Claret and Present Danger, page 24
“But you know I used that term for her. Somehow, you know, and you’ve put two and two together. I can tell.”
I took another step back. Again, Rachael advanced with me. Barely two inches of space separated me from the dagger’s sharp point.
I wasn’t about to explain how I’d found out that Rachael had called Minerva a grief vampire. I didn’t want Tilly on a killer’s radar. The girl had overheard Rachael mumbling the words under her breath while glaring at the fortune-teller. Once I’d had that bit of information, I’d realized what a mistake it was for me to overlook Rachael as a suspect.
“Now I have to figure out what to do with you,” Rachael grumbled, as if I’d greatly inconvenienced her, which I probably had.
“You don’t need to do anything with me.” I edged back another step.
For once, Rachael didn’t move with me.
“You think I want to go to jail? If I don’t get rid of you, that’s where I’ll end up. You know too much.”
“Like Collette?”
Rachael smirked. “No one knows what happened to her. Maybe she just ran off.”
I almost blurted out that Grayson and I had found Collette alive, but I stopped myself. If I couldn’t get out of this situation, I didn’t want Rachael speeding off to the hospital to make another attempt at silencing the acrobat forever.
Instead, I hoped I could distract her and keep her from killing me immediately.
“Ozzie was a decoy, wasn’t he?” I said. “Minerva was the intended victim, but you decided to complicate matters by killing Ozzie too.”
“You’re smart, but not that smart. I had another reason for killing Ozzie.”
“What’s that?” I edged back another few inches.
Something soft brushed against my shoulder. A gasp died in my throat when I realized it was one of the suspended silks touching my arm.
“I wanted Minerva to suffer.” Tears filled her eyes, but her voice was laced with bitterness. “I wanted her to know what it feels like to lose a loved one. I wanted her to suffer the way I suffered.”
“When you lost your mom.” I’d taken a guess, but the flash in Rachael’s eyes told me I was on the right track.
“Even before I lost her.” Tears escaped and slid down her cheeks. “That woman preyed on my mom’s grief and hope, draining her until she was broken and penniless. Minerva pretended to communicate with my sister and father, to pass messages to and from my mom. All for a price, of course. And I didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late. By then my mom had nothing left—no money, no hope. She died within weeks.”
“I’m sorry, Rachael.” And I was, even though her mom’s suffering didn’t justify the murders or the attack on Collette.
I wasn’t sure she heard me.
“I don’t want blood on my hands,” she said through her angry tears.
“Good.” I didn’t bring up the fact that she already had plenty of blood on her hands, figuratively speaking.
She wasn’t listening to me, anyway. “So we’re going to arrange an accident.”
Her gaze darted to the side. When I looked that way, I realized what she had in mind. She wanted me to climb the ladder up to the high wire.
I shuddered, and my heart raced faster. Numbness worked its way into my fingers and toes.
Rachael had her focus back on me again. She jerked the point of the dagger toward the ladder. “Go on. Climb.” When I hesitated, her eyes hardened. “Don’t worry. I’ll be right behind you.”
I definitely didn’t want to go up that ladder. Maybe I could kick Rachael in the face as she followed me up, but then I’d still have to get past her to escape the tent. That wouldn’t be easy if my kick didn’t render her unconscious.
I shot a glance over Rachael’s left shoulder.
As I’d hoped, she automatically looked that way.
The point of the dagger drifted away from me.
I grabbed onto the aerial silk and jumped up and back. I swung forward and kicked my legs out in front of me. My feet slammed into Rachael’s midsection.
She flew back with a grunt and hit the ground, sprawled on her back. The dagger clattered out of her grasp.
As the silk swung me backward, I let go and dropped to the ground.
Rachael rolled up onto her knees and made a grab for the dagger.
Detective Marquez burst into the tent. “Police! Hands where we can see them!”
Rachael froze, the dagger inches from her fingers.
I raised my hands in the air.
Marquez, Eldon, and Officer Rogers rushed over with their guns drawn. Within seconds, Eldon had Rachael’s hands behind her back, cuffs securing her wrists.
Marquez lowered her weapon.
“Are you okay, Sadie?” she asked me.
“Yes,” I said, the word coming out as faint as I felt.
I thought I saw a corner of the detective’s mouth twitch.
“You can lower your hands now,” she said.
I’d forgotten they were in the air.
