I jerked to a stop when the sound of more than dirt falling around me caught my ear. An engine! Someone was driving around up at the construction site. Car doors slammed and I caught my breath. Sweat ran down my back, tickling, urging me to move, but I kept as rigid as possible. Do I call out? Or stay silent? Are they friend? Or foe? My thoughts rattled back and forth; an impossible decision that could have dangerous consequences.
Beeeeeeep-beeeeeeep-beeeeep! The high-pitched sound in my fanny pack made me jump. What in the world is that? Different than the panic button, it was still loud. I cringed, digging around in my pack. Any chance I had at a cover was blown now.
I heard muffled voices and shoes shuffling on dirt. Seconds later, three heads peeked over the edge of my prison.
“Thank God!” I exclaimed at the sight of Griff, Sam, and Gladys.
Griff disappeared and reappeared with a long length of chain from somewhere nearby. “Grab onto this,” he said, lowering the chain down next to me a little at a time.
Gingerly, bracing myself for another fall, I transferred my hands from the root I clung to, over to the chain. With a firm grip, I nodded at Griff and walked my feet up the wall as my friends pulled the chain. Once I was a few feet from the top, Griff handed the chain over to Gladys and Sam. He dropped down on his stomach, grabbing my hands and pulling me the rest of the way out. Carefully, I pulled myself into a sitting position on the ground.
“Ahh-ouch!” I cried out as Sam wrapped me in a bear hug.
“What’s wrong?” she pulled back.
“Are you okay?” Griff knelt down beside me.
Beeeeeeep-beeeeeeep-beeeeep. The shrill sound made us all jump.
“Sorry. Sorry!” Gladys fumbled with her phone as Griff and Sam shot annoyed looks her direction.
“What was that?” I asked.
Waving her cell phone, Gladys answered, “The key finder! That’s how we found you. See, I knew it would be perfect. A little dot shows up on my phone when I searched your key fob and then we came here but only saw your truck so I hit the alert button and voila, there you were.”
“Gladys, I think I could kiss you right now! Your pack saved me more than once today.”
“No thanks, Piper, but if that cute boyfriend of yours is feeling generous,” she said, winking at Griff.
I think I saw him shuffle closer to the hole I’d just climbed out of.
Gladys waved her arms toward the hole. “Do you think we need to get that other guy out?” She leaned toward the edge.
Sticking my good arm out to stop her, I shook my head. “No. He’s dead. We need to call Sheriff Kent.”
Sam began dialing immediately while Griff helped me to my feet.
I winced. “Do any of you have a bottle of water?” I asked.
Gladys whisked a short, stubby water bottle from her fanny pack. “Here you go,” she handed it to me.
I raised my eyebrows, beginning to wonder if we were back to Mary Poppins’s carpet bag again.
“I thought of these for the supplies later on,” she shrugged. “I didn’t have time to add them to your pack or Sam’s purse because you were already gone.”
I took a swig of the lukewarm water. Then another, swishing it around to rinse my mouth. At last, I rolled up my sleeve again and poured a little on my shoulder. I tried to wipe the crusted blood and dirt away, but everywhere around it was so tender that tears sprang to my eyes.
“What is that?” Griff leaned closer to get a look at the angry, torn skin. “Piper! What happened?”
I quirked my mouth and shrugged my shoulders, trying to downplay the words as I uttered, “I got shot, but just a little.”
“What?” Sam shrieked, before hurriedly assuring the sheriff that yes, we were all still fine. She updated him on my status, apologizing for screaming. “I’m sorry,” she said into the phone. “I have to go; you have the address. Please get here soon. Thanks.”
Griff’s jaw was working overtime, clenching and unclenching. I could see the struggle between freaking out about my safety and trying to remain calm about the situation, physically battling for control. I reached up and put my right hand on his chest. “Hey,” I said drawing his eyes to mine and away from my shoulder. “I’m fine. I’m okay.” When he didn’t relax, I poked him, hard. “I’m also hungry, and you owe me dinner.”
