Sealed with a Hiss by Addison Moore (read 50 shades of grey .txt) 📕

We come across Georgie as she regales a man with a monocle and she toasts us as we pass them by.

Jasper leads me all the way back to the caboose, and we find a tiny little corner of this traveling circus to call our own—and we do just that, make it our own.

I kiss him with my eyes open until this runaway ride comes to a rather abrupt conclusion.

Here’s hoping this case comes to a rather abrupt conclusion as well.

And Lacey Lovelace just might be our only hope of that happening.

Chapter 12

The Country Cottage Café sits all but barren this evening. The ratio of pets to people is just about even, and five of those pets belong to the four of us seated at this table.

It’s the very next night after that train fiasco, and Jasper, Leo, Emmie, and I just polished off a large pizza for dinner and, at the moment, we’re plowing our way through a platter of those red velvet cookies. Sugar and Fish are curled up together on the seat next to mine, and Sherlock, Gatsby, and Cinnamon are chasing after one another, rabble-rousing for the heck of it.

It was Jasper’s idea to dig into Chip Buckingham’s social media tonight, and that’s exactly what we’re doing now.

“Look at this.” Emmie flashes her phone our way, and we’re treated to a picture of Chip tossing up a peace sign while sticking his tongue out at the camera. “The guy sticks his tongue out in just about every picture.”

Fish lifts her head lazily. I don’t trust people who stick their tongues out.

Sugar mewls, Chip did it all the time. It drove Bobbie crazy. Come to think of it, everything he did drove her crazy.

“Check these out.” Jasper turns his laptop around, and we see a montage of about a dozen pictures, all featuring the victim. “The guy can’t keep a straight face.”

“Eh.” Leo shrugs. “It lets us know he had a playful side.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “He seems a little too glib. Sugar said that everything he did drove Bobbie crazy. Maybe he had Peter Pan syndrome?”

“Or cheaters syndrome,” Em says, taking another bite from her cookie.

Jasper and I filled Leo and Emmie in on everything we’ve gleaned so far, highlighting the fact Chip was not only running around on Bobbie, but that he was somehow funding his mistress.

Leo takes a breath. “The guy was cheating on his wife, which is bad enough, but what was he funneling cash to his mistress for? Do you really think he was paying her rent? The guy had to take money from his wife to do it. That takes some serious cookies to take the allowance your wife is giving you, and handing it over to your side piece.”

Emmie grunts, “I’d hang you by your cookies if you ever even thought about getting a side piece. And my bestie reads minds. You can’t go hiding things like that.”

Leo chuckles. “It’s not happening. Besides, Bobbie didn’t hang him by his cookies. She shot him.” He looks to Jasper. “What does forensics have to say about it?”

“It’s true.” Jasper leans back in his seat and glowers at his laptop as he considers this. “The bullet that killed Chip was fired from the gun Bobbie was holding. She was cradling the gun in her hand when we found her.”

“What about the bullet that hit her?” I can still see them both lying there, with blood pooling around them. It was horrible. Something I’d love to forget, and yet each night when I go to bed they pop up in my mind’s eye as if they were tattooed on the inside of my eyelids. “Bobbie says she didn’t shoot herself—that she didn’t shoot anybody.”

Jasper nods. “But the bullet says otherwise. Forensics confirmed the gun was fired twice, and it was her prints—and hers alone—that were on the weapon.”

I reach over and give his hand a squeeze. “And that knock on her head?”

“The doctor said she must have hit her head on the way down.”

Leo pulls Jasper’s laptop his way. “All right. Something’s not adding up. Let’s study the security footage from that night one more time. There has got to be a clue here somewhere.”

Jasper has already run the footage multiple times—that from the inn and from the security camera that sits on our porch. But as it turns out, Bobbie and Chip were too far from the inn, and just out of range from the camera at our cottage.

Jasper cues up the security footage once again, and both he and Leo crouch around the laptop with all the intensity they can afford.

Heads-up, Bizzy. Sherlock barks. Uncle Huxley is headed this way.

A smile crests my lips. First, because I think it’s adorable that Sherlock has taken to calling my brother by the rather formal moniker. And second, my brother is here.

Hux pops up in a suit and tie, looking a bit bedraggled, and the entire lot of us extends a friendly greeting his way.

“Long day at the office?” I ask, pulling up a seat for him, and he plops down without hesitation.

“You can say that.” He snatches a handful of cookies off the platter. “I’m in the middle of three different divorces, and each one is ten times more bitter than the next. Nobody believes in civil dissolutions anymore. Marriages should come with a warning label.” He takes an angry bite out of a cookie. “So it got me thinking, I’m about to get married in a just a couple days... What the hell am I thinking? I’ve already been divorced three times.” He says that last bit in a rather animated fashion.

Jasper doesn’t waste any time frowning over at my brother. “What’s the matter, sweetheart? Getting cold feet?”

“I’ve got ice blocks.” Hux chomps down on another cookie, and Emmie gives me a wide-eyed look.

This is your chance, Bizzy. She hitches her head his way. If you really don’t want Mackenzie Woods as your new sister-in-law,