by S. Y. Robins
That was stupid though, right? Just because it was dark, and creepy, and possibly haunted, and no one had lived here for three decades, and people died here... that didn't mean the place was scary.
Yeah right. All alone up here, in this creepy old shack, I wasn't a confident secure almost-thirty-year-old anymore. I was that same seventeen-year-old girl I'd been when I'd left. There was another creaking. I squinted and looked towards the wall.
Oh god, I have to get out of here, I thought.
I stumbled backwards and reached my hands out behind me, hitting the table where I'd been sitting. I spun around and grabbed my handbag, intending to leave, but the bag knocked over a pile of books in the same place where the dust was thinner, like someone had been there recently. A piece of paper fell out of one of the books. I noticed right away that it was crisp and clean - fresh paper, not old and musty like the other books that lay there falling to bits.
The doors and walls continued to creak as I picked up the piece of paper, unfolding it, turning it over to see what was on it.
Recipe for Chocolate Cheesecake.
My heart started thumping as the back door flew open.
"Mr. – Mr. Sherman..." I stammered, stepping backwards, hitting the table again. I looked around frantically for another exit. The only door was right behind Mr. Sherman. I was cornered.
"What are you doing up here Allison?"
I tried to quickly think of a good explanation for being there, as Gary crept closer and closer to me. My heart was racing, and it wasn't just because I was being pressed up against the wall by a killer.
All of a sudden it felt like a blinding light flashing through my mind, and everything that had happened two months earlier came flashing back. I leant forward, out of breath, feeling like I was having a panic attack.
There I had been - the images came back thick and fast. I'd been chasing a story - the biggest story I'd ever been assigned to - about an infamous family in the criminal underworld. I'd been getting close to one of the sons - Anthony - for the story of course, just so that I'd have material for my expose, when he'd found out what I was up to, and cornered me in one of the factories his family owned.
A flash; a knife. Another flash; my back pressed against steel bars. Then another flash; the sound of me almost choking as I was saved at the last minute by a police team. Anthony ended up with a four-year sentence, but I haven’t felt safe since.
I wasn't able to save my career. I could barely bring myself back into the office after that, let alone go out on any other stories. I made one excuse after another about why I couldn't work, why I couldn't take on a story. Stressing myself out. Getting no sleep. Partying. Burning through my credit card. Till it all got too much and I self-combusted, told off my boss, the editor of the paper, in front of the entire staff. Made a fool of myself. Got fired. And ended up back in Curtain Bay.
And all for what? Because I'd gotten scared? I should have brushed myself off after the incident, gotten back on the horse, kept working, and kept chasing stories. Instead, I'd acted the same way I had when I was seventeen, and the love of my life asked me to marry him. I got scared and ran away.
Suddenly, I was back in the present moment. And Gary Sherman was pressing me up against the wall, demanding to know what I was doing there.
"I suppose you think your Miss Big Shot now, don't you?"
I shook my head. "I really don't, actually." I surprised myself by how calm my voice sounded. I'd expected it to shake, to crack.
I pushed him off me. I wasn't going to be scared this time. Or run away.
"Why did you do it Gary? Because she won the Cheesecake Competition over you? Well you've got the title now. I guess your plan all worked out. Kill off Cassandra, then steal her crown."
I'd made an even worse choice of winner the second time round than I had the first.
He shook his head. "You don't know anything, Allison."
"I know you killed Cassandra. But over a cheesecake? Geez, don't you have anything else to occupy your time?"
"I followed your career Allison," he said, menacingly.
My eyes shot wide open. "What does that mean?" I took a good look at him for the first time. My career? Why would he have any interest in anything I'd done once I'd left Curtain Bay? I hated him knowing that my journalism career was in the toilet. But had I really disappointed him that much that he would try to threaten me? And why had he hurt Cassandra?
"I hear you set up my nephew, Anthony, real good..." his tone was menacing.
"What the..." I murmured, searching his face? No, he couldn't be related. I shook my head. Then again, that family had connections everywhere. They'd probably known all along who I was, and where I was from. They would have kept tabs on me, told Gary I was back in town.
"Why did you kill Cassandra?" I asked, my voice strong and steady. This was a rematch. My second shot. This time I wasn't going to cower away. I had to know why Gary had done it.
"I thought she was you," he spat out. "Out there that night, walking alone. I heard her calling up your old sweetheart Robert, and I assumed."
I looked around the cabin for some kind of weapon to grab. If he had tried to kill me once, he could do it again. There was nothing within grabbing distance, so I just pushed him off me. "So this was never about the cheesecakes?" I was breathing deeply, trying to keep steady as I made my way towards the exit, the ever looming threat of him about to attack me still present.
"Well that was a bonus," he said, eyes still gleaming. "It was kind of funny that you crowned me the winner. Thanks for that, by the way. Got Joy annoyed again. Now she'll be blamed for Cassandra's death, as well as yours..."
My heart started racing even faster.
Gary continued on. "I knew it was only a matter of time before you started creeping around in this cabin again - you kids always were obsessed with it. I just had to wait for you to come back up here. Surprised it wasn't you the other night, actually."
