by K. J. Emrick
She was glad to see that Jessica, at least, wasn’t mad at her. Jayce was. Benjamin was. Jerry certainly was. She wasn’t sure where she stood with Avery any more. Cookie knew that Jessica certainly had every right to be mad at her too, after the way she’d treated her brother. It was nice to see that some friendships transcended stupid mistakes.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry,” she said, hands folded uselessly in her lap. “I said some awful things about Jayce.”
Jessica leaned her head to one side. “I know you thought he murdered Joseph, but I also knew you’d figure out you were wrong. You’re a smart one. I wasn’t worried about it. What changed your mind?”
“Um. Well, I found out that your brother is dyslexic.”
“True that. He’s never been able to work his way out of that problem.” Jessica studied Cookie thoughtfully. “Ever since I’ve known my step-brother he’s been angry that he couldn’t do things as easily as everyone else. Reading. Writing. It was all harder for him. He hated being treated differently, too, and that kept him from getting the help he needed to adapt, and that made him even angrier. It was all a nasty spiral. Mom and Pops dying was just the last straw for him. Last I checked, though, being dyslexic doesn’t stop someone from committing a murder.”
Cookie chuckled lightly. “No. But, whoever killed Joseph left me a note warning me to back off the investigation. It was written in block letters to mask the handwriting, you see, but everything was spelled correctly. So. Unless your brother had someone spell check his work before slipping me a note threatening me and my dog, then he didn’t do this.”
“Of course not,” Benjamin scoffed, coming out of the bedroom while pulling a t-shirt over his head. “However, it wouldn’t be the first time you accused someone of something they didn’t do, now would it?”
“Wait,” Jessica said, leaning forward until the blanket slipped dangerously low. “Your dog? What about your dog? What happened to Cream?”
She kept the tears back, but only with a strong effort and a deep breath. “Someone took him. They have him. The crew is searching the ship but I’m just so worried.”
“Oh, Cookie, I’m so sorry.” Jessica put her fingers up to her mouth, her eyes wide. “First your son-in-law and now this. That poor dog.”
A hand settled on Cookie’s shoulder, and she looked up in surprise to see Benjamin standing there. His usually smug expression was gone, replaced by one that looked almost like concern. “I’m sorry, Karen. Is there anything we can do?”
That took her a moment to process. Benjamin Roth showing actual human compassion. Would wonders never cease?
“I think I just need to get back to bed,” she told him, pushing herself up from the couch. “I’m tired. I’ve been up since early this morning and with everything that’s been happening, I think I just need sleep.”
“Will you be able to sleep?” Jessica asked. “You could stay here with us if you wanted to. I know if my best friend was missing I wouldn’t be able to rest at all.”
“No. Thank you, but no.” Cookie shook her head and started for the door. “I’ve ruined your night already, I’m afraid, and I just want to be alone for a while.”
“We’ll be up for a while yet,” Jessica told her. “You’ve got my number if you need to talk.”
Thanking her, Cookie shut the door behind her and then leaned against it for a moment. Tired didn’t begin to describe what she was. She was exhausted. She was bone-weary.
She was heartsick.
Chapter Eight
She still remembered talking to Avery. Jerry was wrong about him, and she believed that in her heart, but a part of her had to admit that he couldn’t be taken off the suspect list entirely. Part of her even wanted to rush there right now and demand that he let her search his cabin for Cream but she knew it would be pointless.
For one thing, she did not believe he had done these terrible things. Well. Mostly.
For another, if he really did steal Cream he wouldn’t be stupid enough to hide the Chihuahua in his own cabin. People would notice. Oh, he had his own dog and his neighbors would be used to hearing Chaz bark but Chihuahuas had a unique sound. Higher pitched. Insistent. She’d even heard them called yappy, although she didn’t like that term.
It was almost like she could hear him right now.
Holding her keycard ready to swipe open the lock of her own cabin, she hesitated. She could hear Cream barking. She could hear him right now, from the other side of this door!
Anxiously she slid the card through the slot and waited for the little light to turn green and then she shoved the door open and there he was. Her little Chihuahua. Her best friend.
Cookie dropped to one knee and picked him up as he jumped and yipped and licked her face. She couldn’t tell if she was crying or laughing, or both. “Oh, Cream! I was so worried. I was so scared. Where have you been? Who took you? Who did this?”
He barked excitedly. That was the only answer he could give her. In all the years they had been together they had gotten to know each other pretty well, but she still couldn’t speak dog.
“Come on,” she told him, putting him back on the cabin floor. “You must be hungry. I’m sure whatever monster took you didn’t bother to feed you…”
That’s when she saw it. Another folded piece of paper, just like the note from before. This time it was standing up on its folded edge on the bedside table like a menacing greeting card, waiting for her.
She kept her eyes on it as she moved around the room, closing the door, throwing the security bar into place, scooping out a helping of dry dog food from its sealed plastic container to put into Cream’s dish. The note was just a note, but Cookie felt like she couldn’t turn her back on it. When she finally did pick it up she held it at arm’s length to read the words.
