CHAPTER 10

The strident ring of the telephone jarred Lexie as she was pulling two cakes out of the oven, nearly causing her to drop the hot cake pans. Boy, was she on edge. And no wonder, given everything that had been happening lately.

“Buster!” she yelled, balancing the hot pans in her hands. When Buster didn’t immediately appear, she cursed and rushed over to the countertop to deposit the pans on waiting trivets. Then she slammed the oven door shut, yanked off her right oven mitt, and rushed to the still-ringing phone. She picked it up on what must have been the tenth ring.

“LMK, Lexie speaking,” she answered, slightly out of breath from dashing around her kitchen.

“Lexie? Hi, it’s Cole.” His deep voice resonated through the speaker.

“Oh, hi, Cole. What’s the good word?”

“I’m afraid there isn’t a good word, Lexie.”

She stiffened, recognizing from his tone that she was about to get some unpleasant news. “Want to tell me what the problem is?” she asked warily.

“I heard back from the Berkeley Police Department ten minutes ago. Frank Doherty is not in town. His roommates say he left a few weeks ago. No one knows where he went.”

Lexie flashed first hot, then cold. A lump of fear formed in her chest and started to push its way up her throat. She swallowed hard.

“Lexie?” Cole asked. “You still there?”

Lexie took a deep breath. “Yeah,” she managed to squeak out.

“Do you have a lawyer?”

“Yes,” said Lexie, without hesitation. “She’s good.” Marlene Russbaum was someone she trusted implicitly.

“I want you to call her first thing in the morning to have her draw up the paperwork for a restraining order. You’ll need a certified copy of it. I’ll want to talk with her, too, about getting it on the statewide registry and on file with Barnstable County. Could you also please swing by the station tomorrow to sign some documents for me?”

“Okay,” Lexie said, still in a bit of shock. “Do you really think Frank could be here in Star Harbor?”

“I don’t know, but I intend to find out. You have a photo of him we can use?”

“No.” She’d thrown them all away. “But he’s really into social networking. You might try searching online.”

“Okay, I’ll see if we can get ahold of one that way. And I’ll start making inquiries immediately. Until we know for certain what’s going on with Mr. Doherty, I don’t want you going anywhere alone. Is Buster still there?”

“He’s around here somewhere.”

“Make sure. I want him to walk you to your car, or better yet, drive you home.”

“Is that really necessary?”

“Lexie,” Cole sighed, “I don’t want anything to happen to you. Jimmy Bishop’s a good friend of mine and he’d be extremely upset if you were unable to cater his wedding next weekend. So you see, I’m interested in helping you out of selfish motives, too.”

“Ha, ha, Cole.”

“Look, all joking aside, this is my job and I am very good at it. Trust me. Don’t go anywhere alone. I’d never forgive myself if something happened to you on my watch.”

“All right, Cole. I’ll have Buster see me to my car, at the very least.”

“Good. Call me in the morning to set up a time to come in after you’ve spoken to your lawyer.”

“I’ll do that. Good night, Cole.”

“Good night. Be safe, Lexie.”

Lexie listened for the click as Cole hung up the telephone on his end. Then she sighed. When had her life become this complicated? The last thing she needed was to have Frank after her again. Didn’t she have enough to worry about? Frank’s reappearance—or the threat of it—was just the icing on the cake.

The old Lexie would have been frightened and contrite. But Frank didn’t know how much she’d changed. Slowly, her fear turned to anger. The new Lexie could think of nothing better to do than to swear up a blue streak.

First, Lexie cursed Frank for being such a creep. Next, she cursed herself for getting involved with him at all. Finally, she cursed the whole stupid situation.

When she’d run out of curses—she didn’t know that many colorful ones, after all—she calmed down. She’d finish up the cakes, and if Buster didn’t appear by the time she was done, she’d just have to find him. She needed to get a million and one things done that night, and she’d be damned if the specter of Frank Doherty prevented her from doing her job. She threw her oven mitts back on and got back to work.

