“You’re no fun. With the latest round of terrifying dreams, not to mention some madman wanting you and Jonah dead, I’d think you’d be up for some type of fun.” He pulled one of his legendary pouts. The one that worked on everyone, except her.
Addie turned as the bell over the door chimed, announcing a customer. “Nice try. I'm not going to be a part of your little scenario to poke the bear.”
“Let me guess, I'm the bear.” Jonah entered and strode over to the desk, leaning over to kiss her on the lips. He then turned to Grey. “What trouble are you up to now?”
A warmth spread in her chest at his words. Although his voice held a rough note, it was laced with his obvious fondness for her best friend. The two very different men had become great friends because they shared one very important thing in common. Her.
“Oh, nothing,” murmured Grey.
“Nothing worth mentioning is what he meant to say,” she answered. “What brings you here in the middle of your busy detective day?”
He held up a take-out bag. “I thought I’d bring lunch. Steal a few minutes with my best girl.”
“Better be only girl,” Grey sniped with a raised brow.
“Goes without saying. Keep that up, and I won’t hand over your fortune cookie, Grey.”
She laughed at Grey’s crestfallen look. Her friend was a sucker for a good fortune cookie fortune. The ones he liked, he carried around in his wallet until they came true, thus ‘proving’ them. This was just one of a million quirky things she loved about him.
“Fine, I’ll be good! Now hand it over.” Grey held out his hand, palm up, and waited.
Jonah held in a laugh as he handed over one of the individually wrapped cookies. “You’re worse than a toddler.”
“No, I’m not. My hands are never sticky.” He shuddered. Grey’s view of the children who came in the store were well known to all.
Jonah shook his head and took their lunch from the shopping bag. “Shrimp lo mein for the lady. Szechuan Chicken for Grey.” He passed a container to each of them. “Chicken and cashews for me.”
They found seats in the reading area, spreading out their lunches on the low table.
“Spicy, like me,” Grey joked before opening his lunch.
Jonah rolled his eyes. “What were you guys discussing when I came in?”
Addie counted to ten in her head, not wanting to bring it up.
“She and I having a baby,” Grey announced around a mouthful of fortune cookie. Because he always ate that first. Life was short.
“Why? She has me for that, now.”
She had to give Jonah credit. He didn’t miss a beat. And he knew how to shut Grey up, a skill few possessed. Still, her heart beat a funny little rhythm in her chest at the thought.
“He was being difficult, as always. And he was kidding. Weren’t you, Grey?”
“Yes, of course I was. And if by chance I wasn’t, don’t worry. We’d be using one of those turkey basters.” He wrinkled his nose, as if thinking about how conception would happen without one.
“I see,” muttered Jonah, although his tone said otherwise. “For the record, I'm not in the least bit threatened. I’m more curious as to why we’re having this discussion. Again.”
Addie tried hard not to choke on her noodles. Back when they’d first met, Grey tortured Jonah a bit, making it sound as though their “contingency plan” was a real thing about to happen. She grabbed her water bottle and took a swig. “It was nothing. Just Grey being Grey.”
The man in question pointed a plastic fork at her. “Actually, as you know, it was the Aunties who brought up the whole marriage and babies thing.” He swung the fork between her and Jonah. “Apparently, you’re not getting any younger. Who is?”
One day, she really would kill him. She smiled brightly, mostly teeth for Grey’s sake. “In their defense, and to take away any pressure you might feel, Jonah, they’ve been commenting on my eggs since way before you came into the picture.” She felt her face burn, but she couldn’t do anything about it.
“Oh, well, that makes sense.” Jonah resumed eating, without further comment, leaving a dumbfounded Addie to stare at him.
“Anyway, now that they have a mission, the Aunties should be out of your hair, or ovaries, for a bit, Addie.”
And that caught Jonah’s attention. “Mission?” He looked from one to the other before sighing. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”
“Nope,” smirked Grey.
