Trying hard not to smile at the change in her attitude, I stepped back a bit. “I know. Logan’s on the way though, so the less people in there the better.”
“I think that you should stay here, Vivian.” Henry said, laying a hand on Vivian’s arm gently. “Behind those gates with a killer is no place for a gorgeous woman.”
“Why thank you, Henry,” Vivian batted her eyelashes at the older gentleman, always up for flirting, no matter what the heck was going on.
Red harrumphed, but kept his mouth shut, while I covered my mouth with my hand to stifle a giggle. Leave it to the older residents to provide comic relief, no matter how dire the situation. My smile left my face at Henry’s next words though.
“So, you stay here with Red where it’s safe, and I’ll go up to the village with the young Missy here in case she needs protecting.” Henry stood to his full height, his chest puffed out, looking like a rooster strutting around the hen house.
Red laughed so hard at Henry’s words, he had to lean over with his hands on his knees, as he struggled to catch his breath. Ignoring the glare from Henry, he stood up pulling a handkerchief from his back pocket to wipe his eyes. “You’re going to protect Coco from a killer.” He started laughing again, “What are you going to do you old coot, beat them to death with your cane?”
“I can protect her better than you can, old man.” Henry shot back, “You can’t get from the car to the diner without huffing and puffing and looking like someone could knock you over with a limp noodle.”
“Hey, let's not bring up personal innuendos!” Oh no...TMI!
“I just call 'em like I see 'em, old man.”
“Who you calling an old man?” Henry asked, putting his fists up in a classic boxer’s pose.
“Why I oughta...” Red took a step towards his friend, but Vivian stepped in between them.
“Boys, boys,” she said, putting a hand on the chest of each man, just like the perfect classic southern belles of the past. “I’m sure Coco can handle this on her own. She’s just going up to the center to wait on Logan. He’s certainly not going to let anything happen to our girl.”
All three of them turned their gazes to me, where I stood trying not to laugh at the entire situation. “What?” I asked, having missed something somewhere.
“You’re not going in without Logan, are you?” Red asked, eyes squinted, as if he knew he couldn’t believe me but was going to try to anyway.
I sighed, “No, I won’t go in without Logan, but I do need to get to the center so we can go in together.”
The trio of senior citizens finally let me get in my car and head through the gates of the retirement village, though they did so reluctantly at best. With comedy hour over with the elderly, I sat fidgeting in my car, hoping Logan got there soon and that I was right about where Stella had gone or we would soon have another murder on our hands.
Chapter 28
I waited just outside of the retirement village with my heart pounding out of my chest. I kept checking my phone for some sign that Logan got my message, but the screen remained blank. Finally, after what felt like forever, his car pulled up next to mine.
“Sorry I’m late.” He panted after rushing to my side. “Let’s go.”
We both bolted into the center through the dark, and I stayed close to Logan as we ran. The halls were deserted after hours, and the building seemed to be haunted as moonlight streamed in through the small windows. “Let’s stick together, this place gives me a bad feeling.”
“Me too, but we have to search every single room. We don’t have much time.” His brow was marred with worry as he combed every corner for a clue.
After looking through multiple rooms with no luck, Logan and I hovered at the cellar door. The breath hitched in my throat as I tried to calm my breath. “Do you want to go first or should I?”
Logan gripped my arm in the moonlight, assuring me. “I insist on going down first. But follow close behind and do not leave my side.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll protect myself.” I nodded, making sure to pull out my trusty rolling pin before following him down into the darkness.
Every step we took inside the cellar made my heart beat faster. Even with my weapon drawn, I was still scared of what we would run into. Eventually, my worst fears were realized as we rounded a corner to see Stella tied to a chair with a cloth in her mouth.
Under the light of a flickering ceiling lamp, Stella sat strapped to a metal chair, her arms and legs bound by a fraying rope. Tears streamed down her face, and her makeup ran down her cheeks to form a messy puddle by her chin.
Standing close behind her was Lorraine Blake, the nurse from the senior center. She held a syringe near Stella’s throat and wore a wicked grin. Once she spotted us, she pressed the needle against her skin and whipped around to face us. “Don’t come any closer or I’ll kill her right away.”
Both Logan and I put our hands up in surrender after I hid my weapon under my shirt. I inched closer, letting the captor know that I wasn’t a threat. “Hey now, no need to do anything drastic.”
She tightened her grip on the syringe. “Not another step or I’ll do it.”
Though I was quivering with fear for Stella’s safety, I had to distract Lorraine. “You must be a pretty big Elvis fan in order to kill someone over it. What did he do, forget the lyrics to your favorite song?”
Lorraine’s lips curled in anger. “I didn’t mean to kill Franklin, I just wanted to shut him up for a little while. I wasn’t born a murderer, but if you make me out to be one I have no problem fitting that description.” She pierced the surface of Stella’s skin, making her wail in response.
“Why don’t you tell us what you mean then? If you didn’t mean to hurt Franklin maybe we can work something out,” Logan lied, hoping that his words would calm Lorraine down.