It took another hour for Lexie to finish baking the rest of the cakes and preparing the pastry dough for the next morning. During all that time, she saw neither hide nor hair of Buster. Where could he be? He had no cell phone, as far as she knew. And even though he’d given her his landline number, she’d never needed to contact him that way before because he lived right upstairs.

As a last resort, Lexie called Buster’s apartment from the phone in the kitchen. There was no answer. She couldn’t stay at the LMK all night, and she couldn’t wait for him to come back. She grabbed her coat from the hook and headed for the back door, making sure she had her car keys in her hand. If she wasn’t going to follow Cole’s instructions, she at least wanted to make sure she didn’t have any lag time between the kitchen door and her car.

Just as she was about to open the back door, she heard it click. She jumped back, but it was just Buster.

“Where have you been?” she demanded.

“Scoping out the building. Checking for security. Making a few phone calls.” Buster’s calm monotone filled the space.

“Why?” she asked, suspicion creeping into her voice.

“Cole called me.”

Lexie slapped her forehead. “Good grief! Does everyone in town know about Frank now?”

“No. But the more people who do know, the better. You need people you can trust looking out for you.”

Lexie was still miffed. “Well, you could have warned me you’d be gone. You scared the living daylights out of me when you disappeared and came back just now. I was about to leave without you.”

“I’m glad you didn’t. Look what I found outside.” Buster reached into the pocket of his worn barn jacket and pulled out a folded piece of white paper.

Lexie swallowed. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Yes. Another note. It was placed outside sometime between when I left and when I returned.”

Slow, dull anger simmered inside her. “That’s it,” she said. “I’m calling Paige right now!”

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, Lexie. Like Cole said, what if it’s not her? What if someone else is leaving the notes?”

“Buster—” Lexie’s voice was as much a plea for help as it was a warning that she was about to lose it. He held up his hands in supplication. She reached for the phone and quickly dialed The Vanilla Bean’s main line. The phone rang and rang. On the seventh ring, the answering machine kicked in. Disappointed, Lexie hung up before leaving a message. “I don’t know why I expected her to be there. Especially if she was just here leaving me that note.”

Buster cleared his throat. “I think we should install a security camera out back. I can wire everything through my apartment.”

“At this point I’m willing to try anything. This is getting ridiculous.”

“I’ll talk to Cole and Luke Bedwin at the hardware store and make it happen.”

“Fine.” Lexie waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. Cole and Luke would be the right people to give them advice. “I can’t even think about this anymore given everything else that’s been going on.”

“I know. You must be tired. Let me get you home.”

“All right.”

Lexie let Buster provide her an escort home, she in her little Honda and he in his beaten-up pickup truck. He waited until she was safely inside her cottage with the lights on before driving away.

From her living room window, Lexie watched Buster’s truck putter down her bumpy dirt driveway and pull out onto Harper’s Pond Road. The sound of his engine gently faded into the distance.

What he’d said stayed with her—what if Paige wasn’t the one leaving the notes? A wave of fear coursed through her. Some of those notes were pretty graphic. When she’d thought Paige was the one leaving them, it had been easy to brush them off as a silly joke. But what if it was someone else? Several of them had actually threatened her with physical harm. Could Frank somehow be behind them? At least until the end of their relationship, passive threats were certainly more his style, which is why it was so hard to believe that he could have attacked her on the Green. Maybe Frank had hired someone to slowly drive her crazy until she fled back to Berkeley. Uncertainty chafed at her.

Fear was what had caused her to run from California in the first place. From Frank. Three years wasn’t that long in the scheme of things, but she loved Star Harbor and couldn’t imagine leaving. Running again. But would she stand her ground if her own safety was on the line? As she found herself pacing like a trapped cat, her little house felt smaller than usual. She stepped up to the window and drew the curtains tightly over the frame. As she moved, a loud creak sounded from the floorboards.

Ignoring the flutter of nerves in her stomach, she forced herself to head to her bedroom. After sending a quick email to her parents, she dressed for bed. She scrubbed her face with soap and water and brushed her teeth as quickly as possible. Then she jumped into bed, cut the light, and pulled the covers over her head.