I dropped my arms and grabbed onto the silk for support as relief rushed through me, leaving my legs weak.
Chapter 39
The evening sun warmed my skin and brought a smile to my face. It was the perfect weather for a barbecue. Damien had his grill fired up on his back porch and was cooking burgers, hot dogs, and shrimp skewers. Grayson passed around bottles of cold beer from his brewery, brought over to Damien’s place in a large cooler.
Across the yard, Damien’s daughters played badminton with Kiandra and Tilly, the game punctuated by bursts of laughter. The happy sound washed over me, raising my spirits higher. I’d needed this get-together more than I’d realized.
The events of a couple of weeks ago had dampened my spirits. Although the police had arrested Rachael for the murders of Ozzie and Minerva, and for the attempted murder of Collette, I’d been slow to shake off the melancholy that had settled over me after the showdown at the fairgrounds.
The charges against Damien had been dropped, and he was once again a free man, back to work at the Inkwell, with a cloud of suspicion no longer hanging over his head. Yet every time I thought about Rachael and the murders—which was often— sadness weighed heavily upon my shoulders. Rachael had suffered so much, but her thirst for revenge had gone way too far. The memory of my confrontation with her had followed me like a dark shadow for days.
That had improved, but it wasn’t until this evening, while hanging out with my friends, that I finally felt as though I was close to banishing that shadow for good.
I took a sip of cold beer and got up from the Adirondack chair where I’d been relaxing and watching the badminton game. Tilly’s mom, Tamara, stood near the steps to the back porch, chatting with Mel, the twins, and Booker and his girlfriend.
Shontelle, with a glass of wine in hand, wandered over to my side. “You’ve been awfully quiet so far this evening. Everything okay?”
“Just relaxing,” I said. “Maybe for the first time in a while.”
Shontelle rested a hand on my shoulder. “This barbecue was a good idea.”
I smiled. “I’m glad Eldon was able to make it.”
A smile touched Shontelle’s lips as well as she looked over at Eldon, who stood on the porch, talking with Damien and Grayson. “Me too.”
Noise from the badminton game diverted our attention momentarily. Bryony, in an attempt to hit the birdie, had ended up sitting on the ground. She seemed unharmed, but a fit of giggles had overtaken her. That got the other kids laughing too.
“Any word on how Collette’s doing?” Shontelle asked after taking a sip of wine.
I’d visited Collette in the hospital the week before, and she’d promised to keep me updated on her condition by text message. I’d last heard from her two days earlier.
“She suffered a bad concussion,” I said, “but she’s out of the hospital now. It’ll be a while before she’s back on a trapeze, but her chances of a full recovery are good. She was planning to start an acrobatic magic show with her magician boyfriend, who lives in New York City, but she broke up with him after her run-in with Rachael. Now she and her brother, Toby, are hoping to have a future show together.”
She was certain that Toby would do well onstage, once he had built up his confidence. Apparently, Ozzie had made a practice of putting him down on a regular basis. That had amplified Toby’s insecurities and had driven him to sending the illusionist hate mail, something he’d confessed to his sister. Now he and Collette just wanted to put the past behind them and move forward.
“I hope things work out well for her,” Shontelle said. “She’s lucky to be alive.”
There was no denying that. I’d heard from Detective Marquez that Rachael had thought she’d killed Collette out in the woods, after chasing her across the fairgrounds at dusk. Like Tilly, Collette had overheard Rachael muttering disparaging remarks about Minerva, only Rachael had realized that Collette heard her. Worried that Collette had suspicions about her—which she did—Rachael had tried to silence her in a permanent fashion, striking her in the head with a rock.
“Food’s ready!” Damien called out from the back porch.
Kiandra and Tilly let out squeals of happiness. They dropped their rackets and ran for the porch. Bryony and Charlotte followed close behind.
Shontelle and I stayed put for the moment, letting the kids get their food first.
Eldon wandered over, a bottle of beer in hand. “How have you been doing since everything went down, Sadie?”
“All right.” I gazed around at all my friends. Teagan and Zoe were laughing with Booker and his girlfriend, and Mel and Tilly’s mom were heading for the grill to get some food. Everyone looked happy and at ease. “And better every day.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Eldon said.
“Can you fill in some gaps for Sadie?” Shontelle asked. “Some of the details have been bugging her.”
