A laugh gets caught in my throat. “Then I guess I’ll have to show you the rest of me when we get home.”
“That is a verbal contract I will happily hold you to.” He dives in to kiss me but stops abruptly before landing the feat. “My phone.” His brows furrow as he fishes it out and winces at the screen. “I’d better take this. Don’t move a muscle. I’ll be back within ten seconds.”
He steps away and is quickly swallowed by the crowd.
I’m about to turn to look for Noah when a man in a suit stumbles in close, holding a half-eaten slice of my key lime pie. I recognize that blond hair and that boyishly handsome face. It’s Duncan.
His mouth opens as if he were about to say something just as he smashes what’s left of his key lime pie into my chest, and before I can scream or back away, he falls over my chest as well.
“Oh my goodness,” I hiss as I struggle to hold him up.
“Lottie,” Noah shouts as he quickly takes the man’s weight off of me.
“Lemon.” Everett runs over and helps lay the man down. He checks his pulse and gives me a stern look. I know exactly what Everett is trying to tell me.
Duncan Spears is dead.
Lottie
A choir of screams breaks out among us, and soon a crowd grows around the poor man lying on the floor while he stares vacantly at the ceiling.
We had only met just a few moments before, and now he’s gone, just like that. I can’t help but feel a little responsible. I mean, I personally didn’t kill him. But I sure as heck knew someone in this room was going to die tonight, and all I did was dance with Noah and Everett as if I didn’t have a care in the world. I should have been on the hunt. I should have had the room evacuated. Heck, I should have kept an eye on everyone who was taking one of my sweet treats from the dessert table.
My fingers run absentmindedly through the goo on my chest just as Carlotta and my mother run up and thrust handfuls of napkins at me.
“I saw the whole thing, Lot!” Carlotta says with a touch too much glee in her voice.
“Well, I didn’t,” my mother says as she helps clean me up. “But as soon as I heard those screams, I knew something was afoot. Oh, Lottie, I don’t know why you seem to attract this kind of attention. There has to be something we could do about it.”
Carlotta clucks her tongue. “We could try turning her over to the Honey Hollow Fire Department again. It worked for me the first time.”
Mom rolls her eyes. “Not that.” She gives my cheeks a quick pat. “Lottie, you’re losing color. You mustn’t let yourself go into shock. You’re still the baby’s primary source of nutrition. Try to think happy thoughts.”
I avert my eyes. “That’s a little hard to do when there’s a corpse less than ten feet away.”
Carlotta nods. “And Lot Lot not only fed him his last meal, she gave him his last dance, too.”
“That’s because she has manners.” Mom winks my way, and I scoff at how glib she’s being. From Carlotta I expect it.
The room floods with members of the fire department, along with the sheriff’s department. And Detective Ivy Fairbanks strides this way with her crimson locks wound as tight as a coil in a bun, and it only accentuates her sharp features. Ivy is Noah’s partner down at the homicide division, and not only have I long suspected that Ivy has had the hots for Noah all this time, it turns out, I was right.
“Why am I not surprised to see you here?” Her expression sours as she comes my way. “Let me guess, you’re already plotting on how you’ll solve this case, aren’t you? Well, don’t. If you care at all for Noah’s job, I’d leave this one to the professionals. There are whispers of the department bringing in another detective because they don’t think we can handle our workload. In other words, this is me telling you nicely to butt out.” She stalks off and I shake my head in her wake.
“Good riddance,” I mutter.
Carlotta shakes her fist at the woman. “Good luck getting my Lot Lot to butt out of anything.”
Heading this way are my sisters, Lainey and Meg. They’re the sisters I was raised with. I have a couple of other sisters from my biological father, Mayor Harry Nash. And, of course, there’s Charlie—who also happens to hail from Mayor Nash in the genetics department. I’ve got a half brother from Mayor Nash, too. He was quite prolific in the sponsoring of spawns department.
“Lottie,” Lainey hisses. “I can’t believe you’re at it again. Nice dress, by the way,” she snips.