“You’re right about that. As soon as the sheriff clears us to leave, I’ll take you to Sam’s to get cleaned up and cook you a fantastic dinner myself. How’s that sound?”
I pursed my lips. “That sounds like you are trying to manipulate me into spending the evening at your sister’s instead of going home by myself.” He started to protest but I held up a hand. “It also sounds delicious and like a fantastic plan,” I smiled.
Gladys squealed, actually squealed like a little girl, buzzing with excitement as she caught up to the conversation. “You mean you two finally have a date? I knew it, I knew it. I told you, Piper, I knew he was boyfriend material the first day I saw you two together.”
“Excuse me,” Sam scowled, her usual smile having taken a hike somewhere far away. “Let’s go back to the part, oh friend of mine, where you said you ‘got a little shot’; you don’t get a ‘little’ shot.” She emphasized the word little with angry, jerking air quotes. “You either get shot or you don’t. Why the heck did you not tell us right away that you were shot?” She fisted her hands on her hips.
Gladys, I noticed, was still holding up her phone doing something. Looking back at Sam, I said “This,” and waved my hand in circles encompassing her from head to toe. “This crazy worried freak-out is why I didn’t tell you. It barely grazed me, I’m fine, and you all get to say you saved the day so I don’t know what the big deal is.”
“Friends tell friends if they’ve been shot,” she pouted.
I giggled.
She glared and I only giggled more. Maybe it was the shock, the hunger, the blazing heat, who knows. The statement echoed in my head and laughter was my only response. “I didn’t read that in the manual,” I told her. “Was it before or after friends don’t get friends kidnapped?”
By the look on her face, I thought I might have to institute the rule that ‘friends don’t shoot friends’, but thankfully was saved by the sound of sirens. Real sirens. “That reminds me,” I turned to Gladys. “My panic button might need new batteries soon.”
“Your what?” Griff narrowed his eyes. The three of us busted up laughing and his frown deepened. We were going to be in so much trouble.
Chapter 13
After relaying my statement to the sheriff, multiple times, he allowed me to leave on the condition that someone take me to the hospital to get checked out. My protests were ignored as I was bundled into Griff’s truck and handed more water.
Now we finally arrived, two hours and three stitches later, at Sam and Griff’s duplex. Gladys had gone home after we dropped her off at her car at the bakery.
“I think I should just go get in the ocean.” The salty scent did more to relax me than anything else had all afternoon. “Who needs a shower anyway?” My rhetorical question earned me a few extra frowns.
“You can see the ocean later. You cannot sit on my furniture after sharing a room with a corpse,” Sam crossed her arms.
“And I will not feed you if you do not shower,” Griff added with a wink as he left us to go to his half of the duplex and prep supper.
“You two stink,” I pouted.
“Nope,” Sam laughed. “That’s still you.”
I trudged up the porch stairs after her and took myself straight to the shower. After a good sniff, I had to admit, she had a point.
The warm water was a welcome relief to my tight muscles. I had a bad feeling that tomorrow I would be sorer than I cared to think about. I scrubbed carefully around my stitches, gritting my teeth at the tenderness. By the time I got done showering, I couldn’t decide which was worse: the pain from washing my hair, or the awkwardness of trying to wash it one handed when I gave up using
both.
I dressed in a pair of Sam’s yoga pants and a tank top, not exactly my first date outfit of choice, and brushed my teeth with the spare toothbrush I kept in Sam’s guest bathroom. Looking in the mirror, I could see that the redness around my stitches had already started to go down. I braided my hair, gave myself one last glance, and went out to find Sam and Griff.
Searching Sam’s side turned up nothing, but I heard voices coming from the big wraparound deck. I slid the glass door open and sure enough, there they both were over on Griff’s side. He had the grill fired up and sizzling, smoky smells of beef beckoned me to join them pronto.
“What’s cooking?” I asked as I slid into the chair next to Sam and accepted bottled water from the cooler. Beads of condensation sprung to life right away. It had to be ninety degrees out still, and that was with the breeze and the beginning of sunset.
