Chapter 14 Lottie
LOTTIE
Dolly Hatchett laughs at something one of the other Daughters says—all in a sunny yellow dress and with her red bouffant bouncing with each giggle—and for a second, I almost forget she’s currently sitting at the top of my suspect list.
She looks so cheerful. So wholesome. So completely not like someone who threatened to bash Vivienne’s skull in with a cast-iron skillet.
Almost forget, I said. Not quite.
Percy rustles his spectral feathers on top of the dryer and gives a low, unimpressed coo. “That one stirs more than just gravy, dear.”
“Subtle,” I mutter under my breath, adjusting the casserole dish in my hands. “You’re about as cryptic as a neon billboard.”
Carlotta’s right beside me, eyeing the dessert table like she’s planning a heist. She glances over. “You talking to the dead bird or me?”
“Both,” I say, because with my life it’s always safer to assume everyone’s listening—living, dead, or feathered.
Percy sniffs. “I take offense to dead bird. I’m a specter of elegance.”
“You’re a specter of something,” I mutter.
Carlotta grins. “I like him. He’s got style, and he knows it. That’s my kind of guy.”
“He’s a peacock who speaks in food riddles.”
“Exactly.” Carlotta winks at Percy. “Gorgeous and mysterious. If you weren’t dead and covered in feathers, I’d ask for your number.”
Percy preens at the thought. “Madam, you flatter me.”
Carlotta nods. “I speak only truth, handsome.”
I close my eyes briefly. “Please don’t flirt with the ghost.”
“Why not? He’s the best-looking male in this room, and he actually listens when I talk.”
“Honestly, he’s miles above some of the men you’ve dated,” I say with a sigh.
Ozzy’s tucked against me in his sling, freshly fed and already complaining. He lets out a grumbly little noise and kicks his chubby legs as if I’ve personally offended him.
“I know, buddy,” I whisper. “Mommy’s about to shake down a suspect. It’s exhausting for all of us.”
He answers with a tiny gurgle, and I can’t help but note that he smells suspiciously like banana pudding.
Appropriate. Come to think of it, this entire place is starting to be saturated with the tropical scent.
It’s basically banana-based psychological warfare at its best. Midge strikes again.
But I’m not gunning for Midge right now.
Dolly spots me approaching, and her laughter hiccups to a stop. Her freckled cheeks go bright pink, and she clutches her punch cup like it’s a life preserver instead of a sugar bomb. She steps our way.
“Lottie.” Her voice lands somewhere between wary and wobbly. “My stars, this hair of yours. You let Blanche at it and lived to tell the tale?”
“I’m a survivor,” I say. “It’s my superpower.”
Carlotta slings an arm around Dolly’s shoulders like they’re college roommates instead of Daughters of Honey Hollow frenemies. “I gotta say, if my hair ever looked that good, they’d arrest me for being a public menace. You’ve got a dangerous level of style.”
Dolly snorts. “Oh, hush. You look like you walked off the cover of a romance paperback. One of the spicy ones.”
Carlotta pats her curls. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
Percy hops from the dryer to the top of a nearby hair station, his ghostly tail fanning in an iridescent arc behind Dolly’s head. He tilts his head, studying her.
“Such bright plumage for someone with such heavy secrets,” he muses.
I plaster on a smile and pretend my life is normal. Lainey strides by and shoves a drink in my hand, and I gladly accept.
“So,” I say, taking a sip of punch that tastes suspiciously like melted sherbet and regret, “how are you holding up? With everything that’s happened.”
Dolly’s fingers tighten around her cup until the plastic creaks. For a moment, I think she’s going to cry. Instead, she sets her mouth in a firm line.
“I keep expecting Vivi to walk through a door and criticize something,” she says. “My hair. My hemline. The temperature of my deviled eggs.” Her shoulders shake on a humorless laugh. “Then I remember she can’t.”
Carlotta tuts. “If she tries, I’ll smack the ghost right out of her.”
Percy stiffens. “I’d like to see you try, sassy vixen.”
I shoot him a look. “We probably shouldn’t goad her,” I whisper.
Dolly blinks. “Pardon?”
“Nothing.” I wave it off. “Just thinking out loud.”
“Thinking about your investigation,” Carlotta clarifies, because she has never met a boundary she didn’t strip for parts and sell on the black market.
“Lottie’s got her little baker brain working overtime.
