“Why would Mandy owe anyone money? She knows better than to borrow from anyone but my brothers.” She blinks up at Everett as if suddenly feigning innocence. “They’re loan officers at a totally legit operation. Let’s leave it at that, big boy, got it?” And she’s right back to flirting.
“Hey?” A thought comes to me. “Did she borrow money from your brothers?”
“How do you think we met? But before you get any funny ideas, my brothers don’t go around poisoning their clients.”
“Of course,” I say, at least hoping that it’s true.
Everett takes a breath. “If you were to guess who killed her, who would it be?”
Connie tips her head back, her tongue still kneading that pink wad of gum in her mouth. “Okay.” She tucks her chin to her chest, her eyes set directly to mine. “I’m going to say it, but only because we’re all thinking it. Mark Russo needs to be thoroughly investigated for these so-called offshore accounts where he stashes his fortune from the government. But is he a killer? I don’t think so. Yeah, the guy is shady. Yeah, he’s unfaithful—but let’s be honest. Mandy wasn’t tying herself to the dock because this guy was an upstanding moral character. She liked designer shoes just as much as the next girl.”
“Then who?” I elongate the word, and Owlbert flies over as if it were a calling card.
“Janelle Hastings.” Connie lifts a penciled in brow. “About yea tall”— she holds her hand to her forehead—“brassy blonde, enough plastic parts to qualify for a stamp that reads Manufactured by Mattel? She had a real beef with the girl.”
“Janelle Hastings?” I shake my head as I try to place the name, and sure enough an image of her standing next to Amanda that night flashes through my mind. “But Amanda introduced her as her best friend.”
Any trace of a smile glides right off her face. “Exactly.”
“Bingo!” someone shouts, and we look over to find Cormack waving a card in her hand.
Connie takes a quick breath. “That witch.” She takes off, and it’s just Everett and me.
“I wasn’t investigating her.” I shrug up at him. “We were.”
He wraps his arms around my waist. “I love the we part.”
“And why exactly is there a we when it comes to Noah and you?” I wrap my arms around his neck, and he frowns at the mention of his old stepbrother’s name.
“Because there are some things that we can agree on. We like you alive and in one piece.”
“Every piece of me misses every piece of you.” I bat my lashes up at him.
“Then let me reintroduce myself.”
Everett lands a soul-melting kiss over my lips that makes me forget everything about poor Amanda, about her so-called best friend, Janelle Hastings, and about where I am and who I am.
Everett’s kiss reminds me of just one thing—exactly how very much he cares for me.
Chapter 9
The Moose Lodge is the setting for this down-home reception, which looks to be hosting about five hundred of the newly minted Mr. and Mrs. Bradley Frisky’s closest friends.
It’s Saturday night, and, due to a previously scheduled engagement, my linear investigative trajectory, which included Janelle Hastings as my next target, was momentarily derailed. Okay, so it wasn’t derailed just because this wedding was cropping up on the horizon. I can’t seem to figure out where to locate the girl, and Hazel hasn’t returned any of my calls ever since I rejected the six thousand legal tender motivators to help nab her sister’s killer.
Lily and Alex are adorably matching tonight. Her red dress is the very same shade as his tie—and terrifyingly enough, it matches the rage in Naomi Turner’s eyes. Yes, she’s followed us here like a well-seasoned sleuth. It turns out, Lily left on her location services on her phone, and she was easier to hunt down than a mall Santa at Christmastime.
Both Noah and Everett look arrestingly handsome. I myself have donned a simple black dress and heels because I don’t like to stand out when it’s another woman’s day to shine.
I glance into the entry of the Moose Lodge and frown as I spot a sea of little black dresses already bopping to the music. Owlbert is already here, his feathery plumage spinning to the music high above the dance floor. He’s adorable, and I wish I could keep him around long after this fiasco winds down.
The guy up on stage is killing a cover of some old rock song, and I recognize his dark curly hair and prominent chin as the guy I met the night of Noah’s—my engagement party. The lodge itself is a little bit scary with taxidermy busts of every living creature known to man lining the walls of the cavernous room the reception is held in. A group of teenagers angles for a selfie with a ferocious looking bear dripping with fingerlike fangs.