I’d admitted that to Shontelle days earlier.
“I can share some things,” Eldon said. “Fortunately, we know quite a bit about how events unfolded. Rachael’s planning to plead guilty to all charges. She was pretty open about things when we questioned her.”
“How did she poison Ozzie?” I asked. “I know she used monkshood, but how did she administer the poison?”
Eldon took a sip of beer. “The bullet.”
“What bullet?” Shontelle asked. “He was shot?”
I shook my head. “He did a trick where Collette shot a gun at him and he caught the bullet in his teeth. At least he made it look like he did. He collapsed a few minutes later.”
“Rachael used a concentrate or paste of juice from the roots of a monkshood plant,” Eldon explained. “Her mom was a botanist, so she knows a good deal about plants. She found the monkshood growing at the back of someone’s garden at the edge of town when she was out for a walk. Once she prepared the poison, she laced Ozzie’s bullet with it right before the show. He had the bullet tucked inside his cheek before and during the trick, so he could put it between his teeth once the gun was fired. It didn’t take long after he put it in his mouth for the poison to start to work.”
Shontelle shuddered. “It must have been a terrible way to die.”
I tried to push away the memory of Ozzie collapsing, struggling to breathe in his last moments.
“And that was all to get revenge on Minerva?” Shontelle said.
“Apparently,” Eldon confirmed. “She wanted Minerva dead, but not before she suffered the loss of Ozzie, the man she loved. Then Rachael asked Minerva to help her with something over at the mermaid tank one night. Once they were up at the top of the tank, she pushed Minerva in and held her under until she drowned.”
“And then dragged her all the way to the pillory?” I asked.
“It took some strength, but she did it,” Eldon said. “Rachael thought it was fitting to lock her body in the pillory. I guess it sent a message that Minerva deserved to be punished.” He paused to drain the last of his beer. “You’ll be interested to know, Sadie, that Rachael’s Renaissance costume was missing an eyelet from the bodice.”
So the eyelet by the pillory really had been a clue as to the killer’s identity.
“I had no idea Rachael was suffering so much,” Shontelle said sadly.
Eldon put a hand to her back. “You hadn’t seen her in years.”
“And she hid it well,” I added.
“She’s not the same person I remember from college.” Shontelle swirled the wine in her glass. “I feel bad that she went through so much, but resorting to murder . . . She must have been unhinged to do that.”
Damien hailed us from the porch. “Better come grab some food before it’s all gone!”
As much as I appreciated Eldon filling in the gaps of the story, the distraction of food came as a relief. My mood had started growing darker again, and I didn’t want to slide back in that direction.
The conversation turned to happier, lighter topics as we all grabbed food and dug into our meals. After I’d eaten my fill, I set down my plate on a picnic table and joined Grayson on the lawn, where he stood talking with Booker.
“I’m going to grab another burger,” Booker said a few minutes later.
It didn’t surprise me that he could eat more than one.
As Booker jogged off toward the grill, Grayson put an arm around my shoulders. I leaned into him.
“You doing okay?” he asked.
I knew he’d worried about me over the past couple of weeks.
“I am.” I nodded at the scene in front of us, with so many of our friends gathered together. “This is helping.”
He kissed the top of my head. “Good.”
I tipped my head back to look up at him. “How about you?”
“If you’re doing better, then so am I,” he said.
Grayson regretted heading back to the brewery without me after the ambulance had whisked Collette away from the woods. I’d reminded him many times that it was my own decision to return to the fairgrounds, but that didn’t stop him from wishing he’d gone with me.
He’d raced over to the park after reading my text message, but by then the police had already had Rachael in custody. Lucky for me, Rachael hadn’t disconnected my call to Detective Marquez when she knocked my phone out of my hand. The detective’s voicemail had picked up some of my conversation with her.
Marquez hadn’t gone far after leaving the woods. She’d driven around to the faire’s front gates, looking for Toby. She’d heard the voicemail shortly after it was recorded, and Hamish had pointed her and her officers in the direction I’d gone. I didn’t like to think about what would have happened to me if things had played out differently.
“There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you,” Grayson said.
I gave him my full attention. “What’s that?”
“Now that you’ve got Damien back at the Inkwell, and with Zoe working for you part-time, I thought maybe we could manage some time for just the two of us.”
I liked the sound of that. “What were you thinking?”
