“Fire away.”
I kept my voice low. “Have you ever heard of ghosts going missing?”
“Missing how?”
“That’s the problem. I’m not really sure.”
I briefly caught her up, using as general terms as possible and keeping my tone soft enough that no one else could hear over the quiet hum of the ambient noise.
Unfortunately, Holly hadn’t heard of a similar case. “I’m really sorry,” she added. “I can ask around. If nothing else, there’s always my Grandmother Honeysuckle.”
“Thanks. If you hear anything, let me know. I’m sure it’s nothing, or at least nothing serious, but I’d like to put Gwen’s mind at ease.”
Not to mention my own.
Holly nodded and said her goodbyes when Cassie called for her to cover the front. She smiled wide as she headed up to greet a second rush of morning customers filing through the doors.
As I was finishing my scone, the table beside mine cleared and the two ladies who had been in front of me in line circled the small cafe and took the table beside mine. Great. Let the whining fest commence.
“Do you know why there was a police car outside Matilda’s bakery last night?”
An audible gasp. “You haven’t heard?”
I stilled, the last bite of scone crumbling between my fingers as my ear perked. This was way better than the finer points of picking out a ripe cantaloupe.
“Penny was taken into custody for questioning.”
“Whatever for?” the second woman asked. I could practically hear her salivating in anticipation of the juicy gossip.
“Well, I’m sure you know all about that spoiled brat from New York—the one who was getting married at that gaudy bed and breakfast?”
The other woman added a sanctimonious mhmm before replying, “I thought she died?”
“She did!”
“Oh.”
“That’s the whole point! Apparently, it was just more than an allergic reaction. The police think there was foul play.”
Another gasp. Followed by some coughing. Gotta hate choking on muffin crumbs.
“They think Penny killed her? But why? Penny’s a sweet girl. She couldn’t so much as hurt a housefly.”
The first woman sighed heavily. “There was something in the cake. That’s why the police wanted to talk to Penny—it was from her shop.”
“Oh my stars! I bet her mother is simply losing her mind over this.”
“I’m sure! If that were my daughter, I’d be standing outside the station, banging on the doors until they let her go!”
“I wonder why they think that young woman was killed.”
“I don’t know, but it does seem suspicious though. You heard that her fiancé didn’t even bother showing up to her funeral?”
I turned as the second woman was nodding like a bobble-head doll. “My friend Sarah’s daughter works the front desk at the hotel they were staying in. She said every other night there was some kind of complaint about the noise coming from their room. And not the kind of noises you might expect to hear from the hotel suite of a soon-to-be-married couple, if you catch my drift.”
I rolled my eyes; the entire population of Washington could have parasailed on that drift.
Some people.
“I heard they were fighting like cats and dogs. Very strange behavior, if you ask me.”
“Mmhmm. Indeed.”
A group of people walked between the tables on their way to the exit, briefly muffling the women’s conversation.
“—real piece of work. She had Gigi reduced to tears after their trial run-through on the makeup.”
“At least the wedding coordinator had good manners!”
“Well …”
“What? What did you hear?”
“I think she was looking for a way out of the whole thing,” the woman clarified. “I caught her rolling her eyes after they left the Lucky Lady that day.”
“Looks like she got what she wanted.”
The ladies shuffled around, rising from their seats. “We should go see Matilda. Offer our support.”
Code for: snoop and pry.
The two women passed by and I balled up my napkin and stuffed it into my empty coffee cup. When the front doors swung shut again, I pushed up from my table, shoved the chair in, and hurried outside. If there was even a shred of truth to the theory that Kimberly’s death had been less than an accident, I had to find it; it could be the only way I’d ever get rid of her.
My first call was to Sonya. I barely waited until I was back at the shop before dialing her number. She didn’t answer and I cursed her syrup-sweet voice as the call clicked over to voicemail.
“Good heavens!” Hayward said, appearing at my side. “Whatever is the matter, Lady Scarlet?”
I set my phone down on the counter and pushed my fingertips through my hair. “I think I might be onto something with this whole Kimberly mess. The problem is that I need to talk to Sonya and she’s not answering her phone.”
“Take heart. I’m sure she will get back to you soon.”
I frowned at him. “You sound like her answering service.”
Hayward shrugged and floated to the front window. With his back to me, he stared out the front window, watching as the small town came to life: people shuffled off to brunch or the market, cars buzzed by on their way in or out of town, and children ran in small packs, enjoying the sunshine.
“Hayward? Are you all right?” I glanced around. “Are you down here all by yourself?”
“I’m fine, Lady Scarlet. You needn’t trouble yourself with a melancholy old man such as myself.”
He was laying on the Oxford accent thicker than normal. Always a bad sign. It usually meant that he was homesick.
“Hayward, you’re my friend,” I reminded him softly. I rounded the counter and started toward him. “I’m not troubling myself. I’m—”
My phone rang.
“Damn.” I looked between Hayward and the phone, then back again, guilt and anxiety tugging me in two directions.
“Go ahead, Lady Scarlet. I know you’re frightfully busy these days.”
