Raspberry Crush (39 page)

Grinning down at her, Seth pulled her close and pressed a warm, gentle kiss to her mouth. "I love you," he said softly.

I love you, too,
Billy thought, and made a concerted effort not to cry.

* * *

After checking on Pike, Billy hopped down the stairs to the lobby of her brownstone, pausing at her mailbox on the wall. She wasn't expecting anything good, just bills and ads, but very disturbingly, she'd set her hopes too high.

Among the bills and ads was a plain white envelope. It had Billy's name and address printed neatly on it, in blue ink and all caps, and there was no return address.

It lay mysteriously in her pile of mail, setting her on edge. Until she reminded herself that the threatening notes she'd gotten before had been from Melissa, who hadn't bothered her since their confrontation, and who ultimately seemed to be harmless. Twisted but harmless.

Running her finger under the seam of the sealed envelope, Billy tore it open. She pulled out the slip of paper inside and unfolded it. "Oh, no," she whispered as she read, feeling her heart slam hard against her ribs and hearing it pound fiercely in her ears.

Her stomach clenched nervously as she pressed a hand to her chest and swallowed a full, solid lump of near terror in her throat. "Oh, no, what's happening?"

She flipped over the torn envelope to check the postmark.

Churchill, Massachusetts.

Swallowing hard, Billy pressed a hand to her racing heart and another to her forehead. She shut her eyes and tried not to panic, but it was too late.

Someone in Churchill had sent her a note that said
, You'd better stop what you're doing—before you die.

* * *

That evening while Billy was at work, Seth surfed the Net, anxiously trying to find any information he could about Ted Schneider, Greg Dappaport, and a dozen random people in Churchill he could think of. He had been so shocked by Billy's frantic call earlier, telling him about the letter she'd received. He couldn't believe it! He'd thought the threats were over; he'd thought she was completely safe.

Cursing out loud when his computer froze, he banged hard on the keyboard. The mouse kicked back in, which undoubtedly had nothing to do with Seth.

He couldn't even look at the pizza that had gone cold, or the can of Coke he'd popped open right before Billy had called.
Goddamn it.
He hated feeling so powerless to protect her. If it had been up to him he would've insisted that Billy skip work tonight and go straight to the police with him, but she'd called him from the Copley Mall, telling him that she wanted to go, that at least she felt safe there, and that they would go to the police when he picked her up.

He'd left a message for Joe, but was still waiting to hear back, and in the meantime he was a desperate man scouring the Internet for any scrap of useful information. Who the hell could be behind this? Was it someone he
knew,
for chrissake?

When he reached across his desk for a pen and pad, he accidentally knocked his mouse, causing it to click the translation bar on his browser. He hit "back" without even thinking, but then registered something he'd just seen.

Quickly, Seth hit "forward," pressed "reload," and reread a link that came up on his screen:
English Translations of German Surnames.
He zeroed in on one name in particular, and when he clicked on the link, it took him only a few seconds to find the answer.

* * *

Work had gone by pretty uneventfully that night. Donna had been in the back for the past few hours, keeping to herself. Apparently Des was still holding a grudge against Billy, because he'd been giving her the semi-silent treatment all night; finally she'd given up on him, and whenever she'd had a question she'd covertly asked Katie's grandmother to ask
for
her. It was all very ridiculous, and Billy might even laugh if she weren't so preoccupied thinking about the note she'd gotten a few hours earlier.

She'd called Melissa's cell phone to ask her if she knew anything about it—i.e., did it—but predictably Melissa hadn't called her back. But Billy didn't believe it was Melissa. Not this time. She might be bitter, but she wasn't certifiable, and she definitely didn't want to get in trouble with the law. But, God,
who?

It had occurred to her that maybe Joe had been right. He'd made a comment at Uno's that maybe someone didn't like the idea of Billy and Seth spending so much time together. Billy had blown it off at the time. But now...

Pam kept popping into her mind. Not that Pam wanted Seth, but there was no question that her aunt Sally wanted Seth
for
Pam. The question was: How
much
did she want it?

