Muffins & Murder (Sweet Bites Book 3) (Sweet Bites Mysteries)

by Heather Justesen

  I squeezed his hand. “Sorry, maybe I should have skipped on asking you about that. It wasn’t really my business.” But I was glad to know. It made sense. Made me understand him more, made me appreciate what he was doing, how much he’d accomplished here, and what a great parent he was.

  “Don’t worry about it. Especially since I’m going to pry about what happened between you and your ex-fiancé.”

  “Turnabout is fair play, I guess.” And I’d moved past the hurt and anger leftover from both of my failed engagements. “The question is which ex-fiancé you want to know about.” I tried to keep my expression calm. I didn’t like thinking about my failures, never mind talking about them to others, but after his honesty, I couldn’t keep part of it to myself.

  His brows lifted. “How many times have you been engaged?”

  “Twice. Both engagements lasted a few months and no date was ever set. Lance backed out at that point, saying he changed his mind, that it was a bad idea after all. Which I have to admit is true, with a little hindsight. He wasn’t ready to get married. Heck, I probably wasn’t ready, either. I was only twenty-three, just out of my internship in France, and was more in love with love, than in love with him.” It didn’t hurt to admit it, even if it made me feel stupid.

  He nodded. “And what about the other one?”

  “You met Bronson. He was my boss—head of the hotel where I worked in the restaurant. We kind of circled around each other for more than a year, not wanting to make that step into a romantic relationship. I’ve never been sure whether that was because the timing was bad or we were both cowards, or something else entirely. When he finally did ask me out, we got serious pretty fast.”

  “You’re not really big on the initiative when it comes to relationships, are you?” Jack asked, teasingly.

  “I can be, when the time is right,” I denied. “I just choose my moments.”

  He smiled, then motioned to me, “Sorry, go on, will you?”

  “Bronson’s family liked me—even though I wasn’t as high class as they were. And his grandma—a serious dragon of a lady who runs the whole family—adored me. After I split with Bronson she contacted me for an address so she could keep me on her Christmas card list.” I smiled as I said this, pleased by it.

  “So why did you break up?”

  “I caught him kissing the kitchen manager—who I complained about almost every day because she was so abrasive and not even a good fiscal manager. She’s the reason Lenny ended up moving here, because he couldn’t stand her, either. Anyway,” I waved as if it would move the subject back to the one I’d started with. “I wasn’t pleased to see him kissing someone else, and Karen made it sound like it was far from the first time, so I dumped him, quit my job and came here to lick my wounds.”

  “That really sucks,” Jack said, twining our fingers together on the tabletop. “But I’m kinda glad, since otherwise you wouldn’t have moved here.”

  “It was a blessing in disguise,” I agreed. A very, very lucky one. “If it hadn’t been Karen, it would have been someone else, eventually, so I know I dodged a bullet.”

  His eyes shone in the candlelight and I knew I was much better off where I was.

  When he walked me to my door later that evening, I was not ready to say goodnight. “Would you like to come in for a bit?”

  “Yeah.” He gave my hand a squeeze before releasing it so I could retrieve my keys and let us in.

  “We’ve been avoiding discussing the situation with Francine all evening,” he said when we walked inside and I hung my wrap on the peg by the door. “Did you want to talk about that?” His voice sounded funny and a look at him told me he was nervous about being alone with me tonight.

  “Not much to say. I’m at a dead end—I even went to the neighbor’s house and picked her brain about Francine to see if there was another stalker following her besides Cole.”

  “You heard about him, didn’t you? On the news?”

  “I heard. Tingey thinks it’s the same killer.” I moved to the fridge. “Would you like something to drink? I have juice, milk or I could heat some water for tea.”

  “No, I think I’m fine, thanks.” He followed me into the kitchen. “And something will come up about the killer soon. It has to.”

  I turned to him and saw the look in his eyes, then remembered the comment he made about initiative and Honey’s advice to test the waters. My heart started to pound with anticipation as I stepped closer to him. “How about if you take my mind off of my dead ends?” I slid a hand down his sleeve to just above his elbow. “Distractions can be a good thing.” I was trying to be smooth, but wasn’t sure if I succeeded.

  His hands touched on either side of my waist, drawing me close. “Is this you taking the initiative, then?”

  “Yeah.” I could smell his cologne—it had been driving me crazy all through dinner and his lips quirked, making me focus on them even more than I had been. “You okay with that?’

  “Very, very okay.”

  I touched his face with my palm and leaned in. He met me halfway, his lips pressing ever so softly to mine. The kiss teased and tempted me to more, slow and seductive. He pulled me closer and I let my fingers dive into his hair, curling in the soft texture, as he tipped his head and took the kiss a level deeper.

  I was lost, wrapped up in the moment so that when he pulled back, setting me away from him, I felt dazed and fuzzy around the edges. “Wow,” I said.

  “I gotta second that.”

  “I guess maybe that’s what anticipation can do for you.” I could barely breathe, barely think.

  “I’ve been anticipating that since April. I don’t think I want to wait that long for the next kiss.”

