For Better or Worsted Page 23

  “Yes,” Emerson said, nodding for emphasis. “I had it all planned. I knew from before that Jackson Kingsley liked ice in his wine. I’d brought ice cubes laced with cyanide in the flower cooler. I waited to replace his boutonniere until he had a glass of red wine. I knew he’d ask the closest server for ice and, even though I was bringing him a flower, since I was dressed like the servers, I knew he’d ask me. I brought him a glass with the poisoned ice cubes and he poured them into his wine.” She stopped, looking distraught.

  “But then I thought about it. I couldn’t do it. No matter what he’d done, I couldn’t kill someone. So I knocked over his glass of wine on myself and left.”

  “Wait a second. So you’re saying you didn’t kill Jonah Kingsley?”

  Emerson seemed surprised. “I never had any intention of killing Jonah. My beef was with Jackson Kingsley, his father. I’d already given Thursday the card, so I just left. Well, I did some venting in the service tent first. I went in there and ranted a bit about what a horrible person Kingsley was, not caring if people died from his product as long as he got his money. Then I left. You have to believe me. I wasn’t there when Jonah was stabbed.”

  Emerson then confessed she had put away the photographs of her father and his things after hearing about my amateur sleuthing.

  “I’m glad to finally tell someone. You have no idea how this has been weighing on me. I didn’t kill Jonah, but I’m afraid that what I said set off somebody else.”

  I could see her point. She goes and gives a speech about what a terrible person Jackson Kingsley is, and a few minutes later, his son Jonah is stabbed.

  “I’ve thought and thought about who was in the tent and tried to remember if anyone seemed to particularly listen to what I said.”

  “Well,” I said, “what did you come up with?”

  “Nothing. With the severe dress code, everyone looked the same, and I don’t know who even heard me.”

  “What about Ben Sherman? Was he in the tent?”

  Emerson put up her hands. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  CHAPTER 32

  THURSDAY WAS WAITING FOR ME WHEN I GOT HOME. “What happened?” she said. I told her the whole story and she seemed let down. “I was hoping it would get Ben off the hook.” Thursday looked dejected as she went back to her small room with Hamlet for company.

  I was in one of those places where I didn’t know what to do with myself. The party was over and had been a success despite the surprise guest pig. That meant there would be others to follow. But the buildup to confronting Emerson had gone kaput. I had a bad case of the loose ends.

  When I felt that way, the best thing to do was to clean house. The movement, the mindlessness of it all, seemed to soothe me.

  The animals had figured out there was someone new in the house and were searching around, sniffing and looking for it. Cleaning wasn’t as relaxing as I thought it would be, because I kept having to dodge wandering cats and dogs.

  At least I could clean out my car. As I looked in the backseat, I was embarrassed to see my things from the wedding reception were still there. Not that I was likely to miss a pair of sling-back heels.

  As I grabbed the shoes, something fell out of one of them and rolled on the car floor. I thought back and remembered how my foot had suddenly begun to hurt as I was escorting Thursday out the back way. Now I realized the pain must have come from something getting into my shoe. I bent down and searched the floor, curious what it was. When I picked it up and examined it, I was stunned as I realized what it meant.

  It was out of left field, but I saw that I’d been missing what was in front of me all along. What had I heard repeatedly—that the servers and help were all people in the area who had other jobs. And that was the case here.

  This time I was going to tell Barry, but only after I’d made sure about the proof. It would be so simple, just locate it and take a picture with my smartphone. I left without telling Thursday and didn’t even bother putting a jacket on over my vest.

  It was getting close to closing at Caitlyn’s Cupcakes when I went in. Caitlyn and Kirsty were both waiting on a customer when I asked for the restroom key.

