Goody Goody Gunshots (4 page)

Frustrated, I closed the first cake box and set it aside. “I
know
that. Jawarski and Wyatt pointed that out at least half a dozen times last night. There doesn’t seem to be any explanation for what happened, but that doesn’t change the facts. I know what I saw.”

“Maybe he only pretended to be shot,” Karen offered.

“Why would he do that?”

Karen lifted a shoulder and shut the cash register drawer. “Maybe he and the other guy were working together, trying to get you out of your car for some reason.”

I gaped at her, not because she’d come up with the suggestion, but because I hadn’t thought of it myself. “Of course! They must have been counting on me to get out of the car and check on the guy after he went down.”

“And once you did . . .” Karen only shrugged again, but I figured we were both thinking the same thing. I could have been hurt or killed last night, and if I’d been a kinder, gentler soul, I might have been.

With a shudder, I scooped another piece of cake into its box. “I don’t like the sound of this,” I said. “If these guys are hanging around Paradise, they could try it again.” And next time they
might
get one of my nieces or even Elizabeth. I didn’t think Elizabeth would be lured out of her car, but I wasn’t so sure about Danielle and Dana.

“That’s true,” Karen said, “but now that the police know, I’m sure they’ll keep their eyes open.”

“I wouldn’t count on that,” I mumbled. “I’m pretty sure Jawarski thinks I exaggerated what I saw.”

“Even if that’s true,” Karen said, “what can we do about it? We don’t
know
that’s what those men were doing last night.”

“No,” I admitted reluctantly, “but we could find out. All we’d have to do is find the guy with the limp and make him talk.”

Karen stared at me as if I’d lost my mind. “Assuming we could find him, how would we make him talk? Threaten him with a lollipop stick?”

“No. But if we could just prove that he exists, Jawarski would have to believe me.”

Karen laughed and pulled the key from its hook beneath the register. “Jawarski doesn’t
have
to do anything, Abby,” she said as she headed for the front door. “By the way, how did your evening with the boys go last night?”

Reluctantly, I abandoned the shooting, real or imagined, and moved on. “It was fine. Brody scored eight points, and Caleb actually pulled down a rebound. The whole team did well, as a matter of fact. They seem to like their coach.”

“Really?” She looked surprised. “Didn’t you say that Kerry Hendrix is coaching their team?”

I boxed up another piece of cake. “Yeah, why?”

“You probably don’t remember him, do you?”

I shook my head. “He can’t be more than thirty, can he? I think he was about ten when I left town, and I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to kids when I was eighteen and full of myself. Why, is something wrong with him?”

Karen laughed and returned the key to its hook. “I wouldn’t say there’s anything
wrong
. It’s just that he seems a bit . . . intense to be coaching kids that young.”

“He’s kind of a control freak,” I agreed, “but like I said, the kids seemed to like him.”

“Well, that’s good then.” Karen tossed a smile at me and hurried off to the supply cupboard.

When she came back, I said, “Brody and Caleb asked if I would help with the team all season, but I don’t know . . . I don’t remember enough about the game, and I’m not exactly what you’d call athletic anymore.”

Karen didn’t even look surprised. “I heard that they need another adult on the roster, or the team will fold.”

“That’s what the boys said, but I don’t think I’m the solution they’re looking for.” Now that I’d said that aloud, I knew how right I was. “Somebody else will step in, and I’ll catch their games when I can.”

Karen straightened several boxes on a shelf of one-pound Divinity cream-filled chocolates, but I couldn’t help noticing that she was taking care not to look at me. “Don’t you think the boys’ll be disappointed?” she asked casually.

The image of Brody’s face flashed through my head, but I ignored it. I’d find another way to bond with them— something that would actually work in my world. “They’ll be more disappointed if I say yes. I don’t remember enough about basketball to be an effective coach.”

“You know enough,” Karen said mildly. “It’s really not about you and your skill level, it’s about the boys.”

“I don’t know,” I said hesitantly.

Karen finally made eye contact. “What’s not to know, Abby? It’s a Youth League team, not college ball. Who cares if you’re not the greatest basketball player in town?”

