Burned in Broken Hearts Junction: A Cozy Matchmaker Mystery (Cozy Matchmaker Mystery Series) (24 page)

“It’s the only thing I
do
know,” I said. “I was there. When you walked away that night across that empty parking lot, your heart wasn’t the only one breaking.”

“No,” she said, panic in her voice.

All this time, she’d played the part of scorned lover, not knowing that the love she felt for Dale had been mutual.

And if she just hadn’t burned his truck up, if she had just waited him out, then he would have chosen her.

I was sure of that.

“He was your soulmate, Annie,” I said, twisting the knife in deeper. “And he loved you.”

“What kind of bull crap are you trying to pull, Loretta?” Courtney said in a shrill voice.

“You didn’t belong with Dale, Courtney,” I said. “Annie did. But she killed him. She killed her own soulmate.”

Anabelle let out something akin to a shriek, and then her face twisted into something dark and horrifying.

I suddenly knew that I had put my bet on the wrong horse.

It wasn’t going to work. She wasn’t going to see the error of her ways, drop the bottle, and leave Courtney, me, and The Cupid alone.

I could see in her eyes that this was only going to end one way: the saloon going up in flames, and me and Courtney going with it.

My blood turned to ice.

Anabelle reached forward and dug her hand in Courtney’s jacket pocket. Courtney squealed at the sudden movement. A moment later, Anabelle had her lighter.

“Don’t let them tell you different, honey,” she said. “If you want something done the right way, you’ve got to do it yourself.”

She flicked the flame and tossed it toward the bar.

“Don’t—!”

But it was too late.

The flame caught, and spread rapidly across the bar top, like a writhing snake of fire.

Chapter 68

I let out a scream.

The Cupid was burning up.

Anabelle thrust the broken bottle toward her sister. Courtney was sobbing and crying, backing away against the wall.

I had two choices, I realized.

Go for the fire extinguisher, put out the fire, and possibly save the saloon from going up in flames.

Or try to save Courtney from her psycho sister.  

And even though The Cupid was my everything, had practically become my reason for living these past few years, there was only one real choice in any of that.

I ran around the bar, feeling the heat of the flames lick at my face. Anabelle lashed out with the bottle, and it sliced into Courtney’s arm, ripping her jacket to shreds.

She screamed. A howling, fear-soaked scream that sounded as if it came from the very base of her soul.

“I’ve been wanting to do this for years, sis,” Anabelle said.

I lunged for the killer’s head, grabbing her long black hair and pulling it as hard as I could. She screeched, and threw herself back into me. The force of her body knocked me onto the hard wood floor.

I came crashing down in the exact place where I’d found Dale dead.

Anabelle turned toward me, her black eyes glowing with hate.

And I knew that I had antagonized the snake one too many times.

Courtney took the opportunity and ran out the front door, leaving me alone with Dale’s killer.

I would have been livid with her if I could feel anything else but fear.

Anabelle started coming toward me with the bottle, and I knew.

I knew this was it for me.

I’d intervened in one too many bar fights, and now, now I’d be paying the ultimate price.  

I closed my eyes and screamed.

Chapter 69

The next thing I knew, there was a blood-curdling howl, and then a massive thud as someone crashed into the floor next to me.

No broken bottle going into my flesh. No pain. No mortal wound. No blood.

I opened my eyes.

Someone was standing over me.

Anabelle writhed on the ground, blood spurting from a deep gash on her face.

Before I knew what was going on, he had pulled me to my feet.

“Did she hurt you?” he said, his hands on my shoulders, his eyes searching my face. “Did she hurt you?”

I shook my head, a numbness settling in at the base of my chest. Everything seemed like it was underwater.

“Where’s the fire extinguisher?”

I nodded slowly toward the hallway. He ran past me, and a moment later, white foam was quashing the flames dancing on the bar.

I looked back down at Anabelle. She was holding her face and sobbing into the floor.

