At 8:25, a loud pounding on the front door scared her. She peeked around the corner of the downstairs hallway and made out two dark shapes at the front door, barely visible through translucent strips in the shutter that covered it.
With 911 punched into the phone in her hand and ready to hit send, she slowly walked up to the door. “Who is it?”
“Detective Haines, Hernando County Sheriff’s Office. We’re looking for Mandaline Royce.”
Her hands trembled so badly she almost couldn’t unlock the door. She stood back as Detective Haines and a uniformed officer came in, both dripping water from their official yellow rain slickers.
“What happened?” Mandaline asked, terror creeping through.
Then she spotted in his hands a clear plastic bag with EVIDENCE printed on it. Her eyes flew up to the detective’s face. She didn’t want to acknowledge what she saw in the bag.
Then it wouldn’t be real.
He looked grim. “Ma’am, are you Mandaline Royce?”
She nodded.
“Ms. Royce—”
“Mandaline.”
He nodded. “Mandaline, are you here by yourself?”
She nodded again. “Julie’s coming back.” She knew her voice raced and rambled in her growing panic, but she made no attempt to silence herself. She suddenly realized she recognized the detective from Libbie’s bakery, had seen him in there a few times when she went to pick up the daily order for the store. “She had to go out to Croom, to a house out there, to do a cleansing ritual. But she’s coming back. I’m worried because she’s been gone all day. I’ve tried to call her and keep getting her voice mail. But she’s coming back. Maybe you can send an officer out there to check on her. She’s coming back.”
She didn’t miss the look the two men exchanged. Her voice grew shrill, panic fully in charge. “She’s coming back. She’s my best friend and, dammit, she’s coming back!”
The detective gently led her over to one of the sofas and made her sit. “Mandaline, I hate to have to tell you this—”
“She’s coming back!” Mandaline screamed. “Dammit, she’s coming back!”
He put the plastic bag down, the one she refused to look at, and knelt in front of her. He grasped her hands. “I’m so, so sorry,” he softly said. “She’s not.”
Mandaline shook her head, her tears falling hot and heavy. “She is! She has to, she’s my best friend!”
He shook his head a little. “Do you have someone we can call for you?” he finally asked.
“Julie. Julie Prescott. Call her. This is a mistake. You call her and—”
“Mandaline,” he gently said, “I’m sorry. She’s dead.”
Mandaline closed her eyes and shook her head, refusing to believe it even though in the depths of her soul her dreaded suspicion had come true.
“Libbie Addams,” she finally whispered. “Across the street.” She could have asked for Sachi, but she lived almost twenty minutes away on a good day. She didn’t want her out on the road in the storm.
“At the bakery?”
She nodded. “She lives there. Knock on the back door. Keep knocking. It might take her a while to come down.”
She didn’t open her eyes, but the detective never let go of her hands when she heard the front door open, wind briefly screaming in until it closed behind the deputy again.
“Mandaline, we need to talk. But I’m going to wait until he gets back with Libbie so she’s here with you, okay?”
She nodded, now slowly rocking back and forth in place, not wanting to ask how, not wanting to let go of his hands, knowing in her heart it had to be Steven Corey who murdered her.
Had to be.
Pers, who had remained quiet throughout everything, jumped up on the sofa and laid his head in her lap.
Roughly ten minutes later the uniformed deputy returned, Libbie in tow and wrapped in a pink rain jacket. She pulled off the sodden jacket and immediately rushed to Mandaline’s side and sat next to her, her arm around her shoulder. Mandaline didn’t open her eyes until she leaned her head against Libbie’s shoulder.
Detective Haines wore a concerned expression.
“I called Grover,” Libbie softly said. Mandaline didn’t know if she was speaking to her or the detective. “Grover Johnson. He’ll be here in a minute.”
“Okay,” Haines said. He took a deep breath and gently squeezed Mandaline’s hands. “We still don’t know all the details of what happened,” he softly said. “And we need someone to come…give a positive identification.”
Mandaline nodded, tears falling into her lap.
“Did she have any other family? Husband? Kids? Parents? Siblings?”
“No,” Mandaline said. “Just some cousins she disowned a few years ago.”
He nodded. “Okay.” He reached into the plastic evidence bag and pulled out a large, tan hobo-style purse.
Mandaline sobbed.
“Do you recognize this?”
She closed her eyes and nodded. “I gave it to her for Yule last year. She…she had it with her when she left here this morning.”
She heard him set the purse on the floor, followed by the sound of him removing something else from the plastic bag. “We also found this in her car.”
She opened her eyes. In his hands he held a large, bulky manila envelope she hadn’t seen before.
On the front, in her playful script, Julie had written Mandaline’s name and cell number, and the name, address, and phone number of the store.
“What’s in it?” she asked.
“We haven’t opened it,” he said. “We found it, sealed like this. It…” He coughed. “We didn’t open it because we found it separate from the…scene. It was in her vehicle.” He offered it to her.
She tried to reach for it and couldn’t force her hand to move. “Libbie, please. You open it.”
“Of course.” She took it and opened it for Mandaline.
Mandaline closed her eyes and let Libbie tell her.
“They’re forms,” Libbie slowly said. “I…uh, I think we need Grover,” she said as she looked through everything. “These are all legal stuff.”
A moment later, the large, black man himself burst through the door, shaking water off his rain jacket. “What’s going on?” he asked Libbie as he rushed over. “What happened?”
Mandaline started crying again. The detective pulled him aside and in murmured tones caught him up.
The men returned to them, Grover sitting on Mandaline’s other side. “Oh, sugar. I’m so sorry. We’re here for you.”
Libbie spoke up and handed him the paperwork. “Julie left this for her in her car. In a sealed envelope with Mandaline’s name on it. I opened it for her.”
Grover, a retired attorney, frowned as he quickly leafed through everything. “It’s…” He cleared his throat, obviously overcome with emotion. “Mandaline, honey, I don’t know how to say this other than to say it. Julie left everything to you. She had all these papers witnessed and notarized yesterday. It’s a will, power of attorney, bank paperwork, everything you’re…going to need.”
Mandaline closed her eyes and sobbed against Libbie’s shoulder.
Chapter One
Mandaline surveyed the shop Wednesday morning. A type of functional numbness had set in somewhere around Saturday, forcing her to keep up with the mundane things.
Like breathing and eating.
Her world felt enclosed in a grey cocoon she couldn’t break free of. Any time she tried, her grief hit her, hard and heavy and with razor shards of pain she couldn’t process.