Chapter Twenty-Three

Furry Godmother’s proverbial advice: Beware of a fox in sheep’s clothing. She’ll pull the wool over your eyes.

I raced from the restroom and stopped at the sight of Chase sitting alone at the judges’ table. I inched out of the way as folks streamed around me in every direction, hurrying to make the most of our short break. I considered rushing to him to ask what had happened to Jack, but the idea of threading my way through the giant congested room seemed like a waste of precious time. Eva was waiting, possibly changing her mind at any second or worse. What if she was in danger? What if the person she was so afraid of had found her?

I texted Chase as I scanned the sea of faces for the one I desperately needed. WHERE’S JACK?

Chase’s response came back fast. JACK WENT TO FIND YOU AND TALK TO EVA. ARE YOU OKAY?

YEP.

I was perfect. Jack was already on his way to the bridge, which meant Eva would be okay too.

I worked my way through the crowd as fast as I could in stilettos and an amazing vintage gown, then ducked outside and broke into a jog on my tiptoes. I’d sent the texts to Jack only a few moments before, so I had a good chance of catching him if I hurried. He must’ve assumed I’d gone ahead without him, but I’d learned my lessons about rushing headlong into sketchy situations alone. This time, I’d arrive with Jack and use my friendship with Eva to set her mind at ease. Then we could bring her back with us and keep her safe until local authorities could make the arrest I’d been waiting for all week.

I darted through the night toward the arching cobblestone bridge. “Eva?” I called, squinting into the darkness. The path was darker than I recalled and the bridge significantly steeper, though it was admittedly my first trip there after dark and in stilettos. “Jack?”

I slowed at the crown of the bridge, utterly alone. My skin crawled as I double-checked my phone screen to be certain I hadn’t misunderstood Eva’s texts, but something wasn’t right. Where was Jack? Where was Eva? They couldn’t have had time to meet up and leave already. Could they? And even if I’d missed their rendezvous, I should have passed them on their way back to the Tea Room. Where else could they have gone? The zoo?

I turned to study the massive wrought-iron gates. The zoo was closed. Jack and Eva had to be here. Right where I was standing.

But they weren’t.

Behind me, muffled cries rose into the night. I spun to find the Tea Room completely dark, and the path before me significantly dimmed from the loss of the building’s ambient light.

My muscles went rigid and my mind on alert as I teetered on the bridge. Go forward? Go back? Was the danger here or there? Were Jack and Eva caught in it somehow?

The Tea Room’s emergency lights flickered on before I could decide what to do. The new lights cast an eerie glow over the building and its surroundings. A repetitive bleating groan echoed from the walls. A moment later, the doors flung open, and people poured out in a panic.

Another bomb threat? Something worse?

I dialed Jack’s phone.

“Where are you?” he barked without saying hello.

“I’m on the bridge,” I said, his tension adding to my own. “Why aren’t you here? Where’s Eva? What’s happening at the Tea Room?” The questions poured out of me, and there were more mounting by the second.

Jack spoke again, but I couldn’t understand him. The chaos on his end of the line mixed with the increasing drone of people spilling outside in a frenzy. The combination was near deafening. “What?” I asked, unsure if he’d answered me or someone else. I pressed a palm to my opposite ear and closed my eyes to concentrate.

He called out a series of instructions, and I realized he was directing people to the exits from inside the Tea Room. The edge in his voice tightened my stomach into knots.

I longed to run back toward the chaos and find Jack, but my cowardly bones were frozen, unwilling to carry me through the short expanse of darkness cloaking the path. I jumped at the sound of cracking twigs, but there was no one there. Just my tension and nerves playing tricks on a rattled mind.

“Lacy,” Jack snapped. “Get back here. Now!”

“What about Eva?” I asked, turning back to watch the distant crush of people outside the Tea Room. “What if she’s hurt?” Or worse? “She said she’d be here.” An awful thought wiggled into mind, and my heart jerked into a sprint. “What if whatever is going on at the Tea Room is the killer’s way of flushing her out? Whoever did that might not know she’s out here. We’ve got to find her!”

“Dammit, Lacy,” Jack growled. “I’m with Eva!”

“What?” His words crashed and banged in my mind. I scanned the area around me again. How was that possible? Why would she ask me to meet her on the bridge, then go back inside? Had I misunderstood? Had she lied? Why? “I don’t understand.”