Low tree branches rustled loudly nearby, the dried leaves that were still attached to them adding to the sound as they scraped against the eaves of her house. Lexie shuddered. Honestly, she felt all of six, quivering and quaking in her bed like a little girl.

She’d give anything to be in a big city right now. A big city filled with lights and people and honking cars and blaring sirens. A big city where she’d never be alone. Anywhere but in her quiet country cottage with her nearest neighbor three quarters of a mile away and nothing around but frogs, insects, and trees.

And the Note Writer.

And Frank Doherty.

No! She shouldn’t think like that. She couldn’t. Even if Frank were here, he wouldn’t be able to get into the house. Buster had prepped it for her when she first hired him. He’d locked it down tight, making sure her doors and windows were sealed and strong. There was no way someone could get in.

Unless he broke the glass. Or forced the door with a crowbar.

Oh, God, she needed to stop these terrible thoughts from circling around and around in her head. She needed to think of things that made her happy so that she could relax enough to sleep.

Her parents made her happy. If she were back in Berkeley, she’d be surrounded by friends and family, getting ready to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which was coming up in a few days. Her mom would make her famous honey cake, there’d be laughter around the holiday table, and they’d celebrate the bounty of fall with apples, pomegranates, and lots of Napa Valley wine.

The realization that the celebration would go on without her made her melancholy. Frank had taken more from her than her spirit—in essence, he’d taken her family, too. So much for happy thoughts. She switched tactics and tried to envision sheep jumping over a wooden fence, their woolly bodies floating through the air like balloons. Somewhere between three hundred and four hundred sheep she finally fell asleep. But her sleep wasn’t soothing or dreamless. It was filled with disturbing images, her ultimate fears come to life, if only in her mind.

First she was at her restaurant without any food to serve. From the dining room, she heard the angry rumble of hungry customers who weren’t being fed. She opened the utility refrigerator, but instead of finding ingredients, she found notes, thousands of them, all demanding her coconut cake recipe. Horrified, she tried to close the fridge, but she couldn’t get the door shut. She closed her eyes and when she opened them, she was in a tiny room surrounded by stacks of crates, each filled with rotting vegetables. Her missing produce. The stench was overpowering.

Now she was in a big field with Frank Doherty, his dirty blond hair and ice-blue eyes exactly as she remembered. Overcome with panic, she froze as he grabbed her and threw her to the ground. He pushed himself on top of her, his evilly grinning face moving closer as his warped smile stretched, his face morphing into a monster’s, with frightening, sharp fangs and yellow-slit eyes. Just as the demon-faced Frank was about to sink his teeth into her jugular, she squeezed her eyes shut, but no bite came.

Opening her eyes, she saw Sebastian’s handsome face, a smile upon his lips. Lexie tried to thank him for getting rid of Frank, but no words came. Sebastian began to stroke her cheek with a large hand. “Lexie,” he said, “don’t be afraid.” Then she was falling through a never-ending passage, like Alice down the rabbit hole. Images from her life passed by—Babs standing in front of the Clam Shak, Buster behind the griddle at the LMK, Cole handcuffing a criminal at the sheriff’s station, Val lounging on his boat. She couldn’t hear them—she could only see them for a fleeting moment before they disappeared. Then she saw Paige Sinclair in her own bakery, holding one of Lexie’s beautiful coconut cakes on a silver cake stand.

“I finally figured it out, Lexie!” Paige said, a triumphant look on her face. Lexie reached out to snatch the cake from her, but it was too late—Paige was gone.

Lexie picked up speed as she fell. Faster and faster, farther and farther down, with nothing to break her fall. Lexie said her prayers, knowing with the utmost certainty that she was about to die. Suddenly, there was a mighty crash and a burst of light. Then all was dark and still.

What had happened? Was she dead?

Lexie took stock of her body. Her head was aching and her throat was bone dry, but for the life of her, she couldn’t move. Slowly, she opened her eyes. At the same moment that she realized she’d fallen out of bed onto her hardwood floor, she also became aware of the fact that she was completely twisted up in her sheets and comforter. It looked like she’d knocked over her bedside lamp, too. That would account for the flash of light she’d seen.

