Boston Cream Killer: Book 8 in The INNcredibly Sweet Series (6 page)

Izzy Gillmore, one of the most famous young horror authors in the world, sat back, sipping at her down-and-dirty martini, relaxing after having completed her latest book. She’d been a bit of a recluse lately, immersed in her writing, tapping away at her laptop until the wee hours of the morning for days at a time. Her latest book had wrung her out, but she’d loved the process, as usual. There was something magical about taking an idea, and creating a world out of thin air.

Now, she was ready to relax and continue to get to know the handsome young Marine veteran she’d dated off and on since her move to Calgon a few months ago. She’d certainly made the right decision to leave the hustle and bustle of New York City and the unrelenting micromanagement of her abrasive publisher. The words just seemed to flow more easily here at the ocean, and the company was much better, too. She and Spencer weren’t declaring their love just yet, but it certainly seemed like a possibility in the future.

“Sorry I’m late,” he appeared suddenly, startling her a bit. The man had an uncanny ability to move soundlessly.

“No worries, I got a head start on you, though,” she grinned, raising her glass.

“Celebrating? That means you must have finished the book, congratulations,” Spencer’s smile didn’t quite reach his eyes, and Izzy noticed a distracted air.

“Thanks,” she said, sobering. “Is something wrong?”

The Marine ran a hand through his thick dark hair.

“I just have a lot on my mind,” he hedged.

Izzy knew nothing about his position as bodyguard for the Becketts and it was much safer for her not to know. Spencer hated keeping secrets from her, but it was essential in this particular case.

“Look, Spence… I don’t want to be “that girl,” but… you disappeared for weeks, only texting me once in a while, then, since your return, you’ve been very distant. Is there someone else? I mean, am I barking up the wrong tree, here?” she bit her lip, waiting for his response.

Izzy didn’t trust people in general, and men in particular, having been content to stay single and socially inactive for most of her life. It allowed her to focus entirely on her writing, without distractions, and allowed her to hide her shy self from the very public that she worked so hard to entertain. The slow, easy pace of Calgon, where everyone was free to do their own thing without interference, had been an oasis for her.

Spencer closed his eyes briefly, not knowing how to respond. He’d been with Chas during his time away, keeping a would-be assassin from killing members of the Beckett family, but he couldn’t share that with her, the killer was still at large. He hated dishonesty, even when it was for someone’s own good. The thing that bothered him the most, however, is that when she asked if there was someone else, Joyce Rutledge’s teasing smile flashed brilliantly in his memory, making him feel like a complete heel. He reached across the table and took her hand.

“I’m sorry that I’ve been out of touch. The family stuff that I had to deal with while I was away just took its toll on me, I guess. I haven’t been quite the same, and I apologize for that, but it has nothing to do with you, or the way that I feel about you,” he assured her.

“When are you going to tell me about your family?” she whispered, her hazel eyes soft with compassion. “If it’s as bad as it seems, it would probably help to share it. You trust me, don’t you?” she asked, trying to understand, hoping he’d open up.

“I’m… not ready to share that. Someone very close to me nearly died, that’s all I’m going to say.” His eyes pleaded with her for understanding, but he found himself having to look away from the intensity of her gaze… which, to Izzy’s fragile heart, made it seem as though he was feeling guilty.

She took a breath, dropped her gaze and withdrew her hand from his. Her voice trembled slightly when she spoke again.

“You’re a very difficult person to get close to, Spencer Bengal,” she said quietly, taking a gulp of her martini and nearly choking on it. Somehow, it no longer tasted as good.

“You don’t understand… it’s not you… there are things about my life that I can’t share with anyone,” his reply was pained.

“We’ve had this discussion before, Spencer. I thought we were past the point of me being in the category of ‘anyone.’ For some strange reason, I thought that I meant more to you than that, that I was special,” her gaze was aching with accusation and a sense that something had been lost.

The Marine sighed. He truly wished that he could tell her his real job and purpose, but that could put her in danger. If the wrong person came looking for him, and discovered that Izzy was a part of his life, she’d become a potential target, and he couldn’t live with that.

