“I’m already there, sweetheart,” he bellows back as the two of them take off in opposite directions.
The music grows a notch louder, and soon it seems as if all bodies have shifted back to the dance floor.
“Come on, Lot.” Noah pulls me close. “Let’s get out there and dance. I’m not letting a few theatrics ruin my night.”
“What?” I squawk. “We should be packing it up and heading back to Honey Hollow where we belong. These people are horrible.”
Everett nods. “And that’s why we shouldn’t let them win. Noah is right.” Everett takes me by the hand. “We need to get out there and have a good time. I’m not letting Cressida or Owen think they chased us out of here.”
“What about the homicide?” Clearly I’m desperate if I’m grasping for the nearest killer I can find to help rectify this night.
Noah holds up his phone. “I already called Ivy. And she’s called for extra patrol. I’ve got it handled.”
Detective Ivy Fairbanks is Noah’s counterpart down at the homicide division. She’s a leggy redhead who has had the hots for Noah ever since she laid eyes on him. Suffice it to say, I’m not her biggest fan and vice versa.
I glance over to the refreshment table where I see Jasmine, Ariella, and her testy husband Owen noshing on a slice of my Bundt cake.
“Fine. I don’t see what a little dancing can hurt. Maybe it’ll shake the baby out of me a few weeks early. If my water breaks, we’ll be forced to cut out early and I won’t take no for an answer.”
The three of us let loose on the dance floor with both Noah and Everett doing a rather sexy rendition of a dance-off as they vie for my attention, and believe me, the crowd of panting women is very much eating it up, as am I.
After a few songs, my feet begin to sing as well, and my stomach muscles have tightened a time or two but nothing I can’t handle. I bet my sugar cookie is looking to expand the swimming pool. Every time I think I can’t get any bigger, I grow another few inches in circumference—or feet as it seems.
Noah pulls me in and dots a kiss to the top of my head. “You’re a good sport, Lottie. Ivy just texted and said she’s at the entry. I’ll go speak with her for a second. Don’t leave this room.” He points to Everett.
“Lemon is staying with me. She’s perfectly safe.”
“Don’t screw things up,” Noah growls.
“That would be your expertise,” Everett says as his chest expands.
“Funny.” Noah’s dimples dig in, no smile.
“Don’t worry. Noah.” Everett sweeps the room with his eyes. “I’ve got Ethel with me. Lemon and I will be plenty safe.”
Ethel would be the Glock handgun Noah and Everett chipped in to buy me a while back. I was toting her around whenever I wasn’t at the bakery, and seeing that I’m usually at the bakery that wasn’t a whole lot of toting. But Everett brought her along tonight. I think he had a feeling things would go sideways.
“All right, I’ll be right back.” Noah takes off into the crowd like a man on a mission. And he is. A man looking to stop a potential homicide.
Everett pulls me in and lands a kiss to the tip of my nose. “I don’t know about you, Lemon, but I’m piping in this suit. It looks like the back door is open. How about we head that way and get a breath of fresh air?”
“Are you kidding? I’d pay you to take me out of this room for a minute.”
We thread our way through the crowd and step outside that opened door into the cool night air. There’s a wooded area just beyond what looks to be a service parking lot. The snow is starting to melt all across Vermont, as evidenced by the fact the ground is slushy, quickly pooling into puddles everywhere you look. A few large trucks are parked side by side next to what looks to be a building housing a trash receptacle, and just beyond that there’s a pile of clothes on the ground.
“What’s that?” I ask as I take a step in that direction.
“I don’t know,” Everett says as he heads on over and I follow along.
Both Everett and I groan at the very same time as we freeze solid in our tracks.
Lying slumped on the ground are both Jasmine Albright and Owen Kellerman, each with a bullet wound to their chest and a couple of plates of my lemon Bundt cake spilled onto the ground beside them.
It looks as if Jasmine and Owen won’t be attending any more high school reunions.
Jasmine Albright and Judge Owen Kellerman are dead.
Lottie
“They’ve been killed,” I pant.
“Get back in the hotel, Lemon.” Everett quickly taps his fingers over his phone.
“Okay, I will.” The words expel from me in a long white plume. I glance out past the bodies and note a set of footprints, nothing discernable, just piles of snow swished back and forth as if whoever did this was slipping badly as they tried to take off. There’s a green glint over the right side of Owen’s suit jacket, and about six feet out from Jasmine sits a small metal object. “Everett, there’s a gun.”
“I see it.” The words stream from him, pressured, as he tries to regulate his breathing. These were Everett’s old schoolmates, this can’t be easy for him to witness.
Last month, on the night of Valentine’s Day, the ghost of my grandma Nell came back to pay me a visit. She told me that something was coming this way. She specifically instructed me to stay on alert, that things would not be as they seem, that enemies were lurking where I least suspected them, and that I should tread lightly. And here we are, met with a double homicide.
My goodness, could this be what she was trying to warn me about?
The sound of women chattering and the clatter of high heels erupt from behind, and I turn to see Ariella and Jen having a rather tense conversion.
“Oh hi, Lottie.” Ariella navigates Jen in this direction, and both women spot the horror at the very same time.
Both Ariella and Jen start in on howling screams, which attracts a slow trickle of people to drift this way from the ballroom.
A man in a dark coat comes running this way from the dead center of the parking lot, and I can tell by his dark hair and neatly trimmed goatee that it’s the same man that was having a heated conversation with both Owen and Jasmine. In fact, I recognize him to be Jasmine’s soon-to-be ex, Slater Sutton. But I suppose any litigation they had in the matrimonial area is off the table now, too.
“What the hell?” He looks from Everett and me to where the bodies lie slumped, and he rakes his fingers through his hair. “Did you do this, Baxter? Did you gun down Owen because you couldn’t take a little taunting?”
A crowd quickly gathers, and before Everett can say a word, Ariella takes a few staggering steps forward.
“Everett, did you do this?” Ariella pants. “Did you shoot my husband in cold blood?”
“No,” Everett says it strong and commanding and his voice echoes throughout the vicinity. “I don’t know who’s responsible for this, but it wasn’t me.”
“Of course, he didn’t do it!” a female voice pipes up just as Carlotta crops up next to us. “Sexy wouldn’t kill a woman or a man. He doesn’t even have a gun on him, for Pete’s sake!”