by Carol Durand
“Remember a few weeks ago, when I told you I was homesick for California?” Echo asked, receiving a slow nod for an answer. “Well, I decided that, as much as I try, I can’t forget my home. Louisiana is wonderful and beautiful and the people are all so sweet and I love you to death, but California is home, so I’m moving back,” she explained gently, pushing Missy’s bowl of ice cream closer to her. The sad and stressed out woman looked mutely down at the rapidly melting treat and burst into tears.
“Why is everything going wrong?” she cried, all the stress and tension that she’d been carrying breaking free in a flood of emotion. “Grayson might die, and if he doesn’t die, he might go to jail, and if he doesn’t go to jail, I might, even though it’s all the mayor’s fault, and Ben and Cheryl are moving away and taking my god-daughter with them, and now you’re moving away and my whole life is just falling apart,” she wailed, putting her head in her hands and sobbing.
“Missy, hey…” Echo hurt for her dear friend. “I’m not going away forever, I’ll come back to visit, and I’ll definitely still be your Maid of Honor when you marry Mr. Wonderful,” she came to stand by her heartbroken friend, then knelt by her chair, stroking her back while she cried.
“What am I going to do without you? How on earth am I going to cope with my crazy life?” she murmured, her breathing punctuated by hiccups from her tears.
“Well, we can Skype a lot, and I promise I’ll come visit too. You know we can’t stay apart for any length of time,” Echo grinned fondly, grabbing her friend and wrapping her in a warm hug. “I love you, girl. That’s never going to change.”
“Promise?” Missy asked weakly.
“Promise.”
Chapter 11
Missy had been working off her angst by baking non-stop, and had just turned off the mixer in the kitchen at the LaChance shop, when she heard Cheryl call out, “Ms. G!” from the front. Hearing the distress in her manager’s voice, Missy sprinted to the front of the store, narrowly missed by an object that went flying by her head.
She saw Cheryl cowering in a corner behind the counter, covered in cupcake and frosting and was startled when a Purple People Pleaser cupcake splatted against the side of her head. Her gaze found the source of the barrage, a very angry Mrs. Kingsman. She had positioned herself next to all of the top-of-the-counter covered glass plates and was firing fresh cupcakes at Cheryl, Missy, and anything in her path as hard as she could.
“Mrs. Kingsman!” Missy scolded. “Stop it right now,” she ducked as a series of three cupcakes in a row headed her way. “I know you must be upset, but this is not how adults handle these things,” she popped up to say, then ducked again as Celia Kingsman reloaded.
“Your dreadful little punk-rocker employee killed my Chester,” she screamed, red-faced.
“No, he didn’t Mrs. Kingsman, I promise you that,” Missy stuck her head up for a bit too long and got thwacked right in the forehead with an Apple Caramel Crisp cupcake, the sticky topping gluing her curls to her face. Brushing aside the mess, she tried again. “This isn’t going to solve anything, please stop,” she pleaded, really not wanting to have to call the police.
“I’m not going to stop until I feel better, and that could take a while,” Celia shrieked. “Chester may have been a fat, pompous, jerk, but he was all I had,” she seemed to deflate, still holding two cupcakes in each hand.
“I know, and I’m really, terribly sorry for your loss, but it had nothing to do with Grayson or my store, so why don’t you just put those cupcakes down and go home and we’ll forget this ever happened, okay?” Missy spoke softly, trying to calm the agitated widow.
“Never,” she raged, plowing Missy squarely in the face with a Margarita Madness cupcake.
Just then, as Missy stood there, too stunned to move, wiping frosting out of her eyes and hair, the bell over the door jangled, distracting Mrs. Kingsman from her task as Chas walked in. Quick to assess the situation, he walked right up the the widow, his hands held out in a conciliatory manner.
“Okay, now, let’s all just calm down,” he said, in a slow, soothing voice.