  With a weary sigh, Kirsty handed it to me and went back to listening to the woman complain that they were out of everything. I tried not to look at Kirsty too long, but my brain was spinning. Of course! Why hadn’t I realized that when Kirsty told me Emerson had worked at the wedding, the only way Kirsty could have known was if she had been there, too. Hadn’t Kirsty said something about working a bunch of jobs? Kirsty was a premed student and would certainly know just where to stab someone to dispatch them before they had a chance to react. She would have gotten away with it, except for what had fallen out of my shoe. The dangle earring with the clay bead was unmistakable.

  The area near the restrooms had cubbies for the employees to leave their things. Kirsty had said the single earring was there if Adele wanted to see it. I saw Kirsty’s books and backpack and realized which cubbie was hers. I reached around inside quickly, and bingo, my hand touched a small box and then an earring with a bead. I pulled it to the front and took out my BlackBerry, turning it to camera mode. It was shadowy dark back there, and if I used the flash, Kirsty might notice. I was about to move the earring into a light spot when I heard a rustle.

  “What are you doing?” Kirsty said, staring at my BlackBerry. It took a moment before she saw that the things in her cubbie had been moved around.

  I tried to make an excuse, but Kirsty knew something was up. “I know all about your amateur sleuth stuff. Why are you investigating my cubbie?”

  I tried to make more excuses, but Kirsty finally saw the box with the earring. Obviously she knew where she had lost its mate. “You might think you know something, but you don’t, and what can you prove by a single earring, anyway?”

  If only I had shut up. But no, I had to tell her what I had figured out.

  “You couldn’t wear jewelry when you worked at the reception. So you must have taken off your earrings and put them in your pocket. But when you went to ditch the shirt, you took them out, maybe to put them in your pants pocket. But only one of them made it. The other one ended up in my shoe.” Kirsty’s expression changed when I got to the part about the beads. I’d called Adele on the drive there, and she’d explained she had made the beads for the earrings out of one piece of polymer clay she’d formed into a random pattern out of a bunch of scraps. She had cut the piece into two square beads that were mirror images of each other.

  “Do you think I’m really going to believe that? Let me see if the other bead really is a twin.” Did she think I was born yesterday and would fall for that? I just told her the other earring was someplace safe.

  She shifted her weight a few times and glanced around. I heard Caitlyn call out good-night, and then the front door whoosh shut.

  “Nice story,” Kirsty said in a dismissive tone. But then her face began to cloud up, and the hard exterior she put on gave way. “I suppose you want to know why. My sister was one of the people who took that diet supplement, believing the label.” Kirsty’s voice rose in anger. “She wouldn’t listen to me. I told her she was fine, but she was a fanatic about her weight. She had to wear a size zero. Who needs to wear a size zero? She went into arrhythmia and died. She was seventeen years old. I heard that there was a mistake with the supplement, and it was recalled. I was angry, but it seemed to just be circumstances. I didn’t even put it together with the people at the wedding until Emerson came into the service tent and did her rant. When I heard that Kingsley had refused to hold back the shipment and knew that it was tainted, I lost it.” She had started to cry, and her mascara was making black speckles on her cheek. “I loved my little sister. Things weren’t so hot at my house, and it was always the two of us against the world. When she died, I felt like my right arm had been ripped off. I wanted Jackson Kingsley to lose someone the way I
did. I was acting all on impulse. I stabbed Jonah before I knew what I’d done. It was automatic to dump the bloody shirt and pull out the spare I’d brought. I hid the bloody gloves in my shoes. It was all so surreal,” she said.

  “I’m sure if you get a good lawyer and explain about your sister, you’ll be able to work something out,” I said, feeling some sympathy for her. It sounded like she’d gone temporarily insane. I started to put away my BlackBerry. “If you want, I’ll go with you when you turn yourself in. It’s probably a good idea to talk to a lawyer first. I even know someone who might help.”

  I was starting to collect myself to go, but Kirsty didn’t move. “How do you want to do this? Do you want to do it now, or maybe wait until tomorrow?” I said.

  “How about never,” Kirsty answered. Her tears had stopped, leaving tracks of thick mascara down her cheeks.

  Her answer surprised me, and I was going to say something.

  “Where did you say the other earring is?” Kirsty asked.

