“That was some fine detective work,” he replied.
Phew.
Talk about a relief. So much for my fretting. It turned out he didn’t hold a grudge about me investigating his case, after all. I had never been happier to be wrong in my entire life. In addition, not only had I avoided being scolded, but David had even paid me a compliment.
I felt free to get playful with him again. “For a coffee shop manager, you mean?”
David was quick to correct me. “No.” He looked determined to make his stance on the topic perfectly clear. “That was some fine detective work—for anyone. Myself included. After all, you were able to do what I couldn’t—find Andrew’s killer. I owe you a debt of gratitude.”
Wow.
Not only had I been wrong again, but he was effusive with his praise. Refreshingly, I didn’t see even the slightest hint of resentment in his eyes about me being the one to crack this case. I had to admit, I definitely didn’t expect him to be so gracious. Especially after the awkward buildup to this conversation. Either way, I was happy to have his gratitude.
“Thank you,” I said.
He turned the spotlight back on me. “No. Thank you. I truly couldn’t have done this without you.”
Make no mistake, it was great to hear the kind words. Suffice it to say, it was infinitely better than being chewed out. But after having spent almost an entire week thinking about Andrew’s death almost nonstop, even more than the praise, it was the relief that mattered most to me.
I exhaled. “I’m just happy this is over.”
He concurred. “That makes two of us. I can suddenly breathe a little easier.”
Despite my sarcastic attitude and my attempts to make light of situations, the confrontation with Patrick lingered with me like a ghost that had decided to hang around and give me a spook every now and then.
Suddenly, I found myself a little shaken. After all, I had never confronted a killer before. Like an emotional earthquake, I had survived the initial shaking but was now staring down some unexpected aftershocks.
“The breathing is still a little heavy over here,” I said.
David saw how deeply this case had affected me. He leaned in and gave me a hug. When he was content that he had calmed me down, he turned to lighter conversation fare. “You look like you could use a donut.”
I couldn’t help but flash him a smile. “Is that your way of welcoming me into the investigative fold?”
He kept up the playful banter. “There’s no higher compliment I can give you as a police detective than being willing to share a donut with you.”
I chuckled. “In that case, I won’t turn you down.”
He offered me more words of encouragement. “Besides, it’s hard to feel anything but happy after eating a donut.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Just as my attitude was improving, I was rocked by another emotional aftershock. This one really shook me. I became lost in thought, to the point where David became concerned about me.
He couldn’t reconcile the sudden dip in my mood. “Sabrina, what’s on your mind?”
I took a deep breath before revealing what was on my mind. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy that we were able to get justice for Andrew, but by that same token, I can’t help but wonder when we’ll be able to do the same for my sister.”
“I know it’s hard, but you just have to hang in there. It’ll happen,” David said.
I knew what David was trying to do, and I appreciated his attempts to keep hope alive, but after all this time, I wanted answers.
“It has been ten years,” I replied. “Time has brought me no closer to finding out what happened to my sister. I’m tired of being patient.”
He looked at me with sympathetic eyes. “I know you are. I wish I had an answer for you.”
I groaned. “But you don’t, I know.”
He tried to instill some confidence in me. “What I know is that there’s an answer out there somewhere. We just haven’t found it yet.”
That was of little consolation to me. “That’s the problem. It has been so long that I can’t help but wonder if we’ll ever figure out the truth.”
He offered me words of encouragement. “Sabrina, you have to keep searching. You never know what might happen.”
David was doing his best, but I remained unconvinced.
I took a deep breath. “I guess.”
With each uninspired response that he heard from me, David became more desperate to keep me strong. “Look at this case, for example. All hope seemed to be lost. It looked like Andrew’s killer might not be found. Then you cracked the case.”
There was no way I could take complete credit for solving Andrew’s murder. There was another factor that had played a big role in apprehending his killer. “I can’t pretend like I didn’t get a little lucky.”
All of the usual means weren’t succeeding in cheering me up. David tried to appeal to my senses another way.
“I wish I could tell you that we have some big lead about your sister’s whereabouts. What I can tell you is this—losing faith will do no good. Hope is the most powerful thing we have. You have to keep believing that one day we’ll find her.”
I couldn’t dispute that, mostly because I knew he was spot-on. If I was ever going to find out what happened to my sister, I would need to keep faith. Hope wasn’t just the best tool I had at my disposal, it was the only one.
As David’s words sank in, I found myself instinctively clutching the heart-shaped locket around my neck.
“You’re right,” I said. “I will keep praying for answers—no matter how long it takes.”
The End.
Caramels with a Side of Murder
Chapter One
“Your sister will be found,” Miss Terri said.
I had to keep my jaw from hitting the floor. Terri hadn’t just made a bold prediction. She had just made the kind of statement that could change the direction of my life.