“You are special, Izzy… it’s just…” he began, reaching for her hand again.

She snatched it away and dug in her purse, extracting a twenty and throwing it on the table. “Spare me,” she muttered. “I know, it’s not me, it’s you. I really thought that you’d be able to come up with something more original. Buy yourself a drink, my treat,” she said, gritting her teeth against the impending tears, and turned to go.

He stood quickly, following her, and placed a hand on her retreating shoulder.

“Izzy,” he said softly, trying not to attract too much attention.

She shrugged from beneath his grasp. “Stop. Just forget it, Spencer. I didn’t need to be with you, I just wanted to, but if you can’t be honest with me, I don’t really want to anymore. Don’t worry, you’re off the hook, I don’t expect anything from you, so save the platitudes and pity for someone who needs it.”

With that, she turned and headed for the door, leaving without ever looking back. Izzy was the first person with whom he’d tried to have a relationship in a very long time, even though he knew that there was a degree of risk involved. She was smart, beautiful, funny, and clever. She was everything he could have imagined wanting in a significant other, and now she was gone. His jaw tightened. He didn’t have time to dwell on his warped personal life at the moment; someone was stalking Chas, Missy had almost come to blows with someone, and he had to figure out what was behind it all. It was going to be a long night. He left Izzy’s drink and money sitting on the table and took off out of the bar.

Chas had been swamped all day. When he wasn’t working on the mountain of paperwork engulfing his desk, he was on the phone with Chalmers, the caretaker of the Beckett estate and director of Beckett Holdings Corp., trying to figure out why there was a strange woman hounding him, and what her cryptic insinuations might have meant. The shrewd elderly man was mildly alarmed, and promised to look into any new transactions and accounts to see if anything seemed amiss.

It was well past eleven when Chas finally rubbed his eyes, stretched, and decided that the typewritten lines of the reports were jumping and twitching too much from his fatigue for him to accomplish anything else. Gazing at his reflection in the washroom before he left, the typically flawlessly groomed detective was dismayed to see his hair askew from running impatient fingers through it while he was on the phone, and dark circles of exhaustion smudged under his bloodshot eyes. He was starving, but much too exhausted to eat, and couldn’t wait to slip into the sweet embrace of his wife as she welcomed him to bed.

***

Missy was curled up miserably on the window seat in the master bedroom, with the dogs snoring softly from their bed in the corner. She hadn’t been able to even think about food, and had spent her evening crying and rocking back and forth, arms wrapped around her midsection, feeling as though she’d disintegrate at any moment. The only light in the room came from the glow of a small lamp by her side of the bed. Chas had attempted to call her a couple of times and she had simply let the calls go to voicemail, not bothering to listen to the messages. Echo had texted, and that communication had gone unanswered as well.

Adrenaline shot through her when she saw the beams of light from Chas’s car, and her stomach plunged to her knees. Missy let out a soft moan, knowing that in a few short minutes, she was going to be having the most painful conversation of her entire life. She heard his footsteps on the stairs and it seemed that his ascent was agonizingly slow. Taking off his sports coat, he opened the bedroom door, and glanced over at her in the semi-darkness, surprised.

“You didn’t have to wait up for me, sweetie,” he said softly, setting his sport coat on the chaise and coming over to kiss her cheek.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she whispered, looking down at her hands, which were twisting in her lap.

He sat down on the window seat, facing her. “What’s wrong?”

She looked up at him, saw what looked like genuine concern in his beautiful blue eyes, and burst into tears. He took her in his arms, and she let him, for now. She couldn’t help herself, she sniffed his shirt to see if there was any trace of strange perfume, then covered her face with her hands and sobbed quietly.

“Hey, hey,” he soothed, smoothing her hair and kissing the top of her head. “What is it, sweetie? What’s going on?”

“Did you have anything to eat today?” she asked, pulling back and sniffling, trying to regain control.