The bakery had been closed for about ten minutes now. The light was shut off in the front, and everyone was working in the back when, all of a sudden, Billy went to shut down the register and heard someone calling her name. She looked up. Seth was standing outside the metal gate that locked the store. Instinctively she checked the clock on the wall, because she wasn't expecting Seth until after cleanup, which wouldn't be for about another half hour.

"Sweetheart, I need to talk to you," Seth whispered, motioning with his hand for her to come closer.

Eyes wide with surprise, Billy darted to the side door, unlocked it, and let him inside. "Seth, what's up? You're early—is everything okay?"

"Yeah, but I couldn't wait till later to tell you this."

"What?"

"I figured out who killed Ted."

"You
did?"
she said, shocked. "Omigod, who? And how did you figure it out?"

"It was an accident. And you're not even going to believe it." After he explained about stumbling onto the wrong Web site, he said, "See, Schneider is a German name."

"Yeah..."

"And
'schneider'
in English means 'tailor.' "

"I knew I should've changed my name."

Billy and Seth whipped their heads around. Mrs. Tailor, who must've overheard Seth say that he'd solved Ted's murder, had come quietly out of the back... and was dragging Des along with her, holding a knife to his throat.

* * *

"All right, now just do what I say and I won't have to splatter Des's guts on the floor," Mrs. Tailor said, her voice holding a steely calm. The image was ridiculous; she was a little wizened woman and Des was a young, quasi-virile man, but she must've caught him at a vulnerable moment, and now the knifepoint was digging so far into his neck, Billy couldn't believe he wasn't bleeding yet.

"Oh, my God, Mrs. Tailor," Billy stammered. "I don't understand this." She looked to Seth for clarification, and he took her hand and squeezed it for comfort. Then it clicked. "Wait a minute—
you're
Gertrude Swain?"

"Ding, ding, ding!" she said mockingly. "That's right.
Formerly
Gertrude Swain—now I'm Gertrude Tailor. Divorced women can keep their married names, can't they?"

Jeez, how stupid did Billy feel? She'd never even known Katie's grandmother's first name. That could've saved her a lot of trouble.

"Please," Des begged, croaking out the words, "please don't hurt me."

"What do you want?" Billy said, panicked. "Please let Des go. He didn't do anything."

"Yeah—we'll just all forget all about this," Seth said, taking Billy's hand in his and squeezing it with fierce affection. Billy gripped it back, praying that God would get her out of this.
God, please, I don't ask for much.

Okay, I do—but this time I mean it.

"Oh, I'll be happy to let him go," Mrs. Tailor said, "after
I'm
safely gone." She motioned with her head for Seth and Billy to go into the back. "C'mon, move or I slit his throat right here, right now."

They followed her orders for Des's sake. Des was whimpering a little in pain from the knife point, and hunched over sideways, while Mrs. Tailor practically hung on him to keep her knife pressed to his neck. "You two, get in the freezer," she ordered Billy and Seth.

Billy held her hands up and started moving backward to the walk-in freezer. "But I don't understand this," she stammered. " I mean, what happened? Have you been after Ted all this time?"

"I haven't been after him at all. I moved on—left my conniving family behind and started over. Of course, that's not to say my view of the world wasn't tainted. But when I saw Ted at the jubilee... what can I say? I couldn't resist the opportunity to give him what he had coming," Mrs. Tailor said, then muttered, "No-good fortune-hunting bastard."

"But he must've recognized you at the jubilee," Seth asked, backing up slowly alongside Billy. "Why didn't he say anything?"

Mrs. Tailor barked a harsh, hateful laugh. "You'd think he would've recognized me, wouldn't you? My heart almost stopped when I saw him at the jubilee. I couldn't decide if I should confront him or just leave before he had a chance to see me. But when he came up to me, I knew he'd seen me. I thought he was going to try to apologize, and I was going to tell him what I really thought of him. Only he
didn't
recognize me. He didn't want to apologize. He wanted a
drink.
And you know what he said to me?"

"No, what?" Billy said, because no one else did. She and Seth were poised at the door to the walk-in freezer, while Des had terror imprinted on his face as Mrs. Tailor pressed the blade harder against his neck.

"He said, 'Hey, Grandma, go make yourself useful.' I almost died. Here I was his
wife
, that motherfucking
asshole!"