  I laughed, pulling away completely. “No, definitely not.” I wanted to ask him something, but hesitated.

  “What? I can see the questions on your face,” he teased. “Just ask me.”

  “You’re going to the wedding Saturday, right?”

  “Yes.”

  My throat seemed to close up, but I pushed my way through. “Would you like to go with me as my date? I mean, I’ll be there early to set up, but you could meet me there and stuff.”

  He leaned in and brushed his lips over mine. “I would love to.”

  I felt the tension in my shoulders ease and I let out a relieved breath. “Good.”

  He pulled away slowly. “I ought to go. Work starts way too early tomorrow.” The reluctance in his expression was enough to have me believing him.

  “I have to be up early to start cinnamon rolls, too.” I decided not to mention I still had a few hours before my burgling adventure. I took the hand he held out to me and walked him back to the door. He leaned in for one more far-too-brief kiss, and then left.

  I nearly floated to my room to change my clothes.

  The thermometer was plunging when Honey and I pulled up four doors down from Francine’s place at twelve-thirteen that night.

  “It’s cold out here,” Honey whispered as she burrowed deeper into her jacket.

  “Next time maybe you’ll wear something warmer,” I suggested.

  I looked around and saw the lights were off in most of the houses on the street, though a place across from us had one burning in the front window and the porch light was still on. I hoped whomever they were expecting didn’t show up while we were slinking down the sidewalk.

  We reached Francine’s house in no time, and Honey dropped to one knee, pulling out a little kit and grabbing her lock pick tools despite the dark that made it hard for me to see anything with real clarity. I waited impatiently, watching the windows of the surrounding homes, paranoid that someone would look out and see us standing on a dead woman’s porch in the middle of the night.

  “Ah, ha.” Honey’s soft call of triumph made my shoulders sag with relief. “That was too easy.” She stood and tested the knob, nudging the door open.

  “You’re amazing,” I said.

  Her teeth glowed white in the darkness when she grinn
ed. “Where do we start?” She tugged on the latex gloves we’d both donned before exiting my Outlander.

  I put my hands on my hips and peered through the deep shadows. “You dig in here. I’ll see if I can find an office or wherever she might keep letters or bills. Look until you’re sure you’ve seen everything, then move to the kitchen drawers. I’ll cover the other rooms.”

  She saluted to me. “Sir, yes, sir.” She turned on her pen light. We had actually planned ahead this time, buying the tiny flashlights and testing to be sure they worked before we arrived, wanting to keep the light spillage low so people wouldn’t notice anything going on from next door or across the street.

  I looked down the hall. There was a bedroom and an office. The office had a desk with Francine’s sewing machine on one side. A set of quilting frames leaned against the wall and the floor was half filled with boxes and drawers, making me groan. I glanced into the bedroom, which was perfectly organized with everything put away. I moved into there first, knowing I would be able to cross it off my list quickly and then return to the other room which might take several nights to dig through if the boxes were full of papers.

  Finding what I needed in the bedroom would have been too easy, which is, I’m sure, why I came up empty. I looked for secret hiding places and dug through her nightstand, but it was well organized with few papers or notes, and nothing in the room that didn’t appear to belong. I checked between the bed mattresses and flashed my light at the underside of the box springs—you could never be too careful, right?

  I poked my head into the bathroom and rifled through it quickly, again finding everything exactly as it ought to be. The woman was ruthlessly organized, and aside from the boxes in the spare room, didn’t appear to have anything she didn’t absolutely need. With a sigh, I turned to the spare room. I could hear Honey moving around in the kitchen so I knew she’d be joining me soon.

  I pulled down the window shade, though the room looked into the backyard, which had a privacy fence. I wasn’t taking any chances. I started on one end of the room and opened a box. Fabric. I sighed in relief. If most of this stuff was just fabric, we could dig through it quickly.

  I carefully pulled everything out, a layer at a time, emptying the box, then returned it, and slid the box to the side, moving to the next one. I had gone through six boxes before I found one filled with papers. They were stacked neatly in labeled folders.

  Honey came to the door. “How’s it coming?”

  “I cleared the bedroom and bathroom. Dig through boxes with me. Start over there.” I pointed to the other side of the room.

  She let out a sigh and did as I asked. I glanced at my watch. It was 1:20 a.m. already and I had to be up in four hours. I yawned, thinking about how tired I was going to be the next day, and started flipping through the papers. School lesson plans.

  Half an hour passed as we worked side by side, muttering about what we were finding, and speculating in low voices about whether or not the average human being lived long enough to go through that much fabric, or use that many great lesson ideas in school.

  “So, how did it go?” she asked me after a while. “You haven’t volunteered any information. Was it that bad or that good?”

  I grinned thinking about my evening with Jack. “It was good. Really good, actually. We talked about, oh, practically everything and not nearly enough at the same time. It was fun. We’re going to do it again sometime.”

  “How far away is sometime?” she asked speculatively.

  “He’s going to the wedding with me, or rather meeting me there as my date. How’s that for a beginning?”

  “Could be worse. It’s just a beginning.” She sent me a knowing look.

