The Iced Princess (15 page)

I considered calling Pinky and Erin to tell them about the crazy evening: how Clint had stopped over, how we'd had dinner together, and then how he'd kissed me out of the blue—the very last thing in the world I'd expected. I had to admit we'd shared a fairly pleasant meal together, but that was mostly because we hadn't talked much.

Clint took his eating very seriously, and it seemed it was the only thing he could concentrate on at the time. That had cut down substantially on our propensity to disagree. Then he
kissed
me. He must have been overcome with gratitude for the home-cooked meal to do that. But what if he tried to do it again sometime? How in the world would I handle that? Golly.

I went into the dining room and started cleaning up the rest of our meal. As distracting as Clint's visit had turned out to be, there were critical things going on in our small community. All the things Molly's mother had been part of umpteen years ago had come to light and landed her in jail. Then Emmy Anders—or Andersohn—was arrested for Molly's murder because the police found cyanide in her
garage. Mind-boggling events. Would either of the women sleep a wink tonight?

The only thing our friend Archie Newberry had complained about when he was in jail, before he went to the treatment center, was the hard, thin mattress on the metal bed. “These old shoulders of mine kinda like a softer place to rest on.”

Archie. Pinky and I had agreed to keep him in the dark about the latest happenings for as long as possible. He didn't watch television, so we felt fairly sure he wouldn't hear about it. When he was further along in his psychological healing and could handle the news better, we'd decide on the best way to tell him.

I put the leftover stir fry in a plastic container and snapped on the lid. After I'd put it in the refrigerator, I heard a light scraping, like a tapping noise, near the dining room window. My first thought was that it was a woodpecker. But it was late, and the ones that wintered over, that didn't migrate south for the winter, would be in their shelters for the night. I turned off the dining area light, went over to the window, and opened the blind. There was enough light from the streetlamp to make out the offender—a large branch had broken off, and the wind was pushing it against the house and window. If the wind pushed much harder, the branch might break the window.

I did not want to go out in the frosty, windy night, but I had no choice. I slipped into a quilted jacket and boots then went out the front door to the south side of the house. I ignored the moving, reaching branches that had given me a fright earlier and resolutely marched to the broken one. It was six or seven feet long, and the base of it had a diameter that would
be the right size for firewood. I got ahold of the heavy end and tugged until it moved then kept going until it was far enough away from the house.

I started back inside but almost fainted on the spot when a white ghostlike object floated by. I was frozen in my tracks and thanking God out loud that it hadn't come toward me. When my irrational terror settled down, and I could see better, I recognized it was a tall kitchen garbage bag that had taken on a ghostly appearance in the buffeting wind. I stood there for another second, chiding myself for being such a big baby. Ghosts didn't look like the cartoony white-sheet version, anyway. They looked like the people they had been, but different. Like Molly had been in my dream. That thought sent me rushing into the house.

Maybe I was officially cracking up. Perhaps the stress of getting ousted from my position in Washington had finally caught up with me. That got me thinking about Senator Ramona Zimmer, who was about to be ousted herself. She had actually accused me of costing her the election. She was really grasping at straws, but it was possible that wild notion had warped her brain. Enough to have me killed? If that was the case, her plans had gone awry when either she or Peter or the mystery man who was looking for me poisoned the wrong girl. Oh my.

I started shaking my hands the way Pinky did when she felt nervous. The results on the letter Ramona had delivered were not back from the crime lab, and I was getting impatient. If the letter contained poison, that should prove to the police that the Zimmers were the ones who had killed Molly. Unless . . . Emmy had killed Molly after all. And her death gave the Zimmers the idea to poison another girl—namely
me—in Curio Finds to make it look like a serial killer was on the loose.

I had caught Ramona completely off guard when I came in and found her at my counter. She may have thought I'd trustingly open the envelope, inhale the contents, and die before I could tell anyone what had happened.

Then one more thought hit me. What if that man who was in the store asking about the woman who fit my description was not working for the Zimmers after all? What if he was asking for Molly because of some other connection they had? And who was that strange guy Ramona brought to her house when Peter wasn't home? The man had looked like he would be staying awhile.

My head hurt from all the bad thoughts circling around in my brain. I needed to do something calming, but what? It was too dark to go for a walk, even if I bundled up against the cold and armed myself with a canister of Mace. Plus, if the Zimmers had it in for me, the Mace might not be enough to ward them off. I grudgingly admitted Clint was right. I needed to take a self-defense class. After all, the same kinds of things, good and bad, happened in small towns, rural areas, and big cities.