She groaned and tried to extricate herself, while simultaneously trying to avoid touching more of the floor in case the light bulb had shattered.

After a few moments of wiggling, she managed to free herself. She was covered in a fine sheen of sweat from her nightmare. Her skin, now exposed to her cool bedroom air, began to chill. All she wanted to do was get back into bed. Gingerly, Lexie reached for the toppled lamp. Happily, she didn’t feel any shards of glass, and she was able to right the lamp. She switched it on.

And looked at the war zone that was now her bedroom. Her sheets lay in a tangle on the ground. In addition to the lamp, she’d knocked over her clock radio and all the books on her bedside table.

Shivering, she picked them up and returned them to their proper spots. She righted her sheets, then crawled back into bed, head pounding, muscles aching, mouth still dry. There was no way she was going to the kitchen now to get a glass of water. Best to curl back up under the covers and pray that sleep claimed her quickly. And that another nightmare wouldn’t come.

* * *

Though she’d managed only a few hours of sleep, Lexie kept her word to Cole and called her lawyer first thing in the morning. Marlene Russbaum was an extremely competent practitioner who had her law offices in Barnstable. Marlene offered to meet Lexie at the LMK between her breakfast and lunch services, which was a relief. Lexie didn’t want to spend more time than she needed to away from the restaurant, given all that she had to do that week. Besides, she really didn’t want to take a long drive anywhere after her awful night.

Marlene showed up promptly at ten-thirty, just as the breakfast crowd was beginning to thin. As she walked in, she pushed her wire-rimmed glasses up the bridge of her nose and tucked her chin-length, salt-and-pepper hair behind her ears. She peered around the restaurant like she was lost.

Spotting her from behind the counter, Lexie called out a greeting. Marlene was notoriously near-sighted. “Hi, Marlene. Thanks so much for driving here to meet me.”

Marlene turned toward the sound of Lexie’s voice and smiled, the corners of her eyes crinkling up. “Not at all,” Marlene responded. “I spent the morning drawing up the petition for filing the restraining order. We can go over the documents for the catering business at the same time.”

“Thanks. Now you’ve saved me two trips.”

“Given the circumstances, it’s probably best if you don’t take too many long trips alone.”

Lexie sighed. “It is so repressive having these kinds of restrictions.”

“I know, dear, I know. But it’ll be better having the legal documents in place. You’ll have more protection, even if it doesn’t give you complete peace of mind.”

“You’re right. Let me get you a cup of coffee and we can get started. You like it black?”

“That’s right, thanks.” Marlene looked pleased that Lexie had remembered. “Where should I sit?”

“If it’s not too uncomfortable, how about at the counter? That way I’m right there if I need to deal with an emergency in the kitchen.”

“Of course.” Marlene smiled and began to unpack her shoulder bag. Once Lexie returned with her coffee, the two women got down to work.

Two hours later, Lexie had a signed, notarized declaration for filing the restraining order and a whole stack of documents pertaining to the addition of her catering business as part of the LMK. She knew it had been a lot of work, and she was grateful for Marlene’s time.

“So,” Lexie asked wryly, “how much do I owe you?”

Marlene smiled. “I’m doing the restraining order gratis. No use fretting about that, dear. As far as the business documents go, my usual fee applies. I won’t charge you for travel time, though.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Don’t worry,” Marlene said. “I know your catering business will be a huge success. I’m counting on you to make up the legal fees and then some with your first event.”

“I hope so,” Lexie said.

“I know so,” Marlene reiterated, patting the top of Lexie’s hand. “You’re going to be great. Sheriff Grayson told me he has some additional papers for you to sign. We want to get all of the documents to the courthouse as soon as possible. Can you go down to his office now?”

Lexie looked around at her restaurant—the lunch rush was just starting. “Not just yet. But I can make it there this afternoon.”

“Do that.” Marlene pushed her glasses back up her nose and packed up to leave. “I’ll be in touch, dear.”

“Thanks again, Marlene. This has been a huge help.”

“You’re welcome. Happy to assist.” Marlene waved a goodbye and walked out the door.

