A Flaky Alibi Page 4

  Suze coughed, then swallowed the bite she’d been chewing. “Uh … she was sneaking into the building where someone died hours ago.”

  “She was embarrassed about her outburst and wanted to clear out her locker without having to face everyone after hearing about Grady. Nell propped the back door open for her.” Paul crossed his arms over his chest as if to say that’s that.

  “But …” Suze blinked.

  “She …” Hadley sighed, leaving off the “was our best suspect” part of the sentence.

  “She also has an alibi. When she left the competition, she went straight to Wendy’s to get a coffee and calm down. I have her receipt and Wendy’s statement confirming she stayed there for more than an hour.”

  Hadley should’ve felt relieved at the information, but something else about the whole situation was bugging her. Paul took another bite of his sandwich, and she realized it might be the best time to bring it up. He couldn’t yell at her when he had a full mouth, right?

  “I also can’t get around how the person got Grady to eat the poisoned pie in the first place.” Hadley chipped at her nail polish.

  Luke nodded. “Yeah. Had’s right. The guy is a total snob—er—was.”

  “He never tasted anyone else’s stuff at the end.” Suze’s eyes widened as she realized what the two judges had already known.

  Paul chewed and swallowed before answering. “There was a note with the pie. But we’re not sure what it means.”

  Stepping forward, Hadley asked, “What did it say?”

  Paul looked from side to side. “Checkmate.”

  “Cryptic.” Luke snorted.

  “But that note somehow got him to take a bite.” Suze shook her head. “Sounds like there was a lot about Grady we didn’t know.”

  Paul ran a hand over his face. “Tell me about it. I’ll be pulling a double shift today to figure it out.”

  Suze groaned in sympathy and wrapped her arms around him. “I was excited about a night off with you.”

  Hadley winked at her best friend. “You can come help me over at the kitchen, if you want something to do.” She glanced down at her phone. “Dad’s just finishing up my new shelves.”

  Suze groaned again, but this time it wasn’t out of sympathy, just exhaustion. “Had, I love you. But I can barely lift my right arm after the mural. I still haven’t been able to get the paint out of my hair after our work last week, and that’s coming from an artist.”

  She was right. She’d been putting in a ton of hours helping Hadley with the renovations to her jam kitchen—and soon-to-be jam shop.

  Waving to show she was kidding, she said, “You deserve a million best-friend points for that mural. It’s amazing.”

  Suze, an accomplished digital designer by day, was also a landscape painter in her spare time. It had been her idea to use the large open wall in Hadley’s retail area for the mural. It depicted the Cascade mountains with wild blackberry bushes in the foreground, and it was beautiful.

  “Well, I’ve got a tractor in need of a new starter.” Luke flicked his hand away from his temple in a salute.

  Paul coughed. “Actually, Luke.”

  Luke paused in his retreat, but Hadley and Suze froze as if he’d said their names instead. Hadley looked between her brother and Luke, hearing the unusual tightness in her brother’s voice.

  “You mind coming inside with me for a second? I have a … question or two.” Paul blinked up at the sky, a surefire sign he was hiding something from Hadley.

  She narrowed her eyes at her twin.

  Luke, knowing Paul almost as well, lifted his eyebrows and pivoted. “Sure thing, Deputy James. As long as you don’t arrest me at the end.”

  He laughed, but Paul didn’t. Paul feigned a wave at the women and then followed Luke toward the community center.

  “What was that about?” Suze asked, clutching Hadley’s arm.

  “I'm not sure.” Hadley could hear the tremors of panic in her own voice. There were definite downsides to small-town living—like never having much privacy. But one perk had always been knowing everything that happened in Stoneybrook, especially with her brother being one of the deputy sheriffs.

  Not having a clue was a feeling she hated, and one she was experiencing more now that Paul decided he didn’t want her getting involved. Her lungs tightened with worry as Luke and Paul disappear into the building.

  With a promise to call each other if either of them learned why Paul needed to talk to Luke, Suze and Hadley went their separate ways. Suze peeled off toward her house while Hadley headed down Main Street to the jam kitchen.

