Chapter 11 Jayne
When my dad and Anson Crowe showed up, I knew Sin must have alerted them. Normally, I wouldn’t have wanted to bother them, but JJ was fussing, and I was feeling overwhelmed. All I wanted to do was go home, feed him, then eat a serious amount of eggnog fudge and take care of Sin.
Except I didn’t even know if Sin was home. I looked at my dad, then Anson. “Where’s Sin? Is he okay? I need to go to him.”
Constable Larsen, who was directing the crime scene team she’d called in, came over. She had her tablet and stylus in hand. “Princess Jayne, can you go over again the events that led to you finding the body?”
“No,” my father said sternly. “She cannot. She’s already given you a statement, now she’s going to leave. If you need to speak to her again, you can make an appointment through my office.”
Constable Larsen looked up at him. “Forgive me, your highness, but this is police business, and I need to—”
“Excuse me, Constable?” Crispin approached, hands twisted together, brow furrowed. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“I’m trying to interview a witness,” Larsen said, giving him a look that sent him away without another word.
“No, you’re done,” my father said. “If you need to speak to her further, you can call my office and make an appointment with my assistant, Mrs. Greenbaum.” He put his arm around me and shepherded me toward the door.
In my peripheral vision, I could see Anson smiling as he walked next to me.
As soon as we were in the corridor and away from the swarm of people, Anson chuckled. “Nice work, Jack.”
“Thanks.” My dad gave my shoulders a little squeeze. “You okay, Jaynie? How’s my grandson?”
“I’m fine. Worried about Sin.” I glanced down at JJ, who was still strapped to me and getting fussier by the minute. “And JJ is due for a feeding.”
“Listen,” Anson said. “I can go check on Sinclair.”
“We both can,” my dad added. “If that’s what you want, Jayne.”
“That would be great. I need to go home and take care of JJ.”
Anson nodded his approval of that plan. “If you’d like, we’ll get you home, then I’ll have Lila come over and help you with whatever you need. She can fix you something to eat while you feed that little one, look after the cats, do dishes, anything you want.”
I guessed post-pregnancy hormones were still a thing because their kindness was making me weepy, but the truth was, I wanted my husband. Taking care of JJ had to come first, though. I sniffed and sighed. “Okay. Thanks.”
Before I knew it, I’d been whisked back to the apartment and Lila was in my kitchen, fixing me a plate of fudge and licorice while I fed JJ in the nursery. My dad and Anson promised to text me a report about how Sin was doing.
Once JJ’s tummy was full and he was in a clean diaper, I laid him in his crib. He was half-asleep before I put him in there, but I knew he’d be ready to eat again in a few hours. Much like his mother, the boy had an appetite.
I left the nursery and found Lila sitting at the kitchen counter, playing games on her phone. A plate of fudge, cookies, and truffles sat beside a cold Dr Pepper and a new pack of licorice.
She smiled at me. “How are you doing?”
“I’m all right. Worried about Sin. Any word yet?” My phone was … I wasn’t sure where my phone was. Maybe in the diaper bag? Which was with Sin, so fat lot of good that was going to do me.
Lila shook her head. “Nothing yet. Can I help with anything else?”
I sat in front of the plate, taking a sip from the Dr Pepper. “No, this is great. Thank you.”
She stood up. “I should go then.”
“Do you have to?”
She stopped. “You want me to stay?”
“If you want to. I don’t want to keep you if you have something else to do.”
She smiled. “I’d be happy to stay. I could do laundry if you want.”
“There is a basket in the nursery that could go in. Then maybe we could watch a movie.” I needed a distraction.
All I could think about was why someone had killed Delton and whether or not my husband’s ankle was broken.
Both of which might have been my fault. There was very little chance me wanting to see the original guest lists for Naming Day and Delton’s murder weren’t related.
That wasn’t how my life worked.
“A movie would be great.” She got up. “I’ll get that laundry right in. What do you want to watch?”
I was in the mood for something old and good. “We have a streaming service here in the NP that has Hollywood Classics On Demand. You okay with Desk Set?”
She grinned. “Oh, I love that movie. You really can’t go wrong with that cast.”
“Nope.” I smiled. I was fortunate to have a mother-in-law like Lila. She was so sweet and supportive.
As soon as she came back from the laundry room, I waved her over. “Come on. Let’s go to the couch. Do you want something to drink or a snack? Please, help yourself. You can have anything you want.”
She laughed. “Sin told me your snacks are off-limits.”
“To him. You can have whatever you want.” I chuckled. The woman was doing JJ’s stinky laundry. She could have anything her heart desired.
“Okay, I’ll have a Dr Pepper, too. And maybe a piece of that fudge.”
“Take two. It’s fantastic. My Aunt Martha makes it.”
