by Bree Baker
I forced my gaze to hers. “It was your necklace that I saw at the water’s edge,” I said, the pieces coming slowly together in my addled mind. She must’ve dropped the locket and gone back to retrieve it, then shoved me in before I saw her there or got my hands on evidence that would have connected her to the murder.
Lucinda gave a low and hearty laugh. She stroked Maggie’s dingy fur. “You think you’re so smart,” she said. “Everyone thinks I’m so dumb.”
“What did you put in my tea?” I struggled to clear my thoughts. Maybe the effects were reversible. Maybe there was an antidote.
“Insurance,” she snarled. “Now drink up or I hurt the cat.”
“What?!”
She repositioned her hand, suggestively, around Maggie’s throat.
“No! Stop!” I raised my hands in surrender. The world blurred and spun around me. “Don’t hurt her,” I begged. “I’ll drink.” It was a terrible idea, but I couldn’t run. Couldn’t fight. And Grady was on his way. Supposedly. How long was three minutes, anyway? Hadn’t it already been an hour?
Maggie struggled, knocking Lucinda’s hand off her neck and swinging the necklace over her chest.
I gasped. “Is that where you keep it?” I was suddenly unsure what was more shocking: my recent poisoning or her cavalier behavior. “You just wear it around your neck like jewelry?”
“That’s right,” she quipped. “Benedict wasn’t meant to get a double dose, but Sam Smart certainly was, and when I realized you were getting close to the truth with your ridiculous pursuit, I loaded the locket up again. Can you blame me?”
“Yes!” I squeaked.
Maggie wrestled free with a hiss and flew past me with an indignant roar.
“Yeow!” Lucinda shrieked. Blood streamed from fresh claw marks on her thin arm. “Finish the tea.” Her voice turned cold and demanding. “Just drink up. It will help this go faster.”
“This what?” My voice ratcheted another octave. “My death?” Who would want to speed up their death?
The teakettle whistled in my ear, and I spun toward the stove with a scream. A fresh flood of panic and adrenaline washed through my system. I jerked it off the burner and turned back, kettle in hand, unsure where to set it or why any of this was happening. “Why are you doing this?” I cried.
I’d let her inside my café, thinking we could make friends. I’d wanted to make up for offending her—meanwhile, she’d come to kill me!
Lucinda turned her enraged expression on me, plowing forward at a tilt. She swiped the cleaver off my knife rack and charged me. “Drink it!” she screamed, lifting the knife overhead. “Or you’re about to have a ghastly kitchen accident, and I’ll still end the cat. I’ll find that grubby thing and I’ll—”
The sound of my steaming kettle colliding with her forehead was gruesome. It reverberated up my arm and in my ears as she fell to the floor in a heap, a red kettle imprint over one eyebrow.
I yelped. The rage that had bubbled in my limbs for everyone she’d hurt had overcome me in a burst, moving my arm to stop her before I’d had time to think better of it. I released my weapon, scalding water streaming across my floor in a tiny flood that washed against Lucinda’s crumpled frame.
As I stared at her, the too-familiar flash of red and white emergency lights registered through my windows.
I sobbed with relief, slipping and sliding across the splattered planks on weird noodle legs, and wrapped weak and trembling arms around my middle. Had I killed her? Was she dead?
The steady thump of footfalls on the stairs outside my door echoed through my head and heart. “Grady?”
“Everly!” His strong form came into view a moment before my world slanted.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered through the cotton filling my mouth.
“Medic!” he yelled.
I ached to tell him everything, to see his face and know things would be okay, but my brain had been disconnected, unplugged, no longer in control of my limbs or tongue.
“Everly?” Grady’s hands were on my face and neck. “You’re going to be okay, Swan. You hear me?” He heaved me into his arms and began to move. His words were barely a whisper against the blast of fresh sea air.
