Of Spice and Men Read online

  While he stepped out onto the back porch with Bentley, I dug into my coleslaw. I’d just swallowed a delicious forkful when I heard a muffled chime sound nearby. I paused, but couldn’t identify it, so I refocused on my meal.

  I heard the chime again a second later. This time I thought it had come from my tote bag, sitting on the floor next to my chair. That puzzled me, since I didn’t have my cellphone set to make that sound.

  I set down my fork when I heard the chime a third time. Grabbing my bag, I dug through it. When I caught sight of an unfamiliar flash of magenta, I zeroed in on it, fishing the object out of my tote. I held the item in my hand, staring at it. It was a cellphone, in a bright magenta case. It definitely wasn’t my phone, which was still tucked safely in the interior pocket of my bag, but it looked familiar. I was fairly certain it was the phone I’d seen in Alyssa’s hand when she’d been here at Brett’s place earlier. But what the heck was it doing in my bag?

  Brett’s voice floated in through the open back door, calling out to Bentley, trying to hurry him along. I stared at the phone for another second before deciding to give in to my curiosity. Feeling a hint of guilt, I woke up the phone, and a photo of Haze Moody and Alyssa appeared on the lock-screen. Haze was kissing Alyssa on the cheek as she smiled her perfect white smile for the camera.

  I grabbed my own phone and Googled Alyssa’s birth date, trying the numbers on her device. No luck. As I frowned at the lock-screen, another idea popped into my head. This time I Googled Haze Moody’s birth date. When I punched the numbers in, the phone unlocked.

  Another twinge of guilt wiped away my smile of victory as I delved into Alyssa’s text messages. I knew I shouldn’t be snooping into her private conversations, but the fact was that I couldn’t resist. The most recent texts—likely the source of the chimes I’d heard—had come from someone named Amber and seemed innocent enough. Whoever Amber was, it appeared as though she was simply checking in with Alyssa to see how filming was going in the “backwoods” of the Olympic Peninsula.

  I rolled my eyes at that and moved on to a different conversation. This time, as I scrolled back through the messages, I slowed down to read them more carefully, the food I’d eaten sitting heavily in my stomach. I set the phone on the table when I heard footsteps out on the back porch.

  Bentley burst in through the back door, his tail wagging happily, Brett right behind him. The dog nuzzled my hand with his cold nose, and I rested a hand on his head while Brett shut the door and returned to the table. As he sat down and reached for his glass of water, Brett eyed the device with its magenta case.

  “You got a new phone?” he asked, clearly puzzled.

  “No,” I said. “It’s Alyssa’s phone.”

  Brett set down his glass, his eyebrows drawing together. “Okay,” he said slowly. “What’s it doing here?”

  “Good question. I found it in my tote bag.”

  “How did it end up there?”

  “I’ve been wondering the same thing. My guess is that Alyssa put it there before she went to talk with Ray.”

  Comprehension dawned in his eyes and he frowned. “When she bumped into you.”

  I nodded and nudged the device toward him. “I’m pretty sure she did it on purpose, probably so she wouldn’t have it on her if Ray decided he wanted to seize it from her.”

  His blue eyes darkened with wariness. “I have a feeling I don’t want to know why she wouldn’t want Ray to get his hands on her phone.”

  “You probably don’t,” I said. “But I think you should take a look at her text messages.”

  He raised his eyes from the phone to meet mine.

  “Yes, I snooped,” I admitted. “Maybe it’s a good thing I did.” I pushed the phone closer to him. “Check out the conversation she had yesterday with someone named Michelle.”

  Reluctantly, Brett picked up the phone. A couple of taps took him to the text messages and he read in silence, scrolling through the conversation before going back and reading it again. He shut off the screen and set the phone on the table.

  “Michelle is her sister,” was all he said, though I could read far more from his face.

