Cupcakes and Murder: A Frosted Love Cozy Mystery (Book 5) (Frosted Love Mysteries) (5 page)

“So
what’s the good news?” Missy asked when Chas relayed Rinaldo’s info that
eliminated Miguel from suspicion.

“The
good news is that Rinaldo received copies of the autopsy reports for both Raoul
and the housekeeper who was murdered, and it turns out that they were poisoned,
but your cupcakes were not the culprit.”

“Oh,
I’m so relieved Chas,” she breathed. “So, how were they poisoned?”

“For
some reason, they wouldn’t release the name of the poison to me, but they did
say that the only way that someone could’ve had access to it was if they had a
pretty high level clearance at a hospital. Whatever substance the killer used
was medical grade.”

Missy
looked around her hospital room, chilled. “But who on earth would do such a
thing?” she wondered.

“That’s
what I’m trying to figure out, because whoever killed Raoul and the
housekeeper, tried to do the same thing to you,” he said, taking her hand.

Missy’s
eyes grew round. “What do you mean? The night that someone came in and messed
up my room, they were planning to kill me?” she whispered.

“Maybe,
maybe not. I tend to think that what happened in your room was more about rage
and trying to scare you, more than anything else.”

“Then
what do you mean?” Missy was puzzled.

“When
you told me that you had been stung by a bee, I checked the back of your neck
and saw that you had a puncture wound that would be consistent with a syringe
being used to inject you. There was bruising at the sight, and whatever was
injected irritated your skin terribly and caused a swollen spot. You told me
that you had been stung on the path to the beach, so I ran down to check it out
and found a syringe that was nearly full of fluid, lying in some of the
undergrowth. I gave it to Rinaldo for testing, and he confirmed that the
substance it contained was the same poison that had killed the other two
victims. Not only that, but when he dug deeper and examined some unsolved local
cases, he discovered that there were at least four more victims who had been
killed the same way.”

“Oh
my goodness, that’s awful – we’re dealing with a serial killer,” Missy was
horrified and trembling. “So…who were the other victims?”

“That’s
the scary part,” Chas grimaced. “I don’t know their names, but Rinaldo
confirmed that they were women, all in their early forties, petite but curvy,
with long blonde hair.”

Missy’s
mouth dropped open as the enormity of his words sunk in. “So they all looked
just like…”

“You,”
he finished for her. “Yes, there is a definite pattern, but Raoul and the
housekeeper don’t fit the pattern, which makes it difficult to decide how to
proceed.”

“What
if someone killed all of those women because Raoul had been suggestive with
them like he was with me?”

“A
jealous girlfriend? Maybe. But then why would she kill Raoul?” Chas was about
to say more, but cut his sentence short when the doctor came into the room to
let Missy know that she’d be free to go in the morning as long as nothing
changed overnight. Missy thanked the tall, thin woman with the lovely accent
and resumed her conversation with Chas when she left the room.

“Maybe
he did more than just flirt with those women. Maybe she was tired of his
philandering,” she guessed, shrugging.

“But
that doesn’t explain why she would kill the housekeeper,” he reminded her.

“Maybe
the housekeeper was a witness, or maybe she killed the housekeeper in my room
so that she could frame me. If she saw that I spent the day with Raoul, she may
have thought that something other than sightseeing had happened.”

“People
have killed for less,” he nodded. “I’ll check in with Rinaldo, and let him know
to keep a lookout for a strong-willed lady in Raoul’s life, just in case. In
the meantime, you need to get your rest.” Chas kissed her forehead and headed
for the door, promising to be back in the morning to pick her up. He ran into
the doctor on his way out. She was standing just outside Missy’s door, so he
thanked her again and walked to the elevator, unaware of her gaze following
him. An hour or so later, after Missy was sound asleep, she slipped into the
room, checked all of the monitors, and pulled a syringe from her pocket,
dispensing it into the IV line in Missy’s arm.

Chas
Beckett was more than frustrated, running into dead end after dead end. After
talking with Rosa, the housekeeper who thought that Miguel Garcia, the
concierge, was the killer, he had learned that there were rumors floating
around the resort that Raoul had actually been married, which would give
Missy’s ‘jealous woman’ theory more weight, but he searched and searched, never
finding evidence of a marriage. He glanced at his cell phone and realized that
it was time to head to the hospital. The doctor had estimated that she’d be
ready for release around 9:00, and it was now 8:50.

Arriving
at the hospital, Chas took the elevator, lost in thought. He got out on Missy’s
floor and headed to her room, finding it completely empty. A custodian was
changing bedding and had a mop bucket nearby. When Chas questioned him about
Missy’s whereabouts, the older gentleman merely shrugged and said that he
didn’t know. Remembering the way that the doctor had strangely been standing
outside Missy’s door when he left, and putting that fact together with the
knowledge that whoever had tried to poison her had to have medical clearance,
the typically calm detective felt the beginnings of panic.

A
new shift of nurses had just started their rotation, and he approached the
nurses station, asking if they knew where Missy, the woman from room 343 was.
They all shook their heads, finding no record of a patient in 343. As calmly as
he could, Chas asked for the location of hospital security, and jabbed the
button in the elevator that would take him to the 1
^st
floor, heart
pounding. The directions that the nurses had given him for the security office
indicated that he would turn left, away from the elevator, take the first
right, through the lobby, and the office would be on the left.

Walking
as quickly as he could without calling undue attention to himself, Chas stopped
dead in his tracks when he was halfway through the lobby and heard a familiar
voice.

“Chas!”

He
turned slowly toward the voice, more relieved than he’d ever been in his entire
life to see Missy waving at him from a wheelchair near the entrance of the
building.