The broken bottle lay next to her, the jagged edges covered in her blood.

He must have surprised her, turned the bottle around on her just as she was trying to use it on me.

My heart skipped a few beats, thinking what would have happened if he hadn’t come when he did.

That would be me on the floor there instead of her. And it wouldn’t have just been a gash on my face, either.

Smoke filled the room as the fire died out.

He dropped the red tank, and came back, taking a hold of my hand.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said.

And for the third time that week, the stranger saved me.

Chapter 70

The blue and red lights flashed through the blowing snowflakes.

I sat in the back of an ambulance, clinging to an aluminum blanket draped over my shoulders. Shivering more than I ever had before.

Fletcher Hart had saved my life.

He’d stopped Anabelle, he’d put out the fire, and he saved The Cupid.

When I finally collected myself and pulled out of my fog, I asked him what he was doing there, how his timing could have been so dead on. He’d told me, rather mysteriously, that he’d just had a feeling that I was in trouble.

It wasn’t enough of a reason. And if I hadn’t been as cold and tired as I was, I would have grilled him on it.

But as it was, I’d never been so cold or tired in all my life.

I just sat there. The stranger had an arm around me, and I felt safe.   

For the first time, in a long, long while, I felt really, really safe.

“Is Courtney…?” I started saying between chattering teeth.

“She’ll be just fine,” he said, holding me tighter.

Just then, the back door of the ambulance opened, a blast of cold air cutting right through me. A large, stocky man stood in the blowing snow.

Raymond.

He looked at us, a sad expression on his face. But there was nothing more. Not antagonism or hatred or jealousy. Just a sadness.

“Uh, we’d like to talk to you each separately about what happened,” he said. “Sir, if you wouldn’t mind stepping out here and speaking to our detectives? I can take care of Loretta for the time being.”

Fletcher looked at me, like he wanted to make sure that was okay with me.

I nodded.

He rubbed my arm and leaned his face into my hair, like he was about to kiss the top of my head, but he didn’t.

He let go of me and stepped down into the driving snow.

“I won’t be gone long, Bluebird,” he said.

I watched him walk out into the storm.

Chapter 71

Fletcher Hart lied.

He never came back.

A few days passed. And then a few more with no word.

I talked to the police, telling my story over and over about what happened that night. I spent the days thinking about Anabelle, about the feelings of rejection and heartbreak that had festered so long in her heart. About how those deep-seated feelings had grown into some sort of black mass that had turned her into a monster.  

She was still alive, though, in some sense of the word. She was now in the hospital, having almost lost an eye when the edge of the broken bottle cut up her face. She’d be charged with the murder of Dale Dixon and put in jail until a trial date was set. That’s what Raymond had told me.

Courtney was alive too. She’d come out with only a few scratches from the incident. But like so many things in life, it wasn’t about the physical injuries. It was about the emotional ones, the kind that can’t be seen.

She didn’t have a funeral or even a memorial for her husband. Instead, she scattered his ashes alone, in a place up in the mountains where she said they used to have picnics.

I didn’t know if Courtney was going to be okay after this. Hell, I didn’t know if any of us were going to be okay. At least for a while.

Since it had happened, everybody had been acting so nice to me. My mom came over to my house, making me enough chicken noodle soup to last me a full month. Lawrence, unable to get out of the nursing home on his own, had called me every morning to make sure I was okay. Even my sister, usually so cold and steely, had stopped by, bringing over a Skinny Girl cocktail mix to make up some cosmos for a girl’s night. Flavorless, low-calorie cocktails weren’t exactly my thing, and I wasn’t in much of a talking mood when she stopped by. But I appreciated the thought. And it meant a lot, coming from her.

Still, I didn’t care for everyone being so nice.

There was only one person I had wanted to act that way toward me.

And he had up and disappeared. Vanished, like a ghost.  

I kept hoping that Fletcher might show up on my doorstep. That he might appear, the way he had. I wanted to hear his voice. Wanted him to look at me again the way he had that night in the doorway. To see that spark in his eyes.

