She melted into me as I tipped her head back to kiss her, maybe harder than I meant to, but I would happily say “Fuck it” to this murder investigation and spend the rest of December with her.
“Hi,” Emmie whispered when I released her, my hand lingering on the back of her head. “Did you talk to Abbott?”
“Don’t you have anything better to focus on than this mystery?”
She blushed as I stared at her. “What did you have in mind?”
“No!” Zoe slammed her glass on the table, making Moose hiss. “We’re about to toss this Christmas wreath of cheaters into the fire,” Zoe declared. “You guys can go hook up in the woods like teenagers after you clear your name, Emmie.”
Emmie rubbed her hands together. “Oakley has a baby shower coming up. I think that’s the perfect time to pull back the curtain and reveal that the wizard is a lunatic who lies about being pregnant.”
“Didn’t she just have a baby shower?” Zoe scowled.
“That was the family shower and the subsequent-close-friends shower. Apparently, this is the shower for third-tier people in her life.”
“So we confront her then and put it all over the Facebook group?”
Emmie nodded. “We have to do it in a public place, or she’ll just deny it.”
“It’s safer to wait for the baby to never appear. She won’t expose her lie then. If,” I warned, “she is actually faking it. She could just be drinking while pregnant.”
“She’s lying,” Emmie said firmly.
“It’s just an insane thing to lie about. I mean, she’d get caught eventually. She has to know that.”
“Maybe she was going to steal someone else’s newborn,” Emmie suggested. “Oh, Cora was visiting Beatrice in the hospital with her granny. Maybe she has some insider knowledge.”
“Tell her to come over here, and I’ll give her free drinks and snacks if she tells us everything she knows,” Zoe urged.
Emmie texted then set her phone down.
“Cora and Beatrice must have been plotting to take down Oakley. I bet that’s what was going on in your café,” Zoe said. “Oakley knew Beatrice was about to go allGame of Throneson her, and she sent lover-boy Abbott to do the deed.”
“We need to call her out now. We can’t wait for baby shower number three or the birth. Someone else could get killed.” Emmie looked concerned.
“Oakley was cheating on Brooks with Theo and is cheating on Theo with Abbott.” I rubbed my chin. “There’s no way Oakley is attracted to Abbott,” I said, trying not to think of that fall in high school. “He must have something on her. She’s not sleeping with him because she wants to.”
Emmie nodded. “Maybe Abbot was rooting around for any detail he can put in his next article and came across evidence that implicated Oakley.”
“But you said she was doing her happy-drunk dance. That’s not what you do if you’re having blackmail sex with the creepy town reporter,” Zoe argued.
The bell over the door chimed.
“Sorry,” Cora said, rushing over. “He followed me here.”
I winced as a flashbulb went off.
“Do you have a comment, Emmie, about what you’re doing to keep people from being killed in the Santa Claws Café?” Abbott asked loudly.
The reporter took one look at me and blanched.
Emmie kicked me under the table. I knew she wanted me to talk to him.
I put on my best lawyer face and slowly stood up, buttoning my suit jacket.
“I did actually want to talk about the case with you, Abbott, if you have a moment.”
“Well, sure,” he said, fumbling with his camera and his bag and loping after me to an out-of-the-way table.
