Surprise Daddies (#1-4 Box Set)

by London James

  When she gets to the barrier surrounding the Ferris wheel, Avery carefully eases her way between two of the fence panels and pauses in a pocket of deep shadow. The figure looks around as if they might have heard her coming, but then resumes their search.

  I keep my eyes trained on Avery, watching her every movement as she slowly climbs up onto the ride platform. She's hard to see in the darkness at this distance, but a tiny flicker of light tells me she's taking the next step of her plan, turning on a flashlight. There's a breath, and then I hear her voice, clear and loud in the night air.

  “Are you looking for something?” she asks.

  The figure stumbles, startled out of their position and leaning over the bucket where Mr. Mercer was found. It takes a second for the person to regain control of their body, and then the figure takes a step toward Avery.

  “Avery? What are you doing?”

  The voice squeezes my throat, and I hear Avery let out a trembling breath. She knew the truth. She just didn't want to admit it.

  “Hannah, how could you?”

  The other woman laughs. “How could I what?” she asks.

  “You know what I'm talking about,” Avery says. “It's the only reason you're here. I had the Sheriff do that press conference this morning because I knew it would lure you here. If you thought there was some evidence that would point to you being the killer, you'd come out here as soon as you thought no one was looking so you could try to find it.”

  “I heard the press conference this morning,” Hannah says. “Everybody did. The police weren't giving any details about the evidence they found or what it meant, and I got curious. I told you, this whole thing has really gotten the best of me, and I just needed to know.”

  “How did you know about the sprinkles?” Avery asks.

  She scoffs. “The what?” she asks.

  “The sprinkles,” Avery repeats. “How did you know what they looked like?”

  “I have no idea what you're going on about,” Hannah says dismissively. “I came out here because I thought it would be fun to be the one who found the evidence, but you are taking this too far.”

  “You said they were white,” Avery says. “When I was telling you about being arrested for obstruction of justice, I mentioned that there were two apples set aside with a note for Mr. Mercer. I said one was peanut and the other one was decorated with sprinkles. I didn't describe the sprinkles, but later on when you called me, you joked that somebody threw that apple away because white sprinkles are better for spring. I never told you the sprinkles were white.”

  “It was a lucky guess,” she says. “Most sprinkles are white.”

  “Not really,” Avery says. She's keeping herself unbelievably calm and in control, and I am in awe of her. “Anyone who knows baking and entertaining as well as you do knows sprinkles come in every color and shape imaginable. The ones I use for my caramel apples during the festival are autumn-themed. Orange, red, and chocolate. I didn't use any white ones because, like you said, white sprinkles are for spring. I hadn't even thought about that until we were sitting in the restaurant and I mentioned Julie. I was looking at the deserts, and I remembered she was talking about her Halloween costume. She was going to be a donut with sprinkles.”

  “So, I made one comment, and now you're sure I'm a murderer?”

  “Not just one comment. If it was just the sprinkles, that would be easy to brush off. But that wasn't your only mistake. You see, all this time, everybody's been focusing on the caramel apple. It got thrown away so no one could ever test it, and the only other one that didn't fit in with mine disappeared. You didn't take the sprinkled apple away because you were worried someone was going to eat another poisoned apple. You knew that apple was perfectly safe, if appropriately colored. That's why you got rid of it. You didn't want somebody eating it, realizing it was fine, making the link, and then questioning your efforts to frame me. It wasn't the caramel apple that killed Mr. Mercer.”

  “And what do you think it was?” Hannah asks. “If you're such a brilliant mind, how did he die?”

  “This experience has involved one of the absolute worst days of my life. But it's given me the opportunity to meet a lot of really amazing people and really showed me who my biggest supporters are. One of them is Skylar. She went out of her way and put herself at tremendous risk to help me when I needed it, and during one of those trips she took to bring me stuff, she made a comment. It stuck with me, and I couldn't figure out why. But now I know. She said they were putting hand stamps on everybody who went into the beer garden. That's exactly what you did, isn't it? It wasn't the apple that poisoned him. It was his hand stamp.”

