Streusel Creme Killer: Book 5 in The INNcredibly Sweet Series Read online

  Chelsea was about to erupt, but Dylan cut her off. “You know what, take your time. We’ll be back in a few days to chat with you again, but please remember, the council will be voting next week,” he said with a tight smile.

  “I hear you,” Missy nodded. “Y’all have a nice day,” she said, sweetly dismissing the young couple. She was going to do some investigating alright, of GenetiCorp and Safe-A.

  **

  Echo sighed, pushing her delicious herb salad with lemon-garlic dressing around on her plate. She was eating dinner alone because Kel had called, saying that his client had some meetings pop up during the day, so he’d need to show her more of his collection this evening. She was trying to be supportive, and told her fiancé to take all the time that he needed, but her imagination kept running away with her, painting ugly tableaus of Kel and the Latina beauty out dancing, gazing into each other’s eyes over a candlelit dinner, and a host of other preposterous things that made her stomach churn. It took an insane degree of willpower to not call or text him, and she planned to go to her studio to craft more candles after she finished the dinner that she was only pretending to eat.

  Finally giving up on the prospect of consuming the fragrant greens, she scraped her salad into a plastic container to use as a sandwich topping tomorrow, and headed for the studio that was in a spare bedroom of her cozy cottage, surprised when, after only having been in there for perhaps half an hour, her doorbell rang. It struck her as odd – Kel would never ring the doorbell, he had a key, and should still be tied up with his client anyway – and she rarely had visitors, particularly after dinner.

  “Hey,” Spencer Bengal greeted her when she opened the door, looking a bit morose.

  Spencer was the young, dark-haired, muscle-bound, Marine veteran who worked as handyman at the Inn for Missy and Chas. He’d been with them for months and had become like a member of the family. When demand for Echo’s hand-crafted candles had exceeded her ability to produce them, she’d drafted the capable young man to help her increase her inventory. Just before she opened her shop, she and Spencer had worked day and night, dipping and sculpting the works of fragrant art.

  “Hey, Spence,” she replied, glad, but surprised to see him. “What’s up?”

  “I need a distraction. Are you in the studio tonight?” he asked hopefully.

  “Actually, I just got the wax heated up, so your timing is perfect. I needed a distraction too,” she confessed. “Come on in.”

  “What’s bugging you, tiger?” she asked, when they had determined which colors and scents they were going to work with.

  “Izzy,” he said simply.

  World-famous horror author, Izzy Gillmore, had been staying at the Inn for several weeks now, in an attempt to get away from the micro-managing tactics of her publisher, and had spent most of her time with Spencer when she wasn’t writing.

  “Really? What’s wrong? I thought that you two were getting along so well.”

  “We were, but she thinks I’m hiding something from her, and now she’s being really distant, because she thinks that I don’t trust her enough to share,” he sighed, dipping a wick into brilliant purple, blackberry-scented wax.

  All of the scents for Echo’s candles were inspired by Missy’s cupcakes, and Spencer had chosen to create her special “Purple People Pleaser” cupcake scent, which was a mix of luscious berries and vanilla.

  “Well, are you?” Echo challenged mildly.

  “Am I what?”

  “Hiding something from her?”

  “Nothing that I don’t hide from the rest of the world as well,” he sighed.

  “Sweetie, you do realize that when you’re in a relationship with someone, they get to know the things that you hide from the rest of the world, right?” she raised her eyebrows at the Marine.

  “It’s just not that simple,” he shook his head, regretting having brought it up.

  “Is it worth it? These things you’re keeping to yourself…are they worth potentially destroying a relationship with this incredible young woman?” Echo asked softly.

  “I don’t have a choice,” he said grimly.

  “And yet you chose to get close to Izzy…” she let the statement hang.

  “I couldn’t help it,” Spencer replied, dipping the candle slowly up an down.

  “I know the feeling,” she murmured, twisting her own candle round and round.