She’s trying to figure out who whacked Vivi with that skillet like she was last night’s leftovers. ”
Oh, for Pete’s sake. Why do I even bother? Ozzy gives an exasperated sigh as well, as if he agrees.
Dolly’s face turns pale, even her freckles look startled.
“I’m not accusing anyone,” I rush to say, elbowing Carlotta hard enough to make her double over and groan. “Yet. I’m just asking questions. You know, trying to make sense of things.”
Ozzy chooses that moment to let out a cheerful squeal and grab a fistful of my scarf, shoving the corner in his mouth.
“See?” I say. “This is my intimidation tactic. I show up with weaponized drool.”
Some of the tension leaves Dolly’s shoulders. “He is certainly precious,” she says, reaching to lightly touch Ozzy’s foot. “They both are. I don’t know how you manage it all, dear. The babies, the bakery, the murders.”
“It’s like spinning plates,” I say. “Except the plates are on fire and filled with Jell-O.” And I’m being chased by a killer, but I leave that last tidbit out for now.
Carlotta nods sagely. “Also, half the plates are felonies.”
Dolly huffs out a laugh, but it dissolves quickly.
“Dolly,” I try again, softer this time, “I know Vivi hurt you. Publicly. That video at the meeting…” I wince on her behalf. “That couldn’t have been easy.”
Her eyes gloss over. She looks away, toward the sea of curling irons and pearl necklaces, as if she were actively searching for an exit.
“She ruined my reputation in ten minutes,” she says quietly.
“Thirty years of catering. Thirty years of feeding this town. I have brides ask me to cater their weddings, families who celebrate every milestone with my pies—and now they all look at me like I’m the punchline of a joke.
” Her chin wobbles. “My bookings are down forty percent. People don’t want pedestrian food at their special events. ”
Carlotta frowns. “Vivi sounds like she was a spoiled viper in kitten heels.”
Percy lets out an approving trill. “At last, someone with taste. Kitten heels should be worn day and night by all women everywhere. Why isn’t there a law about that?”
Dolly wipes at the corner of one eye. “I was so angry that night. After the meeting. I said terrible things.”
I nod. “People heard you shouting in the parking lot.”
“You’ll regret this, Vivienne,” she quotes herself bitterly. “Mark my words. I sounded like a soap opera villain.” She lets out a watery laugh. “I didn’t mean it. Not really. I just wanted her to feel an ounce of what she’d made me feel.”
“Humiliated,” I say with a shrug.
“Small,” she corrects. “Like I was less than. Like all these years, I’d just been reheating frozen dinners instead of building something that mattered.”
My heart squeezes. I get it. If someone reduced the Cutie Pie Bakery to cupcakes and social media nonsense, I’d consider arson.
“Wanting her to hurt is understandable,” I say. “Hitting her in the head with a skillet is something else.”
“I know that, Lottie.” Dolly meets my eyes, and for the first time, I see something steely behind the softness. “I didn’t kill her. I swear to you on every biscuit I’ve ever baked.”
Percy gives a little shimmy. “Oaths sworn on baked goods are about as reliable as meringue in humidity, dear. Pretty, but they don’t hold up. However, I don’t think she’s capable.”
I let out a breath. My amateur sleuth radar hums, and for once it agrees with the ghost bird. Dolly is guilty of a lot of things, wearing gingham unironically, weaponizing mayonnaise—but murder doesn’t feel like one of them.
“Okay,” I say. “Then help me understand what Vivi was doing. If she wasn’t just being cruel for sport, what was all of this about?”
Dolly’s gaze flicks to the far side of the room, where Gigi Wentworth-Crane holds court near a mirror, all jewel-toned elegance and perfect posture. She’s supervising a stylist who’s trying to pin a silk scarf in place, her sharp green eyes missing nothing.
Dolly’s lips press together. “You really want to know what Vivi was doing?”
“Yes.”
“She was building a bonfire,” Dolly whispers. “And we were the kindling.”
Percy ruffles, clearly pleased. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
Carlotta leans in, smelling blood in the proverbial water. “Spill it, Dolly. What did Mother Vivi have on you, hot mamas?”
Dolly hesitates. She glances back at Gigi, then at Midge, who is currently fussing over the refreshment table like it’s the most important event of the last century, adjusting doilies under platters of deviled eggs.
“I probably shouldn’t say,” Dolly murmurs. “It’s not my story to tell.”
“Those are my favorite stories,” Carlotta says.
“Mine, too,” I mutter to myself. I give Dolly a pained smile.