  The conversation troubled him, as I knew it would. The messages Alyssa had exchanged with her sister on the day of Christine’s death referred to the special-effects makeup artist, sometimes with unflattering language. But the most worrying message was the last one Alyssa had sent, which read, What she has with Haze is nothing compared to what I had with him. He belongs with me. It’s time for her fantasy to end once and for all.

  Michelle had written back, Don’t go off the deep end, but Alyssa hadn’t sent a response to that text.

  “She was clearly jealous of Christine and Haze’s relationship,” I said. “And that last message of hers doesn’t look good in light of what happened last night.”

  Brett worked his jaw, taking a few seconds before speaking. “No,” he eventually agreed. “It doesn’t look good.”

  “She had a motive, so if she doesn’t have an alibi…” I let the sentence hang, watching Brett as he stared at the blank screen of Alyssa’s phone. “Do you still think she’s innocent?”

  He raised his eyes. “I do.”

  My jaw nearly dropped. “But, Brett, she obviously hated Christine with a passion.”

  Brett pushed back his chair and got to his feet. Bentley sat up and watched as he paced across the kitchen, running a hand down his face. “Sure, she hated her, but that doesn’t mean she killed her.”

  “Someone did,” I pointed out.

  “Not Alyssa.”

  I wrestled with my rising frustration, trying to keep it in check. “How can you be so sure?”

  “I lived with her for nearly three years. She has her faults, but she’s not a killer.”

  I pushed my lunch away, my appetite so far gone that it was nothing more than a distant memory.

  I lived with her for nearly three years.

  Those words echoed in my head, so loud that I could hardly form a thought. I struggled to push them out of my mind.

  “Don’t you think you might be letting your feelings for her cloud your judgment?”

  “My feelings for her? Marley—”

  Someone rapped on the front door. Bentley barked and charged out of the kitchen. I could feel Brett’s eyes on me, but I stared at the remains of my meal, a storm of emotions swirling around inside me. I sensed that he was about to say something more, but whoever was on the front porch knocked on the door again, harder this time.

  I continued to stare at the cooling food until Brett left the kitchen, heading for the foyer. As soon as he was gone from sight, I quickly wrapped up my leftovers and slung the straps of my tote bag over my shoulder.

  “Alyssa,” I heard Brett say with surprise, and the storm inside of me picked up in intensity.

  I grabbed the phone off the table and marched down the hall to the foyer. Alyssa stood on the front porch, Bentley sniffing at her high-heeled boots. When he saw me coming, he lost interest in the actress and trotted back indoors to meet me as I reached Brett’s side.

  “I misplaced my phone, and thought maybe I’d left it here,” Alyssa was saying.

  “I think we all know where you left it,” I said, holding up the device.

  She reached out to grab it from me, but Brett’s hand reached it first.

  “I can see why you wouldn’t want my uncle to get hold of this,” he said.

  Alyssa’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “That last text message you sent your sister.”

  “You hacked my phone?” She snatched the device out of Brett’s hand.

  “Alyssa,” he said, and I could tell he was struggling to stay calm, “things aren’t looking good for you.”

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  She tapped away at the phone, and I figured she was probably erasing the text messages. I wondered if she knew there were still ways to retrieve them.

  “Your uncle thinks I kille
d Christine. I have to be on set in less than two hours, and he’s probably about to arrest me. If that happens, my career could be over.” She shoved her phone into her bag. When she looked at Brett, she made an effort to rein herself in. “I didn’t kill her, all right? And I worked too damn hard to get where I am to have everything fall apart.”

  “So what are you going to do?” Brett asked.

  “I was hoping you would do something. Like I said, I’ve got scenes to film this afternoon.”

  “What is it you want me to do?”

  She threw her hands in the air. “I don’t know! Something.”

  “Alyssa…”

  “You were ready to marry me at one time, and now you won’t help keep me out of jail? I thought you were the one person I could count on.”

  Alyssa and I both stared at Brett, waiting to see how he’d respond. He looked like Alyssa had punched him in the stomach, and I wondered if I wore a similar expression. What little food I’d eaten sat in my stomach like a heavy stone, and silence rang around us.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Brett said eventually.

