“Then…why were you out on a date with Lee?” I ask.
She says impatiently, “It was my cover. No one knows we’re married. Seriously, Lizzie, keep up. I thought you were a little smarter than this.”
“I am when I don’t have a freaking concussion!” I cry, wincing as my head starts pounding from the exertion of raising my voice.
“Long story short, I killed that dirty son of a bitch Taggart and framed Blake for it because it was convenient and because he’s a giant asshole. Now I’m killing you and framing Blake for it, but this time I’m adding his confession for killing Taggart, written in your blood. Surely all that will actually get a conviction to stick this time.”
I tug desperately at the restraints tying my hands and feet to the bedposts. They’re Blake’s neckties. “Wait, why—”
Bret cuts in, “You’re asking too many questions. Amber, let’s get this over with. Blake should be here any minute. A flat tire isn’t going to slow him down too long.”
The previously romantic glow of the candlelit room now seems creepy and ominous, like at a sacrifice or something. I have to stall them. “You guys are nuts. This is never going to work. No one is ever going to believe Blake would kill me. It seems like you haven’t really thought this through.”
“Shut up,” snaps Amber, stabbing the blade of her knife into the fleshy underside of my upper arm.
I scream in pain, watching horrified as blood courses out of the wound. Bret swipes his fingertips in my blood and begins painting letters on the wall with it. I’m about to seriously lose it when something clicks inside my head.
I gasp, “You’re the mayor’s daughter!”
Amber chuckles. “No shit, Sherlock.”
“But I thought this was about Bret’s mom—”
“It is. It’s about getting justice for everything Taggart has done.”
“That’s enough!” warns Bret, coming back over for a refill of my blood. Him wiping my blood on Blake’s wall is the least of my worries, yet it’s the thing that’s disturbing me the most right now. That is, other than the fact that they’re planning to kill me if I can’t find a way to get free. I need to stall some more.
I say quietly to Amber, “Honestly, I don’t blame you for wanting to kill your father. If there’s one thing I’ve found out through all this, it’s that Harold Taggart was not the upstanding man many people thought him to be. He was a dirty old man, a drunk, a crooked politician, and an absentee father. For my money, he had it coming.”
Amber brightens. “That’s exactly what I’ve been saying for years. Then I met Bret a month ago and heard his story… And I knew something needed to be done.”
This woman is a serious nut job. My eyebrows shoot up. “You guys met a month ago and are already married?”
“When it’s right, you just know.”
Something like that. “So speaking of getting married, why do you hate my fiancé enough to frame him for murder?”
Her face gets a sour look. “Not that’s it’s going to matter for you in a few minutes, but you should know that your fiancé is a real piece of work. He seduced me and then never called me again. I’m doing you a favor.”
I give her a confused stare. “By killing me?”
“Well…yeah…just…”
Bret snaps, “Amber, quit talking to her. Don’t you see what she’s trying to do?”
I turn my attention toward Bret, and I can’t help snickering at what he’s been working so hard to paint on the wall: I killed the mayor.
“What?” he demands.
With more bravado than I feel, I reply, “You’re in charge of writing the confession, and that’s the best you could come up with? Blake is never that prosaic. He’s a journalist! You need to add something to give it a little pizazz.”
“She has a point, Bret,” says Amber.
“Both of you shut the hell up!” roars Bret. He grabs another of Blake’s ties from a pile near my head and shoves part of it in my mouth. “Come on, Amber. Finish this!”
It takes me only a moment to work the slick, silky tie out of my mouth, and as I’m about to let out a scream, William Johnson appears in the room, gun pointed at the middle of Amber’s chest.
“LPD! Nobody move!” he bellows.
Amber and Bret both freeze in their tracks, and I’m so overcome with relief, tears start pouring down my cheeks and into my hair.
“Lizzie, are you okay?” he asks, flicking his eyes at me but quickly returning his attention to Amber and her bloody knife.
“Yes,” I breathe.
I notice Amber tense up and turn the tip of her knife toward William.
“Drop the knife and hands behind your head!” he barks.
Bret clamps his hands obediently behind his head, but Amber doesn’t flinch. I don’t know what she’s thinking, but if she doesn’t come to her senses soon, she’s going to regret it.
William’s eyes get hard. “I said, drop the knife! I have half a mind to shoot you anyway for what you’ve done to Lizzie.” When Amber does nothing, William curls his finger around the trigger and growls, “Last chance.”
His voice strained, Bret says, “Amber, put it down. It’s over.”
For a moment I think Amber is going to charge William, but then the knife drops from her hand. Defeated, she places her hands behind her head. I can see the relief in William’s eyes.
“Get down on the floor,” he orders. “Face down.”
Bret and Amber do as they’re told, and as William is binding their hands with black zip ties, I hear the wonderful sound of sirens. They’re quickly growing louder and as a result are making my head hurt, but I don’t care. It really is over.
William still has his gun trained on Bret and Amber, but glances over at me. “I’ll get you cut loose as soon as my backup gets here.”
I nod and smile up at him. “William, I’m sorry for what I said earlier. I think you’re a great cop. Thank you for saving me. Again.”