As I was on the couch, eating a piece of fudge with one hand and using the remote to find Desk Set with the other, Lila came over and sat. She had Dr Pepper in one hand and a napkin with two pieces of fudge on it in the other.
She sat on the couch with me, set her drink on the coffee table, then pulled out her phone. “Still no word on Sin. What is taking those men so long?”
“Maybe he’s being examined by the doctor and they’re waiting for the results.”
“Maybe.” She took a bite of fudge. “Mmm, this is good. It’s so creamy.”
“It’s one of my favorite things.”
“Did you ever find out why Sin couldn’t see the same thing on that guest list that you and I could?”
“No. That’s why we were at the archives. We were going to look at the original guest lists to see how that name showed up on them. It’s so strange.” I had to tell her the truth. “I don’t think it was a coincidence, either.”
“What wasn’t?”
“Delton getting murdered.”
“What? No!” She shook her head so hard I thought she might lose some skin, although she wasn’t nearly as flaky as when I’d first met her. “There’s no way anything you or Sin did caused that man’s death. I refuse to believe it.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Don’t you think it’s odd that he was murdered the morning we showed up there?”
“A murder at any time is a strange and terrible thing. Until the police know more, we can’t guess at what happened. And it’s not fair to you or Sin to think you were in any way responsible.”
“I suppose.”
She nibbled a bit of fudge off the corner. “Do you still have that guest list?”
I nodded. “You want to take a look at it?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.” I put everything down and went into the bedroom. The file was on my dressing table. I carried it out to her. “Here you go.”
I took my seat and went back to finding the movie. Having to use the remote to search alphabetically was such a pain.
“Hmm.”
I glanced over. “What is it?”
“You and I can see the weird moving letters, but Sin saw the name Holiday.”
She looked at me across the file. “Do you think it’s a female thing? Magic that doesn’t work on men? Or only works on men, depending on how you look at it.”
“That’s interesting.” I found the movie and selected it, then sat back. “What would that mean if it was magic designed to keep men from reading it? Someone invited someone to the ceremony who didn’t want a man to know about it?”
“A woman, most likely.”
“Or it could be a man trying to hide who he invited from another man.”
“True.” She smiled sadly. “That was no help at all, was it?”
“It’s okay. It’s an interesting theory. I really don’t know what to make of it.”
Her phone buzzed. She looked at the screen. “Anson texted. Sin has a badly sprained ankle, a grade three sprain, and they are fitting him for a boot. He’ll be on crutches for at least two weeks, maybe longer. Well, they probably don’t know how fast he heals.”
“Even so. Poor Sin.” He did not like being immobile at the best of times. This was not going to be easy for him. “When will he be home?”
She tapped at the screen. “I’ll find out.”
“He’s not going to be happy.”
She looked at me. “No, he is not. But the good news is, he has all of us here to keep him company. And we’re here to help you, too.”
I smiled. “I’m very grateful for that.” There was plenty of staff at the palace who could help, too, but family was always better. “Hey, is there anything Sinclair really liked as a kid? Something you might have made for him when he was home sick?”
Her gaze took on the faraway look of memories. “He used to love this soup I made. He always asked for it if he was home sick. I used to call it meatball soup, but it was basically my version of Italian wedding soup.”
“We had that at a place called Mama Del’s in Nashville. It was so good.”
“Is there a grocery store in town? I could make it for him.”
“You don’t need a grocery store. Just write up a list and send it to the kitchen. They’ll deliver all the ingredients. You can make it here, in our apartment.”
“Really? That would be great.”
“I’ll get you a notepad and pen.”
“Sit,” Lila said. “I can get it.”
“Okay. First drawer next to the fridge.”
When she got back, I put the movie on and ate more fudge while she wrote up her list. At some point, Spider and Sugar got bored watching JJ sleep and wandered out to join us. They didn’t say anything, but they didn’t usually talk in front of anyone but me and Sin.
Lila set the notepad down, and I paused the movie to speak to her. “Got everything you need?”
She glanced at it again. “Everything I could think of. Are they really going to send all of that up? Won’t they have to shop for it?”
“The palace kitchen is very well stocked.” I picked up the phone and pressed the button to call a footman. “When the footman arrives, all you have to do is give him this list, and the kitchen will do the rest.”
“That’s amazing.”
I shrugged. “Life in a palace.”
“I would say so.”
We went back to the movie while we waited. It was a good thing I’d seen it several times, because I was thinking too much about Delton’s death and the guest list to pay full attention.
Was his death just a coincidence?
I’d seen so many coincidences turn out not to be coincidences at all that I couldn’t bring myself to believe that. Which might mean the guest list was responsible.
But how could that be? Who was that important?