I thought back to when we were all kids, how the teachers – Mr. Sherman included - always told us off for our stories and dares about the old cabin.
"So how's this story going to end, then Allison? Do you have a big scoop now?" He lunged towards me, reaching his hands around my neck, and I knew I only had seconds to act.
I lifted up my leg and kicked him as hard as I could, and he went flying backwards, hitting his head on the table as he fell.
There was the sound of someone pushing the door open, and I spun around. Robert flung the door open and burst through. "Allison?" he asked frantically, running over to check I was alright.
"I'm okay," I said, as he quickly put his arm around me, before turning his attention to Gary lying on the ground.
"Robert, don't, he's... he's dangerous..." I warned him.
"Allison if he was going to hurt you, I am going to kill him."
"Rob-"
I stopped at the sound of police sirens and looked through the open door.
"How did they..." I started, then I saw Cheryl coming up the hill behind the cops, with Mom in tow; the big yellow school bus behind them.
Thank god for small towns.
I shot Robert a wry look. "I honestly can't believe this is the third Cheesecake Competition I am hosting this week."
He laughed back at me. "Come on, you love it now."
"I actually don't." I put my hands on my hips, teasingly. "Every time I judge one of these, someone winds up dead, or almost dead."
"Well, come on," he prodded. "Time to announce the winner."
I sighed, and turned back to the cr owd. It didn't matter what had happened, this town still took this competition so seriously that they'd stopped whatever they were doing to attend it for the third time.
"I am pleased to announce, that the winner - the real, and final winner - of the annual Curtain Bay Cheesecake Competition is... Joy Robinson!"
Beaming, Joy climbed up on the podium and gave her thanks, before leaning over and giving me a hug. "Thanks for finally makin
g the right choice, Allison."
I gave her a squeeze back. "I should have chosen you in the first place."
We looked at each other for a moment, and I moved away from the mic. "I'm sorry I lost touch all these years. I should have checked in, should have come back. I didn't even know about your husband. I just swooped back in here, thinking I knew everything."
"Hey, it's okay," she replied. "I knew everything that had happened to you in the city and I still gave you a hard time." She looked a bit guilty. "Plus, I knew how hard it had been for you to leave all those years ago. Even if it seemed like you were running away."
I sighed. "Well, I'm not running away now."
"You're not?"
I looked over at Robert, who was waiting for me to join him off to the side of the stage. Next to him stood Mom, beaming proudly, not bothered, after all, that I had to come back to Curtain Bay in disgrace. I was still her daughter, and she loved me. And Robert - well, maybe there was hope there after all.
"No, I'm not running away," I replied.
THE END
Nail Vanish
Cozy Mystery
About the Book
When Emma opens her own salon at last, she’s beyond thrilled. It’s taken four years of saving and planning to get here, and she even managed to leave her old salon on good terms with her former boss, Gina. Wishing her luck, Gina has even promised to tell all of Emma’s clients that she has her own salon now. With the grand opening only two days away, Emma is on top of the world.
Until someone is murdered right in front of her apartment, that is. The woman is a tourist with zero connections in town, and there’s no reason at all that anyone should have killed her…unless you count the fact that she looks remarkably like Emma. Emma tries to brush it off as a coincidence, but deep down she knows the truth: someone hired a killer to take her out, and another person paid the price.
Driven by guilt, Emma decides that she’s not going to rest until she learns the truth. But every time she turns around, it seems that there’s another body. And when she finally figures out the truth, it just might be too late to save her...
1
“One second, tea’s ready.”
The kettle whistled, and Emma craned to hold the phone between her shoulder and her ear as she turned off the stove and poured the tea. The aroma of cinnamon rose through the kitchen and she smiled, leaning over the steam and inhaling. Fall had just slid from a hint of chill into bracingly crisp weather and Emma was celebrating with flannel pajamas and tea. If only her apartment had a fireplace…
“Okay, I’m back.” She settled onto the couch, tea in one hand and phone in the other.
“All cozy?” Rob’s voice sounded like he was smiling.
“Yeah. Finally relaxing.” Emma curled her feet up under herself and smiled. “I’m sorry you’re still working.”
“It’s just for a few nights.” He paused. “Are you okay? Should I come over? I can leave if I need to.”
“No, no. You stay.” Emma managed a tired smile. “I’ll probably be asleep soon, anyway. But you should still come over. We can have breakfast together.”
“That sounds wonderful. I’ll bring the pancake mix.”
“I have the best boyfriend.”
He laughed, that sexy laugh that always made her toes curl, and Emma felt her face split into a grin. She’d fallen for Rob the first time she’d seen him, tagging along at the bar and looking out of place as he nursed a beer. When he’d asked her if she wanted to get out of there, only to take her strolling along the city streets under a crisp winter sky, staring at the stars…she’d been pretty sure she was already in love. Two years later, she still felt like the luckiest woman alive every day. Rob might be an absolutely terrible cook with a penchant for bad puns, but he was her terrible cook with a penchant for bad puns.
“So tell me how it went with Gina,” he said finally.
