Sadly, I found that to be very true. “Including killing the man she was in love with?”
He reached back and slapped me hard across the face. “I will not let you poison her against me!”
Kelsey shrieked, pulling away from him.
“Still have that boat?” I asked, my cheek burning as I battled an onslaught of tears. “If I were you I would have kept it ‘cause it sure looked like a beauty from the photo I saw. Looked a lot like your dad’s boat, Kelsey.”
“Bigger.” Her lips trembling, she struggled to find her voice.
“We … we went out on it two weeks ago.”
“And didn’t we have a wonderful time?” Lance wrapped his arms around her. “That was just a taste of the life we can have together.”
Tears cascaded down Kelsey’s cheeks. “No, I—”
“Sweetheart, I know you’re upset.” He drew her closer. “But surely you can see it as clearly as me – we’re meant to be together. I knew it from the first moment I stepped into this shop and saw your lovely face.”
Criminy, where was Steve? “Very touching. Was this before or after you killed your wife?”
“I’m not dignifying that with a response,” he said, wiping away Kelsey’s tears.
“My guess would be before. Maybe you were on one of the weekend excursions on the Sound that your wife loved to take. Isn’t that what your old buddy Derek told the police? That buying the boat was her idea so that she could have you all to herself a few days every month? Yep, his quote in that news story made it sound like you had lost your one true love. I guess he didn’t know about the truer love you’d found here in Port Merritt.”
He smiled at Kelsey. “Ignore her. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about it.”
“Please.” Kelsey’s face crumpled like a wet newspaper as she looked up at him. “Let me go.”
“My dear, you don’t need to be afraid. This fiction she’s concocting is ridiculous.”
My phone rang in his front pocket. “If it’s so ridiculous, why did he take my phone?”
“What do you say we let it go to voice mail?” Lance asked with enough frost to turn me into a human popsicle.
Kelsey’s gaze shifted from his pants pocket up to his piercing dark eyes. “You killed Russell.”
“No.” His jaw tightened. “He had some sort of accident.”
As she pounded his chest with her fists I noticed Andy Falco looking through the Feathered Nest’s front window as he walked by.
“You did this!” she shouted, still pummeling Lance. “You!”
Good girl. Be nice and loud so that Andy can hear you.
A second later, he was pounding on the door. “Kelsey! Open the door!”
“Andy!” She wriggled away from Lance and made a run for the door. Sticking out my foot, I tried to trip him, but he was too quick, and Kelsey only made it five feet before he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her tight.
“If you don’t open this door right now, I’m going to break it down!” Andy shouted.
“It’s time for us to go, my dear.” Lance inched back with a squirming Kelsey in his grasp. “I’m sorry it has to be this way, but someday I hope you’ll understand that everything I’ve done I did for us.”
While Andy was using his shoulder as a battering ram, I looked for a weapon, something that I could use to keep Lance from dragging Kelsey to the rear exit in the storeroom.
Screaming, she tried to stomp on his toes. “Are you crazy? I’m not going anywhere with you!”
To make sure that didn’t happen I picked up the wooden barstool I’d been sitting on. It was ten times the weight and much more unwieldy than the aluminum bat I used to swing on my high school softball team, but the rounded legs afforded me a good grip. And as my coach always said, “A good grip is key to a good swing.”
My heart pounding as I crept toward Lance and Kelsey, I knew I’d have the opportunity for only one really good swing or he’d see to it that I got benched, permanently.
With sirens wailing in the distance, I squared up to my target and swung away at Lance Greenwood’s back with all my might, knocking him to his knees.
Stumbling forward, Kelsey steadied herself on a display case and then limped to the door. Flinging it open, Andy rushed in and she fell into his arms. “Are you okay?” he asked, holding her tight.
Clinging to Andy she muttered something unintelligible.
He and the detective who had just burst through the doorway behind him both locked their eyes on me.
“We’re fine,” I said.
Steve sidestepped Andy and Kelsey, his revolver in his hand and his brow slick with sweat as if he’d run here. Moving to my right he did a visual sweep of the room. “Anybody else here?” he asked me.
“Just us, and are we glad to finally see you.”
I received a little Clint Eastwood squint as Steve eyeballed the barstool in my hands.
Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have made it sound like he was deserving of a tardy slip, especially when I was so happy to see him and his gun.
He scowled at Lance, who was cursing at my feet, and then met my gaze. “Did you do this?”
“I didn’t hit clean-up in the batting order for nothing.”
“You know you can put the stool down now, Babe Ruth.”
“Oh.” With shaky limbs from the adrenaline coursing through my veins, I stepped around the contents of an earring rack that had scattered throughout the aisle and set my bat down near the window.
“Does that mean that I may get up now?” Lance asked as if I’d been inconveniencing him.