He grins. “Anything for one of my oldest friends.”
There’s a commotion downstairs, and within seconds, the room is filled with police. Amber and Bret are unceremoniously yanked up and dragged away. William and another officer work to free me while a third puts pressure on my stab wound to try to stop the bleeding. They get me up and wrap a blanket around me. I’m a little light-headed, so William puts his arm around me and helps me down the stairs. The front door is wide open, and I can hear Blake yelling and cursing outside.
William chuckles. “I think you need to go calm down that fiancé of yours before he gets himself arrested. And you should let the EMTs check you out. Your wound needs to be dressed and your eyes don’t look right.”
I thank him again and hurry out the door. Blake is trying to bust through a line of police to get into the house, but when he sees me, he stops, his eyes filling with tears. I rush past the officers and into his arms.
He chokes out, “I was afraid you were…” and grabs me into a tight hug.
“I’m fine.”
“What the hell happened in there?”
He’s still got me in a vise grip. I reply, “I’ll tell you everything…but…could you let me go? You’re squeezing my stab wound.”
Immediately releasing me, he cries, “Stab wound?”
I show him my arm, which is still oozing blood. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. And the wound wasn’t the worst part of it. For some reason the part that really got to me was when Bret painted ‘I killed the mayor’ on your bedroom wall in my blood.”
“He what?” His face grows dark. “I’ll kill him.”
“Okay, but first I think I need to get this looked at…” Everything starts getting swimmy, and the last thing I remember is Blake catching me before I hit the ground.
EPILOGUE
“Would you quit hovering? I’m going to get enough of that once my mother finds out what happened to me,” I gripe at Blake, who’s straightening the blanket over me as I lay on a horribly uncomfortable hospital bed
in the emergency room. I slap his hands away.
“You should rest. You have a concussion.”
“A mild concussion. When are they going to let me out of here?”
He smiles. “I forgot how lousy a patient you are.”
“I’m fine!” I snap, cradling my head as it begins to throb again.
“Obviously.”
“So why did you think I was dead?” I ask.
Grimacing, he says, “Because I came home and saw your car, two ambulances, and a dozen police cruisers parked out front.”
I nod. “That’ll do it.”
“It was a damn good thing you stopped at the station on your way home. After your conversation with Detective Johnson, he decided to follow up with Amber. When he tried to call her at work and found out she was at our house, which was where you told him you were going, he got a bad feeling and headed out there. He found Bret Howell’s car there, too, so he called for backup. Oh, and Mia is okay, by the way. Johnson said she got knocked out, but she was starting to come to when he got there.”
William had stopped by the hospital to talk to me, but I was busy having my head examined by a CT scan, so he talked to Blake instead and said he’d let me give my statement tomorrow so I could rest.
I smile. “That’s good news. Hey, thank you for my bracelet and my dress, by the way.” I look down at the bloody mess on the lovely red fabric. “Unfortunately, I ruined the dress.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m just happy you’re okay.” Blake takes my hand and kisses it. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you. I got a flat tire on my way home.”
“I know. That was Bret’s handiwork.”
He shakes his head in disgust. “I had stopped by John Barnes’s office to ask him how he was doing. When I mentioned the mayor had a daughter and that we thought she might be connected to the murder, he nearly had a heart attack. He told me about how the mayor had come to him years ago to set up a trust fund for his daughter, only to go back a month ago and cash it out to pay his own gambling debts.”
“Wow. No wonder John couldn’t stand the guy.”
“Exactly. And because he’s a stickler for client confidentiality, at least regarding people who are still alive, he wouldn’t give me her name. As I was leaving, he called the police to fill them in.”
I think back to what Amber had said to me about Bret. “Wait, you said Taggart took her trust fund away a month ago? Was she already receiving regular payments from it?”
“Yes. He pulled it out from under her.”
I finally put it all together. “That’s when she decided to kill him. She said she met Bret a month ago and married him. She also mentioned that spouses don’t have to testify against each other.”
His eyes widen. “You think she married him to keep him quiet?”
“It’s the perfect murder, right? Find someone else who has a beef with your victim, get him to help you, and then marry him so he can’t be forced to testify against you. Amber even covered her ass further by coming to us behind Bret’s back and throwing some suspicion onto him.”
“She honestly didn’t seem that crazy the one time I went out with her.”
“Promise me this is the last scorned female friend of yours we’re going to have to deal with.”
Before he can reply, my nurse walks in with release papers for me to sign, and I get the hell out of this hospital as fast as humanly possible.
Blake puts his arm around me as we walk to his car. “I think our Valentine’s dinner will be ruined by now, not that we can go back to the house anyway.”
“And if Amber had anything to do with preparing or handling the food, I’m out. She probably poisoned it.”
“I wouldn’t put it past her.” He frowns. “I had a fantastic evening planned before it got hijacked. And I’m sorry to say I didn’t have a Plan B. At this point, I think our only options for dinner are going to come in a paper bag.”
I stop and smile up at him, placing my arms around his neck. “I don’t care as long as I’m with you. Happy Valentine’s Day.”
Blake leans down and kisses me sweetly. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Lizzie.”