“Would you like to go to Nantucket with me at the end of the summer?”
“Nantucket?” A big smile stretched across my face. “You remembered that I want to go?”
“Of course I remembered.” His smile almost outshone my own. “So is that a yes?”
I threw my arms around him and gave him a kiss.
“It’s most definitely a yes.”
Recipes
THE SECRET LIFE OF DAIQUIRIS
½ cup frozen mango chunks
½ cup ice
4 oz cream of coconut (see recipe below)
2 oz mango juice
1 oz coconut rum*
1 oz freshly squeezed lime juice
Add all the ingredients to a blender and blend until smooth. Pour the mixture into a cocktail glass and serve at once.
Makes 1 cocktail
*For the mocktail version, simply leave out the rum.
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S CREAM (MOCKTAIL)
6 oz cream of coconut (see recipe below)
½ cup frozen strawberries
½ cup water
½ cup ice
1 oz lime juice
Whipped cream, to taste
Pour half the cream of coconut into one cocktail glass and the other half into a second glass. In a blender, combine the strawberries, water, ice, and lime juice. Blend until smooth. Slowly pour half of the strawberry mixture over the back of a spoon into one of the cocktail glasses. It should form a layer over the cream of coconut. Top with whipped cream. Repeat with the second glass and serve at once.
Makes 2 mocktails
CREAM OF COCONUT
13.5 oz coconut milk
¾ cup granulated sugar
Combine the ingredients in a small saucepan and heat gently over low heat, stirring frequently, until the sugar has completely dissolved. Allow the mixture to cool before using.
(You can store any leftovers in a sealed container in the freezer for future use.)
SOFIE’S APPLE FRITTERS
Dough:
¾ cup warm milk
3 tbsp granulated sugar
2 tsp dry active yeast
2 tbsp butter, melted
⅓ cup dry apple cider
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
½ tsp vanilla extract
2 tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp salt
2½ cups pastry flour (plus more if needed)
Vegetable or canola oil for frying
Apple Filling:
3 medium Granny Smith apples (or preferred variety),
peeled, cored, and cut into ½-inch dice (about 2 cups)
1 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tsp salted butter
¼ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup brown sugar
½ tsp ground cinnamon
2 tbsp dry apple cider
I took another step back. Again, Rachael advanced with me. Barely two inches of space separated me from the dagger’s sharp point.
I wasn’t about to explain how I’d found out that Rachael had called Minerva a grief vampire. I didn’t want Tilly on a killer’s radar. The girl had overheard Rachael mumbling the words under her breath while glaring at the fortune-teller. Once I’d had that bit of information, I’d realized what a mistake it was for me to overlook Rachael as a suspect.
“Now I have to figure out what to do with you,” Rachael grumbled, as if I’d greatly inconvenienced her, which I probably had.
“You don’t need to do anything with me.” I edged back another step.
For once, Rachael didn’t move with me.
“You think I want to go to jail? If I don’t get rid of you, that’s where I’ll end up. You know too much.”
“Like Collette?”
Rachael smirked. “No one knows what happened to her. Maybe she just ran off.”
I almost blurted out that Grayson and I had found Collette alive, but I stopped myself. If I couldn’t get out of this situation, I didn’t want Rachael speeding off to the hospital to make another attempt at silencing the acrobat forever.
Instead, I hoped I could distract her and keep her from killing me immediately.
“Ozzie was a decoy, wasn’t he?” I said. “Minerva was the intended victim, but you decided to complicate matters by killing Ozzie too.”
“You’re smart, but not that smart. I had another reason for killing Ozzie.”
“What’s that?” I edged back another few inches.
Something soft brushed against my shoulder. A gasp died in my throat when I realized it was one of the suspended silks touching my arm.
“I wanted Minerva to suffer.” Tears filled her eyes, but her voice was laced with bitterness. “I wanted her to know what it feels like to lose a loved one. I wanted her to suffer the way I suffered.”
“When you lost your mom.” I’d taken a guess, but the flash in Rachael’s eyes told me I was on the right track.
“Even before I lost her.” Tears escaped and slid down her cheeks. “That woman preyed on my mom’s grief and hope, draining her until she was broken and penniless. Minerva pretended to communicate with my sister and father, to pass messages to and from my mom. All for a price, of course. And I didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late. By then my mom had nothing left—no money, no hope. She died within weeks.”
