To Have and to Kill Read online

  To Have and to Kill

  Mary Jane Clark

  Dedication

  For Doris Boland Behrends, my mother,

  who helped me make my first cake.

  And for those affected by Fragile X Syndrome.

  It looks as if treatment is coming . . . soon.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Epilogue

  Piper’s Simple Buttercream Icing

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Mary Jane Clark

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  He took her hand and squeezed it in the darkness. She held on tight as the giant dome above them filled with bright stars, flaring, exploding, and spraying the sky with colors. Listening to the explanation of what the heavenly bodies meant to mankind, the couple felt the stars rushing past them faster and faster, as if they themselves were careening through the Milky Way.

  He leaned over and whispered close to her ear: “Make a wish on one of those stars.”

  She closed her eyes and did as she was told.

  When the planetarium show was over, she started to get up from her seat. “That was fantastic,” she said. “There was so much of that I didn’t know. I sometimes forget that the sun is a star and that, without it, we wouldn’t be alive.” She gently pulled at him to get up.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “Sit down again.”

  Usually, as one group filed out of the theater, the next filed in. He had deliberately chosen the last show of the day so they would be left unrushed and alone.

  “I made a wish on one of those stars, too,” he said. “I wished that you’d say yes.”

  She looked at him, her eyes widening.

  “I’m asking you to marry me, sweetheart,” he said, taking both of her hands in his. “I couldn’t think of a better place to ask you than here among the stars where you belong.”

  She inhaled deeply, pausing for just a moment as she remembered the disturbing letter hidden at the back of her desk drawer.

  His eyes searched her face. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she answered, trying to ignore her apprehension. “Of course I’ll marry you. Yes. Yes. Yes.”

  Tears welling up in her eyes, she threw her arms around his neck and they held on tight to each other.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” he said, pulling back and reaching into his coat pocket. He took out a little red box and opened it. Inside was a large, clear diamond solitaire set in platinum.

  Her left hand trembled as she held it out and he slipped the ring on her finger. This is what she had wanted, what she had hoped would happen. But as she kissed him with joy, something else was nagging at her, leaving her feeling unsettled. For some reason, a portion of the star show they had just seen was repeating itself in her mind. What the narrator said had hit a nerve somewhere deep inside her and somehow felt like a warning.

  She smiled at her fiancé but shivered as she recalled what she had just learned. Explosions ended some stars’ cosmic lives. There were stars that burned hot, lived fast, and died young.

  Chapter 1

  Sunday, November 28 . . . Twenty-six days until the wedding

  Mother and daughter worked, side by side, in the kitchen of The Icing on the Cupcake. Piper Donovan mixed buttercream while her mother poured smooth batter into round baking pans. The front of the store was closed, the shelves emptied of the rolls, Danishes, and coffee cakes eagerly purchased by the morning’s many customers. The ever-present aroma of sweet delights wafted throughout the building.

  With her long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, Piper stood at the table laden with bricks of butter, cartons of eggs, and bags of flour and sugar. She picked up a flower nail—a thin, two-inch-long metal rod with a small, round platform affixed to the end—and secured a square of parchment paper to it. Holding the flower nail in one hand, she applied firm and steady pressure to the plump bag she held with the other. Piper concentrated on the stream of stiff buttercream icing that oozed out from the piping tip and fashioned it into an acorn shape on top of the parchment. Then, picking up another decorating bag, with a different tip, sh
e piped a wide strip as she turned the nail, cloaking the top of the acorn completely. Piper slowly spun the nail, making longer petals that overlapped again and again. When she reached the bottom, she had created a perfect yellow rose.

  She repeated the process over and over, gently sliding the parchment squares with the finished roses onto baking sheets before storing them in the refrigerator.

  “You’ve gotten so good at it, Piper,” said her mother as she leaned forward to get a closer look at the flowers.

  Piper shrugged and smiled mischievously. “And all those years you complained I never paid attention to you,” she said.

  “I really appreciate you taking the time to do this, honey,” said Terri Donovan. “It’s getting so I can’t keep up with everything. I hated to do it, but I even had to turn down three wedding cake orders. Having these flowers made in advance will really help me at the end of the week when I have to make the cake I did promise to do.”

  “It’s no big deal. I had to come out again anyway with more of my stuff. Might as well do these while I’m here.” But it is a big deal if my mother’s turning down wedding cake orders, she thought.

  “Do you have much more to bring back?” asked Terri as she sifted confectioners’ sugar into a mixing bowl.

  “A few more cartons and the rug,” said Piper, squeezing out a final delicate yellow flower. “I sold pretty much all the furniture and the kitchen things to the guy who is taking over my apartment.”

  “Good,” said Terri. “None of it owes you anything. We found most of it at tag sales and, when the time comes for you to get another place, we’ll be able to find more.”

  As she brought the decorating utensils to the sink and began washing them, Piper was thinking about getting back to the city and the audition she had in the morning.

  Terri reached out and touched her daughter’s arm. “It’s going to be great having you back home, Piper,” she said softly.

  As Terri spoke, her eyes were trained over Piper’s shoulder.

  Piper turned around to see whom her mother was looking at. There was nobody else in the kitchen. “What are you looking at, Mom?”

  “I’m looking at you, honey.”

  “Uh, no. No, you’re not. You were looking at something behind me.”

  “I was not,” insisted Terri. She nodded in the direction of the cleaned piping tips. “Make sure you put everything back exactly where you found it.”