  “In a safe place only I know,” I said and Kirsty nodded.

  “Good work. Then without you, nobody will find it.” When I looked up, I saw that Kirsty had picked up a cleaver.

  “You can take off a hand in one blow with something like this if you know just where to cut,” she said, looking at my hand resting on the counter.

  While I was contemplating what she said, she pulled out a long plastic tie. “When Caitlyn opened, she got a Welcome to Tarzana package with a bunch of these in case she had shoplifters.” Kirsty made me place my hands on the counter in front of me and wrapped the plastic around my wrists, holding the cleaver in one hand as a threat. Once she’d gotten the tie tight, she put down the cleaver and used both hands to finish the job. As soon as she was done, she grabbed the cleaver again and said something about being able to take off both hands at once if I gave her any trouble.

  “Did I mention that my father was a butcher?” she said, seeming to want to make sure I believed she could carry out the threat.

  She pushed me into the back room where all the baking equipment was. The mixers looked just like mine, only built for a giant. There was a stove top and a glassed-in enclosure that worked as a vertical oven.

  “That’s it,” she said, more to herself than me. “A little Hansel and Gretel action.” She pushed me back toward the glass enclosure and pulled open a door as tall as I was.

  “This oven is Caitlyn’s pride and joy. She can put in a rack with trays of cupcakes and bake them perfectly all at once. But without the rack, there’s enough room for a person to stand.” She pushed me into the vertical oven and I stepped onto something round and could feel it move back and forth. “You’ve noticed the metal disc,” she said with a malevolent smile. “It’s the secret to baking everything evenly. It revolves when the oven is turned on.”

  I got the message. She was planning to bake me. She didn’t share what plans she had for me after, and I really didn’t want to hear. Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place—either I got roasted or had my hands lopped off.

  Having my hands in front gave me a little wiggle room. And Kirsty didn’t object when I asked to scratch an itch, even though it delayed her shutting the glass door.

  Then with a shove, she pushed it shut. I could see her looking at the controls. There was the hum of a motor, the disc began to turn, and a moment later, I felt the heating elements beginning to raise the temperature.

  Kirsty stood watching me spin slowly in the hot air for a few turns, and then she walked out shutting off the light, sure my goose was cooked.

  CHAPTER 33

  I WISH I HAD BEEN THE ONE TO TACKLE KIRSTY. ANY sympathy I had over her sister’s death ended when she pushed the On button at the oven controls. Of all the ways to kill someone, this one really rated high on the scale of cruel and unusual.

  But while she was being tackled, I was too busy trying to save myself.

  After this, whenever my older son mentioned how old and creaky the greenmobile was, I was going to remind him of this night. It might be old, but the car was a blue-green color that was like a signature. Barry recognized it right away and figured that since it was the only car in the closed cupcake-store parking lot, something wasn’t right.

  By the time I came flying out the back door, Barry was handcuffing Kirsty to the stair railing.

  “Babe, your hair is singed,” he said with shock in his voice, rushing to catch me as I almost missed the top step in my haste to get into the cool air. He helped me sit on the top step of the short stairway down to the parking lot. As he looked me over, he was already on his phone calling out the troops.

  He threw Kirsty a menacing look when I told him what she’d done. “I saw the cupcake store was closed, and only one person came out, and it wasn’t you,” Barry said as he sat next to me and instinctively hugged my shoulders. “As soon as I asked the cupcake counter girl about you, she made a run for it. My motto is that when somebody runs from a cop, there has to be a reason.” In the background, Kirsty was pulling at her restraints and telling Barry that he had it wrong. That I was the one who should be handcuffed.

  I could already hear the sirens in the distance. The sound kept getting louder, and after a few moments, three cruisers with their lights flashing roared into the parking lot followed by the red fire department rescue ambulance.

  I tried to tell Barry that other than a few burned hairs and a melted headband, I was okay, but he insisted the paramedics check me over anyway.