  “Most of the people at the festival had one of those stamps,” Hannah snaps.

  “How would you know that?” Avery asks.

  “I heard you talking about it.”

  “You weren't in the room when I talked about the hand stamps,” I say. “But that's not the point. I already know the reason you know about the stamps. You were here, and you made one especially for Mr. Mercer, and Mr. Mercer alone, by using ink embedded with poison. The thing is... Mr. Mercer didn't drink. He calmed down on the intensity of it recently, but in the past his evaluations of spots with bars or events that included alcohol were scathing. So why would someone who felt that way about sipping half a glass of wine at night have a hand stamp saying he'd been through a beer garden and done tastings? How did you do it, Hannah? How did you convince him to get a stamp on his hand? How did he not recognize you?”

  “You have no idea what you're saying,” Hannah says. “A stamp isn't proof of anything.”

  “No, it's not,” Avery agrees. “But you made one more mistake. Can you think of the biggest thing you did wrong? Something so utterly ridiculous and right in front of me that I didn't even see it?”

  “What?” Hannah says mockingly.

  “The pictures of you baking. They were right there. I looked at them, and I had no idea what I was looking at. I sat there in your bed-and-breakfast and looked at the picture from the day he died, and it didn't occur to me. Not until we were having dinner. When you showed us the pictures again, you kept talking about the banana walnut bread. Anyone who has ever made banana walnut bread knows it has to be made with extremely ripe bananas. We're talking speckled all over, and more brown than yellow. But that's not what you had on the counter.”

  “What do you mean?” Hannah asks, her voice weaker now, and her eyes bulging.

  “If you look at the pictures of the days leading up to the murder, there's a bunch of bananas sitting on the counter behind you. They progressively ripen day by day, but then the day before you made the banana bread, the bunch is suddenly unripe again. It stays like that right through the day he was murdered and until the picture of you making dinner the next night. Then they’re ripe again. How could that possibly happen?”

  “I bought new bananas,” Hannah says, straightening up, the strength of her voice returning. “Is it really that hard for you to understand?”

  “So, you decided to throw away perfect bananas right before you baked your favorite fall dish using overripe bananas? I don't think it's that at all. I think you'd figured out who Mr. Mercer was a long time ago. I don't know how. I don't know what you went through with him other than that review, but I think you knew you wanted to kill him, but you couldn’t get away with not posting those pictures every day.”

  “You seriously think anybody actually notices that they're there?” Hannah says in a shocked tone of voice. “Those pictures are for me more than anybody else. It sounds good to say customers love that, but you know as well as I do that that's not true.”

  “No,” Avery says. “It's exactly something a bed-and-breakfast guest would notice. Remember, people come and stay in places like this for unique experiences and the personal touch. They like feeling like they're off the beaten path and getting services and surroundings and amenities they wouldn't receive if they just stayed in a conventional hotel. It's not like Willow Springs
is a hip, happening town with a ton of nightlife to draw people in. People go there because it's out of the way and it's cute. They would definitely notice you going out of your way to point out that you are involved in all of their stays. In fact, there are probably plenty of people who would come into the office a few times a day solely for the purpose of catching you off your game. So, you staged the pictures leading up to the day you killed him. You made sure you had pictures of the day before, and pictures of the day of, as well as of the morning of the day after his murder. Those are the ones where the bananas don't make sense. They were taken days before and just kept until you were ready to have them for display.”

  “So, what did I do with all my guests? If I was taking this trip to Vidalia Isle to kill a man, who ran my bed-and-breakfast, who took care of my guests?”

  “Nobody had to. You chose the day you were going to murder him because you knew that you had no reservations. Literally and figuratively. There were no guests to take care of because of the way he treated you in that review. People canceled their bookings because of him. You wanted revenge. I just have one question for you. Why frame me?”

