For Love and Cheesecake

by Misty Simon

  “Yes?”

  He sighed his sigh of resignation, and I got with the program.

  But then another car went racing by, and this one was a police cruiser. “Something’s going on out front.” I walked to my front door and opened it cautiously. Not that I was afraid some car would come hauling up my sidewalk and plow into my house, but really, you never knew around here.

  “What’s up?”

  “I just saw three cars rush by at high speed. I’m not sure where they’re going, but I hear sirens.”

  “Well, get out there.”

  “But what if…” I didn’t know how to finish that sentence.

  Ben didn’t wait long after I had trailed off to assure me it would be fine and he would be here in a minute and all the while he would have his CB radio on. Ah, yes, I forgot the CB radio. I had so far resisted the lure of knowing what was going on at all times in the town, but now I wished I had access.

  “Someone’s running,” he said after a moment I assumed he had used to listen to the chatter.

  Well, duh. But I didn’t say that.

  “Two someones are running, and they have four cop cars on it, coming at them from different directions. I have to go.” And he hung up on me.

  Okay then.

  I had to go, too. Charlie had tried to beep in on me, and I didn’t want to talk to him only to tell him that I was going to be later than I had promised.

  I hustled to get my hair back into some semblance of normality after the romp through the woods. I picked some leaves out of my bangs and brushed them off my chest. How had anyone let me walk around like this?

  Then again we’d had other things to worry about.

  So I did my best to clean up, then ran down the block to The Masked Shoppe. Man, I was doing a lot of running lately.

  And once I made it inside the door through the crush of people, I knew I’d be running here, too. Well, I hoped Ben was able to do some of the sleuthing stuff without me, because I had a feeling the rest of the day was going to be nonstop.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Three hours later, I knew I was right. Holy crap, that had been intense.

  Charlie and I sprawled on the divan and floor respectively in the back room after gnoshing on copious amounts of chocolate chip cheesecake. The front door was finally locked at seven p.m. after the last customer had been stuffed through the door with purchases in hand and their money in my till. I’d had one call from the police to make sure I knew what time it was. Gah! I would really have to think about giving Charlie a raise and maybe an end-of-year bonus. Despite what the rest of the world was doing, we here in Martha’s Point were obviously flourishing enough to spend a couple hundred dollars on the perfect wench outfit or vampire costume covered in velvet capes. Woo-hoo!

  The bonus, too, was that Mr. Hanks had expanded his wants and needs. Well, actually this was a double-edged sword. He still wanted his banana hammocks (God help me), but he also apparently had started dating someone who was into bustiers, and she wasn’t a little woman, which I thought was wonderful. For him and for the shop.

  But now he was gone, too, and the store was quiet except for a moan from Charlie’s corner every minute or two.

  “That was a long day,” I said, resting the back of my hand over my eyes.

  “You’re telling me? Preaching to the choir, sister. I was here all morning, too, and I did all that by myself.”

  “Seriously, you are my hero.”

  Charlie quietly chuckled. “Don’t let Debbie hear you say those words. She’s already jealous of you sometimes. I certainly don’t need her thinking you have a thing for me.”

  I laughed along with him, though not so quietly. Some snorting was involved, also. I lifted my head to see Charlie’s reaction to find he looked a little affronted. Okay, maybe it hadn’t been that funny. But still.

  “I wasn’t being mean.” I tried to reach over and pat his arm, but I fell short, until he put out his own hand and we touched in the middle. “I think of you as the cool older brother I never had.”

  “I get it, honey.” He gave my fingers a quick squeeze, then let go. His hand flopped onto the floor as he exhaled. “I love you, too.”

  I felt a little glow in my heart. Here at least was one person in Martha’s Point who thought I was wonderful. I had a few others, too, but not a whole lot. Certainly not enough to turn away a kind word when it came my way.

  “I would so hug you if I could get up off this comfy half couch.”

  “Thanks for the thought, anyway.”

