We fall into a silence.
Then he takes my hands in his and rubs my knuckles with his thumbs. "What now?"
I'm not sure of my options, and I'm less sure of what I want.
"Take it slow," we say in unison.
I softly chuckle at our timing, but the sound feels and sounds hollow.
"I should go," he says and leans toward me. He cups my cheeks with his large hands and presses his mouth to my forehead.
When he pulls back, I inwardly sigh. Despite my current level of distrust, I like him close. I love how he makes me feel protected, safe, and special.
"I'll call you later," he says.
I nod and get out of the truck. He waits while I walk across the gravel parking area and into my building. I run upstairs, unlock my apartment door, and plop onto the couch. I hug a throw pillow to my chest and sigh. This would be a great time for some dead aunt quips or even a stuffed animal.
My cell rings. I dig it out of my purse. It's Michael.
After the police came and took Warren away, Raina said she wasn't sure what she was going to tell her family. If I answer, I may not know what is okay to discuss and what is off-limits.
But I take the chance. I don't want to ignore his calls. "Hello?"
"Hey, I was hoping I'd catch you." He doesn't sound sad or angry. That's a good sign.
I fling off my cape and then lean back into the cushions. "What's going on?"
"A lot. Raina told me everything and how she confided in you."
I sink further into the cushions, shut my eyes, and breathe a sigh of relief. "I'm glad. I don't want to keep secrets."
I push thoughts of Julian aside. I'm assuming and hoping that Raina knew better than to say anything about his involvement. Julian probably schooled her when he helped her.
"Yeah, me neither."
"What's going on with Warren?" I ask.
"The police tend to believe it was an accident, but flashing a gun and threatening the two of you is more serious."
I hope I won't have to testify in court. I can't tell all I know, and I don't want to perjure myself. Orange is not my color. I'm not going to worry about that now though. If the police can get Warren to confess, my testimony may not be necessary.
"This whole thing has me thinking though," Michael says.
"Oh yeah. About what?" I snuggle against the cushions again.
"I've decided to not go back home."
I feel one of my brows raise. "You mean not now, not until after the wedding?"
"No. I mean ever. I'm moving back to Long Island."
Oh crap. I just told Julian that Michael's going home.
"That's great. I'm sure your mother is thrilled." I forgot to try to convince him to stay. I guess I don't have to now. I wish I felt happier though. Not that I don't want Michael staying in town. I sincerely think it's great. I'll probably be more enthused in a week when I've recovered from the attempted-murder lag I'm feeling.
"Yes, she is beside herself. She's already cleaning the guest room. I hate to tell her I will not be moving back into my childhood bedroom."
I laugh. That sounds like Ma.
"I hope I'll get to see you more often, especially since you're officially my only friend in town," he says.
Oh boy.
I swallow hard. "Um, Michael, about that. You are aware I'm involved, right?" Even if I'm not exactly sure how that's going.
"Yes, of course. You made that clear."
"Good, 'cause you made a comment that night at your mother's at dinner, and she made assumptions and…"
"I'm sorry, Gianna. I didn't mean to allow her to think something is going on between us. I'll let her know. I hope that doesn't mean I've already lost my only friend."
I laugh again. "No, it doesn't. I'm happy to be your only friend. That makes you my only one as well."
"Perfect. How about lunch tomorrow?"
"Sounds great." We make plans and hang up.
Well, I have a friend now. I've been wanting one since I moved back home. Of course, I didn't expect it to be an old crush. I'm sure Julian will be fine with it. Not. Never. He'll have to understand though.
I get up and head to my room to use the bathroom. I open my door and see a man standing not four inches from my face. He has shocking white hair that stands out in tufts to the side of his extremely wrinkly head.
My heart leaps and fights against its restraints in my chest while I scream and bloody scream.
It isn't until my third scream that I realize no human being has skin that looks that gray, and the eyes aren't sunken because he's old and horrifying looking but because they're normally holes.
It's a mask.
I step forward and yank it off, knowing darn well who's under it.