Clint.
It was the strangest thing, but thinking about him and the way his lips caressed mine for that brief moment gave me a sense of reassurance. Yes, we butted heads on a regular basis, and we had virtually nothing in common. Not to mention that the way he slurped his coffee drove me bananas. But there was a part of me, way deep down inside, that liked and respected him.

When my phone rang and I saw it was the man of the hour
calling, I debated whether I should answer it or not. But it might be important. “Hello, Clint.”

“Camryn, I wanted to thank you again for the delicious meal. And to make sure you locked your door after I left. I forgot to remind you, and I know you don't always remember to do that.”

That's what Clint did, and it drove me up a tree. He'd draw me in and then insult me. But I was not about to get all hyped up again, so before I said a word, I took a breath and bit my tongue. “You're welcome, and I did remember to lock the door.”
I'm not quite as feebleminded as you think I am.
“I've gotta go, but thanks for calling. 'Night.” I hung up. It didn't matter whether he was done talking or not—I was. Clint had effectively reminded me how we clashed way too much and way too often.

S
he came to me for the second time in the middle of the night. A pale Molly in all her otherworldly glory was back in Curio Finds, and I was the only one who seemed to notice. I was standing behind my checkout counter, and she moved in a smooth and graceful way. “Did you see them?” she asked.

“Who?” I said.

“The ones who put that there.” She glanced down at the counter. When my own eyes followed her gaze, I saw the coffee cup and knew it was
the
one with the poison because a strong odor of almonds was emanating from it.

“No, I'm sorry, I didn't.”

“I think there were two of them, but maybe it was only one. The one who brought it to me.”

“Molly, what did they look like? Was it a man, a woman?”

“Look around,” she said and faded to nothing.

I did what she'd said, but everyone's faces were fuzzy, and then they all disappeared, too. I was alone in the shop when all the lights went out and total blackness engulfed me.

When I awoke, I was sitting upright in my bed with my hands clamped tight over my eyes. I was panting. When everything went dark in my dream, I had screamed bloody murder, but not a sound had escaped from my mouth. I was completely mute. My throat hurt, like I had strained it. And whether I had screamed out loud or silently didn't matter, because there was no one else in the house to come to my rescue.

I gripped the blankets and pulled them around my chest as I tried to calm down and convince myself that a dream was only a dream and nothing to be afraid of. I was grateful the orange red glow from the dial on my alarm clock gave off some light. When I looked at it and saw it was only 3:01 a.m., I felt even more distressed. Who would I dare wake up in the middle of the night to talk about my bad dream, terrifying or not?

I turned on the reading lamp on the nightstand then got out of bed and pulled on a flannel robe and the furry pink bunny slippers Pinky had given me. I went to the kitchen for a cup of tea, turning on lights along the way. I fished through the assortment in my cupboard and settled on a bedtime tea with chamomile and spearmint. I heated a mug of water in the microwave then dropped the tea bag in and put a saucer over it to let it steep.

My heart was quieting down, and I breathed in slowly though my nose and out through my mouth a few times, the way Mom had taught me to do when I was upset. My breathing was back to normal in about a minute. Why were things
so much scarier in the middle of the night? At least the howling wind had died down.

“Okay, Molly, your ghost has to just quit it.” I gave my forehead a light bop. “You are losing it, Cami. It was
your
dream, after all.”

The tea was ready, and I carried it into the living room, turned on a reading lamp, and settled on the couch. I felt I owed it to Molly to help find out who had poisoned her, especially if the final hit was meant for me. Wasn't there some unwritten rule about that, like I would need to take care of her family until death do us part? I had money put away and could bail Molly's mother out of jail if it came to that. Did Molly's husband Will even care that his mother-in-law was locked up?

And then there was Molly's stepbrother. He sounded like a real piece of work. He'd actually taken money to keep quiet about his father's murder instead of going to the police with the information. Then on top of it all, he had extorted thousands of dollars a month from Molly until she finally put a stop to it. In my opinion, he was lower than low and seemed a likely suspect in her murder. He certainly had more of a motive than Emmy did. And he could have been the one in the shop who'd asked for the blonde that worked there.