I pulled in a series of shallow breaths, sipping the beloved ocean breeze and relieved at the flutter of hair across my face. Humidity clung to my skin, and the treasured scents of sand and salt air seemed to pull my eyes open. Dual carousels of emergency lights lit the darkness. A pair of ambulances blocked the path to my front porch, and Grady set me on a gurney outside the first. His truck was practically parked on my porch.
He kept a hand on my shoulder as a new face drifted into view.
An older gentleman wearing a stethoscope snapped a mask over my nose and mouth, the sweet taste of oxygen poured into my lungs. “I’m Tom,” the man said. “How are you feeling?”
I looked at Grady and struggled to swallow. “She has poison in her necklace,” I choked through a tightening esophagus.
The men exchanged looks.
Grady removed a phone from his pocket and barked orders across the line.
Tom flashed a light in my eyes and took my pulse.
Fear swam in Grady’s ethereal eyes. “How is she?”
“BP is sixty-six over fifty, dilated pupils, shallow breathing. I’d like to know what was in that necklace.”
The ponytailed woman from Mr. Paine’s crime scene appeared, as if on command. Her black jacket had a Charm PD logo over the pocket, and her face was all business. She lifted a plastic bag in Grady’s direction. “Lucinda’s awake. This is the necklace. Traces of the medications are available for testing, but she claims it’s the remnants of a prescription her late husband discontinued using last year.”
“Which?” Tom asked.
The answer was completely unfamiliar and slightly garbled by my ringing ears.
“I don’t know how you’re still conscious,” Tom said, presumably to me, though his eyes were fixed on the needle he pressed into my vein. “This will help.” He attached a tube and bag of fluids, then popped a clip on the end of my finger and wiggled it. “You’re going to be just fine, Miss Swan.”
The gurney began to move. My head rocked side to side.
“I’m coming with her,” Grady said.
My eyes slid closed before the ambulance doors had time to shut, and I drifted to sleep with the warmth of Grady’s hand heating my shoulder.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I swiped a wrist against my forehead, moving a bead of sweat into my hairline before it could drip onto my tray.
The lunch crowd at Sun, Sand, and Tea had grown steadily in the two weeks since a lunatic woman had tried to kill me. News had traveled fast, and I seemed to be cleared of any lingering suspicions before my aunts had taken me home from the hospital. Thankfully, I hadn’t killed Lucinda, but her mug shot had wound up on the gossip blog, and I was certain she wished I’d gotten the job done after seeing that photo. The goose egg and kettle burn/imprint combo was enough to give viewers a sympathy headache—as was the resulting black eye. For a woman who’d worked so carefully on her appearance, I imagined that was its own kind of corporal punishment.
I, on the other hand, had overdosed on Mr. Paine’s sleeping pills. Luckily, Grady had arrived in time—even if Lucinda hadn’t managed to stab me to death, the pills could’ve finished me. She’d mashed half a bottle into dust and dumped them into my tea like sugar. I’d been appreciating my life in new ways since then, mostly during every breath I took.
I set my tray on the table between two tanned girls. “Two fruit salads and two Old-Fashioned Sun Teas. Is there anything else I can get ya?”
The girls shook their heads and dug in. They’d chosen the right ensembles for my sun deck, bikini tops and jean shorts. They looked cool despite the rising mercury, unlike myself in capri pants and a T-shirt that c
lung to my every humidity-dampened curve. I didn’t care what the calendar said: it might’ve only been the middle of May, but summer had officially arrived in Charm.
The wind chimes over my front door jangled, and I spun my way back into the café. My heart leapt stupidly at the sight of my personal hero. “Welcome to Sun, Sand, and Tea,” I said, tugging the screen shut behind me.
Grady sauntered to the counter, a trip he’d made almost daily since saving my life. Today, the collar of his dress shirt was tugged open, and his tie hung loosely around his neck like a scarf. “Not an empty seat in the house,” he said, a twinkle of pride in his eye.
“Or on the deck.” I set a napkin in front of him. “What can I get you?”
“How about a few minutes?”
I cast my gaze around the room, checking the levels on the tea jars and making certain all my orders had been filled. “Y’all,” I called, drawing the room’s attention. “I’m going to have a walk on the deck. If you need me, I won’t be long.”