“Everyone needs to stop telling me to calm down,” Celia Kingsman screeched. “You calm down!” she hissed between her teeth, crushing the remaining cupcakes in her hands into the front of the detective’s Savile Row suit. Even before inheriting a third of his late father’s fortune, Chas had always dressed well. This one would make his dry cleaner really wonder. “Take that!” she said as her parting shot and stormed from the shop. Missy and Cheryl came out from behind the counter and the three cupcake-covered friends observed Celia get into her silver European car and drive away. Cheryl and Missy looked first at each other, then at Chas, and burst into laughter.
“Oh gosh, look at this mess,” Missy surveyed the damage when the gales of laughter had passed. Chas, none too amused, had gone to the employee bathroom to see if he could salvage his shirt and suit coat, his tie was clearly a total loss.
“I’ll get some trash bags and cleaning supplies,” Cheryl said, heading toward the back and nearly mowing over Chris, who was coming in to start his shift.
“Whoa, did you guys have a food fight?” he chuckled, glancing at the mess on the walls, the floor, and the people in the shop.
“It’s a long story,” Missy sighed. “Will you please go grab the push broom and start on the floors?”
“No problem,” Chris grinned, still confused. When he turned, he nearly collided with a slightly damp Chas.
“Hey, Detective, how ya doin?” he asked cordially, extending his hand for Chas to shake.
“A bit better now that I no longer have Margarita Madness squished into my suit jacket,” he replied dryly, giving Chris a strange look.
“I don’t even want to know,” the young man laughed, heading for the kitchen.
“Hey, beautiful,” the handsome detective called out to his fiancée, walking over to her. She stood, wiping sticky hands on the front of her apron. “You look delicious, but something just came up and I need to get to work. Dinner later?” he asked. She nodded and kissed him, passing along a smear of vanilla buttercream frosting that had been on her lips. “Yup, delicious,” he nodded, heading for the kitchen.
“Where are you going?” she asked, puzzled because he had come in the front door.
“Just want to check out the scene of Grayson’s attack one more time,” he explained easily. That struck Missy as a bit odd, but she was entirely too busy at the moment to dwell on it.
She had heard earlier in the day that Grayson had finally moved from the ICU and was now recovering in a regular room, but still had an armed guard around the clock, just in case. She had planned to go see him right after work today, but now she’d have to go home and shower first. With Chris and Cheryl’s help, she had the mess cleaned up in short order, but decided to close for the day anyway, since she and Cheryl were such sweet, sticky messes. Her sensitive skin was beginning to get irritated, and she knew that if she didn’t get home and shower soon, she’d develop hives.
“We don’t have to close. I can handle the afternoon traffic,” Chris offered.
“Are you sure?” Missy asked, thinking it over. Chris had closed for her on more than one occasion since his mistake with Echo’s sister, and had been perfectly fine, so she knew she could trust him.
“Of course,” he replied. “There’ve been quite a few times when Ben has left me alone at Crème de la Cupcake during the slow time in the afternoon, it’s a piece of cake…no pun intended,” he joked. “But seriously, I’ll be fine, you two can go do what you need to do,” he assured her.
“Thanks so much, Chris, you’re a lifesaver! I can’t tell you how much I’ve appreciated you stepping up and contributing at both stores while Grayson recovers, it means a lot to me,” she smiled at the young man, making him blush.
“Don’t worry about it, I’ve got this,” he said, turning his attention to the push broom.
Chapter 12
Missy had been incredibly re
lieved that when she had visited Grayson. He looked battered, bruised and torn, but was clearly alive, despite not being able to smile because of the stitches in his face. She had stayed with him until visiting hours ended, stroking his hair back from his forehead and lightly resting her hand on his one intact arm because his hands were a mess of cuts, bruises and broken bones. Petaluma alternated between snoring loudly in the chair in the corner and casting hateful glances as Missy behind her back. Grayson didn’t want his mother to be in the hospital with him, but the one time that he’d tried to communicate that fact, she’d thrown such a hysterical fit that he decided to just silently endure her presence. When Missy left the hospital, he’d been sleeping, and she fervently hoped that the troubled woman who had birthed him wouldn’t disturb him.
