Sweet Taffy and the Millionaire's Murder Read online

  Sweet Taffy & The Millionaire's Murder

  Sweet Taffy Cozy Mysteries - Book #3

  Dana Moss

  | FIRST EDITION |

  CHAPTER ONE

  Maria waded out of the dressing room of Gabriella’s Bridal Shop in a floor-length wide-skirted wedding dress made of chiffon and silk.

  “I can’t believe you dragged me all the way out here just to take pictures of me looking like a cream puff.”

  Taffy aimed her cell-phone camera and said, “Pose, my little pavlova.”

  Maria struck a half-hearted, hand-on-hips position but refused to smile.

  Taffy frowned. “You look like one of those turn-of-the-century brides shipped over to marry some freaky frontiersman.”

  “I feel silly doing this.”

  “Just two more to try on and then we’re going for drinks with Kyla and Cher at a new hip club called Eden.”

  “I’d rather be back in Abandon having a beer at Ted’s.”

  Taffy rolled her eyes. Ted’s bar in Oregon was quaint, but how could Maria even compare it to what was on offer in New York City?

  “We can go to Ted’s anytime. How often do we get to party the city?”

  “You said ‘drinks’ not ‘party.’ I want to be in bed by eleven.”

  “For your beauty sleep?” Taffy grimaced. “Don’t forget I’m taking you to Lorenzo’s tomorrow. He’ll know what to do about your hair.”

  “What’s wrong with my hair?”

  “I think only Lorenzo can solve that mystery.” She tugged at one of Maria’s frizzy curls. “First thing he’ll do is get rid of that ridiculous perm.”

  Maria pouted. “I like my curls.”

  “Waves, darlin’.” Taffy wriggled her wrist in serpentine spirals. “Smooth waves are in. Don’t you want to surprise Finn when you get home?”

  “He likes me as I am.”

  “But he will looooove this new you. And so will you.”

  Maria sighed. “I guess I agreed to let you do your worst.”

  Taffy scoffed. “Tush-tosh, to quote my lovely Nana. You’re getting the royal treatment before we head home. And before Lorenzo’s, we’ve got three hours at the spa where you’ll get every pore squeezed and every hair tweezed.”

  Maria winced. “Pure torture.”

  “Plus a massage and mud bath.”

  “Then we get on the plane to go home?”

  “Tomorrow night. Unless you want to stay a few more days? Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  Maria hesitated. “Uh, I’d love to but…” She cleared her throat. “I promised the chief I’d only be away four days, and then there’s Finn.”

  “What’s the hurry? In a few months he’ll have you for the rest of his life.”

  “Don’t you miss Ethan?”

  Taffy held up a veil studded with mini pearls. “Yeah, sure.” She set the veil on top of Maria’s head and stood back to get a better look at the overall composition.

  “You’ve hardly mentioned him since we’ve been here.”

  “Doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about him.” And she had. She’d imagined him chopping wood, working on park trails, making coffee, mowing the lawn—all of it back in Oregon, far from the Big Apple. She just couldn’t picture him in New York City.

  Maria pushed the dress straps off her shoulders and stepped out of her whipped-cream frills, which revealed her no-nonsense bra and panties.

  Taffy tapped her chin. “And lingerie. We can’t forget new lingerie.”

  Maria looked down at her full-coverage white panties that still didn’t manage to cover every hair that would soon be tweezed.

  “Is all this necessary?”

  “The best things in life aren’t necessary, they’re luxury!”

  Maria sighed. “You’re different here, Taff.”

  Taffy paused. “How so?”

  Maria shrugged. “Like super girly and kind of… I don’t know. Materialistic.”

  Taffy blinked. She was aware of the length of her lashes brushing at the upper portion of her cheek. One of her first stops after they’d landed, while Maria had been resting after their red-eye flight, was to make an appointment for eyelash extensions.

  “I’m the same person, Maria.”

  “Are you? I mean, I know you are, deep down.”

  Taffy pouted. “But?”

  Maria picked up the slinky satin spaghetti-strapped gown and turned back to the dressing room. “Only two more to go, right?”