“Let me explain.” That was as far as Addie got. How to explain her aunts? Grey leaning forward in anticipation didn’t help. “It’s not as bad as it’ll sound,” she started weakly. “They were in the shop when you called and overheard about Mrs. Henry being in the hospital.” She stopped at the darkening of Jonah’s expression.
“Let me guess. They wanted to ‘help.’” He set down his fork and wiped his mouth on a paper napkin. To Addie, it looked as though he was gathering patience.
“In my defense, short of tying them in a chair, I couldn’t really stop them.”
“I know. But it’s enough to worry about your safety without adding them to the list.”
“Ah, he’s a keeper,” crooned Grey.
“Shush, you.” Even though he wasn’t wrong. She turned to Jonah. “All they were going to do was go visit Mrs. Henry. See how she is. What harm could come from that?” She hoped her words held true.
“Let me see if I have this straight. First, you two go off posing as a married couple to ‘investigate’ Magnolia Haven. Now, your aunts, who have watched way too many crime-shows, are ‘checking up on’ Mrs. Henry. Have I missed anything?”
“No, that about sums it up,” said Grey with a smirk, not at all put off by Jonah’s glare.
“Y’all do remember what I do for a living, right? That I’m an actual detective?”
“Jonah, I really couldn’t stop them. I did try.” Addie twisted her hands in her lap. She loved her aunts, but sometimes they were a bit of a handful.
“She did,” added Grey around a mouthful of his lunch. He grabbed a bottled water and downed a quarter of it. “Whew! They sure know how to spice up a chicken.” He wiped at tiny beads of sweat gathering on his forehead.
Jonah turned to her, a soft smile on his face. “Honey, I’ve met your aunts. Hell, they’ve interrogated me on my choice of underwear. You couldn’t have stopped them. I just don’t want anything to happen.”
Her heart did that funny little flip thing it did around him. “I know. Neither do I. On a different note, anything come up with the letter left on my door?” The thought of some nameless, faceless someone threatening him, because of her, made her stomach flip in a different way altogether.
Jonah placed his hands over hers, lending silent support. “Nothing so far. Whoever he, or she, is, they at least know enough not to leave prints. Or saliva.” He gripped her hand before resuming his lunch.
Addie did the same, thinking about every male she’d had even the slightest encounter with over the past few months. It was too much. Ocean Grove might be a small town, but she far from knew everyone. And then there was the constant influx of tourists. She squeezed her eyes shut in the midst of the wave of despair pouring over her.
She felt a hand on her arm and opened her eyes. Grey’s grim face told her everything she needed to know. “It’s okay,” she told him.
“No, it’s not. Some person thinks it’s okay to screw with my best friend’s life. Nothing okay about that,” he muttered.
“Damn straight,” Jonah agreed. A fierce grin then split his face. “But think how much fun it’ll be when we catch the bastard.”
Addie looked back and forth between these two very different men, wondering how she was so lucky to have both of them in her life.
She blew out a breath and said, “I don’t know how to figure this out. Who could it be? Where do I start? How do I narrow it down?”
“It starts with logic,” Jonah started. “Think about the time you started getting these ‘gi
fts’ for lack of a better word. He would have noticed you sometime before that.”
“The flowers,” she muttered, her feelings on that evidenced in her tone.
“Oh, right, the funeral bouquet,” said Grey, his blue eyes dancing with mischief.
“Yes, the ones you somehow thought were from me. As if I’d ever buy you those.” Jonah grimaced. “But at least we have a starting point. So, before Halloween.”
“Going by what you suggested, I would have met him in the weeks before that.”
“Or days even. You never know how long it took for him to focus on you.”
She shuddered at the thought, the room suddenly feeling cooler. “Then maybe from the summer forward until I got those?”
Jonah nodded. “That time frame makes sense. And it goes back far enough that we don’t accidentally leave someone off the list.”
