“What do you want me to do?” he asked, when she returned.
“Why don’t you stand over by those shelves? I’ll make all the introductions once the sheriff gets here.”
Hamilton looked around the shop, his gaze resting on the nook for a moment. “Whatever,” he said.
The door opened, the bell above it jangling. Angelica stepped inside, dressed to the nines in her pink-dyed rabbit fur coat, another enormous purse, and matching magenta stilettos. “Why is your closed sign up?” she said, noting the two people in the store and turning it around to say open again. “It isn’t six o’clock yet.”
“And why aren’t you in your own store?” Tricia said, charging forward.
“I closed early and didn’t want customers pounding on my door. I’m meeting Bob here. He’s taking me to Portsmouth for dinner overlooking the harbor.”
“That’s all very nice,” Tricia said, pushing her sister back toward the door, “but I think you should just go back to the Cookery and wait for him.”
“What’s the big deal?” Angelica protested, digging her heels into the carpet. She caught sight of Artemus Hamilton lurking further back in the store. “Oh, Mr. Hamilton!” she called brightly and waved.
“Ange, you’ve got to go. Now!”
Before Tricia could maneuver here sister to the exit, the door opened again, but instead of Wendy Adams, it was a coatless Nikki who stood in the open entrance, still dressed in the white waitress garb and thick-soled shoes she wore at the patisserie—a full twenty minutes early. “What’s going on, Tricia? Frannie just stopped by the shop and told me the meeting had been canceled. But you called me not half an hour ago to say there was a special guest coming in. What gives?”
Rats! Her worst fear had come to pass.
“We do have a guest. In fact, we have two.”
“Then what—”
The woman who’d been quietly sitting in the nook, her back to the door, finally stood. Slight, with shoulder-length graying blond hair, she turned, face taut, arms rigid, and fists clenched at her sides.
“Nikki, this is Fiona Sample. She writes the Bonnie Chesterton librarian mystery series,” Tricia said.
Nikki gave the woman a quick once-over. “Oh, sorry. Nice to meet you.” She turned back to Tricia. “What’s going on? What gave Frannie the idea the meeting had been canceled?” She looked around the room, her gaze settling on the only other person in the shop. Nikki took him in, and Tricia wondered if she’d remember Hamilton standing next to Kimberly at the statue dedication.
“I could’ve brought some cookies or cupcakes if I’d known,” she said, distracted. “I should go home—change. Where is everyone else? Will they be here at six?”
“This is a private signing,” Tricia said, and turned to her guest. “Fiona, I’d like you to meet Nikki Brimfield.”
Fiona held out her hand. Nikki took it, shook it impatiently. “Nice to meet you,” she said again.
“But we’ve met before,” Fiona said, her voice shaking.
“Before?” Nikki echoed, puzzled.
“Yes. I’m your mother.”
Twenty-Four
Nikki’s jaw dropped. “My mother’s name was Faith. She died over twenty years ago.”
“She left Stoneham over twenty years ago,” Fiona said. “But here I am.” Her right hand dipped into the pocket of her long, dark skirt. She pulled out an old photograph, handed it to her daughter.
Nikki stared at the image of a little girl on a bicycle.
“I have more in my purse. Your seventh birthday. Even then you liked to bake. Remember, together we made a three-layer chocolate cake with marshmallow frosting?”
Nikki looked up from the photo to glare at the woman before her. “My mother is dead.”
Fiona swallowed. “Your father’s mother and your aunt told you that. Did they ever offer you any proof?”
Nikki opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again.
“What are you doing here? Why now?”
Fiona’s eyes filled with tears. “Because . . . I’m afraid. Afraid you’ve done something very, very bad.”
“Me? I didn’t abandon anyone. I didn’t stay away for years and years,” Nikki accused. “You let me believe you were dead. Where have you been all these years?”
“Believe me, I didn’t want to leave. I told you—”
“But you did nothing to let me know you were alive, either.”
“Your father gave me an ultimatum: leave without you—without anything—or he’d kill me. I believed him. No one told me when he died. Many years later, I was told his mother and sister had had me declared dead.”
“You could’ve come back.”
“To what? I had no home—no one, except a daughter who probably hated me. And I had a new life, a new family in Canada. Was I supposed to abandon them?”
“Family?”
“Yes, you have a half sister and brother. Twins. They’re sixteen now.”
“Don’t tell me Jess and Addie,” Nikki sneered.
“No, Jessica and Andre. My husband’s French Canadian.”
Nikki crossed her arms defiantly over her chest. “So what do you want me to do, embrace you all with loving arms?”
“I came to ask you to do what’s right. To give yourself up.”
“What?”
“You’ve done a terrible, terrible thing.”
“Just what is it you think I’ve done, killed someone?”
She took in the faces of the people surrounding her, focusing on Hamilton’s penetrating, hateful stare. “Good grief! You don’t think I killed Zoe Carter, do you?”
Fiona’s gaze swung toward Tricia.
“Tricia? What have you been telling people?” Nikki asked.
Tricia stepped forward. “I’m sorry, Nikki, but the evidence is pretty overwhelming.”
“You wouldn’t like to let me in on some of this evidence, would you?”
“You knew who the real author of the Jess and Addie Forever books was when you asked me to invite Zoe Carter to sign here at Haven’t Got a Clue. She hadn’t returned to Stoneham in several years, but an invitation to speak in her hometown as the last leg of her first and only book tour was an opportunity you could use.”
“And what was I supposed to use it for, blackmail?”
“Zoe made millions off your mother’s work.”
The anger drained from Nikki’s face, replaced by annoyance. “How was I supposed to shake her down for money? I didn’t have any proof my mother wrote the books. I didn’t even know they’d been published until a few months ago when I was browsing in this store.”
“And what was your reaction when you found out?” Fiona asked.
“Okay, I was angry. It wasn’t right that someone made money off of your work. But so what? I thought you were dead.”
“So why didn’t you out Zoe?” Tricia asked.
“What proof did I have? Was I going to tell a lawyer that Addie was afraid of thunderstorms? That was mentioned in the second book. I could tell them that in Forever Banished, when Jess had to kill his horse, Prince, because he’d broken a leg, my mom cried buckets. But guess what? By the time I knew of the books being published, they’d been in print for years. Why would anyone ever believe some down-and-out baker in the boonies of New Hampshire? It would sound like sour grapes—or some kind of greedy envy.”
“There’s more,” Tricia said. “The attack on the statue in the park. I saw a satchel full of tools in the patisserie on Sunday.”
“So what? Steve knocked out an old closet so we could have more space for the baking trays.”
“There was a can of red spray paint in the bag as well.”
“Is it against the law to possess spray paint?”
“And Kimberly was attacked by someone wielding a sledgehammer,” Hamilton said, finally joining in the conversation.
“Did she point the finger at me?”
“She doesn’t remember what happened that night,” he admitted.
“Very convenient,” Nikki said.
“Someone forced Tricia’s car off the road Sunday night. We could’ve been killed,” Angelica said.