“I’m sorry, Rachael.” And I was, even though her mom’s suffering didn’t justify the murders or the attack on Collette.
I wasn’t sure she heard me.
“I don’t want blood on my hands,” she said through her angry tears.
“Good.” I didn’t bring up the fact that she already had plenty of blood on her hands, figuratively speaking.
She wasn’t listening to me, anyway. “So we’re going to arrange an accident.”
Her gaze darted to the side. When I looked that way, I realized what she had in mind. She wanted me to climb the ladder up to the high wire.
I shuddered, and my heart raced faster. Numbness worked its way into my fingers and toes.
Rachael had her focus back on me again. She jerked the point of the dagger toward the ladder. “Go on. Climb.” When I hesitated, her eyes hardened. “Don’t worry. I’ll be right behind you.”
I definitely didn’t want to go up that ladder. Maybe I could kick Rachael in the face as she followed me up, but then I’d still have to get past her to escape the tent. That wouldn’t be easy if my kick didn’t render her unconscious.
I shot a glance over Rachael’s left shoulder.
As I’d hoped, she automatically looked that way.
The point of the dagger drifted away from me.
I grabbed onto the aerial silk and jumped up and back. I swung forward and kicked my legs out in front of me. My feet slammed into Rachael’s midsection.
She flew back with a grunt and hit the ground, sprawled on her back. The dagger clattered out of her grasp.
As the silk swung me backward, I let go and dropped to the ground.
Rachael rolled up onto her knees and made a grab for the dagger.
Detective Marquez burst into the tent. “Police! Hands where we can see them!”
Rachael froze, the dagger inches from her fingers.
I raised my hands in the air.
Marquez, Eldon, and Officer Rogers rushed over with their guns drawn. Within seconds, Eldon had Rachael’s hands behind her back, cuffs securing her wrists.
Marquez lowered her weapon.
“Are you okay, Sadie?” she asked me.
“Yes,” I said, the word coming out as faint as I felt.
I thought I saw a corner of the detective’s mouth twitch.
“You can lower your hands now,” she said.
I’d forgotten they were in the air.
I dropped my arms and grabbed onto the silk for support as relief rushed through me, leaving my legs weak.
Chapter 39
The evening sun warmed my skin and brought a smile to my face. It was the perfect weather for a barbecue. Damien had his grill fired up on his back porch and was cooking burgers, hot dogs, and shrimp skewers. Grayson passed around bottles of cold beer from his brewery, brought over to Damien’s place in a large cooler.
Across the yard, Damien’s daughters played badminton with Kiandra and Tilly, the game punctuated by bursts of laughter. The happy sound washed over me, raising my spirits higher. I’d needed this get-together more than I’d realized.
The events of a couple of weeks ago had dampened my spirits. Although the police had arrested Rachael for the murders of Ozzie and Minerva, and for the attempted murder of Collette, I’d been slow to shake off the melancholy that had settled over me after the showdown at the fairgrounds.
The charges against Damien had been dropped, and he was once again a free man, back to work at the Inkwell, with a cloud of suspicion no longer hanging over his head. Yet every time I thought about Rachael and the murders—which was often— sadness weighed heavily upon my shoulders. Rachael had suffered so much, but her thirst for revenge had gone way too far. The memory of my confrontation with her had followed me like a dark shadow for days.
That had improved, but it wasn’t until this evening, while hanging out with my friends, that I finally felt as though I was close to banishing that shadow for good.
I took a sip of cold beer and got up from the Adirondack chair where I’d been relaxing and watching the badminton game. Tilly’s mom, Tamara, stood near the steps to the back porch, chatting with Mel, the twins, and Booker and his girlfriend.
Shontelle, with a glass of wine in hand, wandered over to my side. “You’ve been awfully quiet so far this evening. Everything okay?”
“Just relaxing,” I said. “Maybe for the first time in a while.”
Shontelle rested a hand on my shoulder. “This barbecue was a good idea.”
I smiled. “I’m glad Eldon was able to make it.”
A smile touched Shontelle’s lips as well as she looked over at Eldon, who stood on the porch, talking with Damien and Grayson. “Me too.”
Noise from the badminton game diverted our attention momentarily. Bryony, in an attempt to hit the birdie, had ended up sitting on the ground. She seemed unharmed, but a fit of giggles had overtaken her. That got the other kids laughing too.