  The back door was unlocked, and she pushed it open. Clear plastic swished in the wind created by her entrance. She'd covered everything in the kitchen in hopes it would lessen the amount of deep cleaning she’d need to do once the place reopened for business.

  And even though the plastic coverings were what she noticed first, they were never what held her attention. After weeks of renovations, the front of the space was resembling her dream of a jam shop. Long, live-edge walnut-wood shelves now ran the length of the left wall, ready to hold jars of jam for purchase. Her father stood a few feet away, rubbing bright stain onto similar pieces of wood for the opposite wall. He glanced up and smiled.

  “What do you think?” He turned to appraise the completed shelves.

  “Dad, they’re even better than what I pictured.” She walked forward, running her hands over the smooth wood. She was especially glad for the sturdy wrought-iron brackets holding up the shelves; all those jars got heavy. “Thank you so much.” Hadley rushed over and pulled her dad into a hug.

  She loved the way he emanated the scent of wood shavings and varnish, in the best way possible. It was the smell of her dad.

  He nodded when she pulled away. “Glad to help, little one. I’m so proud of what you’ve done here.” His ice-blue eyes misted over, and he turned from her to look around the shop.

  Hadley bit her lip to hide a smile. She realized he didn’t want her to see him get emotional. Her lanky dad had called her little one as long as she could remember. Even though she felt plenty tall at five foot five, compared to her giant, brawny brother, she’d always been the smaller of the twins.

  “How’d the competition go today?” he asked, turning back to her.

  The smile dropped off Hadley’s face. “Oh, Dad.” She blinked. He’d been working in here and hadn’t heard the news yet. “It was fine.” She cleared her throat. “Until …”

  “Until?” His intense gaze held hers.

  “Someone poisoned Grady Fines. He’s dead. Paul’s investigating the murder with McKay,” she said, adding, And asking Luke Fenton questions which makes me worried, in her thoughts only.

  Her father’s weathered face tightened. “Murdered? How do they know?”

  “They saw evidence of cyanide poisoning. The killer left a pie in his locker for him to eat.”

  Tsking and shaking his head, her father wiped his hands on the towel tucked into his tool belt. “That’s a shame. If I didn’t see just as many good things happening around here, I’d be on my way to worrying about this little town of ours.”

  Hadley leaned back into the half wall they’d framed a few weeks ago to delineate the retail space from her jam kitchen. She puffed a breath out and nodded. “I know. Me too.”

  Her father winced as he stretched to one side.

  She put a hand on his arm. “Hey, why don’t you call it a day?”

  He glanced back at the shelves. “I will, just as soon as I finish staining these.”

  Hadley tugged the cloth out of his rough fingers. “Let me do that.”

  A true woodworker’s daughter, Hadley knew her way around a cloth and a bucket of stain.

  He smiled. “Okay, little one, I’ll take you up on the offer. Your gran's making her famous chili tonight, and I could use something that might stick to my ribs.” He patted his lean stomach.

  “Give Mom and Gran my love,” she said as he unbuckled his tool belt and laid it on the half wall to his left.

  “Will do,” he said, coming over to plant a woodsy-smelling, rough kiss on her cheek before leaving.

  Alone, Hadley sighed, overwhelmed but excited all at the same time.

  Now that things were coming together, she couldn’t help picturing what the space would look like as a shop. And right behind the feelings of excitement fluttering in her chest was the real urgency to finish up and get her business opened again. She couldn’t make jam while the renovations were in swing—not wanting to risk anything getting into the jam—so she was closed until they finished renovating.

  Luckily, her grandmother had been helping her since she’d moved to town that fall and had helped Hadley build up quite a stockpile to prepare for the close. In fact, she’d just opened the last boxes of each flavor that morning at the farmers market.

  Hadley picked up the rag and got to work.

  Just around the time she finished staining one piece of wood, Luke Fenton entered through the back door of the jam kitchen. His face was dark, etched with concern.

  6

  Hadley stood, dropping the rag she held before walking toward Luke.

