I pulled the sheet over my head. “What time is it?”

  “Six thirty.”

  “Who let you in?”

  “Marjie.”

  “I’m disowning her.”

  “I’ve got your coffee right here.”

  I lowered the sheet a bit to peer out at him. Damn him, he was smiling. “It’s unnatural to smile so early in the morning.”

  “Ah, but Care Bear, I remember a time or two putting a morning smile on your face. . . .”

  That was a low blow. He was right, of course, but still. “Who made the coffee?”

  “Marjie.”

  I tossed the covers off and sat up. Roly and Poly were long gone, the traitorous buggers. Dylan handed over the coffee. I breathed in the tendrils of steam and eyed him warily. “What’re you doing here?”

  He wasn’t in uniform, so I hoped that meant he wasn’t here on business. I’d had just about enough bad news as I could stomach in a week.

  “Putting up sheetrock in the bathroom.” He sat on the edge of the bed.

  I grabbed my locket. “You’re my hero.”

  “It’s time you finally realized that, Care Bear.”

  Maybe it was. . . .

  “Did you have any luck with the search last night?” I asked around a yawn. There had been a full-scale search of the post office in hopes of locating the envelope Katie Sue had mailed.

  “No luck,” he said. “It’s not there.”

  “Then it had to be intercepted by whoever attacked José in Mr. Dunwoody’s yard yesterday.”

  “It would seem that way. As a precaution, we’re sending an armed escort with today’s mail carrier. Just in case.”

  It felt too little, too late.

  I stared into my mug, my stomach sinking. If the Calhouns had gotten their hands on that envelope, then there was very little connecting them to Katie Sue’s death. No proof of motive at all.

  Yesterday, during Dylan’s interrogation of Warren, he’d denied knowing of an envelope at all. In fact, the entire interview had been a complete waste of time. Warren, Louisa, Landry, Cassandra, and the two lug nuts all provided alibis for each other during the time frame of Katie Sue’s death—which my aunt Hazel verified. Warren had also flown in a fancy lawyer from D.C. who ended up threatening the whole department if they continued to harass the family. The sheriff, Dylan’s boss, had shut things down pretty quick after that.

  Deny, deny, deny.

  It infuriated me. If the manila envelope had been intercepted by one of the Calhoun’s lug nuts, I was quite sure that it was destroyed by now. If it hadn’t been, I didn’t know where else to look.

  It was yet another dead end.

  “We’ll figure it out, Carly,” Dylan said, giving me a nudge with his elbow.

  I looked at him and nodded, unable to voice my doubts.

  He stood up. “Now, not that I’m not enjoying the view of you in your loose little tank top—because trust me, I am—but it’s time for me to get busy. And time for you to get your lazy bones out of bed and help me before we both have to go to work later.”

  “Just when I was liking you again.”

  He dropped a kiss on the top of my head and strode out the door.

  I leaned against my headboard and sipped the coffee. Heaven. When Marjie moved back to her inn, I might have to start having morning coffee with her. Of course, it would have to be here since she wouldn’t let me in her house, but that was okay with me. I’d get to keep the leftovers in the pot.

  I let my eyes drift closed and allowed myself to just be for a minute. Birds were singing, and for this very brief moment, all was right in my world.

  But then I remembered my run-in with Cletus, and my eyes popped open. When I’d talked to Dylan last night, he said he’d try to get a search warrant processed, but it wasn’t going to be easy. The thing was, there wasn’t a lot of supporting evidence that Cletus had done anything to Katie Sue. Nothing that tied them together. No overheard threats. No sightings together. No . . . nothing. He was also trying to interview Cletus and Dinah—but so far they’d evaded the police like pros.

