A Deadly Slice of Lime: A Key West Culinary Cozy - Book 6 by Summer Prescott Read Free Book Online Page A

watching her daughter work.
    “Honey,
I don’t want this thing with your dad to come between us. Now, I know that we
both said some things…” she began, trying to smooth Tiara’s ruffled feathers.
    “It’s
fine. We’re fine,” the young woman interrupted, without even bothering to
glance up from her computer.
    Marilyn
sighed inwardly, knowing that restoring things to their formerly easygoing flow
was going to be a challenge. “Did you know that your dad was in the Keys on
business?” she asked casually.
    Tiara’s
fingers stopped their perpetual clickety-clicking on the keyboard, and she
actually raised her eyes to meet her mother’s. “What?” she said quietly,
grinding her teeth a bit.
    “I
did some checking, an apparently your dad brokers luxury items and businesses
for some very wealthy people. Brad was a client of his,” she explained, her
daughter taking it all in.
    “Brad
was his client?” she repeated.
    “Yeah.
The reason that they went charter fishing was because Brad wanted to buy the
charter business,” Marilyn nodded, hating to hurt her daughter.
    “You
just couldn’t leave it alone, could you?” Tiara said, shaking her head slowly.
“You couldn’t let me believe for even a little while that my dad had actually
come to the Keys because he wanted to see me, could you?” she blurted, tears
welling in her eyes.
    “Honey,
I’m sorry. I thought you would want to know,” Marilyn hung her head. “I never
meant to hurt you. Looks like I can’t do anything right these days,” she
muttered, turning to leave.
    “Mom,
wait,” Tiara called out, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I know you meant well,
I’m just sad and confused, and I did some checking of my own that makes me
think that things are even worse than we may have thought,” she admitted,
wiping her face with the back of her hand.
    “Really?”
her mother asked. “What did you find?”
    “Come
look,” was the response. Marilyn came around behind her daughter and saw that
she was looking at a series of photographs simultaneously.
    “What’s
this?” she asked, befuddled.
    “See
that guy, right there?” Tiara asked. “That’s Brad.” She indicated a middle-aged
man in a bar with a drink in his hand, who appeared to be singing or something.
    “Okay,
so what’s the issue?” she was still confused.
    “There’s
Dad, right there,” her daughter pointed out Daniel, standing behind Brad, with
a hand on his shoulder, and in a couple of other pictures, where they appeared
to be dancing in a group.
    “Well…it’s
not unusual to take your client out and schmooze them until the deal goes
through,” Marilyn pointed out, wondering what Tiara saw that she didn’t.
    “Yeah,
I know,” the young woman nodded. “But do you see this neon sign? That’s the
name of the bar. I searched it on the internet, and…” she shook her head, her
cheeks reddening.
    “And?”
her mother prompted.
    “And…not
that there’s anything wrong with this at all, but…it’s a bar for…for people
with alternative lifestyles.”
    “Okay…”
Marilyn said, not understanding what any of this had to do with their current
situation.
    “So…if
Brad and Dad are…or were, in a relationship, Dad might’ve been really mad at
his client or partner or whatever he was to him, because he flirted with me on
the fishing trip. The bad part about that is that, even though I know that Dad
would never hurt anyone, this might make him look more guilty,” her tears
started anew.
    It
was on the tip of Marilyn’s tongue to reply tartly that Daniel had indeed hurt
his share of people, two of whom were in this very room, but she refrained, not
wanting to cause her daughter anymore pain. Instead, she murmured words of
comfort to the scared and sad young woman.
    “Sweetie,
one thing you have to realize right now is that what happened was not in any
way your fault. We don’t know whose fault it was, but the police will figure
that out. As for your dad looking