“Hayward, don’t—” I reached out but he was already shimmering on the other side of the display window. Head bent, he headed down the street, not even bothering to avoid the people hustling up and down the sidewalk.
I ground my teeth together and kicked myself for hesitating when the phone rang. Getting Kimberly sorted was an important task, but taking care of Hayward was inarguably higher up on my list of priorities.
“Hello, Sonya,” I said, answering the call on the last ring.
“Hello, Scarlet. Sorry I missed your call. It’s been a little … busy.”
“So I’ve heard. What’s going on? I overheard something about a police investigation.”
“That’s right.” Sonya paused and heaved a sigh. “I was supposed to be flying out of here this afternoon back to New York, but I’ve been asked to stay local until the police can speak with me. I honestly don’t know much about it, but we’re at the police station. Kimberly’s parents and sister are in a room speaking with the detective now and I’ll go in after them.”
I could hear a catch in her voice, as though she were slightly out of breath. I imagined her stalking up and down the brightly lit hallways of the station.
“What have you heard? I’m desperate for information,” Sonya asked.
“Just that they brought in someone from the bakery for questioning. Seems like they think there was something in her cake samples. I can’t for the life of me think of the reason why.”
Sonya snorted. “That’s because you weren’t there when we did all three of her tastings. The first time, she took one look at the plate of samples and stormed out!”
“Why?”
“The color of the frosting was wrong. I tried to console her, told her the samples were just for taste, not look, and that we’d figure that out later, but she refused to go back in. The second time, she took a f
ew bites and spit it back out, insisting that she was not going to serve sugar-coated sawdust to her very important guests.”
I cringed. The bakery was popular in several nearby cities. I’d heard they even took orders for big events all the way in Seattle from time to time. There was no way their cake was anything close to sawdust. Sugar-coated or otherwise.
“I’m afraid to ask what happened on the third visit,” I told Sonya, bracing for the next horrifying account.
“Yeah, you should be,” Sonya scoffed. “Ironically enough, it was on the day that Kimberly passed. We’d gone in for a final shot at making it work. The venue has a similar deal with the bakery as they do with you regarding large-scale events. However, I had a feeling that if things didn’t turn around, they were going to be more than happy to make an exception and let us go somewhere else. I was actually contacting bakeries in the car on the way over to the appointment.” She sighed. “Anyway, at first it looked like we might have turned a corner. The colors were right, Kimberly tried the first two samples and actually seemed pleased, which—as you know—was a real miracle. The third sample was where it all fell apart.”
“What happened?”
“There was a miscommunication. It was my fault, really. I’d heard some locals raving about their banana cake and asked Penny to slip one into the line-up, thinking maybe Kimberly would take to it. Big mistake. Kimberly spit it out, flipped over the plate of the samples, and threw a huge fit in front of a couple of other customers. Poor Penny was reduced to tears before I managed to get Kimberly out of the bakery. Drea went back to try to comfort her, to pay her for her trouble, but it didn’t seem to help much. At least not according to Drea. She refused to take the money and said they weren’t going to be able to fulfill the order for the wedding cake. Not that I could blame them.”
“But you ended up taking samples over there later that night, right?” I asked, recalling the conversation I’d had with Sonya at my flower shop.
“Matilda, the owner, called me that afternoon and apologized. She said they had a special custom recipe they wanted Kimberly to sample and asked if I would have her give it one more try. To be honest, I think they wanted the exposure. As you know, the wedding was going to be featured on the season premiere of Mints on the Pillows and all the vendors would get a mention in the credits as well as on the show’s website. It would be a lot of potential revenue to walk away from. I agreed, and by some miracle, cajoled Kimberly into trying them.”
“So now they think the cake was laced with something?”
“I suppose. Drea was the first one questioned since she was the one who found Kimberly. She must have told them about the whole thing and turned their suspicions to Penny.”
I conjured up an image of Penny, the sweet young woman who helped her mother Matilda run the local bakery. For the most part, I got my pastry fix from Siren’s Song, though a lot of their product was from the bakery, but had occasionally visited the small shop since arriving in Beechwood Harbor. She was a tall, slender woman with straw-colored hair and a shy demeanor. She reminded me slightly of Belle from Beauty & the Beast—a quiet, bookish type who preferred to spend her days lost in books and daydreams.
She was the farthest thing from a killer that I could imagine.
Then again, wasn’t there some kind of phrase about the silent ones?
“Scarlet, sorry, I’m going to have to wrap this up. They’re calling me back.”
I started to reply, but she’d already disconnected, leaving my head spinning and my stomach churning with a dozen new questions.
Chapter 11
After my phone call with Sonya, the morning quickly dissolved into madness. The printer jammed while spitting out orders. An hour-long battle followed, and by the time the foul little electronic beastie was back in working order, I was running majorly behind schedule.
I trudged back into my office to take care of some paperwork. I hated that part—as my business grew, so did the amount of office work. Perhaps it was naive of me to overlook the fact that as a business owner I would be doing a whole heck of a lot more than just making pretty floral designs. There was maintenance on the shop itself, bills to pay, invoices to collect, and now, with my first official staff member, the joys of payroll were part of the mix.
