Deep Autumn Heat (12 page)

“That don’t matter. Old habits die hard, and Theo and Seb haven’t changed, far as I can tell. When they’re back in town, they cause trouble. Or trouble follows them.” Babs looked at her ominously. “I heard about the guy who went after you on the Green.”

Lexie blanched. “Who told you about it?”

“I know what goes on in this town, girl,” Babs said, cocking her head. “Besides, someone’s got to look out for you, a single gal living alone so far out by the pond. Cole know what’s going on?”

“Yes, I talked to him.”

Babs seemed satisfied. “Good. I imagine it’s a relief having him investigate.”

Lexie nodded.

“Well, as much as I don’t care for Seb, I’m grateful that he got you out of that jam.” Babs looked at her consideringly. “He must like you if he helped you out. And he must respect you if he’s willing to compete against you. He don’t have that much respect for women, I can tell you that.”

“Really?” Lexie took a sip of her tea, maintaining eye contact with Babs. She didn’t want to miss a word of this.

“Well, except for his momma,” Babs amended. “But even ’fore he left Star Harbor, he’d been through all the local gals. I remember one summer, he took up with four different gals. Each of ’em knowing about the others. And not caring, neither. Can’t even tell you what he’s done since then.”

“I think I have some idea.” Lexie tried not to smile. When Babs gave her a suspicious look, she hurriedly provided additional commentary. “I mean, his reputation is well known.”

“And well deserved,” Babs supplied. “I knew that something was bound to get lost in
translation when their momma, may she rest in peace, named all of ’em after saints.”

Lexie gave her a quizzical look. “They’re all named after saints?”

Babs nodded. “Oh yeah. But they’ve always acted more like sinners.”

“Now
that
I can believe.”

“They near burnt down the pier the Shak is on, you know that?”

“No! Really?” Lexie was shocked. “They couldn’t have done it on purpose.”

“Knowing those boys, I can’t say.” Babs took a sip of water.

“How’d it happen?”

“They started a bonfire half a mile down the beach. One of them—Theo, I think—had the bright idea to set fire to a piece of driftwood so he could use it as a torch. Took Maysie Pruitt underneath the boardwalk to do God-knows-what. ’Fore you could blink twice, the pier was on fire.”

“Wow.”

“Luckily, Andy Neiman smelled something burning—the Rusty Nail is right there, you know—and called the fire department. They got there just in time to put it out.” Lexie nodded. Andy had a nose for sniffing out danger.

“Oh, those boys were trouble with a capital T. I’m just telling you all this ’cause I like you.”

“I know. I like you too, Babs.”

“Just remember those Grayson boys have one thing on their minds, and it ain’t fishing.”

Lexie laughed. “I appreciate your advice, but I’ve already figured that one out.” She placed one of her hands over Babs’s, which was resting on the table. “I do appreciate you representing Star Harbor as part of the judging trio this Thursday. I’ll be proud to have you there.”

Babs cleared her throat and spoke gruffly. “No thanks are necessary, girl. Happy to do it. ’Specially for you. I know I’m s’posed to be neutral, but I hope you beat him.”

“I hope so, too.” Lexie glanced over at the kitchen. “I’ll go check on your order.” She slid
out of the booth gracefully and picked up her mug of tea.

It
did
mean a lot that Babs was looking out for her. She thought of the older woman as an aunt and she appreciated her heartfelt advice. Even though she dealt with scores of people on a daily basis, she wasn’t close to many of them. She had a few friends, but she’d thrown herself so wholly into her work that free time was almost a foreign concept.

She’d been working so hard for so long, trying to forget her spectacularly failed relationship—her only relationship—that she’d also forgotten what it felt like to have someone care about her. Sure, her parents still did, but they were three thousand miles away and the last time she’d talked to them was a week ago, by email. Besides Seb’s embrace the night she was attacked, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d even been hugged.

She had no life to speak of outside of the restaurant. The thought made her incredibly sad. Maybe that was why she was drawn to Seb. He represented everything that she was lacking. He was worldly and dangerous. Given how sedate her day-to-day life was, it was no wonder she found him exciting.

