A Fatal Finale

by Stacey Alabaster

  “No. It won’t be the same.” I zipped up my suitcase, which contained all of my books and was almost impossible to lift as I set it on the ground. “But you can come and visit me in Lakes Entrance. You’re going to come up for the weekend next month, right?”

  She nodded and suddenly looked more enthusiastic. She flopped herself down on the bed and held herself up by her elbow, her head resting on her palm. “I can’t wait, actually.”

  “It’s really beautiful.” I opened a new case and packed the last of my socks and then reached for my scarf collection, stuffing them into the side of the case. “You’ll love it there. I love it there.”

  “And you’re sure about all this?” Sue asked. She frowned for a moment and got all serious on me. “I mean, what is Jackson actually offering you?” She sat up straight and searched my face for an answer.

  “A chance to start over,” I said as I grabbed another bag and threw in all my shoes. “And that is all I want.” I looked around my room, hoping that was the end of the interrogation.

  “But there’s no ring?” Sue asked.

  I was a little shocked she was even asking that. “I don’t think we’re at that stage just yet.” I coughed to clear my throat. “We are not Blake and Simona,” I muttered. “And I am glad we’re not. Those two moved way too fast.” I was a little flustered as I did the last of my packing.

  Sue raised an eyebrow, a sneaky look on her face. “But you would say yes if he asked?”

  “Sue!” I said, trying to get her to drop the subject. “It’s not something I’ve even thought about.”

  That was a lie, of course. I had thought about it, and what I would do if he asked. If he really, genuinely asked, then I would have to seriously think about it. And I would have a very hard time saying no.

  But at that stage, I was just happy to get away from Belldale.

  Blake had agreed to keep the bakery going until we had a buyer, or until he could afford to buy me out—whichever came first. “Of course, there’s always the chance that with you out of town, business will pick up again,” he’d said the last time I’d seen him. What a warm good-bye that had been. Oh well. I couldn’t complain too much, considering I was leaving him with the responsibility of not only operating the bakery, but of overseeing the sale.

  The trunk of the car was packed, as well as the backseat. Jackson had gotten off easy—he’d never really unpacked since his return from Mornington, so all he had to do was pile in the bags he’d already had. We were only taking one car for the time being. And in the true spirit of minimalism, both of us were leaving behind our furniture. Sue was going to keep all mine and Jackson had sublet his house for six months. The lake house was fully furnished and I liked the idea of moving with only the possessions I absolutely needed.

  We had to drive through the center of town before we left because Jackson needed to get cash out at the bank. The bakery was at the other end of the street and I was very aware of it as Jackson climbed back into the car and we prepared to leave the town behind for good.

  Jackson slowed as we drove by. “You sure you don’t want to go inside and say good-bye one last time?”

  I glanced inside. I could make out Blake and his slicked back black hair operating the coffee machine. Him and Simona had gotten married, but apparently, they hadn’t taken a honeymoon yet since he was hanging out at the bakery.

  I shook my head. “There’s nothing inside there for me anymore.”

  I bit my lip as we drove away and I tried to focus on the positives. I focused on the new life waiting for me, not the old life I was leaving behind. If this was how it all had to end, at least I had the man I loved sitting by my side.

  But I wondered if the loose ends and the lack of closure would haunt me forever. Pippa had never even returned my text when I’d told her I was leaving.

  And the case of Rogan’s death remained unsolved.

  Two weeks had passed and even though we hadn’t bought much stuff, we had still not gotten around to the last of the unpacking.

  I pulled the last of Jackson’s boxes from the car and brought it into the house one evening, starting to unpack it for him.

  An old, brown-looking uniform spilled out of one of the boxes “What is this?” I asked, picking up the badge-covered uniform as I tried not to laugh when I noticed there was a badge for baking on the top corner. “I didn’t know you were a scout. I suppose you have always liked wearing a uniform, huh?”

  Jackson took it off me and shook his head. “I had forgotten how much I enjoyed baking… Isn’t it strange to think about all the things we forget from when we were kids.” He folded the uniform and put it in a drawer. Then, off-handedly, he said, “When I have kids, I want them to join the scouts.”

  I just continued to unpack the boxes, but I replied, “And are you thinking that might be any time soon?” I waited, holding my breath a little, for the answer.

  He just smiled to himself. “Perhaps sooner than I had thought, actually.”

  He was full of surprises. It was still strange to see him in his ‘civilian’ clothes every day, out of his designer suits. His clothes were still expensive, still brand name, but now he got around in shirts and jeans while he puttered around the house, fixing up the garage and a leaky hole above the kitchen. But the repairs and unpacking would all be done soon. I wasn’t sure exactly what he intended to do with his time in Lakes Entrance. We’d moved in a bit of a whirlwind, with neither of us having firm plans in place. He’d told me that not knowing was all part of the fun.

  He was right, of course.