I set my tea on the coffee table and went to my desk for a pad and pen then carried them back to the couch. I set the pad on the coffee table and leaned over it, pen in hand, ready for action. I thought back over the last month when we'd had a murder in town and remembered how I had worried that my friends, Erin, Pinky, and Mark, were involved in some way. I felt awful about having even a smidgen of doubt about them, but I'd tried to be as objective as possible. And they
all had reasons to want Jerrell Powers out of the picture. Instead it was Archie, whom I had not initially suspected, that sadly turned out to be the guilty one.

I thought back to the afternoon Molly died. I poked my pen into the pad a few times, debating whose name to write down first as a suspect. Emmy was with Molly right before she died and was the Brooks Landing Police Department's prime suspect. I hoped to have a real heart-to-heart with her soon. I printed her name then jotted down all the things that had come to light about her past and the evidence the police had found in her garage.

Molly's stepbrother was a prime suspect as far as I was concerned. The problem was finding out where he was. Troy Ryland fit the general description of the mystery man that had talked to Pinky. If Molly had seen Troy, even if she didn't want to tell us about him, it seemed she would have given something away by her reaction. At the time, none of the rest of us knew about Troy, or how he had blackmailed Molly. I didn't blame her for wanting to keep that under wraps forever.

But say he came in, greeted her, said something nice, asked her to forgive him, then handed her a cup of laced coffee, disguised as a peace offering. Poor Molly would have been none the wiser. “Okay, Troy Ryland, you get an asterisk by your name. Make that three.” And then I underlined his name, twice.

That left Peter and Ramona Zimmer, and I wrote a page of reasons why I thought it might be them, with a possible accomplice. Molly had said “they” when she talked about her killers.
Cami, you keep forgetting, she told you that in your dreams.
It was becoming more and more clear to me what people meant when they said they felt like they were in the Twilight Zone.

I laid the pen down, took a final sip of tea, and stood up. I left the lamp on in the living room, just because, and headed back to bed. The Shakespeare volume of works that included
Macbeth
was lying on my nightstand. I turned it over so the title was covered. No matter what my imagination came up with when it ran wild, it did not hold a candle to Shakespeare's, thank goodness.

—

M
y alarm woke me up at 8:00 a.m. I smiled when I opened my eyes and saw it was light out. Remarkably, I had slept the rest of the night without any more unwelcomed dream visits from you know who. The first person that came to mind was Emmy. I needed to talk to her. And the second person I thought of was Molly's mother. Clint said she would go before the judge today, and I hoped Emmy would, too. Whether either one of them would be released was the big unknown. I'd made a vow the night before that I would help Mrs. Ryland, and I hoped if they did set bail it would be an amount I could manage. As far as Emmy was concerned, her bail might be steep and way beyond my means. And I wasn't completely convinced she was innocent. Evidence was evidence.

I called Mark Weston's cell phone. “Good morning, Cami, what's up?”

“Morning. Hey, Mark, I was wondering how I'd find out about court today? Like if Emmy or Mrs. Ryland will be going before the judge?”

“Well, court admin makes up a calendar, and their names should be on it. How about I check it out for you?”

“I'd appreciate it.”

“So, Cami, did you hear that they're not having a funeral for Molly?”

“What do you mean?” Everyone who lived and died in Brooks Landing had a funeral.

“I talked to Ike over at the funeral home and he told me. He said her husband wants to keep it limited to an intimate few.”

“Like her mother, his parents?”

“I have no idea, probably something like that. According to Ike, Mr. Dalton does not want it to turn into a circus.”

“I don't think it's possible for a funeral to turn into a circus. People are more considerate than that.”

“I agree with you on that one.”

“You'd think he'd appreciate people coming to pay their respects.”

“I sure would. He must be having a lot of trouble dealing with it all and just can't face what happened to his wife.”

“You have a point there.”

“And when it comes right down to it, it's none of our beeswax.”

“I know, but still.”

I heard Mark's badge number being called over his police radio. “Gotta go. I'll get back to you about the court calendar,” he said.

“Thanks.”

Mark was right—it was not our business whether Will Dalton had a service for Molly or not, but it seemed that a man in his position would want one. His parents were upper middle class, known for their social gatherings. Will was a partner in a large law firm with a ton of colleagues. Although
Molly didn't say much about their social life or friends, she'd mention events here and there. They may have felt more like obligations than fun, but I remembered feeling a little jealous when she told us about a fund-raiser gala they were going to earlier in the fall. There wasn't much occasion for my friends and me to get dressed to the nines.