  Jessa Yadkin, however, had validated Dinah’s claim that Cletus had been in Déjà Brew during the time frame that Katie Sue had been murdered. He’d apparently made quite a fuss over the way Jessa fixed his iced coffee. I wasn’t ready to rule him out as a suspect. Because we didn’t know exactly when Katie Sue had been killed, it was possible he’d been in the coffee shop before or after the deed. It seemed to me he might have made a big ass out of himself so people would remember he’d been in the shop—all witnesses to his “alibi.” Of course, we wouldn’t know anything for certain until Cletus and Dinah were caught and properly interrogated. Dylan also promised to head down to Birmingham to talk to Jimmy, and I’d had to listen to him lecture me for a solid fifteen minutes last night when I confessed to going to Katie Sue’s house.

  Lordy, the man could lecture when he built up a head of steam.

  I found it interesting that word hadn’t broken yet about Katie Sue having been murdered, and wondered if the Calhouns had also paid someone off to keep that out of the news. It wouldn’t surprise me. They just got rid of the press—news of a murder would bring the media swarming back.

  I wanted to push thoughts of the murder aside, but try as I might, I couldn’t. They festered in my brain, and even thinking of the phone call I’d received from Lyla last night didn’t help. She’d phoned to say that Jamie Lynn was walking without her crutches and smiling bigger than Lyla had seen in a long, long while. She’d offered to give the scooter back, but I told her to just go ahead and sell it and use the money to buy something nice for Jamie Lynn’s birthday.

  I finished my cup of coffee and threw back the covers. After grabbing a change of clothes I headed downstairs to take my shower.

  Roly and Poly sat on the back of the couch—which, I noticed, had been draped in a sheet. Apparently, Aunt Marjie didn’t want Johnny’s poison ivy cooties, either. I bent and kissed each of the kitties. Their tails swished happily.

  By the time I emerged from the bathroom my stomach was rumbling from the scent of breakfast cooking. I was surprised to see Gabi with Dylan and Marjie. They were all gathered round a kitchen table piled with pancakes, bacon, sausages, and muffins. The two cats prowled around. Even Roly had resorted to begging. She was a sucker for sausage.

  “Dylan, I thought you said you woke her up,” Marjie joked. “She’s sleepwalkin’ if I ever saw it.”

  “Ha. Ha,” I said. I poured coffee, added a little milk, and joined them.

  “I saw Gabi running this morning and invited her on inside for a bite to eat,” Marjie said.

  “I couldn’t be more thankful. I was starving after my morning run.” Gabi smiled and reached for another helping of pancakes. “One good thing about the wedding being called off is that I can stop worrying about fitting into my dress.”

  I sipped my coffee and said, “Are you all right?” It had to be a difficult day—she was supposed to be marrying the man of her dreams this evening. Instead her whole world had turned inside out.

  “I’m okay.” She took a deep breath. “Yesterday, I called off the wedding completely.”

  “Oh?” I asked.

  “I know it’s what’s best,” she said. “It’d just be nice if it didn’t hurt so bad.”

  I glanced at Dylan. After two failed attempts to get married, we knew that pain.

  Marjie added two sausage links to Gabi’s plate. “Eat all you want.”

  “Thanks,” Gabi said, taking another pancake.

  “How’d Landry take the news?” I asked.

  “Honestly, I don’t know.” Gabi looked at me. “He refuses to come out of his bedroom.”

  I glanced at Dylan—that was odd.

  “Bastard,” Marjie said, adding a slice of bacon to Gabi’s plate.

  “I just can’t believe how much of my life I wasted,” she said. “On him. On them, that family. And when I do something for myself for once—choosing not to marry a man who doesn’t love me—they treat me like a pariah. Giving me the silent treatment. Going to dinner without me.” Her lip trembled. “So much for me being part of the family.”

  “They suck,” Marjie said.

  Dylan kept quiet, forking pancakes into his mouth like nobody’s business, but I could tell he was listening to every word.

  I refilled my coffee mug. “It probably doesn’t feel like it right now, but you’re better off without them, Gabi. I feel good things for you.”

  “You do?” Skepticism clouded her eyes.

  “I really do.”

  “Me, too,” Marjie said, thumping the table.

  Gabi looked at each of us. “But what am I going to do with myself? I don’t know how to start over.”

  I knew she’d just graduated from college. “What’s your degree in?”