  There is a moment of silence as Hannah stares daggers at Avery.

  “You are an easy target,” she says in a voice even and cold. “You still are.”

  She lunges at Avery, who ducks out of the way just in time to stop the woman from hitting her. I jump to my feet and run toward the ride, watching in horror as Hannah rushes toward Avery again.

  “A little help here,” I shout across the dark green. “A little help would be fantastic.”

  I scramble up onto the ride's platform and grab Hannah from behind, pulling her off of Avery. A second later, the sheriff and his deputies swarm, their bright flashlights taking away all the shadows as they glow against Hannah's shocked, devastated face. I look right at her, our eyes locking together momentarily.

  “Never fuck with the woman I love or our child,” I growl.

  The Sheriff takes her out of my hands, and I turn to Avery. She curls into my arms, and I hold her close, kissing her head as I murmur soothing sounds into her ear.

  “I love you, too,” she says.

  “You promised me you wouldn't be in any danger,” I say.

  “I wasn't,” she says with a smile. “I knew you were right there. You wouldn't let anything happen to us.”

  “I love you,” I say.

  My mouth finds hers, and I kiss her for every moment we lost together, and with the promise of every one we will spend together for the rest of our lives.

  Epilogue

  Avery

  One month later…

  The Winter Festival is arguably the most treasured tradition throughout Vidalia Isle, drawing everyone from the village to days of festivities. Tourists flock to see the beauty of the island, but this year there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference between the number of people here for the first day of the festival and how many were here last week. The rate of people coming to visit the village hasn’t lessened since the beginning of October, and the locals have settled in for the possibility of months without a lull ahead.

  Those who have been to the Winter Festival before and are planning on returning for the nostalgia of the same charming event have a surprise in store for them. It’s going to be interesting to see how they react, though I’m sure many of them will be as delighted by the changes as we are.

  No one is as excited about today’s opening as Julie, Shawn, or Leo. Julie can’t contain herself, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet in the middle of the boardwalk as she watches Shawn and Leo hang the banner. Julie gestures for Leo to lower his end by a hair, which puts it at a slope. Shawn compensates, and it slopes the other way. Julie turns toward the sound of my laugh and waves happily.

  “How are you feeling?” she asks, coming toward me.

  “Good,” I tell her. “The cold air is keeping the morning sickness at bay.”

  “Glad to hear it.” She makes a dramatic sweeping gesture toward the banner that is flailing up and down as the men try to cooperate to find the right height. “What do you think?”

  “Vidalia Isle Re-Does Halloween,” I read.

  “A Winter Festival Production,” Julie says, running her hand through the air in front of her like she’s using her fingers to block out the subtitle of the event.

  “It looks wonderful. I’m so excited about this. It was an amazing idea.”

  She dips down in a little curtsey. “Thank you very much. When the committee first got together to revive Halloween, we thought about waiting longer. Maybe have a Valentine’s Day Massacre crossover.”

  “What changed your mind?” I ask.

  “We realized we didn’t want to give Hannah any more power over Vidalia Isle. The last time the village skipped Halloween was because of the Curse and look at the ramifications of that.”

  My mind goes to Brandon and how embarrassed he was when I confronted him about the Curse notes. It turns out the notes were from him, but he had convinced himself Mr. Mercer’s death was a big game and he was going to be the very best interactive member of a giant village-wide murder mystery event that he could possibly be.

  He even thought me leaving for the summer palace was going to turn into me being the second fake murder of the game. Of course, since the murder mystery game didn’t actually exist, the whole thing wasn’t nearly as amusing as he planned it to be. He was extremely apologetic, though, and will be checking back into Hometown Bed And Breakfast for the Winter Festival.

  “Vidalia Isle deserves Halloween,” I say.