“No! Spread-eagle on the floor, and keep your mouth shut until I read you your rights,” Steve barked, slapping a pair of handcuffs on Lance’s wrists. He glanced back at Andy. “Take Kelsey across the street and wait for me there.”
After they left he cupped my chin and frowned. “You’ve got a nasty welt on your left cheek.”
“Artistic temperament, I guess.” Trying to avoid the lecture about putting myself in harm’s way, I didn’t want to make the smack to my face sound worse than it was.
The tic in Steve’s jaw counting down to a major explosion told me something much worse than a lecture was on the immediate horizon. “He didn’t hurt me.” Much anyway.
“You should have waited for me.”
“Who knew when you’d be showing up? Certainly not me because you didn’t answer your phone!”
“I was busy.”
“Not too busy to read that story I told you about, I hope.”
“I didn’t get to finish it because of a call I got from a nine-one-one operator.”
“Hmmmm … that’s a pity. It’s a killer story.” I smiled, trying to diffuse the tension between us with my bad pun.
Lance groaned. “For God’s sake, either shut her up or get her the hell away from me!”
“You shut up!” I said, wanting to grab the stool and take another whack at him. “And give me back my phone!”
Minutes later, red and blue lights flashed outside the Feathered Nest’s windows as Lance was escorted out the door.
I turned to Steve. “Now what happens?”
“I’ll need you and Kelsey to come to the station and give your statements, then I’ll work with Port Townsend PD to do a search of Greenwood’s boat. First things first though.” Steve held his hand out to me. “Let’s get of here.”
“Where we going?” I asked as we headed out the door.
“I’m going to buy you a mocha latte. I think you could use one.” He gently squeezed my hand. “Sorry to say it’s going to be a long day for you.”
Probably an even longer one for him. “In that case I’m having a scone with it, but if you think that will get you off the hook for the breakfast you still owe me, you’ve got another think coming.”
“What breakfast?”
The man might ignore me occasionally, but he never forgot anything. “The breakfast date in Port Townsend we didn’t get to have.”
&n
bsp; “Oh, that breakfast. I’ll make that up to you later.”
“Later like breakfast for dinner?” Yum. I was hungry already.
“Who said anything about eating?”
“Huh?” Oh. “That sounds good, too.”
* * *
A shirtless Steve came to his door when I arrived with two Eddie’s Place pizza boxes almost ten hours later. With a hint of a smile he tossed a hand towel over his shoulder. “Don’t think I ordered any pizza.” Leaning over the white boxes in my hands, he sniffed the air.
His hair was damp and he smelled of menthol and lime, and I lingered near his freshly shaved neck as I walked past him. “Since when do you say no to pizza?”
“Rarely,” he said, following me to his kitchen table. “And I never say no to pizza girls, so make yourself at home.”
After a quick side-trip to his laundry room for a white t-shirt, he grabbed two beers from the refrigerator while I popped one of the pizza boxes into his microwave oven.
A minute later, I slid two pizza slices onto a ceramic plate in front of him. “Bon appétit.”
“Two slices? That’s all there was in those two boxes?”
“Hey, my mother and Barry ate almost the entire large supreme that I ordered for you. I was lucky to salvage these two slices.”
“Your mother wanted to go out for pizza?” he asked with his mouth full. “I thought The Grotto was more her style.”
“It is, but since Gram and Alice were the ones celebrating tonight, it was their choice.”
He frowned. “Okay, I know I was a little distracted today, but what are we celebrating now?”
I opened up the other pizza box containing a half dozen each of their blue ribbon-winning cookies. “My grandmother and her sister each won a first place blue ribbon in different divisions, beating out …”
“Don’t tell me—Joyce Lackey.”
“Yep, must have been off her game.”
He almost choked on his pizza. “And whose fault would that be after you hounded her and her husband most of the week?”
“Never mind that. Anyway, the girls were sorry you couldn’t join us earlier, and since there wasn’t much pizza left they wanted to make sure that you had plenty of dessert.”
He gave me an evil grin.
“Those sweet old ladies were referring to the cookies!”
“Did I say anything?”
“You didn’t have to, pal.”
He ran his index finger over my cheek, tracing the red welt Lance Greenwood had left me with. “The swelling’s gone down.”
“It’s nothing.” With the knowledge that the man had killed two other people he deemed to be standing in the way of true love, I knew that I’d gotten off easy.
Steve’s eyes darkened. “It’s not nothing. You could’ve been—”
“I wasn’t hurt and it will be gone by morning.” And if it wasn’t, I had my mother’s makeup treasure trove at my disposal.
I sipped my beer and mentally replayed some of the events of the day. “So what happened after I left the station?”
“The usual. By the time his lawyer arrived from Seattle, Greenwood broke down, crying about losing Kelsey to someone like Russell Falco.” Steve popped the last bite of pizza into his mouth. “The lawyer couldn’t shut him up.”
