Chapter 23 Willow
WILLOW
“I’m too tired to eat.” I slump into a chair in the carriage house living room.
On the coffee table, Hughes sets down the pizza and the Yuletide beer that smells suspiciously like repurposed pumpkin spice beer from the fall festival.
“At least you don’t smell like a jail cell anymore.” He kisses the top of my wet hair and pours the beer into a mug. “The guy at the craft brewing stall said it needed to be served warm.”
“Warm beer will send me over the edge.” I accept the piping hot pizza that is fortunately holiday themed only because of the tomato and pesto and not because someone did something unholy with the recipe. I sip the beer then take a bite of the hot pizza, the herbs a jolt on my tongue.
I set the mug painted with jolly Santas on my knee and look at the whiteboard in front of me, on which Hughes is moving Damien’s photo to the “cleared” column.
“We don’t actually know that he’s not the murderer,” I remind him.
“He’s never actually said he wants her dead. He seems lazy and entitled. He didn’t lock you in the stall.” Hughes turns to me.
“That’s just what he said. We don’t know.” I take another bite of pizza.
“There are others who are more likely suspects than he is.” Hughes refills my mug.
“He’s not off the board completely. So, who else do we have?” I glare.
“There’s Josie—”
“Josie did not kill Taylor!” I yell.
“You said you found her bracelet,” he argues. “If you want Damien to be a suspect, then Josie needs to be one too.”
“Put her in the cleared column. In fact, take her off the board entirely.”
“Where was she the night of the Christmas party?” Hughes presses.
“Off the board.” I gesture with the mug.
He sighs and puts her photo on a chair. “I guess you want our grannies off the board too?”
I point.
Their photos are taken down.
“So, who are we left with?”
“Mysterious earring owner, Maris, the person in black who locked you in the stall.”
“Lydia and her husband,” I add.
Hughes stares at the photos. “This is Maris?” He taps her photo.
“Yup.”
“Huh.”
“What?”
“The night of Taylor Grace’s murder… I saw her with what I now wonder might have been a bloodstain on her sweater.”
“The bloody coat,” I say to fill him in.
“Damn. I mean, she’s a suspect, then. Maris Dupuis? Taylor Grace ruined her business and ran her out of town. She mysteriously comes back a few weeks before Taylor Grace is killed?” Hughes lets out a low whistle. “But who on this list would want to kill both Taylor Grace and Dr. Merriweather?”
“Maybe it’s two completely different murderers and they’re unrelated. Or—” I snap my fingers. “Maybe Lenore and Maris did a murder swap, like Maris killed Jonah and Lenore killed Taylor Grace, so they both have alibis and they both win.”
“Or—” Hughes puts Damien’s photo back on the wall. “We look at the people who have reason to kill both.”
I add Lenore’s photo. “These two are directly impacted by the affair and have the most to gain.”
“Damien doesn’t gain anything,” Hughes argues.
“But he thought he’d gain half a business. Don’t any of these people have alibis?” I ask.
“Maybe.” He pulls up his computer on the large TV on one wall.
“I’ve written a script to troll the Harrogate tags on Facebook to see if we can pick up anyone.
I ran it after Dr. Merriweather’s murder, and of course, everyone on this list was in the Christmas market and at the tree lighting during the time of the murder, so no alibi. ”
I try not to be too impressed.
“And the night of Taylor Grace’s murder?” Hughes scrolls through the results that the program turned up. “Most of these people were at the Christmas party, though they could have murdered Taylor Grace right before or snuck out during the event.”
“We don’t have an exact time of death?”
“The coroner seemed overwhelmed when I brought him some sympathy jerky. He kept bitching that the mayor wanted him to perform the autopsy right now.”
“Is he really that backed up? How many deaths have happened in Harrogate?”
“Nope. He’s been renting out the morgue to Airbnb-ers and doesn’t want to evict them yet because he’ll be out the money.”
“This freaking town,” I mutter.
“Lenore posted that she was at home, which could have been fake. And Damien doesn’t show up in the photos, though that doesn’t mean he is in the clear.”
“Okay, move Damien back to the suspect side. Wait—” I hold up a hand as I type into my phone. “No, he’s clear.”
“What?”
I hold up my phone.
“#DrunksOfHgate?” Hughes reads the hashtag name.
“There’s Damien.” I point at a man lying next to a stall, his pants undone—while a tourist mugs for the camera to take a selfie.
“Maybe he went and drank after he killed Taylor Grace,” Hughes argues. “If anything, this is more evidence in my column. He stays a suspect.”
I glare at him. He’s staring at my chest.
I look down. Do a double take. “Crap.” I pull the robe closed. “Sorry, didn’t mean to flash you.”
“Oh yeah.” His voice is deliciously deep. “Because I kind of hoped you were coming on to me.” He hooks three fingers on the robe and tugs it away.
And then I have a cute guy staring at my bare chest.
He licks his lips and leans in. His breath is hot on my skin. “I’m going to assume—” His head moves up, lips barely caressing my flesh until his mouth is just a hair’s breadth away from mine. “That you aren’t wearing any panties under that robe.”
“Unh,” I make a strangled noise and am glad he starts kissing me before he notices and doesn’t want me anymore.
I grab his hair as he breaks the kiss, moves down my body to tug at the tie of my robe.
It falls open, then he’s spreading my legs.
I squeak when suddenly his mouth is right there, and his tongue is on me and in me, and I’m rocking against his face as he licks me like a candy cane until I’m riding that sinful tongue all the way to the Nutcracker fairyland.
Sugarplums, Christmas cookies on fire. I know I’m gushing all over him as he licks me clean.
“Wow, that, um—” I swallow.
He looks up, smirking. “You want to take a break from solving a murder?”
I make a strangled noise. “That sounds scary crazy.”
“So you don’t want—” Hughes gives me a quizzical look.
Figures—the one time I get a man, I completely blow it. “Just give me a second.” I scoot around him then stub my toe on the coffee table as I rush into the bathroom.
What in the Christmas hell? Did I seriously just have Hughes’s tongue in my you-know-where? And now we’re, what, going to have sex on the couch?
I pace in the tiny bathroom. “You can have sex. You’re overthinking this. People have sex.”
I look down. In my post-orgasm clarity, I have to wonder, after all my holiday stress eating, is this really what a guy wants to see? Like, I’m going to have to take the whole robe off.
I’m freaking out for no reason. It’s just a hookup. People hook up. Gran hooks up.
I shudder and open up the cupboards, looking for a washcloth or alcohol. Instead, I find—
“What the hell is this?”