FOURTH SUSPECT
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Chapter 1
Sometimes living in a small town sucked. Like when everyone heard you were a murder suspect before 
you.
Heat from Anessa’s oven fogged up the bakery’s window beside me, and I wiped my hand over the spot to clear it away. More afternoon light filtered in, lighting up the pink walls of Bakery by the Bay.
“How are the ribs?” Pearl asked from her table, one away from mine.
We both wanted the best spots for the gossip but couldn’t share a table. I needed to spread out for my project and she was too willy nilly with her tea. I couldn’t have her dribbling on my crime scrapbook. With my index finger, I nudged the tender spot under my right breast. Three weeks ago, I’d taken a good hit to them when the principal of the high school tried to hit a home run using my head as the ball.
“Almost healed,” I said and finished cutting out Susan’s most recent news article about Rafferty’s upcoming sentencing. “The bruising looks worse than they feel.”
He was no longer Principal Rafferty since the school board fired him after he confessed to the murder of Coach Torres. It also meant he didn’t have a trial, which sucked. I mean good that he just went right to jail, but I’d never get my time on the witness stand. I’d make a kick-ass witness. Had the outfit picked out and everything.
Anessa eyed my messy window cleaning job as she walked a tray of cupcakes to the couple practically sitting on top of one another on her couch by the fake fireplace. The public groping weirded me out, so I did my best to ignore them.
“Is Broadrick going to freak when he returns?” Anessa asked, finding her way back behind the counter.
I glued the article to the middle of the page and then wrote the date on top with a thick red pen. To make sure no one missed the important stuff, I also underlined all the mentions of my name in the article. They were growing fewer with each one. Sadly.
Hopefully, someone else died soon. But like a criminal, not a good person.
I felt bad wishing for someone’s death. Okay, fine. Hopefully, someone important cheated on their spouse, so I got to catch them, and it made the paper. Still not great, but no one died. We had to pick our poison in the PI life.
“No, he’ll be fine,” I said and capped the pen, but not before getting red ink on my fingers. Great. It was permanent, too. I’d have to scrub to get it off.
The government sent Broadrick on hopefully his final mission as a SEAL last month before I closed the big case. He’d been out of communication since then and hadn’t heard what happened here. I’d been sending him a steady stream of text message updates, but so far he’d read none of them.
I only hoped he was somewhere safe and delusional, so he believed I’d stayed out of trouble while he was gone. Then, by the time he made it home and everything was fine, he’d have nothing to get upset about. If he even found out about everything that happened at all.
Pearl laughed at me as I frowned at my red fingertips. “You can’t hide anything in this town.”
“I’m not hiding,” I said, meeting her eyes and wiping my fingers on my napkin. It didn’t help.
I had considered hiding the attack from Broadrick but figured he’d find out, anyway. And then we’d have to go through the whole “don’t be irresponsible” talk when none of it was my fault. Anderson should have messed up his hair and followed me outside. Really, it was his fault. I blamed him.
To get around that three-day argument, I hit the bull on the head. Or whatever.
I sent Broadrick a daily photo of the bruising and update on my healing to prove to him everything was fine. When he made it home, I’d be perfectly normal, and the only person he’d have to yell at was Anderson for being crappy backup.
That is, if he ever read my text messages.
Anessa opened the cookie display case to rearrange them, and I peeked at my phone for the millionth time that day.
Still unread.
I’d tried to count my number of unanswered earlier that morning and stopped at fifty.
Why wasn’t he reading them? Why didn’t he respond? I trusted—a little—the government to tell me if something happened. Broadrick said he’d left directions with his commanding officer to notify me. I hadn’t totally paid attention to him because I didn’t want to imagine a world where he wasn’t in it. Now he’d been gone almost a month, and I missed him.
I worried.
A lot.
Even NB lost a little pep in his step without Broadrick here. I kept giving him extra treats, but they never lasted long enough. We missed our guy.
How come it took these super GI Joes so long to save the world?
I solved my murder case in less than two weeks. They really needed to get with the program.
“When is he getting home?” Anessa asked, closing the bakery case door with a thud. A ray of sun lit up the pink apron she wore. Pretty much everything in the bakery was pink except the tables and chairs. Somehow it worked.
My heart rang with the sound becoming louder as it clenched in worry when I didn’t have an answer. Something in my chest grew heavy, like I had a big fat weight sitting on it. Dread surrounded me, and taking a breath became harder. I tapped the jade table top where I sat.
“I’m not sure,” I said, somehow sounding casual and light. “But I’ll hear once he’s back in the states.”
I hoped.
