“Lindsey’s daughter?” Mac swallowed, clearly shaken. “Lindsey and I go way back. We were best friends all through school.” He wrung his hands. “Dead?”
“Yes. It’s been a shock for us all.” Jill got up from her chair. “Sit down.”
Mac took her seat. Sweat beaded on his forehead.
Jill tried to lighten the moment. “See what happens when you leave town? The whole place falls apart.”
“Yeah. Makes me feel a little squeamish.”
“Sorry. Well, on a brighter subject,” Garrett piped up, “I’m already planning a pretty cool idea for the grand opening of Bridle Path Estates once we sell all the lots. A neighborhood-warming celebration with the most amazing animated cake ever. I can’t wait to run it by Derek.”
“He’ll be thrilled. I think that kid might even get up early in the morning to make those things.” Mac rolled his eyes. “That’s saying a lot, by the way.”
“We missed you at the wedding,” Jill said. “But thanks for getting everything set up. It was all perfect.”
“Glad to hear that,” Mac said absently.
“Where’d you go?”
“Anita needed a little getaway. She surprised me at the last minute with an interview for another cake competition show. Only, it fell through when we were already halfway up there, so we ended up just visiting some folks up in Northern Virginia that she knows. Hope we didn’t worry you none.”
“Is she in the truck?”
“No. She ended up staying behind. She’s going to visit her sister. She’s not doing so well, but Anita’ll be back in a couple days.”
“Oh dear. Is it serious?”
Mac waved a hand dismissively. “I don’t know. Woman stuff. I didn’t get into it.”
Connor nodded. “Hear ya on that.”
“I wanted to stop by and confirm the delivery for your cake Saturday morning. I’d like to deliver it early so I won’t be in the way while I put the last touches in place.”
“You still have the code from last weekend, don’t you?”
Mac’s brow wrinkled. “Not sure. I think it was in the van, but we traded that old clunker in for the new one out there. You better give it to me again.”
Jill jumped up and got a slip of paper from behind the counter and wrote down the code for him. “Here. You can come as early as you like. I’d like to have everything set up and ready to go no later than nine, though.”
“I’ll have it ready for you.” Mac turned and started heading to the door, then turned back. “Real sorry to hear about Gina. I’ll see you Saturday.”
After Mac left, everyone was quiet.
“Y’all ready to call it a night?” Garrett asked. “If we leave it to Jill, she’ll have us work through it.”
“I would not.”
“You might,” Carolanne agreed.
“Then let’s go. Just leave everything where it is. Shoo. Y’all can go now. Garrett and I will lock up and be out right behind you.”
Connor walked Carolanne out to her car. “I’m sorry I was so hard on you the other day.”
“I deserved it.”
“I could have been kinder about it.” He waved to the Malloys as they backed out of the parking lot. “I guess you’ll be sleeping in your place tonight. You know I still would have helped move your furniture.”
“It worked out fine.”
“Are you going to show me your place?”
She nodded. “Sure. When do you want to come by?”
“How about now? It’s still kind of early, since all that talk about Gina kind of plummeted the party mood in there.”
“I know. He seemed pretty upset about it, too.”
“So, what do you say?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Sure. Follow me over. I don’t think you’ll get lost. It’s the only house in the neighborhood.”
She got into her car and took the back exit from the artisan center toward home. Home. That felt good.
Connor followed behind her.
There weren’t any streetlights. She was thankful for the bright moon; otherwise it would have been pitch-black.
All of the lights were on timers, so once they got to her driveway, things were well illuminated. Even though she didn’t have much in the way of landscaping, the lighting around the garden areas and the pathways had already been installed, too.
Connor stepped up behind her on the porch.
When Carolanne twisted her key in the front door, Connor surprised her by handing her a bottle of wine.
She took the bottle and then looked up at his playful grin. “Aw, that was sweet.”
“I’m not sweet. I’m charming. Remember?” Then he scooped her up and carried her through the doorway.
Carolanne squealed as he whipped her through the air like a sack of potatoes. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m giving your house good luck.”
“That’s not how it works. Put me down.”
“Are you sure that’s not how it works?”
“Yes! Put me down.”
He tossed her on her couch. “Well, since you’re determined to be an old maid, I figured someone should carry you through the threshold at least once in your life.”
“You could have given me a heart attack. Thanks for almost giving me the last thrill of my life.”
“You’re made of tougher stuff than that.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked around. “Man, this place already looks like a home. You have pictures up and everything.”
She was proud of what she’d gotten done so quickly; of course, she’d been waiting for this day for months. She’d placed the furniture in her mind a hundred times.
“Want a glass of wine?”
He followed her into the kitchen. “Sure.”
She took two wine glasses down from the corner glass-front cabinet and handed him the wine opener.
He opened the bottle and poured. He lifted his glass. “A toast to my very dear friend.”
She touched her glass to his. “Special friends.” She took a sip and felt a warm glow. “That’s good.”
