The use of my full first name cut off every argument I’d been planning to make. I didn’t need all the fingers on one hand to count the number of times Mark had called me Nicole since learning I preferred Nikki.
However we dealt with the situation, it had to be as a team. Investigating it against his wishes would only pit us against each other at a time when we most needed to stay united. And I wouldn’t truly be helping him if fear for my safety destroyed all his peace.
“I don’t like it, but I promise.”
4
I spent the evening on the Internet studying lock picking just in case Mark changed his mind and I got a look at his doors. We’d need to figure out how someone had gotten in.
Working around Sugarwood the next day and then going to my meeting with our cupcake designer rather than investigating Troy’s death left me feeling like I was showing up to an appointment on the wrong day. On the drive there, I’d come up with a list of reasons why Mark couldn’t have been serious about asking me to stay out of the case and why I should ignore him even if he had been. With every turn, I talked myself into and then out of investigating anyway.
But every time I decided to secretly investigate, I remembered the look on his face, and I knew how I’d feel if I asked him not to do something and he did it anyway—willfully, despite knowing how important my request was to me.
It’d feel like a betrayal, and I couldn’t let Mark down that way. I might not agree with him, but I had to respect his wishes in the same way I expected him to respect mine.
I parked my car beside Isabel Addington’s cupcake food truck, How Sweet It Is, in the Lakeside Park parking lot.
Isabel and How Sweet It Is showed up in Fair Haven just as the summer tourist season came to an end. She’d only been passing through, planning to stay a couple weeks at most, but I’d begged her to stay long enough to create a cupcake display for my wedding. I hadn’t been able to find anyone around who could make the maple syrup cupcake I’d been imagining. The first bite of Isabel’s cupcakes had assured me she could do it.
It’d taken the promise of a big bonus and calling in a few favors to have other friends ask her to also cater their events, but she’d finally agreed. We’d been meeting semi-regularly in the past six weeks as she worked on perfecting the recipe she was designing specifically for me.
I stepped out of my car, and the cold sliced straight through my coat and gloves as if I wasn’t wearing any. Hopefully Isabel had cranked the heat in her truck. If she hadn’t, I’d subtly drop the hint that we should meet at her home next time. There was no reason for her to bring her truck all the way out here. Even the winter tourists weren’t going to the beach in this weather.
The food truck’s door popped open before I could knock, as if she’d been watching for me.
I stepped in, and she locked the door behind me.
My shoulders tensed as if someone had suddenly turned my veins to iron. Locking that door felt like it was meant to keep me in rather than to keep others out. There wasn’t anyone else out there.
The hyper-logical lawyer part of my brain could hear how irrational that sounded, but the half that was still reeling from Troy’s death didn’t want to listen.
“Do you have many people walk in on you as if you’re a normal store?” I tried to keep my voice light, as if I wasn’t sure how a food truck worked rather than that I thought she might be about to kidnap me.
Something flitted across her face that I couldn’t interpret. She tugged the door. “Not yet, but I guess that’d be another good reason to lock up. It’s an older truck. If I don’t keep it locked, it lets in a draft.”
My metal-stiff shoulders eased. That made more sense than the crazy conclusions my brain wanted to jump to. Isabel might have met Troy—I’d gotten most of the police department hooked on her cupcakes—but I couldn’t think up an obvious reason she’d want to kill him. A romantic affair seemed unlikely. She looked to be in her late thirties, almost old enough to be his mother.
Besides, her answer seemed reasonable. The air inside the truck was so warm it was almost too thick to breathe. Definitely not drafty with the door locked. I slid off my jacket and set it aside.
Isabel still wore her puffy silver jacket with the hood up. The hood squished her black hair around her face, and her lips and cheeks were red from the cold, making her look a little like the painted face of a Russian nesting doll.
She rubbed her gloved hands together. “Is it always this cold in Michigan in the winter?”
I held back a snort. If it was, I might have to reconsider my choice of home. This was only my second northern winter. It was already colder than the first, and we weren’t even into January yet. “They keep promising me these temperatures are record-breaking. I’m not sure yet whether they’re lying to me or not.”
“I’m going to hope whoever told you that wouldn’t lie to you,” she said with a smile.
Isabel’s smile was like a firecracker. When she wasn’t smiling, I would have described her as average-looking, but when she smiled, it was a bit like those gossip pages where they showed pictures of celebrities with and without their makeup side by side. I might not have recognized her.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I snatched for it, praying it wasn’t bad news from Mark. The display showed Russ’ name.
Technically I didn’t need to answer it, but if he’d heard about Troy’s murder, not answering would panic him. He’d assume something had happened to me.
“Go ahead and answer,” Isabel said. “It’ll take me a minute to set the cupcakes out.”
I slid my finger across the screen and answered.
“You’re not working Mark’s case.” Russ’ tone made me imagine him pounding his meaty fist into a table. “I forbid it.”
I guess there wasn’t an if involved. He’d heard about Troy’s murder. Thank you so much, Fair Haven gossip chain.
The first response that jumped to my lips was to tell him he couldn’t forbid me from doing anything. Even at Sugarwood, we were co-owners, and I had the controlling share. It wasn’t like I was a child and he was my dad.
I swallowed all those responses down. Russ had been going to grief support group meetings with Stacey and me, and had been making progress. Before the cold hit, he’d even started walking with Mandy and my dogs to lose some weight. He still tended to be blind to his personal triggers, though. The main one seemed to be fear he’d lose another person he loved. When baby Noah came down with a cold, he’d forced Stacey to go sit in the ER for hours, only to have the doctor tell her to give him some Tylenol to bring down his fever before sending them home.
Snapping at him for caring about me didn’t seem to be the right response even if his approach came straight out of a previous century. “Mark and I decided to leave the investigating to Chief McTavish this time.”
“Who’ll defend him?” Russ asked. His tone clearly said I don’t believe you.
“He hasn’t been charged with anything yet. If he needs someone to defend him, my parents will do it. And Anderson offered to go with Mark if they bring him in for further questioning until my parents get here.” Anderson had sounded almost giddy about the prospect of working with my dad, right up until he seemed to remember what that would mean for Mark and me.
Russ harrumphed, but he ended the call. Maybe I should turn my cell phone off. Gossip in Fair Haven was as inescapable as gravity.
“It’s ready when you are, Nicole,” Isabel said from behind me.
I must have been standing and staring at my phone for longer than I realized if she needed to nudge me. I pocketed my phone and sat at the tiny table she’d managed to squeeze into the space between her counters while I’d been on the phone.
I could already feel extra heat creeping up my neck at what she might have overheard. Add that heat to the warmth in her truck, and I’d be close to passing out. Time to redirect attention somewhere else. “You can call me Nikki. Do you prefer Isabel or Izzy?”
