Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fourteen
Kate was on at least her sixth cup of coffee and her fifteenth sheet of paper borrowed from her Loretta plotting notebook (Loretta would certainly approve) by the time Jake groaned and cracked one eye open, his gaze widening as he took in the state of the attic.
“Kate?” he said, slow and unsure.
“You’re awake, finally ,” Kate said, waving a sheet of paper in his face. “Can you tack that up there? Above the creepy portrait of the Victorian child with the blurry face? Actually, go ahead and put it over the picture, she’s been staring at me for hours now.”
“What’s with all the candles?” Jake asked, pushing himself to stand and stretching his arms above his head. The movement exposed a strip of lean stomach muscles that made Kate’s already over-caffeinated heart beat even harder.
“Power’s out,” Kate said, handing him a flashlight. “Storm knocked it out. Abraham says they have a backup generator, but something’s wrong with it? I don’t really know, he was in high form at four A.M. ”
“And what is that ?” Jake asked meaningfully.
Kate looked up at the swath of sheets she had haphazardly taped and tacked to the attic wall. “That? Oh, it’s my murder board. Murder wall? Murder attic? No, that just sounds like an attic where you do all your murders. Murder wall, let’s go with murder wall.”
“No, I don’t mean that.” Jake looked at the papers. “Well, I don’t not mean that. I mean, what are you wearing?”
Kate looked down at herself in horror, suddenly unsure if she’d bothered with a bra at any point in the night. “What do you mean? What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”
“The jumper,” Jake said, as if that would explain the whole thing.
“Oh,” Kate said, perking up. “It’s my sleuthing sweater.”
Jake’s brows rose. “Sleuthing sweater?”
“Yeah, my mom gave it to me for Christmas after the first Loretta book came out. There’s this scene in the book where Loretta’s stuck on a clue, so she gets her grandfather’s old fishing cardigan out because she’s missing him, and the itchiness helps her realize who the real killer is.”
“The nephew with eczema, I remember,” Jake said, nodding sagely.
“You’ve read Shaken, Stirred, and Stabbed ?” Kate asked in surprise.
“’Course I have,” Jake said. “And A Dark and Stormy Murder . I’m only halfway through the new one, though, so no spoilers. And I only read them for the Blake bits, since he’s obviously based on me. That kiss with Loretta when she thought the storm was going to tear the roof off the bar? Wowza.”
“He is not based on you,” Kate said with an eye roll.
Jake matched her eye roll. “Of course he’s based on me. He’s hot, he’s hilarious, he wakeboards, and he’s British.”
“You’re Australian,” Kate pointed out.
“Same thing to you Americans,” Jake said. “Our names even rhyme. Jake? Blake?”
“That’s… coincidence,” Kate said, turning away to hide her frown. They really did rhyme. How had she missed that? “Anyway, my mom drew an illustration based on the description in the book and had Jan at the retirement community knit it up. You remember Jan? The woman in the corner condo with all the cats?”
“The one with the cataracts and the revoked driver’s license because she hit too many parked cars?” Jake said, looking at her sweater again. “That Jan?”
Kate frowned at the repeating motif of sea creatures along the chest of her cardigan. “I’ll admit she might have gotten a little… creative with the design. In the book I said they were crabs and lobsters, but I think she went more… mythological.”
“They look like dragons with penises,” Jake said matter-of-factly.
“I thought they were jellyfish,” Kate said, tugging at the hem. “Or maybe octopi?”
“That one’s got horns,” Jake said, tilting his head to the side. “Or maybe teeth?”
“I think it was sweet of Jan, and my mom,” Kate proclaimed, though now that she could see the teeth, she couldn’t unsee the teeth. “Whenever I get stuck on a clue in Loretta, I put it on and the itchiness helps. So.”
“And you need the itchiness now because…”
“Because someone tried to poison Kennedy last night,” Kate said with dramatic flair. She’d never gotten to deliver such a line, just like Loretta, and the dopamine of it lit up her brain like a pinball machine.
“How many of those have you had?” Jake asked, eyeing the cup in her hand.
“Uh, I don’t know. I lost track somewhere around four.”
Jake raised his brows. “Four cups?”
“No, four in the morning.”
“Okay, why don’t I just… take… that,” Jake said, forcibly removing the cup from her hands. “And set it waaaaaay over here. And then you’re going to tell me why you think Kennedy was poisoned.”
Kate was nearly hopping at the chance to explain what she’d figured out hours ago. She’d had to stop herself from waking Jake up several times, reasoning that one of them would need their strength to confront a killer. “Remember that thing you found in Kennedy’s mouth last night? When you were giving her CPR?”
“Yeah,” Jake said, frowning. “What about it?”
Kate moved to the half wall of books and picked up a piece of paper she’d folded to make a pocket for the sliver. And her mother said her origami obsession at eleven was just a waste of paper. She unfolded it carefully, holding up the sliver to him.