  The two talked about their respective love lives and their frustrations, which led to more general conversation, and, before they knew it, both were laughing and actually enjoying themselves. When they were finished with an entire batch of candles, hours later, a tired, but relieved Echo walked Spencer to the door, and was glad to be enveloped in his bear hug on the porch, before he left.

  “I feel so much better, thank you for coming over tonight,” she grinned up at him.

  “I feel better too,” he nodded. “Thanks for listening,” he kissed her cheek and gave her another squeeze.

  “Anytime, Tiger,” she waved as he trotted out to the sidewalk for his jog back to the Inn.

  Spencer had access to the Inn’s car and shuttle bus whenever he needed them, but, like Echo, he preferred to travel on foot when he could. An observer in the dark watched the Marine go, then glanced at the porch where Echo had just switched off the light.

  CHAPTER 6

  Timothy Eckels had seen some strange things in his life’s work, but the atrocities that had been visited upon Diane Fellman’s corpse, post-mortem, were among some of the strangest that he’d ever seen. Death would be a secondary focus in this case, because, while the cause had not yet been determined, clues that were of an odd enough nature to shock the Medical Examiner, who thought he’d seen it all, were present in the deceased.

  One of the things that Tim always did, just as a matter of practice, was to take scrapings from beneath a victim’s fingernails, even if the forensics team had already done so, simply so that there would be available evidence, if needed, for further testing. When he scraped beneath the ring finger of the victim’s right hand, her artificial nail popped off, revealing what looked like a capital T, drawn on the nail bed with a permanent marker.

  Two things were remarkable about that. One, quite obviously, was whatever significance the letter T held. The other, was a more subtle message. Diane Fellman was not a woman who would ever deign to wear press-on nails, which meant that the killer had used the nails to hide, or perhaps, more accurately, to send, a message. Knowing what he had to do, Tim selected a scalpel from his autopsy instruments, and meticulously removed each of the press-on scarlet nails.

  On the deceased’s left hand, all five nail beds had a different letter. Starting at the pinky, and working toward the thumb, the letters were, T, I, B, A, H. On the right hand, there was only the T that he’d originally found on the ring finger, and an A on the pinky. He photographed the nails, and continued with his examination.

  A subtle movement caught his eye, and he took his glasses off and polished them, thinking that there must have been some sort of optical illusion happening. After all, dead bodies don’t move. He put on the newly-cleaned heavy spectacles, and thought he saw movement again. Grabbing his magnifying glass, he moved back over to the corpse of Diane Fellman and focused in on her belly button. In the wrinkled folds of skin, hidden just a bit by the formation of the belly button, was a small incision. As he examined the incision, something small and white squirmed briefly up through it, disappearing again in a flash.

  Taking his gloves off with a decisive snap, the mortician-turned-medical-examiner pulled his phone from the pocket of his lab coat and texted Fiona.

  “Close the mortuary and come to the morgue immediately. Bring as many specimen jars as you can get your hands on. Timothy Eckels.”

  **

  Detective Chas Beckett was in a quandary. Everything within him believed that Carmen Feeney was emotionally and physically incapable of having killed Diane Fellman, but the town council and the Mayor’s office were pushing hard
for him to find a killer, and very publicly pin the blame on him or her. Carmen’s attitude, when questioned by the detective, merely added fuel to the fire of speculation that she had eliminated the Vice Mayor, but in Chas’s mind, it just didn’t add up.

  If Carmen Feeney had killed Diane Fellman, why on earth would she have left her body in the middle of her shop? And what motive, aside from disliking the woman for whatever personal and political reasons that she might have, would possibly prompt her to homicide? That she wasn’t a fan of the Vice Mayor was clear, but to imagine that the tiny bookstore owner had committed murder was a bit of a stretch in the detective’s mind.

  Chas reached across his desk, wanting to grab his office phone to make a call, when a sudden stomach cramp seized him, making him so uncomfortable for a moment, that he froze in place, waiting for it to pass, unable to move. When the cramp started to lessen, the detective was struck by a debilitating wave of nausea. His thought, as he dashed to the men’s room, barely making it in time, was that, he was never, ever sick, and now was the worst possible time for whatever bug seemed to be attacking him.