“Mr. and Mrs. Frisky,” Naomi muses as she pulls Noah’s doppelgänger brother in by his long red tie. “I think I like where they’re going with that fancy name of theirs.” She giggles as she pulls him in close. She’s donned a white silk gown that clings to her skin like wet paper. That’s two fashion strikes as far as wedding etiquette is concerned.
Full disclosure: I tried to invite Keelie to our impromptu wedding crashing soiree, but she made up every lame excuse in the book to evade the matrimonial scene. I’m starting to wonder if she and Bear are actually engaged. The Keelie I know and love would never eschew an open bar.
“Mr. and Mrs. Frisky!” Cormack hops into Noah’s arms, and he grunts as he catches her unexpectedly. Cormack has pulled out the big guns tonight, and I mean big literally. She’s dressed in a powder blue number that has some sort of plume built in around the collar that jets out a foot over her head. Lily called her “a peacock in heat” on the way over from the parking lot, and she’s not too far off base with that one. Cormack looks as if she belongs in some sort of a pornographic Valentine’s Day card with her gown that shows off more than it does cover anything up.
Everett leans in. “I think they’re going to get frisky.”
Cormack does some body gliding maneuver as she shimmies down Noah as if he were a stripper pole.
“They’re already frisky,” I counter.
Cormack hops up as she takes Noah by the hand. “Come on, everybody. Let’s get inside! Noah, let’s pretend this is our wedding night.”
“You do that.” Everett blinks a dry smile Noah’s way. “Lemon and I will do the same.” His lids hood low as he looks my way, and it suddenly feels as if all of that I think we should take a break business is off the table.
Lily snatches Alex from Naomi and whisks him off to the dance floor without missing a beat. Of course, Naomi is dancing right there with them, and oddly enough they blend right into the hip swinging crowd.
We head in on their heels, and soon Cormack hijacks Noah once again as she hoists herself up and around his body like a seasoned gymnast.
I’m about to let a smart-aleck remark fly when my eyes gravitate to the impossible.
“Holy stars up above Honey Hollow!” I say, making a beeline to what could only be described as the wedding cake as it hangs from the ceiling.
A wooden platform adorned with white roses braided throughout the outer rim plays host to a three-tiered plain white cake with incandescent glowing blue butterflies floating up and down every surface.
“Oh my word,” I say breathlessly.
Owlbert flies overhead, and his tiny body shimmers as if a thousand fireflies were trapped inside him.
“Stunning, isn’t it?” he says as he flies around the periphery of the display. “Now let’s get back to finding the killer. Chop-chop.” He takes off back to the dance floor and whirls and twirls with the best of them. Something tells me he’s enjoying this tiny bit of respite.
“Look at that.” Everett points to the corner of the wooden base where it reads A Cake Above Bakery and I gasp.
A Cake Above is owned and run by my personal nemesis—okay, so she may not be aware of the fact she’s my nemesis, but it’s completely true in my mind.
“That’s Crystal Mandrakes’ place,”
I hiss her name out like a curse. “She’s the one that beat me out of winning that refrigerated van last fall.”
“That’s because you let your pies burn in order to catch the killer we were after.”
I turn and wrap my arms around this sweet, ornery, very good at getting frisky judge. “And you bought me a refrigerated van anyway.”
“That’s because you risked it all to clear my name.”
“It must be love.” I shrug up at him playfully.
“It is, Lemon.” He comes in for the kill, and a body slices between us.
Noah offers a devilish grin. “I believe they’re playing our song.” He wraps his arms around me and begins to sway to the rhythm of the slow song Chrissy is currently warbling out.
“We don’t have a song, Detective Fox.”
“We do now.”
I glance back, and Cormack has wrapped herself around Everett like a python with its afternoon snack. He shrugs over at me, so I go with it.