  She laughed, a joyless sound. “Officially? Communications, and I barely scraped by at that.”

  “Unofficially?” Dylan asked.

  “Sororities and pageants.”

  Marjie barked out a laugh. A laugh.

  Gabi said, “I know. It’s bad. On the pageant stage I came across as this strong independent woman, but behind the scenes the truth was I’d been perfectly groomed by Louisa to be a trophy wife. In all reality, my degree should have been an MRS.”

  A Mrs. A married woman. An arm piece.

  “You don’t have to figure it out right now,” I said. “You have time.”

  “That I do,” she said solemnly.

  After that, we fell into an easy chatter, discussing nothing more serious than the day’s forecast (sunny). Gabi seemed in no hurry at all to return to the Loon.

  Dylan and I cleared dishes while Gabi and Marjie chatted about how the aches from their broken bones had pretty much disappeared overnight. I never tired of hearing how my potions helped someone.

  I finished cleaning up while Dylan went out to his truck to bring in sheets of fancy moisture-resistant drywall.

  “Tell me again why you let that one go, Carly?” Marjie asked.

  I eyed her. “Tell me again what game you’re playing with Johnny?”

  “I’m going to go clean,” she snapped, hopping out of the kitchen. Over her shoulder, she said, “Someone around here has to.”

  Gabi comically tried to dry a mug one-handed and looked at me. “You and Dylan?”

  “Long story.” I watched him out the window. “Long complicated story.”

  “Give me the CliffsNotes version. Come on. It’s my failed wedding day. Humor me.”

  I tipped my head side to side, weighing what to say. Finally, I said, “Engaged, his meddling vindictive mama, two failed wedding attempts, a fiery chapel, a bad breakup, broken hearts, separate towns, a tentative reconciliation, and . . . here we are, treading softly. Well, I’m treading. He’s clomping.”

  Her jaw dropped. “Okay, I might need more than the CliffsNotes.”

  Dylan walked in, carrying the sheetrock. He glanced between the two of us. “What?”

  Gabi still looked stunned. “Carly just summed up your two’s relationship for me.”

  “Summed it up, did she?” he drawled. “Did she mention the fire?”

  I wiped my hands on the dish towel. “Yes. That’s the best part.”

  His eyes glinted. “Naw, it’s not.”

  “What is?” Gabi asked.

  “Yeah, what?” I echoed, curious.

  “Well, it sure isn’t her cheery disposition in the morning. You should have seen the look she gave me when I woke her up, after I brought her coffee and everything.”

  I whapped him with the towel.

  He laughed, then said softly, “If you must know the best part, it’s knowing that if you really truly love each other, you can overcome anything life throws your way. Ain’t that so, Care Bear?”

  Gabi’s eyes widened as she looked between the two of us.

  Talk about a loaded question. I squeezed the towel. “That is pretty good,” I finally said. “But the fire still might trump it.”

  His gaze met mine, and the tenderness there, the love, nearly did me in. “If so, only because you were arrested because of it. I have your mug shot framed on my nightstand.”

  He leaned in, gave me a kiss, winked at Gabi, and clomped away, taking my heart with him.

  Shaking her head, Gabi said, “You know, I don’t think I ever really knew what love looked like until just now. That’s the kind of love I want.”

  “I highly recommend you find it without the meddling mama-in-law. Or the fire. Or the arrest. But yeah . . . the rest is pretty good.”

  “So why aren’t you married then?”

  Another loaded question. “Broken hearts get put back together one piece at a time. I still have a few pieces left to go.”

  She looked to be contemplating that when the phone rang. I reached over and grabbed it up. It was the sheriff’s station, looking for Dylan.

  As I took the cordless phone upstairs, I could only imagine why Dylan was wanted so early in the morning. I had my hand over the mouthpiece as I stuck my head in the bathroom. “Your office.”

  He dusted his hands off on his shorts and said, “Jackson here.” He listened for a second and added, “You’re sure? Okay, let me write it down.”