  And for the first time, I didn’t mind not having a job either. I tried not to think about the bakery too much, though Blake emailed me the profits and losses summaries each week. I tried to turn my attention to more positive things. The land around the lake was stunning, as well as the wetlands, and I was spending my time hiking on the trail and getting back in touch with nature. Sometimes it felt like I was the only person in the world when I was out there on the bridge across the wetlands. I would spin around in a circle and not see another human being, and I didn’t mind the feeling. I was alone in those moments, but far from lonely. I had everything.

  Just about.

  “I love it here,” I said one evening as we were sitting on the porch. It was the end of summer and there was still humidity in the air. From our back porch, we had a clear view of the water with the ducks and the swans. And when the sun hit the lake just right every evening, it still looked like there were fairies dancing on top of it.

  I had received an email with the wedding pictures from Simona and Blake’s big day. I wasn’t sure whether Simona had just added me to the list automatically or whether it had been a deliberate attempt to rub my nose in what I had missed out on. She’d also posted them on social media. I still hadn’t looked at them. It was like she wanted to make sure that I saw them. Sitting in front of the lake, I started to scroll through the images.

  Blake and Simona looked happy on their wedding day, Simona slightly more than Blake with her big grin. However, I had never actually seen Blake grin, so that might not have meant much. I browsed through the photos and tried not to focus on the sea of Big Bird bridesmaids behind her, vowing that I would choose a softer color for my own bridal party if I was ever a bride.

  There was a photo just of Pippa, holding onto a bouquet of yellow daffodils. I quickly turned the screen off.

  Blake and Simona may have looked happy, but I’d heard a rumor, thanks to a little bird—well, Sue—that things were not all rosy and that the new marriage was already on the rocks. After less than two months.

  “I finally looked at the wedding photos.”

  “Huh?”

  “Simona and Blake. Apparently, they are having issues already. Well, they did rush into it…”

  Jackson seemed a little jumpy that evening, and he didn’t seem to be fully focused on what I was saying. I thought that it was maybe because he still hadn’t found a job he was interested in and he was startin
g to get restless. Hearing about Simona and Blake only seemed to make him more on edge.

  He stood up and started to pace. His nervous energy was starting to rub off on me and I grew nervous as well. “Jackson?” I asked. “Don’t you love it here as well?”

  He stopped pacing and took a deep breath. I could have sworn there was a light sweat that had just broken out on his forehead. Then, before I could even ask what was wrong—he wasn’t having chest pains, was he?—he was on one knee in front of me. He reached clumsily into his pocket and pulled out a box.

  “What do you think of marrying me, Rachael Robinson?”

  “Jackson…” I gasped as I looked at the ring. “Don’t you think this is a little too soon?” My heart was beating so hard, I was sure that it was going to scare the ducks away. I searched Jackson’s eyes. Did he know what I was thinking?

  “We are not Simona and Blake,” he said, reassuring me. “We have known each other for years, and we’re not rushing into this. At least, I don’t feel like we are. Do you feel that we are?”

  I shook my head. “No,” I whispered, my hands trembling.

  “So?” he asked, letting out a little nervous laugh. He needed me to put him out of his misery. “Will you marry me?”

  I’d known the answer to the question pretty much since the day I had met him. “Yes, of course I will.”

  He put the ring on my finger and I threw my arms around him. This was actually happening! The last few months had been some of the hardest in my life and now here I was, so full of happiness that everything else seemed to fade away.

  Jackson sat beside me on the porch, looking very serious. “If we are to do this, Rachael, make a fresh start, then it has to be just that. A total blank slate. We both have to leave detective work behind. No more mysteries, no more murders. No more digging around. The past is in the past, okay?”

  I nodded. “Okay. I promise.”

  11

  We may not have made our wedding vows yet, but we had made other vows to each other. We’d promised to stop investigating. His was more of a professional promise. He’d told me that he was going to take serious strides to find a new career path. A complete change of pace. For me, it was a little more of a casual commitment. I’d never actually made a living out of being a detective, although I’d always thought that would be a very cool thing to do. It was always something I’d just done in my spare time. So, you would have thought it would have been easy to let go.

  It just wasn’t that easy. I would dream about Rogan’s body. Try to remember the details of that night. Of who had gone into the kitchen. Try to figure out which one of my former friends and co-workers had wanted Rogan dead.

  I shook the thoughts off again. Maybe I just needed a job. Hiking and sitting in nature had been good for a few weeks, but now I was starting to get as restless as Jackson, so I started working on my resume.

  Not that there weren’t other things to fill my time with. I had a wedding to plan after all, and Sue was the first person I called. She came the following weekend to help me with all the myriad of preparations. I was starting to get entirely overwhelmed. I’d never even been involved with wedding planning before, let alone planned my own. I was starting to see why Simona had needed so much time off to plan hers. If only I could call on her for help.

  Sue climbed out of the car and greeted me with a wave. She was wearing cat’s eyes sunglasses and a black and white polka dot dress. I had an arm full of wedding magazines all ready as I started to hurry down the driveway “Help!” I called out.

  “I don’t see why you can’t just have the wedding here,” she gasped when she first saw the cottage on the lake. And when she saw the view out back, she was completely flabbergasted about why we would ever have the wedding anywhere else.