  Naturally, the lights and sounds drew a crowd from nearby restaurants and Whole Foods, and there was an audience as Barry put Kirsty in one of the cruisers. No one could accuse her of going quietly.

  “Sunshine, where are you?” a worried-sounding Mason called out, pushing through the crowd. Thursday was trying to keep up with him. Judging by their expressions when they saw me, I must have looked worse than I thought. I quickly told Thursday about Kirsty’s confession, and despite her concern for me, she let out a huge sigh of relief. Mason had no idea why, not that he even noticed. He was touching my hair and making worried noises while asking what had happened. Barry came by and stopped outside our little group. I was going to say something to him, but Mrs. Shedd and Adele came rushing through the crowd. And when I looked again, he was gone.

  “We were afraid all the sirens and flashing lights had something to do with you, Molly,” Mrs. Shedd said. Adele’s eyes bugged out when she saw me, and she started to say something, but before she could stick her foot in her mouth, I stood up and hugged her.

  “If it weren’t for you, I’d be toast.” Adele seemed stunned, then accepted the praise without question. It was Mrs. Shedd who asked for an explanation.

  I held up the metal J hook and the off-white cotton yarn that now looked the worse for wear. “Adele was using this instead of the diet powder.” I explained how Adele used it to distract herself when she wanted to eat a sundae. I had picked it up the other day and shoved it in the pocket of my vest. I demonstrated how when my hands had been restrained, I’d used the excuse to scratch as a way to take it out. “It was the only weapon I had,” I said. “A crochet hook against a cleaver wouldn’t do much, but there was something the cotton yarn could do. As Kirsty hustled me into the vertical oven, I had managed to slip the yarn into the lock so that when she shut it, it didn’t quite engage. As soon as she and her cleaver left, I was able to use the hook to jimmy it open and escape.”

  “It’s just like Dr. Wheel says,” Adele said. “Crochet can save your life.”

  * * *

  AND CROCHET HAD BECOME PART OF LYLA’S LIFE. AS Emerson predicted, Lyla immediately campaigned for us to start a junior crochet group. I chose to call it junior because it sounded better than kids. They weren’t teens yet, and well, Little Hookers just didn’t sound right. Lyla was talking about the group in an excited voice as I gave her a lift home from their first meeting. “Come in,” Emerson
said as Lyla ran into the town house and up the stairs. I looked around the familiar room and saw that Emerson had placed the photographs and mementos back on the mantel.

  “I can’t help but feel sad for Kirsty and that it’s all my fault,” Emerson said. “If I hadn’t spouted off, Kirsty wouldn’t have killed Jonah Kingsley and tried to cover it up by pushing you in that oven.” She cringed when she said it and then went on. “She went from being a med student with a future to being charged with second-degree murder for Jonah and attempted murder for you.”

  “If she gets a good lawyer, she may be able to make some kind of plea deal,” I said. Emerson and I traded glances.

  “But any way you look at it, the life she knew is over,” Emerson said.

  “If you want to blame anyone, it should be Jackson Kingsley,” I said. Emerson glanced at the photo of her father with a sad expression. Even after all that had happened, Jackson Kingsley still insisted he’d known nothing about the banned ingredient in the diet product until after the problems had shown up and the product was analyzed.

  “I don’t care what he says. My father was framed because he told Kingsley what was in the shipment. I just wish Kingsley would tell the truth.”

  Lyla came back in the room to show off the beanie she had started. “I just love the group,” she said to me. She told her mother excitedly how CeeCee had come to their meeting and invited her to go with when they took the pet mats to the animal shelter. “One of them is the one we made at the party.”

  Lyla went off with her hook and yarn, anxious to crochet a little more before she had to begin her homework.

  I noticed the pen was back with the other things on the mantel. I picked it up and turned it around in my hand.

  “It’s kind of big for a pen and on the heavy side,” I said.

  Emerson shrugged. “My father took it everywhere with him.”

  As I ran my finger along the barrel, I felt something click and was surprised to hear a beep.