A fresh fear. One I’d successfully pushed back and ignored, lit up in my brain again. What if I never saw him again, not because something happened, but because he didn’t want me to see him? What if Broadrick didn’t come back to Pelican Bay? He was out there alone with no contact or reminders of what he had here. What if he met some amazingly beautiful and skinny chick on this tour and fell in love? He’d stay and have little super model babies with her.
I counted to ten to calm my worries and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, I reached for my last cookie and took a bite. Broadrick had to come back to Pelican Bay. He might leave me, but he’d definitely never leave NB. Right? He loved the dog for sure. They had a special bond.
“He better hurry or he’ll miss the Memorial Day Festival,” Pearl said.
I highly doubted Broadrick even realized we had a Memorial Day Festival. And that it lasted an entire weekend. He had so much to learn about this town.
“There’s always the Fourth of July Festival or Labor Day Weekend Games. The Fall Harvest Fest. Halloween and then the holidays.”
Pearl smiled. “You forgot Winter Fest.”
“Ah, yes.” We always had something to celebrate and to keep us busy. Half of them were in costume, too. That added…something. I didn’t know if it was a good something, but it was definitely something. “It’s almost graduation season.”
“Don’t remind me,” Anessa said, holding up the clipboard she used to track orders. It was full.
If he didn’t hurry and get back soon, Broadrick would miss Vivi’s high school graduation. He’d probably feel a little bad about that. But saving the world was more important than watching Vivi walk down the graduation aisle.
The woman laughed by the fireplace and then kissed the person whose lap she was practically sitting in. Eww. Really?
“Knock it off, you two,” I yelled and closed the scrapbook. “What if Dad sees you?”
Vivi laughed and snuggled closer to Allen on the couch, putting her head against his neck. Our father was not on board with the two of them getting back together, hence the bakery meeting. Didn’t they have a backseat to do that stuff? My word. They were sitting in front of the large storefront window. Everyone could see them. Why not just borrow Katy’s megaphone and announce it to the entire town at once?
Just because I’d cleared Allen’s name on the murder charge didn’t mean my dad trusted him.
Pearl laughed again, almost choking on her tea. “Let them have fun. They’re young.”
“They’re in public,” I countered.
Anessa brought me another cookie, and while I should have turned it away, I needed the distraction. No one wanted to watch their sister make out with her boyfriend. In public!
A body ran into the closed bakery door, rattling the hinges. We all turned to watch as Katy jerked open the door with a flourish and set the pink bell above the door into a frenzy.
I bit off half my new cookie. She definitely had good gossip to share with an entrance like that.
“Vonnie!” Her eyes widened when she saw me, and she ran for my table.
My excitement over the gossip lessened. I didn’t like the kind that involved me, and this obviously did.
Unless it was a dead body.
“We have to hide you,” she said and jerked on my arm.
Not good gossip then.
“What?” I asked. Cookie crumbs tell from my lips and landed on the top of my scrapbook.
She yanked at me harder, moving my chair with her effort. “They found your mentor.”
“Mick?” He wasn’t a great mentor, but he came to town occasionally. It’s not like I needed to run from him.
Katy gave me a big jerk, and it tweaked my achy ribs. “They found him dead.”
I plopped down into the chair, costing her all the progress she’d made. “Dead?”
That explained why he hadn’t called in the last week. “Okay, that sucks.”
I still had like two hundred hours I needed for my PI license. Now I’d have to find a new mentor. It’d been hard enough to find Mick. Damn it.
“In your office.” Katy stared at me with big round eyes as her fingers cut into the skin on my arms. “Mrs. Coogs found him dead in your office. She was walking Brent and heard the gunshot.”
Wha- It clicked.
“But I didn’t do it,” I shouted and glanced at the woman for confirmation. I’d been at the bakery all morning.
Katy motioned at my hands and I spotted the red on my fingertips. The ink coated the tips of three fingers.
“You’ll be their top suspect.”
My shoulders hunched, and something in my chest squeezed. Did I murder someone and forget it?
Where had I been that morning? Did I have a murder weapon?
I shook my head with my gaze still stuck on Katy.
No. I didn’t kill anyone.
It wasn’t me.
“It wasn’t me,” I said to Katy, since she couldn’t read my mind.
She shrugged, and Anessa leaned up against the counter behind her, watching me.
“Everyone saw me not kill anyone, right?” I asked the room at large.
Pearl snorted. “You don’t have the killer instinct.”
I jerked forward. What did that mean? “I do too.”
Pearl sipped her tea. “No.”
“Yes. I could kill.” Wait. Did I just admit that out loud? And on camera? Ridge and his crew wired the entire bakery with cameras, and now I’d just practically confessed to a murder. “I mean, you’re right. There’s no killer in me. I’m soft.”