I laughed, but I wasn’t amused. “You need to work on your powers of persuasion,” I said. “Even if I was interested, which I’m not, I’d just be window dressing. I’d probably end up embarrassing the boys.”

Karen propped her hands on her hips, a sure sign that she was getting angry. “They asked you, didn’t they? How often do you think kids actually ask an adult to step into their world? Do you have any idea how lucky you are? You should be grabbing this opportunity and running with it.”

She had me there. Groaning, I slipped another piece of cake into its box and tucked in the flaps to hold it shut. “I know you’re right, but you’re forgetting one tiny thing: I don’t have the time. If I were to agree, I’d be gone three or four evenings out of every seven. I can’t be away from the store that much. You already have more than enough to do.”

Karen stopped long enough to take a sip of coffee. “You could be if we were more organized.” She lifted the cup again and mumbled something behind it I couldn’t understand.

“What?”

She lowered the cup slowly. “I said, you could be gone more if we had some help around here.”

I stopped working and stared at her. We’d had this discussion a dozen times in the past few months, and we never seemed to get anywhere with it. “I thought we’d agreed to wait.”

“
You
agreed to wait,” Karen said, locking eyes with me and gearing up for a fight. “I’ve never been convinced we should.”

“Aren’t you missing something?” I asked. “If we hire somebody because I’m gone, we aren’t ahead. We’re just paying more money for the same amount of work.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” Karen said stubbornly. “If you focus on making the candy and let me hire somebody to help me with the sales floor, you could get everything done that you need to and still have time to spend with the boys.”

“That sounds good in theory,” I said grudgingly, “but there are just too many factors to consider.”

Color crept into Karen’s cheeks, more proof that she was becoming agitated. “Just how many chances do you think you’re going to get with your family, Abby?”

“
Excuse
me?”

She stalked back to the supply cupboard, opened it, and slammed it shut without taking anything out. “I don’t mean to be rude, but you lived away from here for most of those kids’ lives. They hardly know you. Right now, all four of them want you to be part of their lives, but you can’t keep turning your back on them or they won’t want you anymore.”

The air left my lungs in a
whoosh
, and resentment coiled up my spine. I desperately wanted to find some moral high ground, a place where I could look down on her and ask how she dared to say something so hurtful. Trouble was, I knew she was right. I didn’t want to know it, but I did.

I’d left Paradise for college, met and married my husband while I was away, and spent the next twenty years living a life that had very little to do with the Hanks and the Shaws of Paradise, Colorado—and absolutely nothing to do with Divinity. I’d been as shocked as anyone when the lawyers read Aunt Grace’s will, but I was determined to show the world she hadn’t been wrong to put her faith in me.

I picked up a piece of cake and tried to get it into its box, but I ended up jamming my thumb into it instead. Frustrated, I tossed it into the trash can. “Fine,” I snarled. “Have it your way. I suppose you still feel the same way about who we should hire?”

To give her credit, Karen tried not to gloat about my change of heart. “I know some of the cousins have been a pain in your side since you came back, but I think hiring one of them makes the most sense. They’re familiar with the business, and hiring outside the family will just make a lot of people angry.”

I might have been ready to capitulate on the subject of my nephews, but the cousins were another matter entirely. I’d had nothing but trouble from my cousin Bea since I came back to Paradise, and there were others just waiting for me to screw up and prove that Aunt Grace should never have left Divinity to me.

I packed away the last slice of cake and carried the boxes to the end of the counter. “No matter what I do, I make the cousins angry. I’m not going to make business decisions based on their moods.”

“Divinity is a family business.”

“Divinity is
my
business,” I reminded her. “Aunt Grace didn’t leave it to all the cousins. She didn’t set up some committee to run the show and make the decisions. And every time I let one of them in, it’s trouble for me.”

“The only two you’ve let in are Bea and me,” Karen retorted. “You have a fifty percent success rate.”

“And if I
do
hire one of the cousins, and it doesn’t work out? How easy will it be for me to let her go? You think
that
won’t cause bad feelings in the family?”

