Murder Has a Sweet Tooth Read Free Page A

over my chest. “And you keep them closed, too.”
    “It’s my duty.” He grinned. “As a husband who wants to please his wife.”
    “But—”
    “No buts.” He stopped my objection with a quick kiss. “This is my wedding gift to you and I want it to be special. That means it has to be a surprise.”
    “But—”
    This time, he kissed me longer. Right before he hopped to his feet. “I just stopped home to see what Alex was up to. He didn’t answer when I called this morning. I’m going to pop inside and see if he needs any help.”
    I got to my feet, too. “I could help you find him.”
    Jim’s expression teetered between tolerance and I-can’t-believe-you-had-the-nerve-to-say-that. “It’s a small enough house that I think I can find him myself, thank you very much.” He unlocked the front door. “If I find ye back in that tree . . .” he warned, and he opened the door just enough to slip inside before I could see anything. I wasn’t imagining it; I heard the door lock behind him.
    There was nothing I could do but wait, so I went back to the steps and sat back down. Now that I thought about it, I was surprised I hadn’t heard Alex rambling around in the house while I was trying to get a look inside. Alex is not quiet, especially when he’s working. Come to think of it, I hadn’t heard the radio he usually played at full blast, either.
    The Alex in question was Alex Bannerman, Jim’s cousin who had come all the way from Scotland to be the best man at our wedding. Alex was as rough-and-tumble as Jim was quiet and laid-back, a strapping, handsome man of thirty-eight with a shock of hair as red as a Virginia sunset. Alex never talks, he bellows. He doesn’t walk, he sprints. Alex believes in taking in life not in tiny bites but in huge gulps, and he proves it by singing too loud, eating all the wrong foods (and still managing to look like a million bucks), and—as he himself admitted the very first time I met him—loving too many women with too much passion to ever make him a successful candidate for marriage.
    It was impossible not to like Alex. He was like a big, friendly bear, all smiles and hugs. In fact, the only fault I could find with him was that, like his cousin, he loved to cook. I didn’t hold it against him. In fact, I’d become inordinately fond of what he called his “broken biscuit cake,” a concoction of chocolate, nuts, and crumbled cookies. So much so, in fact, that I was a little worried about fit when I went to try on my wedding dress that morning.
    Alex is also a skilled craftsman. He’s a carpenter and a plumber. He’s good at painting and hanging wallpaper. There was even talk about him being an expert when it came to laying carpet. As his wedding gift to us, Alex had arrived four weeks earlier and was remodeling Jim’s house.
    Who could ask for more?
    Curious, both as to what Alex had been up to and why he hadn’t answered when Jim called him that day, I got up and tried for a look in the front window again, but even before I did, I knew I was wasting my time. When I heard Jim inside, I pretended I was taking a look at the pots of herbs he’d put out on the porch railing to catch the afternoon sun.
    “That’s a bit daft, isn’t it?” Jim wasn’t talking about me and the plants. In fact, I’m not sure he even noticed that I was pretending to mess with the rosemary and the mint. He was lost in thought. “Alex isn’t here,” he said. “I left early this morning. I thought he was still asleep. But . . .” As if trying to work through it, he shook his head. “His bed isn’t slept in. He went out last night and I thought he’d come home after I was already in bed. Apparently not.”
    “Maybe Alex has met another woman to fall in love with.” I was only half kidding.
    Jim didn’t look convinced. “Maybe. But what if something’s happened to him? You don’t suppose—”
    “Nothing has happened to Alex.” I managed to make it sound like I believed it. The