“Golf balls. Wow.”
I leaned back against the sun-warmed car seat. Even with the window rolled down, it was still pretty hot. But I’d rather be on a stakeout with Rhonda than dodging golf balls from Tommy. At least here I had junk food. Plus I didn’t have any more leads to follow at the moment.
“And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about Freddie. I tried to apologize. I know I behaved badly, and I don’t want a friend break, but we don’t keep secrets from each other,” I said, shaking my head. “Why wouldn’t he just tell me about breaking up with Sean in the first place? It’s like I’m the one who’s getting dumped as Freddie’s best friend, and I don’t even know what I did.”
“I hear you.”
“And with my mom and Grady acting all weird on top of that…” I shook my head. “I just don’t know how much more I can take.”
“Sure.”
“But you want to know what the worst part of all this is?”
I thought I heard Rhonda mumble something like, Can’t wait to hear this one.
“We should all be coming together for Candace.”
Rhonda had just put a chip in her mouth, but stopped mid-chomp to look at me. She studied my face a moment before chewing again. “You’re right.”
“And actually it’s not just for Candace,” I said. “It’s for the town.”
Rhonda nodded. “Yeah, people are pretty upset. Mr. Coulter thinks we should start up a neighborhood watch. He wanted to know if OLS would participate.”
I shook my head. “I mean I’d participate in something like that, but I don’t know if it will help. I don’t think people are going to feel better until the killer is behind bars.”
She nodded.
“What’s your theory?” Rhonda was an ex-cop. She had to have some thoughts on the subject. I had already told her everything I had learned from Candace and Tommy. “I mean, I know you’re busy with this insurance thing, but what do you think happened to Lyssa? What should my next move be?”
“Well,” she said, leaning back in her seat. “I do have one idea.”
“What is it?”
“If you really want to solve this murder—like right away—there’s only one way I can think of to do it.”
“What is it?”
“You’ve gotta find out what was in that bag.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Lyssa’s bag, you mean?”
“Think about it,” Rhonda said, grabbing another chip. “The night Lyssa is murdered she is carrying an oversized bag around that she won’t let out of her sight? Sounds pretty suspicious to me.” She shrugged. “Who knows what could have been in there. Drugs? Money? Priceless jewels?”
I frowned at her. “I doubt it was priceless jewels.”
“The point is,” Rhonda said with a point of her finger … to really drive the point home I guess. “Whatever it was, I’m thinking it was the motive for her murder.”
“Well, yeah,” I said, leaning back in my seat. “That thought had occurred to me too, but how am I supposed to find out what was in the bag? I doubt Amos is going to tell me. And I don’t think breaking into the evidence locker at the sheriff’s department right now is a good idea.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Rhonda said. “I can’t come up with everything. I’m just trying to point you in the right direction.”
“I know,” I said. “Thanks.”
“Now about this whole thing with Freddie…”
I looked sideways at her.
“I think…” she said, before biting her lip, “you do need to give him some space.”
I flopped my hands onto my thighs. “But he needs me, Rhonda. I can tell. If he and Sean really did break up, then I should be there for him, bringing him ice cream, listening to him complain about the ice cream I was bringing him, about how I never choose the right bowl for the ice cream, and—”
“I know. I know,” she said, holding up a hand. “Be that as it may, he has a right to his space.”
“But … but we’ve never had space in our relationship before.”
She nodded, her supercurly red hair shuddering around her face. “But relationships change over time. They evolve. You need to evolve with them. And maybe it would be good for the both of you to let other people into your lives like…” She fake-coughed Grady’s name.
“Um, I wasn’t the one who didn’t want Grady in my life. That was Grady.” I sighed. “Besides, he’s being all weird now. Like he’s launching Grady 2.0 … which probably has anti-Erica software. And … I don’t like all these changes! I feel like I should have been consulted first.”
“Freddie will come back,” she said, patting my leg. “You know he can’t quit you.”
I sighed again. “I guess I’ll have to take your word for it.” I leaned back in my seat and propped my feet up on the dash. Rhonda whacked them off pretty quick. “Thanks for talking to me about all this, Rhonda.”
“No problem. Any time.”
“Are you sure about that?” I asked, shooting her a look. “Because when I first got here I kind of got the impression that you weren’t happy to see m— Oh my God!” I suddenly yelled. “I forgot to bring you lunch yesterday! I totally forgot!”
Rhonda smiled.
“I am so sorry! Why didn’t you call me?”
“I think I was too dazed from the lack of food and— Oh! Crap! There he is,” Rhonda said, lifting her camera from her lap and raising it to her eye. “Frick. There’s grease on the lens.”
My gaze snapped over to the clearing in the distance. Now, it was hard to tell given the distance—I didn’t have a big lens to look through like Rhonda—but from what I could see …
“Whoa, is that him?”
“That’s him,” Rhonda said, clicking furiously.
“Where are your—” I remembered Rhonda had binoculars. I grabbed them from the glove compartment.
Our target was a large, large man, mid to late thirties, with reddish-blond hair that fell to his shoulders. He was wearing low-slung jeans … and nothing else. Well, I mean, I’m sure he had shoes or boots on, but I wasn’t looking at his feet. He also had a small tree resting on his shoulder. Lucky tree.