It wasn’t until four that afternoon that Lexie had a free minute to go see Cole. She gave a nod to Rhonda Lee as she walked into the station. In return, the woman threw her a sympathetic look.

“Hello, Lexie. Cole’s at his desk. Just head on back, honey.”

Lexie gave her a smile. “Thanks. I’ll do that.”

“And honey? Don’t worry about your ex. Cole will deal with him for you.”

“I hope so, Rhonda Lee. Thanks for the encouragement.”

“No problem.”

Lexie walked back to Cole’s office, happy that Hank wasn’t around. It was bad enough that Rhonda Lee knew her personal business. She guessed it wouldn’t be long before everyone else in Star Harbor knew, too. She gave a brief knock on the door frame leading into Cole’s office.

“Hey,” she said.

“Come on in. I’m glad you made it down today.”

“I guess I am, too. I had a bad night.”

“Why? Someone bother you?” Cole was immediately on the alert. “No,” Lexie said, waving her hands. “Just a nightmare.”

“Well, hopefully the nightmare that is Frank Doherty will be just a bad memory once we get these papers filed. Let me grab them.” He stood and walked over to a side table, returning to his desk seconds later with a small pile of papers. “All right,” he said, turning the first piece of paper toward Lexie so that she could read it. “This is my write-up of the notes from our meeting yesterday about the attack. I need to file this with my police report. Could you please confirm that everything is correct, and then sign the bottom if you agree with it?”

“Okay.” Lexie took her time reading the statement. Everything seemed to be in order, so she signed it.

“Great,” Cole said, placing the paper back on top of the pile and sliding another sheet toward her. “Now could you please read and sign this one about the threatening notes?”

Lexie nodded, and reviewed the second document. Again, everything seemed accurate, so she signed that one, too.

“Good,” Cole said. “Now here’s the plan for dealing with that issue. I spoke with Buster and he mentioned you two had discussed installing a security camera. If you’re on board, we’d like to set it up to look out on the back door. The next time you get another note, just let me know, and one of us here can review the feed.” Cole looked at her expectantly.

“I’m on board. Just do what you need to do.”

Cole looked surprised, then relieved. “Good. Then it’s settled. To be honest, I was afraid you’d balk. It will take a few weeks for me to get the paperwork done and the camera installed. I’ll let you know when we’re ready to do the setup.”

“Okay. I hope it doesn’t interfere with your plans. You’re off for the week, right?”

“Yes.” For a fraction of a moment, he looked unhappy. Just as quickly, the moment passed. Cole cleared his throat and continued, once again the consummate professional. “We’ll be filing the paperwork first thing in the morning for the restraining order. We’ve missed the drop-off at the Barnstable County Courthouse clerk’s office today—they close at four. But we’ll get there in the morning when they open. The paperwork’s just a formality. Where we’re really going to gain traction is by telling as many people as possible to be on the lookout for Frank. Star Harbor is a small town, and people have eyes and ears. The more people who see something or know something, the better protected you’re going to be.”

Lexie nodded and rubbed her forehead with her fingers. Her head ached from lack of sleep and too much caffeinated tea. “I understand that you think this is best, but it’s all just a bit overwhelming. I’m a pretty private person. I don’t like everyone knowing my business.”

“I know that, Lexie, and I’m sorry. But the more people who do know, the better. You’re well liked here, and no one wants anything to happen to you. You know that.”

“Yes, I do know that. And I’m grateful. Tell whoever will listen. If Frank’s here, I’m going to need all the help I can get.”

“Good,” Cole said with satisfaction. “And just so you know, I found a few pictures of Frank online, and I had his DMV photo pulled. I plan to get the word out immediately.” He began to jot down some notes on a notepad. As he bent his head, his black hair swung over his forehead, concealing his eyes. For a moment he looked so much like Sebastian that Lexie had to look away. She needed to get out of there before she lost her mind.

“Ah, Cole?” she asked. “Can I get back to the LMK now?”

“Yes, of course,” he said. “Thanks for coming down. We’ll get everything sorted out—you have my word.”

“Thank you. Thank you very much.” When Lexie finally left the station, she felt more optimistic that everything would soon be resolved.