The Bracelet (4 page)

Piper sat up straight. So, it
had
been Zara's car in front of CVS. But that didn't mean the drugstore was the only place Zara had gone.

“You still haven't told me yet. Was there a reason why you stopped over?” asked Robert.

Piper felt an ache in her chest as she watched her brother enjoy his beer. He seemed so happy, so oblivious to anything being wrong. How could she tell him her suspicions about his wife without wounding him?

She couldn't.

“Can't a girl visit her brother just because she feels like it?” she asked.

Piper drove home, agonizing about what she should tell the police. No matter what, she had to report her suspicions about the theft tomorrow morning. If Poppy had been attacked and robbed, that was the only thing she could do. But she didn't have to tell the cops about Zara. She decided she would describe what she actually saw and nothing else.

She would tell them about the person rushing down the stairs. They would surely ask for a description. She could truthfully say she hadn't seen the person's face. And if they asked what the person was wearing, she would tell the truth. But there were lots of purple ski jackets out there, weren't there?

As for the Teaberry gum wrapper in the wastebasket, the police could find that for themselves if they searched Poppy's apartment. Piper wasn't going to volunteer the information. And she certainly wasn't going to tell them about Zara's fondness for the flavor or her fondness for nice jewelry.

The police would have to conduct their own investigation. At the end of the day, Piper just couldn't rat on her sister-in-law.

When she walked into the front hallway, she met her parents. They were putting on their coats. Her mother was smiling.

“I just called the hospital and Poppy is conscious,” she said. “They've upgraded him to stable. He can have visitors. Your father and I are going over. Do you want to come with us?”

When they entered the hospital room, Poppy was sitting up in bed. His body was covered with a green cotton blanket, his white hair fanned across the pillow. He looked wan but his blue eyes shone brightly beneath the bandage wrapped around his brow and head.

“You gave us quite a scare,” Terri said as she placed a box of lemon and poppy seed mini-muffins on the bedside table. She took the old man's hand. “Do you remember what happened?”

“It was my own fault,” said Poppy. “I haven't been taking my blood pressure medicine the way I should. I remember feeling woozy and then . . . nothing. I must have passed out and hit my head on the desk as I fell backward.”

Piper explained how she had come to deliver the cookies and found him lying on the apartment floor. “You know, your front door was unlocked,” she said gently. “It opened right up when I knocked on it.”

Poppy shook his head. “I must get the landlord to fix that latch. It doesn't catch right. And I have to pay more attention to making sure I remember to lock the door.”

“Do you need anything? Is there anything you'd like us to get from your apartment?” asked Piper's father.

“My glasses,” said Poppy. “But my next-door neighbor is coming with them. She had the landlord let her into my apartment. She's a nice girl but, between us, she puzzles me. Sometimes she seems so relaxed and calm while, other times, she's all wound up and rushing around like a whirling dervish. I don't understand it.” He looked at Piper. “She called to see how I was and said you came over to tell her what happened. That was very nice of you, Piper.”

Poppy reached over and pulled at the panel on the front of the bed table, extracting a white plastic bag and riffling through it.

“Gum, anyone?” asked the old man as he held up a small package. “Teaberry. I used to love it but I hadn't had any in years; in fact, I didn't even know they still made it. But after I smelled it again when your daughter-in-law was chewing it in the bakery the other morning, Terri, I made it a point to get a pack.”

Piper felt like she could breathe again. Zara hadn't left the chewing gum wrapper in Poppy's trash can. Poppy had put it there himself. Zara hadn't attacked Poppy to get the bracelet before rushing out of the apartment and leaving the door open behind her. Poppy hadn't been attacked at all and he had left the door ajar himself. But where
was
the bracelet?

“I do have a favor to ask,” said Poppy.

“Of course,” said Terri. “What is it?”

“Will you hold on to this for me?” he asked as he fished the brown leather wallet from the plastic bag and handed it to Terri. He leaned over and whispered, “I don't want to leave it lying around here. There's a lot of money in there. I took your advice, went to the jewelry store this morning and sold the bracelet. The jeweler gave me several thousand dollars for it.”

Walking down the hospital hallway with her parents, Piper mentally berated herself for being so quick to think the worst of her sister-in-law. It wasn't anything to be proud of.

Piper knew she'd better learn something from this. She silently resolved to be nicer to Zara, be more patient and give her the benefit of the doubt. At the same time, Piper was profoundly grateful and that she hadn't verbalized her suspicions to anyone else. Nobody had really been hurt. Not her brother, not her parents and, most of all, not Zara.

As they pushed through the heavy revolving door that led from the hospital lobby to the parking lot, Piper saw a young woman hurrying in from the other side. The woman looked through the glass panel at Piper and, for an instant, their eyes locked. Piper recognized her as the tenant in the apartment next to Poppy's. The woman smiled and lifted her arm to wave, a pair of glasses in her hand. She was wearing a purple ski jacket.

 

Read on for more mystery and mayhem

and weddings with Piper Donovan

from Mary Jane Clark

An Excerpt from

To Have and to Kill

An Excerpt from

The Look of Love

 

An Excerpt from

T
O
H
AVE AND TO
K
ILL

 

P
ROLOGUE

H
e took her hand and squeezed it in the darkness. She held on tight as the giant dome above them filled with bright stars, flaring, exploding, and spraying the sky with colors. Listening to the explanation of what the heavenly bodies meant to mankind, the couple felt the stars rushing past them faster and faster, as if they themselves were careening through the Milky Way.

He leaned over and whispered close to her ear: “Make a wish on one of those stars.”

She closed her eyes and did as she was told.