“That’s great that he talked! Did he go into any detail about what exactly he did that night?”
“Enough to convince me that he struck Falco on the head with enough force to knock him into the water after he didn’t take the hint to stay away from Kelsey.”
Okay, that solved the mystery of Russell’s cell phone and shoes not being found on his boat. They had to have been on him when he went into the water, but Steve was losing me with that last part. “What hint?”
“Greenwood slashed Russell’s tires.”
“He probably saw Kelsey with Russell that Monday night, just like Andy.” And then flew into a jealous rage, as I had suspected, only I’d been looking at Pete Lackey, the wrong jealous guy.
“Sounded to me like that’s when things started escalating.”
“Because he hadn’t done everything he did, including killing his wife, to lose Kelsey to Russell.”
Steve shot me a humorless smile. “You got it.”
Wow. “The fact that he told you all this should make it easier to charge him, right?”
“It should. Ben will have to make that determination sometime tomorrow, before arraignment.”
“But you can at least tell Mitzi that you have a suspect in custody, right?”
Steve nodded. “She’d already heard it from Andy, but I told her.”
“Good.” Not that the knowledge of an arrest could dull the pain, but maybe it would serve as a first step in the healing process for Mitzi and her family.
Steve leaned back in his chair and took a long pull from his bottle. “Your turn to talk. How’d you happen to find that news story?”
“Listened in on a deposition this morning. Turned out that one of Lance Greenwood’s buddies defrauded an old lady out of some valuable property—right next door to the Benoit Gallery. So it was just a matter of time before that whole investment deal came crashing down like a house of cards, but with the plans my mother had been making for that performing arts center, I knew that I’d have to provide a convincing argument for her to walk away. Then I stumbled onto that news story.”
“That’s also called following a lead.” He lifted his bottle in a salute. “Way to go, rookie.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “It was a good day.” A little tough on my diet with another celebration dinner, and my mother wasn’t happy to see her investment plans go up in smoke, but still—it was a good day.
I reached for the pizza box with the cookies. “Are you ready for some dessert?”
Grinning, he took my hand. “Yes, I am.”
THE END
Acknowledgments
The expression about it taking a village is certainly true when I think about the path Sex, Lies, and Snickerdoodles took on its road to publication.
First, I must thank the two subject matter experts who supplied this mystery writer essential information so that my story people didn’t make unintended blunders: Thank you, Funeral Director Real Robles for sharing your time and expertise to help me get the details right. And huge thanks go to “K.” I’m so grateful to have you as my “top cop” advisor for this series.
Secondly, thank you Corvallis Press for your unfailing support of this mystery series. You’ve been a dream team to work with.
To Ann Charles, my critique partner and friend, thanks for always being there to play the “what if” game with me.
Thank you, Adam Linstad, my talented cover designer, for breathing life into the bones of my cover ideas.
To my husband Jeff, thanks for being my “guy stuff” advisor and for understanding why dinner was late, again.
Thank you to the authors and reviewers who offered their time to read and comment about this book. And special thanks to Ann Charles, Maggie Toussaint, and Terri L. Austin for providing the wonderful cover quotes.
Finally, a boatload of thanks go out to my readers and critiquers: Ann Charles, Jacquie Rogers, Diane Garland, Jody Sherine, Deb Tysick-Hawrylyshyn, Bob Dickerson, Denise Keef, Wayne Roberts, Amber Jacobsma, Brandy Lanfair, Denise Fluhr, Dixie Daniel, Cindy Nelson, Susan Cambra, Barb Harlan, Beth Rosin, Lori Dubiel, Toni Mortensen, Vicki Huskey, Betsy Helgesen, Jim Vavra, and Karen Haverkate. I’m so grateful for your gracious support and invaluable feedback.
About the Author
Wendy Delaney writes fun-filled cozy mysteries and is the award-winning author of the Working Stiffs Mystery series. A long-time member of Sisters in Crime, Romance Writers of America, and Mystery Writers of America, she’s a Food Network addict and pastry chef wannabe. When she’s not killing off story people she can be found on her treadmill, working off the calories from her latest culinary adventure. Wendy makes her home in the Seattle area with her husband an
d has two grown sons.
Contact Information:
Authors Website: www.wendydelaney.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Wendy-Delaney/1122544009
Twitter: @Wendy_Delaney
Corvallis Press, Publisher
630 NW Hickory St., Ste. 120
Albany, OR 97321
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Copyright
Sex, Lies, and Snickerdoodles
A Working Stiffs Mystery – Book 2
Copyright © 2014 by Wendy Delaney
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Corvallis Press.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover Design by Adam Linstad
Editing by Mimi (The Grammar Chick)
ebook: ISBN-978-1-62528-001-5
Corvallis Press, Publisher
630 NW Hickory St., Ste. 120
Albany, OR 97321
www.corvallispress.com
[email protected]
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