by CeeCee James
“Yes, I think it is. What are you so worried about?”
“Well, just a couple months ago you were living off of ramen noodles and tic-tacs. So, yeah, I have some concerns.”
“Is it possible your concerns are more about you than Lucy? Like, now I’m not going to be free to run whenever you want. Free to go on trips and stuff.”
Lavina pushed on her arm. “Are you serious? You think I’m that shallow?”
Shallow? Elise’s brow furrowed. No, she didn’t think her friend was shallow, not in the caring about people way. But she did think Lavina was self-centered when it came to her ‘fun time.’
Elise continued, again in her most even-tempered voice. “I know that having the responsibility of a child will really change things. I get that it’s a big change, not just for me, but for you too. But she needs me.”
“She needs a family.”
“Look, like I said, it’s just temporary. Maybe for only a couple months. The state said they’d reassess after her mom completes rehab. And hopefully she will.”
“You hope?”
Elise sighed. “I don’t know what I hope. I just know this girl pulled at my heartstrings.” She glanced at Lavina. “She reminds me of you when you were little.”
The silence between them grew for a couple beats. Lavina had lost her mom at the age of six, and had been forced to move in with her grandparents. Back then, all Elise had understood was that her best friend—the girl who stood up to the school bus bully and punched him right in the nose when he tried to steal Elise’s lunch— was moving two houses down the street. It had seemed like the best thing ever, at the time.
But now she knew better. Understood that there had been a cost paid, and not by Elise, but by Lavina who didn’t have her mom to grow up with. Elise didn’t understand it then, but she’d seen the effects of it on her friend. The protectiveness, the overly-toughness, at times. Still, Lavina’s grandparents had been first rate, and that was what had given her that heads up in life. Without them, who knows where Lavina would have ended up.
Lavina groaned and shook her head. Lines of resignation creased her mouth. “Elise….”
Elise continued. “She doesn’t have anyone to help her with her mom in rehab. I want to protect her until she gets her mom back. Things will be tight. Super tight. I get it. But we’ll be okay. If worse comes to worst, I still have some jewelry I can pawn. And there’s Grandstone’s reward money, if they ever pay. Right now, I just want her to know she is valuable and wanted, despite her mother’s choices.”
“Well,” Lavina blew out a big breath, then stood up and dusted off her pants. “I sure love you, Elise. You know I always have your back. I guess that means she needs an Aunty Vi, hmmm? Let’s go shopping and get her a few things.”
Elise jumped up too, as excitement flew through her. “Are you serious? You’ll support me with Lucy?”
“Are you kidding? I’m your wingman in everything. Although, I guess now I’m your wing-aunt.” She scowled briefly. “Just don’t expect me to babysit.”
“Vi, she’s fifteen.” Elise answered with a snort. “Seriously? You know more about kids than that.”
“I don’t know anything about kids!” Lavina snapped back. “I just have that one babysitting experience under my belt….”
“Dear Lord. The time you nearly burnt down the church?”
“Who lights candles in a church?” Lavina quibbled. “Besides, I put the fire out.”
“Fire extinguisher foam all over the podium.”
Lavina raised a painted eyebrow. “So you’re saying…?”
“I’m saying that may be the first nativity scene covered in snow ever. Poor baby Jesus was blanketed in it. Kids screaming.”
Lavina rolled her eyes. She calmly plucked a thread from her sleeve before turning her brilliant green eyes to Elise. “It was memorable. Those kids all know—”
“Not to let Lavina babysit. Yes, I think I remember the Sunday School director shouting it.”
“Stop, drop, and roll.” Lavina continued without missing a beat. Then she smiled. “And who got out of babysitting?” She pointed at Elise. “And who ended up stuck with it for the rest of the year?” She laughed. “You smelled like graham crackers every Sunday.” Wrinkling her nose, she hesitated. “Are you going to smell like that again?”
“Good grief. Are you kidding? Of course not. That only happened because I had to hold the Cooper twins, who were always covered in crumbs. Lucy will be fine. Like I said, she’s fifteen. Self-sufficient, even.”
Lavina grabbed her card out of her wallet and set it next to the bill. She looked for the waiter and gave him a wave when he noticed her. “I’ll pay for this,” she said as the waiter hurried over. “This might be the last treat you get for a while.”
The waiter took the card with a smile. Lavina pulled out her compact mirror and her signature red lipstick from her purse. “By the way,” she said, lining her lips in glossy red. “Have you talked with Brad about all of this? What does he think? Does that mean he’ll become an instant dad?”
At the word “dad” Elise’s heart dropped like a stone. Sure, she’d been thinking about how Lucy would impact their relationship, but she never in a million years thought about Brad carrying the name of dad. Never! No way. This is just temporary.
Most likely.