“Any word on how Collette’s doing?” Shontelle asked after taking a sip of wine.
I’d visited Collette in the hospital the week before, and she’d promised to keep me updated on her condition by text message. I’d last heard from her two days earlier.
“She suffered a bad concussion,” I said, “but she’s out of the hospital now. It’ll be a while before she’s back on a trapeze, but her chances of a full recovery are good. She was planning to start an acrobatic magic show with her magician boyfriend, who lives in New York City, but she broke up with him after her run-in with Rachael. Now she and her brother, Toby, are hoping to have a future show together.”
She was certain that Toby would do well onstage, once he had built up his confidence. Apparently, Ozzie had made a practice of putting him down on a regular basis. That had amplified Toby’s insecurities and had driven him to sending the illusionist hate mail, something he’d confessed to his sister. Now he and Collette just wanted to put the past behind them and move forward.
“I hope things work out well for her,” Shontelle said. “She’s lucky to be alive.”
There was no denying that. I’d heard from Detective Marquez that Rachael had thought she’d killed Collette out in the woods, after chasing her across the fairgrounds at dusk. Like Tilly, Collette had overheard Rachael muttering disparaging remarks about Minerva, only Rachael had realized that Collette heard her. Worried that Collette had suspicions about her—which she did—Rachael had tried to silence her in a permanent fashion, striking her in the head with a rock.
“Food’s ready!” Damien called out from the back porch.
Kiandra and Tilly let out squeals of happiness. They dropped their rackets and ran for the porch. Bryony and Charlotte followed close behind.
Shontelle and I stayed put for the moment, letting the kids get their food first.
Eldon wandered over, a bottle of beer in hand. “How have you been doing since everything went down, Sadie?”
“All right.” I gazed around at all my friends. Teagan and Zoe were laughing with Booker and his girlfriend, and Mel and Tilly’s mom were heading for the grill to get some food. Everyone looked happy and at ease. “And better every day.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Eldon said.
“Can you fill in some gaps for Sadie?” Shontelle asked. “Some of the details have been bugging her.”
I’d admitted that to Shontelle days earlier.
“I can share some things,” Eldon said. “Fortunately, we know quite a bit about how events unfolded. Rachael’s planning to plead guilty to all charges. She was pretty open about things when we questioned her.”
“How did she poison Ozzie?” I asked. “I know she used monkshood, but how did she administer the poison?”
Eldon took a sip of beer. “The bullet.”
“What bullet?” Shontelle asked. “He was shot?”
I shook my head. “He did a trick where Collette shot a gun at him and he caught the bullet in his teeth. At least he made it look like he did. He collapsed a few minutes later.”
“Rachael used a concentrate or paste of juice from the roots of a monkshood plant,” Eldon explained. “Her mom was a botanist, so she knows a good deal about plants. She found the monkshood growing at the back of someone’s garden at the edge of town when she was out for a walk. Once she prepared the poison, she laced Ozzie’s bullet with it right before the show. He had the bullet tucked inside his cheek before and during the trick, so he could put it between his teeth once the gun was fired. It didn’t take long after he put it in his mouth for the poison to start to work.”
Shontelle shuddered. “It must have been a terrible way to die.”
I tried to push away the memory of Ozzie collapsing, struggling to breathe in his last moments.
“And that was all to get revenge on Minerva?” Shontelle said.
“Apparently,” Eldon confirmed. “She wanted Minerva dead, but not before she suffered the loss of Ozzie, the man she loved. Then Rachael asked Minerva to help her with something over at the mermaid tank one night. Once they were up at the top of the tank, she pushed Minerva in and held her under until she drowned.”
“And then dragged her all the way to the pillory?” I asked.
“It took some strength, but she did it,” Eldon said. “Rachael thought it was fitting to lock her body in the pillory. I guess it sent a message that Minerva deserved to be punished.” He paused to drain the last of his beer. “You’ll be interested to know, Sadie, that Rachael’s Renaissance costume was missing an eyelet from the bodice.”
So the eyelet by the pillory really had been a clue as to the killer’s identity.
“I had no idea Rachael was suffering so much,” Shontelle said sadly.
Eldon put a hand to her back. “You hadn’t seen her in years.”
“And she hid it well,” I added.
