Cherry Chocolate Murder by Abby Byne

Author:Abby Byne [Byne, Abby]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-04-27T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

James ended up being held for just twenty-four hours before he was released on bail, but by that time, Anabel was gone.

Anabel had a sister in Chicago who invited her to come to stay for a couple of weeks, and Bitsie encouraged Anabel to go. Her job would be waiting for her, when she returned, Bitsie assured her. The morning before Anabel got on a flight to Chicago, she’d gone to see a lawyer and started the paperwork to file for a restraining order.

Bitsie should have felt relieved, but she didn’t. As long as James was out and about, she couldn’t rest easy. She still wasn’t entirely convinced that he couldn’t have been the one to poison Malcolm, so, even though she was exhausted from taking Anabel’s place on the early-morning shift at the bakery, she went straight to Shady Grove after she got off at noon. She wanted to track down Cherise and see if she’d corroborate Anabel’s claim that James had spent almost the entire hour leading up to Malcolm’s collapse out in the parking lot and well away from the scene of the crime.

When she arrived at Shady Grove, she went straight to Roscoe’s room.

Roscoe was happy to see her but disappointed that she’d arrived alone.

“Didn’t bring Nick with you today, I see,” he said. “Not seen much of that boy, lately.”

Bitsie hadn’t seen much of Nick, lately, either. Ever since the arrival of the mystery woman from Nebraska, she’d seen much less of Nick than she’d grown accustomed to. Nick was perfectly friendly, but there were no more dinner invitations or suggestions that they catch a movie. He even seemed to be suddenly avoiding any discussion of the poisoned cupcake case, though he must be concerned about it.

As of yet, the police investigation hadn’t yielded any evidence leading to an arrest, and Stan was keeping quiet about how things were progressing. He was happy to hear anything Bitsie might have to tell him, but the flow of information coming from his direction was nonexistent. Bitsie supposed that she didn’t blame him. She was too close to one of the suspects in the case, and for Stan to tell her anything that she might be tempted to pass on would be unethical. Still, Bitsie couldn’t help being curious about what he’d found out.

“Do you know if Cherise is working right now?” Bitsie asked Roscoe.

“No. She’s off today. She’s always off on Saturdays.”

“Do you happen to know where I might find her on a Saturday?”

“Not sure,” said Roscoe. “Although, she said something about going to her brother’s birthday party.”

“Did she say where the party was?” Bitsie wasn’t keen on crashing stranger’s birthday parties, but maybe she could catch Cherise as she was coming or going.

“She said something about a family picnic at Brink’s Lake.”

Bitsie wasn’t sure she wanted to make another visit to Brink’s Lake. The first and only time she’d visited Brink’s Lake, she’d been in search of a dead body. Still, crashing a family birthday

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