Untitled (31 page)

   "That's all very nice," Tricia said, pushing her sister back toward the door, "but I think you should just go back to the Cookery and wait for him."

   "What's the big deal?" Angelica protested, digging her heels into the carpet. She caught sight of Artemus Hamilton lurking further back in the store. "Oh, Mr. Hamilton!" she called brightly and waved.

   "Ange, you've got to go. Now!"

   Before Tricia could maneuver here sister to the exit, the door opened again, but instead of Wendy Adams, it was a coatless Nikki who stood in the open entrance, still dressed in the white waitress garb and thick-soled shoes she wore at the patisserie—a full twenty minutes early. "What's going on, Tricia? Frannie just stopped by the shop and told me the meeting had been canceled. But you called me not half an hour ago to say there was a special guest coming in. What gives?"

   Rats! Her worst fear had come to pass.

   "We do have a guest. In fact, we have two."

   "Then what—?"

   The woman who'd been quietly sitting in the nook, her back to the door, finally stood. Slight, with shoulder-length graying blond hair, she turned, face taut, arms rigid, and fists clenched at her sides.

   "Nikki, this is Fiona Sample. She writes the Bonnie Chesterton librarian mystery series," Tricia said.

   Nikki gave the woman a quick once-over. "Oh, sorry. Nice to meet you." She turned back to Tricia. "What's going on? What gave Frannie the idea the meeting had been canceled?" She looked around the room, her gaze settling on the only other person in the shop. Nikki took him in, and Tricia wondered if she'd remember Hamilton standing next to Kimberly at the statue dedication.

   "I could've brought some cookies or cupcakes if I'd known," she said, distracted. "I should go home—change. Where is everyone else? Will they be here at six?"

   "This is a private signing," Tricia said, and turned to her guest. "Fiona, I'd like you to meet Nikki Brimfield."

   Fiona held out her hand. Nikki took it, shook it impatiently. "Nice to meet you," she said again.

   "But we've met before," Fiona said, her voice shaking.

   "Before?" Nikki echoed, puzzled.

   "Yes. I'm your mother."

Nikki's jaw
dropped. "My mother's name was Faith. She died over twenty years ago." "She left Stoneham over twenty years ago," Fiona said. "But here I am." Her right hand dipped into the pocket of her long, dark skirt. She pulled out an old photograph, handed it to her daughter.

Nikki stared at the image of a little girl on a bicycle.

   "I have more in my purse. Your seventh birthday. Even then you liked to bake. Remember, together we made a three-layer chocolate cake with marshmallow frosting?"

   Nikki looked up from the photo to glare at the woman before her. "My mother is dead."

   Fiona swallowed. "Your father's mother and your aunt told you that. Did they ever offer you any proof?"

   Nikki opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again. "What are you doing here? Why now?"

   Fiona's eyes filled with tears. "Because . . . I'm afraid. Afraid you've done something very, very bad."

"Me? I didn't abandon anyone. I didn't stay away for years and years," Nikki accused. "You let me believe you were dead. Where have you been all these years?"

   "Believe me, I didn't want to leave. I told you—"

   "But you did nothing to let me know you were alive, either."

   "Your father gave me an ultimatum: leave without you— without anything—or he'd kill me. I believed him. No one told me when he died. Many years later, I was told his mother and sister had had me declared dead."

   "You could've come back."

   "To what? I had no home—no one, except a daughter who probably hated me. And I had a new life, a new family in Canada. Was I supposed to abandon them?"

   "Family?"

   "Yes, you have a half sister and brother. Twins. They're sixteen now."

   "Don't tell me Jess and Addie," Nikki sneered.

   "No, Jessica and Andre. My husband's French Canadian."

   Nikki crossed her arms defiantly over her chest. "So what do you want me to do, embrace you all with loving arms?"

   "I came to ask you to do what's right. To give yourself up."

   "What?"

   "You've done a terrible, terrible thing."

   "Just what is it you think I've done, killed someone?" She took in the faces of the people surrounding her, focusing on Hamilton's penetrating, hateful stare. "Good grief! You don't think I killed Zoë Carter, do you?"