I stared back at the streams of people, baffled.

“I got your texts about the bridge,” Jack said, sounding more frightened than angry.

The low cries of emergency vehicles had swollen in the distance, and I suspected he felt the relief of knowing help was on its way.

“I went to stop you from going out alone,” he said. “I saw Eva in the crowd on my way and flagged her down.”

“She never made it outside?” I asked.

A large splash turned me around on the bridge. My muscles ached with tension as I peered over the edge. Something large and dark floated in the water below. A man’s jacket? A man? “Oh no!” I yelled into the receiver. “Someone’s in the water!” I leaned forward for a better look, gripping the ledge at my middle and pinching the phone between my head and shoulder.

“Stay put,” Jack snapped. “Do not engage! I’m coming!”

My stomach churned as I watched the silhouette’s arms float to the water’s surface. His features invisible in the night.

I forced myself not to wonder if he’d fallen in, of if he’d been thrown in by the same killer who was hunting me. My heart clenched as I stretched my right arm behind me, working the strap of my stiletto over my heel with shaking fingers. I had to try to save him. I said a silent prayer that we would both survive whatever was happening.

“Lacy!” Jack yelled. “Do not engage,” he repeated. “Eva didn’t send you those texts. Someone stole her phone. You were tricked, Lacy, and you’re in trouble.”

I froze, one foot up, fingers curled beneath an ankle strap. Trouble. The word sent ice splinters through my soul.

Before I could form another solid thought, my left foot was swept out from under me by the sharp crack of something hard and fast. Two angry hands shoved my bottom up and over the narrow cement ledge, and my cell phone plummeted in with a splash. My palms pivoted on the hard surface, and I scrambled for purchase to keep from going the way of my phone. The water was far too shallow and the rocks too thick for anyone to survive a fall from this height.

A string of emergency vehicles raged to a stop outside the Tea Room. Their sweeping carousels of lights washed over the darkened path, repeating and circling, not quite reaching the bridge. “Help!” I screamed.

Mrs. Smart’s placid face came into view just opposite the ledge where I clung.

Ice formed on the back of my neck as I realized I’d overlooked the most obvious killer.

“You,” I whispered.

“Me,” she agreed, raising her duck-head cane overhead with a scowl.

“All to save your husband’s precious pageant.”

She frowned. “All to save his reputation and preserve his legacy.” She brought the weapon down on my clutching fingers with a sharp crack.

I screamed until my throat was raw, and my nails ground into the cement, tightening their grip on the ledge when pain and instinct urged me to let go. “Stop!” I cried. “Please, don’t!”

The cane bounced against the cement, having caught a few of my fingers and missed the rest. I realized it was probably the same object that had been used to whip me off my foot. Heat pooled beneath my sweaty palms, now doubly slick with blood where the soft skin had been torn as I’d struggled not to fall. I kicked my feet uselessly, wishing I could find something beneath the bridge to use for a foothold.

My unfastened stiletto jostled free and landed in the water with my phone and the man. I swallowed another cry for help, begging my heart to settle and my mind to think clearly. Who would hear me through the chaos outside the Tea Room? Save your strength, I thought. Think.

“Let go!” Mrs. Smart yelled. Her pale, wrinkled face was menacing in the moonlight.

“Why are you doing this?” I gasped.

“You know why,” she said, frustration pooling in her angry blue eyes. “You looked right at me in the green room tonight, and you told me that you know what I did to Viktor.”

“What?”

She nodded. “You said you’re close to proving who did it. You said it won’t be long now.”

My mind reeled. I had said those things, but I hadn’t meant it the way she thought. That had been her guilty conscience speaking.

“Well, I’m not giving you time to prove it,” she continued. “I killed Viktor to protect my husband’s good name. I can’t very well go to prison, or the whole thing would have been for naught.”

A dozen recent memories rose to the surface of my terror-filled mind. Mom had told me that Mrs. Smart blamed the pageant’s demise on Viktor. She thought he brought the wrong kind of people and the wrong kind of attention to the event. She’d told me as much herself the day I met her. And I’d still been too blind to see it.

“What about the bomb threat?” I asked. “Was that you, too?”