“This is from a rosary pea. It’s a decorative plant—”
“I know what rosary peas are, Kate, they’re all over the place in Australia,” Jake said.
“Then you know that their seeds are highly toxic if ingested,” Kate said. “Ground up into a powder, it’s called abrin. Even a small amount can cause gastric distress, loss of consciousness, and death.”
“But how did that get in Kennedy’s mouth? The oysters?”
Kate shook her head. “Abrin is fast acting. She would have started feeling symptoms within thirty minutes of ingestion. She said the oysters were in her room before the rehearsal dinner, so that’s out. And all the food courses last night were brought out together, so the poison couldn’t have been in her food. No, I thought about it, and I figure the most likely avenue of poisoning was her champagne glass. It would have been an easy target, considering it was the only glass in the room with the word Bride etched on it. Plus, Loretta noticed that the champagne glass was missing last night, which means the killer must have taken it with them as evidence when Kennedy passed out! So, we find the glass, we find the killer.”
“Did you just say Loretta noticed the champagne glass was missing?” Jake asked.
Kate blinked a few times, wishing he hadn’t taken her coffee cup. A well-timed sip would have saved her answering his question. She could hardly admit that she’d briefly hallucinated Loretta Starling surveying the crime scene because Kate Valentine couldn’t handle what she’d seen. Then she’d have to admit how often she imagined Loretta in times of stress, and why Loretta seemed so much more capable of handling Kate’s life than Kate herself did.
“I… said… you oughta,” Kate said. “You oughta… have noticed the champagne glass was missing.” Kate shook her head, getting herself back on track. She didn’t have time to psychoanalyze Loretta when a real attempted murder was staring her right in the face. “The point is, someone poisoned Kennedy last night, and they used the exact setup from my last Loretta novel . Loretta gets hired as bar staff at this swanky wedding on a private island in the Keys, right? Except that the night of the ceremony, the groom is discovered with the bride’s dead body. And everybody thinks he’s pushed her down this grand staircase, right? Except Loretta starts investigating, and she finds a sliver of rosary pea wedged in the bride’s teeth. Somebody poisoned her, and wanted it to look like the groom did it! Somebody who read my book used it as inspiration to plan their own attempt at murder!”
Jake crossed his arms. “You don’t have to sound so gleeful about it.”
“Am I appalled? Of course I am. Am I also a little flattered? Well, I mean, who’s to say? The point is, somebody really did try to poison Kennedy, and they used my book to do it!”
Which meant now Kate had the incredible opportunity to play detective in real life, just like Loretta. And maybe prove that Kate Valentine was just as capable as badass Loretta Starling, and she’d be just as fine no matter what chaos life threw her way.
“But Kennedy wasn’t actually killed last night,” Jake reasoned. “Sure, she said she wasn’t feeling well, and she clearly passed out. But she’s fine now.”
“Exactly!” Kate said, pointing at him with her pen. “Which means whoever started this business isn’t done. They’ll try it again, and we have to catch them before they finish the job.”
“Kate.” Jake sighed, and she readied another defense tactic when he held up his hands. “I believe you.”
“I know it sounds cra—Wait. You believe me?”
Nobody ever believed her, most especially Kate herself. Even when she was positive she was right about something, there was a nagging voice in the back of her head telling her she was crazy, and everyone would finally see her for the mess she was. But here was Jake being a Blake—a character who had little to no real-life resemblance to him, obviously—supporting her wild theory. It did itchy, tingly things to her skin that had nothing to do with the sleuthing sweater.
“I do believe you,” Jake said again with a nod. “Which is why I’m going to find a phone and call the police.”
“Oh, you can’t,” Kate said, turning back to her murder wall. “Phones are all down, too, and there’s another storm cell on the way. We’re completely stranded.”
“Again, so gleeful,” Jake said, coming to stand beside her and survey the suspect sheets.
“Because that was the exact plot of Loretta Starling book two, A Dark and Stormy Murder . Loretta got stranded at the bar during a hurricane and one of the patrons ended up stabbed. She had to figure out who the murderer was before they could escape after the storm.”
“Alright, so what are the itchy dragon penises telling you about who poisoned Kennedy?” Jake asked, standing close enough that their shoulders rubbed together. Kate wouldn’t think about how firm his muscles felt beneath the soft slide of his sweater, or the thin, nearly transparent weave of the ancient T-shirt she wore beneath her sleuthing sweater. She definitely wouldn’t think about how she hadn’t bothered to put on a bra since last night. What she would do was casually bring her arms around her chest, one hand thoughtfully cupping her chin, so her nipples wouldn’t show through the sheer fabric.
