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  “He was a lying, cheating, manipulative bully. He didn’t deserve Maggie! He deserved what he got.”

  Miss May and I raised our eyebrows and exchanged a look.

  “Exactly,” Miss May said. “So...we’re all on the same page.” Miss May gently placed her hand on Lance’s shoulder. As soon as she touched him, it was as if she had pushed a button on a creepy doll. Lance immediately started to laugh.

  It was angry and guttural, like the sound of someone trying to start a rundown car. And his flaring nostrils and tiny, manic pupils made my heart race.

  I involuntarily took a step back toward the bus, but Miss May was fearless.

  “You’re right.” She took a step toward Lance. “Maggie deserves better than Vinny. She deserves someone smart, and kind, and accomplished. Someone like...you.”

  “I’ve known Maggie since high school,” Lance said. He looked at me, “You know. We’ve always been friends. And I’ve always been there for her, always. I’ve known since I met her that we should be together. She didn’t see it, though,” Lance shrugged Miss May off. “She thought Vinny really was going to change. But he wasn’t. He was only going to get worse. Those two would have ended up divorced and miserable.”

  “Oh, I know,” Miss May raised her hand in agreement. “We all knew it. But nobody was brave enough to stop her.”

  “I tried to talk sense into Vin, you know.” Lance’s voice turned threadbare and desperate. “I told him to leave her. I asked him nicely, ‘Call off the wedding, bro! Go be with whatever sidepiece you’ve got right now and leave Maggie alone.’”

  “But he wouldn’t listen to reason, would he?” Miss May asked.

  Lance shook his head, “He was my brother. I loved him. He was my brother.” Lance dropped the backpack. It landed with a loud THUNK. “But I love her too. And he was going to hurt her.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Miss May moved towards the bag, ever so slowly. “Lance... what’s in the bag?”

  As if that simple question was the only prodding that he needed, Lance reached down, unzipped the backpack and produced the hunk of basalt. The murder weapon. The rock was bigger than I expected, at least six inches wide and six inches across. But it was a deep black, just as I had imagined. I marveled that this hard piece of lava, that had once been so destructive in its molten form, could still do so much damage in my little home town, centuries after its first run of carnage.

  The sight of the basalt took my breath away. Every time I thought I had wrapped my head around this situation, it got a little more real, and I realized I knew nothing about anything.

  “What’s that?” Miss May asked, playing dumb once again.

  “I figured you knew,” Lance said. “I didn’t want to use this, you know? I didn’t plan on doing what I did.”

  “You’re not a monster,” I said. This time, my voice came out strange, muted, and foreign.

  “Of course not,” Miss May said. “The way I see it? You’re a savior.”

  Lance softened. He seemed convinced that we were on his side, and almost happy to have a pair of confidantes. “Look, I talked to Maggie. She loves me. I know it. She wouldn’t act on it because of my idiot brother. But I told her everything. I had to before she went through with things. I told her I loved her. Told her I always had. But she just yelled at me. Told me to leave her alone and to get out of her cabin.”

  My eyes widened. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “So it was you arguing with Maggie in the cabin that day? The day of the rehearsal dinner?” I asked.

  Lance nodded. He had taken a more aggressive posture, and he was pacing back and forth, like all his pent-up stress and energy was finally pouring out.

  “Vinny pulled me out to the stream before the dinner. He had a flask. He was half-drunk already. And he was just talking about how good Rita looked in her dress. So I said, ‘Then just marry Rita, why don’t you? And leave Maggie alone.’ But then Vinny says, ‘It’s too late, bro.’”

  “Too late?” I cocked my head.

  “He and Maggie were already married. Went down to Atlantic City a while ago.”

  Ohhhh right! The elopement.

  Lance continued, his voice rising, “And you know what? He didn’t even invite me!”

  Maybe he didn’t want to be murdered? I thought.