Both she and Meg have on pale green dresses. Lainey shares the same caramel-colored waves and hazel eyes as I do, by sheer coincidence, of course, and Meg has black hair that she’s teased into a beehive, and her face is an homage to every heavy metal band out there with its dark eyeliner and black lipstick. Lainey is the head librarian at the Honey Hollow library and Meg works at both the gentlemen’s club down in Leeds and at my grandma Nell’s restaurant, the Honey Pot Diner. But now that Grandma Nell has left me her vast real estate portfolio, I guess you could say Meg works for me.
Meg shakes her head. “Don’t listen to her, Lot. You keep being you. Word on the street is, the people down at the morgue appreciate the business.”
Both she and Lainey share a chuckle at that one.
Carlotta pulls out her phone and seizes as she stares at the screen. Her face goes white and her jaw goes slack as she slowly glances to the main entry to the room.
“What is it, Carlotta?” I ask. “You look sick.”
“Oh, I am sick, Lot,” she seethes, still looking in that direction. “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. Too bad you met your killin’ quota for the evening. There’s one more body I’d like to see hit the ground.”
We follow her gaze, only to see Charlie waving furtively at Carlotta from the entry to the ballroom.
“Excuse me,” Carlotta growls as she takes off.
Mom clucks her tongue. “It’s a shame Carlotta and Charlie don’t have a close relationship. But don’t you worry, Lottie. I’ve been taking good care of your new sister at the B&B.” Mom has generously let Charlie stay on at the B&B, rent-free. “I bring her breakfast in bed every morning, and every night I make her a cup of hot cocoa with little marshmallows on top. And then I warm her jammies in the drier just before I tuck her in.”
“Aww,” Lainey coos. “Just the way you used to do it for us.”
“I miss that.” Meg sighs.
“Wow, you’ve really taken to her.” I can’t help but feel a twinge of jealously. I don’t know why. Poor Charlie is still dealing with the effects of being raised by Carlotta—a pack of rabid wolves would have done better. Not only that, but Charlie got fired from the pizza place she was working at—her first job in Honey Hollow. Then she went straight to Leeds, straight to that gentlemen’s club that Meg works at, and got a job as a dancer. Speaking of which… “Before I forget, Meg, I want you to take Charlie off the schedule down at Red Satin.”
“But she’s my best dancer,” Meg protests as the whites of her eyes bug out. Meg used to be a wrestler in the Las Vegas women’s wrestling circuit, but now she teaches those saucy vixens down at Red Satin their moneymaking moves.
“I don’t care,” I say. “She’s my little sister.”
Lainey snorts. “You mean she’s your look-alike. I get it. I wouldn’t want someone who might as well be my twin bearing it all for a bunch of sweaty men to see.”
Meg shakes her head. “That’s too bad. She’s making a killing at it, too.” She glances over to the entrance again. “I’ll go ask her if she wants to stay on or not. If I can’t fill that vacancy, I’ll have to dance myself.” Meg takes off and I choke in her wake.
“Don’t give her a choice!” I shout.
“Great,” Lainey mutters. “In an effort to get your sister to stop dancing, now you’ve got mine doing it.”
“Oh stop.” I wrap an arm around her. “Meg is just as much my sister, too. You know I love you both—I love you all.” It’s the first time I’ve admitted to loving Charlie, and
a warm, fuzzy feeling comes over me at the thought.
“Speaking of things you love, you have to come to the mommy and me meeting this week.”
“I will,” I tell her. “In fact, I just met the teacher,” I say as Keelie comes this way.
“Lottie Lemon,” Keelie scolds as her blonde locks bounce over her shoulders. Keelie has on the exact same dress that I do, but on her it makes her look like Cinderella. “Leave it to you to dance with the dead. Bear and I watched the whole thing from the other side of the room. I would have been here sooner, but watching that man smash that key lime pie over your chest made me hungry,” she says, holding up a half-eaten slice of my key lime pie. It’s rimmed with heavy whipped cream and the thinnest slice of lime for garnish. A head-turning culinary classic if I do say so myself.