“How was he?” Chas asked, over fettuccini at their favorite Italian restaurant.
“As good as can be expected, I suppose. He was still pretty out of it on pain meds, and he couldn’t smile because of his stitches, but it seemed like he was glad to see me,” Missy replied, sad to see Grayson suffering, but ever so grateful that he had survived and would be back to normal at some point. Thankfully, his left hand was merely cut and bruised, not broken, so his artistic endeavors shouldn’t be impacted, which was very good news indeed.
“I have to warn you, I’m waiting on a phone call, regarding some lab results, and once it comes in, I’ll most likely have to go and arrest someone,” Chas said mysteriously, twirling pasta around his fork.
“The mayor?” Missy leaned forward and whispered.
“No, actually…it’s…” he stopped abruptly as his phone rang. He glanced at the screen quickly. “This is the call I’ve been waiting for,” he said, hitting the ‘Accept’ button.
“Detective Beckett,” he answered. “Yes. And was it? Conclusively? Get me the warrant, and meet me at his home address, I’m headed out now,” Chas hit End and stood to go. “I prepaid for dinner because I knew that this might happen. My apologies beautiful, do you mind taking a cab?”
“Not at all, but Chas…who are you arresting?”
“I’ll stop by your place tonight after he’s booked and tell you all about it,” the dashing detective promised, kissing his future bride.
**
“Chris??” Missy was astounded. “Chris was the killer? But…how? Why? And how on earth did you figure that out?” she demanded. “All this time, I thought it was the mayor!” She had pounced on the detective, peppering him with questions the moment that he’d walked in her door. Dressed hastily in the first set of yoga pants and t-shirt that she could find after jumping out of bed that morning, she poured them both coffee and sat expectantly at the breakfast bar in her kitchen.
Chas shook his head. “The mayor is much smarter than that. He might lie, cheat, bribe or torture to hang on to his power, but he wouldn’t kill someone, or on the off chance that he had to, he’d never do his own dirty work,” he explained. “That day that I walked in, when Celia Kingsman was pelting you and Cheryl with cupcakes, I went to the rest room afterward to clean some of the frosting out of my suit coat…” he began.
“Oh, right! Did it come out?” Missy interrupted.
“Yes, my dry cleaner is a wizard,” he said absently, returning quickly to the topic of importance. “…and when I came out of the bathroom, Chris nearly ran me over.”
“Okay…” Missy said, listening intently.
“He held his hand out to me to shake it, and I noticed that it was pretty significantly bruised, with lots of little nicks and cuts – the kind of nicks and cuts that come from hard impact against things like teeth,” Chas said grimly. Missy gasped, putting her hands over her mouth.
“So…on a hunch, I decided to go out the back door, and sure enough, there was a red pickup truck. I ran the plates and confirmed that it belonged to Chris. His fingerprints were on file from when he stole from you last year, so I had the lab run them against the prints in the back of the van, on Chester Kingsman’s cuff links and on the murder weapon and they were an exact match.”
“Ugh,” Missy said, chilled to the bone at the thought that a trusted employee, whom she’d been gracious to and had given a second chance, not only betrayed her, but was a murderer. “I probably don’t want to know, but…what was the murder weapon?” she grimaced.
“An ice pick, that’s why we suspected Grayson. It was nearly identical to the one that your team uses to chip ice from the inside of your freezers, but when we tried to match it against the one that was still in your shop, where it was supposed to be, it was from a different manufacturer, and it had Chris’s prints all over it,” the detective explained.
“But Chris had his entire future ahead of him, and he was a Criminal Justice grad student – he should’ve known that he wouldn’t get away with that!” she exclaimed, puzzled.
“From what he said once we’d handcuffed him, he thought his knowledge of Criminal Justice would help him get away with it. He complained about the quality of his education,” Chas shook his head in disbelief.
“He confessed?” Missy was astonished.
“I think he was so disgusted with himself for having been given a second chance and throwing it away, that he just wanted to ‘fess up,” her fiancé shrugged.