  **

  Missy was beginning to wonder if she’d gotten a bad batch of eggs or something, as her stomach rolled and churned throughout the morning, making her miserable. The only things that she’d had to eat or drink were the cupcakes and coffee that she and Echo had before the shop opened this morning. She felt faint and awful, and thought that she should probably ask Spencer to take care of the shop so that she could lie down for a bit.

  “Spencer, darlin, could you come take over for me, here at the shop? I’m not feeling well,” she spoke into her cell phone, sitting at a bistro table, head in her hand, as her stomach threatened to revolt.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, I can’t,” the Marine replied, sounding weak. “I’m lying on the bathroom floor, and I’m not going to be able to move anytime soon,” he explained. “Oh gosh, gotta go,” he exclaimed, not sounding well at all, and he hung up abruptly.

  “Oh no,” Missy murmured aloud. “I wonder if Spencer ate some bad cupcakes too?” She felt awful. So awful in fact, that it would take every bit of her strength to make the short walk from the cupcake shop to the Inn, right next door. She just wanted to let herself into the Owner’s Quarters and lie down. Head resting in her hands, she was just about to attempt to stand up, when a text from Chas came in.

  “I think I may have stomach flu. Coming home to rest. C.”

  Now Missy really felt guilty. Chas must have eaten the bad cupcakes too. Tears sprang to her eyes when she struggled to her feet, clutching her midsection as a cramp took hold. She knew that she wasn’t going to be walking across the parking lot to the Inn anytime soon as she sprinted for the shop’s bathroom.

  **

  Echo laid on the bathroom floor in her cozy cottage, writhing in pain. The first stomach cramps had hit her in the middle of the night. She drank some water to try to calm her stomach, and that had been a big mistake. She couldn’t keep anything down, and the more that she tried to soothe her upset stomach, the sicker she became. She hated to bother Kel while he was with a client, but she felt like she didn’t have a choice. She dialed his number in between bouts of vomiting, and cried at the sound of his voice.

  “Beloved, what’s wrong?” he asked, alarmed. He had known that if his fiancée was calling, it was important, so he picked up the call, even though he was lunching at the Club with Carlotta, and when he heard his future bride crying, it set off all sorts of warning bells.

  She explained what was going on, briefly interrupted by a bout of dry-heaves, and he promised to come get her and take her to the hospital, asking Carlotta to take a cab back to the Inn.

  **

  Nearly half the staff of Calgon Memorial Hospital had called in sick, and the place was flooded with patients who all came in with the same symptoms as the medical personnel who had been unable to come to work. Severe nausea and vomiting, stomach cramps, fever, and dangerous dehydration. Every bed in every ward was filled, as were all of the bays in the ER and the Convenient Care Center, and there were still gurneys and wheelchairs lining the corridors of the hospital, filled with patients spewing into hastily provided containers while waiting to be seen.

  Masked doctors and nurses were administering IV’s in hallways and on waiting room couches, trying desperately to keep their patients comfortable and alive, while awaiting the results of blood tests that would hopefully shed some light on the epidemic. The elderly, and small children seemed to be hit the hardest, and the condition of some of them was deteriorating rapidly.

  Echo sat in a wheelchair, holding a bucket in her lap and wondering whether the plague that would wipe out humanity once and for all, had descended. Kel seemed to be perfectly fine, so she sent him home, hoping that he would escape whatever germs had attacked the rest of the population. He didn’t want to leave, but when his fiancée cried and pleaded, he begrudgingly acquiesced, for no other reason than to keep her calm.

  The Inn was silent when Carlotta Lehman took a cab there after she finished her lunch, as were most of the streets of the town. Her gracious host, Kel, had thoughtfully paid the bill before dashing out to rescue his vomiting fiancée, and Carlotta had simply sat alone, finishing the sumptuous spread that the Club had provided. No one seemed to be moving about the Inn, so when she returned, she went up to her room and turned on the television, texting Kel to make sure that he let her know when he was available again.