Pearl snorted again. “I didn’t say that.”
My word. The woman needed to make up her damn mind.
“I’ve got to find Anderson,” I said and scooted back my chair. It scraped against the floor and the screeched echoed off the pink walls.
I had to get to my office, explain everything to Anderson, and rescue my stun gun. I’d left it in my top desk drawer. What if Mick tried to steal it before he died?
Holy shit. Someone killed Mick.
A block from the bakery, I slammed to a stop.
Someone killed my mentor. Sure, he drove me insane with his stupid Dick Tracy hats and his pen clicking, but he was my mentor. He didn’t deserve to die. And not in my office.
Why was he even in Pelican Bay?
I quickened my pace until I hit a full run. My steps pounded the sidewalk and thundered in the quiet streets.
The yellow crime scene tape caught a speckle of sun and half-blinded me before I crossed the parking lot. Four police cars—three from the county—blocked the path in a semicircle. I ran between them and came to a halt in front of Officer Bradley, who guarded the entrance to my office building.
It was a small rundown building on the north side of town with only a few spaces for rent. Earlier in the year, the ceiling caved in, coating me with water and debris. Bricks covered the only two windows, and the room had a single outlet with no lighting.
It would be a horrible location for crime scene photos. Think of the shadows.
“Bradley, what are you doing?” I asked and tried to push past him.
He hit me on the shoulder to stop my forward movement. “This is a crime scene.”
“Get her out of here!” Detective Anderson yelled from behind me in the parking lot.
I whipped around and squinted at him in his standard tan trench coat. What had him all yelly?
“Let me in there. My stun gun is in the desk,” I yelled, but he’d already approached.
Anderson stared down at me with an evil expression. “Mick Darcy is dead. Your office is a crime scene. This isn’t one of your games, Vonnie. Stay away and let us do our job.”
“Games?” I asked. “Who is playing games?”
I never played games.
Anderson stopped between me and Bradley, so I had to step backward. “Go home.”
“I’ve solved more crimes than you this year,” I said and poked him in the chest. The red on my fingers caught my eye. I yanked my hand away and stuck it behind my back.
His eyes widened as huge as saucers. “Go home or I will escort you to the police station myself.”
“Well, then.” If he was going to be that way about it. I turned around and stalked toward the bakery and my vehicle. Well, my step-vehicle since my Camero ran out of gas earlier in the month, so I’d been driving Broadrick’s red Shelby F-150 truck.
It got horrible gas millage. He had less than half a tank left, and then I’d have to use a gas station. Which meant I needed money. And a case.
I crossed the street behind a car and continued toward the bakery. Maybe to save gas, I’d walk all the way home. It was only a few more blocks and it would give me time to think about Mick. Who would kill him? And why in my office? How? Why?
A huge white Dodge Ram honked at me. I stopped and waved before crossing the street.
“That your cat?” Tony, the bounty hunter, yelled from his truck window. He had on his standard tough-guy vest that showed off the tattoos with his dark hair cut short to his head and swept back on the top.
“What?” I followed his gaze and spotted a white and brown small dog racing across an open yard. “NB!”
My troublesome pup ran into the road and dove over the curb. I threw my hands up and scowled at Tony. “It’s a dog.”
He shook his head and rested his tattooed arm on the truck’s window. “Anything less than fifteen pounds is a cat.”
Ugh. I whipped an errant piece of blonde hair behind my ear and took off after NB, crossing in front of Tony’s truck and hitting his bumper.
He yelled something out of his window—probably a swear word—and then followed behind me in his truck.
I caught up to NB three yards later and scooped him up while leaning over, sucking in air like I might die. He wiggled, trying to get away like he was late for a hot doggie date.
“Where. The. Hell. Is. Your. Collar?” I asked him between gasps.
Broadrick bought him that collar, and it wasn’t cheap. How did he lose it? Tony honked once, and then a car door slammed. I did my best to stand up and face him with my back straight.
“Thanks for the help,” I deadpanned when he finally lumbered over.
Tony shrugged his big ass meaty shoulders. “It looked like you had it under control.”
Men.
“You’re such a bad boy, NB,” I said to the dog and then kissed the end of his nose.
The skin between Tony’s eyes crinkled. “How are you sure that’s your dog?”
I stared at NB. Totally my dog. “He doesn’t smile. It’s a long story. Don’t ask.”
“Whatever you say, princess.” Tony reached out to grab NB but then thought better of it and stepped away again. “Let me buy you pizza and you can tell me why I got a call that you’re wanted for murder.”
Ugh. Small town living sucked sometimes.
