Sugar Coated Sins (15 page)

When I looked up at Gabby, I could
see that she was still standing there patiently, waiting for me to finish my
examination.
 
“Did you see it, too?” she
asked me.
 
“When Lisa gave me the page, it
was too painful to examine it very closely, but I certainly saw things this
time that I wish I’d never seen.”

“You’ll have to be more specific
than that,” I said.
 
“There’s a lot of
information written on that piece of paper.”

“He was dating other women after
all,” Gabby said, her voice cracking slightly with tears.
 
“Suzanne, I’d heard rumors, but I’d
discounted them.
 
Why shouldn’t I?
 
We were going to be engaged!
 
At least that’s what I thought.
 
It’s as though I didn’t even know him.
 
Do you know who those other women were?”

“I have a few good guesses, but do
you really want me to say them out loud?” I asked her, trying to hide what I’d
just discovered.
 
“Gabby, may I keep
this?”

“You can have everything in the
box for all I care,” she said.
 
“It’s all
just one big lie.”

That was too good an opportunity
to pass up, but I still felt the need to offer her some kind of
consolation.
 
“It’s important to remember
that just because you two weren’t exclusive doesn’t mean that he didn’t care
for you.”

“I would love to believe that
there was some truth to that,” she said.
 
“The reason I wanted you to see that is the date before his body was
discovered.
 
Do you see the first set of
initials there?”

I’d noticed them first thing,
before I’d found Jan’s partially obscured initials.
 
“H.M.”

“Hillary Mast,” she said.
 
“Isn’t that who you think it is, too?”

“I’m sorry, but I do,” I said.

“And the other one, that had to be
Hilda Fremont.”

My nod was all the acknowledgment
that she needed.

“One of them did it, Suzanne.
 
They must have.
 
The killer found a way to poison him with
something besides that chicken.”

“I need to show this to Jake,” I
repeated.

“Take it.
 
Take it all,” she said.

I could see the edges of Gabby’s
toughness begin to crack a little, and I knew that she wouldn’t want anyone
witnessing that.
 
“Thanks for calling
me.”

“Just go,” she ordered, and I took
her advice, but not without scooping up the box before I left.

I decided to get out of there
before she could change her mind.

I planned to carry the box back to
Grace’s house, where we could dig through it at our own leisure, but first I
wanted to call Jake and bring him up to speed on what I’d just uncovered.

His phone went straight to
voicemail, which made me believe that he was interviewing one of his suspects
and didn’t want to be disturbed.
 
I’d
wanted to tell him immediately, but what could I do short of driving to the
police station and starting my very own manhunt for him?
 
It would just have to wait.

At least Grace would be available
to me.

Or so I thought.

When I got to her door, I found a
note taped to the glass.

“Suzanne,

Sorry for bugging out on you, but I had to go in to work to handle a
crisis.
 
Call you when I get back.
 
Stay out of trouble in the meantime.

Grace.”

What was I supposed to do
now?
 
Both people I needed to speak with
were otherwise occupied.
 
I decided to go
home and grab a quick shower and maybe a bite to eat.
 
Maybe that would help put everything into
perspective.

That was the plan at the time,
anyway, but things didn’t end up working out that way in the end.

Chapter
17

Jake wasn’t there when I got back
to the cottage, which was no real surprise.
 
When he was working on a case, he could become obsessed, not that I
didn’t understand his behavior.
 
I’d been
known to become single-minded myself on occasion when I was tracking down a
killer.

There was a pie sitting on the
kitchen table, and a healthy slice had been taken out of it.
 
How thoughtful.
 
My mother must have come by and delivered it
while I’d been gone.
 
Though she ran a
not-unsubstantial empire, she still found time to make us goodies.

I dialed her number, hoping to
catch her.

“Hi, Suzanne.
 
How nice to hear from you again so soon.
 
Did you want to chat more about life in
general, or did you have another question to ask me about Benjamin Port?”

“Actually, I just wanted to thank
you for the pie,” I said.