  “No prob.”

  We rested for another moment. I was happy, generally happy, for the moment, since all was right in my little world. Sure, there was a big bad killer out there roaming around, but I didn’t have a lunatic running around at the same time stealing things, this time, and no one had tried to kill me yet.

  If I could just shake this cold, I would be an enormously happy camper.

  But the reminder of my physical state was enough to make my stomach churn and my skin break out in a sweat. Why did this keep happening to me? If I didn’t know better, I would think I was being poisoned.

  “Charlie, you’re going to have to help me up or I might puke on the floor.”

  He was up quicker than I could fathom, snaking an arm under my rounded shoulders. He had me in a half-sitting position when I started feeling better. I didn’t know what the change was, but I felt so much more stable already that I patted his arm.

  “Thanks. If you could prop me up on the arm here, I think I’ll be fine.”

  “Are you sure? I mean, I don’t mind helping you into the bathroom.”

  “Nah, I’m good.” I looked over at him and his comfortable, familiar face. I really did have some of the best friends God had ever given anyone. I might have been unlucky in getting the majority of the town to accept me as one of their own, but the people who did accept me loved me wholeheartedly. I was a very lucky person.

  Which was why it shocked the heck out of me when I burst into tears.

  “Are you okay now?” Ben asked an hour later. He’d picked me up at the shop after Charlie called him, calmly explaining I appeared to be having a mental meltdown even while I wailed I was fine.

  But now I really was fine. I had no idea what had come over me, but I can tell you I felt pretty embarrassed at this point. Why couldn’t I seem to maintain any kind of sanity lately? Yeesh!

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m good. I was simply being an idiot earlier. Maybe it’s the fact that we’re in the middle of another mystery when I had thought we were done with those.” I turned to him and looked him over from head to toe. “Remember how we were going to stop doing this altogether, because of the shots fired last time? How do I keep getting dragged in?”

  Ben drew me to my feet by taking both of my hands into his larger ones. Still holding onto me, he backed up, pulling me into the living room. Once there, he sat in a big comfy chair we’d purchased together and tugged me into his lap. Long gone were the days where I would protest, saying I was too big and heavy to fit there. At this point, I loved to snuggle into his chest, and if he could handle my weight, then who was I to argue with him?

  I snuggled down onto him and prepared to enjoy a few quiet moments with my pooky-bear. Yeah, I won’t even mention that one.

  Of course, that’s never the way my life works.

  As soon as I had found a truly comfortable spot with one hand on his chest, under his shirt, and the other creeping into the short hairs on his neck, the freaking doorbell rang.

  “Freaking doorbell,” I said. Yeah, I tend to repeat myself in thought and words. This was not new.

  “We should probably see who it is,” he said, breathing into my neck and making shivers run up and down my spine because of the whispering in the ear thing.

  “I guess we should answer that,” I said grudgingly.

  “Yeah.”

  “Or we could pretend we aren’t home, and hopefully the person will go away.”

  “You kno
w it doesn’t work that way. Especially if it’s your dad, or Bella, or Charlie, or the police, or…” He smiled at me, trailing off.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I knew, oh how I knew, what he was saying was absolutely true. And if it was my dad, there was every chance he would simply use his key instead of waiting for me to actually answer the door. He was extremely intrusive like that.

  But instead of someone letting themselves in, the person, whoever it was, leaned on the doorbell, and a muffled voice came through the front door.

  “I’m coming,” I yelled, getting off Ben and ignoring his “oof” when I shoved against his chest to hoist myself away from his delectable body. I whipped the door open and came face to face with the one person I certainly hadn’t expected to see on my front porch.

  I didn’t know whether to slam shut the door and haul ass for my safe place, or drag Heather into the house and sit on her until Ben could get the police here.

  “Let me in already so I can quit freezing my ass off out here.”

  As soon as she started talking, Ben was behind me in a flash. He took the decision out of my hands when he took her by the arm and pulled her into the house.