We both watched in silence another few moments.
“He … does not look hurt,” I said.
“No, he does not,” Rhonda replied.
“He’s also very … sweaty.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And dirty.”
“Just the way I like them,” Rhonda muttered.
I gave her a once-over, but she had no attention to give me, so I turned back to take in the view. “It feels kind of wrong to be getting paid for this.”
“Don’t worry,” Rhonda said while furiously clicking her camera. “You’d be amazed how much easier it gets in a short period of time.”
* * *
I walked back into town after leaving Rhonda to her photography session.
Man, I was getting tired of all the walking I was doing lately. But that’s what happens when you get used to your best friend driving you everywhere and then you go on a friend break.
It was probably for the best though. I needed time to think of a way to find out what had happened to Lyssa’s bag without getting Amos fired. But how? I guess I could get Candace to ask the sheriff’s department, but I doubted they’d give the information to her either.
I needed more ideas.
By the time I made it back to Main Street I was still stuck … and hungry from all that walking and thinking.
I shot a look over to Vivienne’s Pastry Shoppe. I couldn’t help but wonder if Freddie had remembered that he had to reorder the cake, now that he was on the wedding and I was on the murder.
I trotted a few steps over.
It probably wouldn’t hurt if I just popped in to make sure … and maybe get a cupcake.
Bells jingled as I opened the door.
I loved Vivienne’s place. It always smelled like sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, and other sunshiny happy
things. But it wasn’t just the atmosphere that made it so special, it was Vivienne herself. She was one of a kind. She had this lust for life that was infectious. She was always laughing … and eating … and laughing some more. She was a hedonist in the best kind of way.
Strangely, though, even though the place was usually a bit of a hot spot … today, it was empty. Huh. I looked around at the cozy little tables with nobody sitting at them, before swinging back around to make sure that Vivienne’s was in fact open.
“Erica,” a voice called out. “I thought I heard someone come in.”
I smiled at the older woman sweeping in from the back room, rubbing her hands on a dish towel.
“Hi, Vivienne,” I said. “Are you open or…?”
“I’m always open. I just have an icing class going on in the back, so you’ll have to bear with me. What can I do for you?”
“I promise I won’t take up too much of your time. I just wanted to ask if Freddie had been in to talk to you about Candace’s wedding cake.”
“Don’t you worry, honey. It’s all taken care of. Freddie was in this morning actually to sample cakes. He’s already made a decision, so we’re all ready to go.”
I frowned. “Hadn’t Candace already chosen what she wanted?”
“Well, yes,” Vivienne said, making a face. “But it was carrot. Joey’s sister … what’s her name?”
“Antonia.”
“That’s it,” she said, snapping her fingers. “Anyway Candace chose carrot because it was Antonia’s favorite. But Freddie insisted that that was an act of sabotage because carrot cake is nobody’s favorite. We decided red velvet would be best.”
“Oh. Okay.” Hopefully he had checked that out with the bride first. “Well, I should get going, but while I’m here…”
“Yes?” Vivienne asked, flashing me a knowing smile. She knew I loved her cupcakes.
“You wouldn’t happen to have any—”
“Grady’s icing a fresh batch as we speak.”
I froze. “I’m sorry. I must have misheard you. Did you say…?”
“Grady,” she said with a knowing smile. “Sheriff Forrester. He’s my private lesson.” She waved her towel in the air toward the door that led to the back. “Why don’t you come and say hello?”
Chapter Fourteen
“Oh, no, no, no,” I said, waving my hands in front of me. “But … I’m sorry, are you sure we are talking about the same Grady?”
She waved me toward the swinging door with the window. “Come. See for yourself.”
I walked ever so carefully toward the door and peeked in the window. Well, I’ll be a monkey’s girlfriend—or uncle!—however that went. Didn’t matter. I needed to focus on the sight before me.
Yes, yes, it was indeed Grady … my Grady—or everyone’s Grady—Sheriff Forrester! It was indeed Sheriff Grady Forrester in an apron putting the last swirl of vanilla icing on a cupcake.
“Quite the sight, isn’t it?” Vivienne said, coming to stand beside me.
I swallowed. I couldn’t quite answer, so I just nodded.
“He’s got quite a talent for it,” Vivienne said, leaning in closer. “Frosting, I mean.”
“Oh yeah?” I said, struggling to find my voice.
“Yeah, he’s got those big, big hands, you know.”
I shot her a look. Oh, she was loving this.
“But they’re real steady.”
Just then Grady brought his finger toward his mouth. It had a dab of icing on the tip. I held my breath as it touched his lips.
Vivienne jabbed me in the ribs. “What I wouldn’t give to be that frosting, eh?”
I swallowed again.
“Do you want to go in and say hi?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“You know what? I think I’m just going to go.”
“Really?” Vivienne asked.
I took a couple of steps away from the door. “Yeah, yeah, I have a lot to do.” Like try to figure out what the hell was going on with Grady and somehow find a way to get that vision of him … and the icing out of my mind.
“You sure you don’t want to go back there,” Vivienne said with a jerk of her head. “And sample the merchandise?”
