a decent person.”
“Well, you don’t have sexual skills and you’re not a decent person, either. Pretty sad.”
“We’ll see who gets the last laugh.”
At that moment Hawk strolled through the doors that led to the kitchen.
“That would be Jessica.” He pulled out his handcuffs. “Grant Dobbs, you’re under arrest for the murder of Matilda Dobbs.”
The front door opened and Ranger Jackson came in, his gun drawn and pointed in Grant’s direction.
“You have the right to remain silent,” Hawk said. He rattled off the rest of the Miranda rights. Grant, obviously stunned, just stared at Jessica.
“You’ll want to put your hands against the counter and let Constable Coleman search you,” Jackson said.
At first, she thought Grant was going to fight, but he looked at her, then Hawk, then Jackson. Jessica noticed Marty stood nearby, his hand on the butt of his gun. She wondered if Grant had noticed that, too.
Grant put his hands on the counter. Hawk frisked him as Jackson stood nearby, his gun still drawn.
“Oh, and don’t worry about the remain silent part,” Jackson said. “Your girlfriend already told us everything when we caught her trying to plant the gun and ring in Jessica’s house.”
“She did it,” Grant said. “She killed my mother.”
“Funny, that’s what she said about you,” Jackson said. “Willis told me she spilled her guts about the planning and the actual murder. What sort of story will you tell us?”
“The truth,” Grant said.
Jessica laughed. “Doubtful.”
“Bitch,” Grant spat at her.
“You’ve used that word before,” Jessica said. “Try and figure out something different.”
“Let’s go,” Jackson said. He holstered his weapon and took one of Grant’s elbows. He led him out the front door. Jessica hurried over in time to see Vanessa, the woman from the regional newspaper, take photos of the arrest.
“How did she know?” Jessica asked.
Marty waved his phone at her. “I love text messaging,” he said.
Jessica burst into laughter. She ran across the room and hugged him. “Thank you, Marty.”
She turned to Hawk and rushed to him. She threw her arms around his neck and pulled him close, and then kissed him deeply.
“Hey, where’s my kiss?” Marty asked.
“I owe you one,” Jessica said as she kissed Hawk again. Hawk wrapped his arms around her and held her tight.
“You owe me, too,” he said.
“A debt I will gladly pay,” she said. “Just name the price.”
“I’ll think on it and let you know.”
She was sure he would, and it would be a great deal of fun for both of them.
A week later, Jessica checked her cabinets to make sure she had enough supplies to make the wedding cake. The event was in a week and a half, and if she had to make an emergency run to a box store in Amarillo she wanted to make sure she had enough time to get all her ducks in a row.
Lizbeth and Natalie would take care of the bakery next week. The only thing Jessie would do was make cakes: two of them, the main wedding cake, and the groom’s cake. The main cake would be three tiered, with all the bells and whistles of a wedding cake. Holt had asked her to make the groom’s cake into the shape of a boot She’d spent the last week making drawings of how to cut cakes into the shapes to make the boot.
Hawk had suggested she use a mold, but she knew that would look, to her anyway, unprofessional. She wanted to cut and make her own design. Aurora had unique boots to go with her dress, white with turquoise inlay. The groom’s cake would be turquoise color with white inlay. But cutting the pattern into the cake would be difficult. The main cake would be easy. She would have it made by Monday, with the cakes stored in the refrigerator. The frosting and decorations would not take place until Saturday morning.
But the groom’ s cake. She was wishing she’d never told Holt it would be “a piece of cake.”
She had a new composition book. Hawk had given it to her a few days ago when he’d seen her drawing images of the cake on napkins. Now the book was a fourth full of cake drawings, all of them of boots. Most were single boots, but there were also pairs of boots, some of them together, some separate. She couldn’t decide which one she liked the best, and which one would be easiest to make. She flipped a page and giggled when she saw Hawk’s handwriting under a drawing of a single