  “Are you in some kind of trouble?” she asked.

  Luke ran a hand through his floppy, sandy-brown hair, and the lines on his face only deepened. “Trouble? Why would you think that?”

  “Because Paul needed to ask you questions.”

  His features relaxed. “Oh, that was just for help, not because I’m in trouble.”

  “Help?” Hadley cleared her throat, hoping it might push down the feelings of jealousy rising, making the word sound strangled.

  Luke’s mouth tugged up into a smirk. “Yeah, he needed me to consult about fruit.”

  An indignant s
coff left her. “What about me? I’m surrounded by fruit every day.” She raised her arms to gesture around the room. Her shoulders fell a few millimeters. “Well, normally.”

  A chuckle escaped Luke. “You are quite the fruit expert, I’ll give you that. I think he wanted to talk with me because I grew the fruit in question.”

  Hadley’s eyes widened. “The cherries in the pie?”

  Luke nodded.

  “How’d he know?”

  “Well, he didn’t—at first. He showed me the pie, and I identified the variety. We’re the only ones in the valley who sell Rainiers. So unless the pie poisoner traveled over the mountains for their ingredients, the cherries in that pie were likely ours.” Luke leaned back into one of Hadley’s plastic-covered stainless-steel workstations.

  “So you can figure out who bought them!” Hadley stepped forward, stopping short as she tallied up how many people that might be.

  Luke chuckled at her, standing there chewing on her bottom lip. Sure, she was an outlier, buying flats of fruit throughout the summer to freeze for the winter months. But even the most fruit-conservative Stoneybrookians went through at least three bags of the pink-and-yellow cherries each summer. At least.

  “Yeah, Paul realized it was a dead end just as quickly as you,” Luke said.

  Hadley sighed. “Darn. I was hoping you might’ve gotten a clue out of seeing the pie.”

  Luke kicked the toe of his boot against the tile floor of the kitchen.

  Hadley’s forehead creased as she recognized the sign of discomfort.

  “Wait. You saw a clue, didn’t you?”

  Luke met her gaze. He nodded.

  “Then why do you look like you just got news that frost destroyed half of your crops? That’s great news! What was it?” Hadley couldn’t hide her excitement. She’d been going over Grady’s death in her head ever since that afternoon.

  “Hadley.” Luke cleared his throat.

  The low, worried tone of his voice threw cold water on her eagerness. “What was the clue, Luke?” she asked, equal parts not wanting to find out and needing to know.

  He swallowed. “You know how, before she had her bakery, Mickie used to bake her pies in that ceramic pie dish with the blue star design around the edge?”

  Hadley’s heart sank. “The one that said Sweetie Pie at the bottom once the pie was gone.”

  Luke nodded, his blue eyes stormy with concern.

  “She can’t be the only person who had that dish. Surely.” Hadley paced in front of Luke.

  “Surely.” He agreed.

  But right as he did, Hadley blurted, “She’s the only person in Stoneybrook I’ve ever seen with it.” She closed her eyes. “Why does everything keep pointing back to Mickie?”

  Luke’s hand closed over hers. She blinked, looking up at him.

  “I didn’t tell Paul that I recognized it,” he said. “He’s not as close to Mick as you and I are, so he won’t know unless one of us tells him.”

  A lump formed in Hadley’s throat as she realized the implications of what Luke was telling her. “Luke, we can’t keep—”

  “We won't keep it from him forever, but we should investigate first. If we tell Paul, he'll report it to McKay and then …” Luke trailed off, unable to finish the sentence.

  Hadley swallowed the lump and dipped her head. “Okay. You’re right. We’re just saving him from distraction. We know Mickie didn't do this, so we will figure out why her dish is under that pie while Paul and McKay follow the real poisoner.”

  Luke smiled. “Thanks, Had. What are you up to tonight? We could head over to Mickie’s and see if we can get the scoop on that dish.”

  “Sure.” Hadley gestured behind her. “I’ve got more staining to do here, but after that I’ll be free to sleuth the night away with you.”