“Then what about Dana and Danielle? They’re probably wanting to pick up some extra cash, and they’d be cheap labor.”

I shook my head firmly. “They’re both tied up with too many extracurricular activities. Wyatt and Elizabeth want them to spend whatever free time they have studying. No, if I’m going to hire someone to work for me, I want it to be someone who . . . oh, I don’t know . . . someone who acknowledges that I’m the boss and that I have the right to make decisions around here. I want someone who won’t challenge me on every decision I do make.”

“Then let me talk to Stephanie. She used to work here on weekends a few years ago. I know she’d be exactly what you want.”

Of the whole, unreasonable bunch, my cousin Stephanie might actually have worked out all right, except for one thing. “I saw her a couple of days ago at the market. I guess you haven’t heard that she’s pregnant again?”

Karen’s mouth fell open. “
Stephanie
is? But she’s—”

“At least forty-two,” I finished when words failed her. “Apparently the baby is as big a surprise to Stephanie and Kevin as it is to you. She’s not having an easy time of it. I don’t think she’s a candidate.”

“Hire Roz, then.”

“Roz has decided that she’s going to make her fortune selling Mary Kay. She predicts that she’ll be driving a pink Cadillac around Paradise in two years.”

Karen’s brow furrowed in concentration. “Those would have been my top two choices, but give me a minute to think.”

“This is exactly what I’m talking about, Karen. You just can’t see it. If you worked for anyone else, you wouldn’t push like this to get one of your relatives hired.”

“They’re your relatives, too.”

All the more reason to keep them at arm’s length when it came to business. “I’m not hiring from within the family,” I said firmly. “End of discussion. You’ve convinced me to spend time with the boys; be happy with that. I’ll put an ad in the paper tomorrow. Do you want to take care of interviewing the applicants, or should I?”

Thankfully, Karen recognized the olive branch I’d extended. She might not be happy with my decision, but she gave up the fight as the bell over the door tinkled to signal our first customer. “I’ll do it. God only knows what kind of ‘help’
you’d
stick me with.”

I grinned as she slipped out from behind the counter to greet Pearl Whitfield, one of our oldest and most loyal customers. And I wondered again what I’d do without her. I just hoped I’d never have to find out.

Chapter 5

I spent the rest of the morning telling myself that
it wouldn’t do any good to keep rehashing the episode at Hammond Junction, and trying to keep busy in the kitchen. I pulled my favorite of Aunt Grace’s saucepans from the overhead rack, then measured sugar, corn syrup, and vinegar into the pan and set the mixture over a low flame. When the sugar dissolved, I turned up the flame and hooked a candy thermometer to the pan. The temperature climbed steadily while I scrubbed down the granite counter, buttered a cookie sheet, and dug my kitchen shears from the drawer.

The thermometer finally reached 245 degrees, and I quickly stirred in butter and molasses. The heat in the kitchen had climbed, but even that didn’t dispel the pleasure I found in the rich scent that filled the entire shop as the flavors came together. I left the candy on the flame, watching and stirring every few minutes, until it finally reached the hard-ball stage, then carried it to the workbench and poured the molten mixture into the pan I’d prepared earlier.

Every few minutes, Karen poked her head into the kitchen and made appreciative sounds—a habit of hers I find increasingly endearing. When you cook for a living, it’s nice to know that someone is eagerly awaiting the results of your efforts. When I thought about how excited about candy we’d been as kids—and how many of us cousins there were—I decided Aunt Grace must have been on an emotional high most of the time.

I managed not to think about the previous night’s encounter while I was actually cooking, but as soon as the mixture cooled enough to touch, my brain clicked into gear again while my fingers did the work. Hands buttered, I pulled and folded again and again, working air into the mixture so that the texture slowly changed, and the color morphed from molasses brown to a light, creamy tan.

With each pull, I went over another aspect of the near accident and shooting. Karen might be right about the limping man and his “assailant” working together, but the terror on his face had seemed so
real
. Was he just a good actor, or had he really been afraid? If so, what had he been afraid of? My car hurtling toward him or something else?