  A brilliant smile flashed across Alyssa’s face, wiping away her frustration in an instant. She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “I knew I could count on you.” She turned and hurried down the steps. “I have to go.”

  She climbed into a waiting car, and the vehicle pulled away from the curb.

  I stepped out onto the porch. “I have to go, too.”

  “Marley, wait.”

  I was already on my way down the steps.

  “Can’t we talk this through?” he called after me.

  “Not right now we can’t,” I said over my shoulder.

  To my relief, he didn’t follow me, leaving me to storm off down the driveway and toward home.

  Chapter 9

  I took the beach route home, fuming the whole way. When I reached the section of beach located behind my Victorian, I stood and faced the ocean. The clouds overhead had darkened since I went out for my run, and the wind had picked up. The blustery air currents whipped my hair across my face and brought the waves crashing into shore with extra height and vigor. It was as if the weather had stirred itself up to match my mood, the gray-blue ocean as unsettled as my emotions.

  I stooped down and closed my fingers around a small pebble, hurling it out over the surface of the sea. Instead of skipping across the water, it sank upon first contact. I tried again with another stone, but only managed to get it to skip once before it disappeared beneath the churning waves. Between my internal storminess and that of the ocean, my current success at skipping rocks rated about level with my ability to control my frustration.

  Giving up on the rocks, I sat down on one of the many sun-bleached logs that littered the beach. I closed my eyes and focused on taking in deep breaths of the cool, salty air. Together with the familiar sound of breaking waves, it helped to calm me, though only slightly. Not even my beloved beach could completely erase all the turmoil currently going on inside me.

  My mind kept replaying my last encounter with Alyssa and Brett. I didn’t like how I felt whenever I saw or thought of the actress, but I couldn’t seem to stop the reaction. It wasn’t that I suspected she would lure Brett into betraying me—I’d told the truth when I said I believed him—but he’d obviously loved her at one time, and part of me worried that maybe those feelings weren’t entirely gone.

  They had a history of at least three years together, after all, whereas Brett and I had been together only for a few months. He’d even wanted to marry her. It hurt that he hadn’t told me that part, that I’d had to hear it from Alyssa first, and it also left me baffled. Although I didn’t doubt that the actress could turn on the charm when it suited her, her personality left plenty to be desired. Sure she was gorgeous, but had that really been enough to blind Brett to her other characteristics? If so, that didn’t fit with the Brett I knew, and that worried me. What if I didn’t know him as well as I thought I did?

  I’d fallen for him in short order back in the spring, and since then my feelings had only continued to intensify. The mere thought of our relationship crumbling scared me so much that I had to take deep breaths until the panic flaring up inside me simmered down.

  Maybe I had nothing to worry about, but I was so muddled that I couldn’t think clearly about the situation. It didn’t help that a twinge of shame had joined in with all my other jumbled emotions. I wished I hadn’t walked away from Brett the way I had, but at the same time I knew I couldn’t have had a conversation with him at that time. I needed a chance to cool down, to clear my head. How long that would take, I didn’t know, but judging by my current state, it wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

  I was a mess, and the temptation to remain there staring at the ocean and stewing in my emotions was hard to resist. That wouldn’t get me anywhere, though. I knew that. What I needed was someone to talk to, someone to vent to. I considered calling my mom or Cassidy, one of my friends in Seattle, but I quickly discounted those options. I wanted company, someone who could hang out with me and keep me from dwelling on my troubles once I’d vented them.

  Fishing my phone out of my tote bag, I sent a text to Lisa, asking if she’d be free once she finished work. While I waited for a response, I walked along the beach, away from town, following the curve of the coastline. As I passed Gerald Teeves’s property, I eyed his large glass-and-steel house. No matter how many times I walked by the Teeves home, I couldn’t get used to the sight of it. Most of the homes along the beachfront were original Victorians, but Teeves—a developer—had torn down the old house that had stood there and replaced it with one that I and many others viewed as an eyesore. I was lucky that I couldn’t see more than a glimpse or two of the roof from my own house, and I was glad that no one else with a beachfront home had sold their property to Teeves.