When the planetarium show was over, she started to get up from her seat. “That was fantastic,” she said. “There was so much of that I didn't know. I sometimes forget that the sun is a star and that, without it, we wouldn't be alive.” She gently pulled at him to get up.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Sit down again.”

Usually, as one group filed out of the theater, the next filed in. He had deliberately chosen the last show of the day so they would be left unrushed and alone.

“I made a wish on one of those stars, too,” he said. “I wished that you'd say yes.”

She looked at him, her eyes widening.

“I'm asking you to marry me, sweetheart,” he said, taking both of her hands in his. “I couldn't think of a better place to ask you than here among the stars where you belong.”

She inhaled deeply, pausing for just a moment as she remembered the disturbing letter hidden at the back of her desk drawer.

His eyes searched her face. “What's wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she answered, trying to ignore her apprehension. “Of course I'll marry you. Yes. Yes. Yes.”

Tears welling up in her eyes, she threw her arms around his neck and they held on tight to each other.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” he said, pulling back and reaching into his coat pocket. He took out a little red box and opened it. Inside was a large, clear diamond solitaire set in platinum.

Her left hand trembled as she held it out and he slipped the ring on her finger. This is what she had wanted, what she had hoped would happen. But as she kissed him with joy, something else was nagging at her, leaving her feeling unsettled. For some reason, a portion of the star show they had just seen was repeating itself in her mind. What the narrator said had hit a nerve somewhere deep inside her and somehow felt like a warning.

She smiled at her fiancé but shivered as she recalled what she had just learned. Explosions ended some stars' cosmic lives. There were stars that burned hot, lived fast, and died young.

 

C
HAPTER
O
NE

Sunday, November 28 . . . Twenty-six days until the wedding

M
other and daughter
worked
, side by side, in the kitchen of The Icing on the Cupcake. Piper Donovan mixed buttercream while her mother poured smooth batter into round baking pans. The front of the store was closed, the shelves emptied of the rolls, Danishes, and coffee cakes eagerly purchased by the morning's many customers. The ever-present aroma of sweet delights wafted throughout the building.

With her long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, Piper stood at the table laden with bricks of butter, cartons of eggs, and bags of flour and sugar. She picked up a flower nail—a thin, two-inch-long metal rod with a small, round platform affixed to the end—and secured a square of parchment paper to it. Holding the flower nail in one hand, she applied firm and steady pressure to the plump bag she held with the other. Piper concentrated on the stream of stiff buttercream icing that oozed out from the piping tip and fashioned it into an acorn shape on top of the parchment. Then, picking up another decorating bag, with a different tip, she piped a wide strip as she turned the nail, cloaking the top of the acorn completely. Piper slowly spun the nail, making longer petals that overlapped again and again. When she reached the bottom, she had created a perfect yellow rose.

She repeated the process over and over, gently sliding the parchment squares with the finished roses onto baking sheets before storing them in the refrigerator.

“You've gotten so good at it, Piper,” said her mother as she leaned forward to get a closer look at the flowers.

Piper shrugged and smiled mischievously. “And all those years you complained I never paid attention to you,” she said.

“I really appreciate you taking the time to do this, honey,” said Terri Donovan. “It's getting so I can't keep up with everything. I hated to do it, but I even had to turn down three wedding cake orders. Having these flowers made in advance will really help me at the end of the week when I have to make the cake I did promise to do.”

“It's no big deal. I had to come out again anyway with more of my stuff. Might as well do these while I'm here.”
But it
is
a big deal if my mother's turning down wedding cake orders,
she thought.

“Do you have much more to bring back?” asked Terri as she sifted confectioners' sugar into a mixing bowl.

“A few more cartons and the rug,” said Piper, squeezing out a final delicate yellow flower. “I sold pretty much all the furniture and the kitchen things to the guy who is taking over my apartment.”

“Good,” said Terri. “None of it owes you anything. We found most of it at tag sales and, when the time comes for you to get another place, we'll be able to find more.”

As she brought the decorating utensils to the sink and began washing them, Piper was thinking about getting back to the city and the audition she had in the morning.

Terri reached out and touched her daughter's arm. “It's going to be great having you back home, Piper,” she said softly.

As Terri spoke, her eyes were trained over Piper's shoulder.

Piper turned around to see whom her mother was looking at. There was nobody else in the kitchen. “What are you looking at, Mom?”

“I'm looking at
you,
honey.”

“Uh, no. No, you're not. You were looking at something behind me.”

“I was not,” insisted Terri. She nodded in the direction of the cleaned piping tips. “Make sure you put everything back exactly where you found it.”

“Got it, Mom.”

Strange. Was her mother losing it? Usually she was pretty laid-back, but recently she had become almost maniacal about having everything in its place. And there were other things Piper had noticed. On Thanksgiving, her mother missed a few of the glasses when she poured the apple cider. She had ruined the gravy, stirring in confectioners' sugar instead of flour. And when a customer handed Terri a $10 bill this morning, she pulled change for $20 from the register. Thank goodness they had honest customers.

Piper hadn't really thought much about each individual event, but now, as she concentrated on the decorating, she realized something was up. “Mom, is something wrong?” she asked gently.

Piper observed that her mother's jaw tightened as she shook her head.

“No, nothing's wrong, Piper. Just too much to do and not enough time to do it. I guess I'm a little tense, and when you're tense, you make mistakes.”

Piper didn't buy it, but she kept silent. She knew she was on the brink of having to set major boundaries with her parents about her own privacy. So it was only fair that she gave her mother hers.

As she carefully arranged the piping tips in their container, Piper knew that, soon enough, she would figure out what was going on with her mother. When you lived in the same house with someone, there was no place to hide.

Unfortunately, that worked both ways.