   Fiona's gaze swung toward Tricia.

   "Tricia? What have you been telling people?" Nikki asked.

   Tricia stepped forward. "I'm sorry, Nikki, but the evidence is pretty overwhelming."

   "You wouldn't like to let me in on some of this e
vi
dence
, would you?"

   "You knew who the real author of the Jess and Addie
Forever
books was when you asked me to invite Zoë Carter to sign here at Haven't Got a Clue. She hadn't returned to Stoneham in several years, but an invitation to speak in her hometown as the last leg of her first and only book tour was an opportunity you could use."

   "And what was I supposed to use it for, blackmail?"

   "Zoë made millions off your mother's work."

   The anger drained from Nikki's face, replaced by annoyance. "How was I supposed to shake her down for money? I didn't have any proof my mother wrote the books. I didn't even know they'd been published until a few months ago when I was browsing in this store."

   "And what was your reaction when you found out?" Fiona asked.

   "Okay, I was angry. It wasn't right that someone made money off of your work. But so what? I thought you were dead."

   "So why didn't you out Zoë?" Tricia asked.

   "What proof did I have? Was I going to tell a lawyer that Addie was afraid of thunderstorms? That was mentioned in the second book. I could tell them that in Foreve
r Banished,
when Jess had to kill his horse, Prince, because he'd broken a leg, my mom cried buckets. But guess what? By the time I knew of the books being published, they'd been in print for years. Why would anyone ever believe some down-andout baker in the boonies of New Hampshire? It would sound like sour grapes—or some kind of greedy envy."

   "There's more," Tricia said. "The attack on the statue in the park. I saw a satchel full of tools in the patisserie on Sunday."

   "So what? Steve knocked out an old closet so we could have more space for the baking trays."

"There was a can of red spray paint in the bag as well."

"Is it against the law to possess spray paint?"

   "And Kimberly was attacked by someone wielding a sledgehammer," Hamilton said, finally joining in the conversation.

   "Did she point the finger at me?"

   "She doesn't remember what happened that night," he admitted.

   "Very convenient," Nikki said.

   "Someone forced Tricia's car off the road Sunday night. We could've been killed," Angelica said.

   Nikki rounded on her. "What proof do you have that it was me?"

   "None," Tricia said, "but you did give me poisoned food."

   "Are you delusional?"

   "The cut-out cookies and the red velvet cake you gave me were laced with some foreign matter that contained salmonella. A lab in Nashua has confirmed it—at least with the cake."

   "You don't look sick."

   "It wasn't me who ate them. Ginny Wilson and her boyfriend Brian did. Brian was so ill he was hospitalized on Saturday night."

   "That can't be. I baked them myself, I—" She stopped short, her eyes growing wide in horror, her face blanching.

   The door to Haven't Got a Clue opened, and Steve Fenton stepped inside. "What's taking so long, Nikki? I got the bakery cleaned up, but you know I can't cash out without you."

   Nikki turned to face her assistant. "What have you done?" she asked, her voice shaking, frightened.

   Steve shrugged. "Cleaned the bakery, like always."

   She raised her left arm, pointed abstractedly at the people behind her. "They think I put something in those cookies and that cake I gave Tricia. They say they have proof."

   "What are you talking about?"

   "I assembled the ingredients for that cake, but you put it together and iced it. I baked those cookies, but you frosted them."

   "You'd take their word that something was wrong with them?"

   "Yes, because what they're saying makes a lot of sense. My God, I'm surprised the Health Department hasn't swooped in and closed me down." She clasped her head in her hands, looked at Steve in panic. "What am I thinking—they all think I killed Zoë Carter. They think I destroyed the statue in the park." She inched closer to him. "They think I attacked and nearly killed Kimberly Peters."

   "You would never do that," Steve said, his gaze softening as he looked at her. "You could never hurt anybody."

   Nikki closed her eyes and swallowed hard before speaking. "Please tell me you couldn't, either."