"Oh, man, that's messed up," Des agreed, even though he was still at knife point. But he was right—it
was
messed up. Ted Schneider had been a class-A jackass!

Mrs. Tailor nodded and bitterly continued, "I was furious—livid—so I'd been a few years older than him. But to not even
recognize
me? Well, what can I say? I snapped. The next time he came around, asking me about the nuts, I remembered how severe his allergy was. And I knew chocolate was his weakness, so after he talked to Georgette I fixed a paper plate of double-fudge brownies and took it to him. He never saw it coming."

"But wait," Billy said, confused. "Georgette's fudge brownies don't have nuts in them."

"They do when you crush up nuts, mix them with caramel, and drizzle it on top."
Ob.
"I thought the whole matter was closed, but when I heard you talking to your aunt about how you'd been digging into Ted's death, the threats you'd gotten—and how you were going to
keep
digging—"

"So
you
sent me the note," Billy said as she put it all together. Mrs. Tailor had been working the day that Aunt Pen had come into the bakery, but Billy hadn't paid her any mind. She never did; she was just a sweet, harmless old lady. Or not. "But the letter was from Churchill."

"I mailed it from Churchill to throw you off. It wasn't exactly brain surgery," Mrs. Tailor remarked. "Now get in the freezer!"

"Please, Mrs. Tailor, you don't want to—"

"I'm warning you, Billy," she said, "I like you, but if you don't cooperate, Des here is going to end up with a hole in his throat the size of a muffin." Des groaned at the disturbingly graphic, yet timely metaphor, and Billy and Seth obliged, quickly darting inside the icy-cold, pitch-dark freezer. "And shut the door behind you," Mrs. Tailor snapped.

"Please, Mrs. Tailor, you'll never get away with this. Donna's just upstairs," Billy cried as Seth swung the freezer door shut.

"Actually, Donna left early," Mrs. Tailor called out. "I told her I'd lock up for her. What a fortunate coincidence, huh?"

In the icy darkness Billy shook and shivered, and Seth pulled her close for heat. Running his hands over her body, he tried like crazy to warm her up. "I'm so sorry," he whispered. "I had no idea she was working tonight." They could hear Des pleading on the other side, and Seth felt fucking awful for him. Christ, he'd never meant for this to happen when he'd come to tell Billy what he'd learned. It never even occurred to him that Mrs. Tailor would be working at the bakery tonight.
Goddamn it!
He was solely responsible for what was happening; if Billy or Des got hurt, it would be all his fault.

God, Billy
... He couldn't let anything happen to her.

"I can't believe this is happening," Billy whispered, still trying to process everything that was happening. Mrs. Tailor—Katie's grandma—a
killer
? And that begged the question...

"What about Katie?" she called out, not knowing whether Mrs. Tailor had heard. Teeth chattering, she tightened her arms around Seth, trying to absorb his strength, needing him to settle the fear still skittering along her nerves. With a little less vigor, she called again, "What about
Katie
?" Did she have any idea about all of this?

No, she couldn't; Katie was too sweet and bubbly for the darkness of murder.

"I'll get in touch with Katie in good time," Mrs. Tailor called through the freezer door. "And when I tell her everything, believe me, she'll understand. Sorry it turned out this way, everyone. I really did like you all, but life's tough all over. Believe me, I should know."

There was a loud bang and then silence.

"What's happening?" Billy whispered frantically, not sure if she and Seth should come out. What would Mrs. Tailor do to Des if they did? Or maybe she'd already done it.

"Let's go," Seth said, taking her hand and tentatively leading her out of the freezer.

Mrs. Tailor was gone.

"Oh, my God, Des!" Billy cried when she saw her coworker lying on the floor.

"She must've knocked him out with that," Seth said, pointing to the big metal pan that had rolled under the sink. While Billy raced over and crouched down beside Des, Seth grabbed the phone on the wall and called 911.

"He's still alive," Billy said on a breath. "Oh, thank God."

After practically throwing the phone back on its hook, Seth pulled Billy into his arms, trying to take the cold from her, trying to take away her shiver. "It's all right," he said gently, rocking her quivering body tightly in his arms. "It's over, sweetheart."