Addie rose from her seat and crossed to the desk, reaching for a pen and paper. “How many people could I have possibly brushed by in that amount of time?” she asked with a hint of snark. She sat back down and chewed on her bottom lip while she thought.
“Start with anyone who sticks out,” Jonah suggested. “Someone who made you think twice about the encounter.”
“People who make you go, ‘Hmmm?’” Grey joked.
“Very funny. But I get what you mean.” Addie closed her eyes and tried to picture the past few months like a video playing in her mind. Who stood out? Nothing jumped out at her. She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know.” She ground her teeth, desperate to come up with something that would help.
Grey got a look on his face. The one he made when he was right about something. “You have to put Caden on there. You know he has a huge crush on you. Gives you extra whipped cream in your hot chocolate.”
“We talked about him, remember? He’s a puppy.”
Jonah slid the paper toward himself, grabbed the pen from Addie’s hand and wrote the name. “I told you, age doesn’t rule him out. Now, who else?”
Grey grabbed the paper next and scrawled “Noah” in big, bold letters before sliding it back to her. She grimaced but nodded.
“Yes, he has to be on here I guess.” She chewed on the pen, a memory niggling at the back of her brain. “Remember that guy in the bar, Grey? Near the beginning of the summer.”
Grey’s brows drew together as though in deep thought. Then his mouth formed a perfect O. “Teeth bleaching guy! Of course. How could I forget him?”
Jonah looked at each of them. “Teeth bleaching guy? I'm going to need more than that. Explain, please.”
“I don’t know his name. We saw him in the bar a couple times at the beginning of the summer. Wouldn’t take no for an answer.” She wrinkled her nose at the memory. “Much too handsy for me.” She suppressed a grin as she watched Jonah’s face go from curious to pissed in a heartbeat.
“What does that mean?” Jonah all but growled from between clenched teeth.
“Grey and I went for margaritas after closing one night over at The Tipsy Seagull on Ocean Way. And this guy stared at us for a while across the bar.”
“Like, way too long to be comfortable,” added Grey.
Addie grimaced before saying, “We joked about which of us might be the object of his affection.”
“Turns out he was staring at her. And of course Addie, who never thinks she’s hot, acted totally oblivious to the whole thing. Which only made him stare more.”
“In my defense, his stare wasn’t one of interest. More of hunter to prey. It really creeped me out.” She shuddered, remembering the feeling she got from his stare.
“And then he came over,” drawled Grey in his manner.
“This is worse than watching paint dry. Tell me what happened,” Jonah prompted.
“He started out sitting across the bar from us. And I did notice his intent stare. I chose to ignore it. And then suddenly it stopped.”
“Because he was standing right next to you,” added Grey.
Addie nodded. “I felt a hand on my shoulder, and when I turned, there he stood. Grinning. And he had the brightest teeth I’d ever seen.”
Jonah grinned. “That explains the lovely nickname.”
“Exactly,” piped up Grey.
“But it was his eyes that got me.” Addie shivered, remembering the dead, black look in them.
“What about his eyes?” Jonah asked.
“They were dead, flat, without any sign of life in them. And he pulled up the bar stool next to me, throwing an arm around my shoulder. I didn’t like it.”
“So, I stepped in.” Grey puffed out his chest. “Let him know she wasn’t available.”
“There was a moment where I wasn’t sure he’d take the hint. Finally, he got up and left. But not before whispering, ‘Not for long’ in my ear as he left.”
10
“Even though we don’t have a name, he definitely goes on the list,” Jonah snarled, scribbling on the paper.
Addie leaned forward, watching Jonah write ‘creepy guy at bar’ on the paper. “Well, that’s progress. We have a twenty-year-old barista, one ex-barely even a boyfriend, and a stranger without a name. Any other thoughts?”