“I hoped to get the whole show canceled before it went down in infamy,” she said, pinching the cane against her side with one elbow, “but that didn’t work, so I decided to keep it simple. Pretend I had no idea what happened to Viktor and be glad he’d finally be replaced.” She pressed a soft palm to the back of my hand and began to pry my fingers off the cement, one by one. “Every time I saw your mother, she assured me that you’d know who killed Viktor soon, and I shouldn’t worry because you’d find the culprit. You’d figure it all out.”

“You don’t have to do this,” I said, curling my fingers over hers as she freed them. “I won’t tell anyone. I swear. No one else has to die.”

“You’re wrong,” she said, peeling another finger free.

I dared a look at the drop beneath me. “Who’s in the water?” I asked.

Mrs. Smart pulled my right hand free and gave it a toss.

I screamed and threw my hand back against the ledge.

“That’s just a jacket in the water,” Mrs. Smart said, going to work on my other hand. “I took it from the back of someone’s chair.”

I gave the dark shape a closer look. It wasn’t a body. Just a cast-off item of clothing. “The splash,” I argued. “I heard him fall in.”

“You heard a rock,” she said, moving on to my third finger.

I jerked free and repositioned my hand on the ledge.

“Darn it!” Mrs. Smart freed her cane and smacked my hand again. “Stop that.”

I ground my teeth and bit back a sob.

“You should run while you still can,” I said. “Jack’s on his way. He knows I’m here, and he’s coming to help me. You’ll be caught if you stay.” I found a cleft in the stones beneath me and wedged the toes of my bare foot into it until I felt the sweet relief in my hands and shoulders.

She glanced in the direction of the Tea room, then doubled down on her efforts to pry my hands loose. “I can’t leave a tattletale behind to tell on me.”

Fatigue racked my aching muscles, weakening them by the second, and all I could think about was how stupid I’d been.

The real killer had been right in front of my face all along. I’d spoken with her minutes after she’d killed Viktor, and I’d had no clue. I’d shared coffee with her at my shop after she’d stabbed my cake and ruined my party, and I’d had no clue. She’d been right there at every turn, and I’d only seen what she’d wanted me to see. A cranky, clueless old lady.

She groaned. “Your hands are bleeding everywhere.”

She took a break and stared at the ground, hopefully rethinking her plan.

My left shoulder shuddered from the strain, and my arms burned from their burden. I needed a better foothold. Needed relief for my hands. Needed ground beneath my feet.

“This is all your fault. The police would’ve cleared your friend eventually,” Mrs. Smart said before ducking out of sight, “if you would have left things alone. All you had to do was wait.” She stood again, popping back into view. This time there was a large chunk of broken concrete in her hands. She raised the mass high above her head and locked her gaze with mine. “Forgive me,” she whispered.

“Freeze!” Jack’s voice boomed through the night, sending waves of thanks, relief, and gratitude through my desperate, trembling frame.

A pair of big warm hands were suddenly on mine, curling their strong fingers around my burning wrists and lifting me to safety. I recognized Chase’s touch before I saw him. When he heaved me over the ledge and into his arms, the look on his face was foreign, as if it belonged to someone else, someone years older, someone who’d nearly lost something irreplaceable. His usual jovial expression was eerily absent, replaced by sheer terror.

Mrs. Smart’s face went bright with the beam of a spotlight as Chase whirled me away from the ledge and eased me back onto land. My knees buckled beneath my weight, and Chase whipped my legs up like a bride carried over the threshold, unwilling to let me fall.

I buried me face against his chest and sobbed as he lowered us to the ground. He pressed his back to the bridge and peeled my bloody hands from around his neck to examine them closely.

Jack’s voice was cold as ice and sharp as a razor reading Mrs. Smart her rights.

I pressed my cheek to the curve of Chase’s warm neck and tuned in to his pulse as it tapped too quickly against my skin.

Jack pushed the old woman into the grasp of a uniformed officer, then came to stand before us. He extended a fist to Chase, who bumped it gently with his. “May I?” He reached for me, and Chase helped me onto my feet and into Jack’s arms.

I wobbled unsteadily, still weak from exertion, and tilted significantly between one bare foot and one stiletto. “I lost my shoe,” I cried.

The hint of a smile twisted his troubled face as he scooped me into his arms and headed down the darkened path toward the Tea Room. “You’re a mess, Crocker.”

“But we got the bad guy.”

Jack slid emotion-filled eyes in my direction, his mouth still fighting the smile. “Yes, we did.”