No, that didn’t make sense. She’d had her fill of danger when she’d broken up with Frank. She was a different person now. Stronger. More grounded. And much less likely to lose herself in someone else. For the past three years she’d focused on making herself a better, more independent person. Her work was her life now. She wasn’t looking for thrills. She was looking to keep her nose to the grindstone and herself out of trouble. But that low heat she felt every time Seb was around was starting to make her wonder what she’d been missing. She’d thought she was immune to the charms of men, but it was impossible not to be attracted to him.

If she didn’t keep herself in check, the heat would turn into fire, and she’d soon be right back where she started.

The strident ring of the telephone jarred Lexie as she was pulling two cakes out of the oven, nearly causing her to drop the hot cake pans. Boy, was she on edge. And no wonder, given everything that had been happening lately.

“Buster!” she yelled, balancing the hot pans in her hands. When Buster didn’t immediately appear, she cursed and rushed over to the countertop to deposit the pans on waiting trivets. Then she slammed the oven door shut, yanked off her right oven mitt, and rushed to the still-ringing phone. She picked it up on what must have been the tenth ring.

“LMK, Lexie speaking,” she answered, slightly out of breath from dashing around her kitchen.

“Lexie? Hi, it’s Cole.” His deep voice resonated through the speaker.

“Oh, hi, Cole. What’s the good word?”

“I’m afraid there isn’t a good word, Lexie.”

She stiffened, recognizing from his tone that she was about to get some unpleasant news. “Want to tell me what the problem is?” she asked warily.

“I heard back from the Berkeley Police Department ten minutes ago. Frank Doherty is not in town. His roommates say he left a few weeks ago. No one knows where he went.”

Lexie flashed first hot, then cold. A lump of fear formed in her chest and started to push its way up her throat. She swallowed hard.

“Lexie?” Cole asked. “You still there?”

Lexie took a deep breath. “Yeah,” she managed to squeak out.

“Do you have a lawyer?”

“Yes,” said Lexie, without hesitation. “She’s good.” Marlene Russbaum was someone she trusted implicitly.

“I want you to call her first thing in the morning to have her draw up the paperwork for a restraining order. You’ll need a certified copy of it. I’ll want to talk with her, too, about getting it on the statewide registry and on file with Barnstable County. Could you also please swing by the station tomorrow to sign some documents for me?”

“Okay,” Lexie said, still in a bit of shock. “Do you really think Frank could be here in Star Harbor?”

“I don’t know, but I intend to find out. You have a photo of him we can use?”

“No.” She’d thrown them all away. “But he’s really into social networking. You might try searching online.”

“Okay, I’ll see if we can get ahold of one that way. And I’ll start making inquiries immediately. Until we know for certain what’s going on with Mr. Doherty, I don’t want you going anywhere alone. Is Buster still there?”

“He’s around here somewhere.”

“Make sure. I want him to walk you to your car, or better yet, drive you home.”

“Is that really necessary?”

“Lexie,” Cole sighed, “I don’t want anything to happen to you. Jimmy Bishop’s a good friend of mine and he’d be extremely upset if you were unable to cater his wedding next weekend. So you see, I’m interested in helping you out of selfish motives, too.”

“Ha, ha, Cole.”

“Look, all joking aside, this is my job and I am very good at it. Trust me. Don’t go anywhere alone. I’d never forgive myself if something happened to you on my watch.”

“All right, Cole. I’ll have Buster see me to my car, at the very least.”

“Good. Call me in the morning to set up a time to come in after you’ve spoken to your lawyer.”

“I’ll do that. Good night, Cole.”

“Good night. Be safe, Lexie.”

Lexie listened for the click as Cole hung up the telephone on his end. Then she sighed.
When had her life become this complicated? The last thing she needed was to have Frank after her again. Didn’t she have enough to worry about? Frank’s reappearance—or the threat of it—was just the icing on the cake.

The old Lexie would have been frightened and contrite. But Frank didn’t know how much she’d changed. Slowly, her fear turned to anger. The new Lexie could think of nothing better to do than to swear up a blue streak.

First, Lexie cursed Frank for being such a creep. Next, she cursed herself for getting involved with him at all. Finally, she cursed the whole stupid situation.