He looked at her intently, then strode to the door that led to the patio. “Are you going to give me the nickel tour?”
“You have to pay up front. I know how you lawyers can be. You’ll talk me out of charging you later.”
He jingled the change in his pocket, but instead of a nickel, he dumped his whole pocketful of coins out onto the granite kitchen counter.
What the heck are you doing? She lifted her gaze to meet his light-blue eyes.
“If a nickel gets the tour, what can I get for that?”
She poured a little more wine in each of their glasses. “Well, I guess you get to see the whole darn place.”
He followed her through each room downstairs and then out onto the back deck. “It’s nice out here,” he said.
She tilted her glass in the direction of the pond. “Except for the fact that someone died right over there, it couldn’t be more perfect. But I’m trying not to think about that.”
“You’re safe here. Scott wouldn’t have let you move in if it weren’t.”
“I know. It’s just a little creepy.” She shivered, though the air outside was warm.
His finger stroked her arm sensuously. The hairs on her arm stood to attention at his caress. She knew she should stop him, but she didn’t really want to, and it was innocent enough. He stepped behind her and set his chin on top of her head. “It’s a nice view from here. With the moon so full, you can see the tree line, and the lights from the cars traveling down Route 58 are kind of nice.”
“Like giant fireflies. I wondered if it was going to be noisy, but really, it’s rather soothing.”
“You’ll be happy out here?”
She nodded, causing his chin to bounce up and down as she did. “That hurts,” she teased, stooping down and spinning out from in front of him. “Come on. I’ll show you the rest of the place.”
He followed her inside
, locking the door behind them. “You want more wine?”
She placed her glass on the counter. “No. I think I’ve had enough.”
He put his glass down beside hers and followed her back into the living room.
“Wait a second,” he said. He looked up at the raised ceiling in that part of the room.
“What are you looking at?” She stepped closer to him and looked straight up, following his line of sight.
He swept her up in his arms again and started carrying her right upstairs.
“This is not funny!”
“It kind of is,” he said, laughing with every step.
At one point, he even tipped her toward the handrail.
“You better not drop me!” She was laughing so hard she could barely breathe.
He took the last step onto the landing and then walked into the master bedroom straight ahead. He tossed her on the bed and belly flopped on it right beside her.
“That was fun,” she said between breaths. “I might even give you a refund.”
“Cool.” He rolled over in a push-up position over top of her, then lowered slowly, catching her lip between his teeth and then softly covering her mouth.
She didn’t know if it was the wine or her heart taking over, but she relaxed into his cushioning embrace.
The kisses he pressed to her neck sent volts of passion through her that threatened to steal her ability to think, and she couldn’t imagine a better place to be. His breathing was heavy, but his touch was featherlight as it slid from her shoulder to her hand.
She lifted her mouth to meet his.
Connor’s phone chirped.
Carolanne groaned.
“You know I have to get that, right?”
She nodded.
“Don’t you move.” He turned to the side and took the phone from his hip as he stood next to the bed. “Connor Buckham.” He held up a finger.
She watched, wide-eyed and feeling less than patient.
A serious look washed over Connor’s face. Then he turned his back and walked into the hallway.
“Yeah. No. I can do that. Sure.” Connor was steadily nodding his head. “Sit tight. Don’t say a word. I’ll be right there.”
He turned around and stood in the doorway.
Carolanne was propped up on one elbow. “You’ve got to leave?”
He nodded. “I really don’t want to.”
“Can I get one more of those sexy kisses before you go?”
“Nope.” He crawled onto the bed and slowly kissed her. “You can have two.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Connor rushed into the police station in a personal tug-of-war over not telling Carolanne who had called and even more so over answering the call to begin with.
The schedule board was just inside the door. One glance confirmed that Scott wasn’t in. Not many were. He wished Scott were around so he could get some details from him first, but this late at night, he wouldn’t be at the station, and Connor couldn’t bother him at home without some concrete information. Damn if this isn’t awkward. What am I supposed to say to the poor guy? Sorry I took so long. I had to peel myself off your daughter.
A deputy walked up to the front desk.
“I’m here to see Ben Baxter,” Connor said.
The deputy escorted him down the hall from the holding cells.
A few minutes later, Ben was brought in and seated across the table from Connor.
“What’s going on?” Connor asked.
Ben let out a breath. “I lied, and now it’s got me in trouble, but I swear I didn’t do anything. You’ve got to help me.” He sighed. His voice was full of anguish. “I know this puts you in a bad position—me asking you not to tell Carolanne.”
If you knew what position I was in when you called… “Puts me in a very awkward position.”
“I know, but I wanted to talk to you first.”
Connor had his doubts that keeping it from Carolanne was a good idea under any circumstances, but he figured he best hear the whole story first. “Start at the beginning.” He tugged his pen out of his shirt and wrote the date and time at the top of a clean sheet of paper.