Griff opened the grill to reveal thick, juicy New York strip steaks, corn on the cob, and a couple of foil packets containing something. “I hope you’re still hungry,” Griff said as he stuck the meat thermometer into one of the steaks.
“Famished,” I assured him. My stomach growled in agreement. I didn’t have to wait long. Griff began plating up the food minutes later, handing me a knife to cut the kernels of corn off the cob like he’d seen me do a million times.
As Griff sat the plates on the table, Sam reached carefully into the cooler and pulled out jugs of tea one at a time, unsweet for the two of us and sweet for Griff, and poured into the waiting glasses.
The foil packages were opened, releasing steam and more delicious aromas. One held buttery asparagus, another a garlic cauliflower and potato hash, and the last one brimmed with apple slices coated in cinnamon and brown sugar.
I munched happily on all of the delicious food and considered once again how blessed I was, not only to be alive but for this to be my life: amazing people who loved me and looked out for me, God’s beautiful creation surrounding us to enjoy and never lacking for a meal.
“Well,” Griff finished eating first and leaned back into his chair. “I called Sheriff Kent and, so far, he hasn’t been able to come up with a name for the murdered man or the guy who claimed to be Asnee’s father. He liaised with the officer in charge over in Pierson county. Said there was no record of Asnee when he was arrested, and the working theory is that most likely all of them are in the country illegally.
Disappointed, I only nodded and forked another bite of potatoes and cauliflower into my mouth.
Ding.
Sam looked down at her phone as it chimed again. Then she put down her fork and swiped it open. “It’s BeeBee!”
“Really? What did she say?” I leaned over to read her screen. I’m sure we could add ‘there’s no such thing as privacy between friends’ to the list of rules we’d been accumulating today; but truly, we had been friends too long to care. We shared everything and most people around us knew it. Heck, even Griff chose to get Gladys involved in sending a gift to me at the spa a few weeks ago because he knew Sam would tell me about it and spoil the surprise.
“She wants to meet us tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“In Lion’s Cove. She doesn’t have a car or a way to get here,” Sam continued to read. “She says she understands if we don’t have time.”
I licked my lips, thinking. “What do we have tomorrow?”
“That Girl Scout order,” Sam reminded me.
“That’s right,” I snapped my fingers. “Trail Mix Cookie Cups for the Girl Scout birthday party. If we get those finished between nine and ten, we could head over and meet BeeBee for lunch.”
“Victoria and Millie were planning to come in tomorrow anyway,” Sam nodded. Her fingers whizzed over the touchscreen keyboard on her phone. “I’ll ask Gladys to come too since Millie might still be helping Flo with flower arrangements.”
“I guess that means no lunch date for you and me tomorrow,” Griff said, having been quiet as we settled our plans.
My excitement about helping BeeBee dimmed somewhat. I wasn’t used to planning around other people, and tonight’s date already hadn’t worked out the way either of us pictured.
“Tomorrow night?” I asked with a sheepish grin. Relief flooded me when he smiled.
“Sounds great,” he reached over and squeezed my hand. “Why don’t you two call it a night and I’ll clean up out here?”
My answer was stolen by a great big yawn. I stretched and covered my mouth. Exhaustion was finally making an appearance. We agreed with Griff, though we did grab the paper plates to toss into the garbage, and headed back into Sam’s side of the duplex to get some sleep.
Easier said than done.
Chapter 14
Slam! Clank, clank, clank.
I jerked to a sitting position in bed, still forcing my eyes open. The feel of a cold gun, the smell of death, my nightmares had been full of unsettling people and events; just snippets, scaring me awake and then fading away only to wake me in a cold sweat again an hour later.
Slam! The loud noise most recently responsible for waking me up sounded loudly again, assuring me it was not part of another nightmare.
“We’re late!” Sam yelled from the hallway.
