Murder Has a Sweet Tooth Read online

  I sighed, and I knew Jim understood. I’d bet his head was still pounding, too. “That’s not the kind of wedding I want. You know that, Jim. I want things to be simple. I just want to concentrate on you. And on being the best wife I can possibly be.”

  “You’re already the best possible person you can be; the wife part shouldn’t be so hard.” He slipped an arm around my shoulders and gave me a quick hug. “But remember, Annie dear, even when you have the best intentions, things don’t always work out the way you planned.”

  “You’re saying I shouldn’t expect our wedding to be perfect.”

  “I’m saying that nothing is perfect. Not weddings, not marriages. Even the ones that look perfect from the outside. Especially the ones that look perfect from the outside!”

  I gave him a sloppy kiss on the cheek. “Ours is going to be. I’m going to make sure. Knowing what’s happening in the house where I’m going to live would be a good start.”

  “Oh, no!” Jim threw back his head and laughed. “You won’t get around me so easily. Not when it comes to this.” He looked over his shoulder toward the closed front door. “Have you not seen Alex since you’ve been here?”

  We were back to talking about everything I couldn’t see in the house, and just so he’d know I knew it, I harrumphed. “I can’t see anything. Not through the living room window or the kitchen window in the back or even the dining room window.”

  “The dining room window? The one that’s so high off the ground you shouldn’t even be trying to look in it?”

  I was too offended to be embarrassed. “Your neighbor’s tree has this low-hanging branch and—”

  “You climbed Mrs. Malone’s tree? To try and get a peep into the dining room?” It was Jim’s turn to groan. “She’s a little old lady. She doesn’t need to see you lurking about like that, Annie, and I don’t need a bride with her arm in a cast. Besides . . .” His smile was mischievous. “I thought you’d do exactly that. Which is why I had the miniblinds installed in the dining room.”

  I folded my arms over my chest. “And you keep them closed, too.”

  “It’s my duty.” He grinned. “As a husband who wants to please his wife.”

  “But—”

  “No buts.” He stopped my objection with a quick kiss. “This is my wedding gift to you and I want it to be special. That means it has to be a surprise.”

  “But—”

  This time, he kissed me longer. Right before he hopped to his feet. “I just stopped home to see what Alex was up to. He didn’t answer when I called this morning. I’m going to pop inside and see if he needs any help.”

  I got to my feet, too. “I could help you find him.”

  Jim’s expression teetered between tolerance and I-can’t-believe-you-had-the-nerve-to-say-that. “It’s a small enough house that I think I can find him myself, thank you very much.” He unlocked the front door. “If I find ye back in that tree . . .” he warned, and he opened the door just enough to slip inside before I could see anything. I wasn’t imagining it; I heard the door lock behind him.

  There was nothing I could do but wait, so I went back to the steps and sat back down. Now that I thought about it, I was surprised I hadn’t heard Alex rambling around in the house while I was trying to get a look inside. Alex is not quiet, especially when he’s working. Come to think of it, I hadn’t heard the radio he usually played at full blast, either.

  The Alex in question was Alex Bannerman, Jim’s cousin who had come all the way from Scotland to be the best man at our wedding. Alex was as rough-and-tumble as Jim was quiet and laid-back, a strapping, handsome man of thirty-eight with a shock of hair as red as a Virginia sunset. Alex never talks, he bellows. He doesn’t walk, he sprints. Alex believes in taking in life not in tiny bites but in huge gulps, and he proves it by singing too loud, eating all the wrong foods (and still managing to look like a million bucks), and—as he himself admitted the very first time I met him—loving too many women with too much passion to ever make him a successful candidate for marriage.

  It was impossible not to like Alex. He was like a big, friendly bear, all smiles and hugs. In fact, the only fault I could find with him was that, like his cousin, he loved to cook. I didn’t hold it against him. In fact, I’d become inordinately fond of what he called his “broken biscuit cake,” a concoction of chocolate, nuts, and crumbled cookies. So much so, in fact, that I was a little worried about fit when I went to try on my wedding dress that morning.