Yep, it's Enzo, and he's laughing his butt off.
I throw the mask at his face and am grateful I didn't pee on myself. "Gosh, I hate you."
"It's only fair after what you and Aunt Stella pulled," he says around his laughter.
I march to the front door and open it. There's no way I'm going to the bathroom while he's still in my apartment. God only knows what I'll open the door to. "Get out."
By the time he walks to the other side of the door, he's only giggling. "Remember to be careful what you put out there, sis. Karma is a sneaky brother with a gun."
I slam the door on him and shout, "And I have ghosts."
His laughter echoes as he climbs down the stairs.
Darn brothers.
* * * * *
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* * * * *
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jennifer Fischetto is the National Bestselling Author of the Jamie Bond Mysteries. Unbreakable Bond, her adult debut novel, has received a National Reader's Choice award nomination. She writes dead bodies for ages 13 to six-feet-under. When not writing, she enjoys reading, cooking, singing (off-key), and watching an obscene amount of TV. She also adores trees, thunderstorms, and horror movies—the scarier the better. She lives in Western Mass with her family and is currently working on her next project.
To learn more about Jennifer Fischetto, visit her online at: http://jenniferfischetto.com
* * * * *
BOOKS BY JENNIFER FISCHETTO
Gianna Mancini Mysteries:
Lipstick, Lies & Dead Guys
Christmas, Spies & Dead Guys (holiday short story)
Mini Skirts, Mai Tais & Dead Guys
Cupcakes, Butterflies & Dead Guys
Jamie Bond Mysteries:
Unbreakable Bond
Secret Bond
Lethal Bond
Dangerous Bond
Danger Cove Bakery Mysteries
Death by Scones
Disturbia Diaries:
I Spy Dead People
* * * * *
SNEAK PEEK
If you enjoyed this Gianna Mancini Mystery, check out this sneak peek of another exciting novel from Gemma Halliday Publishing:
DEATH BY SCONES
A DANGER COVE
BAKERY MYSTERY
by
JENNIFER FISCHETTO
&
ELIZABETH ASHBY
CHAPTER ONE
One, two, three dashes of pure lemon extract. I rarely measured when I baked anymore. I'd done it all my life and could eyeball a teaspoon or tablespoon perfectly. I breathed in a deep lungful and smiled. Raw dough smelled of hope and possibilities. The tanginess of the lemon trifecta—extract, juice, and zest—mixed with the olive oil, sugar, and eggs was heaven. Grams swore up and down that it was impossible to smell sugar and that it was the memory of the way it tasted that I thought I smelled, but hogwash. I had the nose of a bloodhound, and I knew the sweet raw scent of the tiniest grain.
I thrust my hips to the right and then the left. The skirt of my black-and-white, polka-dot halter swing dress
made a whooshing sound. A glance to the other side of the bakery's kitchen showed me that our full-time baker, Joe, wasn't watching. Good. Food needed to be celebrated, but it didn't mean I wanted an audience. I'd prefer if Joe didn't see me getting jiggy with it this early in the morning.
I turned off the Hobart stand mixer and admired the yellow flecks in the gorgeous, pale batter. This was a new recipe. One that had come to me last night as I crawled into bed.
One of Grams' many friends had a farm in Southern Cali. The family had sent her a crate full of baby spinach last week. It was as if they'd forgotten only the two of us lived in the small, white-shingled house by the beach. We'd been eating spinach for days, and while I loved the tender green leaves, it would go bad before we finished it all. So last night I made a spinach, mushroom, and fontina frittata and a bucket of pesto. We still had enough for lasagna and several vibrant smoothies.
I reached for the container of nut-free pesto, dropped a couple of large dollops into the batter, and mixed just until incorporated.
After filling two jumbo muffin tins, I popped them into the oven, tucked an escaping strand of my long dark hair back into my hair net, and started cleanup. A quick glance at the clock told me I still had an hour before I needed to open the family bakery. My bakery!