When she’d run out of curses—she didn’t know that many colorful ones, after all—she calmed down. She’d finish up the cakes, and if Buster didn’t appear by the time she was done, she’d just have to find him. She needed to get a million and one things done that night, and she’d be damned if the specter of Frank Doherty prevented her from doing her job. She threw her oven mitts back on and got back to work.

It took another hour for Lexie to finish baking the rest of the cakes and preparing the pastry dough for the next morning. During all that time, she saw neither hide nor hair of Buster. Where could he be? He had no cell phone, as far as she knew. And even though he’d given her his landline number, she’d never needed to contact him that way before because he lived right upstairs.

As a last resort, Lexie called Buster’s apartment from the phone in the kitchen. There was no answer. She couldn’t stay at the LMK all night, and she couldn’t wait for him to come back. She grabbed her coat from the hook and headed for the back door, making sure she had her car keys in her hand. If she wasn’t going to follow Cole’s instructions, she at least wanted to make sure she didn’t have any lag time between the kitchen door and her car.

Just as she was about to open the back door, she heard it click. She jumped back, but it was just Buster.

“Where have you been?” she demanded.

“Scoping out the building. Checking for security. Making a few phone calls.” Buster’s
calm monotone filled the space.

“Why?” she asked, suspicion creeping into her voice.

“Cole called me.”

Lexie slapped her forehead. “Good grief! Does
everyone
in town know about Frank now?”

“No. But the more people who do know, the better. You need people you can trust looking out for you.”

Lexie was still miffed. “Well, you could have warned me you’d be gone. You scared the living daylights out of me when you disappeared and came back just now. I was about to leave without you.”

“I’m glad you didn’t. Look what I found outside.” Buster reached into the pocket of his worn barn jacket and pulled out a folded piece of white paper.

Lexie swallowed. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Yes. Another note. It was placed outside sometime between when I left and when I returned.”

Slow, dull anger simmered inside her. “That’s it,” she said. “I’m calling Paige right now!”

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, Lexie. Like Cole said, what if it’s not her? What if someone else is leaving the notes?”

“Buster—” Lexie’s voice was as much a plea for help as it was a warning that she was about to lose it. He held up his hands in supplication. She reached for the phone and quickly dialed The Vanilla Bean’s main line. The phone rang and rang. On the seventh ring, the answering machine kicked in. Disappointed, Lexie hung up before leaving a message. “I don’t know why I expected her to be there. Especially if she was just here leaving me that note.”

Buster cleared his throat. “I think we should install a security camera out back. I can wire everything through my apartment.”

“At this point I’m willing to try anything. This is getting ridiculous.”

“I’ll talk to Cole and Luke Bedwin at the hardware store and make it happen.”

“Fine.” Lexie waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. Cole and Luke would be the right people to give them advice. “I can’t even think about this anymore given everything else that’s been going on.”

“I know. You must be tired. Let me get you home.”

“All right.”

Lexie let Buster provide her an escort home, she in her little Honda and he in his beaten-up pickup truck. He waited until she was safely inside her cottage with the lights on before driving away.

From her living room window, Lexie watched Buster’s truck putter down her bumpy dirt driveway and pull out onto Harper’s Pond Road. The sound of his engine gently faded into the distance.

What he’d said stayed with her—what if Paige wasn’t the one leaving the notes? A wave of fear coursed through her. Some of those notes were pretty graphic. When she’d thought Paige was the one leaving them, it had been easy to brush them off as a silly joke. But what if it was someone else? Several of them had actually threatened her with physical harm. Could Frank somehow be behind them? At least until the end of their relationship, passive threats were certainly more his style, which is why it was so hard to believe that he could have attacked her on the Green. Maybe Frank had hired someone to slowly drive her crazy until she fled back to Berkeley. Uncertainty chafed at her.

Fear was what had caused her to run from California in the first place. From Frank. Three years wasn’t that long in the scheme of things, but she loved Star Harbor and couldn’t imagine leaving. Running again. But would she stand her ground if her own safety was on the line? As she found herself pacing like a trapped cat, her little house felt smaller than usual. She stepped up to the window and drew the curtains tightly over the frame. As she moved, a loud creak sounded from the floorboards.