“Noah, you do realize had that disaster last winter with Britney never occurred this could have been our wedding. I’ve always envisioned myself as a fall bride. There’s just something magical about this time of year. Plus, it’s a great excuse to have a pumpkin spice wedding cake and it wouldn’t be weird at all.”
He moans as if it sounded delicious. I’m sure everything I just said sounded delicious to Noah.
His dimples dig in deep as a look of regret sweeps across his face. “I would do anything for this to have been our wedding, Lottie.” He sways us closer to the dance floor. “How about we pretend this is our first dance as husband and wife?” There’s a soulfulness in his voice, the underpinnings of agony just beneath that.
“I would love that.” I close my eyes as I land my head over his chest, and I can feel his heartbeat reverberating against my cheek. My husband’s heartbeat. The father of my future children.
Noah and I sway steadily as our bodies warm one another with desire. An entire montage plays out in my mind. Noah and I enjoying our own wedding cake in a far more intimate setting. Noah and I ducking out early, eager to start our first night as a married couple. Noah and I alone in some rose petal strewn love nest. I can feel his kisses. I can feel the warmth of his body pressed to mine just the way it is now. Noah would love me ferociously. He already does. He would love our children just the same. Of course, I’d make him buy a safe for that gun of his.
Come to think of it, he is in an awfully dangerous line of work. He could leave me widowed and my children fatherless at any given time. My eyes spring wide open as I have a mild panic attack over a family that’s yet to exist.
“Liking what you see?” He drops a heated kiss over the top of my head.
“Would you consider turning in your gun and taking up a desk job?”
Before he can answer, Cormack chops her arm right through us as if we were a couple of seventh graders caught making out under the bleachers.
“Music finished five minutes ago.” Her blonde locks fall haphazardly over her eyes as if Everett just gave her a good shakedown. “I believe Essex is looking for you.” She scowls over at me a moment, and I do believe it’s the first time Cormack has ever looked threatened by me.
I pull back, and spot Everett chatting it up with none other than Chrissy himself.
“Would you look at that? He sure does move fast,” I muse.
“I’ll say,” Cormack purrs as she straightens her gown.
I choose to ignore her as I glide right over to the front where Everett and Chrissy are yucking it up as if they were old buddies.
“Lemon.” Everett pulls me in, and his arm warms my shoulders. “I’d like you to meet Christopher Castaneda.”
The dark-haired gentleman has a squiggly smile bouncing over his lips. “Judge Baxter sentenced me to three months of community service about four years ago. He didn’t remember me, but I sure as heck remember this guy. Turned my whole life around. My community service was doing cleanup by the oil refinery up north. I ended up making nice with the grounds manager, and now many moons later, I’m a manager myself.”
“Wow,” I say, genuinely impressed. “You really did turn your life around.”
“Judge Baxter has that effect on people.” Chrissy slaps him on the shoulder. “He’s a good guy. You’re a lucky woman, Mrs. Baxter—or the future Mrs. Baxter. I happened to be at your engagement party.”
Mrs. Baxter.
It does have a nice ring to it.
Everett leans in. “It’s a shame what happened to the wedding planner. Any idea what went on that night?”
Chrissy glances to the ceiling before casting his gaze to the ground and scratching the back of his neck. “I don’t know.” His voice is threadbare. “Amanda was a beautiful woman. Full of life. She had everything going for her, and it kills me that someone saw fit to snuff the life out of her.” He looks up with a fire in his eyes. “If I find out who did this, there might just be another murder to contend with.”
“You really cared about her, didn’t you?” I ask as I wrap my arms around Everett.
“I did. And I don’t get it. She didn’t have an enemy in the world.”
“What about her friends? Connie? Janelle?” It’s that second name I’m hoping will trigger something in him. Connie seemed determined to hand-feed her to us.
“Janelle is a cool girl. But Connie? She and Amanda were oil and water. That relationship was all about saving face.”
“What?” I stumble forward. I don’t want to miss a word. “But I thought she and Connie got along great.” At least Connie made it seem that way.
“They did.” He pauses as he looks from Everett to me. “That is, until Amanda snatched Mark Russo right from under Connie’s nose.”