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Kisses?” Honey asked.

  I just smiled.

  Accepting that as my answer, Honey finished the boxes nearest to her and moved to the desk to dig through those drawers.

  “Maybe there’s nothing to find here,” Honey said.

  “It sure looks that way. We’re almost done, so keep going. It’s a good thing she isn’t one of those who keeps all of her past bills and stuff.”

  “No kidding.”

  Honey dug through all of the drawers while I cleared two more boxes.

  She picked up one of the books on the nearby shelf and started flipping through it, as if looking for things between the pages.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “You know a lot of the people who were around during World War II had a real mistrust of banks. Many of them would stash things between pages of books or magazines.”

  “Things?” I held in a groan as I saw that my new box held more files.

  “Money, deeds, important papers. Mostly money, it seems. They wanted to set some aside in case they went through another Great Depression.”

  “And you think Francine, who is younger than we are, fits into that category?”

  “Well, no,” Honey admitted. “But if she’s looking to hide papers, then sticking them between the pages of a book no one would ever want to pick up on their own might be a good idea, don’t you think?”

  I flashed my light at the book she held, saw the title and shuddered. “The Rise of Feminist Ideals in the 1900s? Yeah, that’s where I’d hide something important. No fear anyone I know would page through it out of curiosity.”

  She flipped to the end and sighed. “No luck. Maybe she actually bought the thing to read.”

  “Huh?” I focused back on my box and looked at the six beside me. We would actually finish before I had to open the store—I would need a strong cappuccino, or three, while I mixed cinnamon rolls, but we would be done by then.

  “Wait a minute,” Honey said ten minutes later.

  I looked up from the box of Halloween decorations, excitement percolating through me at the possibility that she might have found something useful.

  Honey took several books from the shelf and withdrew pages from behind them. “What do we have here?” Her pen light flashed over the pages and I could see they were hand-written letters of some kind.

  “Are they from the stalker?” I asked, hopefully.

  “Why, yes, they are.” She grinned.

  I shoved the Halloween stuff back into the box, though I’d only gotten through half of it. “Check the rest of the bookshelf. Could you have missed something before?”

  We both worked on pulling off books, sliding them around and checking for more papers. No luck.

  “Well, we have these.” Honey held up the pages. “Do you want to keep digging through boxes?”

  “No. I so don’t want to dig through any more boxes. I have painful memories of my move to Arizona flashing through my mind.” I shuddered dramatically.

  “I guess if we think there’s more, we can always come back later to finish the job.” She checked her watch. “It is after two.”

  “I vote we go.”

  “Seconded.”

  We slid the boxes back where they had come from and I took careful note of which ones I hadn’t gone through yet, and where they were before we left. We sneaked back down the sidewalk to my Outlander, and turned it toward home where we could study the letters at leisure.

  I felt exhaustion pulling at me when we reached my place, but I didn’t object when Honey followed me up the stairs—neither of us was going to sleep if we didn’t read the stalker’s notes first. I poured us both glasses of water and we settled at the sofa to read the four notes Honey had found.

  Dear Francine,

  I passed you on the sidewalk earlier this week and smelled the sweetness of your perfume. You smiled at me—you’re always smiling, such a happy person. I know you’re probably wondering when I’m going to talk to you face-to-face instead of being too bashful to speak up, but your beauty stuns the words out of me.

  I hope you liked the gift I left you the other day—I spent a long time picking it out, making sure it was just right. Just right for you. I dream of our life together, of children
with your eyes and your smile. Someday you’ll save that smile for me alone. Someday soon I’ll stop you on the street and talk to you. Or I’ll be waiting outside your home when you get back from work. It’s a nice place, but wait until you see the home I’m building for us. You’ll love it, I just know it.

  Until later, all of my love,

  Your Prince Charming

  The letter made me shiver in revulsion—he just told her that he passed her on the street, that he was someone she saw off and on and didn’t think twice about. That had to be unnerving and it was no wonder she changed her name and moved to a new state. The idea of him building them a house—of being so delusional that he’d actively worked toward that future without ever having a conversation with her was more than a little freaky as well. I swapped letters with Honey.

  Dear Francine,

  Aren’t the spring flowers lovely? I missed the lantana when it was so cold this winter. I love the lilac bush in front of your place and stop to touch the blooms sometimes. You weren’t home this weekend—were you visiting your sister? Emma is a nice girl, but she takes too much of your time.

  I saw you talking to a man at the grocery store the other day. He was flirting with you, touching you. It made me angry that he would have the presumption when you belong to me. You walked away without giving him your name, though, so I won’t have to teach him a lesson unless he bothers you again. I know you won’t go out with him—you wouldn’t because you know you’re meant for me. If you did, you know I’d have to take action. I wouldn’t have any other choice.

  All my love,

  Your Prince Charming

  The other two were more of the same. I was unaccountably disappointed when nothing in them popped out at me, even while I was seriously creeped out that he was watching her so closely.

  “Anything you saw that I missed?” I asked Honey.

  “Doubtful. It doesn’t make sense. They must have meant something to her or why else would she keep them?”