“Hi!”
she greeted him, completely unaware at the emotional trauma he’d just suffered.
“You must’ve come in the back – I’ve been down her waiting for you for about
half an hour. They made me use a wheelchair, it’s a liability issue I guess,”
she babbled on before suddenly noticing the detective’s ashen complexion.
“Hey…are you okay?” she asked, concerned.

Detective
Chas Beckett took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “I am now,” he nodded
with a relieved smile. “I am now.”

Chas
and Missy arrived back at the resort, him having brought her up to speed in the
case and expressing his frustration.

“So,
what information do you need, exactly?” she asked.

“Well,
it would be great if we could get a match for the fingerprints in your room,
and we really need to know if Raoul had a significant other, whether wife or
girlfriend, but nothing has turned up in any of the local or regional
databases,” he sighed.

“What
if she’s not a local?” Missy speculated.

“What
do you mean?”

“Raoul
worked at a resort,” she reasoned. “He had access to women from all over the
world. What if one of them happened to fall in love with him and decided to
leave her former life behind to live in the tropics with a new Latin lover?”

Beckett
nodded, looking at Missy with admiration. “You’re right. Maybe we’re not
finding anything because we’re not looking in the right places. We shouldn’t
limit ourselves to Mexican databases,” he agreed, lost in thought.

“And
it would make sense to me that you might want to be on the lookout for a
40-something, curvaceous blonde,” she suggested.

“You’re
brilliant,” he said, kissing her, then jumping up, headed for the door.

Missy
was reading the novel that she had been neglecting the entire time she’d been
in Cozumel when the text tone on her phone went off. It was from Chas, and
said, simply, “
Come to the convenience center, you’re going to want to see
this.”

Bending
the corner of her page down to mark her place, Missy jumped up from the couch,
grabbed her cell phone and room key, and headed for the convenience center in
the lobby. She came around the corner just in time to see Detective Gonzales
placing handcuffs on the blonde clerk who had been so rude to her when her card
was declined.

“Michelle
Perez, you are under arrest for the murder of Raoul Perez and Sofia Consuelos,
as well as the attempted murder of Melissa Gladstone,” she heard the detective
say, as the clerk stood stone-faced, saying nothing.

Missy
caught Chas’s eye and they shared a moment without having to say a word. It
made so much sense now. She couldn’t wait until he explained the details. They
stood together, watching the clerk being herded into the back of a patrol car
which took her away, sirens flashing. When they returned to Missy’s room, they
were barely in the door before she started grilling him.

“How
did you figure it out?” she asked, practically jumping up and down in her seat.

“Once
you said that I should look for someone outside of Mexico, Rinaldo checked
other databases, including those in the US. It turns out that Michelle was
wanted in the US for tax evasion. Her fingerprints were a perfect match. She
came to Cozumel on a temporary visa, met and married Raoul, and became a
citizen. When I looked into her history in the states, there were some very
suspicious situations involving ex-boyfriends that she had been involved with,
but nothing was ever proven. It seems that she’s the jealous type. The other
victims who fit your description had all been in contact with Raoul in some way
or another, and Detective Gonzales thinks it’ll be very easy, based on the physical
evidence that they’ve collected, to form a case against her in those murders as
well.

“I
can’t begin to tell you how relieved I am,” Missy exhaled, melting into the
sofa, her stress and tension gone.

“I
can only imagine,” Chas smiled at her. “If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t have
cracked the case. Ever consider a second career?” he teased.

“No
thank you!” she returned emphatically. “I’ll be just fine baking my cupcakes
and minding my own business. We do seem to make a pretty good team though,” she
flirted shamelessly.

“Indeed
we do,” he agreed, leaning over to kiss her.

It
seemed like Missy and Chas had been in Cozumel for an eternity, but in all
reality, they had only outstayed their original departure date by four days.
Once Missy and Chas’s names had been cleared, and the real killer found, the
couple had decided to enjoy an extra day of vacation where they could actually
enjoy themselves and went snorkeling again, as well as trying two more
delicious restaurants and going for one last moonlight stroll. What had started
out as a lovely vacation, and then morphed into a hellish nightmare, had ended
well, with neither of them in jail or dead. It’s the little things in life that
one appreciates.

Missy
leaned back against her headrest, not looking forward to the long flight home,
but definitely ready for what awaited her upon arrival. She had called the
doggy hotel, where Toffee was spending long leisurely days swimming, being
walked, hand-fed and groomed, at least once a day, usually two or three times a
day, including skype calls where she was able to speak directly to her beloved
golden retriever. She missed her best friend terribly, and planned to make up
for her extended absence with lots of walks, games of fetch and maybe a new
chew toy or two.

Checking
in on her shops was also high on Missy’s priority list. While Ben and Cheryl
had done a superb job of running their respective shops in her absence, she
wanted to jump back in with both feet and give the two of them a bit of a break
as a reward for their hard work. Ben’s grad school friend, Chris, and Missy’s
new hire, Grayson, had both worked out very well, and both shops were primed
and ready for the fast-approaching holiday season.

Missy
glanced over at the strong profile of Detective Chas Beckett, who exuded confident
intelligence and capability, even in repose. He had been a rock during the
tempest of their Cozumel adventure, and she knew she wouldn’t have made it
through the experience emotionally intact without his help and support. Her
fear of relationships had ebbed significantly while in the company of this
outstanding gentleman, and she felt herself falling for him. As if he felt her
gaze, the object of her admiration opened his eyes, and, catching her staring
at him, grinned and raised an eyebrow, making her blush from her toes to the
tips of her ears. He took her hand in his and closed his eyes again, letting
her off the hook.