“Ooh.” Mom clasps her hands together. “I’d better get a slice myself before it all up and disappears.” She takes off, and I spot Noah’s father catching up to her. Wiley Fox is Noah’s look-alike in every way, so I can see why she’s so smitten—or more like why she chooses to look beyond his shady past. Just recently, he convinced my mother to sell her B&B to Cormack and Cressida, Evie’s bio mother. Apparently, he needed the money to fund his publishing house, of which his only clients are Carlotta and my mother, both wonderful authors in their own right surprisingly. Anyway, I managed to get Cressida to give her half of the B&B back to my mother by bending to her humiliating terms—a live paternity reveal on television to reveal the father of my sweet baby girl, Lyla Nell. That entire nightmare went predictably backwards, but we’ve made our way past that.
Lainey looks to Keelie. “Lottie just agreed to come to the mommy and me class this week. Now we just need to get her keyed into our scrapbooking group.”
Keelie nods. “They scrapbook, I drink.”
“Lottie can’t drink, she’s still nursing. That would be dangerous. Which reminds me, give me your phone.” She twitches her fingers until I do just that, and she quickly begins to fiddle with it. “I’m installing the Beware app onto it for you. Now that you’re a mother, you’ll want to be in the know when it comes to all the horrible things that are happening in Honey Hollow and a few of the neighboring towns as well.”
“She’s right, Lottie,” Keelie says, pulling out her own phone. “I’ve got the Beware app installed on my phone and it lets me know every time someone’s been stabbed, shot, or kidnapped.”
“What?” I squawk in horror at the thought of any of those things happening in the great state of Vermont, let alone in the general vicinity.
“Don’t forget the endless stream of assaults,” Lainey says as she hands the phone my way. “All done. You’re set to be informed.”
“Wonderful,” I say.
“You of all people shouldn’t be afraid, Lottie,” Keelie says, warming my arm with her hand. “You’ve got Noah and Everett to protect you.”
“That’s right,” Lainey says. “And you carry a gun. That man who fell over you is lucky you didn’t shoot him right between the eyes before you realized he was a goner to begin with.”
“I don’t have Ethel with me.” Ethel is the name I gave to the Glock handgun that Noah and Everett chipped in to buy me a while back. “But I bet my handsome husband has her. Excuse me. I’d better go find Everett. I want to get home to the girls.”
I take off into the swirling crowd as people continue to gasp and whisper amongst themselves.
A woman bumps into me and nearly spills her wine on my dress. It’s the wiry-haired woman I saw spilling a glass of wine just like this one right into Duncan’s face.
“It’s you,” I say without meaning to. “You knew Duncan, didn’t you?”
“What?” her fragile features contort in terror. Her hair is short and cuts off at the base of her neck and she’s taller than me by at least a foot. She looks older, late fifties maybe, and around her eyes are deep creases.
“You tossed a glass of wine in his face. He must have really made you angry,” I continue because evidently I can’t seem to stop running my mouth. I can’t help it though. A part of me wants to get my own investigation underway.
Her eyes expand to the size of hard-boiled eggs. “I have to go.” She darts into the crowd, and that’s the end of that.
I’m about to continue my quest to find Everett when I spot the two women I met earlier, Karen and Lorelei.
“Excuse me,” I say as I come upon them. “There was a woman here just a second ago. Tall, wiry salt and pepper hair? Do you know who she is? She left in a hurry.”
Lorelei’s mouth falls open. “The woman who was just speaking to you? I saw her take off in a rush. That was Enya. She’s a part of our book club.”
Karen’s dark, glossy locks shimmer as she nods. “She does Swift Cycle with us, too. She’s probably just as shaken as the rest of us. Lord knows I want to run out of here, too. In fact, I’m going to do just that. Lottie, if you need the name of the nanny, feel free to track me down. I’m going to track down my husband. Goodnight.” She darts out the back exit before I can properly interrogate her.
Lorelei grimaces past me as the coroner shows up on the scene. “So very tragic.” She sighs.
“It is.” Although I think it’s interesting to note I saw Lorelei having it out with the deceased earlier as well. It makes me wonder just how tragic she finds this. “I’m sure the detectives will hunt down the killer soon enough.”
“Excuse me?” She blinks back. “I mean, he probably had a heart attack, don’t you think?”
