I bear hard into her glossy green eyes. “Did Thomas or Wyatt ever mention anything at all from that time in their lives?”
She squints up at the dark sky. “He said something about letting a night of impulsive partying get away from them once. I guess everyone’s got their skeletons, though. They argued about the past every now and again. Some people can’t let bygones be bygones.” She blinks up at Dax. “Whatever it was, I guess Thomas won’t be worrying about it anymore.” She glides her arm around his waist.
Dax nods toward the crowd behind them. “We’d better get my business cards circulating. The shop needs people.” And without a bookstore to clean out, we need to start earning our keep the old-fashioned way—also known as the hard way.
They take off into the thicket of bodies, and I’m about to retrieve my phone from my pocket to let Jasper in on the fact we have an all but formal confession to the thievery that hit Killer Books the night of Wyatt’s murder, but I pause midflight when I see Molly Shay headed for my sister’s wares.
“Molly!” I give a friendly wave and point to the lemon tarts in an attempt to lure her over.
Gatsby moans and tucks himself under my table for safekeeping.
That woman never goes away, does she? I bet she’s satisfied now that no one else will ever have Wyatt. She wanted it that way. She never made a secret about it.
A mean shiver rides through me at the thought. If Molly is the one that killed Wyatt, she certainly arranged for no one else to have him.
“Bizzy.” She hitches a loose lock of dark hair behind her ear as she picks up a lemon tart. “Mmm, these are the best.” She takes a bite and moans hard. “I have a confession to make. That night at the murder mystery party? I had abandoned my character and snuck off to inhale as many of these beauties as I could.” She polishes off the rest. “I guess that’s an odd thought to have. I was literally eating these while my boyfriend was being brutally stabbed to death. You’d think I’d have an aversion to these lemony treats.” She shakes her head as she looks to the sky. “And oddly I don’t.”
“So you were at the refreshment table around the time Wyatt staggered back into the room?”
She nods, scooping up a handful of bite-size lemon tarts. “I saw him heading over. I remember thinking, wow, he really overdid the blood. And my next thought was, there was never any blood before when we’d done those types of parties. I just thought Wyatt was stepping up his game because he invited the entire town to the anniversary celebration. But then when his face went white, I knew. There are some things you simply can’t fake.”
“No, I guess you can’t.” I glance to Thomas and Brooklynn as they lean in and whisper to one another. “Molly, did you know that the first print run Agatha Christie that Wyatt kept in a glass case upstairs was missing?”
Her eyes widen a moment before she turns to look directly at Thomas.
He finally did it. I didn’t think he’d have the cookies to pull it off.
“Molly, you think Thomas took the book?” I ask. It would confirm what Stormy suggested the first time we spoke about it.
Her lips swim with an ambivalent smile. “It’s almost as if you just read my mind.” Her eyes narrow over mine. “You know, I might be a fake psychic, but I wasn’t kidding the day I read your palm. You have some strange lines running across them, and according to all the books I’ve read, you might be the real deal.” She leans in. “You don’t have any psychic abilities, do you?”
“Let’s see”— I bite down on my lower lip to keep from grinning like a loon—“I do have the eerie ability to wake up exactly five minutes before my alarm goes off.”
Her chest bounces with a laugh. “That’s not quite what I meant.” She looks toward Killer Books. “Can you believe it? The greed never ends. No sooner did Brooklynn plunk down a bunch of cash to help Wyatt open the bookstore than she wanted to take over. It’s like she wanted to control Wyatt.”
“That’s interesting,” I say. “But wasn’t the bookstore partially owned by some investment group?”
She nods. “And she’s the group. That was just a front to keep it out of her name. I think she likes to run dicey with the law.”
“Brooklynn is the Weatherston Collective?” Huh. So she lied.
Molly takes a breath. “I asked her once about why she would want to invest in a bookstore. I mean, it’s not like she was a wealthy woman. She said herself she couldn’t quite afford it. But she said she was doing it for her fiancé.”
“Her fiancé?” I blink back, surprised at the answer. “That’s very kind of her.”
“Yeah, I guess he passed away and she wanted to give him a tribute of some kind. He must have liked books.” She chuckles, looking their way. “And it looks as if she got her wish. About six months ago, she was asking for hot tips on how to land a man, and now look at her? Holding Thomas’ hand, right out in the open.”
I look that way, and she’s doing just that.
Gatsby lets out a snapping bark. I don’t buy it, Bizzy. That woman has a dark heart. There are some things that a dog just knows, and that’s one of them.
A dark heart.
Molly staggers over to Macy’s table and begins to pick up the candles she has on display and sniffs them.
Stormy said that Wyatt was controlling Thomas. That Wyatt was lording something over him. Channing Neville comes to mind.
Gatsby doesn’t trust Brooklynn.
Molly suggested that Brooklynn bought an interest in the bookstore when she couldn’t quite afford it—and that she did it for her fiancé.
Her fiancé…
I pull
