Pecan Pies and Dead Guys

by Angie Fox

  I did.

  “Don’t dig too hard into the skin,” she added. Her lips curled into a predatory smile. “We don’t want to leave any evidence.”

  Sweet Jesus. I tightened until she was satisfied. “Whatever you want, it’s yours,” I said quickly. Anything to keep her from shooting me before I could attempt an escape. Although my options were severely limited with my hands bound.

  “Good.” She nudged the gun at me. “I want you to turn around, walk to my truck, and get inside.” The corner of her mouth ticked up. “We’re going for a ride.”

  Oh, holy no. If I got into that truck, I’d be as good as dead.

  We were out in the middle of nowhere, and if Virginia had Beau, it could take hours before he made it back. I hadn’t told anyone where I was going, and I had no way to defend myself.

  No ghost, either. I’d left Frankie back at the house. Not that he could do much to defend me against a living killer.

  Think.

  I needed to work out an escape plan, but until then, I had to stall. “I don’t understand why you’re doing this,” I said, reeling a bit to the right, toward the yellow lady sculpture, the one with the ginormous lips.

  “I don’t know why I have to do this either,” Zoey grated out. “Do you not like pie or something?”

  It was her.

  Of course, it was her.

  “You left the pecan pies in my house,” I said flatly.

  “The first one wasn’t poisoned,” she said, defensive. “I was being kind.”

  Maybe, but the pie that poor Cammi had eaten was sure deadly. “You tried to poison me. Why?”

  “It wasn’t enough for you to break Beau’s heart,” she said, watching my every move. “You had to lead him on, even after he’s with me.”

  Lord in heaven. If there was one thing I didn’t want to die for, it was Beau Wydell. “I don’t want him,” I protested. “I thought you were good for him.”

  But she wasn’t listening. “You don’t believe in him. You don’t support his dreams. You never deserved him.” She aimed her gun at my head again, as if itching to pull the trigger. “You brought this on yourself, Verity.”

  I backed away, closer to the statue. I doubted it was thick enough to stop a bullet. I had to keep her talking.

  “You were watching my house,” I said. She must have been to know when I’d be gone.

  “Hardly.” She smirked. “Lauralee tells me all about where you go and what you do. She even keeps your house keys in her purse.”

  Oh no.

  Zoey twisted her lips into a grin. “It was so easy to borrow her car to go buy some produce, then stop by the hardware store to make my own set of keys to your house. Sweet, trusting Lauralee.” She tilted her head. “I think I’ll keep her as a friend. She’ll be so sad when she loses you.”

  There was no way I was letting this psycho anywhere near my friend or her boys. I had to figure out a way out of this.

  The cuffs were light like they’d come from a commercial store rather than police supply. Maybe they wouldn’t hold.

  If I could get my hands free, I’d have options.

  “Now come on out to the truck,” she said. “You don’t want to end it here. We’d leave a mess all over Beau’s art.”

  Ha. The yellow lady sculpture with the huge pink lips was enough of a mess. But it was metal, and the skirt and lips were wide. It wouldn’t be a great shield, but it was better than nothing.

  I took another minuscule step to the right. “You don’t want to do this, Zoey.”

  “I don’t,” she agreed. “I like you. If you hadn’t messed things up with Beau, I’d be your best friend.”

  Yeah, I didn’t think I needed her brand of friendship.

  Still, as long as she was talking, she wasn’t shooting. If I could keep the conversation going, I had a chance.

  “My boyfriend’s a cop,” I said. “He’ll put you in jail for the rest of your life.”

  She stared at me long and hard. “I don’t think so. I got away with the girl in the ravine.”

  My mouth went dry.

  She enjoyed my shock. “Ellis the Great won’t solve that one, either.”

  “You’re a serial killer.” I regretted the words as soon as I said them.

  If my accusation touched her, she didn’t show it. “Maya was awful,” Zoey said as if it were a fact. As if we were friends again, making small talk at Virginia’s picnic. “Maya told Clint he’d never make it as a musician. I mean, who does something like that?” She notched her chin up. “Maya was completely wrong for him. I supported his dreams like she never could.”