  “Can you believe the nerve? Vinny asked some Indian guy—” I pressed my lips together to keep from shouting, His name is Sudeer! “— to be the best man instead of his own brother! I couldn’t believe it, I mean, I was beside myself. But Vinny didn’t even care. He said he’d only asked me to be his best man at the ceremony ‘for Mom and Dad’s sake!’ Adding insult to injury, you know? But Vinny was like, ‘whatever’ about it. He didn’t apologize or anything, he just turned around and took a pee in your stream.”

  “Uch.” I couldn’t help myself. It was gross to think of Vinny peeing anywhere on our property.

  “The whole time, he kept talking about how smart he was ‘cuz he had Maggie on lockdown, and she had no idea about the affair. And poor Maggie. She’d already said ‘I do.’”

  Lance held up the basalt. “I lost it. I saw red and blue and all the colors of the rainbow. I wasn’t even trying to kill him, but I just hit him and...I heard a crack.”

  Lance slumped a little, losing some of his bravado as he replayed the moment of his brother’s death. But he perked up as he remembered his purpose, “Now all I’ve got to do is plant the rock in Rita’s house. Maggie can go free, and we can finally be together.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to work out, Lance,” Miss May said with genuine sympathy.

  Lance furrowed his brow. “What do you mean? I thought you wanted this too.”

  “The thing is,” Miss May’s tone turned strong and resolute, “it doesn’t matter what you think I want. It doesn’t matter what you think anyone wants. You don’t get to decide for other people. Maggie is a grown woman. It’s her choice which idiot brother she loves.”

  Miss May took a hobbled step towards Lance.

  Lance held up the basalt with a new menace in his eyes, “You’re wrong. Sometimes...Sometimes people don’t know what they want!”

  Amen to that, I thought. And I shuddered at how readily I was relating to this murderer’s rationale.

  “Lance,” I said. “You didn’t mean to kill Vinny. I’m sure you can explain—”

  “Shut up!” Lance yelled. His face had started to match that purple hue on Miss May’s ankle. “Both of you! Shut up! Go home. Let me do what I came here to do!”

  Lance turned to enter Rita’s house, but Miss May grabbed his arm.

  Lance whirled on Miss May with violence in his eyes. My whole world slo-mo’d as Lance raised the basalt up high and took aim at Miss May.

  In a moment that would have made Mister Skinner proud, I sprang into action. And in one awkward motion, I delivered a clunky, wobbling roundhouse kick right to Lance’s skull-smashing arm.

  Lance stumbled back and dropped the rock. As the world returned to normal speed, I patted myself on the back for my heroic moment. But before I could get too self-congratulatory, Lance regained his footing. We weren’t safe yet.

  “I said. Go. Home!” Lance panted out the words in staccato fury.

  Lance picked up the rock and took a step towards Miss May. As he hoisted the rock up above his head for the second time, a voice exploded from the bushes.

  “Hands in the air!”

  I looked over, and Detective Wayne Hudson stepped out from behind a shrub, with his gun trained on Lance. “I said hands in the air.”

  Lance lifted his hands in the air, then he turned on his heels to make a run for it. But Wayne sprang after Lance, tackled him to the ground and cuffed him in what seemed like one fluid motion.

  I swooned again, until, that is, Officer Flanagan hurried to Wayne’s side and began reading Lance his Miranda rights.

  I wanted to appreciate the moment. We had found the killer and taken him down. Heck, I had delivered the cri
tical kick! Instead, I was distracted by Flanagan’s effortless glamour. Why did she have to look so good in that uniform? And seriously, what was with that shiny hair?

  When I turned to Miss May, I expected her to seem afraid or upset, but instead, she looked victorious as she watched Wayne handcuffing Lance.

  Miss May shifted her gaze to me. “You saved me, Chels,” she said. “Master Skinner would be very impressed.”

  “Would he?” I smiled.

  “Well, don’t show him a video replay. That was one ugly donkey kick.”

  We both laughed, but my laughter stuck in my throat. This was all so crazy, raw, and frightening. Emotions surged through me, and one of them, oddly enough, was pity for Lance. He’d been so desperately in love, so set on rescuing Maggie from a bad marriage, that he’d killed his own brother. Lance had ended Vinny’s life, and now Lance’s life was basically ending too. Neither of the brothers deserved such a bleak fate, I thought, and Maggie didn’t deserve to carry a burden like this with her into her future.