After a curious pause, she said,
“I’m not sure that I know what you’re talking about.”

“Momma, are you telling me that
you didn’t bring a pie by the cottage this afternoon?”

“I’ve been meaning to bake a treat
for you, but things have gotten busy lately.
 
I’m sorry to say that it wasn’t me.
 
Was there some kind of note with it?”

I looked around frantically for
some indication of who had gifted the treat to us, but I couldn’t find
anything.
 
“Sorry to bother you,” I said,
clearly a little distracted by the sudden appearance of baked goods.

“Nonsense.
 
You could never bother me,” she said.

We both knew better than that, but
I decided not to push it.
 
“I’ll talk to
you later.”

I didn’t even wait for her to say
good-bye.

I dialed Jake’s number, and again,
it went straight to voicemail as it had before.
 
Maybe it was harmless.
 
He could
have gotten a note with the pie and thrown it away or absentmindedly stuffed it
into his pocket.
 
If that were really
true, though, why did I have a knot growing in my stomach?
 
I didn’t trust this, and what’s more, if Jake
had taken a bite of the mysterious offering, it might already be too late.
 
As I rushed out of the cottage, something
fluttering in the bushes in the breeze caught my eye.
 
I didn’t want to stop to see what it was, but
then I realized that it could be important.
 
After all, it could have blown off the pie when it had been
delivered.
 
My hands shook as I retrieved
the crisp white paper and saw that there was a single word printed in block
letters on the index card:
ENJOY
.

I nearly died the moment I
realized that it was written in the same handwriting as whoever had left that
confession note fifteen years earlier.

My husband and I were being
targeted by a killer!

Of course my Jeep was still down
the road, sitting where I’d left it earlier.
 
I had to go on foot, so I raced across the park toward Jake’s
office.
 
Please let him be there, I
silently prayed with every step as I raced across the uneven ground.
 
I pushed myself beyond my level of physical
conditioning, ignoring the stitch in my side as I continued to sprint
onward.
 
If Jake ate that pie while I was
going one iota slower than I was capable of, I’d never be able to forgive
myself.
 
I tried not to crush the note as
I ran, but it was of secondary importance.
 
Stopping Jake before it was too late was all that I really cared about
at the moment.

I finally burst into the police
station, and the officer at the desk frowned at me, even though I was married
to his boss.

“What can I do for you, Mizz
Hart?” he asked.

“Jake.
 
Is he in his office?” I asked between pants
as I furiously searched for my husband.
 
There he was!
 
He was sitting
behind his desk, but that wasn’t what shot a jolt of fear through me the
instant I saw him.
 
A slice of pie was in
front of him, and what was worse, he was getting ready to put a forkful of it
into his mouth!

“He’s right back there,” the
officer said, but I hadn’t waited for an answer.
 
I rushed through the maze of desks and burst
into Jake’s office.
 
The fork was
literally a scant inch from his mouth when I knocked it out of his hand.

Instead of being angry about it,
he looked a bit bemused in my direction.
 
“Suzanne, I know you want me to drop a few pounds, but wouldn’t it be
insulting not to at least taste the pie your mother brought us?”

“It’s…not…from…her.”

“What?”
 
He was frowning now.
 
“If she didn’t bring it by the cottage, then
who did?”

“The killer,” I said, finally
catching my breath to complete a full sentence, even though it had only been two
words long.

Jake pushed the Tupperware
container away from him.
 
“How can you
possibly know that?”

“Look!”
 
I held the one-word note up to him, and he
studied it without touching it.

“It’s in the same handwriting as
the confession we found,” he said as he frowned at it.

“I know that,” I said as I
collapsed into his visitor’s chair.
 
“What should we do?”

“Stay right here, and whatever you
do, don’t touch that pie.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I said.

Jake came back a minute later with
an evidence bag.
 
He then slid both the
container and the fork into the bag before sealing it shut.
 
“I’m going to have them rush this at the
crime lab, so we’ll know soon enough if someone was trying to kill us.”