  Taffy sat down on the chintz chaise lounge and waited to see the next dress.

  * * *

  Two hours later, as they rode in a taxi on the way to meet Kyla and Cher, Maria said, “I should probably just wear the dress my grandmother sent.”

  Taffy faked a gagging reflex. “You know those crochet doily toilet-roll covers…?”

  “Oh, come on, it’s not that bad. And it’s free. Some of those dresses I tried on were over five grand.” Maria shook her head in disbelief.

  “Don’t think about the money. Nana and I already talked about it and—”

  “What if we got my grandmother’s dress altered and updated?”

  Taffy tugged on the zipper of her Coach purse. Why was it so hard to help Maria?

  “Didn’t you see anything you liked at Gabriella’s?”

  Maria sighed. “It’s not that. They were all gorgeous.”

  “And they made you look gorgeous.”

  Maria leveled her gaze at Taffy. “But I’m not. And I don’t want to rely on a dress to put me into a category I don’t belong in.” She crossed her arms and turned away to look out the window.

  Was that was this was about? Was Maria not feeling confident enough in herself? It was not a side Taffy saw often. Maria was practical, that she knew, and she liked to tease Taffy about some of her superficial preoccupations, but Maria tended to be sure-footed and straightforward in work and friendship. She’d had a few wobbly weeks after Finn had first proposed, but that had had more to do with her worries about her mother and a feeling she might be rushing into the next phase of her relationship for the wrong reasons. She was over that now. She and Finn were even talking about buying a small house together.

  Maybe it was being in New York—the land of bold beauty and brash bling—it could wear down anyone. Unless they got caught up in it, which Taffy was prone to do, as Maria had so kindly pointed out. She was right. Taffy was different here. But Taffy wasn’t convinced that was such a bad thing. Just different.

  The taxi pulled up in front of an indigo-slate doorway guarded by a tall doorman wearing a Gucci suit and impenetrable sunglasses. Taffy handed a twenty to the taxi driver, got out of the car, and then handed a silver token to Mr. Tall Sunglasses. Kyla had delivered the token to Nana’s Upper East Side apartment while Maria and Taffy and been cream-puffing it up. Apparently these tokens were passed among an elite clique of partygoers and were only rarely snatched up by the outer circles. But Kyla had her wily ways.

  A bass beat thrummed through the walls as Maria and Taffy made their way down a spiral ramp lined with carpet made to look like grass. This was not the plastic grass of back porches, café terraces, or city dog squares. This was made of some material that both looked and felt like real grass. Holographic butterflies appeared and disappeared near their ankles and an earthy, floral scent wafted around them.

  Taffy noticed Kyla across the room at a high-top table next to what looked to be an indoor pond. Long-haired, barely-clad waitresses carried trays of colored drinks that smoked.

  “Ky!” Taffy called and waved. Kyla slipped from her stool and clicked over to Taffy to give her a hug. Then she led them back to her table and three drinks appeared with barely
a nod.

  On closer inspection, the pond was a piece of glass in the floor with light flowing through it to look like reflecting water.

  “I thought Cher would be here too,” Taffy said over the bass beat. She watched Maria stare at her drink, lift it up to look at the bottom as if trying to figure out where was the smoke coming from, and then take a dubious sip.

  “She took off to meet Macy,” Kyla said. She had already explained that to Taffy that Macy was dating a Los Angeles millionaire. They were taking a yacht cruise up the West Coast. “You know how Cher is. She follows Macy around like a lost little puppy. I’m amazed she isn’t drooling half the time.”

  Maria glanced at Taffy as if to say, “This is how your New York friends talk about each other?”

  Kyla continued. “She joined the crew in Monterey today and is doing the rest of the trip with them.” Her cell phone vibrated on the table. “OMG, that’s her.”

  An image of Macy in a baby-doll negligee and a Groucho Marx mustache popped up on Kyla’s phone screen. Taffy raised an eyebrow. Kyla laughed. “That’s from Luke’s birthday last month. Remember Luke?”

  As if Taffy could forget.