  Yet, even as I sympathized with Lance, I also felt a wave of fury towards him. He had come within an arm’s length of smashing a chunk of basalt into Miss May’s head. What if my donkey kick had missed? Miss May could be paralyzed or amnesiac...or worse.

  As the weight of the “almosts” settled on my shoulders, I threw myself into Miss May’s arms. I didn’t know what I would do without her. And I needed a hug.

  “OK, Chels, it’s OK,” Miss May smiled. “Seriously, you’re hurting my ankle.”

  I wiped my tears as three police cruisers, with their gaudy bubble letter font, screeched to a halt in front of Rita’s house. Liz the town reporter jumped out of the first car, filming on her phone.

  Liz had finally gotten some hard-hitting news in Pine Grove. I was happy for her, but I hoped this would be the last murder our cozy little town would ever see.

  I had a bad feeling that I might be wrong.

  24

  Victory Pie

  “He didn’t!”

  “He did!”

  “He did not!”

  “Yes, he did!”

  “Well, I am so ticked off you wouldn’t let me come!” Even though there was a line of customers waiting for tables at Grandma’s, Teeny was sitting at the same old booth with me and Miss May. We had recounted the story of what had happened with Lance. Several times. But Teeny still couldn’t believe Pine Grove’s most beloved Eagle Scout could kill his own brother with a rock to the head.

  Even more outlandish, Teeny insisted, was that I had come to the rescue with a badass karate kick. OK, nobody else thought it was badass. But I did.

  “And Chelsea really kicked him?” Teeny shook her head in awe. She wasn’t even eating her pie, and I’m pretty sure she was literally on the edge of her seat. “Like, with her foot?”

  “Well, she didn’t kick him with her face, Teeny,” Miss May said, and we laughed.

  Just then, Sudeer, his adorable babies and his pregnant wife entered through the front door. Miss May waved them over. “Sudeer,” she said. “Over here! Do you know my friend Teeny?”

  “I believe we met at Mr. Gigley’s office, yes.”

  Miss May laughed. “Right. That’s why I wanted to buy you and the family lunch at the best spot in town. Figured it was the least I could do after accusing you of murder.”

  “You gotta admit you seemed guilty, though,” Teeny said.

  Sudeer sighed. “Fortunately I’m not guilty, and I’m not worried about money anymore either. I took a job with Hank Rosenberg. Head architect for some luxury condos he’s putting up in the Bronx.”

  “No one wants luxury in the Bronx,” Teeny said.

  “You just think that ‘cuz you’re from there,” a voice said from behind me. I turned to see Maggie approaching. She looked tired, like these few days had aged her a few years, but at that moment, she cracked a smile and slid into the booth next to me. “You know, Teeny,” Maggie said, “I’ve got friends who are seriously considering Riverdale.”

  “Riverdale doesn’t count,” Teeny said. “That’s the fancy part.”

  “Scoot over, Teeny,” Miss May said, squishing Teeny in closer. “Rita’s coming to sit with us.”

  I looked up and sure enough, there was Rita. I glanced at Maggie, awaiting her reaction. Yes, spirits were high in the gossip-y wake of Lance’s arrest, but still. Rita had slept with Maggie’s fiancé. And she was pregnant with Vinny’s baby.

  This had to be awkward.

  “Maggie...” I said. “Is this uh... are you cool with this?”

  “With Rita?” Maggie asked. I nodded.

  Rita waved as she approached. She looked different than usual. No makeup. Hair down in natural curls. Without all her usual adornments, Rita seemed so much earthier, so warm. Like a sweet little Italian mother.

  “Yeah, I’m cool with it,” Maggie said after a moment. “Vinny hurt us both. And Rita’s gonna need all the help she can get with that new baby.” Maggie beckoned for Rita to join us, and Rita squeezed in beside Miss May.