Gwen swooped in as I was midway through writing a sternly worded email to the building landlord concerning an ongoing mold issue in my supply closet. “Scarlet, we need to talk!”
I groaned. “Gwen, can it wait? I’m slammed with work right now, and before you ask, no, I still don’t have any idea what’s going on. I asked Holly Boldt and she’s going to do some digging. If you really can’t wait, maybe try following up with her, though I doubt she’s had a chance to do much yet. She’s probably still at work.”
I held back the urge to remind Gwen that unlike ghosts, us mortals still had other things on our minds. I couldn’t drop everything and go on a wild-ghost chase when there were orders to fill and deliveries to make. Mold to annihilate.
Not to mention the icky feeling in the pit of my stomach whenever my mind wandered off and starting thinking about the strange night with Lucas.
“If you ask me, we have a bigger problem here at home,” I told Gwen, unable to resist the chance to get on my soapbox. “I’m worried about Hayward. You need to talk to him.”
Gwen folded her arms. “I tried. He didn’t want to hear what I had to say.”
“When was this?”
“This morning, before you were awake. After you dismissed me from your bedroom, I came down here and found him.”
I ignored her passive-aggressive tone and licked my lips. “What was he doing?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Just kind of staring into outer space.”
I gave her a pointed look.
Gwen sighed. “I’ll try to talk to him again. He just makes it so difficult.”
“Tell me about it.” I massaged my temples. “Listen, let me finish up some things here and we’ll go talk to Holly and Posy, okay? In the meantime, can you please try again with Hayward? Or at least find out where he’s at. It worries me when he goes off the reservation.”
I couldn’t explain why it bothered me. It wasn’t like there was anything that could happen to him. He was already dead. The worst had already occurred. But still ….
Gwen agreed and floated through the opposite wall that let out into the small alleyway between my shop and the one beside it.
“So, when were you going to tell me that I was murdered?”
My eyes slid closed at the seething voice over my shoulder.
So much for productivity.
“Kimberly, I don’t have time for this today,” I hissed when the thick metal door of the refrigerated room was closed. “As you can see, I’m in the middle of my workday. In life, you could barge in here at any given moment, ready to launch into a tirade, but those days are over. This is my world, my rules, and you have got to accept that!”
“Well, aren’t you just a regular Ms. Congeniality,” she sneered. “Talking to me like that on the day I find out I’ve been murdered!”
I rolled my eyes to the ceiling, silently pleading for an ounce of patience.
“Do you know how I found out? The gossiping front desk clerks at that dump of a hotel Casper and I were staying at! I was searching for him and stopped to hover over their shoulders to get a look at the registrations, and they were talking all about it.”
“I’m sorry, all right? I know this isn’t easy. But you have to—”
“Why would someone want to kill me?”
It took every shred of my self-control not to snort. Instead, I drew in a slow breath. “Well, to be frank with you, you weren’t a very nice individual, Kimberly.” I glanced over at her and found a scowl had replaced the forlorn look from moments before. “Maybe you were back in New York, but since your arrival here, you’ve managed to whip up quite the frenzy. The people who live and work in this town, myself included, all work very hard, and you
stormed through and tore it all to little pieces with your temper tantrums and crappy attitude.”
She scoffed. “Since when is having standards a capital offense?”
“It’s not, Kimberly. I didn’t say you deserved this, but you asked for motive.”
“Do you think that bakery lady did it?” she asked, her tone surprisingly cool.
“Penny,” I corrected and then shook my head. “And no, I don’t. Penny doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. I have no doubt you drove her to drink, but kill? No way.”
“The concierge didn’t think so either,” she replied.
“Oh?”
“He thinks it was Casper.” Kimberly let out a laugh. “But, of course, that’s ridiculous. Casper adored me.”
I considered her for a long moment but decided to keep my opinion to myself.
She met my stare but relented after a moment with a pained sigh. “Just tell me what I’m supposed to do now.”
“I don’t know—ghost things! You can go anywhere. Isn’t there someplace that’s more appealing than hanging around here all day?”
Somewhere? Anywhere! I wasn’t going to get too picky about the details.
She didn’t look convinced. “It doesn’t feel right.”
My heart sank a little. “Kimberly, listen to me, this is all brand new for you. Just like any major change, there is something of an adjustment period. Okay? Give it some time. You’ll settle in.”
“No. I don’t think so.” She shook her head. “If there’s a way out, even if it’s not back to my old life, I want to find it! I want to move on from all of this madness.”
You and me both, sister.
I sighed. “Like I told you before, when someone dies, their body is gone but the spirit remains.”
“Gee, how enlightening. I kinda figured that part out already.”
My hands balled into fists. “You want me to get the iron?”
Kimberly crossed her arms. “No.”
Ghosts Gone Wild: A Beechwood Harbor Ghost Mystery (Beechwood Harbor Ghost Mysteries Book 2) Page 9