Jonah glanced at his phone. “I’ve gotta get back to the station.” He stood, leaning down to kiss the top of Addie’s head. “Keep at it. Anyone that gives you any pause at all belongs on the list.” Turning to Grey, he added, “Don’t let this one out of your sight. No matter what. See you later.” He gathered his trash and headed out of the store.
“Stop watching his butt,” Grey joked.
Addie didn’t even try to hide her grin. “I could say the same to you.”
“You could.”
The theme from The Golden Girls sang from her phone, announcing an incoming text from her aunts. Another of Grey’s doings. She swiped a finger across the screen to read it, and muffled a gasp.
Mrs. H back at that place. Going 2 check it out.
Several emojis, including a gasping face, then a wink, followed the short missive. Addie slapped a hand over her mouth and groaned.
“Oh, this can’t be good,” she said, holding up the phone for Grey to read it also.
“Go, Aunties!” he exclaimed.
“Grey! The last thing those two need is encouragement.” She buried her face in her hands and tried to think of a good way out of this mess. “What if something happens to them at Magnolia Haven? What if whoever the killer is notices them sniffing around Mrs. Henry?”
Grey’s warm hands covered her chilly ones. “What if you take a deep breath? What if we think this through prior to panicking?” He whipped out his phone, fingers flying over the keyboard. “There. I sent a quick note to lover boy updating him. He’ll know what to do. If anything needs to be done. Maybe, just maybe, Beatrice and Clementine will go to Murder Haven to visit a sick friend. Maybe no one will think anything else of it.”
Addie tried to suppress a giggle without much success. “You know very well, Grey, that the name is Magnolia Haven.”
Grey’s eyes crinkled as a huge smile wreathed his face. “But it made you laugh.”
Addie rolled her head on her shoulders. “You’re right, of course.” She pointed one finger in his face. “Don’t let that go to your head either.”
“Never,” he joked while he made a sign of crossing his heart. “You were saying something about me being right? Please, continue.”
“There’s no reason to panic just yet. The Aunties will go visit their ailing friend. Totally innocent.” She held up crossed fingers. “Hopefully, they’ll know to play it cool. Jonah will do his thing, figure out what needs to be done.” She glanced down at the three names on the otherwise blank paper. “Remember the good old days, when I only had to worry about one person trying to k-k-kill m-m-me?” The last words came out with a wobble.
“This is a bit more, uh, challenging. I grant you that. But it’ll be fine.”
Addie raised her eyes to him, desperate to believe him. “How do you know?”
“Because it has to be.”
Closing time approached as Addie wandered around the store, replacing stray books on their appropriate shelves. A few customers lingered, wandering through the store. Grey’s words echoed in her mind throughout the day. Because it has to be. She held onto the thought, repeating it to herself on and off. Addie generally thought of herself as a positive person. She’d dreamed of owning an independent bookstore, and here she was standing in the middle of it. Like all little girls, she’d dreamt of true love, and Jonah had come along. And although it was early days still, it didn’t feel like it.
As though she had conjured him, the bells tinkled over the door, and in strode Jonah. She rushed to him, throwing her arms around him and inhaling the crisp, autumn air he brought in with him. She buried her nose in his chest, inhaling deeper to catch the innate male scent of him, something spicy and uniquely him.
“I missed you, too,” he growled into the top of her head. His strong arms tightened around her, binding her to him.
The words rumbled through his chest, tickling her. Reassuring her. Jonah had become her rock in the storm of madness swirling around her at times. She reached up, kissing his throat before pulling away. “It’s been a day.”
“Good day, I hope.”
“Great day for the store. You gotta love Christmas shoppers.”
“And for you?”
She held out a hand, tilting it back and forth. “It’s hard to know what to worry about most, what’s happening at Magnolia Haven or who wants to hurt us.”
“That’s some toss-up. Maybe flip a coin?”
“That seems like more of a Grey comment.”
“I resemble that remark,” quipped Grey as he joined them from the storage room. “Other than moi, what are we discussing?”
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