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Third book in the Death by Chocolate series.
Finally Rick has agreed to sign the divorce papers and give Lindsay her freedom! She is sitting in her lawyer’s office waiting for him when she gets the call.
Rick is dead. Murdered by a bomb that blew up his car in his own driveway.
Lindsay is his sole heir. Or is she? She’s never met any of Rick’s family. Though he told her various conflicting stories about them, she came to believe they didn’t exist, that Rick was an alien stranded here when the mother ship left without him. But then Rick’s mother and two brothers show up followed by a woman who claims to be his ex-wife and a boy she claims is Rick’s son. Everyone except Lindsay wants to inherit Rick’s estate. What’s so valuable that someone killed for it and is ready to kill again?
Come for the Cookie Dough Cheesecake Bars, stay for the murder, mayhem and fun!
Chapter One
I sat
in the client chair in my lawyer’s office, tapping my foot and
fidgeting. Rick was fifteen minutes late for our appointment to sign
the divorce papers.
Based
on the last year and a half of his alternating between I want a
divorce and I want you back, I suppose I shouldn’t have
been surprised. But this time he’d seemed desperate to get it done
as soon as possible. In fact, he was disappointed we had to wait a
week for our attorneys to find a mutually available time to get
together.
I
figured he was in love again. He hadn’t said so, but that was
usually the reason he was ready to sign off on the divorce. Rick fell
in love regularly. He fell out just as quickly, but that would soon
no longer be my problem.
I was
looking forward to being a free woman with no more ties to Rickhead,
to owning one hundred percent of my little restaurant, Death by
Chocolate located in Pleasant Grove, a suburb of Kansas City, and to
dating Detective Adam Trent officially. Soon Rick couldn’t show up
at my front door with protestations of eternal love or plans for some
barely-legal scheme that somehow involved me. Well, he could still
show up and try to involve me, but he wouldn’t be able to use the
lever of signing the divorce papers to get me to aid and abet him.
I had
even bought a new outfit to wear to my lawyer’s office for the big
event, a dark purple raw silk pantsuit with a turquoise and lavender
scarf. Very elegant and stylish. My friend, Paula, went with me to
pick it out. When clothing goes beyond blue jeans and tee-shirts, I’m
lost.
So I
sat there in the office of Jason Beckwirth of Hoskins, Grier, Morris
and Beckwirth, looking elegant and stylish and irritated, waiting for
my former knight in tarnished armor to show up and make me the
happiest woman in the world by agreeing to unmarry me.
Why
wasn’t I waiting at my father's law firm? Because divorce is
beneath them. They’re corporate lawyers handling real estate deals,
tax law, estate planning, that sort of respectable law.
Besides that, he and Mom blamed me for the failure of a marriage
they’d tried to prevent. After trashing him for years, suddenly
when I announced I was divorcing Rick, he became their favorite
son-in-law. I’m an only child, so that was really no great feat.
Jason
looked up from the papers he was studying and smiled. He has a
deceptively genial expression, looks like the boy next door, but he
turns into the cut-throat lawyer next door in the courtroom. “Relax,”
he said. “They’ll be here any minute. You know Rick will be late
to his own funeral.”
I
crossed my legs and changed to swinging instead of tapping. “This
waiting makes me nervous. I don’t trust him.”
Jason
nodded. “With good reason. But when I talked to his lawyer last
week, he said Rick was adamant about going through with this. You
sure I can’t get you a cup of coffee?”
“No,
but a Coke would be good.” I’d only had one so far that day. Our
breakfast and lunch crowds at the restaurant were hectic and hungry,
so Paula and I had been too busy to do much eating or drinking
ourselves. My stomach rumbled and reminded me about the eating part.
Jason
called his assistant, and she brought me a glass of Coke with ice. I
preferred my Coke straight, no melting ice to dilute it, but at that
moment, I would have settled for a Pepsi.
I
finished the soft drink, swung my right leg then my left, tapped my
feet, drummed my fingers and waited.
No
Rick.
The
beige phone on Jason’s desk jangled—in a dignified manner, of
course. Jason glanced at the display. “It’s Bert,” he said and
lifted the receiver.
Bert
Hanson, Rick’s lawyer.
I
inhaled sharply. I tried to tell myself he was probably calling to
say they were stuck in traffic, but my heart sank down to the tip of
my little toe. I had a horrible feeling Rick was jacking me around
again. His lawyer was calling to say he’d cancelled.
I
watched Jason’s face, listened to every word he said, strained to
hear the other side of the conversation. I couldn’t, of course. My
neighbor Fred probably could have if he’d been there. I’m pretty
sure Fred has super powers. Not that I’ve seen him flying or
anything like that.
Yet.
Jason
didn’t say much. “I see.” He looked at me and shook his head.
That was a bad sign. “Okay. Well, thanks for letting me know.”
He
cradled the receiver, then lifted his gaze and folded his hands on
his desk. “Lindsay—”
“He’s
not coming, is he?”
Jason
sighed and shook his head. “It doesn’t look like it. He didn’t
show up at Bert's office, and Bert hasn’t been able to reach him by
phone.”
“Damn
it!” I slammed my hand on the arm of the chair, shot up and spun
around. I needed to go outside, run, hit something, eat huge
quantities of chocolate. I needed to vent the anger that flared up
inside me. This time I’d dared to hope. This time I really thought
it was going to happen. This time the disappointment was even worse
than usual.
I
thought about the night on the town Trent and I had planned in
celebration. The Divorcement Party I’d scheduled for Saturday
night. None of it was going to happen. Rick was still causing
problems, still controlling my life.
I
stomped to one side of the room then back to the other, cursing with
vehemence and sincerity. “Damn it, damn it, damn it! I knew it!
That sorry, worthless, no-good—”
My
cell phone began to play George Strait’s Blue Clear Sky,
Trent’s ringtone.
“I’m sorry.” I strode over to my purse and pulled out the phone
to shut it off and send the call straight to voice mail, but then
decided maybe I should answer and tell Trent I’d return his call in
a couple of minutes. There was no reason for me to stay in Jason’s
office any longer. We weren’t going to do business that day.
“Hi,
Trent. Can I call you right back?”
“No.”
“No?”
“I
need to talk to you right now. I wanted you to hear this from me
before you see it on television.”
On
television? No good news ever got reported on television. “Okay,
fine, hang on and let me say good-bye to Jason. I’m just leaving my
attorney's office. Rick was a no show.”
“I
know.”
“You
do?” Fred was the one who always knew things. Apparently Trent had
just developed psychic abilities too.
“There’s
been an accident.”
My
insides went cold at that sentence, and I sank back down into my
chair. The cops on TV said those words when they came to tell a
family about a death. Images of the people I cared about most whirled
through my mind. My parents, Fred, Paula, Zach, Henry… “What kind
of accident? Who?”
He
paused for what seemed like an hour but was probably closer to a
second. “It’s Rick. There was an explosion. His car was blown up
in his driveway.”
I
frowned, relieved and puzzled. That explained why he hadn’t shown
up for our meeting. He’d have trouble driving if his car exploded.
“An accident? Rick’s a terrible mechanic, but blowing up his own
car seems like quite a feat even for him.”
“He
didn’t blow it up. Somebody else did. Lindsay, you need to come
down to the station.”
“Why?
Are you craving my chocolate chip cookies?” I was grasping at
straws. I could tell from the somber tone of his voice that he wasn’t
trying to wheedle cookies.
“We
need to ask you some questions.” He paused again, and I could hear
him draw in a deep breath. “Rick was in the car when it blew up.
Lindsay, Rick’s dead.”
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