Laina Turner - The Trixie Pristine Boxed Set Read online

  Chapter 26

  Just goes to show, you never really know people,” I said to Berklie and Sophie the next morning over coffee and scones at the shop. “I mean, who would have ever thought Sylvia and Jack would be running from all of that, end up here, still be followed, and then Sylvia gets killed by someone else not even related to what they were running from?”

  “I am still having a hard time understanding how someone could be killed over snow globes,” said Berklie. “It seems like such a calm hobby.

  “You would think,” I said.

  “So what’s Jack going to do now?” Sophie asked. “Is he going to stay?”

  “He said he’s tired of running. He just wants to settle down and not be looking over his shoulder.”

  “Does he think that’s possible?” Berklie asked.

  “He isn’t sure but said he would worry no matter where he went and he had to stop running at some point. He contacted the local FBI office, and they were going to do some checking with their counterparts in California. See what kind of activity, if any, was going on there with the gangs.”

  The phone rang. “Who is calling us this early?” Berklie asked.

  “Hopefully, someone wanting to know what time we open so they can come in and drop a few hundred dollars,” said Sophie.

  “Wouldn’t that be nice.” I laughed and reached for the phone. “Hello?”

  “Bitch. I will get my money.”

  “Stephen? Why are you calling here? The police are on to you.”

  “You just better keep a look out over your shoulder.”

  I set the phone down and looked at Berklie and Sophie. “I don’t think this is over yet.”

  The End

  Cupcakes Aren’t Just for Eating

  Laina Turner

  Copyright © 2012 Laina Turner

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  Formatting by Anessa Books

  Chapter 1

  I flipped on the overhead lights as I walked through the door of the shop and continued proudly to the small office in the back. Even after a few months it was hard to believe that I was finally the owner, well part owner, of a bookstore. A librarian by trade, I was a book junkie. I had always dreamed of owning a bookstore and finally because of great friends, some money I had set aside, and a lot of hard work, that dream was realized a few months ago.

  I’m Trixie Pristine. Thirty-eight, divorced, and mother of a wonderful eight-year-old son, Cody. I am part owner of a book store/coffee shop/wine bar called Read-Wine. The other two owners of Read-Wine are also my best friends, Berklie and Sophie. One of whom must have just arrived because I heard the front doorbell ding. Since recently escaping a psychopath, we were all adamant about keeping that door locked during non-business hours when we were here by ourselves.

  “Trixie, where are you?” I heard Berklie call from the front.

  “Where do you think? I’m in the back,” I yelled.

  A few minutes later I heard the tapping of her heels on the wood floor.

  “I brought you some coffee. Thanks for starting the machine, by the way,” she said, setting my mug down on the desk. “I added some of that new hazelnut creamer I got to try. It’s not as strong as some, and I think I like that.”

  I took a sip, being careful to not burn my tongue. Our coffee-maker made crazy hot coffee. “You’re right. It does have good flavor. So, how did it go with Tom last night?” Tom was Berklie’s ex-husband, and since the death of his girlfriend, Sylvia, by a deranged snow globe collector, he had been begging for Berklie to take him back. Up until recently, Berklie hadn’t even considered the idea. But lately she had been having second thoughts. Sophie and I thought she was crazy for even thinking about it, but she kept trying to rationalize her reasoning. None of which made sense to us.

  “The same. He took me for a nice dinner and bought me a present.” She held out her wrist so I could see the new diamond tennis bracelet on there. “And gave me his million sorry’s followed by a million reasons why I should take him back. Sometimes I start to believe his bullshit. He seems so sincere, and then I remember I was married to him for years; I should know better. I just feel bad for our twins. You know, I think sometimes, maybe I should give it another try for them.”

  “Berklie, they’ve already been through him leaving, and they’re adjusting to the co-parenting schedule. Showing them a healthy, loving relationship is much more important than them seeing you unhappy. Kids are smart. They will at some point figure it out. Better you be apart and happy than together and miserable,” I said.

  “You’re right. Maybe I will just string him along a little while longer until I get the earrings to match this bracelet. Let him think he can buy his way back. That’s not too mean is it?” she teased.

  After all Tom had put her through in the last year, she deserved all the jewelry she wanted, in my opinion.

  “Enough of my problems. How are you doing with Jack being gone?” she said, changing the subject and taking another sip of her coffee.

  Jack was my boyfriend. At least he had been. Maybe still was. I wasn’t sure what we were right now. Jack had recently moved back to California where he was originally from. He had family business to deal with, and doing it from the Mid-west just wasn’t working. He had quite a complicated background. He had wanted me to go with him, said he wanted to marry me. But the shop had just opened. And while I loved him and he was a great guy, I wasn’t ready to leave here and leave my dream. I also knew he didn’t have much of a choice but to go back to California. We both understood where the other was coming from, so we had kind of left things open- ended and still talked every night. But we both knew that the long distance thing wasn’t going to work, and neither of us was willing to move. It was just bad timing for both of us, which sucked, but what can you do?