  “Maybe they were a bad match,” I suggested, scooting toward the statue a tiny bit more. Beau’s art might be ugly, but if it could block a bullet, I would call it ten kinds of beautiful. “That doesn’t mean Maya had to die.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Zoey lowered the gun a bit as she laughed. “No, she definitely had to go. Otherwise, he’d be carrying a torch for her forever. Why do the artistic ones always have to be so fragile? Like Beau, still thinking about what might have been if you’d stayed together. Do you know he had a file of pictures just of you?”

  “I have an idea.” She’d left them on my counter.

  “That was the last straw,” she vowed. “Once you’re gone, I can stick with him long-term. Make a real go of it in Sugarland.”

  “You can be happy here without killing me,” I said.

  At least she could have been.

  Zoey barked out a laugh. “I wish that were true.” She raised the gun again. “He’s still hung up on you. I’m going to fix that for him.”

  I moved a few more inches toward the statue. I was almost there.

  “I know what you’re trying to do.” Something like compassion crossed Zoey’s face. “Running won’t solve anything. It’ll just make you suffer.”

  We’d see about that.

  I dove past the yellow lady and landed behind a sheet metal wall studded with old tires.

  “Damn it, Verity,” she said as if I were a stubborn cat refusing to get in the carrier.

  She edged around the statue, trying to get a bead on me. “It’ll be quick, I promise. Most of the girls don’t even see it coming. I try to be gentle.”

  I backed up several feet and ducked behind the spider, the one made from repurposed rebar with chunks of concrete clinging to it.

  “Come on,” she coaxed. “Let’s go to the ravine. It’s pretty there.”

  She held the gun steady, stalking me.

  The spider statue was top-heavy and didn’t leave a lot of places to hide. I shoved it at her, sending loose concrete flying as it hit the floor.

  “What the hell?” She jumped back, startled.

  I’d missed, but at least I’d distracted her. I zigzagged sideways and ran past the three-headed snake sculpture. I looped the flimsy cuffs underneath a jagged coil and gave a quick, hard tug. One of the loops holding them together snapped apart. Point one to the snake!

  With my hands free, I grabbed one of the hubcap heads and flung it at Zoey like a Frisbee.

  She cried out. “You bitch!”

  Good. It must have hit her.

  I ran into a forest of spindly, screaming trees made from papier-mâché. Their bloodshot eyes glared at me, but I barely noticed. I was busy looking for a back door.

  Zoey had the front covered. If I tried to escape that way, I was as good as dead. That left the rear. Only she knew this place and I didn’t.

  And she was closing in fast.

  Too bad I’d left my bag—and my phone—in the car in my haste to rescue Zoey.

  I crept through the fabricated forest, as fast and as silently as I could, until I reached the rear of the barn.

  The double doors had been sealed, wired over with a trio of brightly colored planks of wood.

  No!

  “Veeeeeerity…” Zoey called from the other side of the forest.

  I had a minute until she found me. Maybe less.

 
I grabbed for a hot pink wooden plank that had been wired over the largest section of door. Splinters dug into my skin. It didn’t budge. I braced a foot on the door and pulled harder. It wobbled, then slid out.

  One down, two to go.

  I heard a gasp behind me and spun around.

  Zoey stood at the edge of the papier-mâché trees, the gun at her side as she stared in dismay.

  I chucked the board at her firing hand. It didn’t even come close to hitting her—my aim was completely off, but she still shrieked with horror.

  “That’s the Blocking of the Muse!”

  A sculpture? The fricking barn door was a sculpture?

  I ripped the second board free in one swipe and tossed it at her. This one was lime green with wavy purple lines.

  “Stop!” She tried to dodge, but it nailed her in the knee, and she stumbled.

  I went for the last board. She raised her gun. I was wide open.

  Bam!

  She blew a hole in the door, right next to my head.

  “Oh, my God!” she bellowed when she saw the damage. “Look what you made me do!”