  He used a nub of a pencil and wrote on the sheetrock. It was an address in Nashville, Tennessee, about two hours north. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m on my way.” He clicked off the phone and said to me, “We might have finally gotten a break.”

  “How?”

  “Got a hit on the alert I sent out about Katie Sue’s jewelry. It’s sittin’ in a pawnshop in Nashville. I’ve got to go.”

  “I don’t suppose I can go with—”

  “No.” He kissed me.

  “That doesn’t make up for it,” I said as he dashed down the stairs.

  “Then I guess I need more practicin’,” he hollered back.

  Smiling, I went to the window in my bedroom and watched him hop in his truck and drive off. My gaze skipped across the street to the Loon.

  Opposite me, Louisa was watching the same scene as I was . . . and I had to wonder how long she’d been looking out the window. She glanced up and noticed me. Quickly, she swished the curtain closed.

  Huh. I couldn’t help but wonder if her nosiness was idle curiosity at the goings-on in the neighborhood . . . or if she was lying in wait for the mail carrier.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  When I left for work a little after nine thirty, I moseyed down the steps to the mailbox. I opened it up and pulled out the small pile of mail that had been stuffed inside only moments before.

  No manila envelope.

  I turned to the Loon, held up the letters for anyone who might be taking a gander—like Louisa—and shoved them in my bag. It was my way of saying, “Look! No manila envelope! No need to break in while I’m at work.”

  I hoped the message was loud and clear, because Dylan still had my pitchfork as evidence and unless Marjie had secretly brought one of her guns over along with her clothes yesterday, she was somewhat defenseless.

  The cats hadn’t looked the least bit willing to come to work with me, so I decided to leave my bike and walk. I was starting to wonder if they’d choose Marjie over me when it was time for her to go.

  As I passed the Buzzard, I stopped, stared. Marjie’s front yard had been cleared of weeds. Planters filled with colorful annuals dotted her porch. As I watched, Johnny came around from the backyard, pushing a wheelbarrow. He wore a fishing hat, a short-sleeved shirt, long pants, and tall boots. His skin was still red and rashy.

  He spotted me and said, “Looks good, don’t it?”

  “You do have a death wish, don’t you?”

  Laughing, he said, “What? I’m just doing a little tidying. This spring cleaning is long overdue. Besides, I’ve already got poison ivy . . . what’s this yard going to do to me?”

  “It’s not the yard you should be afraid of.”

  “Marjoram doesn’t scare me. She’s all bark and no bite, that one.”

  Had this man learned nothing? “I’m not sure which of the two of you is more stubborn.” Or crazy.

  “A draw, I’d say.”

  “Does she know you’re here?”

  He smiled. “It’s a surprise.”

  “I’ll send flowers to your funeral,” I said, waving good-bye. His laughter followed me down the street. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I hadn’t been joking.

  I stopped at Dèjá Brew, grabbed my usual, and headed across the Ring to my shop. I quickly went around and turned on lights, adjusted the thermostat, and took quick stock of what needed to be done today. It was a lot. I’d been neglecting the place the last couple of days. There were bills to pay, orders to place, and cleaning to do.

  No sooner did I unlock the door than a couple came in to browse around. They held hands, kept their heads bent, and continually smiled at each other.

  Just eloped, was my guess. They bought a couple of my premade items, a few hand soaps, a jar of bath salts. They’d just walked out the door when another person walked in.

  Warren Calhoun.

  There was no sign of my witchy senses, so I unclenched my hands and wondered what he was doing here.

  “I’m not sure we’ve formally met,” he said, picking up a bar of soap and sniffing it.

  It was so like what Katie Sue had done, I felt a pang of grief strike me hard. “I don’t think formal introductions are necessary, do you?”

  “I was told you were feisty,” he said as he walked around.

  “You probably don’t want to know what I’ve been told about you.”

  The corner of his lip lifted. “Probably not.”

  Outside, I noticed two of his lug nuts stood watch. I wondered if one of them had puncture wounds in his patootie, but they were too far away for me to feel their energy.

 

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