Both Sugar and Juliet look momentarily confused. Odd how both Keelie and my mother aren’t the least bit fazed by Carlotta’s lunacy. I suppose they’re used to it by now.
“I actually had a koala bear once.” Sugar sighs with a shrug. “She was a precious little thing, a gray fuzzy cutie that my dad named Sugar Bear. Sugar after me.” She averts her eyes as if it were silly. “I just called her Teddy. Oh, how I wish I still had her. Our time together was way too short.”
“I’m right here, Sugar,” the furry gray cutie shrills in a high-pitched voice before dotting a kiss to the side of Sugar’s face—although she might be trying to gnaw on it. I can’t be sure.
So she’s a girl.
I shoot Carlotta a look for being wrong about the gender. But in her defense, I’m not sure I’d be able to tell either.
“I’m sorry.” Keelie grimaces. “Did you have to give her up to a zoo or something?”
“Oh no.” She gives a mournful laugh. “My dad was the zoo. He ran an animal preserve, and along with that the local zoo used our land to nurse some of the sicker animals back to health, too. Teddy was born in our care. But she didn’t die young. Verity decided she wanted Teddy for herself, and, well, I couldn’t refuse her a thing.” That pleasant look drips right off her face and she glowers a moment at the thought.
Huh. I’ll have to bring this up to Noah. After all, it was Sugar’s bracelet we found in the snow just outside the conservatory where Verity ventured to have a breath of fresh air—and apparently eat a poisoned raspberry tart. Although toxicology is still looking into that as we speak.
Evie shrieks again and we collectively look in her direction.
“One million five hundred thousand!” She hops up and down and sends her hair springing like coils.
“Followers,” I say as I look to Juliet and Sugar. “That’s my daughter. She seems to be a viral sensation at the moment, and I’m not sure why.” I’m not sure I want to know why either. But as her mother, I’ll make sure I know every dicey detail before the sun goes down.
Sugar taps her fingers to her lips. “Evie is your daughter?”
My brows arch. “You know Evie?”
The blonde gives a nervous giggle. “Well, I’m afraid almost everyone knows Evie, or at least they will. The very last picture Verity posted to her Insta Pictures account last night was of herself and your daughter. She introduced your daughter to the world and mentioned that she would be passing the baton to her one day.”
That’s right. I give a few quick blinks as I recall the exact moment it happened.
Juliet’s shoulders jerk. “Wow, I guess she’s passed the baton a little sooner than she thought.”
A worried look crosses Sugar’s face. “If you don’t mind, I’d love to have a word with your daughter. I feel as if she should know what’s happening.”
“Go right ahead,” I say as Sugar takes off in Evie’s direction.
A series of popping noises come from baby Bear’s bottom, and Mom holds him out at an arm’s length.
“Oh, come on, Miranda,” Carlotta teases. “Afraid of a little thunder from down under?”
“Come here, you,” Keelie coos. “Did baby Bear make a stinky?” She wrinkles her nose my way. “That’s how I know he belongs to his daddy.” She winks as she and Mom scuttle off, arguing over who’s going to change the baby’s dirty diaper.
Carlotta holds out her phone. “I gotta get Harry on the horn.” She winks my way. “Now that I’m a bestseller, I’m feeling a little frisky. Me thinks this author is about to get herself a whole lotta lovin’ tonight. We’ll call it research for my follow-up book.” She takes off, already tapping into her phone.
I step in a notch toward Juliet. “Fun fact about Keelie: she married my old high school boyfriend. His name is Otis, but he goes by Bear. He made sure I cried myself to sleep each night for three years straight. He was a horrible cheat. But he’s cleaned up his two-timing ways. Or at least he better have. He’s married to my best friend.”
We share a warm laugh on Bear’s account.
Bear really is a good guy now that he’s on the straight and narrow. He owns his own construction company and he’s the one Everett and I hired to build our dream home on the land where our former homes burned to the ground. Instead of rebuilding two separate houses, we’re building one mega structure. We were neighbors, so it worked out perfectly that our lots were right next to one another.
“I haven’t had much luck with men myself,” Juliet offers. “But not because I had a bad boyfriend. I’ve always been too busy with work to go out and meet anyone. Verity, on the other hand, always seemed to have a bad boyfriend in the wings. We got to witness Chad in action last night. How horrible was it that he was berating her that way, and on her very last night alive? I talked to him afterwards, and I could smell the liquor coming off his breath. He seemed pretty shaken up about her passing. We all were—still are.”
“It’s a terrible thing. I guess we’ll know what happened once the coroner releases the information. You wouldn’t happen to know if she had any allergies, would you?”
“She never mentioned any to me.” Her lips pinch tightly as she looks over my shoulder. “But let’s face it. I don’t think Verity died from a simple allergy. The girl had a way of turning people against her.”
“Such as who?” I’m half-expecting her to say Chad. Okay, so I’m fully expecting Chad, but I hold my breath just in case she decides to surprise me.
She hitches her nose to someone behind me. “Sugar Hartley.”
“Sugar?” I turn to look at the girl with the cuddly koala still clinging
