Page 1 of Wedding Cake Carnage

Chapter 1

Missing: Judge Essex Everett Baxter

Black hair, blue eyes, mid-thirties

If you have any information, contact the Ashford Sheriff’s Department.

$100,000 Reward

I see dead people.Mostly I see dead pets, but on the rare occasion I do see a dearly departed of the human variety. However, right now, my mind is drifting to terrifying places, and I can’t see a thing.

“Have you seen this man?” My voice is hoarse, raw from crying, lack of sleep, and a growing desperation.

The young man before me grabs a protective hold on his fiancée as he leads her away from the table.

“Lottie Lemon,” Lily Swanson is quick to scold me. “Would you stop that? It’s bad enough you brought his picture. And a sixteen-by-twenty? It looks like you’re about to eulogize the poor guy.”

“Eulogize?”

My thoughts grow dark, and suddenly the din of voices, the elegant jazz music playing on blast, and the sporadic explosions of laughter all around me disappear as that fog I’ve been stuck in for the last nine days slowly pulls me back into its cryptic arms.

“Would you stop?” Keelie swats Lily with a stack of pamphlets she printed up that advertise the Cutie Pie Cakery and Bakery. “You’re sending her over the edge again.”

“Oh, I am over the edge,” I assure them both as I step back from the table before us laden with an exact replica of what my sister Lainey’s wedding cake will look like— three tiers and a lavender marbled coating with thick gold icing dripping from each layer. Next to that sits a cake made entirely out of glazed donuts drizzled with white and pink frosting, and next to that is a cupcake tower frosted in the softest shade of blue. Each display is beautiful,spectacular—and honestly, a meager offering of what I’m capable of, considering the fact we’re smack in the middle of a bona fide bridal expo. Not even the heavenly scent of vanilla and sugar can pull me out of my funk.

The Ashford Convention Center is filled to the brim with future brides, bridesmaids, mothers of the bride, single women with a dream in their heart—and every now and again, I spot the ever so reluctant soon-to-be groom.

It’s wall-to-wall merchants in this cavernous space, offering a rainbow of services—photographers, videographers, vendors who specialize in booking live bands and DJs, stores that specialize in invitations and top-of-the-line stationary, and jewelers showing off their finest baubles—apparently, diamond encrusted tiaras are on order if you’re to keep up with the latest bridal trends. There’s a booth offering limos and other forms of snazzy transportation, three or four booths for honeymoon and travel, and a dozen beauty vendors and makeup artists—God forbid the bride apply her own lip-gloss. There are even a few vendors just like myself who made the trek here from Honey Hollow—just a short thirty-minute drive down the highway.

The Honey Pot Diner is here offering their catering services, and the Scarlet Sage Boutique is also present with Scarlet herself on hand offering huge savings for any gowns purchased at the expo today—and she’s hauled down enough to outfit every bride this side of the continental divide.

My friend, Felicity Gilbert, has one of the most popular booths at the expo with the business she took over once her mother died, The Enchanted Flower Shop. She’s created a monstrous floral arch comprised of peach and cream-colored roses, and it looks straight out of a fairytale. Even Cascade Montgomery from the Busy Bee Crafts Shop showed up for the event, offering custom made reception memorabilia such as tiny Mason jars filled with twinkle lights and other adorable trinkets.

But I can’t focus on how spectacular everything looks or how pristine and perfect it all feels in this plastic wedding bubble. My mind keeps flitting back to Everett and that horrible day I found out he was missing.

I was visiting my mother’s bed and breakfast not too long ago. She was throwing a relatively small victory party for Mayor Nash. Carlotta Sawyer, my biological mother who abandoned me at birth on the floor of a fire station twenty-seven years ago, was there and she was visibly shaken and angry.

Carlotta came back into my life about six months ago, and up until then I was quite content not knowing anything about her. Miranda and Joseph Lemon raised me, along with my sisters Lainey and Meg, and I couldn’t have asked for a better family. I knew I was adopted, but I never felt the need to pry much deeper. The only things Carlotta left me with at the time of her departure were a blanket and a note that requested I be named Carlotta. Of course, my mother—Miranda Lemon—complied and quickly nicknamed me Lottie. Years later, Joseph Lemon died, and my mother became both mother and father to her three daughters. She made sure each of us girls stayed on the straight and narrow and even went off to college when the time came. To keep herself occupied, she purchased a run-down B&B and turned it into the gem it is today. It’s haunted, of course, but that’s a long story and sort of my fault.

Anyway, that fateful day at the B&B, Carlotta just finished up an argument with Mayor Nash before dragging him my way and announcing he was my father—biologically speaking. Let’s just say a Mack truck could have run me over, and I wouldn’t have felt a thing.

Not once have I ever been curious about who my biological father might be. Carlotta knew that. She simply blurted it out to get even with Mayor Nash for the things he said to her, which apparently were not very nice. And before I could say a single word, utter a single sound, Noah—my ex-boyfriend who works for the Ashford Sheriff’s Department as the lead homicide investigator—walked right over and told me the horrible news. My boyfriend, Judge Essex Everett Baxter, was missing. They found his car door ajar, his briefcase and phone thrown into nearby bushes—and that was it.

Gone.

Without a trace.

We haven’t heard one peep. No one has seen him. There isn’t any video footage in the parking lot of the courthouse, so unless we find Everett, it will forever remain a mystery what’s happened to him.

Forever a mystery? I shake my head at my own thought.

Not on my watch.

I take another step back, and my tiny purse thumps over my spine. It’s actually a small leather backpack I’ve been using in lieu of a traditional purse. I’d much prefer having a handbag, but since I promised Everett I’d have the gun he and Noah gifted me with me at all times, here I am, packing heat in a room filled with tulle and lace. The gun is small, no longer than six inches with the wordsGlock 26 Gen4printed on the side.

“Lottie,” a male voice calls from my right, and I startle back to life in hopes it’s Everett himself. But it’s not Everett.

“Noah.” My heart thumps erratically as I try to stifle the spike of adrenaline from taking off full force. “For a second there I thought you were—” I stop myself just before I say his name. As painful as it is to look at his picture, saying his name is ten times harder.