THIS WAS A WARNING
NEXT TIME HE WON’T COME BACK
STOP SNOOPING
I HAVE WHAT I CAME FOR NO ONE ELSE NEEDS TO GET HURT
Cookie sat down on the bed and when she did Cream immediately abandoned his food dish to come sit with her. She scratched all around his neck and under his chin as she puzzled at the words on the note. Stop snooping, or Cream wouldn’t come back next time.
The man who wrote this had killed another human being. Would he hesitate to kill a dog if he felt it would protect him? Taking Cream and giving him back was an extremely effective way of getting her attention. She was taking the threat to kill him very serious.
I HAVE WHAT I CAME FOR
What could that mean?
After a moment or two Cream began whining and fidgeting under her hand. “Am I bothering you now?” she asked, not wanting to stop, not wanting to ever leave her dog alone again, ever. She wondered if the gift shops on board sold those cute little doggie carriers that strapped around a person’s front and let you carry your dog like a baby. Then they wouldn’t have to be apart on the ship again.
He nipped at her finger, and she looked down at him in surprise. “What? Was I petting you too hard? You usually like it when I scratch under your collar…”
But there was no collar. It was gone, along with his ID tag.
“They took your collar? Now, why on Earth would they do that.” Then a thought occurred to her. “Or did you lose the collar on purpose? Oh, you crafty little dog, you! You’re getting more bacon tonight, yes you are!”
For most people, the idea that their kidnapped dog had left behind their collar as a clue to find the person responsible would seem crazy. Not to Cookie. She knew her dog. She had no doubt at all that Cream had done exactly that. If they could find his collar, they could find the dog napper.
The murderer.
He barked and jumped around the bed like he understood every word of praise she was heaping on him, and she figured he probably did. Even if the only word he really understood was bacon.
She heard another keycard being fit into the lock on the door and tensed. The door opened and banged against the security bar and then she heard Jerry�
��s voice asking her what was going on. Her emotions plummeted into the pit of her stomach. Well. She had to face him sometime. They had to know where they stood with each other. She could be strong enough to face whatever he was going to say now, with her favorite four-footed friend by her side.
Leaving Cream on the bed, she crossed to the door and undid the safety bar, then went right back to the Chihuahua. When he came in he stood there, staring at her, and then at Cream. “You found him? Where was he?”
“Right here,” she answered. “I found him when I got back just a minute ago.”
His eyebrows scrunched down as he closed the door. “Was he hiding in here? Did you miss him in the closet or something?”
“No, I did not miss him in the closet!” she blurted out incredulously. “Jerry, you searched the room right after me. You know he wasn’t here. Whoever took him brought him back.”
She handed him the note, and once again he took it by just the edges to read it before setting it down on the table. “Well. Looks like someone doesn’t want you looking around.”
“Oh, really? You needed your policeman skills for that?”
“I told you this would bring trouble,” he said.
“This is not my fault!” Cookie insisted.
“I know that,” he said, waving a hand. “Don’t you think I know that? I… why are we always fighting?”
There it was. The question that was hanging between them, finally brought out into the light of day. Well. The light of midnight, she supposed, considering the hour.
He came over and sat on the bed with her, on the opposite side from Cream. “You stormed out of here so quickly before that I didn’t have a chance to talk to you.”
“You said plenty.” She kept her eyes down on the floor, one hand on Cream’s back for support. “And I’m not sure I want to hear any more.”
“I said a lot, I admit, and I’m not proud of everything I did say. But, I didn’t get to say the things I really wanted to.”
Here it comes, Cookie thought. “If you’re going to tell me something that bad, then just go ahead and say it now.”
“Ahem. Sure. It’s just not that easy for me.” He sighed and turned so that one knee was folded up on the bed and he was facing her. “First, you should know that I went to Avery’s cabin with the captain.”
She humphed. “Of course you did.”
“Cookie, I had to run down what I thought was a lead. He said you went to see him.”
“So what if I did? I went to ask him if he took Cream.” Which wasn’t exactly true. She had gone to find out if her feelings for him were leading anywhere. They weren’t. She had asked about Cream, and she had gotten both the answer she had expected and the answer she had wanted, but that wasn’t the real reason for seeing him. Jerry was about to tell her they were through and here was this other, perfect man standing and waiting for her to take a leap of faith, and she was stuck here on her ledge between a rock and a hard place.
Or, between the frying pan and the fire, to use a cooking term.
“I see,” Jerry said, whether to her words or her thoughts, she didn’t know. “Well. We searched his cabin looking for this little guy.”
“And of course you didn’t find anything because Cream was here.” She thought about that. Whoever had Cream must have returned him not long after Jerry left. Almost like they had been watching to see when the cabin would be empty. How else could they just walk right in here undetected?
“We didn’t find Cream in his cabin,” Jerry confirmed. “But that doesn’t mean he didn’t slip Cream back in here while you were going off to meet him and me and the captain were busy elsewhere.”
“You are just like an MP3 player with a single track, Jerry Stansted. You really can’t believe that any man would just want to spend some time with me?”
“I don’t like the idea,” he said, “but of course I know men are attracted to you. I was, wasn’t I?”
Was. He was attracted to her. Such a small word to hold so much sinister meaning.