I rubbed more sleep from my eyes, cringing at the protest from my shoulder muscles. One Saturday morning, I need to make sleeping in an actual goal. Leaning gingerly over to the nightstand, I saw that my new phone was dead; we had bought it after leaving the hospital, but I’d forgotten to plug it in last night. With no other clock in the guest bedroom, there wasn’t any other way to tell what time it was. Well, maybe there was one.
“Oh no,” I groaned as I lifted the curtain and peeked out the window. Already light tinges of pink and purple were visible on the horizon. A beautiful sunrise meant we were very, very late.
I hurried to brush my teeth, bound my hair up in a wild bun and tied a bandana on like a headband to catch all of the loose tendrils. My cargo pants from yesterday were laying on the floor so I scooped them up and stepped into them, followed by a fresh t-shirt.
I stepped into the hall and was nearly trampled by Sam in a barefoot dash back to her room. “Tea is in the kitchen,” she called.
Adding a few more ice cubes to my glass, I gulped the dark breakfast tea. The first drink after a mouth full of toothpaste was never pleasant, but once that taste dissipated, I slowed down and sipped a few more drinks.
“’ K, I’m ready,” Sam sped back into the room.
You would think that after a while I would no longer be amazed at my friend’s ability to go from frazzled to foxy in under fifteen minutes. Nope. I stared at her, or maybe I glared but we were running late so who can say, and felt the familiar sense of awe come over me. A dark blue jumpsuit, speckled with white daisies, the hem barely skimming the tops of white wedge sandals at least four inches high. Silky strands of hair fell to her shoulder blades, all shiny and perfectly in place.
“You know,” I said, as we hurried down the steps to her car and I marveled that she didn’t break a leg in those shoes, “maybe Deidra was right. Maybe you shouldn’t have gone into baking with me.”
Sam shot me a puzzled frown.
“Did you ever consider fashion?” I asked her.
“Nah,” she waved off the suggestion. “People are too picky, and commercial fashion is a joke. Can’t you imagine how annoying it would be to work with some pretentious model who thought feathers and packing peanuts would make the ideal hat?”
I laughed; the flagrant image too easy to picture considering the ghastly displays on the runway of most designers these days.
The drive to work flew by. Flour coated our hands in no time as we baked at warp speed and prayed that we could catch up before time to open the bakery.
Tap tap tap. A light knock on the back door at six-thirty on the dot signaled that Victoria had arrived.
“Morning,” I greeted as I unlocked the door to let her in.
“Hey!” She tied on an apron and stopped at the si
nk to wash her hands. “Where do you want me to start?”
~
It was a miracle. Between the three of us, the display case was fully stocked by the time we unlocked the door. I flipped the closed sign to the side reading ‘Open for Ooey Gooey Deliciousness’ and smiled. The sun was cresting the tops of the buildings on the other side of the street. All signs of purple were gone; the beautiful display now shot forth rays of deeper pinks lining the clouds and brilliant orange and yellow rays stretching across the sky.
“Good morning,” I opened the door wide as a couple of men and women trickled in on their way to work to get a treat to take to the office with them.
After a few pleasant exchanges, and have a great day wishes, I watched the first group leave. Millie entered the front door, the bell jingling overhead.
“Morning,” she bobbed her head, ponytail swinging merrily. “I told Flo that I would help her out until you and Sam are ready to leave.”
“Thank you. Hey, how is flower arranging going anyway?”
“Not bad. I’ve decided I still like painting best, but there is some satisfaction in getting particularly stubborn flowers to do what you want. I have to admit; I never knew there were so many blue flowers in my life.”
“I never thought of it like that, but I bet with Fourth of July arrangements you are seeing more than the usual number of blue flowers.” I filled a to-go bag with Flo’s normal scones plus a few extra goodies. “I’m going to have to stop by and see some of these arrangements obviously.”
“Come get me when you and Sam need to leave; you can see them then,” Millie waved and headed next door to Flo’s Flowers.
I walked to the open pantry door where Sam counted ingredients for inventory.
“Are we going to need to pick up anything on our way back from Lion’s Cove?” I asked as she scribbled on her clipboard.
Ooey Gooey Bakery Mystery Box Set Page 36