I suck in a sharp breath and give Everett’s waist the death squeeze in the process. Connie is a Canelli, and everyone in their right mind who knows anything about the Canellis knows they shouldn’t do anything at all to enrage a single member of that crooked clan, Connie included.
“That’s shocking.” I try to play it off as if maybe it wasn’t.
“It sure is,” Everett adds. “Especially knowing that the Canellis are generally feared around these parts.”
He shakes his head. “Amanda didn’t have the common sense to fear them. She started seeing Mark on the heels of a hot and heavy relationship with Jimmy Canelli.”
I happen to know that Jimmy is one of the aforementioned Canelli brothers.
My mouth falls open. “You mean to tell me that Amanda had the cookies to dump Jimmy and steal Connie’s boyfriend? That doesn’t sound like the Amanda I knew.” Not that I knew her all that well, but still.
Chrissy’s brows hike up into his forehead. “That doesn’t sound like the Amanda I knew, but she did it.”
Everett nods. “How did you know her?”
“Met her on a dating app. She dumped me right after I introduced her to Jimmy. Jimmy and I grew up together.”
The band starts up, and he glances back at the stage and signals for them to wait.
“I’d better get up there. It’s nice seeing you both again. And congratulations on the upcoming wedding. I’ll do your gig for free!” He hops on stage and doesn’t miss a note of the song already playing.
“Hear that, Lemon? We’ve already booked a wedding singer.”
“Next July is starting to shape up nicely,” I tease. “What do you think of that stuff about Amanda?”
Everett takes a breath, and his chest expands the size of a door. “I hate to say it, but he painted her to be something akin to a social climber.”
I nod in agreement. “And she didn’t seem to mind that the rung she was stepping on was set over a Canelli landmine. Why do you think Connie omitted that little tidbit about Amanda stealing her man?”
“Saving face?”
“Or deflecting us from the fact she put a hit on her?”
Everett wraps his arms around me, and we sway slowly to the music.
“I don’t know, Lemon. The
Canellis aren’t known for poisoning women. This would be a first.”
“It’s almost something that a woman might do,” I say, locking eyes with his. “A woman who was scorned and likes to take care of things herself.” I don’t mind quoting Connie one bit.
“Do you think Connie is our killer?”
“I don’t know, but it’s sure not looking good for her. Monday is the funeral. I’ll try to feel out Connie again. Maybe invite Fiona? She really likes her, and she might loosen her up a bit. I’ll try to speak with Janelle Hastings as well.”
“Working at a funeral. There really is no rest for the weary.”
“There’s no rest for the wicked,” I counter. “Amanda Wellington’s killer had better watch their back.”
Everett’s chest rumbles with a dull laugh as he spins me, and my line of vision falls to Noah and Cormack dancing just the way we are a mere three feet away. Cormack has her eyes closed, her cheek pressed right up against Noah’s heart, and I can’t help but wonder if she’s envisioning what it would be like to be his wife.
I’d give anything for our lives not to be so complicated.
But then, maybe we’re both in the arms of the ones we belong with.
I turn my head, and my gaze snags on Chrissy. He gives a quick wink my way, and I wonder how much of what he said was the truth and how much was a lie.
The song ends, and the bride and groom are ushered to that floating cake in the proverbial sky as the guests all gather around en mass awaiting a bite of its sugary goodness.
A drumroll starts up and the cake is slowly lowered, smoothly at first then in odd, uneven spurts, causing the cake to slide to one end. The crowd gasps in horror, and I clap my hand over my eyes to watch through my fingers. I may not care for Crystal, but what’s unfolding is every baker’s nightmare. And at a wedding no less.
The groom grabs a chair and jumps up in time to straighten the wood panel before it dumps a bucketful of buttercream over the guests below.
“I got it!” he calls out as the crowd erupts in cheers.
The ropes that hold it to the ceiling snap like rubber bands, and the platform, the entire cake comes crashing down. Chrissy swipes the bride from danger as the cake falls to her feet with a splat.
Toxic Apple Turnovers: MURDER IN THE MIX 13 Page 8