But the days passed, and there was no word from him.

On the fourth day, I finally drove over to the hotel he said he’d been staying at.

But when I asked at the front about him, the young kid behind the counter just shook his head.

“Mr. Hart checked out a couple of days ago.”

My heart sank to new levels of despair.

He’d probably decided not to buy the saloon, considering all the damage the fire caused and the general bad luck that had surrounded it these past few weeks.

His reason for staying in Broken Hearts Junction was now gone.

That night I went home and set myself up on the porch with a Skinny Girl Cosmo because I didn’t much feel like drinking anymore of that expensive bottle of whiskey Fletcher had given me. Hank rested his head at my feet, as if he could feel my sorrow deep down in his doggy heart.

And I watched the trains rumble by and listened to them howl their lonely song into the cold and bleak night.

Chapter 72

One night, I was at home, listening to some Willie Nelson and finishing up my romance novel about Remy Martin and Lady Elizabeth Reynolds, when Hank started barking.

A moment later, there was a meek knock at the door.

I threw off my Pendleton blanket and peeked through the eye hole, letting out a disgusted sigh when I saw who it was.

I stood still. Maybe if I didn’t make a noise, she’d just give up and go away.

“Bitters, I know you’re in there!”

So much for that theory.

Beth Lynn was just about the last person in the world I wanted to see standing on my porch this evening.

She knocked a few more times, and Hank let out a few more high-pitched barks, and I knew that I’d have to deal with this.

“What do you want, Beth Lynn?” I said through the door.

She hadn’t so much as texted me after the incident at The Cupid. Even though I was sure she knew every detail of what happened, being the loud-mouth, sloppy gossiper that she was.

She stuttered a little bit.

“I… I… Will you just open the door, Bitters?” she said. “I brought donuts.”

If she thought that was going to work on me, she had another thing coming.

“I only open my house to friends,” I said. “Which you ain’t.”

“Oh, c’mon, that’s harsh,” she said. “Just give me a moment, would ya?”

Hank growled, and I didn’t respond.

Hank had said just about everything I had to say to Beth Lynn.

“You just want to waste 20 years of friendship?” she said. “Just because I let my mouth get away from me the other night?”

“It’s more than that, and you know it,” I said. “Where’ve you been these last few days, Beth Lynn? For that matter, where’ve you been these last few months when I needed you?”

She didn’t answer.

She just let out a little sigh.

“Look, I’m so sorry Bitters,” she said, her voice a little shaky with emotion. “You’re right—I’ve had my head up my behind for months now. It’s just…”

She trailed off.

“It’s just hard getting older, Bitters,” she said. “I think I’ve been going through some sort of pre-midlife crisis, or something.”

I peeked through the eye hole. She was brushing away a few tears.

They were real tears. Not the phony rodeo queen kind of tears that she cried most of the time. 

“You’re my best friend, Bitters,” she said. “And I know all you’ve been trying to do is help me. I was too much of a fool to see that until today.”

She cleared her throat.

“And, uh, I’m sorry about what I said to you at The Cupid the other night,” she said. “I was out of control. I’ll never drink another Cosmo again.”

She sniveled a little bit.

“And, uh, for the record, I don’t think you’re delusional at all. I think you’re true blue, Bitters Loveless.”

I was quiet for a few moments.  

Something about the apology got to me. The true blue part at the end especially.

I thought about all the good times we spent together as best friends. Then about the day Jacob left. How she’d called in sick to her job and come over with three different kinds of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream cartons and a big bottle of Jim Beam. And how she’d listened to me cry all day.

Up until these past few months, she’d been the closest friend I’d ever had.

We’d grown up together. We’d gone through love and loss and heartbreak together. We’d been there for each other, through all of it, even when I was living halfway across the country.

She was true blue too. And her going nuts a few months out of 20 years didn’t change that. 

I reached for the knob, and slowly opened the door.