  Any embarrassment Hadley felt at suggesting she would spend the night doing anything with Luke was lost on the other sleuth because he caught sight of the work behind her.

  “Whoa. It looks great in here, Hads.” He walked forward, cutting through the small door in the half wall and into the retail space.

  She followed.

  “Your dad is amazing,” Luke said as he ran a hand along the finished shelves.

  Hadley beamed. “I like him okay.” She smirked at the understatement.

  “Finally making it happen.” Luke turned around to watch her. “I’m so happy for you.”

  Between the way his familiar face crinkled into a true smile and his eyes locked onto hers, it was suddenly much too hot in her shop. She barely noticed the doors open wide to keep the place ventilated with the stain or how there were visible icicles outside lining her awning.

  There had always been something between them. When they were kids, it was an intense camaraderie. Later, during high school, it had morphed into a spiteful hatred. Now it was a deep comfort. The kind of ease that only came from knowing someone your whole life, of seeing them and realizing—without a doubt—that they saw you for who you truly were.

  These feelings were not only confusing to Hadley, but scary as all get out. She’d been divorced for less than a year, to Luke’s ex-best friend. She wasn’t sure she was ready to be interested in someone else yet, let alone Luke.

  She broke the tension by asking, “And how’s the new house coming?”

  Luke blinked as if waking from a trance. “Oh, you know. The decisions I have to make seem never ending, but I’m sure it’ll be worth it.”

  After searching for a home last year, Luke had decided to build a new one on his current property.

  “At least you don’t have to live in it,” Hadley said, knowing he was keeping the old guest house on the property until his new one was ready.

  He laughed as he walked toward the back door. “You’ve got a point there. Well, I’ll let you get to it here. Unless …” Luke stopped.

  Hadley met his gaze.

  “Unless you could use the company. I might not have grown up sanding and staining like you, but I’m good at following directions.”

  Hadley smiled. “Luke Fenton, you’ve never been good at following directions.” She paused. “But I’d love the help if you want to stay.”

  Luke shrugged. “There’s a first time for everything.”

  Hadley chewed on her lip and watched him for a moment. “Okay, grab gloves.”

  An hour later, she’d finished her pieces. Luke was taking off his gloves and stepping around his sawhorses to survey his work. She walked over to see how he’d done, pulling off her own gloves in the process.

  Luke moved to block her. “Stop. Don’t come any closer. I’m shelf-conscious about my work.”

  Hadley couldn’t help but laugh at the terrible pun. She swatted at his arm. “Just for that, I’m making you buy me coffee on our way to Mickie’s.”

  Luke caught her hand in his, and he turned to face her. “It would be my pleasure, your mahogany,” he whispered, leaning in close.

  The tension that had built from his proximity, erupted out of Hadley in a laugh. “Boo,” she said through a chuckle. “Mahogany is no where near majesty.”

  He placed a finger on the tip of his nose. “Ah, but close enough you knew what I meant.”

  A peace settled over Hadley at the chance to laugh with Luke again. When they were younger, they had each other in stitches half the time, devolving into snorts and tears when the jokes became too silly.

  Done with their work, Hadley and Luke set to work cleaning. The doors had to be closed, their stain jars sealed, and the rags laid to dry in the alley behind her shop. By the time they were ready to go, Hadley's stomach grumbled for dinner.

  “I believe I promised you a coffee.” Luke held out his arm as they reached the end of the jam kitchen’s alley and spilled onto Main Street.

  Hadley slipped her arm through his. She settled into step next to Luke as he tucked his hand into his jeans pocket.

  The winter sun was already setting, sending the valley into an icy twilight. Their breath billowed in front of them as the frost took hold once more, now that the sun wasn’t up to keeping it at bay. The cold stung at Hadley’s nostrils, making her sure they would get another dusting of snow that night. Her boots crunched on the salted sidewalks next to Luke’s boots and she pulled closer to him, glad for their shared warmth.

  The Cascade River Coffee Company glowed in the deepening darkness. The yellow lights streamed out onto the sidewalk in front of the café, illuminating the first few glittering snowflakes as they wafted from the sky.