  Julie gives an emphatic nod. “We do,” she agrees. “Hannah has been charged, and we are all safe. It’s time to get back to normal. Besides, none of us liked the idea of The Year With No Halloween followed by The Year Of Two Halloweens. We all agreed that ‘scary ghost stories’ is a good bridge between the two holidays, so it all works out. We just have to make sure people are being really careful about keeping the little ones away from the green tonight. Once the sun goes down, we’re going to have a bonfire, and there will be a scary-ass zombie Santa telling some not-so-heartwarming holiday stories.”

  I nod. “That could definitely lead to some effective college entrance essays a decade or so down the line.”

  “Oh, look, Sebastian and Skylar are here.”

  She waves and I watch the two make their way toward us, lugging huge crates of the holiday versions of my caramel apples.

  “Where are we going?” Sebastian asks when he’s a few steps away from me. “Give me instructions quick because I’m not stopping. I need the momentum to keep me going, and if I pause for even a second, I’m not moving again.”

  “Same spot as the Harvest Festival,” I tell him.

  “Well, isn’t that convenient,” he says.

  I know he’s feeling queasy about the idea of doing this again. Standing in the same spot we did before the murder is only going to make it worse for him, but I’m excited about today. When the news that my caramel apples had been falsely accused of being a murder weapon spread, there was a cry for justice for the apples.

  My business has boomed, and I can barely keep up with production. I just finished making the ones for today's opening this morning. I decided to make twice as many as I did for the festival, splitting them between autumn and winter flavors and decoration.

  "I'm going to go help them set up the table," I tell Julie. "Come by later and try one of the new apples."

  "I will," she says cheerfully. "Oh! You are coming to the gala tonight, right?"

  "Wouldn't miss it," I tell her. "It'll be nice to get dressed up with Owen and actually know who he is this time."

  She smiles and waves. "See you later. Merry Halloween!"

  "Merry Halloween, Julie."

  Sebastian and Skylar are deep in the process of decorating the table when I walk up. Rather than the simple tablecloth we used for the festival, they decided we needed to get into the spirit of the Christmas-Halloween mashup. So
far, the table is draped with a red velvet cloth and topped with gauzy fabric that resembles black spider webs. An artificial Christmas tree sits in one corner, half the branches bent and slightly melted.

  Sebastian hums a cheerful if slightly unrecognizable Christmas tune as he hangs tiny ornaments shaped like bats and jack-o'-lanterns from the bad half of the tree. The undamaged half gets sparkly blown-glass balls and miniature candy canes. He tilts his hips back out of the way as Skylar scoots along the edge of the table, hanging lights.

  "Looking good," I tell them. "Do you need my help getting the rest of the apples?"

  "Nope," Sebastian says without looking up from his careful placement of the ornaments. "The team is on the way."

  "What team?"

  As soon as the question is out of my mouth, I hear a boisterous ‘Ho ho ho’ from behind me. Owen kisses me on my cheek as he walks by with a crate of apples on each shoulder. I'm thrilled at the next smiling face I see.

  "Miles! What a surprise!" I lean forward to kiss him on his cheek.

  "Good morning, Miss Avery. Congratulations on your wee one," he says.

  "Thank you," I say. "We're really excited. It's due in June, so it seems the summer palace will need a nursery soon."

  His face glows with obvious affection for Owen and excitement at the idea of a new generation of the family. He lowers the crate he’s carrying to the ground and peers in Owen’s open one at the rows of apples carefully nestled in with paper coils to cushion them.

  “They look lovely,” he says.

  “Would you like to try one?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “Oh, no,” he says. “They’re too pretty to eat.”

  “Nonsense,” I say. “I make them so people will enjoy them. Them being pretty is just a plus. What flavor would you like?”

  Miles contemplates the options for a few seconds.

  “What’s this one?” he finally asks, pointing to a row coated in tiny pearlescent snowflakes.

  “Eggnog,” I tell him. “It’s my caramel recipe with some added spices and a bit of rum.”