  “It’s the same. We talk or Skype every night, and I miss him terribly, but we’re at an impasse. He doesn’t want to come back here, and I don’t want to move there. At some point I assume we will stop communicating every night, and it will dwindle away. It’s not anyone’s fault. It just is what it is right now.” I shrugged, trying not to look as upset as I felt. I had spent many sleepless nights trying to convince my heart what my brain knew.

  “I’m sorry, Trixie,” Berklie said, giving me a hug. “I know you really thought he might be the one.”

  “Well, I’ve been wrong before,” I joked, referring to my failed first marriage. “But we can both live our love lives vicariously through Sophie right now.” Sophie was the third person in our close-knit trio. She had moved here a few years ago, unlike Berklie and me, who had been here all our lives, and she’d recently become engaged.

  “True. But marrying a guy you’ve only known a short while? I’m not sure we shouldn’t be trying to talk her out of this.”

  “Listen, just because you and I haven’t done so well in the relationship department doesn’t mean she won’t. You can’t stop true love.” I laughed. “Besides, Sophie isn’t one to normally rush into things. If she is ready to marry someone after a few weeks of being together, then who are we to criticize?”

  “You’re probably right. And it’s not like we haven’t known Jonathan forever. If he hurts Sophie, he knows he has to deal with us.”

  Jonathan Straite had grown up with us, a grade lower, but in a small town like ours everyone knew everyone. In school our graduating class was barely 200. He owned a motorcycle repair shop that had been his father’s on the edge of town. He wasn’t at all the kind of person Berklie or I would have ever thought would appeal to Sophie. He was a biker. And one who fit
the stereotype when you thought of what a biker looked like. Hair past his shoulders, scruffy beard, faded jeans, and a leather biker jacket were his standard uniform, though that outlaw appearance didn’t detract from how handsome he was. He even belonged to a genuine motorcycle club, which added to his bad boy demeanor. Sophie was more on the sophisticated side. From the city, she was more apt to wear a Donna Karan suit and Ferragamos than jeans and biker boots. But Sophie saw in Jonathan what Berklie and I had always known since we had played spin the bottle with him in sixth grade. He was the nicest, sweetest, most loving teddy bear of a guy—as long as he liked you. If he didn’t, he wasn’t one to mess with. He was as loyal as anyone I’d ever known and a really great guy. They just made a very odd couple.

  “I still am having a hard time understanding them as a couple,” Berklie said, echoing my thoughts.

  “Why?”

  “Look at them. I can’t even picture in my head how Sophie fits in at the Royals Motorcycle Club (RMC). Some of those ladies are a bit rough to say the least.”

  “I can understand that. I have problems with it myself. But they are both fantastic people. What people think of them as a couple shouldn’t matter. You know the whole opposites attract thing.”

  “I know. Maybe we should go with them one night so we can see for ourselves how she blends in,” Berklie suggested.

  “I doubt she blends in, but I’m sure she doesn’t care about that either.”

  “True. An original, that’s our Sophie.”

  I glanced at my watch. “Crap, it’s almost time to open. We better get out there.”

  “Wow, it’s certainly hopping today!” I said to Berklie two hours after opening, as she brought in a fresh tray of fancy cupcakes to put in the pastry case. I had just sold the last one to a mom and her daughter on the way to school. Avery Mills, the owner of CupCakes and our dear friend, dropped off a delivery each morning. Her shop was on the other side of our small town, and when we had opened a few months ago and started carrying her fancy cupcakes, her business doubled.

  “I know. I think our mornings have been getting busier with the people on the way to work and school.”

  “And some of the older folks who just like to hang out,” I said, nodding in the direction of a table of older gentlemen. They had started dividing their time between us and the diner around the corner. They said on Tuesdays and Wednesdays their favorite waitress was off, so they preferred to come here. All the men were senior citizens, and it was fun watching them bicker with one another and flirt with all the ladies.

  Berklie laughed. “Keeps the place interesting.”

  I grabbed a fresh pot of coffee and walked over to them. We normally didn’t serve people, but with these guys I didn’t mind. “Refill, anyone?”

  The three gentlemen looked at me.

  “Sure. I could use some more caffeine,” one of them said.

  “Harvey, you better watch it. You better not let Doris catch you having more than your one allotted cup,” one of the men said.

  “Why do you think I’m here? To get away from her nagging.”

  “Oh, Harvey, you wouldn’t know what to do without Doris,” I said.

  “I would know plenty. We’re getting divorced, you know.”

  I stopped pouring and looked at him startled. “You’re kidding, right?” They had to have been married for almost fifty years. I had gone to school with his grandson. People didn’t get divorced after that long, did they?

  One of the other gentlemen broke in. “He’s not kidding. She served him with divorce papers last week.”

  “Harvey! What did you do to make Doris mad enough to divorce you?” I asked.

  “It’s not me. She’s just become cranky in her old age. Anyways, I don’t much want to talk about it. How about one of those fancy red velvet cupcakes to ease an old man’s pain?”

  “Sure, Harvey,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. “I’ll go get you one.”

  I walked back over to the pastry case where Berklie was rearranging things. “Hand me a red velvet, please. Did you know Harvey and Doris were getting a divorce?” I said, as she handed me the cupcake and I put it on my plate.