“Anyway,” he went on when she didn’t say anything. “No, Cream wasn’t there. He seems like a nice guy, but I still have my suspicions about him.”
“You mean, you’re jealous.”
He stood up, walking back and forth in front of the bed. “Look. I came on this cruise with you expecting things to be different. I mean, your son-in-law got killed, and then Cream got dognapped, and we seem to be on each other’s nerves all the time. It just isn’t how I pictured it.”
“I don’t think anyone ever expects someone in their family to get murdered when they’re on a cruise,” she said.
“Right. Sure. That’s not what I mean, though. It’s just that I’ve wanted to say something for a while now, and I can’t find the words and I think it’s made me nervous. I haven’t been myself.”
“No,” she agreed, “you haven’t. You’ve been bossing me around like you own me.”
“I didn’t mean it to come out like that,” he promised. “I just worry about you, Cookie.”
“You’ve got an odd way of showing it.”
He stopped his pacing, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Maybe I’m just no good at this.”
There it was. Cookie’s heart shattered. They weren’t the exact words that her ex-husband had used to explain leaving her and Madison, but they were close enough that they caught her soul in a vice grip, and squeezed. She didn’t have any more tears to shed or else she’d be crying again. This was it. This was the end of Jerry being in her life.
She met his eyes for the first time since he’d entered the room. “Why don’t you just say what you’ve been trying to tell me. Hmm? Why don’t we start with that?”
He nodded, closing his eyes and… was he praying? Seriously? “Cookie, we’ve been in this relationship for a couple of years now, and it’s been great, but I think I want… something more.”
Cookie was mentally cursing Jerry and every man ever born, her thoughts so loud in her own head that she almost missed what he said next.
Drawing his hand out of his pocket, he held out a little felt-covered black box to her. “Cookie, I can’t take being just your boyfriend anymore. Will you marry me?”
There was a very good chance that she fainted. There was a moment when she couldn’t remember who she was or where she was or what in the name of everything holy that she and Jerry had ever fought about. He wasn’t trying to break up with her.
He was trying to work up the nerve to ask her to marry him.
That’s why he’d been so distant. That’s why he’d been so protective of her. He’d been nervous and worried about what she would say and then everything started going wrong and making it worse.
Oh, my. He asked her to marry him! What was she going to say?
He was still holding the box out to her. “I mean, this was supposed to be a romantic moment. We were supposed to be at Jessica and Benjamin’s wedding and on this cruise and everything, and I was going to pop the question at just the right time under the stars but then Joseph got killed and Cream… and Avery… and I thought for a while that I’d messed everything up between us because you were so steamed at me.”
When he stopped for a breath, Cookie reached out and took the box. She opened it. Inside was the simplest diamond ring. It was silver, and the stone sparkled in the light. It wasn’t fancy. It was just beautiful. She instantly loved it.
Cream put his paw up on her wrist, sniffing at the ring box. Then he smiled, his tongue hanging out, looking up at Cookie. Apparently he approved.
The laughter came as a surprise to her, but there it was and it felt good to let her tension flow out of her like this and once it did she fairly leapt off the bed and into his arms. “Yes.”
“Yes?” he echoed, like he’d never heard the word before.
“Yes, I will marry you. Oh, Jerry, of course I will.”
All the time she’d spent worrying about where their relationship was going, dropping not-so subtle hints about wanting to g
et married, she never dreamed he was up to something like this. A wedding proposal on a cruise. Oh, this was so perfect.
At least, it would have been, if there hadn’t been a murder and if the killer wasn’t threatening her and her dog.
Well. Sometimes the best recipes weren’t perfect. That’s how the world got fudge, after all.
The mystery of who the killer was could wait a few minutes. For right now, she just wanted to kiss the man she loved.
So she did.
When they stopped for breath, he slipped the ring onto her left ring finger. It was a perfect fit.
She leaned herself against his chest, and just breathed. She felt the difference immediately. With Avery, it had been nice, but something had been missing. With Jerry, she felt the strings of attraction that should always be there when two people in love touch. He made her complete. The difference was that with Jerry, they were two halves of a whole fitting themselves together.
Everything would be better now. Jerry was staying with her. Cream was back where he belonged. There was still a killer on the ship but that was something they could all tackle together.
Cream trotted over to the door, apparently unimpressed that everyone had forgotten about him, and sat down. With a little whine, he turned his head up to look at Cookie.
Jerry tensed around her. “Does he hear someone out there?”
“No,” she explained, understanding what her little friend was asking. “He needs to go for a walk and relieve himself.”
“Uh, okay. Not how I saw my proposal ending. But, hey, why make anything normal now.” Jerry kissed the top of Cookie’s head before letting her go. “Let me make sure I have my keycard and we can go together. I don’t like the idea of you taking him down there by yourself. Not after this second note. I should call the captain, too, and let him know that we have Cream back.”
“That’s a good idea—” She stopped midsentence. Jerry had just said… yes. Now she knew what had been bothering her.
Could it be? Was it that simple?
“Jerry,” she said, “I think you should definitely call the captain. I know it’s late but I’m hoping he can meet with us. I need to talk to him.”