  Alex is also a skilled craftsman. He’s a carpenter and a plumber. He’s good at painting and hanging wallpaper. There was even talk about him being an expert when it came to laying carpet. As his wedding gift to us, Alex had arrived four weeks earlier and was remodeling Jim’s house.

  Who could ask for more?

  Curious, both as to what Alex had been up to and why he hadn’t answered when Jim called him that day, I got up and tried for a look in the front window again, but even before I did, I knew I was wasting my time. When I heard Jim inside, I pretended I was taking a look at the pots of herbs he’d put out on the porch railing to catch the afternoon sun.

  “That’s a bit daft, isn’t it?” Jim wasn’t talking about me and the plants. In fact, I’m not sure he even noticed that I was pretending to mess with the rosemary and the mint. He was lost in thought. “Alex isn’t here,” he said. “I left early this morning. I thought he was still asleep. But . . .” As if trying to work through it, he shook his head. “His bed isn’t slept in. He went out last night and I thought he’d come home after I was already in bed. Apparently not.”

  “Maybe Alex has met another woman to fall in love with.” I was only half kidding.

  Jim didn’t look convinced. “Maybe. But what if something’s happened to him? You don’t suppose—”

  “Nothing has happened to Alex.” I managed to make it sound like I believed it. The last thing either one of us needed to do was to let our imaginations run wild. When they did, more often than not these days, they ran toward murder.

  I shook away the thought. “Alex is fine. Alex is always fine. Haven’t you said so yourself? Alex is everybody’s friend. He doesn’t have an enemy in the world. Nobody would ever—”

  “There might have been an accident.” Thinking about the possibility, Jim’s brows dipped low over his eyes. “Or he might have gotten mugged. He could be lyin’ in an alley somewhere. He’s got only his driver’s license and that shows his address back home, and the police wouldn’t know he’s stayin’ here with me, and—”

  One hand on his arm, I stopped Jim the way he had stopped me from panicking so many times. “There’s no use worrying. Not if we don’t know there’s anything to worry about. My money’s on a woman.”

  “Aye.” Jim nodded. I’m not sure if he was agreeing with me or trying to talk himself into believing I was right. “A woman. It must be. It is Alex, after all!” He smiled in the way I’d seen him smile so many times when he talked about his cousin. Back when Jim still lived in Scotland, he and Alex had a number of wild adventures they’d told me about, and more, I was sure, they hadn’t dared to mention. Jim knew his cousin better than anyone, and he knew that Alex would come dragging home soon and work twice as hard the rest of the day to make up for the time he’d lost.

  He pulled in a breath and, seeing some of the tension go out of his shoulders, I relaxed. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m going back to Bellywasher’s. We’ve got crab cakes as a dinner special tonight and that means the place will be full. And when I get home tonight—”

  “Alex will be here singing and painting. Or will he be wallpapering?”

  “Ye think I’m that easy to dupe?” Jim laughed. He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and together we headed down the steps. “What Alex is doing—”

  Before he had a chance to tell me, his cell phone rang. He plucked it out of his pocket. “Maybe we’ll find out what Alex is doing. Maybe this is him.”

  He flipped open the phone and I knew he was right about the
call being from Alex because in an instant, the worry was erased from Jim’s face. He smiled and gave me the thumbs-up. “I’ve been worried about ye, man. I was sure something was wrong. But Annie was right. Annie’s often right, in case ye haven’t noticed. She said—” He stopped for a moment and listened. “What’s that?”

  It wasn’t so much what he said as the tone of his voice that sent a shiver through me. I held my breath and waited to hear more.

  “We’ll come. Of course we’ll come,” Jim said. “Right now.”

  He flipped his phone closed, but in spite of his promise to Alex, he didn’t move a muscle. In fact, he stood as still as if he’d been encased in the same ice water that washed through my veins.