Ben filled Connor in on the details of the day he’d come home to find Gina in his house. “She’d broken in and apparently had been doing it for a couple days.”
“But you were aware she was staying there for at least some period of the time, right?”
“Yes. I was.” Ben scrubbed his hands through his hair. “I can’t believe this. You’d think somewhere along the line I could catch a break.”
Connor wrote down notes as Ben detailed the events leading up to the day of the wedding and his car accident.
“I didn’t even know about Gina being dead until that Monday when Scott came to the hospital.”
Connor knew most of this from Carolanne already, but maybe Ben would say something helpful that Carolanne hadn’t relayed. “Do you remember what time that was when you left the reception?”
“I guess it was around one, because I went to grab something to eat. Penny’s was crowded with a late lunch crowd.”
“Sounds about right. I’ll check with the folks over at Penny’s. She might even be able to pull the ticket and give us an exact time.”
“Penny was there. They were packed, but she should remember.”
“Good. At least she can attest to whether you were acting like something was wrong.”
“Well, that’s not going to work to my favor. I was feeling five kinds of blue. That whole wedding had my heart tied up in knots. It’s why I left. It was just too big a temptation for me to stick around. I’ve worked too hard to get this far to slip back.”
“Let’s see what she has to say.”
“When Scott showed me that picture of Gina and asked me if I recognized her, I just wasn’t thinking. All I could think of was that I didn’t want Carolanne to be upset with me for trying to help that girl after I’d been such a piss-poor father to her. I lied. It was stupid, but I did. The words were out of my mouth before I knew it, and I didn’t think it would turn into a big deal.”
“But it has.”
“Hell yeah, it has. Dead is some kind of bad trouble.”
“The worst.”
Ben went on. “Someone must have seen her coming and going from my house. They haven’t told me who, but when they showed up, it wasn’t just to ask some questions—they already had a search warrant.”
“What did they find?”
“Some journals were stuffed under my couch. I didn’t know they were there. I have no idea what’s in them. I think that’s all they found.”
“Any idea where she got those journals? Did she have them with her when she showed up?”
“I have no idea.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Friday night before the wedding. She was asleep on my couch when I went to bed that night, and she was gone early the next morning.”
Connor tapped the pen on the table. “That’s the morning of the wedding, when your car wouldn’t start?”
“Yes. She was already gone when you stopped by the house.”
“That was early.” Connor wrote eight thirty and a question mark down on the piece of paper. “Are you sure she was there all night?”
“I guess she could have left during the night, but I’d have thought I would’ve heard her. She was asleep on the couch when I went to bed. I don’t know when she got up.”
Connor looked Ben square in the eye. “We know why she didn’t come back.”
“Because she was dead.”
“At least we know now that she was alive the night before. What time did you go to bed?”
“Around ten?”
“That’s a start. That gives us a time frame. Let me go find out what they’ve got.”
“Connor, the deputy insinuated I wrecked my car last Saturday on purpose. Something about covering up some kind of evidence.”
Connor laid his pen down. “Ben, Carolann
e said she saw Gina drive off in your car that night at your house. Did she tell you that?”
Ben looked confused. “No. I didn’t let her use my car.”
“Well, according to Carolanne, she drove off in it that night.”
“But my car was right where I’d left it when I got up in the morning, but Gina wasn’t there. That doesn’t make sense.”
Connor shook his head. “No. It doesn’t. Look, if there’s anything you’re not telling me, tell me now. I can’t help you if you’re not straight with me.”
“I know.”
“Was she ever at the artisan center that you know of?”
“Yes,” Ben said. “I took her with me one night. She helped me with some raking and cleanup. She was a good help, too.”
Connor winced.
“This doesn’t look good, does it? You’ve got to believe me. I’m a champ at self-destruction, but I’d never harm anyone else.”
“I know,” Connor said. “I believe you. No, it doesn’t look good, but I’m glad you’re telling me this. It could be important. The more I know, the more I can help.”
“I swear, Connor, I didn’t do anything to Gina. She’s a nice kid. I wouldn’t have called you if I’d done something wrong. You’ve got to believe me.”
“I do, Ben. Completely. But I don’t think I can keep this from Carolanne. Adams Grove is a small town. I don’t know how long it’ll stay quiet.”
“Here’s the thing. Carolanne knows about Gina being at my house. We talked about that, but I can’t ask her to fight this for me. It’s not fair. I’ve put that girl through too much already. It’s why I called you.”
“I’m not bailing you out yet. You sit tight in here.”
“Not like it’s the first time I’ve slept here.”
“I know, and I’m sure it’s not a pleasant memory, but we’re better off if you’re here with an airtight alibi. If there’s anything you can think of that might give us a clue as to what happened, get them to contact me. I’ll see what I can find out, and I’ll be back.”
Connor signaled for the deputy, who came in and led Ben out of the room.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Adams Grove 03-Wedding Cake and Big Mistakes Page 18