  Holy Jesus. There was no way I’d get the last board off before she shot me dead. If and when she got up the nerve to desecrate Beau’s art again.

  And there was nowhere left to run, no art that could stop a bullet.

  I ran to the left, toward Beau’s Armani suit nightmare.

  Bam!

  I had no idea where the next bullet went, but I swore I felt it whiz past my shoulder. I’d never make it to the door, and once she shot me, she’d have me. She could tie me up and toss me into the river or down an old mine shaft, and nobody would ever suspect her.

  I had to take her out. I had to end this.

  I screamed, falling down onto the floor behind the huge Armani mess. It stood in a thick wash bucket that I hoped was filled with rocks. “My leg!” I cried. She’d missed me, but my voice still edged on very real, acute panic. “Please, no. I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take the pain.”

  “Aw, Verity.” Zoey’s voice went from angry to sweet in a few terrifying heartbeats. “It’s okay, baby.” She said it like a Sugarland mamma as she stalked my hiding place, gun at the ready. “I won’t leave you hurting.”

  I scrunched behind the statue as she drew closer.

  Closer.

  “It’ll all be over soon,” she coaxed. “Then there’ll be no more pain ever again.”

  I cowered on my knees as if I wasn’t a threat, as if I’d given in.

  “All you have to do is relax and let me take care of you.”

  Blood pounded in my temples as she stalked me, and it took everything I had not to run.

  I had one shot at this. I watched her every step as she came closer…closer…

  I waited until she stood directly on the other side of the scarecrow of suits and doll heads.

  Now.

  I shot to my feet, kicking the sculpture hard right above the base. The top-heavy statue fell like a fighter hitting the canvas, right onto Zoey, whose bold talk and big gun didn’t do much to help her handle a seven-foot-tall metal monstrosity.

  Beau’s monument to office drones and dead Armani suits took her down with a raucous clatter. Decapitated doll heads skittered across the barn floor, and so did Zoey’s gun.

  I ran for the gun like my life depended on it. Which it did.

  It stopped just short of the back door. I grabbed it and spun around to train it on its owner, refusing to turn my back on Sugarland’s first and only serial killer.

  But I shouldn’t have worried about Zoey.

  She lay underneath the sculpture, knocked out cold. She’d need stitches and a dump truck full of Tylenol when she came to, but I was safe. And alive. And for once, I truly appreciated Beau’s art.

  Chapter 25

  “Verity’s right. Zoey is a serial killer,” Ellis said. We stood outside the library the next day with his brother. Beau’s girlfriend had been taken into custody, and as we spoke, the FBI team was investigating his barn. “She is suspected in at least one other California murder, another woman who dated her ex-boyfriend before her.”

  “I sure know how to pick them.” Beau shook his head. “What’s wrong with me?”

  “Nothing,” I assured him, ignoring the way Ellis almost choked. “You’re making good changes in your life. You’ll find someone.”

  Beau winced and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “I’m going back to the law firm on Monday.”

  “It’s a good place to be until you know where you want to end up,” Ellis said. “But I do have to tell you the guys at the station were impressed with your pictures of Sugarland.”

  Beau ducked his chin, embarrassed at the praise. That was a new one. He glanced at me. “Your sister has offered to display my pictures at the library,” he said. “We’re going to call the exhibit Images of Sugarland. She thinks I can make a go of it as a photographer.”

  “You have real talent,” I told him. He’d captured something special with his candid shots.

  He cocked his head, and a bit of the old Beau surfaced. “I do have my moments.”

  Change was never easy, or fast. “I think you’re on your way.”

  Lauralee stuck her head out of a trailer parked in front of the library. Zoey’s food truck had been taken as evidence, but she’d scrounged a replacement. It was small, rusted at the edges, and only held a cooler and her serving supplies, but she made it work. She’d set up a barbeque grill outside and a cashier’s table out front.

  “Order up,” she said, carrying a stack of paper plates. “Well, as soon as I get it off the grill.”