Now Chas was totally baffled.

“Not much,” he admitted. “I had breakfast at Betty’s, and ate an apple for lunch, but after that I worked straight through until now. I’m honestly too tired to eat.”

Missy had wrapped her arms around herself again, and Chas wondered if she had received bad news about something, or if she was sick.

“How was breakfast?” she asked dully, staring out the window.

Chas frowned. He wanted to keep his precious Missy as far away from Beckett family drama as he possibly could, so he decided not to mention his encounter with “Darla.” It looked as though she had enough that she was dealing with already.

“I went a bit outside of my normal fare and ordered bacon with my pancakes,” he said, with a confused half-smile, wondering why she was asking about something so mundane when there was clearly something wrong.

“I saw you,” Missy said quietly, still looking out the window, feeling betrayed that he hadn’t told her about having breakfast with another woman.

“I’m sorry sweetie, you’re going to have to help me out here. I feel like we’re not participating in the same conversation, and I want to help you with whatever’s bothering you,” he gently turned her chin so that she would face him, and was astounded by the depth of pain in her eyes.

“I saw you… at Betty’s,” she began, fat tears rolling down her cheeks and her breath coming in little gasps and hiccups. “I saw that woman… touching you,” she accused, crying harder.

When he reached for her this time, she shrank from him, drowning in her misery.

“Missy… my love… what you saw was a woman who came to threaten me about my family business. I had no plans to meet her there, I didn’t have any idea who she was and I still don’t. She came in after I did, and I suspect that she was following me,” he said urgently, his heart breaking over what his sweet wife must’ve thought.

“Why was she touching you?” she blurted, her sobs shuddering through her, making her feel ill.

“Because she was trying to manipulate me, and I didn’t let her, sweetie. I got up and left.”

He told her what had happened, and offered to go with her to ask Betty what she heard.

“She came here, too,” Missy tried to take a breath, but her shoulders kept hitching with the impact of her tears.

“What happened?” Chas frowned, concerned.

“I went for a walk with the girls, and…” Missy’s explanation was interrupted by Chas’s work phone ringing.

“I’m so sorry…” he began.

“No, it’s okay, go ahead and answer it,” she mumbled, drained.

The detective’s brow furrowed as he listened to the dispatcher on the other end. He asked a few clipped questions, nodded unconsciously at the responses, and hung up rather quickly. He caressed his wife’s tear-stained face, deeply saddened by her pain.

“Sweetie, there’s nowhere that I’d rather be right now than talking with you and holding you until you feel better, but, they’ve found a body…” he apologized.

“No, it’s okay,” she nodded, wiping at her nose with a crumpled tissue. “You have a job to do… go do it. I’ll be here when you get back.”

“That’s what makes my life worth living, Melissa,” he said huskily.

She lifted her face to his kiss, relieved and utterly spent. She’d have no trouble going to sleep now; she just wondered what might haunt her in her dreams.

Hannah Folsom frowned as she dabbed hydrogen peroxide on her arm. The scratches that Missy had managed to inflict before Spencer could drag her away had broken the skin pretty profoundly, and the peroxide stung and bubbled as she cleaned the wounds. She had to chuckle though when she saw how profoundly she’d gotten under the skin of both Charles and Melissa Beckett. On his own, the detective probably wouldn’t be swayed, but if he thought that his precious hick wife might be dragged into a mess, Hannah might just end up getting the information that she wanted.

Feeling rather pleased with herself, she opened her laptop and spread her notes across the large work surface that the hotel had conveniently provided. She hadn’t learned much in the short time that she’d been in Calgon, but she managed to figure out who Kel was, and had documented interaction with him, Betty, Chas, and Missy. She’d also remembered who the young woman with Missy in the cupcake shop was, Izzy Gillmore. She’d done a rather scathing review of one of the woman’s books a few years ago and had received everything from prank calls to death threats as a result. To say that Izzy’s fans were loyal was an understatement, and some of them were more than a bit creepy, so she’d taken some notes on that as well.