  Rita looked down. “Maggie,” she started, “I wanted to tell you how sorry—”

  Maggie waved Rita off. “No worries,” Maggie said. “Water under the rug.”

  Miss May looked up and smiled as she caught me mouthing the word, “bridge.” Some things never change.

  Miss May turned to Teeny, who was mashed up in the corner of her usual booth. “So Teeny,” Miss May said, “Who’s coming to take our order?”

  We all burst into uproarious laughter, and Teeny wriggled out of her corner.

  My heart warmed, sitting there with Maggie and Sudeer, and even Rita. Rita had known me my whole life, and few people fit into that category. And to these people, I wasn’t “Chelsea Thomas-who-got-left-at-the-altar.” I was “Chelsea-Thomas-who-karate-kicked-a-killer.”

  I brought a few chairs over as more friends, including Liz and Mayor Delgado, arrived for the impromptu party at the restaurant. Miss May launched into her third or fourth retelling of how she had rescued her sad little niece from Jersey City, and together we’d solved the biggest mystery ever to hit Pine Grove.

  Miss May’s story focused a lot on my bravery and my willingness to take chances to do the right thing. I still saw myself as the girl afraid to take a risk on herself, who played it safe and always let other people do the hard stuff. I thought of Miss May as the hero. She was the one driving the bus, at least most of the time. But maybe spending all this time around Miss May in a high-stress situation had rubbed off on me. Maybe I could internalize her go-get-‘em attitude. Maybe I could drive the bus more in the future, or at least try to get my license. I mean, I had used karate in a life-or-death scenario. Pretty empowering.

  Miss May still had a lot to teach me, but I was proud of my part in our amateur investigation. I had grown, slowly, almost imperceptibly, like one of the Christmas saplings that KP planted. But it was real growth, and I planned to keep growing, at least a little, every single day.

  Maybe I’d even get to solve a couple more mysteries along the way. It would be nice to learn more about what happened to my parents, for instance. But if there was one thing Miss May definitely taught me, it was to take life one day at a time. So that’s what I would do.

  I looked around, trying to be grateful and present. I’m surrounded by friends and family, I thought. I’m eating a nice, big slice of apple pie, with perfectly melty vanilla ice cream on top. I feel safe and supported. And oh my goodness, this pie is delicious.

  Yum.

  The End

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  Book 2

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  Apple Orchard Cozy Mystery Series, Book Two

  “Cooking the Books”

  By Chelsea Thomas

  NOTHING RUINS A QUAINT, small-town festival like finding a frozen corpse during the sled race.

  That’s a lesson I learned firsthand at Pine Grove’s Winter Festival... When I found a frozen corpse during the sled race.

  But I’d had a bad feeling in my bones for days before that.

  It started when my aunt, Miss May, met with her accountant to go over her finances.

  The meeting took place in the bakeshop on the orchard Miss May owned. Although the bakeshop was rustic and cozy and filled with smells of cinnamon sugar and apples, on that day the place had a dreary energy.

  I blamed the accountant.

  Charles Fitz, CPA, was in his late 50s. He had slicked back hair, and perfect teeth, and a big-city vibe that was out of place in our small town of Pine Grove, New York.

  I tried to keep a polite distance as Miss May and Charles talked. But they were having their meeting at one of the tables in the bakeshop. And I had to prep four hundred of Miss May's famous Appie Oater cookies for the next day. So I listened in on their heated conversation.

  Miss May leaned forward with her hands balled on the table. “What do you mean I can’t take my money out!?”

  Charles sat back, with the hint of a smile on his face. “Now, now, I never said you can’t take it out. I said that as your wealth manager, I recommend that you keep your money in the fund.”

  “It’s not wealth you’re managing,” Miss May said. “It’s working capital! I need it for repairs, and payroll, and—”

  “Sure,” Charles said, hands in the air. “Repairs, payroll, that stuff costs money. You know I get that, May. All I’m saying is I expect big returns. Soon. You'd be a fool to exit the fund now.”