“Police business,” Grady added.
Some folks nodded, the rest went back to their conversations.
I poured Grady some tea, then stripped off my apron before following him to the rear deck. “Well?” I asked, stopping in the corner farthest from my customers. “How did it go?”
Wind swept through my hair, tossing it against him. I stuffed as much of it as possible behind one ear.
Grady released a heavy sigh. He turned his back to the sea and hooked both elbows on the handrail behind him. “I met with both attorneys for more than an hour. The defense is trying to avoid a trial, but that won’t happen. This was more like a Hail Mary.”
“Was she there?” I asked, still unable to say the name Lucinda without flashbacks.
“Yeah.” He grimaced and sucked down some tea. “She won’t be able to avoid jail time after what she did to her ex-husband and Sam Smart. Not to mention what she did to you.” His eyes darkened for a moment after that last line. “She admits to all of it, though she’s calling Mr. Paine’s death accidental. Regardless, she’s going away for a while.”
I guffawed. “How does she suppose Mr. Paine’s death was accidental? She drugged him.” I crossed my arms in defense against the slew of terrifying memories begging to be relived, prepared for a colossal tale.
“Apparently,” he began with a roll of his eyes, “she was slipping Benedict doses of her old diabetes medication in an attempt to keep him slightly ill so he’d need her again. She wanted to reconcile, but he didn’t, so she decided to give him a little push. The drug she gave him was dangerous for someone with a heart condition and the medicine he took for it.”
“How romantic.”
He laughed. “From what I gathered, her jewelry business was failing, and she needed a lifeboat. She was on my radar long before she showed up that night. The lab sent lists of the medications found in Mr. Paine’s system, and we knew that either he or Lucinda had taken each of them at one time or another, but he’d overdosed on painkillers and sleeping meds. We had no way to prove that she had been the one to put them in his tea, but we knew they met that afternoon for lunch. Without proof of her involvement, it could have easily been an accidental situation.”
“I wish you would have led with that at the crime scene,” I deadpanned. “Possible accidental overdose sounds so much better than ‘the poison is in Everly’s tea.’”
He wrinkled his nose. “I suppose it does.”
“You saved my life, so I’ll let it go.” I smiled. “So, he didn’t eat anything at my place because he was meeting his ex-wife for lunch. Then she rewarded him by slipping a fatal dose of crushed-up old pills into his tea? And all because she wanted his money? What a waste. Lucinda could have come back from financial troubles. I’m not so sure about two murder charges.”
Grady squinted against the sun. “Lucinda had more debt than she could manage on her own, and a reunion with her ex would’ve saved her. Instead, he died and ruined her life. Her words, not mine.”
I cringed. “That’s awful.” I’d thought I’d wanted to be there and hear the details firsthand, but maybe getting the information this way was good enough. I pressed a palm to my anxious tummy.
“I almost feel bad for her,” Grady said. “Clearly, she’s touched.” He tapped his temple. “She had no idea what she was doing. We found her old pill bottle for the diabetes medication stuffed inside a coffee can and tossed in a dumpster behind her store. An entire ocean all around, and she left the pills she killed her husband with right outside a business she owns.” He shook his head in wonder. “When she wanted to shut Sam Smart down, she went back to her medicine cabinet and made him a whiskey and oxycodone cocktail. She tried a little harder to pull it off with Sam—the extra pills and half-emptied whiskey bottle were left on a patio table. I suppose that was meant to make it look like he got doped up and went swimming. I mean, he was fully dressed, but like I said.” He made a tiny circle around his ear with one finger. “The whole thing is a mess. She ought to plead insanity. Nothing she said today indicated otherwise.”
“I still can’t believe she killed Sam too,” I said, my heart breaking all over again. “Why did she kill Sam?” That puzzle had eaten away at me, leaving me up at night for two weeks straight. I understood the concept of drama within couples and between exes, but I couldn’t fathom a reason for her to kill Sam Smart. “What was the connection there?”