Whether it was my business or not, I found the local phone directory and looked up the number for Walters Funeral Services. Ike Walters answered, and his voice was soft and soothing. “Walters Chapel. How can I be of service to you?”

“Hi, Mr. Walters, it's Cami Brooks.”

“Oh, Cami, always a pleasure. How are your folks? Well, I hope?”

“Pretty good. Mom's doing much better, thanks.”

“Good to hear.”

“Mr. Walters, I was wondering about Molly Dalton's service.”

“Well, Cami, it's at three o'clock this afternoon, at Will Dalton's home. But I expect it will be small, family, maybe a few friends. It's private, closed to the public, invitation only.”

I had never heard of an “invitation only” funeral or memorial service. “I'm sorry to hear that. I know a number of our classmates would like to be there.”

“Well, yes, that is unfortunate, and it's been my experience that when people share stories and kind words about the deceased, it helps their loved ones move through the grieving process a little better. But it's not right for me to question decisions the bereaved make. I follow their wishes and do the best job I can for them.”

Mr. Walters was very good at it, too. “Okay, and of course
you are right. I appreciate the info, Mr. Walters, and we'll see you in Brew Ha-Ha one of these days.”

“You can count on it. Good-bye, Cami.”

“'Bye.”

I knew where I'd be at about 2:30 that afternoon if I was able to arrange it—watching to see who made the cut and got invited to Molly's memorial service. Her mother had made no mention of it when we'd talked to her in the jail, so I had to wonder if she even knew about it. Mark called me back a while later to say both women were scheduled that morning and should make it to court sometime between 11:00 and noon. If Pinky was comfortable with handling the business in both shops, I'd head over to the Buffalo County Courthouse and sit in on the proceedings.

—

I
got to Brew Ha-Ha before nine. Pinky raised her eyebrows when she saw me. “Holy moly, you're early.”

“I'm hoping for a couple of breaks later so I thought I'd help out now.”

“Okay.” She drew out the word. “Where are you planning to break to?” I told her about the private service for Molly. “Her mother is in jail, for crying out loud. That would be just plain wrong if Will Dalton went ahead and had it without her,” she said.

“I know, and I plan to ask Mrs. Ryland what she knows about it, if I get the chance. Which brings me to the other reason for a break. Mark found out both Emmy and Mrs. Ryland are scheduled for their court appearances sometime between eleven and noon.”

Her eyebrows went together. “Not at the same time, I hope?”

I shrugged. “According to what Clint said, the jailers are keeping them separated. I'd think everyone at the courthouse knows about that by now.”

“Let's hope so.”

“Anyway, I want to be there—for both of them. And don't go all freaky on me, but if Mrs. Ryland's bail isn't outrageous, I'm going to spring for it.”

“Cami, are you kidding?”

“No, I feel I owe it to Molly.”

“How did you figure that one?”

“In case the poison was meant for me.”

“I wish you wouldn't keep saying that.”

“I don't keep saying it; this is only the second time. And here's another thing not to freak out about, but Molly's ghost was back in my dreams again last night, saying the same thing she said last time, that her killers were in the shop. And then she said she thought there were two, but maybe there really was only one killer after all.”

Pinky put her hand on my shoulder. “Cami, this is just not like you. I mean, actually listening to a ghost tell you crazy stuff in your dreams.”

“I agree, and it doesn't make sense to me, either. I know it's got to be my own subconscious coming up with those things, but Molly seems completely real and certain about what she's saying.”

“That's because the killer was in the shop and gave her a cup of coffee. It could have been Emmy for all we know. Molly didn't give you any names, did she?”

“Well, no.”

“And even if she did, you could not very well go to the
police and tell them a ghost in your dream told you who poisoned her.”

“Yes, I know, it is crazy, crazier, craziest.” I made a secret vow that from then on, I'd be careful what I said to Pinky about Molly's murder. “And of course I know Molly's ghost is just a figment of my imagination.” At least my rational self knew that. My middle-of-the-night irrational self was confused and had sent the jury out with hopes that a verdict was forthcoming. The decision on whether I was of sound mind could not come soon enough, that was for darn sure.

“All this ghost talk is starting to rub off on me, and I've been praying it stays in your dreams. Early in the morning I've seen shadows in your shop that seem to be moving, and they've given me enough of a start. If Molly's ghost shows up for real, I don't know what I'll do—after I come to from a dead faint, that is.”