Free Strawberry Tartlets and a Dead Starlet by A. Gardner Page A

blurt out. Bree coughs, inhaling a cloud of powdered sugar.
    "What?"
    "At least she said she was pushed." I hand Bree another napkin. "I know it sounds crazy, but I believe her. Frankie was lucky that multiple people noticed her splashing around in the water before the boat got too far away."
    "She's also lucky she wasn't drunk," Bree adds. "She wasn't drunk, was she?"
    "Not that I could tell." I shake my head. Frankie was Frankie all evening.
    "Who does she think pushed her?" Bree asks, lowering her voice.
    "If I knew the answer to that, I would've told you already."
    "Okay, let's start from the beginning," Bree continues. "Tell me everything she said to you yesterday. Don't leave anything out."
    "I already told you," I remind her. "She wouldn't talk about Lacy Leigh." I pause, remembering the worried look on her face when Presley drove her to the hospital to get checked out. She was lucky that the fall hadn't broken anything. "She did sound nervous when she finally admitted out loud that someone pushed her overboard."
    "I would be too." Bree raises her eyebrows. "It's too bad Presley wasn't around to save the day."
    "Frankie did say that Lacy Leigh had nothing but good things to say about Presley," I add.
    Bree sits up straighter and puts down her beignet without taking another bite. Her eyes dart from me, to the opposite end of the café, and then back to me again. She holds up a finger—eyes glowing as if a light bulb had gone off in her head.
    "That's it," Bree says proudly. "That's his secret. Well, no wonder he never said anything."
    "What on earth are you talking about?" I wrinkle my nose, trying to follow her logic.
    "Presley and Lacy had a thing," Bree whispers. "Now everything makes sense." Her eyes are as wide as two mini cupcakes.
    "Bree, that's absurd, not to mention extremely unprofessional."
    "Think about it." Bree leans across the table. "Lacy Leigh does nothing but complain every time she's in town, even about her own staff. Don't you find it odd that Presley has been granted angel status? It's because the two of them were involved." She laughs. "I can't believe I never saw it before."
    "Back up," I protest. "It's a theory. That doesn't mean it's true." My mind jumps back to the moment on the boat when Presley kissed me. My heart was racing, and all I could think about was us . He couldn't have been seeing Lacy Leigh Nichols just days before, could he?
    "Maybe the little room-swap thing was a lie too?" Bree goes on. Bree gasps and holds her hands up to her face. "Maybe she spent the night in his room?"
    "Bree, if anything, he would have spent the night in her room," I point out.
    "You don't know that."
    "Then how do you explain Presley answering the door to Lacy's suite Saturday morning?" I respond. "Alone."
    "Maybe he was getting something she left behind?" Bree suggests.
    "Even if that's true, Lacy still ate the strawberry tartlets in Presley's room," I continue. "That means, whether or not they were sleeping together, the poison was still meant for Presley."
    "Maybe Lacy tried to poison him." Bree shrugs.
    "Sounds like a soap opera." My stomach rumbles, and I force myself to eat a small bite of croissant. "Besides, that means Lacy would have known where the poison was. She wouldn't have eaten it herself."
    "Maybe she forgot?" Bree bites the side of her lip.
    "I seriously doubt that," I answer.
    "There is one other explanation," Bree points out. She glances around the café and lowers her voice so much that I have to scoot my chair closer to her. "What if…what if Presley did it?"
    My cheeks go warm and my chest tightens. I clench my fists, refusing to believe any of it. The lies. The affair. The possible murder. Presley can't have done any of those things. I shake my head, holding back my frustrations. But I can't hold them for very long.
    "Okay," I huff. "Maybe we should go. Clearly, you have heat stroke or something."
    "Poppy, we're friends, right?"
    "Right," I agree.
    "How can you be so sure that