Chapter 2
TWO
I stared at my phone, willing Charlie to respond to my texts and calls.
Emergency at the Rose Palace.
Need you immediately.
But the screen remained dark. Maybe he was already on his way, hurrying here to perform his duty as sheriff, but that didn’t stop me from begging him to appear.
The reunion’s festive atmosphere had faded with Brett’s last breath.
Gone were the pulsing lights and pounding music.
They’d been replaced by the harsh glare of chandeliers and hushed whispers.
My shocked classmates huddled in clusters, their faces blurring together as they speculated about what had just happened, about how someone who’d been dancing only minutes before now lay dead on the ballroom floor.
Living, Brett’s entire aura had exuded the relaxed confidence of the wealthy, which was far from his actual lower-middle-class upbringing.
His mom had been a teller at the local bank and his dad had worked for the coal mines.
It was an inside-outside job, meaning that he’d rarely had to descend into the earth, and he’d earned only nominal pay.
Brett Brinkley had escaped Aubergine and made it big, slipping easily into his new persona.
Even when I’d given him CPR, I’d noticed that he must’ve spent money on personal trainers, what with his chiseled pecs and his firm biceps bursting from the sleeves of his designer shirt.
His neck and jaw were thick, and while to me he was still completely unattractive, I could see why he’d drawn the eyes of television viewers two years earlier.
I was thinking that it’s an awful, harrowing experience, watching someone die, particularly when you were the one trying to save them, when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked up to see Jemma standing there, her stage makeup garish in the overhead light.
“This place is, for real, cursed. Has to be,” Jemma said with arms crossed in front of her. Even though we hadn’t spoken in months—not since I’d beat her out for the title of Rose Palace Queen—aside from sending a few texts and memes, she acted as if we were old friends picking up on a recent chat.
The camerawoman who’d helped me with CPR was nearby and overheard Jemma’s musings. Her expression seemed just as lost as I felt, which meant she was likely grateful for the distraction of conversation, even if it was with strangers.
“Is this place cursed?” The woman’s eyes were wide and her throat scratchy.
“Because Presley totally believes in those things.” She glanced in the direction of Brett’s girlfriend, who sat at a table on the other side of the ballroom, tears streaming from her eyes, her cheeks splotchy from crying.
Joe Larson sat across from Presley Lombardi, watching her intensely.
“For the last episode of their new series, she and Brett visited a psychic.” The woman let out a shuddering breath.
“The lady told Presley that ‘hard times lay ahead.’” She put the last few words in air quotes.
“I had no idea that meant…” She couldn’t finish the words as she started crying.
To me, the prediction sounded more like it had come from a fortune cookie than a fortune teller, but I wasn’t about to correct her.
“I’m Dakota Green,” I said, not putting out my hand. It seemed pointless to introduce myself in the traditional way after we’d both knelt side by side, trying and failing to save a man’s life.
“Mina Davis,” the camerawoman responded.
“Mina, thanks for helping… earlier… out there.” There wasn’t a good way to communicate the magnitude of what we’d attempted and failed to do.
I motioned to the dance floor, and her eyes once again filled with tears that she wiped with the back of her arm.
The second person in the camera crew came to her side.
“This is Lee Frank,” Mina said by way of introduction. The man was a couple of decades older and had the deep frown lines to prove it.
Lee gave us a slight nod, but the sour expression he wore didn’t change as he tugged at Mina’s sleeve. “There’s something you should see.”
“Right now?” She glanced from Jemma to me as if she’d much rather stay there with us.
He nodded, that same solemn look on his face.
“All right, but if I need to answer any questions from the medics, the police, the”—she stumbled on the final word—“the coroner, I’ll be nearby.” She motioned to the corner of the ballroom as Lee yanked her away, knuckles white. I didn’t like that at all.
“He seems delightful,” Jemma said drily. She turned in the direction of Brett’s body, now covered by a sheet. “God, what are the odds? Two men dead at The Rose, only a handful of months apart.”
“And we were here for both,” I mumbled, my stomach flipping.
This past summer I’d helped solve the murder of the owner of the Rose Palace, Mr. Frederick Finch.
The man who I’d also discovered was my biological father.
At least this tragedy seemed less complicated, unless…
A creeping uncertainty nagged at me. Something about the way Brett’s body had looked up close wouldn’t let me call this a straightforward death.
People were assembled into cliques just like we’d been in high school, except now it was the exhausted moms who’d left infants and toddlers at home, the guys who’d already had more than enough to drink, the singles who’d been magnetically drawn to one another, and the couples who were offering each other comforting embraces.
I spotted Lacy, her head burrowed into Anton’s shoulder as she cried. I wanted to go to her, but my legs were heavy and my mind cloudy. Thankfully, at that moment Charlie stepped into the ballroom, and I got to my feet and started toward him as if propelled by a motor.
He met me in the middle, and as the familiar scent of his aftershave hit me—cedar and citrus—my throat clenched with unshed tears.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” I whispered.