“She’s not the same person I remember from college.” Shontelle swirled the wine in her glass. “I feel bad that she went through so much, but resorting to murder . . . She must have been unhinged to do that.”
Damien hailed us from the porch. “Better come grab some food before it’s all gone!”
As much as I appreciated Eldon filling in the gaps of the story, the distraction of food came as a relief. My mood had started growing darker again, and I didn’t want to slide back in that direction.
The conversation turned to happier, lighter topics as we all grabbed food and dug into our meals. After I’d eaten my fill, I set down my plate on a picnic table and joined Grayson on the lawn, where he stood talking with Booker.
“I’m going to grab another burger,” Booker said a few minutes later.
It didn’t surprise me that he could eat more than one.
As Booker jogged off toward the grill, Grayson put an arm around my shoulders. I leaned into him.
“You doing okay?” he asked.
I knew he’d worried about me over the past couple of weeks.
“I am.” I nodded at the scene in front of us, with so many of our friends gathered together. “This is helping.”
He kissed the top of my head. “Good.”
I tipped my head back to look up at him. “How about you?”
“If you’re doing better, then so am I,” he said.
Grayson regretted heading back to the brewery without me after the ambulance had whisked Collette away from the woods. I’d reminded him many times that it was my own decision to return to the fairgrounds, but that didn’t stop him from wishing he’d gone with me.
He’d raced over to the park after reading my text message, but by then the police had already had Rachael in custody. Lucky for me, Rachael hadn’t disconnected my call to Detective Marquez when she knocked my phone out of my hand. The detective’s voicemail had picked up some of my conversation with her.
Marquez hadn’t gone far after leaving the woods. She’d driven around to the faire’s front gates, looking for Toby. She’d heard the voicemail shortly after it was recorded, and Hamish had pointed her and her officers in the direction I’d gone. I didn’t like to think about what would have happened to me if things had played out differently.
“There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you,” Grayson said.
I gave him my full attention. “What’s that?”
“Now that you’ve got Damien back at the Inkwell, and with Zoe working for you part-time, I thought maybe we could manage some time for just the two of us.”
I liked the sound of that. “What were you thinking?”
“Would you like to go to Nantucket with me at the end of the summer?”
“Nantucket?” A big smile stretched across my face. “You remembered that I want to go?”
“Of course I remembered.” His smile almost outshone my own. “So is that a yes?”
I threw my arms around him and gave him a kiss.
“It’s most definitely a yes.”
Recipes
THE SECRET LIFE OF DAIQUIRIS
½ cup frozen mango chunks
½ cup ice
4 oz cream of coconut (see recipe below)
2 oz mango juice
1 oz coconut rum*
1 oz freshly squeezed lime juice
Add all the ingredients to a blender and blend until smooth. Pour the mixture into a cocktail glass and serve at once.
Makes 1 cocktail
*For the mocktail version, simply leave out the rum.
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S CREAM (MOCKTAIL)
6 oz cream of coconut (see recipe below)
½ cup frozen strawberries
½ cup water
½ cup ice
1 oz lime juice
Whipped cream, to taste
Pour half the cream of coconut into one cocktail glass and the other half into a second glass. In a blender, combine the strawberries, water, ice, and lime juice. Blend until smooth. Slowly pour half of the strawberry mixture over the back of a spoon into one of the cocktail glasses. It should form a layer over the cream of coconut. Top with whipped cream. Repeat with the second glass and serve at once.
Makes 2 mocktails
CREAM OF COCONUT
13.5 oz coconut milk
¾ cup granulated sugar
Combine the ingredients in a small saucepan and heat gently over low heat, stirring frequently, until the sugar has completely dissolved. Allow the mixture to cool before using.
(You can store any leftovers in a sealed container in the freezer for future use.)
SOFIE’S APPLE FRITTERS
Dough:
¾ cup warm milk
3 tbsp granulated sugar
2 tsp dry active yeast
2 tbsp butter, melted
⅓ cup dry apple cider
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
½ tsp vanilla extract
2 tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp salt
2½ cups pastry flour (plus more if needed)
Vegetable or canola oil for frying
Apple Filling:
3 medium Granny Smith apples (or preferred variety),
peeled, cored, and cut into ½-inch dice (about 2 cups)
1 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tsp salted butter
¼ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup brown sugar
½ tsp ground cinnamon
2 tbsp dry apple cider