  “I heard something about it at the bank the other day, but I thought it was just gossip. You know Missy, she likes to exaggerate.”

  “Well, it’s not. Harvey just confirmed it. I guess Doris served him with papers last week.”

  Berklie just stared at me. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  I shook my head. “Nope.”

  “If they are getting a divorce after what, about a hundred years, then there is no hope for us finding true love.”

  “I just can’t believe it. Things must be pretty bad between them if they would split up after that long together.” I walked back around the counter, gave Harvey his cupcake, and saw another customer walk through the door. I then went back to help Berklie clean up the pastry and coffee area from this morning’s rush. Engrossed in wiping the coffee grinds out of the tray under the brewing station, I jumped when I heard a loud thump and then a scream. I looked up to see Harvey writhing on the floor with his two friends kneeling down beside him.

  “Trixie, call 911, I think Harvey’s having a heart attack!” one of the men yelled to me.

  I grabbed the phone, made the call, and then rushed out to where Harvey was lying on the ground. “What happened?”

  “I dunno. He fell out of his chair mid-sentence.”

  “He’s not breathing. We need to give him CPR,” I cried out.

  Just as I started chest compressions thank goodness for the CPR class I took as part of our food safety license I heard the door slam open and looked to see the paramedics. It helped that we were only one block away from the station.

  “Out of the way please. What happened here?” The paramedic said curtly, obviously trying to assess the situation. He knelt beside Harvey, feeling for a pulse.

  “His heart’s not beating. Hand me the defibrillator!” he said to his partner.

  “He was just drinking coffee and eating a cupcake when he seemed to choke and fell to the floor,” Harvey’s friend said.

  “He has a history of heart problems, and he drank a lot more caffeine then he is supposed to,” I added, feeling guilty. I should have never let him have that second cup of coffee.

  “His heart’s not beating. Hand me the defibrillator!” he said to his partner. The paramedics worked on him for a few more minutes and then set their equipment aside. “Let’s get him on the stretcher,” one of them said quietly.

  I didn’t want to confirm the obvious, but I had to ask. “Is he…”

  “I’m sorry ma’am,” he said solemnly.

  “Oh my God,” Berklie said softly behind me.

  “What are we going to tell Doris?” I said. “That I killed her husband by serving him too much coffee?”

  “We won’t know that until an autopsy is done,” said the paramedic.

  “What happened here?”

  “Clive, am I glad to see you!”

  Clive was the Chief of Police in our town and also a former classmate of mine.

  “I heard there was an incident on the police scanner and came over here. What have we got?” he asked the paramedic.

  “It appears to be a heart attack.”

  “Is that Harvey? Oh, man. This is going to be hard on the family. Get him over to the county hospital.”

  “You got it,” the paramedic replied and with his partner went about the business of getting Harvey’s body loaded up on the stretcher and into the ambulance.

  “Clive, I feel so bad. I gave him too much coffee. I just felt bad. I didn’t know he was getting a divorce.”

  “So Doris went through with it? Interesting. I doubt an extra cup of Joe caused Harvey to have a heart attack. He is eighty-three. It was probably just his time. I better head over to Doris’s and give her the news.”

  “Okay, Clive. Tell her we’re sorry,” I said as he walked out the door.

  “Nothing li
ke a dead body to clear out the place,” Berklie said dryly.

  I looked around, and she was right. Not a soul remained, which I guess was a little surprising since many folks liked to know what was happening, morbid or not. “Can’t say I would be any different. It is kind of unsettling, even if it was natural causes. Do you think we should close the rest of the day? You know, out of respect?”

  “Yeah. I’ll call Sophie and tell her not to come in, and instead to meet us at the diner for a late breakfast, early lunch.”

  “Ugh. I don’t know if I can eat.”

  *****

  “He just keeled over. Right there on the spot?” Sophie asked, as we were all seated at a booth in the diner an hour later.

  I nodded. “I gave him too much caffeine.”

  “Oh, get over the caffeine thing. It’s not your fault,” said Berklie.

  “No, it’s not your fault,” said Clive, coming up behind me.

  I looked over my shoulder. “What do you mean?”

  “Can I sit?”

  “Sure,” I said, scooting over in the booth to make room. Clive sat down.

  “So what happened?” Berklie asked him.

  “He didn’t die from natural causes. He was poisoned.”

  “What!” I exclaimed.

  “Very preliminary, but the medical examiner knew immediately he was poisoned due to the way the whites of his eyes looked or something. I don’t have all of the details yet. She’s running the full battery of tests now, but they won’t be ready until tomorrow.”

  I put my head in my hands. “Harvey was poisoned while in our shop eating and drinking our coffee and cupcakes. This is a nightmare. This kind of negative press could kill a business.” I winced at my poor choice of words.

  “I came over here looking for you because I need you to take me to the shop. I will need all your remaining food, coffee, and anything else Harvey might have come in contact with.” Clive said.

  “At least we made it four months between crime scenes,” Sophie said, referring to right before we opened when Sylvia was murdered in our place. Incidentally, Sylvia had been Berklie’s ex-husband’s girlfriend and the sister of my then boyfriend Jack. Maybe Jack was still my boyfriend. I wasn’t sure right now.