The woman complied, quickly trying to make a case for herself. “I just gave him a couple pills, alright? Nothing heavy, just a few meds to make him sick enough to stay home where he belongs instead of slandering Elvis’ good name. But they shouldn’t have killed him.”
Now in investigator mode, I tried to get the rest of the story out of her. “I understand that you made a mistake. What do you think it was that did him in?”
After a slight pause, Lorraine spoke, her chest heaving as she tried to make sense of the situation while keeping her hostage still. “It was the bottle of bourbon from one of his little fans. They stole it from the cellar and he mixed the pills with alcohol. If he had obeyed the rules he wouldn’t be dead.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My mind went back to the day Masie and I snuck into his cottage and saw the empty bottles hidden away. It turned out to be the biggest piece of the puzzle, and it was right in front of us all along.
“If you think about it, Franklin did it to himself, it’s not my fault.” She yelled, her face hysterical. “I’ve been trying to make it all go away but you people keep snooping and ruining my plans. As I said, I’m not a murderer, but I don’t mind killing three people to cover up an accidental death if that’s what I have to do.”
“We can talk about this, you don’t have to hurt innocent people anymore. Let Stella go.” Logan urged, his eyes meeting with Stella’s wild ones for a split second.
“Who said anyone was innocent? Stella and Vivian are just as much to blame. Dragging Vivian’s name through the mud will finally bring an end to all the horrible old ladies telling me I’m not a real nurse.”
Stella shifted in her chair, the tears still flowing down her face as she tried to speak around the cloth.
“Please, let her go.” I begged, my hands still up in the air. Logan, however, slowly began to reach into his coat.
“Give me that gun, I see you reaching for it.” Lorraine’s eyes were trained on Logan, and I felt his hopelessness radiating throughout the cellar. “You, tie this one up so he doesn’t try any more funny business.” She pointed to me, and I had no other choice but to do as she said.
/> While I was working the rope loosely around Logan’s arms, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Stella had loosened her own ropes. We locked eyes, and I winked at her quickly enough for Lorraine to miss it.
I stalled long enough for Stella to disentangle herself from the last rope while Lorraine watched me struggle to tie Logan’s arm. In a split second, Stella burst up from the chair, and I whipped my rolling pin out and threw it at Lorraine.
The captor stumbled backwards, dropping the needle before Stella knocked her down. She remained seated as I towered over her with my weapon of choice.
“Good work, team. Logan, get your boys, and let’s get out of here,” I directed, making sure Lorraine couldn’t escape.
“Thank you both for coming to my rescue.” Stella panted as Logan dialed the police.
He waved a hand in our direction. “Any time. It’s not going to help my reputation being saved by an ol...esteemed elder citizen, but thank you for tackling Lorraine.”
Eventually, the police came and cleared us to leave the cellar. On our way out, among the flashing lights and cop cars, Polly Smith stood with a scowl on her face. “Mystery solved. Will you stop poking around in the retirement community now?”
I sighed, still in shock that the case was finally closed. “Only if there aren’t any more murderers lurking around town. Perhaps it’s time you go on home to Las Vegas.”
After a moment, Polly nodded. “Yes, if this is the norm here that might be my best bet.”
Logan finally emerged, and he rubbed his wrists playfully as he pulled me to the side. “Good work in there, Coco. Next time we take down a criminal I’ll remember to ask you to help tie them up.”
I laughed, glad that he was able to make light of a crazy situation. “I’ll be glad to help.” We all watched Lorraine as the cops drove her away, and I found myself thinking that we had a great team of people working to solve the mystery. I wouldn’t have liked to crack this case with anyone else.
Chapter 29
We all sat in Stella’s living room trying to get warm.
Even with fewer people, the room would have felt pretty crammed, but with me, Stella, Vivian, and Henry, things felt particularly tight-packed.
Red came back into the room with an armful of Irish coffees for us. “Here we go. Four coffees with a little something extra from my secret stash.”
“Oh, you didn’t,” Vivian said, though she didn’t hesitate to take hers. I took mine as well. So did Stella and Henry.
“I did. I thought we could all use just a little extra something to relax and to celebrate a case closed.”
Normally, I wouldn’t have imbibed, but after the night we all had, I felt we had earned it.
Logan arrived shortly after and settled in next to me. Suddenly, I didn’t mind the small space so much.
After a while, Vivian threw her hands up in the air. “So, are you going to tell us how you knew it was Lorraine or are we just going to sit here?”
I could feel Logan chuckle next to me. It might have been the coffee and what was in the coffee, but I felt warm and fuzzy inside when he did.
“So, how about it, Coco? How did our resident crime stopper figure it out?” Logan asked.
I ran my free hand through my hair. “Well, we had so few things to go on that it was really just a process of elimination,” I said.
“She says it like it’s so easy,” Red interjected.
“But how did she become a suspect in the first place?” Stella asked. “The last time we discussed it, I think we agreed it was likely Agnes.”
“We did,” I said. “But once she was removed as a suspect, I only had so many options left. We had cleared Simon, Shirley, and Polly as well, so I had to think about who was left in town.”