“Sam saw Lucinda on the boardwalk with Mr. Paine on the night of his murder, so he attempted to blackmail her over it. He hatched a plan to make Lucinda his voice on the city council, promising to help her get Benedict’s old position and keep his mouth shut about whatever he saw as long as she helped him get a few new real estate situations past the council. That’s why the Paines had all those blueprints. Those were projects Sam wanted approval on.”
“Shameless.” What a partnership. Two crooks motivated to commit crimes for the sake of money. “I doubt Sam could’ve even gotten her on the council. That’s a big deal around here, and the positions aren’t filled willy-nilly.” Maybe Mr. and Mrs. Waters had been right, and Lucinda’s big party to “celebrate Mr. Paine’s life” was just her trying to reintroduce herself to the community, and hopefully score her murdered husband’s spot on the council.
I felt icky just listening. I tightened my arms over my chest. “So, she’s the one who hit me with the frying pan?”
Grady’s gaze traveled to the place on my head where Lucinda had clobbered me. “She never expected someone to take the maps and blueprints from the trash. When she saw you making off with them during her party, she had to go after them, and grabbed the first thing she saw on her way out to use as a weapon. She’d just bought some new things for her home that afternoon. I’ve got the records to prove it.”
So it had been her watching from the upstairs window. I shivered.
Grady rubbed a broad palm up and down my arm. “Lucinda said she couldn’t trust that Sam’s blackmail would end there, so she had to silence him. Plus, she didn’t want to be on the council.” He dropped his hand away and smiled. “Then she pointed out that blackmail is a crime, so maybe Sam deserved what he got. The prosecutor reminded her that murder is a capital offense, and she started crying.”
“Yikes.”
“Pretty much.” He rubbed both hands against his face and into his hair. “That wasn’t the worst of it, though.”
I failed to imagine how something so convoluted and horrifying could possibly get worse.
Grady dipped his chin sharply and locked his breathtaking gaze on me. “She accused me of only pursuing and apprehending her because she’d gone after you.”
“Oh.” I struggled to concentrate through the charged silence between us. “That was bad for you?”
“It implied that I didn’t care about the murders until you were in danger. So, yeah. Not a great look for a new detective.”
; I smiled, recalling something I knew about Grady that crazy Lucinda did not. “But you aren’t new at this. I’ve read all about you online. You would’ve found the truth, regardless.”
“Undoubtedly.”
I laughed. “See? Everyone knows it had nothing to do with me.”
Grady didn’t smile. He clenched and popped his jaw. “I was more motivated once you were in danger.”
I did a slow blink. “Because you knew me personally,” I suggested.
“Maybe.”
I fought the urge to fan my face. Had we always been standing so close? I flicked my gaze away from him, trying to unscramble my thoughts and assure we were still alone.
Dozens of faces stared eagerly back. Patrons had moved to the window where they openly gawked. A few had cell phones. Even Lou peered judgmentally from the roof’s peak.
“It’s what you do,” I said. “You solve things. Save people.”
A low chuckle rumbled in Grady’s chest, turning me back in his direction. An impish grin had broken over his face and he’d loosened his stance, falling back by an inch. “That’s not what I was trying to say, but we seem to have an audience, so maybe we can pick this up later.”
“We can try, but I’ve told you. Charm is an audience. You can’t escape it.”
Maggie trotted into view before stopping to watch Grady and me. Her fluffy white fur had been scrubbed spotless and blown out against her will, her nails trimmed and a pink bow tied in her hair. She pretended to hate it, but I was sure the bow would have been shredded to bits by now if that was true. Our local pet groomer was clearly part magician.
She batted luminescent eyes at me and an invigorating wave of boldness overcame me. I covered the back of Grady’s hand with mine. “Have I told you about the free food and tea for life promotion? It’s a special I offer to detectives who save my life.”
“I accept.”
“Good.” The intimacy of the moment suddenly seemed too much. I moved my hand away with a smile. I’d spent enough time being featured on our local gossip blog lately.