  “Got it, Mom.”

  Strange. Was her mother losing it? Usually she was pretty laid-back, but recently she had become almost maniacal about having everything in its place. And there were other things Piper had noticed. On Thanksgiving, her mother missed a few of the glasses when she poured the apple cider. She had ruined the gravy, stirring in confectioners’ sugar instead of flour. And when a customer handed Terri a $10 bill this morning, she pulled change for $20 from the register. Thank goodness they had honest customers.

  Piper hadn’t really thought much about each individual event, but now, as she concentrated on the decorating, she realized something was up. “Mom, is something wrong?” she asked gently.

  Piper observed that her mother’s jaw tightened as she shook her head.

  “No, nothing’s wrong, Piper. Just too much to do and not enough time to do it. I guess I’m a little tense, and when you’re tense, you make mistakes.”

  Piper didn’t buy it, but she kept silent. She knew she was on the brink of having to set major boundaries with her parents about her own privacy. So it was only fair that she gave her mother hers.

  As she carefully arranged the piping tips in their container, Piper knew that, soon enough, she would figure out what was going on with her mother. When you lived in the same house with someone, there was no place to hide.

  Unfortunately, that worked both ways.

  Chapter 2

  Monday, November 29 . . . Twenty-five days until the wedding

  Some people were named for beloved relatives, honored historical figures, favorite characters in fiction, or admired movie stars. Piper was named after her mother’s passion: Terri Donovan was never happier than when she was piping sweet icing on a wedding cake.

  Pacing back and forth in the hallway of the rehearsal studio on Manhattan’s West Side, Piper found her mind wandering. Based on her mother’s criteria, if Piper were to have a daughter, what would she name her? Encore? Brava? Ovation?

  The door to the audition room opened, and a young woman emerged. She looked very similar to Piper and the other four girls waiting in the hallway. Piper braced herself, knowing she was next on the list. Her heart pounded.

  “Piper Donovan?”

  Breathe, she told herself, wondering how she had survived all twenty-seven years of her life, even though everyone thought she didn’t breathe well enough. Her acting teachers, her karate, yoga, and Pilates instructors, her mother and father were always reminding her: “Just take a deep breath, Piper.”

  Entering the audition room, Piper studied the man sitting behind the long table. The casting director would size her up within just a few seconds and determine if she was right for the role. His laptop computer was open as he finished tapping in his notations about the previous actress.

  The man turned his attention to the pile of photographs on the table and picked up Piper’s head shot. “Good morning, Piper. I see here you spent a couple of seasons on A Little Rain Must Fall,” he said as he scanned the information printed on the back.

  Piper nodded. “Until they killed me—uh, I mean, until they killed off my character.”

  “Tell me about your character.”

  “I played Maggie Lane’s long-lost younger sister, Mariah, who was always wreaking havoc. Neither of our characters was aware that we weren’t actually related, but, you know how the soaps are, the viewing audience knew that we weren’t really sisters. Glenna Brooks, who plays Maggie, is, like, über-tiny, brown-eyed, and dark-haired. I’m obviously tall, with the whole ‘green-eyes-and-blond-hair’ thing. They had me dye it platinum for the role. I was into it, so I kept it that way.”

  “How did you die?”

  “DWI. The writers wanted a cautionary tale.”

  “Big deathbed scene?”

  “Yeah—eleven days! It’s a soap; you die in installments.”

  The director smiled. “And I see you did a shampoo commercial,” he said, glancing at the head shot again. “That’s where I know you from! You’re the girl on the horse with the mane of golden hair. That commercial used to be on during the first season of Glee.”

  Piper nodded. “I wish it was still running in prime time. Miss the residuals.”

  The director returned to the information on the back of the photograph. “So what have you been doing lately?”

  Um, giving myself pep talks, thought Piper, but she answered with the standard “Oh, you know. Reading a lot of new scripts.”

  “How are you paying the rent?”

  Piper shrugged. “I waitress.”

  “Where?”

  “The Sidecar above P. J. Clarke’s.”

  “Which P. J. Clarke’s?”

  “The original one at Fifty-fifth and Third.”

  “There’s a restaurant above there?”

  “Yeah, it has a separate entrance with a doorbell and a more sophisticated menu, but they still have the burgers.”

  “Huh. I’ll have to check it out.”

  “You should.”

  She wondered how this happened so often. How did she end up spending more time on the merits of P. J. Clarke’s than on her actual audition? Mind-blowing.

  As if he were reading her mind, the director asked, “What do you like about this role?”

  Piper hesitated. The fact was, there wasn’t much she liked about the role. It was too close. She was coming off her own epic roma
ntic failure, and playing a woman with a broken heart night after night would really just be masochistic. But Gabe, her agent, insisted she was perfect for it. Gabe, love bug that he was, thought she was right for every role. Bummer that Gabe wasn’t a casting director.

  When the audition was over, Piper couldn’t even remember what words she had strung together in response to the question. She hoped they were coherent. All she knew was that before she got halfway through her monologue, the casting director turned his attention away from her and back to his laptop. When she was done, he thanked her but made no further comments. Piper knew she wasn’t going to get the part.

  Still, as she gathered up her coat and scarf in the hallway outside the audition room, she allowed herself to hope that maybe she was wrong. For Piper, hope was everything.

  As she made her way toward the exit, Piper pulled out her BlackBerry and switched the ringtone from silent to normal.