“I’m not asking you to betray anyone. I’m asking you to help me make sure the person who did this pays for it.
Vivi was planning some sort of retrospective, right?
Some big exposé at the Mother’s Day tea? Some sort of files she was keeping?”
I leave out the part about Percy hinting that Vivi had files on everyone.
Dolly flinches at the word files.
“She kept records,” Dolly admits. “On all of us. She said it was for the Daughters’ historical archive.” She rolls her eyes. “I’ve seen less documentation in IRS audits.”
Carlotta snorts. “You would know.”
“That woman knew how to weaponize a filing cabinet,” Percy agrees.
“Dolly.” I keep my voice gentle. “Did she have something on you?”
A beat of silence stretches between us, thick with a hint of humiliation.
“Yes,” she finally says, her voice barely above a whisper. “Financial things. From years ago. A mistake I’ve been trying to fix, but Vivi… she liked having leverage. Let’s just say,” she swallows hard, “if certain discrepancies came to light, I’d lose more than my business.”
My mind spins. Embezzlement. Charity funds. “The money the Daughters raise for the women’s shelter,” I say slowly. My mother has told me countless times that it’s one of their biggest achievements. “That’s what Vivi was looking at lately, isn’t it?”
Dolly goes sheet-white. “Please don’t,” she begs. “Not here. Not now.”
“I’m not judging,” I say as I pat Ozzy’s back and he starts to hum. “But if Vivi was about to expose you—”
“She was about to expose everyone.” Dolly’s voice sharpens.
She lifts her chin, freckles standing out starkly.
“Do you think I’m the only one who made mistakes?
Vivi delighted in them. She called it accountability.
I call it blackmail.” She nods subtly toward to her left.
“Why don’t you ask her. That woman knows everything. ”
My gaze follows, and I spot Gigi as she laughs at something the stylist says, her head tipping back with grace, but her hands never stop moving, adjusting a floral scarf, rearranging bobby pins. Her rings flash like warning lights.
“What did Vivi have on Gigi?” I ask.
Dolly hesitates.
“Dolly,” I press. “If Gigi has a motive, I need to know. I’m not trying to ruin her life. I’m trying to keep mine from being ruined by a killer on the loose.”
Percy nods. “Tell her. The truth wants out! Hurry, quick! It’s leaking all over the linoleum.”
Dolly exhales, shoulders slumping. “Gigi’s whole life is about appearances,” she says.
“Vivi knew that. Her shop, her events, her ‘founding family’ status. All that Wentworth-Crane elegance.” She swallows.
“Her mother wasn’t a founding Daughter. She wasn’t even a Daughter. She was turned down. Repeatedly.”
My jaw drops. “But Gigi—”
“Has been telling everyone for forty years that her mother helped start the organization,” Dolly finishes.
“Vivi found the original rejection letters in the archive. She threatened to make them the centerpiece of her little retrospective. Reading them out loud. At the Motherhood Memories Tea.” She shudders. “In front of everyone.”
I whistle under my breath. “Ouch.”
“That would obliterate Gigi’s social standing,” Carlotta says, oddly somber. “In this crowd, that’s like social death, tax audit, and bad haircut all rolled into one.”
Dolly nods miserably. “Gigi’s been paying Vivi to keep quiet. Donations to a certain legacy fund that Vivi controlled. But Vivi took the money and was going to out her anyway. She said she owed it to historical accuracy.”
“Of course, she did,” I murmur.
Percy clicks his beak. “Mother Vivi did love a dramatic reveal.”
“So, you see,” Dolly says, looking me dead in the eye, “I’m not the only one with a motive. I’m just the one who shouted about it in a parking lot.”
“Hey.” I touch her arm again. “Thank you. Really. This helps.”
“It helps me not be the prime suspect, you mean,” she says wryly.
“That, too,” I offer. Although at this stage in the game, I’m not ruling out anyone.
Dolly takes off. Carlotta hits the dessert table, and Percy floats to the ceiling to take it all in with a bird’s-eye view that he deserves to have.
I look back toward Gigi, who is rearranging a vase of carnations, and then to Midge, who is laughing a little too loudly by the punch bowl.
Vivienne Pemberton-Clarke wanted to host a retrospective.
Instead, someone gave her a permanent retirement.
And standing here in a salon full of hairspray and history, surrounded by women in pearls who would rather die than have their secrets exposed, I get the sinking feeling that Dolly is right.
Vivi built a bonfire.
Now I just have to figure out which of these perfectly coiffed women struck the match.