I thought of the box of party decorations I'd left here yesterday, just waiting to be hung, and I giggled. I had purchased balloons, streamers, and a huge banner that read: Re-Grand Opening! Maybe it was cheesy, but it made me smile.
Grams, a.k.a. Cinnamon Templeton, had opened Cinnamon Sugar Bakery twenty years ago. I was ten. She'd built the shop with sweat, tears, and hard work. Not that I'd ever seen Grams cry. Except at Mom's funeral.
Today was the first day of her retirement. She had groomed me all my life and had handed over the keys yesterday afternoon. Today was my first official day as owner.
For my fifth birthday, Santa had gotten me an Easy-Bake Oven. That's when I'd known I'd bake forever. Once I'd run out of packaged mixes, Grams had helped me concoct my own creations. Pretty soon, the tiny pink oven had begun to collect dust in the corner of her kitchen while she and I used her real oven to make bigger, more lavish cakes, cupcakes, and cookies.
She always said, "Riley, dear, you are Cinnamon Sugar's inspiration. If it wasn't for your tiny pink oven, I wouldn't have remembered how much I loved baking with my mother as a child." I was just happy to work in the kitchen and create the delicious treats. I'd never thought about Grams retiring. She was too young for that. But during the last five years, she'd started talking about cruises and trips to Italy and France after she hung up her apron strings, and I started envisioning wearing those strings. Well, the apron too.
The bakery's back doorknob jiggled, and I flinched. Other than Grams or Joe, no one would be here this early or use the delivery entrance. And Grams wasn't in town. She'd left to visit friends last night. Her first official retirement vacation.
"Did you forget to lock it again?" Joe asked and picked up one of our French rolling pins.
He was a big guy. Six feet of bulk and heft and with a jagged scar that ran from the corner of his right brow down to the tip of his nose. He'd been in a knife fight as a teen and said cooking had helped him turn his life around. I loved him. Even when I'd been a kid and he'd first started working here, I'd never once feared him. The rolling pin looked like a toy in his beefy hands, and I had little doubt he'd know how to use it, even though he was up there in age—somewhere between Grams' sixty-nine and my thirty.
I opened my mouth to say I couldn't remember if I'd locked the door but just ended up acting like a fish gulping for air. There was nothing I could say to defend myself. I, Riley Spencer, was absent minded. I was known for forgetting where I placed my phone or keys and not locking up behind me properly. It wasn't an everyday occurrence but usually happened when I was also baking. What could I say? Tossing ingredients into a bowl and whipping up something decadent was foremost on my mind. Luckily, I was also known for my Death by Mocha Brownies.
The door pushed open, and standing on the other side was my best friend since third grade, Tara Fielding. Her straight black hair hung loose. She wore her usual garb of black leggings, black sneakers, and a yellow hoodie. She looked like a bumblebee.
I giggled in my relief that she wasn't an ax-wielding serial killer. Not that there were any serial killers in Danger Cove, Washington, ax-wielding or not.
Joe groaned, but I saw the relief on his face. He went back to rolling out the dough for cinnamon buns.
"Did I miss something?" Tara asked after stepping inside and shutting and locking the door behind her.
I shook my head. No sense in reminding her of my flaws. "What are you doing here so early?"
Tara ran the only dance school in town. She taught some afternoon classes, but most were held in the evening and night. She was not a morning person.
"I wanted to wish you good luck on your first day as boss lady," she said with a tight smile. As much as I believed her words, she was biting the inside of her cheek. This was only half the reason she was here.
I closed the distance between us, in case she didn't want Joe to overhear. "And?"
She glanced away. Something was definitely going on. Tara never shied away from anything. She was my brave rock. The one who held my hand during so many insecure moments. And there had been plenty. What if this was something serious? Oh my gosh, was she sick? She looked healthy. She got plenty of exercise and mostly ate right. Her skin was her normal tanned color, no jaundice or peculiar looking moles, from what I could tell.