  The windows of the big house stared at me like blank eyes, and there was no sign of movement from anywhere on the property. The house might be modern and equipped with top-of-the-line everything, but it struck me as cold and unwelcoming, a stark contrast to the warmth and charm of the rambling Victorians on either side of it. Now that his son, Logan, had gone to live in Portland, I wondered if Teeves felt lonely in the big, empty house.

  Maybe he was too busy to notice.

  When I reached the eastern end of the cove, I paused at the point to look out at the water, the slate-gray sky, and the San Juan Islands. I swept aside the curls the wind had sent dancing across my eyes and checked my phone.

  Sure, Lisa had replied. Want to go out for dinner?

  Can you come over to my place? I wrote back, not wanting to share my troubles with her in public.

  Will do, was her response. See you later.

  Tucking my phone back into my bag, I set off along the beach again, this time heading for home. I had some time to kill before Lisa arrived, but I figured I could channel some of my stormy emotions into cleaning. The main floor needed vacuuming, and some of the windows could use a good washing. When I arrived home, I spent a minute or two greeting Flapjack, but cleaning was my next priority. As I worked, I tried not to think about anything, but I wasn’t particularly successful. Thoughts of Brett and Alyssa kept churning around and around inside my mind, spurring me to work harder to release my pent-up energy. I vacuumed and washed until the floors were spotless and the windows were sparkling clean. I didn’t feel much better when I was done, but at least a good chunk of time had passed.

  I barely had time to put away my cleaning supplies before Lisa arrived at the front door.

  “It’s windy out there,” Lisa said with a shiver as she hurried into the house, huddled in her jacket. “And it’s only supposed to get worse over the next day or two.”

  “There’s a storm coming?”

  “According to the weather report.”

  “More and more it seems the weather is matching my mood,” I said as I took her jacket and hung it in the foyer closet.

  “Uh-oh.” Lis
a eyed me. “What’s going on?”

  “Plenty. Let me get you something to drink before I start, though.”

  Lisa followed me toward the family room. “At least give me a clue. Work? Brett? Something else?”

  “Brett.” I opened the fridge. “Well, Brett and his ex.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “It hasn’t exactly been the best day.” I studied the contents of the fridge. “Sorry I don’t have many options. There’s sweet tea and Coca-Cola.”

  Lisa opted for Coca-Cola and I poured myself a glass of iced tea. We settled on the couch, Flapjack curled up on the cushion between us. I tucked my legs up beneath me and gave Flapjack a scratch on his head. He blinked sleepily and purred before closing his eyes and settling his chin on his paws. I wished I felt as content and unconcerned as he did.

  “No more suspense,” Lisa told me after taking a sip of her drink. “Time to spill the details.”

  I did just that, starting with my arrival at Brett’s house that morning and finding Alyssa in his arms. When I explained that Alyssa was playing the lead female role in The Perishing, Lisa’s jaw dropped.

  “You’re saying Alyssa Jayde is Brett’s ex?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “Wow.”

  “You didn’t know?”

  Lisa had gone to high school with Brett, so I figured she might know some things about his past that I wasn’t aware of.

  “I had no idea,” she said. “They must have dated when Brett lived in Seattle.”

  “I figure that’s the case. Apparently they lived together.”

  “Okay, that was definitely in Seattle. I would have known about her otherwise.”

  A drop of condensation dribbled down the outside of my glass. I caught it on the tip of my finger.

  “You’re not worried, are you?” Lisa asked, her eyes on me.

  I smeared the drop of water between my thumb and index finger. “I’m not entirely sure what I am.”

  “If you are worried, you don’t need to be. I’ve seen the way Brett looks at you. Trust me, he’s crazy about you.”