“But why did he do it in the first place?” she asked, baffled.
“Well, that’s an entirely different facet of the story. Chris had apparently been romancing Celia Kingsman for quite some time – that’s why he volunteered to work on his campaign, because he’d get to see her more often, and there’d be more opportunities to slip away together without anyone thinking a thing about it,” the detective raised his eyebrows at the scandal. “He had overheard you and Grayson talking about the debate event and figured it was the perfect opportunity to eliminate Judge Kingsman and frame Grayson for it.”
“Grayson wouldn’t hurt a fly and everyone knows it, why would Chris try to frame him?” Missy frowned at the unfairness of it all.
“It seems that in his world, people who look and behave differently, make easy targets. Personally, I think he was intimidated by Grayson’s refusal to conform,” Chas guessed.
“Was Celia in on it with Chris?”
“Celia had no idea that Chris killed her husband. Like everyone else, she thought that Grayson had done it, or perhaps the mayor, but that was a long shot in her mind. So, apparently, last night, after you left Chris to close up the shop, he emptied the cash register and fled to the Kingsman mansion, hoping to get Celia to run away with him. When she found out that, not only was he just a poor grad student, but that he was the villain who had killed her meal ticket as well, she pushed a secret button on her nightstand to call her private security guards, and by the time we got there with a warrant for his arrest, they already had him cuffed.
“Wow,” Missy was amazed. “He stole from me again? I guess I’m just a really bad judge of character,” she shook her head sadly.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he teased, moving in for a kiss. “You chose me.”
Chapter 13
“I may have a buyer,” Echo said excitedly as she sat down across from Missy in their favorite corner of Crème de la Cupcake.
Missy put down her coffee cup. “Don’t sound so happy about that, I’m still trying to come to terms with the fact that I won’t be seeing you every day,” she said ruefully.
“I’ll be here for all of the important stuff,” the California girl reminded her best friend.
“I know,” Missy said glumly. “I’m trying to be happy for you, but I just want to selfishly keep you here,” she admitted.
“I know, honey, I’m going to miss you too,” Echo said softly. They blinked rapidly, then both looked down, took a bite of their cupcakes and washed it down with coffee, having a moment.
“So, on a happier note, how are things going with the wedding planning?”
It seemed as though anytime Missy even heard the word wedding these days, it struck a chord of fear in her heart.
&n
bsp; “Logistically, everything is in place,” she said carefully, avoiding her friend’s eyes.
“And what’s bothering you?” Echo probed, tilting her head, compelling Missy to look at her.
“It’s just…this is huge, Echo,” she murmured, overwhelmed. “I mean, this isn’t just “should we do pizza or Cajun tonight?” – it’s spending the whole rest of our lives together, you know?” her eyes were wide.
“You love him, right?”
Missy blushed. “Of course I do.”
“And he loves you…?”
“He says he does,” she made a face.
“Have you known him to be a liar?” Echo looked at her pointedly.
“No, of course not, but…he’s so…”
“Oh, trust me, honey, I know. He’s handsome, intelligent, classy, wealthy, and the sweetest guy ever, right?”
“Exactly!” Missy exclaimed. “What on earth would someone like that want with me?” she worried.
Echo shook her head with a smile. “Well, first, I think anyone who has ever been in love has felt that way about their significant other, and, second, you’re pretty darn terrific yourself, girlfriend.”
“Of course you would think so, you’re my best friend,” she pointed out. “I would hope that makes you naturally biased.”
“True, but Chas is your best friend too,” she reminded her. “That man sees you for all the good and wonderful things that make you who you are, just like I do. Think about it – you took over your parent’s business at seventeen after they died, you put yourself through school while running a successful business, you volunteer in the community, you’ve created a family out of your staff, and you have the best gal pal in the whole world,” she teased. “What’s not to like? Did you ever stop to think that, by not feeling like you’re good enough for him, you’re questioning his taste and intelligence? Does he seem to be a man who’s lacking in either of those qualities?” she demanded, practically.