Before I could respond to her statement, I needed to get my bearings back. That was easier said than done. Especially since I had so many questions swirling through my head. At the top of the list was how Terri even knew about Jessica. I hadn’t mentioned my sister’s name to Terri. As a matter of fact, as I had sat down for this reading, I had purposefully given Terri very little to work with.
Maybe she truly was psychic. That thought gave me some serious pause, mostly because I had spent my entire life being skeptical of psychics and their so-called abilities.
The only reason I had ever come here in the first place was to support my friend Shannon. She was the one who wanted to see Miss Terri. It was only after Shannon finished getting her reading that she told me she had paid Miss Terri to give me a psychic reading of my own. I was going to decline, but Shannon told me that Miss Terri didn’t offer refunds.
I had entered Miss Terri’s parlor, not expecting much, only to have my mind blown. Now as I sat back in a plushy red chair in front of a wooden table with a New Age tablecloth on top of it, neither the red walls of the parlor, the dark mood lighting, nor even Miss Terri’s long, sparkling, ankle-length red dress distracted me from the issue at hand.
I stared deep into Miss Terri’s blue eyes as she cupped my right hand and looked at my palm.
“What did you just say?” I asked.
“You heard me. Your sister will be found.”
It was no less shocking hearing those words a second time as it had been the first. There was a good reason for that. Ten and a half years ago, my sister had gone out for a jog and had never come back. After months of investigating, the police weren’t able to turn up a single clue to determine what had happened to her. Even now, all these years later, Jessica still hasn’t been found. I still had no idea what happened to her.
My eyebrows arched. “Is Jessica alive?”
Miss Terri shrugged. “I can’t tell you that.”
“You can’t tell me, or you don’t know?”
She e
xhaled. “It’s murky.”
“What happened to her? How can I find her? Where is she?”
She shook her head. “I don’t have the answers to those questions.”
Desperation came to my voice. “But those are the most important questions.”
“I can only tell you what I see.”
“And you see that she will be found?” I asked.
She nodded.
“But nothing else?” I said.
Miss Terri shook her head. “Not at the moment.”
“Please, look harder. I need to know if she’s still alive.”
Miss Terri grimaced. “I wish I could tell you that, but there’s a limit to what I can see.”
“I’m begging you to try harder. If you could just give me a little more—anything more—”
“I’m sorry, but it doesn’t work that way.”
I pulled out my wallet and grabbed all the cash that I had on me. “Do you want more money? Is that what this is about? Because you can have it all. Take it.”
Amazingly enough, she didn’t reach for the cash. “This isn’t about money.”
My forehead wrinkled. “What are you talking about? Don’t you want my money?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to take your money.”
“Then why won’t you?”
“Because I wouldn’t be able to give you your money’s worth.”
“Look, this isn’t about the money. I would trade every penny I have to find out what happened to my sister,” I said.
Miss Terri gave me the most sympathetic look that she could muster. “I know. But like I already told you, I can only see so much.”
Chapter Two
I walked out of Miss Terri’s parlor feeling more baffled than ever. It was so difficult to wrap my head around what I had just heard. Not just her bold prediction, but her behavior in general. I had practically thrown money at her, and she had refused to take it. What kind of a psychic did that? Apparently, the kind who made a prediction that was bold enough to turn my life upside down.
I was in a daze when I reached the sidewalk where my friend Shannon waited for me. As I approached her, she was staring out into the distance. She was so deep in thought that she didn’t even notice me standing next to her. Clearly, I was not the only one who had been at the receiving end of a mind-blowing reading.
I reached out and put my hand on her shoulder, which startled her. Shannon placed her hand over her chest and turned to me with wide eyes.
“Sabrina, you scared me half to death,” Shannon said.
“Sorry. Are you ready to go?” I asked.
Shannon nodded. “Yeah. So how did it go?”
My thoughts were too jumbled to give her an answer to that question. I was still trying to process everything I had just been told. As much of a skeptic as I was about psychics, my gut was telling me not to dismiss what Terri had said.
“Sabrina.”
I pulled my head out of the clouds and glanced at my friend. “It wasn’t at all like I expected.”
“I know, right? I came here looking for answers. Instead, I’m leaving with a whole new set of questions.”
I saw a deeply troubled look in Shannon’s eyes. Unlike me, she seemed ready to talk about what was bothering her.
“What did Miss Terri tell you?” I asked.
“That I am going to choose the wrong guy.”
A shiver went down my spine. I took a moment to myself before replying. “What?”
“She told me that my love triangle would be coming to an end. At first, I was excited. Then she pulled the rug out from under my feet by telling me that I’m going to choose the wrong guy.”
I grimaced. “That’s awful.”
Shannon ran her fingers through her hair nervously. “That’s not even the worst of it.”
I scrunched my nose. “How could it get worse?”
“I asked her who the wrong guy was.”
“And?”
“She couldn’t tell me.”
I bit the corner of my lip. “So wait. She is convinced that you are going to choose the wrong guy, but she couldn’t tell you which guy that is?”