  Maria said, “Who’s Luke?”

  Taffy didn’t have a chance to answer before Kyla and Macy started squealing through the phone and gushing about how much they missed each other. Cher leaned into the image, waved, and then made a duck-lip face.

  “OMG, are you at Eden? Without me?” She seemed appalled.

  “You blew off the token when you skipped town.”

  “Who’s there with you?”

  Kyla fanned the phone the phone around the table.

  “Omigawd—Taffeeeeee!”

  When the squealing tapered off, Macy said suspiciously, “Who else is there?”

  “Taffy’s friend Maria.”

  Cher leaned in again and said, “You gave her my token?”

  And then Macy said quickly, “Wait, are we on speaker phone?”

  “Of course you are, you twits.”

  They made squeaky, sighing, frustrated sounds. Cher said, “Gawd, Ky, you always make us look so stupid.”

  “You don’t need my help with that.” Kyla shared a look and a laugh with Taffy. Maria downed the last of her mysteriously smoking drink.

  “Put Taffy on,” Macy snapped. Kyla twisted her wrist so her phone was facing Taffy, who was in the midst of sipping her own drink.

  “Tell Maria we’re not as bad as Kyla makes out.”

  “She hasn’t said anything bad, I promise. Where are you now?” It was dark behind Macy. She seemed to be leaning against a richly stained wooden headboard.

  “That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I convinced Blake to make a small detour to see you in Oregon. He grumbled a bit but Cher and I persuaded him.”

  “When? We’re not even in Oregon!”

  “But we fly home tomorrow,” Maria said.

  She was probably just trying to be helpful, but Taffy took it to mean there’d be no talk of extending their stay.

  Macy said, “We should dock sometime tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Then I guess it might work out,” Taffy said, giving up her plans for brunch at Balthazar and gallery hopping in Chelsea.

  Maria offered a tight smile and lifted her finger, which elicited three more smoking drinks.

  They made plans to meet after they got off their plane and got back to Abandon. Offscreen, a male voice called Macy’s name. Her eyes flicked up and she said, “Coming!” As Macy sat up at attention, Taffy saw a few pillows and a tousled sheet behind Macy, who glanced back to the phone and said, “Gotta go.”

  Kyla tossed her phone back in her purse. “If Cher follows Macy around like a puppy, then Macy’s the pretty little lapdog for this rake Blake, but she seems actually happy for once. Says he could be the one.”

  They toasted new love, old friends, and chance encounters. And then they proceeded to get truly lit on their smoking cocktails.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Though the drinks had been small, by the next morning they realized they’d clearly ordered too many of them. Hungover and grumpy, Maria did not make a great impression on Lorenzo, but he certainly made something impressive out of her hair. By the end of her appointment, Maria had to give him a begrudging smile, and a genuine “thank you.”

  To Taffy she said, “Don’t even think about repeating those four little words.”

  “Which ones? ‘I told you so’? No, I’d never say that to you.” Taffy winked.

  Maria put a hand to her head. “And remind me never to drink again.”

  “What happens in New York stays in New York.”

  Taffy then pulled out two bottles of specially concocted cold-pressed juice. “This will help. I picked them up while you were getting blow-dried.”

  Maria glugged back half the bottle. “So who’s this Luke guy, and why wouldn’t you let Kyla talk about him last night?”

  Taffy focused on unscrewing her juice cap. “He’s just someone I knew at college.”

  “That much I got. An old flame?”

  Taffy nodded. She didn’t want to think about Luke. She’d still been in the process of getting over their breakup when her grandmother had yanked her from New York City’s passionate yet dangerous embrace and shipped her off to the remote reaches of Oregon a year ago.

  “Let me guess, he’s the opposite of Ethan?”

  “Pretty much. And he’s part of the past, so let’s just forget about him, okay?” Taffy had done just that for the better part of the year.

  “And besides,” Maria said. “You’re in love with Ethan.”

  Taffy nodded vaguely. “I’d prefer it if you didn’t mention anything to him about Luke though.”

  “What happens in New York stays in New York.” Maria winked. Then she eyed Taffy’s unfinished juice. “You done with that?”