  “Here? At the house we live in?” I laughed a little. I could see what she was getting at. But we spent all day, every day at the place.

  “Why not? It’s more beautiful than most wedding venues.”

  I considered it for a moment, then shook my head.

  “This is where we live,” I said with a little laugh. “Neither of us have jobs, remember. It’s beautiful, but a change of scenery for the day will be appreciated. I was thinking of going more traditional for the wedding anyway. I was thinking about a chapel?” I asked, making it sound like I was a little unsure, waiting for Sue to give me her permission or at least a say that this was an acceptable thing to do.

  “Sounds perfect,” she said with a smile. “But the bridesmaids should get ready here by the lake, and have our photographs taken here. It’s too much of a beautiful view to not take advantage of.”

  I heartily agreed. “And I’ve already decided on the color. Pink. Much better than yellow,” I said, still feeling a weird competition between Simona and I. Like my wedding needed to be better than hers. Not that she would ever be invited. She would never even know what mine was like. Unless I posted all the photos on social media. Which I did actually intend to do.

  I went a little quiet and looked up at Sue. “I’m not sure who else I will ask, to be honest. To be bridesmaid, I mean.”

  “You won’t ask P— ”

  I shot her a slight glare to let her know not to even say that name, so she swallowed her words back down.

  Sue pursed her lips. “What about Simona?”

  I sighed and shook my head. Sure. Maybe that was a slightly better suggestion, but not by much. “I don’t think I’ll even invite anyone from Belldale. Except for you.”

  Thank goodness for Sue. She was the only one out of all my friends who had not even entertained the nasty rumors, and the only one who had stood by me in the end.

  “You don’t think you’ll regret that?” Sue asked quietly. “Not inviting anyone from the old days, I mean.”

  I couldn’t believe that Belldale was being referred to as the ‘old days.’ How had that happened?

  I shook my head and started to flip through one of the perfume-scented bridal magazines. “The only thing I will regret is inviting any of those people, and inviting all that chaos back into my life again. I made a promise to Jackson to leave the past in the past, and that is what I intend to do.”

  It wasn’t just the people of Belldale that I had vowed to leave in the past. I’d also promised to leave the detective work behind and Jackson had promised me the same. The day after Sue had gone back home, he came in and told me that he had an interview the next day at the local veterinarian’s. To be a veterinary assistant.

  “Wow. That is a big change of pace,” I said, feeling a little stunned. I had soup cooking on the stove behind me, about to burn. “Don’t you need some sort of degree for that?”

  Jackson shook his head and stuck his pinkie into the soup to taste it. It was pumpkin and sweet potato. His favorite. “Not to just be an assistant. But I am thinking about going back to school, actually.”

  He was?

  “If it was something I wanted to pursue full time, you’re right, I would need the piece of paper.”

  I nodded and turned down the stove, hurrying over to the kitchen table to turn one of the magazines upside-down. The design of the dress that the cover model was wearing was a little too close to the design I had in mind for mine. Not time for him to see that yet.

  “What have you been up to today, aside from cooking this delicious soup?” Jackson narrowed his eyes a little. The question he asked wasn’t serious—I was pretty sure—but there was a little bit of a sting in the tail. “You haven’t been solving any mysteries, have you?”

  I laughed. “No. Wedding planning is keeping me more than occupied.” I turned back to the soup and stirred it furiously.

  It was true, but he wasn’t completely wrong to be suspicious. Whenever I had an empty moment or my mind was unoccupied, that was exactly where it would drift to. The Rogan mystery. Where was the missing piece to this puzzle? There had to have been someone else there that night. Or something that I was overlooking.

  It was the one case I had n
ever been able to solve and the loose thread bugged me. Kept me up at night.

  There was one night where I couldn’t sleep at all, and I just kept rolling over in bed as the murder ran through my head. When Jackson asked me why I was tossing and turning and not letting him get any sleep, I lied and said I had a stomachache.

  I got up for a glass of water. It was almost midnight. I sat down with it at the dining table and tried to remember. Where had Bronson been around the time that Rogan was killed? I hadn’t seen him go into the kitchen—apart from when Laura had asked for a glass of water, which apparently, her sprained wrist stopped her from getting. But Bronson had been straight in and out.

  Or had he?

  I just couldn’t remember.

  My thoughts were interrupted by my cell phone ringing. I almost dropped the glass and reached for the phone. Who would be calling at midnight?

  Blake. My heart started to beat faster, wondering if maybe there was finally some news—that we finally knew who had killed Rogan. Otherwise, there was no reason for him to be calling so late at night. I quickly picked up the phone and took the call outside.

  It was freezing. I wrapped my robe around me and pressed ‘accept’ on the call.

  “Blake?”

  “We got an offer,” he said flatly, without even saying hello or making any small talk with me.

  “Offer for what?” I asked, unable to wrap my head around what he was telling me.

  “An offer from a buyer. Someone actually wants to take over this place. They must be from out of town.” He almost snorted. “They must be clueless as to what went on.”

  Wow. “Right. What are they offering?”

  “You are not going to believe this,” Blake said. “They are offering slightly over what you put as the asking price.”