I wagged a finger at her. “You … you are bad.”
She let out a big, loud laugh. “Don’t I know it, honey.”
“Nope. Nope. I’m really going to go.”
“Well, okay,” she said. “But you just keep in mind life is too short not to enjoy a good cupcake every once in a while.”
Chapter Fifteen
“What now?” I groaned to myself as I rolled over in bed to get at my phone. The calendar notification was dinging for some strange reason, but I didn’t have anything going on today.
I looked at the screen.
Well … crap.
Yes I did. I did have something going on today.
I had forgotten that I had scheduled a time to meet Mrs. Roy at her place to discuss the flowers first thing this morning.
After Vivienne’s, I had gone back to the retreat to apologize to my mother and see how she wanted me to handle apologizing to everyone else, but I couldn’t find an opportunity to get her alone. She was always either talking to the guests or Zaki. I thought it was best to lay low. A lot of people had paid good money to come to this retreat, I didn’t want to cause any more problems. That being said, I knew I had to handle it today. My behavior was inexcusable. And I would handle it today, and get the investigation going again … somehow … once I handled this.
I mean, sure I could always text Freddie to get him to take the meeting with Mrs. Roy, but he might see that as a thinly veiled excuse to initiate contact. And I was all about respecting his space these days.
I could always cancel the meeting … but every wedding needed flowers.
That only left me with the option of taking the meeting. On the one hand it probably meant I would lose another hour of my life to a merry-go-round conversation with Mrs. Roy, but on the other hand, I had promised Candace that the wedding would be great. And it would be. Regardless of what was happening between Freddie and me.
And … wait a minute, Mrs. Roy’s place was pretty close to the gazebo.
I wasn’t thrilled about visiting the spot where Lyssa had been found, but that’s what investigators did, right? I needed to get into the headspace of the killer … see what the killer saw. It was worth a shot. I didn’t have any better ideas.
Half an hour later I was across the lake and at the Dawg asking Big Don if I could borrow the bike his nephew used for deliveries. I really needed to think about buying my own—especially if Freddie and I were going to keep fighting like this. I would have taken the boat, but Mrs. Roy’s was on a shallow part of the lake. There were lots of rocks.
It didn’t take long to cycle over. Once I got there, I laid the bike on her front lawn. I really liked this side of the lake. It was peaceful. The wind always seemed to be in the trees. Which was weird because they had actually cleared a good deal of the trees for Mrs. Roy’s gardens.… which currently didn’t have a single flower blooming in them. It was late spring, how could there be no flowers? This was bad. Who ever heard of a bride with a bouquet of tree branches? That wasn’t romantic. That was pokey. Somebody could lose an eye.
I walked up to the cottage and knocked on the door.
It was immediately answered by a loud woof and then a howl from the backyard. A second later, Carmen showed up in the fenced-in strip of yard beside the house.
“It’s okay, Carmen. I was invited.”
That just made her howl louder.
“Wow. Tell me how you really feel.”
I waited as Carmen howled for someone to answer the door. After a minute, I knocked again. Not entirely sure why. Carmen’s howling could have woken the dead. Oh … bad thought. Too soon.
Still no answer.
She wasn’t home.
Well, this had been a complete waste of time.
“You looking for Mrs. Roy?”
<
br /> I whipped around. It was a boy, maybe ten, on a bike. I think his name might be Cole? I was pretty sure I went to high school with his mom, Carrie. Hey, there was another side-by-side comparison I could ponder later.
“Have you seen her?”
“She’s not home. She went out about ten minutes ago. Grocery shopping.”
“But she was supposed to meet me here now.”
He nodded with a “I totally get it” look on his face. I seriously doubted that he had been stood up that many times in his life to warrant that level of understanding, but either way I appreciated the commiseration. “She’s like that,” he said. “You’re Erica Bloom, aren’t you?”
Uh-oh, I was known for many things in this town. Most of them inappropriate for ten-year-old boys.
I nodded.
“You want to know about that woman who—” He made a slicing motion with his finger across his neck and made a gargling sound.
“No! I mean … no.” What was Carrie letting this kid watch on TV? “I just wanted to talk to Mrs. Roy about some flowers.”
“It happened over there,” he said, pointing to the gazebo in the distance.
Apparently he knew quite a bit.
“I live right over there,” he said, pointing to a cottage. Closest one to the gazebo.
Yup, that was Carrie’s place. At least it was back in high school. I probably should have thought about canvassing the neighborhood before now.
I nodded at the kid again. I had no idea what I was supposed to say. I’d point to my place—well, my mom’s—but you couldn’t see it from here. “Cool.”
“I know you and your friend like to solve all the murders in town.”
I shot him a sideways look. “I wouldn’t say like, and—”
“My mom says you’re going to get arrested one of these days for sticking your nose where it shouldn’t be.”
I shrugged. Hard to disagree with that.
“But she says you’d probably like that because you’re hot for Sheriff Forr—”
“All right. All right,” I said, holding up my hands. “You just know all sorts of things, don’t you? But shouldn’t you be in school?”
“Summer break started last week.”
Down the Aisle with Murder Page 9