  Cold radiated off her body, hitting me and making goose bumps run up my arms. I rubbed my hands up and down my freezing flesh as she walked past me into the living room.

  Ben sat her in the chair we had recently vacated.

  Trying to be a good hostess and stall for time, I dithered in the kitchen putting together mugs of coffee. I had no idea if we could trust this woman. According to Bella, Heather had taken her hostage in the forest, then stripped Jared and cuffed him to a tree. And supposedly she had had help.

  She appeared to be alone now, but was she really? I wasn’t naïve enough anymore to think my house was impenetrable. Hell, nearly everyone and their freaking mother had been in here at one time or another. Most of them hadn’t been invited. Who was to say her accomplices—two men, from what Bella could remember—weren’t outside? Waiting for the secret signal so they could come in and ambush us?

  I fingered my cell phone in my pocket, thinking about how the police were a button push away. I had nothing to worry about.

  Yeah, right, tell me another one. When has that ever worked for me?

  I was on constant alert as Ben came into the kitchen. He took one of the mugs of coffee into the living room and handed it over to Heather. She had yet to look at me, which was fine since it gave me the opportunity to study her without feeling like I was intruding or being rude. She seemed to be staring off into space, looking at something I couldn’t see.

  But that all changed when Ben came back. Her smile clicked back into place, her posture straightened, making her boobs stick out further as she crossed her legs slowly.

  I had seen this behavior often enough when it came to Ben. He was to eye candy what Godiva was to chocolate. But for some reason this appeared so much more calculated. I don’t know how I was able to tell, but there was something about her that made me think she didn’t want Ben’s attention sexually so much as she wanted to distract him. Make him so filled with lust he wouldn’t ask the questions needing to be asked.

  How, you ask, did I know this? Simple. It’s what I did when I knew I was going to get in trouble with Ben and I wanted to delay the inevitable, or even avoid it all together. I wasn’t ashamed to admit it.

  But I wanted to know why she was doing it. And how she thought it was going to work with a man like Ben.

  Ought to be interesting, to say the least.

  “I don’t know what to do, Ben,” she said in a breathy voice, making me want to gag. Or maybe it was the overabundance of perfume she wore. I could have told her Ben preferred a fresh clean scent to all that counter stuff.

  “What seems to be the issue, Heather?” He kept his distance, his arms crossed over his chest. I wondered if she got the body language clues at all, but decided she couldn’t have or was willfully ignoring them as she continued on in her baby-girl voice.

  “I think I’m in a teensy bit of trouble, and I need your help.” She twisted her hands in her lap, looking at him from under her lashes. I had to stifle a giggle at the complete and utter overacting. If she thought this performance was good, I would hate to see her on a bad day.

  “Well, Heather, I tried to help you, and you disappeared. What could I do now that I couldn’t have done before you took it upon yourself to go into hiding?”

  “But I had to,” she whined, the hand-twisting getting more violent while her foot twitched like she wanted to kick something, or someone.

  Bella had told me before that Heather was very used to getting her own way, especially in a house where she was the ultimately wanted girl. After both of her brothers had been born, her mom had still wanted a girl, so they kept trying. And when Heather popped out, squalling, there was much jubilation, and spoiling soon followed.

  I vowed right then and there that when I had a child—make that if, but you get the picture—I was so not going to make them into monsters like this.

  “You should turn yourself in, is what you should do.” Ben turned away to pick up a picture from the mantel to examine it. Out of the corner of his eye he winked at me.

  “But turn myself in for what, you great buffoon?” She had turned off all the charm at this point. I could only think it hadn’t taken long.

  “What have you done? I’m not a lawyer, but I will tell you that the police don’t often hunt down people who haven’t done anything. And rarely do they have a person of interest that had no real reason to interest them.”

  Now I was fully aware this was so not true. I had been a main suspect—not only a person of interest—in one of the murders before, and I’d had absolutely nothing to do with it.

