenny,” I said to Kat, feeling just a bit drunk despite the lack of alcohol in my system. “He came to rescue us.”

  “They’re both over here, and they’re going to be fine.” Tingey grabbed something from his trunk, paper ripped and he shoved some gauze against my arm. “Hold this before you bleed out, you crazy woman.”

  I slid my hand over the gauze, holding it in place as the ambulance lights came down the road, two sets of red and white lights flashing at us like a beacon. “Tell me,” I said to Tingey as I rolled my head back to look at him. “Did I hear Jack King’s voice on that radio a minute ago?”

  “Yeah.”

  I sighed. “That’s always my luck.”

  Two figures trod across the ground to us, Shawn and Sheralyn, though I could barely make out their features well enough to tell. “She’s got a couple of nails imbedded in her skin,” Shawn said. “Nothing serious, though—arm and shoulder muscle, and they’re not deep at all. She’ll live.”

  “Goody. She tried to kill me, you know. And she did kill Eric. Said so.” I rested my head on Kat’s shoulder, feeling dizzy. “I don’t feel so good. And my side hurts now.”

  Tingey flashed his light back on the side near my arm and swore loudly, calling for the trauma kit before the ambulance even came to a full stop.

  The ride to the hospital was no fun at all. Jack had me all wrapped up like a mummy, saying that I had a lot of bleeding on my side—apparently the bullet had grazed me there as well as my arm, but deeper. The bleeding actually had him nervous. Me? I was too lightheaded from blood loss to be nervous.

  I cursed him when he put in another IV—what was it with this man and needles, anyway? But I suffered the ignominy of being hooked to a bag of fluid and didn’t even threaten to take away his rights to shop at my place in the future. I guess I must have needed a doctor after all.

  The hospital wasn’t a lot of fun either, but the doctor got to me right away. He stopped the bleeding and unfortunately there wasn’t a lot they could do about the graze. It wasn’t like a slice that could be stitched (I was actually grateful about this, since it meant no more needles. Wearing bandages for the next couple of weeks while the wound healed sounded positively pleasant compared to stitches.)

  The oddest thing was dealing with both Jack and Shawn in the ER at the same time. Jack held back a little, as if reading Shawn’s possessiveness. On the other hand, Shawn barely seemed to notice Jack—why should he? As far as he knew, Jack was just the medical guy.

  Technically he was right.

  Finally, after much hassle and time, I received a discharge from the doctor. Kat had been released before me and after checking to see that I was fine, Lenny had taken her home to baby her. I was glad for them, very glad, and couldn’t believe how scared I’d been at the thought of losing Kat.

  When we exited the ER, Honey was waiting. She threw her arms around me. “George was worried about you, too. I’m so glad you’re safe. I can’t believe it. How could that happen?”

  “I’m fine, really,” I told her, though my side ached and the thought of getting up for work in the morning was almost more than I could bear. I really needed to see about getting medical insurance. The premiums on self-employment couldn’t be worse than two ER visits so close together.

  “She’s lying. She’s in pain and needs to go to bed,” Shawn told her.

  “I know, I can tell. She’s always like that,” Honey agreed.

  “Thanks, I appreciate you taking me at my word.” But I let them help me into Shawn’s car and see me home. After nearly an hour of hovering, I told her to go home, leaning against Shawn on the living room sofa, enjoying his closeness. I was getting dozy when the phone rang—it was Lenny.

  “Hello, how is Kat?” I answered.

  “She’s fine—just shaken up.” His voice sounded sh
aken as well, even though it had been almost three hours since he found us at the school site. “She’s been asking about you. You were hurt worse.”

  “You’re going to be working full time for the next week or so, but I’ll be fine. The doctor said not to go into work tomorrow, and I need to take it easy—which means you get to do all the cleaning.” I let a note of teasing enter my voice. The pain pills were making me loopy again.

  “Happily. Just tell me what you want and I’ll do it. You know you saved Kat’s life. That woman was crazy; she would have killed Kat. I’ll never be able to thank you enough.”

  Right, because it wasn’t my fault that she was involved in the first place. “Give me a break. You’re my family. You know that, right?”

  Now it was my own voice that went shaky. I’d been feeling alone and disconnected, but now I knew I wasn’t alone. I may not have any parents or siblings, but in Honey’s brood, and Lenny and Kat, I have siblings, nieces and nephews, family that I could call my own, even if it wasn’t of the traditional sort.

  “Yeah. I know. I’m glad to be your family too.”

  I realized Kat and I were all he had. Maybe that’s why Lenny and I had bonded so tightly.

  We hung up after another minute and I turned back to Shawn, snuggling into his chest. He didn’t need to stay any more. I was safe, but I was going to miss him—despite my irritation about his constant hovering. “Thanks for showing up tonight. You saved my life.”

  “Are you kidding? After you got her with that nail gun, I seriously doubt she was a threat to you. You acted far more clear-headed when she shot you than she did with a little nail in her muscle. You’re a lot tougher than you think.” He tightened his arm around me.

  “You have to go back to work, don’t you?”

  “I got a buddy to cover so I can take one more day off first. I thought maybe we could do something fun while I was here, to make this trip about something more than just investigating and getting hurt,” he said. “But I don’t think you’ll be up to a hike or anything like that.”