The buzzer went off, jerking me out of my train of panic. Joe opened the oven with the oatmeal cookie bars, and I kept my attention on my best friend.
Somehow, in these few short seconds, I'd taken Tara's hesitation and turned it into a ginormous, life-altering problem that would require radiation, chemotherapy, countless cherry-chocolate cupcakes, romantic comedies, and an endless supply of tissues.
I swallowed hard and squeezed her shoulder. "Hey, whatever it is, we can get through it."
She stared me straight in the eye and whispered, "Duncan has a ring."
I blinked repeatedly, allowing my brain time to process her words. Unless he had a fatal case of ringworm, I realized my flair of drama had reared its ugly head. I was so glad I hadn't uttered any of my crazy thoughts.
"What are you talking about?" I asked.
"I spent the night at Duncan's. When he got up to shower this morning, I was rummaging through his dresser…" She pointed a finger in my face. "No judgments."
I smirked and shook my head.
"And I found a small, red velvet box. The kind that house engagement rings."
My heart began to swell but in the opposite way from before. "Well, how many carats? Is it round, square, or ooh, oval?"
She took a step back and scoffed. "How the hell should I know? I didn't open it. I saw the box, slammed the drawer shut, and then hightailed it out of there."
Of course she did. Tara didn't do serious. She preferred her relationships light and fluffy, like meringue. She and Grams were the same in the romance department. I, however, wanted the fantasy. The white picket fence, the dog, and the two-point-five children. Well, actually three, 'cause half a child would be gross.
Duncan Pickles was a journalist for the Cove Chronicles, and in stereotypical reporter form, he was one of the more unscrupulous ones. He had a killer nose for news and didn't care how he gathered his information. But he was six feet of blond, blue-eyed, bulging, bronzed perfection, so Tara overlooked his lack of humanity. But they'd only been seeing one another for a month. As far as I knew, it wasn't serious enough for a ring, and Duncan hadn't seemed like a picket fence guy either.
"How would you feel if Will got down on bended knee this afternoon?" she asked.
Will Hendrickson and I had only been on four dates, so I immediately got her point.
I pulled her farther into the room and pulled out a stool at one of the steel co
unters. Then I went to the coffeemaker and poured her a cup. Joe glanced at me from the corner of his eye. He was too much of a gentleman to act like he'd heard our conversation, but I believed otherwise. I was certain he'd collected and stored bits of gossip over the years. All the times Tara and I cheered or cried over boys, college, and just life. But not once had he ever mentioned any of it to Grams.
Joe had been with Cinnamon Sugar Bakery since the first day, and despite never sharing holidays together, Grams and I considered him family.
I set the mug and a pint of half-and-half in front of Tara. She drank the stuff without sugar. I wasn't sure how. It was too bitter that way for me. I sat beside her. "So now what are you going to do?"
"Not see him anymore, of course."
Duncan was slimy, and Tara deserved better, commitment or no commitment, but I wondered if she was reacting too harshly. Plus, a tiny part of me felt sad for Duncan. Slimy or not, getting dumped sucked.
"Maybe it's an empty box," I said and waited for her to scoff.
She didn't though. She just stared into her cup. "We haven't been together long enough for him to propose."
There was my level-headed friend.
"Exactly. It was probably a misunderstanding. I mean, it's not like he got down on one knee."
She lifted the right side of her top lip. "What if he has someone on the side, and it's for her?"
Oh gosh, that wasn't any better. And technically, if this other supposed woman was the one he planned to marry, then wouldn't that have made Tara "the one on the side"? But I had no plans to voice that.
"I wouldn't worry about that," I said.
She stared at the wall across the room and had a faraway look in her eye. "Yeah, you're right. I won't."
I considered leaning forward to check her forehead for a fever. Tara never let go of a situation that quickly. Being a Virgo, she tended to become obsessive about some things. It usually started out from concern or analyzing something, and before you knew it, she couldn't let it go.
Cupcakes, Butterflies & Dead Guys (Gianna Mancini Mysteries Book 3) Page 20
