Buried In Buttercream

hair. “Ah, come on, Alma. I just said I think she’s nice and—”
    “And that she’s got shiny blond hair, and a nice shape on her, and that she seems like such a sweet person, and she’s so bubbly, and—”
    “I said all that?”
    “And more.”
    “Oh, well. She is nice and cute as a speckled pup.” He hesitated, then gave her a threatening look. “And, Alma Jean, if you tell her I said that, I’ll get you back for it. I promise you.”
    “My lips are sealed.” Alma closed her mouth and pantomimed locking them shut and throwing away the key.
    “Yeah, right.” He shook his head. “No female in this family has a mouth that stays shut for long. “Don’t you tell her I like her, you hear? I mean it.”
    Alma rolled her eyes. “I promise I won’t say a word. I’ll just pass her a note in class.”
    Waycross gave her a dismissive wave and turned to Savannah, a serious look on his face. “She dropped by to see if we’d heard anything about the case ... you know ... that woman getting killed. I could tell she was real curious.”
    “Tammy’s the quintessential sleuth,” Savannah said, popping a chip into her mouth. “She’s the only person I know who’s nearly as nosy as I am. That’s why she’s so good at it.”
    “I could tell she really cares about the case and about you,” Waycross told her. “She wants to help really bad, but she thinks you don’t want her to ... you know ... because of what happened before.”
    Savannah thought of her gentle friend, a person so kind and filled with the sunlight of pure love that she would never cause a living being pain for any reason. She thought of all the sad and remorseful looks Tammy had sent her way for the past three months.
    And it broke her heart.
    Tammy had nothing in the world to feel sorry about. She had been blameless in the whole miserable mess.
    For a hundred days, Savannah had tried to make her understand that. And so far, it was a losing battle.
    “Thank you for telling me that,” Savannah said. “I’ll speak to her.”
    Savannah stood and started to gather up her empty dishes. But Waycross reached across the table and took them from her.
    “We’ll do that,” he said. “Gran’s given strict instructions that everybody vacate the bathroom upstairs and let you have a long, relaxing soak without interruptions. So, you’d best be gettin’ to it.”
    Alma jumped up and rushed to pour something from a small pan on the stove into a large mug. “Here you go, a cup of cocoa to go with that bath.”
    Waycross rummaged a top shelf until he produced a bottle of Baileys. “And this,” he said, adding a generous amount to the mug, “will help it go down smoother.”
    “Granny’ll have our hides if she sees you adding that evil booze to my beverage,” Savannah said with a grin as Alma squirted a dollop of whipped cream on top.
    “So, don’t walk too close to her,” Waycross said. “You don’t want her getting a whiff of Demon Rum, or it’ll be a hickory switch to the butt for both of us.”

    When Savannah slipped into the rose-scented suds and felt the warm water washing over her body, she couldn’t believe her good fortune.
    Candlelit bubble baths, fortified with some form of chocolate, were her number-one pleasures in life. And it had been over a week since she’d been able to indulge in one.
    She had surely been going through withdrawal.
    With a house full of guests who seemed to have bladders the size of thimbles, she had been lucky to squeeze in a two-minute shower. So, this was sheer bliss.
    The Victorian claw-foot bathtub was the main reason she had bought the house, all those years ago. She could still remember the first time she’d climbed into it and instantly felt like a fairy princess.
    Ah, the sheer indulgence of it all.
    With the candlelight flickering on the iridescent bubbles, the flavor of the glorified hot chocolate lingering on her taste buds, and the smell of a rose garden floating in the steam around her, she could truly forget the troubles of the past week.
    Almost.
    Try as she might, she couldn’t banish the disappointment of three wedding attempts that had been thwarted by fire, mud, and murder. If it hadn’t been for a psycho arsonist, Mother Nature raining on her parade, and a cold-blooded killer, she’d be a married woman right now. The relatives would all be gone, and with any luck, her new husband would be there in the bathtub with her, smiling from the other end.
    It was a big tub.