  She had barbequed pizzas going, and from the line out front of her trailer, I’d say she had a hit on her hands.

  “Need some help?” I asked, strolling over to join her.

  She pointed me toward the cashier’s table. “Have at it.”

  Lauralee served, and I counted change until we’d made it a third of the way through the line and it was time to put more pizzas on the grill. They smelled amazing and looked even better, with crispy crusts flavored with smoke from the grill and Lauralee’s signature sauce bubbling up through the cheese.

  “You’re a pro at this,” I told her, watching her fuss over her creations.

  “Big Jim traded his table saw for this trailer, and once I earn enough, I’m going to buy my own food truck.” She gazed up at me, joyous. “I can do this, Verity. I really can.” She placed fresh grilled chicken on one of the pizzas. “I can make a living with my own business.”

  “I always knew you could.” The lunch crowd in Sugarland was lucky to have her.

  Melody strolled down the library steps and moseyed her way past Ellis, who smiled at something Beau said. She made her way toward us.

  “Can you handle a big order from the library?” Melody asked Lauralee, waving a notebook scrawled with orders.

  “As soon as I take care of my line,” she said. If my friend smiled any more, her face was going to freeze that way.

  It wouldn’t be a bad thing.

  “That was real nice what you did for Beau,” I told my sister, “offering to display his pictures like that.”

  “It wasn’t kindness,” she told me plain. “I can’t stand the guy. But he’s talented, and we need an entry into the Great Libraries Town History competition. I think Beau could win us a ribbon.”

  “That would be amazing.” For him and for Sugarland.

  Melody stiffened, and I followed her gaze.

  Virginia Wydell had pulled up in her Cadillac. There were no open spaces, so she double-parked.

  “Somebody needs to drop a house on her,” Melody murmured.

  Lauralee snickered. “Order up!” she called, pulling pizzas off the grill.

  Virginia wrinkled her nose as she exited her vehicle, whether from the smell of street food or from the crowd around the library, I couldn’t say. She squared her shoulders, bypassed her sons, and strode straight for me.

  �
��Why don’t you give Lauralee a hand?” I asked Melody.

  “And miss this?” My sister balked. “Not on your life.”

  Virginia stopped inches away from me and just stared. I let her. I was used to her intimidation techniques by now, and they didn’t faze me.

  When I didn’t blink first, she did.

  “Beau has returned to the firm,” she stated.

  “He told me,” I said. “I think he made a good decision.”

  She snorted as if to say of course it was. Then, with stiff fingers, she reached behind her neck and unlatched the necklace she wore.

  I could only see the chain, but still I froze. I hoped against hope that this was the necklace I’d missed like a piece of me. And as she lifted it from under her smooth white silk shell, I saw my grandmother’s cross.

  “I believe this is yours,” she said, dropping it into my open palm.

  “It is,” I told her, running my fingers over the gold and silver filigree. “Thank you.”

  “I still don’t like you,” she said.

  At the moment, I didn’t care.

  “We have time,” I said to myself. “People change.” I’d seen it firsthand, with Beau, with Frankie, even with the crooked judge who’d died so many years ago. People could surprise you for good and when you least expected it.

  And so we enjoyed lunch outside, with good food, good friends, and one almost- mother-in-law.

  The necklace felt right once again on my neck, and I couldn’t stop reaching up to touch it. This was a sign of good fortune to come. I felt it in my bones.

  I allowed myself to relax, to simply be. Until Frankie shimmered into view next to me.

  “I thought you were taking Suds to the bank.” It was right across the square. Frankie’s old friend liked to visit his death spot sometimes. They’d hang out down in the tunnel Suds had started under the bank in 1932.

  “Yeah, but I thought you might want to see this,” Frankie said, letting his power flow over me, tingling my arms, making the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

  “Stop it,” I said, even as it washed completely through me. “I’d like a break from ghosts.”

  “Hold that thought,” Frankie said as I heard the faint tinkle of a familiar laugh coming from behind the trailer. It couldn’t be…