Keep reading for a sneak peek at Lizzie’s next adventure!
Wedding Bell Blues
A Lizzie Hart Mystery
I sigh into the phone. “Ryan, no. Just…no.”
“Wait, you haven’t heard me out yet,” my brother says, his voice hopeful.
“I think I heard enough when you said, ‘Hey, Sis, guess who’s got two thumbs and an online minister’s license?’ ”
Ryan replies, “Come on. You’re not even going to entertain the idea that your sweet baby brother could be the officiant at your wedding? How perfect would that be?”
I slip into a pair of pale pink strappy sandals to match the dress I’m wearing. “Are you going to be the one to tell Mom I’m firing the minister who baptized me with only three weeks to go before the big day? She’s had this wedding planned practically since I was born.”
“Whose wedding is it, anyway?”
I let out a bark of laughter. “You’ve met our mother, right? It’s been her life’s dream to plan her daughter’s wedding. And since I waited ‘til the ripe old age of twenty-eight to tie the knot, she’s been jonesing for over six years to make it happen. You realize, by the way, that once my wedding is over she’s going to turn her attention on you and why you’re not married yet. You can’t use the ‘I’m too busy with med school’ excuse forever.”
“I know, and I think she’s already started. She said something about inviting all my high school girlfriends to your wedding. I guess she’s planning to parade me around like some kind of show pony or something.”
I slap my forehead. “I don’t even want to think about how many people she’s invited that I don’t even know. I’ve told her over and over again that Blake and I want something simple, but no. It’s going to be ridiculously overdone and Dad is going to have a coronary when he gets the bill.”
I honestly don’t care what kind of wedding I have. The only thing I care about is marrying the love of my life, Blake Morgan. If it were up to me, I would have dragged Blake to the justice of the peace a year ago and been done with it. When I even joked about doing that in front of my mother, she nearly stroked out. After that, I realized it would be much easier to simply go with the flow. I was allowed to pick out my own wedding dress, Blake was allowed to pick out his own tux, and we were able to talk my mom into having the wedding in the backyard of the lovely estate Blake inherited from his grandfather. Other than that, we’re at her mercy.
Ryan says, “At least think about letting me marry you guys. It was going to be my gift to you.”
I smile and grab my purse. “That’s very sweet, and I appreciate the gesture. But I’m afraid the shitstorm it’ll cause won’t be worth it. I have to go. Blake will be here any minute to pick me up.”
“Where are you going?”
“To a wedding. Duh. What else is there to do every Saturday in June in Liberty? It’s Aiden Buckley’s wedding, actually.”
“Aiden Buttley? Who’d want to marry him?”
I chuckle at my brother’s derogatory (yet fitting) nickname for the groom. Aiden has never been Ryan’s favorite person. They were in the same graduating class, and all through school Aiden and his friends picked on everyone, especially my brother.
“Anna Barnes.”
“Who’s that?”
“Her dad is a friend of Blake’s.”
Ryan is not letting this Aiden thing go. It’s like his insecure high school self came out at the mere mention of his nemesis’s name. “I’m concerned, Sis. First you invite Buttley to your engagement party—”
“Not technically. He came as Anna’s plus-one.”
“And now you’re going to his wedding? He made my life a living hell for years. I would think you’d have a little more family loyalty.”
“I’m pretty sure me attending a wedding is not going to upend the Hart family tree,
dear brother.”
He grumbles, “Well, I hope the wedding sucks. Later.”
“Bye.”
I hang up and go outside to wait for Blake on my screened-in porch. Since it’s early June, it hasn’t quite gotten into the hot, muggy summertime weather Liberty is famous for just yet. A few minutes later, Blake pulls up in his shiny black Porsche. When he gets out, I nearly have a hot flash. His tuxedo fits him perfectly, he has every hair in place, and his smile could light up the entire planet. With Blake looking so gorgeous, no one is going to be looking at the bride today—at least none of the women will be. Blake was once the town’s most eligible bachelor wanted by every lady in town. I can’t help but think I’m one lucky girl that I’m the one who finally snagged him.
“Hey, beautiful,” he says as I skip down the stairs to meet him. He takes me in his arms and gives me a slow kiss, making me tingle from the top of my head to the tips of my toes.
When our lips part, I reply breathlessly, “Hey, yourself. You clean up pretty nice.”
“Thank you. You know, it’s only three weeks until our big day.”
I bat my eyes at him. “Is it?”
He gives me a playful slap on the butt for my sarcastic remark and steers me toward the passenger side of his car. Blake has made a big deal of his daily announcement of the countdown to our wedding everyday for a while now. I think it’s sweet that he’s so excited about it. He opens the door for me and helps me in as he always does. I often wonder if he’ll keep up this gallant gesture after we settle down and become another old married couple.
After he gets in and starts the car, I say, “You’ll never believe the conversation I just had with my brother.”
“Did he call you up to describe some disgusting disease he learned about just to try to make you sick?”
Ryan is a med student at Vanderbilt University spending his summer being a graduate assistant. I think he’s only doing it so he has a good excuse to stay in Nashville rather than spend the summer with our mom and dad in Florida.
My Funny Valentine Page 9