  “What if they put me in a jail cell with some woman named Bertha, and make me wear an orange jumpsuit? That would so totally not go with my complexion.”

  You know, I had stayed silent this whole time, but I wanted to get to the meat of the conversation, such as where had her slut-o-licious T-shirt gone, and what was the point of tying up Bella and Jared when they had a whole lot of nothing to do with what was going on. Hell, I had no idea what was going on anymore, and I was in the middle of it all.

  I still had no idea why someone would actually kill Aaron and try to make it look like an accident. And Jerry was not a happy camper about losing all of his recipes. And now Bella and Jared were not exactly happy, either. Lot of sourpussing going around, and no relief in sight unless we managed to get to the bottom of this whole thing.

  And I had never been known for my tact.

  “So when did you have time for a costume change?” I asked.

  She lifted her head, her face a mask of shock. Well, if nothing else, I’d gotten her to look at me. Right?

  “What the hell are you talking about?” She looked at Ben. “What is she talking about, and why is she talking to me at all? I came here to see you, Benny.”

  Benny? Okay, she’d gone too far. I could have told her how much he hated that name, but I’d keep that little tidbit to myself. “You wanted to be my best friend only a handful of days ago, and now I can’t talk to you? Why?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She harrumphed, locking her arms over her chest.

  “What the hell? Don’t tell me you’re going to say you didn’t come into my shop on Saturday and try to make like we should be new best friends.”

  “Whatever.” She waved her hand at me in dismissal, then went back to Ben. “I need your help, Benny. I need someone to be a go-between for me and the police. I didn’t do anything wrong, so I’m not going to go in there and give them the opportunity to arrest me. Now are you going to help me, or am I going to disappear again?”

  If it were up to me, I’d love to see her disappear again. Yet that would be very bad if she was the one who had killed her brother. Yeah, I was definitely entertaining that idea with full force right now. Why else would she try to get away from the police? And th
e money they all had inherited—with a bigger portion going to Aaron—would definitely have been a strong motive, especially for someone so entitled, someone so used to being the center of everything. It must have eaten her up inside to know she hadn’t gotten everything she wanted and the one person standing between her and it was her brother, a brother who for all intents and purposes wasn’t exactly a paragon of virtue himself.

  But the choice was up to Ben, and he made the one that probably made the most sense, no matter how much it irritated me.

  “I’ll help you, but you have to help me, too. You can’t just up and leave if I ask you to go to the police. You have to stick around this time, no matter what.”

  “I have some things in the car,” she said coquettishly. “I’ll go bring them in, and then you can show me to my room and I can show you I won’t be locking the door.”

  What the fuck!

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Oh, hell no!” I yelled after Ms. Heather the Hussy had cleared the threshold. Surprisingly it wasn’t because I had planted my foot in her butt, though it was tempting. I think I was simply too shocked to have put my thoughts in order quickly enough to get the kick in before she breezed out, all smiles and flippy hair.

  “How else am I supposed to keep an eye on her?” Ben asked, probably trying to sound reasonable.

  But I was so far beyond reason at this point as to be psychotic. “If you think that bitch is going to stay in my house and sleep in my guest bedroom where she hopes you will take up her offer of an unlocked door, then you have a whopper of a kick in the head coming.”

  “Before you get your panties in a wad—”

  “Oh, they are already way wadded and working their way into permanent lodging. Not only is she rude and totally ignoring me, but also if Bella finds out this woman is in my house, she’s going to come over and take the unlocked door invitation and make it a catfight party. And I might not stop her.”

  “Come on, Ivy. And since when is this only your house and your guest bedroom? I thought we were in this together.”

  “Yeah, well.” I mock-punched him in the arm, maybe a little harder than I’d meant to, since he winced. “That was before you became a complete and flaming idiot. She is not staying here, and that’s my last word on it. You take her to your old apartment for all I care, but you’d better not come back if you’re going to smell like her.”