   Steve looked away, his mouth flattening into a straight line, exhaling short breaths through his nose, sounding like an angry bull.

   Tricia stared disbelieving at the couple before her. Steve the murderer? Not Nikki?

   Then she remembered what Kimberly had told her the morning after the murder: that a man had called to tell her Tricia was spreading rumors about Zoë Carter's death, and Kimberly's supposed part in it.

   With his focus still only on Nikki, Fenton clenched his fist, punched himself in the chest. "I take care of my own."

   "Excuse me, but I don't belong to you. I don't belong to anyone. Not now. Not ever again."

   "Nikki, it's just a matter of time," he said, oblivious of the others standing by in stupefied silence. "It's always been a matter of time before you turn to me. We were made to be together, babe."

   "Why would you think that?"

   "You hired me. You gave me work when no one else

would. You and me. We're a team at the bakery. We can be a team in life."

   "You killed Zoë Carter," she accused.

   Steve didn't deny it.

   "Why—why did you do it?" she cried, horror-struck.

   "For you. I did it for you."

   "But why?"

   "I felt so bad when you told me about the books and your mother and all. The money that woman made off those books should have been yours. That woman was a liar and a thief. You could've had a better life—owned the bakery without bank loans. You wouldn't have had to work so hard."

   "Stop calling it a bakery. And I
like w
orking hard."

   "And what did you gain by killing Zoë and attacking Kimberly?" Tricia asked him.

   "Gain?" he asked, blinking.

   "Nikki could never prove her mother wrote those books. She'd never get her hands on any of that money. What was the point?" Tricia said.

   Steve stood straight, looked her in the eye. "If Nikki couldn't have that money, I didn't want those bitches to have it, either."

   The shop door opened once again, the little bell jangling cheerfully as Wendy Adams stepped inside. "What's this all about?" she asked Tricia, ignoring the others standing there like mannequins at the edges of the action taking place in the center of the store.

   "What're you doing here?" Steve demanded, staring at the uniform and the badge on Wendy Adams's jacket.

   "Apparently, I'm here to arrest someone. That is, if what I'm about to hear isn't yet another cock-and-bull story."

   "You called the cops on me?" Steve demanded of Nikki.

   "No. Tricia called them on me!"

   Steve turned, his eyes blazing. He charged forward, yanked back his right arm, and punched Tricia square in the face. She fell back against the sales counter, clutching her bleeding nose as the room seemed to explode in a cacophony of noise. A raging pink blur launched itself at Steve, clawing and screeching like a banshee.

   "Steve!" Nikki yelled.

   "Nikki!" Fiona screamed.

   "Stand back, stand back!" Sheriff Adams called, and yanked the handgun from its holster at her side.

   "Angelica!" Tricia cried through the blood gushing over her lip.

   The shop door banged open. "Tricia!" Russ howled, as Angelica and Steve rolled over and over across the carpet, Angelica punching him with the power of a pile driver.

   "That's. For. Hitting. My. Sister. You. Stinking. Little. Coward!"

   "Stop it! Right now!" Sheriff Adams ordered.

   Russ jumped forward, grabbing Angelica's arms and pulling her onto her feet. She wasn't about to give up, and though she'd lost her shoes, she kicked at Steve again and again.

   He lunged for her, but Wendy Adams's voice stopped him. "Don't make me shoot!" she hollered.

   Fiona pressed a handful of tissues into Tricia's hand while Nikki hauled her to her feet. "Are you all right?" Fiona asked.

   Angelica continued to struggle in Russ's arms.

   "Stop it!" Sheriff Adams yelled once more, this time aiming the gun at Angelica.

   "Wendy!" Russ yelled, outraged.

   Steve lunged again, and Sheriff Adams charged up to him, planting the barrel of the gun against his temple. He froze.

   "Don't make me shoot," she repeated, this time her voice low and menacing. "Firing a weapon means an awful lot of paperwork, and quite frankly, you're not worth it, scum."

   Sirens screamed outside.

"Lie down on the floor. Now!" the sheriff ordered.

   Fenton did as he was told as two deputies barreled through the door.