“Given the matching lettering, can
it be anything but an attempt on our lives?” I asked him.

“Probably not.
 
Still, I’d rather be sure.”

“I’m not disagreeing with
you.
 
What should I do with the pie
that’s still at the cottage?
 
I can’t
just throw it away, can I?”

“No, I’ve got another bag we can
use to collect it as well.
 
Let’s go.”

Before we left, Jake briefed
Stephen Grant on what had happened, and then he put Stephen in charge while he
was gone.
 
“Are you ready?”

“I am,” I said.

We headed back toward home,
stopping long enough for me to pick up my Jeep along the way.
 
I didn’t mind walking the short distances I’d
covered without it, but right now it was important for me to have
transportation that didn’t rely on my own two feet.
 
I shivered a little as I imagined what might
have happened if I’d been too late to stop Jake from taking a bite of that pie.

After Jake bagged the remainder of
the pie in another evidence bag, he had a patrolman pick it up and deliver it
to the crime lab.

“They’ve promised to rush the
testing, so we should know tomorrow morning if someone just tried to poison us
or not,” Jake explained.
 
“In the
meantime, if you didn’t cook it or open it yourself, don’t trust it.”

“Does that include eating out?”

“Especially that,” he said.

“Do you honestly think that
someone might try to kill us if we go have dinner at Napoli’s?”

“Suzanne, we have to take this
threat seriously.
 
What if one of the
DeAngelis women were distracted just long enough for the killer to poison our
meal?
 
At least until we know one way or
the other, we take all precautions, so that means if we’re going to eat, one of
us has to cook.”

“Well, it’s not going to be
you.
 
I’m not in the mood for chili.”

Jake had one thing he liked to
make, like many men I’d known.
 
What was
it about chili that appealed to them so much?
 
Most of the time I could take it or leave it, especially in the summer
months, but he could eat it year round.

“Let me see what we’ve got in the
freezer,” I said.
 
“Does this mean you
aren’t going back to work today?”

He frowned before he spoke.
 
“With this ongoing investigation, I really
can’t afford not to.
 
How about if I hang
around until after we eat, and then I’ll head back in when you go to bed?”

“You don’t have to babysit me,” I
said.
 
“I’ll be fine.”

“I’m sure you will be, but
actually, I’m kind of hungry.
 
I skipped
lunch.”

“As a matter of fact, so did I,” I
said.
 
“I got so wrapped up in the
investigation, I completely forgot to eat.”

“Why don’t we have something
quick, then?”

I knew he was eager to get back to
work.
 
“How about a cheese omelet?
 
They’re filling, and they have the added
advantage of being quick and easy to make.”

He grinned at me.
 
“I’ll grate the cheese and make the toast.”

After we ate, we both felt better,
but I noticed that neither one of us had mentioned having dessert.
 
That pie was still all too real a presence in
both our minds.
 
I couldn’t help
wondering what the lab techs would find when they analyzed its contents.
 
Had the killer used the same poison on Ben
that they’d tried to use on us?
 
If so,
it might give us a clue as to how they’d come to acquire it, and that might in
turn lead to where it could be obtained.

Any new clue could be useful, as
long as it was approached properly.

After we cleaned up the kitchen,
Jake kissed me, and then he asked, “Are you sure you’re going to be okay here
by yourself?”

“I’ll be just dandy,” I said.

“I could always call your mother
or Grace to come over,” he suggested.

“Jake, I mean this in the most
loving way possible, but get out of here and go back to work.”

“I’m going, I’m going,” he said
with a chuckle, and then he kissed me again.
 
I didn’t mind the attention one little bit, but I hated that he was so
concerned about my safety.
 
I’d have to
do better reassuring him that I could manage just fine on my own.

Jake had been gone eight minutes
when there was a knock on the front door, and I had to wonder if I’d been a
little too hasty sending him back to work.
 
Just in case, I grabbed the baseball bat I kept by the front door before
I answered.

When I saw who it was, I put it
away before I opened the door.

It seemed that I was not going to
be spending the evening alone after all.