  After their waxing and threading appointments, which Maria said truly tested the bonds of their friendship, they headed back to Nana’s apartment to pack their bags.

  “And you used to do that regularly?” Maria was still flushed and stressed from her encounter with Ariana, the Brazilian aesthetician.

  “Fairly,” Taffy admitted. “But doesn’t it feel good after?”

  “I don’t see the point. It just grows back.”

  “Which explains the regularity.”

  Nana sashayed in to the guest room as they packed. “It’s been wonderful having you girls around. Do come back anytime.”

  Maria expressed her thanks, and though genuine, Taffy didn’t think Maria intended to return to New York for a while.

  “Oh, I have something for you, Maria.” Nana disappeared into her rooms and returned a minute later.

  “For the wedding.” She carried a velvet box, one Taffy recognized. Her jaw dropped.

  From the box, Nana withdrew an antique tiara that glittered with diamond chips. “It belonged to my grandmother.”

  Since Taffy had been a child, she’d coveted that tiara, and now Nana was giving it to Maria?

  Maria held it over her smooth, wavy hair and said, “Thank you. This can be my ‘something borrowed’.”

  For a moment Taffy was relieved, until Nana tush-toshed and said, “I intended it to be your ‘something old’. You can borrow something from Taffy.”

  “I couldn’t possible take this.” Maria turned to Taffy. “Surely you want this? It’s much more your style.”

  Taffy bit her tongue and had the poise to say, “If Nana wants you to have it…”

  Nana insisted. “It’s a gift.” She handed Maria the velvet box. “If you end up having a daughter, you can give it to her when she grows up.”

  As the tiara slid back into its velvet box, Taffy tried not to pout.

  Maria handed it to her. “As my maid of honor, will you keep it safe for me?”

  Taffy nodded and tucked it into her suitcase.

  “And I have something for you, too, Taffy.” She opened a side-table drawer and pulled out a notebook with
a heart on it. “For the wedding preparation notes.”

  It didn’t sparkle, but it was practical. With forced enthusiasm, Taffy said, “Thanks, Nana.”

  And then it was time to get in the hired car and head to the airport. Nana hugged them both and said she’d see them at the wedding, if not sooner. Taffy and Maria said nothing more about Luke or the tiara all the way home.

  * * *

  When they landed, Finn was there to greet them at the airport. One look at Maria and he gushed,

  “Oh, wow, you look hot—” Then he seemed to catch himself. “I mean…”

  Maria smiled and patted at her smooth hair. “You like it?”

  “It’s just really good to see you.” He embraced her and buried his nose in her neck. “Mmmm. Smells good, too.”

  Maria lifted one of her bags. “Taffy insisted I get all the products to recreate the look, but it’s pretty high maintenance, so I don’t know…”

  Finn said, “I’d love you the same even if you were bald.”

  Taffy looked up from her phone. “Please don’t conjure up such an image.”

  “What?” Finn looked nonplussed.

  Taffy rolled her eyes. “Where’s the car, Romeo?”

  Finn glanced at Maria. “I guess the trip wasn’t long enough for Taffy?”

  Maria shrugged. “Plenty long enough for me.” She grabbed Finn’s hand, leaned in for another kiss, and then said, “Why didn’t Ethan come with you?”

  Finn took Maria’s bags. “He’s helping Ted install some new kegs at the pub.” He led the way out the double doors as Taffy wrestled with her own luggage. “Are you hungry? Ethan said he’d meet us somewhere.”

  Maria yawned. “I could just—”

  Taffy cut in. “Can you take us to the Castle Rock Resort?”

  Finn tossed all the luggage in the back of his Camry. He looked at Maria.

  Taffy added, “Macy and Cher are there. They docked a few hours ago. Come on. They want to meet you, Maria.” She laced her voice with just enough whining pressure to induce guilt.

  Finn raised an eyebrow. “Some of Taffy’s New York posse is here, in Abandon? Well, I’m curious.”

  “I’m sure you are,” Maria said as she climbed into the front seat.