“Me too.” His eyes traveled over me, checking for damage. He wasn’t planning to move or speak until he was sure I was okay.
His hazel eyes said all that and more, reminding me of when he’d first asked me out after the pageant had ended this past summer.
He’d dropped by the stables, where I’d been picking out Bella’s hooves in her stall. Kitty, his gray and black speckled Great Dane, was by his side. I distinctly remember wanting to cuddle that dog—and maybe the owner too.
“Look what we found backstage in the Primrose Ballroom,” Charlie had said, waving an enormous check in front of me.
“They must’ve been planning to present it at the end of the pageant”—Charlie’s voice had lowered to a whisper as if the animals were too sensitive to hear the final few words—“before you revealed Mr. Finch’s murderer. ”
I’d kept a hand on Bella’s mane, trying to appear easygoing, playful. “You know I can’t cash that, right?”
“You mean you don’t need to take this six-foot-long check to the bank?” Charlie’s face had crumpled in feigned disappointment. “I thought they had a huge vault for useless, massive checks.”
I’d tried to maintain a straight face, but despite myself, I’d chuckled. I liked the sarcastic sheriff, and based on the way Bella was eyeing him, I thought she might like him too. Horses know the good ones.
“Actually,” Charlie had said, setting the cardboard against the stall. “Kitty and I came by to ask you something.”
That something had been about a date, and I’d been surprised.
Based on Charlie’s personality shifts during the pageant investigation, I’d had no idea he was actually interested.
At the Rose Palace, he’d gone from playful to purposeful, charming to chiding, blithe to brooding in zero to sixty.
I was still learning to anticipate the shifts, though mostly these days I got the sexy, funny man rather than the intense, suspicious sheriff.
All that to say, our romance had been brief and mostly long-distance thus far, but regardless of his persona in any given moment, I always felt safe with Charlie.
“Savilla called me on my cell while Lacy was on the phone with 911,” Charlie explained, answering the question I hadn’t yet asked.
For reasons I couldn’t explain, at the mention of Lacy’s name I had the sudden urge to shield her from him, even though he’d said nothing to warrant my defensiveness.
That was ridiculous though. Charlie hadn’t seen Lacy and Brett dancing, the way they’d moved in sync, the way Brett had leered at her.
He had no idea that Lacy had been close to him right before he died.
“Before I examine the body, is there anything I should know?”
“Such as?”
“Savilla said you did CPR, right?”
“Right,” I answered. “And one of the people on Brett’s camera crew helped me.
When my arms got tired, she stepped in.” I gestured toward Mina, who was in the corner of the ballroom as promised, looking down at a camera screen with Lee.
“Nothing worked. Brett couldn’t breathe…
he…” How to describe what he’d looked like as he’d died?
How he’d gasped for air that wouldn’t come.
The stillness of his features as he stopped struggling.
“Did you see anything suspicious?” Charlie asked, one eyebrow lifted.
I thought of Anton’s warning about Brett, heavy with meaning; of Lacy shrinking away from Brett as he began to struggle for breath. But I wasn’t going to throw either of them into the spotlight of an investigation without first talking to my oldest and closest friend about what had happened.
“No. I just… I saw, or I heard, Brett coughing, or gasping. I think he choked on something.”
“Sounds pretty open and shut,” Charlie said, studying my face. He could see that I wasn’t saying something.
“Yep,” I said, because I wanted this to be true.
He kept his eyes on me for a moment longer, but then one of his officers approached.
Her badge read Deputy, and I recognized her as the woman Charlie had been chatting with at the Spoonful Diner before I’d left for vet school.
We’d only been dating a month at that point, and he hadn’t even introduced me.
“Did you need something?” Charlie had asked me, as I approached their table. I’d walked away without answering, debating whether I would answer a call from the sheriff ever again.
Of course, I’d relented and given him a chance to explain himself.
Later that night over a piece of pie I’d refused to share, Charlie had explained that she was his former police partner, now back as his deputy.
I’d tried not to seem jealous, but it was hard when his second-in-command looked like Snow White and smelled like strawberries and vanilla.
Harder still knowing they spent more time together than Charlie and I ever could.
Today, she wore a uniform, her hair was pulled back in a tight bun, and she didn’t have on any makeup, but she was just as stunning. I hated that I noticed.
“The medics called the time of death,” the deputy said to Charlie, ignoring my presence entirely as she leaned close enough that even I caught a whiff of her minty breath. “I told them to move the body backstage since it’s the closest place out of the sight of the guests.”
“Got it,” Charlie responded, surveying the ballroom. As he took in the clusters of people and the décor, I could see an invisible veil fall across his features.
The deputy somehow leaned even closer to Charlie, her eyes landing on his in a way that said she knew him well and trusted him without reservation. “I’m not certain that this was an accident,” she said in a low voice.
I watched him turn to her, saw some unspoken message pass between them.
“Understood,” Charlie said, and then he turned and followed her through the ballroom and backstage without even a glance behind to reassure me that everything would eventually be okay.