  Automatically, I reached for Jim’s hand “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  He swallowed hard. “It’s Alex,” he said. His voice was hollow, his face was suddenly ashen. “He’s at the Arlington police station. He’s . . .” Jim drew in a long breath and when he let it out, it wobbled over the emotion he could barely control. “Alex has been arrested in connection with a murder.”

  Two

  I WAS NEVER SO HAPPY TO SEE ANYONE AS I WAS to run into Tyler Cooper the moment we were inside the doors of the Arlington Police Department headquarters. Even though Tyler was dating Eve again, he wasn’t exactly what I’d call a friend. He was, however, a contact—an official police contact. That was exactly what we needed if we were going to find out what was going on.

  I closed in on him before he had a chance to duck and run. “What’s going on?” I demanded. “Tyler, what happened?”

  He looked from me to Jim, and apparently Tyler decided that Jim was his better bet. Little did he know that Jim loved Alex like a brother. If Tyler was counting on Jim to be either coolheaded or objective, he was in for a surprise. “Your cousin called you?”

  “No, we’re psychic.” Too antsy to keep still and sure poor Alex had been caught up in some red-tape mix-up, I stepped between Jim and Tyler. “Of course Alex called us. How else would we know that you’re holding him on some trumped-up charge? Why else would we be here? It’s a bureaucratic snafu of epic proportions. It must be. What else would explain it? And what in the world—”

  It was Jim’s turn to step in front of me, and though I didn’t appreciate it, I knew he was justified. I am usually calm and levelheaded, remember. The fact that I was spouting off like that silver-plated champagne fountain Eve wanted at the wedding said something about how much I liked Alex, and how worried I was that he was mixed up in some ugly misunderstanding he needed our help to get out of.

  Unlike me, Jim kept his voice low, but still, there was no mistaking the look in his eyes. Another couple minutes of not knowing what was going on, and Jim’s head was going to pop. Yeah, like a champagne cork. “Ye’ve got the wrong man,” he told Tyler.

  In spite of all the times I claimed otherwise, I know that deep down inside, Tyler really does have a heart. Eve wouldn’t love him otherwise. He does not, however, like to show it. Especially in public. Most especially when the public place we were in was the place he worked, and his colleagues were coming and going all around us. After all, Tyler had his reputation as a ruthless jerk to uphold.

  Without a word, he turned and walked down a corridor that was less crowded than the main entrance where we’d run into him. It wasn’t until we were well out of range of any eavesdroppers that Tyler stopped. He sucked on his lower lip and shook his head sadly. “Your cousin’s in a pack of trouble.”

  “But, Tyler, you know him!” I should have left the talking to Jim. As Alex’s contact in the States, it was Jim’s responsibility to deal with the authorities in case of a screwup like this. But I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. No matter how hard I tried. And I wasn’t trying very hard. I knew how quiet Jim had been on the ride over. I saw how stiff his shoulders were, how his jaw was steady and tight. The worry was eating him up, and, seeing Jim worried, I reacted as only a fiancée can. I went on the attack. “You’ve met Alex. You and Eve and me and Jim and Alex, we all just had dinner together last week. He’s fun and he’s friendly and—”

  “Fun and friendly have nothing to do with this.” For a moment, Tyler’s expression flashed from sympathetic to stony and I saw the side of him reserved for those who broke the law. It wasn’t pretty. “It’s not my case,” he admitted. “But I heard them talking in the squad room this morning, I heard them mention Alex’s name. I don’t know all the details . . .”

  “But?” Jim stared at Tyler, waiting for more.

  One side of Tyler’s mouth pulled into up into what was more a grimace than a smile. “From what I hear,” he said, “it sounds pretty cut-and-dried. Alex is going to be arraigned, but until he is, he’s going to have to stay here.”

  “In jail?” My stomach soured.

  Jim put a hand on my shoulder to steady me. “We can see him?” he asked Tyler, ever the voice of reason, even when it came to something this crazy. “We’re allowed to talk to him?”

