“Semantics,” she said. “It could’ve been because the last time I brought Big Mo back to my room for a night of passion the walls and furniture incurred some damage. But I paid for it, so I don’t see what the big deal is.”
Big Mo had been a Savannah crime lord for as long as I could remember, and the police had never had enough evidence to charge him with anything. He tried to kill me, but I wouldn’t have been able to prove it. A couple of months ago, someone took matters into their own hands and threw a Molotov cocktail through Mo’s window and set him on fire.
No one had said the words out loud per se, but I was almost a hundred percent positive the person responsible was Scarlet. The justice system worked too slow to her way of thinking, and she wasn’t one to let anyone hurt her family. It was probably best she moved around a lot.
“You know what I’d like?” she asked.
My tea finished steeping and I added milk and honey. “What’s that?”
“I’d like some cake to go with my whiskey. That’s just the thing on a morning like this.”
Now that she mentioned it, I wouldn’t turn down cake. “I’m going to shower, and I’ll be back down in twenty,” I said, carrying my tea with me to the stairs.
“Take your time,” she said. “You look terrible. You must be having a girl.”
“Why would you say that?” I asked.
“Because girls suck the beauty right out of you,” she said.
“That’s an old wives’ tale.”
She raised her brow and slurped her whiskey. “Not from where I’m standing.”
Chapter Two
“I’m looking pretty hot today,” Scarlet said, twirling in front of the full-length mirror in the mudroom. “We need a hot car to complement me.” She looked me up and down and shook her head.
“I don’t want to ride in that van of yours,” she said. “That’s a bad luck van. It’s got Ugly Mo cooties. Ever since you had that van it keeps getting vandalized and you got kidnapped and held at gunpoint.”
“Not to mention you wrecked my bathroom,” I said.
“That too,” she said, nodding. “But that was on account of how I had too many grits at breakfast. Grits keep you real regular.”
“I’ll remember that,” I said. “I guess we can take the Audi today. I’m going to put the van up for sale anyway since I’ve retired from the PI life.”
“Why would you go and do a stupid thing like that?” she asked.
“I’m pregnant,” I said. “And I promised Nick I wouldn’t do anything dangerous.”
She hmmphed and reapplied her bright red lipstick. “All I’m saying is that a little pregnancy wouldn’t have stopped the women from my generation. Sometimes you get knocked up. That doesn’t mean you don’t sleep with the next Nazi to gain information. And it doesn’t mean you can’t stick your knife right in that soft spot at the hollow of the throat.”
I led her out of the mudroom and under the attached portico that connected the garage. The Audi was parked in the first slot, and Scarlet was right. Sometimes you needed a sexy car to get cake.
The ride into Savannah was long and tedious between the traffic and the weather, and Scarlet slept most of the way, resting her head on the collar of her coat and snoring so loud I thought about putting her in the trunk.
The good news was the streets of historic Savannah weren’t crowded with tourists. I dropped Aunt Scarlet off in front of Krazy Cakes and made sure she got in all right before I went to find parking.
“Thank you, Jesus,” I said, finding a spot right on Reynolds Square across from the bakery.
East Congress Street looked like many of the other streets in downtown Savannah. The architecture was ornate and beautiful, and the attached buildings were being carefully restored one by one, with businesses and apartments put in to boost the economy. There were several newly renovated shops along the strip across from Reynolds Square, and the cake shop was one of them.
It sat on the corner, looking cute and tasteful from a distance. But the closer you got, the more the display windows came into view, and it was easy to understand why the shop was called Krazy Cakes. Suzanne had made both of the cakes for my wedding, and I’d been dreaming about them ever since. In her front window was a beautifully crafted historical home, complete with grounds and an iron fence in front of the property. And it was all made of cake.
Suzanne had a real talent. And then I looked a little closer. Inside the windows were different scenes, and I blinked a couple times to make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks. In one of the windows was a bloody mess of a man sprawled across a sofa, and in another window was a woman face down, a hatchet sticking out of the back of her head.
It was the Lizzie Borden house.
“Huh,” I said, taking a step back from the window.
“Psst,” I heard someone say.
My eyes were still glued to the delectable crime scene, and I was trying to figure out if I’d still eat it when I heard the voice again.
“Psst, Addison.”
I looked up and around, trying to find the source of the voice and praying it wasn’t the ghost of Lizzie Borden. She’d probably be pissed that I’d eat her murder cake. Most killers liked to show off their handiwork.
But it wasn’t the ghost of Lizzie Borden.
“Rosemarie,” I said, breaking into a smile. “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you in class?”
“’Cause I quit,” she said. “It’s colder than an Eskimo pecker out here. Come inside where it’s warm.”
I looked through the cake shop window and saw Scarlet and Suzanne in deep discussion, and I caught Suzanne’s eye and pointed to the shop next door.
It wasn’t until I was actually walking into the shop that I realized what