“Oh, uh, hmm.” Kate cleared her throat, trying to bring her attention back to the more pressing matter at hand. “So, I have a couple of the most likely suspects. Juliette Winters, because she’s got a great motive and she’s scary. She lost out on a big promotion to Kennedy recently and was pretty upset about it. She and Simon had a big fight in his office after the announcement. And I saw her breaking into someone’s room last night, when she said she was close to getting everything she wants as soon as she gets someone out of the way. Plus, she was the first one to notice the setup from my book last night, before I even could. Like she wanted everyone else to notice it, too. So maybe she thought if she killed Kennedy and pinned it on me, she’d get the promotion and I’d be on the hook for Kennedy’s murder.”
“That’s a hell of a way to get a job,” Jake murmured, lifting up the sheets to read them more closely. “What about Serena Archer? She certainly seems dramatic enough to pull off something like this, but what’s her motive against Kennedy?”
“I talked to her at the bar last night,” Kate said, pacing like all good detectives do when working their list of suspects. “Well, she talked at me. She was really pissed about the marketing job Kennedy did for her last book. Apparently, her sales tanked. And she mentioned that Spencer and Simon have both been dodging her about renewing the option on her contract. She said she thought Kennedy had poisoned them against her. And then she made some mysterious comment about something big going down at midnight, and that’s exactly when I found Kennedy’s body! So maybe she thought Kennedy was responsible for ruining her career, and she wanted to get revenge.”
Jake lifted another paper, jerking back in surprise. “Hang on, you’ve got Rebecca Hempstead here? Why in the world would she want to kill Kennedy?”
“Yeah, she’s kind of a long shot. She was obviously furious with Kennedy about this whole wedding business. And last night during her speech, Kennedy made the comment that she wanted to keep the Manor and the island in the hands of those who would love it and care for it. So, maybe Rebecca thought Kennedy might pull another fast one on her, and decided to take her out of the equation instead.”
“You’re missing something,” Jake said, crossing his arms.
“Mug shots, I know! I couldn’t find the photographer this morning, though. I thought about doing some illustrations, and then I remembered that my second-grade art teacher called my stick figures ‘questionable.’ So, we’ll just have to use our imaginations.”
“You’re missing someone ,” Jake said. “Where’s Spencer?”
“I don’t know. Probably getting ready for the wedding or something.”
“I don’t mean right now, I mean on your murder wall. Why isn’t Spencer a suspect?”
“Oh,” Kate said, suddenly uncomfortable. “Well, because… Why would he be?”
“Because he’s the spouse,” Jake said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “It’s always the spouse.”
“He’s not the spouse yet,” Kate said, wondering why in hell she was defending Spencer, of all people.
“You have to admit, he was acting all out of sorts last night, even for Spencer. He seemed upset with Kennedy.”
Kate didn’t have to admit anything, certainly not to Jake, but it was harder to lie to herself when she’d noticed the same thing. Spencer had been cagey, and seemed distant with Kennedy. And he’d obviously been hiding something, but Kate didn’t know what. Still, she wasn’t going to give Jake any more ammunition in his campaign against Spencer.
“What’s his motive? Can’t be money, since he won’t get any if she dies before they’re married. And it’s not an affair, because he’d have to be crazy to blow a sweet thing like this.” Kate counted off the routine motives on her fingers. “And he’s obviously not in the habit of poisoning fiancées because I’m still here. It doesn’t fit.”
“But he wasn’t there last night, was he?” Jake pressed. “When we found Kennedy. He’s the groom and yet he was nowhere to be found when his bride nearly died? And he certainly had motive after the way he was looking at you last night.”
Kate drew back in surprise. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means he didn’t look like somebody who had moved on. He looked jealous as hell. It’s half the reason I put my arm around you, just to set him off. He’s still got feelings for you.”
Kate wheezed in surprise, doubling over in laughter. “That’s… that is… I can’t breathe. I really can’t breathe. That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. You’re crazy.”
“Am I? What about you? What was that little scene, running out of the rehearsal dinner like that? You think I didn’t recognize the speech he read? That big, ridiculous monologue Loretta gives in the middle of the hurricane, trying to prove she really loves Geoff when she was obviously still hung up on that kiss with Blake? Don’t tell me Spencer didn’t pull that stunt on purpose. And in murder mysteries, it’s always the spouse, isn’t it? Even the almost spouse.”
“Not in Loretta book three,” Kate said defiantly, crossing her arms.
Jake put up a hand. “I told you I’m only halfway through. No spoilers.”
“It was the sister,” Kate said petulantly.
Jake growled. “Spencer had means, access, and motive. He goes to the top of my list.”
“Fine,” Kate said, throwing her hands out wide. “We’ll investigate Spencer first. If only to prove that you’re being an asshole and I’m right.”
“Fine,” Jake shot back at her. “We’ll see which one is the asshole and which one is right.”