“Oh, I don’t think so. That man was killed. I’m sure of it. I guess you could say I’ve got good instincts when it comes to this sort of thing.”
And one dearly departed little fuzzball of a pooch to verify it.
Speaking of which, where is that little surly specter, anyway? I give a brief look around, but there’s no sign of it.
Lorelei clears her throat. “I’d better get out of here. This is really starting to jangle my nerves.”
She starts to take off and I grab her by the arm, inadvertently knocking her purse to the ground.
“I’m so sorry. Let me get that,” I say, bending over to pick it up, but she beats me to it.
“No, I’ve got it.” She quickly scoops the few things that fell out back into it and holds it close to her chest. “It’s not a problem.”
“I’ll see you at the mommy and me classes,” I tell her and she quickly cinches her purse over her shoulder and holds it there.
“Yes, that will be fun. I’m looking forward to it.”
She takes off and I spin in a circle as the bodies and voices all seem to pick up in pace.
To my right, I spot a vaguely familiar man in a dark suit, and I gasp when I realize who it is. It’s Manny Moretti, a mobster from the Moretti crime family out in Leeds. The same crime family run by his father.
Manny and I have had a few run-ins. Everett was paying him to keep himself and our whole family safe for a time from the hit Jimmy Canelli took out on him for moving his niece’s body from the morgue. Manny is lanky in his ill-fitted suit, his dark curly hair is slicked back, and his eyes look perennially bruised. Manny is just a hair younger than me, and at the moment he’s speaking to a slightly older man, blond greasy hair, worn-out suit, mustache, and scruffy beard. The man seems handsome in a rugged way. His light eyes sparkle with what looks to be mischief as he talks to Manny, and a part of me wonders if he knows exactly whom he’s talking to.
My gaze shifts slightly to their right, and I spot Noah and Everett whispering to themselves with their eyes very much locked over Manny Moretti and that greasy looking man.
“Lot Lot!” Carlotta shouts with that ghostly pooch nestled in her arms and running to keep up by her side is Charlie. “Thank heavens we found you! He’s here!”
“Oh, he is!” I coo as I give the tiny pup a quick scratch between his ears. His white curly hair is formed into the shape of a helmet that expands around his head and he looks so funny I can’t help but laugh a little.
“Not him.” Carlotta tosses the ghostly canine into the air, leaving him to yelp as he floats straight for the ceiling and right on through it. So much for that. “Him.” She points hard to the gentleman talking to Manny.
“Who is that?” I ask as Noah and Everett make their way over.
Charlie’s chest expands as she takes a deep breath. “That, my dear sister, is trouble with a capital T. He thinks he’s going to kill us, but I’ll make Mama kill him first.”
“Why do I have to be the one to kill him?” Carlotta snips. “You can’t always rely on me to do your dirty work, you know.”
“Lemon?” Everett cocks a brow as if to ask a question, but before he can do just that, Britney staggers her way over as if she’s had one too many to drink. But there isn’t a single drink in her hand. Instead, she has a half-eaten slice of my key lime pie.
“My arm.” She nods my way as she falls over my chest and both Noah and Everett help her off me as she crumbles to the floor.
It looks as if the killer has struck again.
Noah
Another homicide.
Darn near a double homicide—one that directly involved my ex-wife. It felt personal because of that, too. Thankfully she’s alive and well and at Honey Hollow General for observation.
It’s almost nine, the next morning, as I grab some coffee and let my golden, Toby, out to use the restroom. No sooner do I step out onto the front porch than I spot Everett standing in his driveway staring at the back of his shiny new SUV. He’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt, his standard fare as of late. But all of that changes tomorrow when he heads back to the courthouse.
After Duncan dropped dead, then Britney dropped to the ground as well, it turned into a rather long night for me. Lottie caught me before she left and let me know that she wouldn’t be going to church this morning. She knew I’d do my best to head straight to the service even if it meant no sleep for me. But as fate would have it, I did manage to get a couple of hours of shut-eye in. Lottie said she didn’t think she’d catch a wink of shut-eye herself between the baby and the fact there’s a killer running loose out there.
Key Lime Pie Perjury: Cozy Mystery (MURDER IN THE MIX Book 34) Page 3