  CHAPTER 7

  Doctor Garrett Madison made a phone call to the CDC to report what he considered to be a disastrous outbreak of salmonella. Hundreds of Calgon citizens were currently hospitalized, the Calgon hospital was full, and patients were being transported to neighboring clinics across the county for treatment. When agents from the CDC and the EPA arrived, a county-wide investigation began to try to trace down the source of the contamination. Restaurants, bars, grocery stores and public drinking fountains were tested, to no avail. Technicians were dispatched to examine the water supply, which also tested negative. Drinking fountains were fine, as were the food and coffee sources in gas stations.

  Investigators were stumped as to how so many residents had been sickened, with no traceable source of salmonella. Victims came from all over the city, and often had nothing in common – not having eaten at the same places, or shopped at the same stores. The only commonality that was found, was that seemingly every person who had shopped at the Calgon Galleria mall was sick, but so were others who’d been nowhere near the mall. Due to the high number of cases that seemed to at least have the mall in common, authorities focused their investigative efforts there.

  The National Guard came in to secure the area, and drop off cases of bottled water, and the residents found themselves in the surreal situation of having to go about their business with armed military personnel watching over them.

  In a stroke of luck and unknowing good judgment, Izzy, the author with whom Spencer was involved, had gone back to New York just before the illness hit, to work something out with her publisher, while Missy, Chas, Spencer and Maggie tried their best to ride out the worst of their symptoms at home. The severity of their illness, however, eventually drove all but Spencer to seek help. The three miserable souls were transported from the Inn to a town nearly forty-five minutes away, where they would be able to receive treatment. Spencer refused to leave the Inn, and no argument would convince him to go, so one of the EMT’s who had shown up to assist Missy, Chas and Maggie, left a few bags of IV fluid with the Marine, and placed a line in the stubborn man’s arm, once he’d been reassured that Spencer was more than capable of changing his own bags of fluid.

  Rather than staying at the Inn by herself, Carlotta convinced Kel to wait out the situation with her from within the plush confines of the yacht club, where they could be comfortable in knowing that every bit of their food had been kept clean and sanitary. The staff at the club was decidedly short-handed, but there were several members there, the Mayor and several city coun
cil members among them.

  At the end of the first evening of the “Crisis in Calgon,” as the network news was calling it, Carlotta asked Kel if she could stay with him, since the staff at the Inn was gone, with the exception of Spencer, who was holed up in his basement apartment, with Moose, his feline friend. Kel sidestepped the issue by saying that he’d be glad to stay in one of the other guest rooms at the Inn until her hosts returned, if it would make her feel better. She agreed, and had stuck to his side like glue ever since.

  Echo slept off and on, feeling feverish and achy in her hospital bed. She awoke somewhere around two o’clock in the morning, to a newscast from Calgon, and weakly hit the volume button on her remote a couple of times so that she could hear what was being said.

  “We are live tonight from the town of Calgon, Florida, where hundreds of residents have been sickened by an outbreak of salmonella. So far, no deaths have been reported, but several residents are in critical condition as a result of the outbreak.

  Speaking with me tonight is Dylan McClary, who is an environmental activist with the group Safe-A. Dylan, do you have any idea of how this might have happened?” asked the earnest blonde-haired reporter, who had flown in from Buffalo to cover the story.

  “Of course I have no idea how this particular outbreak came about,” the serious young man who had come to see Missy, stated. “But, this is the sort of thing that happens when corporate giants like GenetiCorp come in and destroy the environment with their pollutants and chemicals and biological agents that are harmful to the environment and harmful to our health. These companies have to be stopped.”

  “Are you saying that GenetiCorp is to blame for this event?” the reporter was taken aback.

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. What I’m saying is that, letting these companies in, opens the door to more and worse events than this one.”