“Oh, you know…awkward as hell.” Today had been Emma’s last day at Totally Nails. In the three weeks since she had announced her resignation to start her own salon, she had not seen her boss, Gina, even once. It had taken all of those three weeks for her mother and Rob to persuade her to ask Gina for a meeting so that Emma could ask for her client list to go with her to the new salon.
“Well, what did she say?” Rob had been Emma’s staunchest proponent when she first floated the idea of opening her own nail salon, and for two years he had helped her research real estate and business laws. With Perfection opening next week, he was beginning to stress out just as much as Emma was.
“She said it was okay.” Emma hunched her shoulders. “She gave me the list. She wasn’t, uh…very happy about it.”
“Well, I would think not. One of her best artists is leaving.”
“Rob…”
“You know you were the best one there.”
“That’s not why she was upset.” Even to Emma, it felt uncomfortably like betrayal: going to her former boss for her client list, when she was going to set up a rival business. But she’d wanted her own salon for so long…
“You know it is completely okay to start your own salon. And she didn’t make all of you sign a non-compete or anything.”
“I’m pretty sure people are going to have to after this.”
“Emma…” His voice was gentle. “People start their own businesses all the time. Gina started her own salon, too. She must know how much it means to you to do this.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
Still, Gina hadn’t seemed all that happy—or happy at all, really. Her perfect nails had tapped out a staccato beat on the desk, and she answered Emma’s questions curtly, her smile absolutely fake, red lips curved but her eyes looking pained.
“If she gave you the list, then it’s on her,” Rob said decisively. “And how did the meeting with Matthew go?”
Matthew was Emma’s new landlord for Perfection, a nervous-looking man who always wore button-down shirts and khakis, and tended to clear his throat a lot. He’d called Emma three times the night before while she was taking a bath, and texted again when she was already in bed.
“Oh, he wanted to know if I’d consider moving the salon.” Emma tried to keep the disbelief out of her voice.
“What? It opens in three days.”
“I know! That’s what I told him. He said he’d heard about some other place, but it’s on the other side of town, and it’s in the middle of nowhere. It’s been sitting empty for about a year. The windows are broken.”
“Emma.” Her voice had been rising. “You have a lease, you absolutely don’t have to move.”
“I know.” Emma rubbed at her head. “You’d have been really proud of me, I just told him calm as you please that I was going to stay here. But you should have seen him, Rob, he kept behaving like I was being completely unreasonable. Like I should want to move to this other place, and was I sure this was a good place for the salon.”
In retrospect, it had been utterly bizarre. Perfection would be right on Main Street, only a few storefronts down from both the post office and all of the amazing coffee shops, and Emma had already shelled out the money to decorate it in what she called cozy-spa-chic, the sort of place a woman might go if she preferred wearing jeans and flannel shirts, but still wanted to be pampered.
“Anyway, between that and Gina, I’m wiped.” Emma sipped at her tea and shrugged.
“I’ll bet.” She heard Rob settle into his office chair. With two of the security guards at his firm having quit the week before, Rob and his coworkers were pulling extra shifts until the new hires passed their background checks. “Hey, what’s all that noise in the background?”
“Sirens.” Emma looked over at the window, where red and blue lights flickered through the blinds. She could hear Rob’s voice faintly. “Wait a sec until they go, I can’t hear you with all this noise.”
But the sirens did not die down. In fact, they were only getting louder as more and more vehicles approached. Emma pressed her hand over her
ear so she could hear Rob.
“One second, I’m going to go look outside.”
“Car crash?” he asked.
“It must have been, but I didn’t hear anything.” Frowning, Emma set her phone down on the couch and went to peek out the window.
When she saw what lay outside, she screamed.
“Emma?” She could hear Rob’s panicked voice from the phone. “Emma!”
“Oh my God,” Emma whispered. “Oh my God. Oh God.”
“Emma!” A yell.
She couldn’t remember how to walk. Emma stumbled on her way back to the phone, tripping and landing on the ground with a little cry. She rocked back and forth, shaking, and managed to crawl for the phone.
“Oh, my God.” Her fingers were fumbling on the smooth casing.
“Emma, what is it? Do I need to call the police?”
“There’s…there’s a body on the pavement.” Emma pressed one palm over her mouth. “There’s a woman on the pavement. She’s dead. There’s a sheet but I can see her. There’s police everywhere. Oh, my God, Rob, I didn’t hear anything and what if the murderer’s here in the building, and—”
“I’m coming to get you.” Rob’s voice was instant. “Emma, listen to me. Put on your coat. Keep your phone with you and stay on the line, okay? Get some shoes. I want you to go downstairs where all the police are, all right?”
“But…” But the body was there and she could not bear to see it. It filled her with revulsion.
“I know you don’t want to see it, but that’s where the police are, and that’s where it’s safest. Stay by the building and I’ll come to get you, okay?”
“Okay.” She was starting to cry. She slipped shoes on over her bare feet and put the phone down so she could pull on her coat. She could not stop shaking. “Okay, I’ll meet you downstairs.”
“Just stay on the phone with me,” Rob told her. She could hear him speaking urgently to someone on the other end, and then he was back. “We’ll go to my place tonight.” She could hear him trying to smile. “It’s not that messy, after all, right?”