  Tyler seemed to weigh the wisdom of allowing the visit. He gave in with a curt nod. “I know the lead detective on the case. I’ll talk to him. I’ll get you five minutes. And if anybody asks, it’s because Alex is a foreign national and you have to work out how to get him an attorney.” He looked my way. “Can you do this without creating a scene?”

  “Me? Create a scene? You have got to be kidding! Admit it, Tyler, I’m the most reasonable person you’ve ever met. I wouldn’t create a scene. I wouldn’t even know how.” It wasn’t until I heard my voice echoing back at me and saw a couple people passing by look our way that I realized I already had. I gulped down my mortification, stepped back when I realized I was up in Tyler’s face, and nodded, my arms pressed to my sides. “I’ll behave,” I promised. “Once we get this straightened out . . .”

  I was hoping for a little bit of encouragement from Tyler, something like yeah, you’re right, we’ll have this straightened out in just a jiffy. When he didn’t say a thing, when he simply pivoted and waved an arm to point us in the proper direction, the acid in my stomach shot into my throat. I clutched Jim’s arm and together we walked toward the jail.

  Fifteen minutes later, we were standing in a room that contained nothing but a gray metal table and four matching chairs. We were surrounded by a wire cage. There was a guard outside the door. The ambience made it impossible to relax. I paced from the table to the door and back again.

  “Sit down.” When I walked by, Jim caught my hand and tugged me to a stop. “They’re not even going to let Alex walk in if you’re looking so edgy; they think you’re planning some sort of prison break.”

  “Do I look like I am?” Heat raced up my neck and shot into my cheeks. “I didn’t mean it.” I glanced toward the guard at the door. “I didn’t mean to look fishy,” I said again, a little louder this time, just so he knew I was sincere. I forced myself to breathe, sat—and popped up again in an instant when I saw Alex being led down the hallway by another guard.

  The first guard unlocked and opened the door and Alex stepped inside. I controlled the urge to race over and give him a hug, but only barely, and only because we’d been warned that we were to have no physical contact with what Tyler called “the prisoner.” Instead, through the tears that misted my eyes, I looked over the man who was to be the best man in my wedding in just a few short weeks.

  Even in prison pants with an elastic waist and a shapeless shirt the exact color of his fiery hair, Alex looked pale. There were dark smudges under his eyes and they were sunken and hollow. He was relieved to see us; I knew because for just a moment, he allowed an anemic smile to brighten his expression. It was gone again in an instant. As if he remembered where he was—and why—Alex’s broad shoulders slumped.

  He swallowed hard and looked from me to Jim. “I d’na know what to say.”

  “Just tell us what happened.” Jim patted the table across from where he sat. “Sit down, man, and explain what’s going on.”

  Alex did, and once he was seated
, I sat down, too. For a couple long, uncomfortable moments, we simply stared at each other, unsure of where to start. But I remembered what Tyler had told us: We had five minutes. I wasn’t willing to waste them.

  “Tyler says you were picked up in connection with a murder,” I said, and three cheers for me, I managed to keep my voice even and unemotional, even though my insides were jumpy. When I realized my hands were shaking, I tucked them in my lap. Alex looked miserable enough, there was no use letting him know the rest of us were worried sick, too. “This has got to be some sort of crazy mix-up. Alex, tell us what happened.”

  No doubt the police had already asked him to explain what had happened. It didn’t take Alex long to start into his story. “I worked at the house yesterday. Ye know that, Jim. You stopped in and saw what I’d done in the—”

  Darn! Though he was wearing prison issue and there was a charge of murder hanging over his head, Alex remembered he was sworn to secrecy when it came to the renovation. If he saw that I’d leaned forward, eager to hear more, he didn’t let on. He simply collected his thoughts and started over.

  “I worked at the house, I finished up around seven, showered, and went out for a bite.”

  “Which you know you don’t have to do.” I suppose it was only natural for Jim to try to hang on to the mundane in the face of something so serious. “There’s always food in the fridge, and you could come over to Belly-washer’s anytime you want.”