“And you landed on Lorraine?” Asked Henry. “How?”
“Well, there was something always a bit off about her that I could never quite put my finger on,” I said.
“What was it?” asked Red.
“Elvis. The King himself.”
“How so?” said Stella.
“Well, Lorraine swore up and down that she didn’t like Elvis music, yet she quoted it all the time. Even if you knew some of his more famous songs, you probably wouldn’t be slipping them in to everyday conversation,” I said.
Henry nodded thoughtfully. “That’s really very clever, Coco. Clearly no one else considered that.”
“There was something else too,” I said. “We liked Agnes as a suspect because she had so much access. We didn’t consider for a while that Lorraine also had a great deal of access as well.”
“That is true,” Logan said. He put his arm around me and give me a little squeeze. My heart fluttered. “Well done. Really.”
“Thank you,” I said, trying not to blush.
Logan turned to Stella.
“Stella, I really have to commend you on your quick thinking back there, and I have to ask where you learned how to unbind yourself from rope like that.”
“Well, dearie, I’m afraid that’s classified.” She began to laugh uproariously.
We joined in with her as well, but we all looked unsure as to if she was serious or not.
“Is it really classified?” Logan asked after we finished laughing.
She shrugged noncommittally. “It wouldn’t be very classified if I gave you the answer, now would it?”
“So it is classified.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe that’s to get you off of the trail of the things that really are classified.”
“You know that I’m a police officer, Stella. If it’s the others you’re worried about, we can speak in private.”
“Oh, your clearance isn’t high enough, dearie,” she said. “If you needed clearance at all, that is.”
Logan looked confused and I couldn’t help but laugh at the look on his face. The others soon followed suit.
Logan checked his watch. “It’s getting late. Coco, why don’t I take you home? I’m sure you could use some rest.”
I looked at my now empty coffee cup and realized just how sleepy I was. The adrenaline had worn off, and I was left with the crash that comes after.
“Yes, that sounds nice,” I said.
Logan got up and took my hand to help me up.
“Come on, Coco,” he said. “Let’s get you home.”
I stood up with his help and let my hand linger in his. His hand was rough and calloused, but it felt so nice holding my hand.
I waved to everyone. “Good night, everyone. I’m sure I’ll see you all soon.”
I saw them all looking at my hand, which was still in Logan’s, but I didn’t care. It felt nice, and I wanted to keep it there.
“Good night, dearie,” Stella said with a wink. The others happily waved to us as we left.
He led me out to his car and drove me home. I looked at all the lights passing us by as we drove. With the weight of the investigation lifted off of my shoulders, it felt like we were flying.
When we arrived at my home, we both got out of the car and walked up to the door. We stood under the porch light, and I looked up at him.
“Good night, Coco,” he said. He bent down to give me a kiss and I stood on my toes to meet him half-way.
Even in the chilly February air, it felt warm and sweet.
When we both pulled away, I tried to hide my smile and the blush that I knew was creeping across my cheeks.
“Good night, Logan,” I said, hurrying inside.
Once I got in, I leaned against the door and slid down until I was sitting. I felt like I was floating.
This night certainly didn’t start out on the right foot, but it ended with me being happier than I ever thought I could be.
Chapter 30
It was the first Friday in March and the whole group of us was seated and visiting through the commercials preceding Scooter’s episode of Game of Scones. I had installed a large flat screen on one side of the front room and we all set up tables on the other. Red was already
looking forward to hanging out in the shop during the football season and I told him it was fine as long as he bought his regular slice. It was nice to come down off the Valentine’s craziness and spending the past couple of weeks letting things get back to normal after Franklin’s death.
In fact, the other day, Simon had stopped in for a wedding consultation with his bride-to-be. They tried the whole spread of options and from what I could tell they seemed deeply in love despite the difficulties the late King had incited. Eventually they decided on a frankly enormous cake with all the trimmings. Simon made a point to say price was no object and Scooter had already sketched out half a notebook worth of designs, showing no sign of stopping.
At the moment, Scooter was nearly vibrating with excitement. He seemed unable to keep himself from interrupting during the show to point out other contestants’ strengths and weaknesses. “Oh, see, and he was really good at the technical aspect but his flavors were just boring. You can’t bring in white chocolate and raspberry to GOS, you know?” He shook his head, arms crossed as the theme dramatically cut through the speakers. “And her. Don’t trust that smile for a second. She’d take the softened butter or cardamom from your station without any remorse at all. ‘It’s a competition,’ yeah, I know that. Still. Get your own cardamom, right?”
I wandered over to visit with Stella and Vivian who grabbed their usual table in the corner.
“And she just up and went back to Las Vegas. Can you imagine?” I caught Stella saying to Vivian.
“Oh, Polly was too fast-paced for this town. She just came to cause trouble anyway. Better off without her, I say.” Vivian punctuated her statement with a forkful of dark chocolate cupcake.
I leaned against the wall next to them and lowered my voice conspiratorially. “I ran into Shirley the other day at the grocery store and you know what she said to me?” The women leaned forward, eyes wide and lipsticked faces ready for the next bit of gossip.
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