She took a deep breath and stared down at her lap. Her fingernail polish was chipped again. How could she think of taking in a girl when she was so bad at normal “girl” things? Haircuts, manicures…. It’s just nail polish. Quit freaking out. “I don’t know how much Brad has actually thought of it. I guess we’ll need to have a talk.”
“You’re kidding?” Lavina accepted the card back from the waiter with her face frozen in surprise. “You haven’t had that type of talk yet?”
“Just the bare minimum. He’s been really focused in wrapping the Craigslist robbers case up.”
“How bare?”
“He knows Lucy needs a place to stay.”
“Oh my heavens.” Lavina shook her head. “If you aren’t one of the craziest people I know.” She adjusted her thick necklace. “Well, Brad will be getting a big dose of crazy himself, I guess. By the way, whatever happened about the green heel?”
“It was Catalina’s.”
Lavina’s mouth dropped open. “What? Are you serious?”
“That was the hardest clue, but once I figured it out all the rest fell into place. You see, it wasn’t long after Catalina hired Sonya to be her wedding planner that Sonya realized that the circus had been in Meadowford, which was the last town of the jewelry store that she’d robbed. When Catalina wore the green shoes for the first consultation, that’s when Sonya got the idea.”
“What idea?” Lavina swirled her straw in her soda.
“Her plan was to do a final robbery and pin the Craigslist Bandit thing on the circus.”
Lavina took a sip of her sweet tea. “Well, don’t leave me hanging. Go on!”
Elise sucked in a deep breath as all the words rushed to her mouth like cattle trying to get through a gate. “At the wedding dress fitting, Sonya had been surprised that Catalina had worn flats instead of heels. It made me realize Sonya had always seen Cat in heels before. Sonya even mentioned that day how Cat always wore sparkly heels.”
Elise took a drink of her coke to wet her mouth. “And, it was obvious at the wedding that green was Catalina’s favorite color. I realized that heel had to be hers. But how did it get in the alley? Was Catalina guilty? I wasn’t sure.”
“We finally learned the answer a few days ago when Brad told me he’d found the homeless guy in the old car—remember how he’d been watching me?—and brought him in for questioning. The guy calls himself Todd Danger, and said he’d been hired by Sonya. Somehow, Sonya connected with him after he got fired from the circus, and she paid him good money to do a little reconnaissance job. First on the list was to steal Catalina’s shoes and plant them in the Grandstone alley, as Sonya continued t
o set the circus up to take the fall. In his bitterness, he was happy to acquiesce. Especially since the price was right.”
Elise shook her head. “The funny thing was that by him stealing Cat’s shoes, it only fueled Catalina’s hatred of Lucy, because Cat believed it was the teenager who’d taken her heels. Lucy said she’d caught Todd leaving Catalina’s room. When he’d stolen the shoes, he’d also planted the painters mask in Cat’s room, and Lucy had swiped it, which is what Catalina had really seen her take.”
She paused, remembering the teenager shyly sharing the story. “Lucy had hoped to redeem herself in Catalina’s eyes to get a job at the circus, and said she’d kept her eye on Todd. She soon discovered Todd was working with Sonya. She’d tried to warn me that Sonya was involved by hanging the painter’s mask in the bathroom. Only Lucy didn’t completely trust me either, not convinced that I wasn’t in on the plan, too.”
“Now I, like an idiot, turned around and showed the mask to Sonya. I just had no reason to suspect her of anything. Sonya already had Todd on my trail by then but, after that, she had him keep closer tabs on me.”
“And she had him spy on you why?”
“She’d discovered too late that my boyfriend was a cop. She wanted to make sure I didn’t cause any trouble.”
“Okay, that makes sense.” Lavina looked up as the waiter returned with her card and the check. She tucked her card away, continuing, “So the real question of the hour, why did Sonya kill the cake decorator?”
“He’d been her partner. She’d always been the brains behind the operation, searching which store to rob that was in the area of her latest planned wedding, and placing the Craigslist ads. He was the one who did the dirty work. But she was ready to get out of the business and travel the world, and had planned this heist to be her last gig. And, like she told me, she wasn’t going to have any loose ends.”
Elise lifted her brow. “Sonya continued to build the groundwork for the last robbery, even going so far as to subtly guide Cat to pick the mall. She made a Craigslist ad asking for clowns to be guests at the wedding. When I found him, the cake decorator had been dressed as a clown. Originally, he was supposed to rob the jewelry store and later, blend in with the guests in case an alarm sounded. At the last minute, Sonya decided she didn’t need him after all.” Elise made a shooting motion with her hand. “She killed him and did the robbery herself, planning to make a clean escape. No loose ends.”
“Now, she’s in jail, with loads of evidence against her. How did she deal with the jewelry store’s alarm?”
