Lorna Barrett - Bookmarked For Death

“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 Zoe 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 evidence , would you?”

“You knew who the real author of the Jess and Addie Forever books was when you asked me to invite Zoe 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?”

“Zoe 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 Zoe?” 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 Forever 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-and-out 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 Zoe 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 Zoe 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 Zoe 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 working hard.”

“And what did you gain by killing Zoe 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.