“Exactly. Crazy, huh?”
I nodded. “That’s maddening.”
“I don’t know what to do. I begged her to look deeper. To do everything in her power to give me a little more to work with.”
“What did she say to that?”
Shannon looked down at the ground. “That she had already told me everything that she knew.”
Shannon didn’t realize it, but I was in the same boat as her. I just kept my frustration bottled up. That was probably for the best. I had already pressed Miss Terri all that I could. Besides, Shannon was already enough of a mess without me adding fuel to the fire.
At least now I knew that Miss Terri was consistent. Apparently, bold predictions with jaw-dropping loose ends were her calling card. Unfortunately, professionally speaking, it was not the best thing to be known for. Very few businesses succeeded by frustrating their customers.
As I glanced at Shannon, she looked like she needed a hug. I opened my arms and wrapped them around her. “I’m sorry that you weren’t able to get the answers that you were looking for.”
She pulled back from the hug and sighed. “What am I supposed to do?”
I mustered the most comforting look that I could manage. “You’ll figure it out.”
“Sabrina, you’re a great friend,” she said. “I know you’re doing your best to try and cheer me up, but I’m really afraid that I won’t be able to figure this out.”
“Trust me. I know you will.”
Shannon winced. “I could just scream.”
I stared out into the distance. “You know, on second thought, maybe her prediction isn’t such a bad thing after all.”
Her eyebrows arched. “How do you figure that?”
“Maybe by knowing your future, you can change it.”
“But that’s the problem. I don’t know the whole future, just that I’m going to choose the wrong guy.”
“But maybe by receiving that warning ahead of time it will help you choose the right guy.”
“Or maybe her prediction just managed to confuse me even more. I mean, I’m questioning myself more than ever. I feel like I can’t trust my instincts now.” She groaned. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Neither do I, but I know what you shouldn’t do.”
“What’s that?”
“Worry so much that you give yourself a migraine.”
“It’s too late for that. I feel the monster of all headaches coming on.” She looked down at the ground. “What if I’m just destined to choose the wrong guy?”
“Shannon, don’t talk like that,” I said.
My friend threw her arms out. “It’s hard not to.”
“Let’s get you home. I have a feeling that a good night of sleep will do wonders for you,” I said.
Chapter Three
Very few words were exchanged as I drove Shannon back to her house. That wasn’t because we didn’t have anything to say. It was more that we were wrestling quietly with our thoughts. A war was going on inside my head, and panic was winning out. I couldn’t stop thinking about my sister’s disappearance and what I could do to find her. Unfortunately, no answers came to me.
The north side of Treasure Cove was especially quiet during that time of night. That was fine by me. I loved the peace and quiet. Then again, I wasn’t much of a partier to begin with.
Some of the twentysomething residents in town complained that there wasn’t much to do in Treasure Cove. They made fun of the fact that the town had a reputation for going to bed early. If I wanted to experience a rowdy nightlife, I could always take a weekend trip to San Francisco. In the meantime, I was happy with the tranquil evenings that my hometown generously provided.
Now if only I could calm my mind. I drove down Evergreen Avenue, w
here my car passed street after street of Victorian-style houses. I tried to solely focus on the road, but my mind kept lingering on thoughts of my sister.
So when Shannon broke the silence, it came as a welcome reprieve from the storm cloud that was forming inside my head.
“Sabrina, why are you being so quiet?” Shannon asked.
I had wondered if I would be able to drop Shannon off without her noticing how distracted I had become. The problem was, I didn’t really want to discuss my concerns at the moment. At the same time, I had to give Shannon something. She wasn’t going to accept silence as an answer.
“There’s just a lot on my mind,” I said.
Shannon stared deep into my eyes. “Such as?”
I grimaced and remained quiet.
A few moments later, Shannon opened her mouth again. “Sabrina—”
“The psychic told me that my sister would be found,” I said.
Shannon sat straight up in her seat. Her eyes grew as wide as saucers. “Are you serious?”
I nodded. “Dead serious.”
Shannon’s responses were rapid-fire. “Did she say where your sister would be found? Or when? And how? Not to mention if Jessica is still alive?”
I groaned. “No.”
“To which question?”
“All of them,” I said. “She wasn’t able to give me anything else to work with.”
“I’m so sorry. No wonder you have been so quiet.”
“I’m trying to hold myself together, but I’m worried that I’m going to fall apart here.”
“I’m here for you. Do you want to talk about it?”
“No. What I want is answers. Unfortunately, there’s a shortage of those.”
“Yeah, it just seems to be one of those nights when we’re haunted by deep, dark questions.”
I let out a sigh. “Don’t remind me. The last thing I expected to do tonight was obsess about my sister’s disappearance.”
Shannon’s brow furrowed. “Wait. Did you bring up Jessica, or did—?”
“That’s the crazy part. I didn’t mention a word to her about Jessica.”
Daley Buzz Cozy Mystery Boxed Set Page 18