“She had some sort of control over the mall’s alarm system. It’s how she was able to rent several different businesses at once. It turned out there was a silent alarm tripped at the jewelry store that she didn’t know about. It didn’t matter, because, by then, I’d already found the cake decorator and called the police.”
Lavina shook her head, her eyes wide with disbelief.
“And,” Elise continued. “Like I said before, when I saw her coming from that direction with her bag full and weighted, my gut told me to call Brad.” Elise winked. “And you always told me to listen to my gut.”
“You and that darn clunky old phone.” Lavina closed her eyes with a flutter. “You are a lucky, lucky girl. Now, tell me. Who was the mysterious waitress you kept searching for?”
Elise laughed. “That just turned out to be a red herring. Uncle Rozzo actually fell in love for the first time in his fifty-three years. The two live together now, at the circus. I hear he’s trying to make her the next bearded woman.”
Lavina raised her eyebrow and Elise shrugged in response.
“Besides,” Elise continued, “weirdly enough, I was already sort of on guard when I saw the white van unloading flowers the day before. I’d seen a bunch around town being used by different businesses, and it had occurred to me what a perfect escape vehicle that was from a crime scene. You just needed a different magnetic business sign to stick on the side.”
“Mmm,” Lavina nodded. “And, that night of your surgery to fix that darn leg of yours,” Lavina pointed in the direction of Elise’s ankle. “You kept murmuring about a fake wedding. What was up with that?”
“Oh,” Elise blushed. “That was another way Sonya had set up the Petrovitskys…that their wedding was fake. Sonya had been positive that the final nail in their coffin was proof that they hadn’t filed for a marriage license, and were just staging the whole thing. But what she didn’t know was that after the positive pregnancy test, Cook and Catalina had eloped earlier in Las Vegas. It was all hush-hush because it would be an insult to the Petrovitsky family to not be included in the wedding.”
“Married the whole time….” Lavina’s heavily made up eyes were wide.
“Yeah. Crazy, huh?
“Paying all that money, for a dead body and a S.W.A.T. team to crash the wedding.”
“I guess one day that will be a memory worth talking about.” Elise said with a smile. “In more positive news, Catalina said if they have a girl, her name will be Makylah Elise.”
“Awww,” Lavina said. “That’s so sweet.” Her phone dinged and she dug it out of her purse to read the text. Putting it away, she said. “Well, darlin’, it’s time for me to go. Mr. G is here to pick me up.” She smiled with her eyebrow raised. “Would you care to meet him?”
Elise’s pulse raced at the thought. “Vi! Are you kidding me?”
“Come on. Let’s go.” Lavina looped her purse across her forearm and stood.
“Finally. I can’t even believe it.” Elise started, before grabbing her sweater. She shoved her arms in the sleeves, only to have her ring catch a thread on the inside. No matter what she did, she couldn’t pull her arm out or push it through. Flopping her sleeve, she tried to free the ring.
Lavina watched with one eyebrow barely raised and sipped from her tea.
Elise hung her head with frustration before yanking her arm out, dragging a long piece of thread with it. She looked at Lavina and held up a finger, “Not a word.”
“I’m not saying anything.” Lavina smirked. “Nothing to say to my graceful, beautiful friend.”
“Well,” Elise laughed. “At least one of those is true.”
Five minutes later, they exited the restaurant. The breeze was brisk and carried Elise’s hair in front of her eyes. She tried to tuck her hair back and nearly lost her left crutch in the effort. In securing the left crutch, she almost lost grasp of the right one, and then her cast foot dotted against the ground. “I freaking hate these convoluted….”
“Tsk, tsk,” Lavina said. “Such language. And in front of my beau, too.”
“Where is he?” Elise looked around anxiously as she tried to compose her face and look collected.
“Just over there.” Lavina indicated the black limousine with the lift of her finger. Together, they headed over. Elise felt like a combination of the Tin Man and Bambi on ice with the crutches, but she kept her face serene. I’ll make a good impression if it kills me.
As they reached the limousine, a chauffeur raced around and opened the back door for Lavina. Gathering her skirt around her, Lavina carefully climbed in. The chauffeur offered his hand to Elise to help balance her. She hopped a bit to adjust so that she could lean into the car after her friend, ready with a big smile.
Instead, she gasped.
Male laughter greeted her. “Hello, Elise. I’ve heard so much about you.”
The End
Thank you for reading The Honeyed Taste of Deception. Have a great day. :)
Grab a cozy blanket and a cup of tea and curl up with the rest of the Angel Lake Mystery series. Five books in all- Each one better and better- Amazon review
The Bitter Taste of Betrayal
The Sour Taste of Suspicion
The Honeyed Taste of Deception
The Tempting Taste of Danger
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Winner of 2016 best memoir Ghost No More
Wrecked and Yours
Out of the Wreckage
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