I bet he will.
And just like that, it feels as if Lemon and I have already drifted apart.
Less than two hours later, Noah is free to go home and Fiona lets me know the courts here in Ashford are congested. Nobody wants to give a judge preferential treatment in fear it will cost them their own precious seat.
I get my bail hearing in a week.
Nope. I’m not getting an iota of preferential treatment. If anything, they’ll want to make an example out of me.
Homicide detectives may not fare well in prison, but judges sure as hell don’t either.
Lottie
Less than three days have dissipated and Evie and I have dropped by the holding tank Everett is locked up in at least ten times already.
Noah has all but moved in with me. Not that he needs to, seeing that he lives directly across the street. But he’s been staying late and coming in early and feeding us breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It’s hard to tell if he’s ever left. Not that I want him to. Everything has been such a nightmare, I can hardly hold my wits together, let alone my bakery or my household.
Lucky for me, my mother called and asked me to whip up a dozen platters of raspberry tarts for an event taking place at her bed and breakfast. She was very specific in letting me know it’s the only dessert we’re to serve here this evening. Apparently, it’s keeping with the theme in some way.
I tried to explain to her that I didn’t have any fresh raspberries, but she said it didn’t matter. So I used baker’s jam instead, which in my opinion is as equally delicious.
Correction, this event isn’t taking place at my mother’s B&B. Just last week, she handed the keys to her B&B to Cressida Bentley and Cormack Featherby for less than a song. My mother is merely in charge of the event they’re hosting tonight. She’s gone from proud owner to grunt working scullery maid all in one fell swoop.
A chill runs down my spine just thinking about it. My mother let her dubious boyfriend, Wiley Fox, Noah’s con man of a father, talk her into selling her dream in an effort to fund his dream.
Wiley started up a publishing company a few months back in order to help my mother sell her steamy romance books, and in typical Wiley fashion, he’s turned everything into a spectacular mess. Not that there’s anything spectacular about this nightmare.
“No freaking way!” Evie says as we pull into the parking lot of the B&B. “Look, Mom. They changed the sign.”
“What?” I squawk as I lean as close to the steering wheel as my bloated belly will allow, and sure as heck, gone is the warm wooden signage that once read Honey Hollow Bed and Breakfast, and in its place is a large black plaque with a hot pink fancy font that reads Rendezvous Luxury Resort and Razzle Dazzle Day Spa. “Ugh, I can’t believe this. I’m going to head in there and demand they give the keys back to my mother. I have money. I have plenty of money. I’ll have them name their price. Everyone has a price.”
Evie shrugs. “Good luck with that. Cormack and Cressi-duh both have enough purchasing power to buy all of Vermont. Who knows? Maybe they’re going to. And they’ve decided to start with Glam Glam’s B&B.”
I glance over at Evie. She’s not wrong.
Everly Evie Baxter shares her father’s midnight-colored locks, which flow right down her back in thick, luscious coils, and she shares his cobalt blue eyes and cunning wit, too.
Evie has only been a part of our lives since last spring, but so far she’s enjoying her first year at Honey Hollow High. She’s made some friends, a few boyfriends whom she’s recently winnowed down to one, and she’s even made the cheer squad.
The poor thing has been through so much already in her young life, no thanks to Cressida, her biological mother. And I’ve got a feeling Cressi-duh and her blonde bestie are about to expose her to even more horrors once we step inside their new real estate acquisition.
“Hey, Mom? Do you think the ghosts will leave now that the ditzy duo has taken over?”
“I hope not.”
Evie doesn’t know anything about my transmundane abilities. Not many people do. Noah and Everett know all about them, and so does Carlotta, primarily because she happens to share my strange gift. Carlotta and I are technically supersensual, a set of powers that fall beneath the transmundane umbrella. In other words, we can see the dead.
Spotting the disembodied among us has been an odd quirk of mine for as long as I can remember. In the past, when I used to see those ghostly visitors, I’d find them clinging nearby someone who was once near and dear to them. In the beginning, it didn’t mean much more than a skinned knee was on the horizon for the person the ghost was clinging to. But as of late, it almost always means murder.
I park my minivan right outside the door of the glass conservatory my mother had tacked onto the B&B a while back. This very B&B is where my mother, the one who raised me, Miranda Lemon, and my saint of a father, Joseph Lemon, God rest his soul, had their honeymoon. And when he passed away all those years ago, she used the money from his insurance payout to buy the place. She sold the family home, moved in, and converted this place from a ho-hum B&B to a bona fide hot spot for all things supernatural.
Okay, so the ghosts that haunt this place had a little something to do with that, too. But my mother played off of their spooky shenanigans like the successful businesswoman she is and sold tickets to eager tourists looking to have their socks scared right off of their toes. She charged eighty bucks a pop for what she
