In Other Words...Murder

by In Other Words. . . Murder [MM] (retail) (epub)

  I said, “I remember it differently.”

  He continued to regard me with that eerily earnest expression. “Even hearing you say it to my face, I still can’t believe you would think I could hurt you. You know how much I think of you and your work. How much I respect you. Our friendship was one of the greatest joys of my life.”

  “We weren’t friends, Jerry. You harassed and stalked me, and then you attacked me.”

  “I gave you presents. I gave you compliments. I saved your life!”

  Okay, there he had me, because yes, that was all true. He had given me presents and compliments, unwanted but accepted out of politeness. And he had very possibly saved my life that night too.

  I said, “And now you’re dressing up like a clown and—”

  Jerry burst out laughing. “Christopher,” he gurgled. “Did you really say that?”

  We had the attention of everyone in the bakeshop. Jerry saw it too and played up to it. He guffawed and chortled and howled, “A clown!” He even hit the table with his hand, so that it jumped forward a couple of inches. I put my hands out to stop it from knocking into me. Two or three people at the end of the counter line abruptly left the shop.

  Finally, he wiped at his eyes and sighed, shaking his head. I couldn’t seem to tear my gaze away from the dark bruise on his forearm. That would be where I’d hit him with the hotel iron.

  He said, “There’s that wonderful sense of humor.”

  It was quite the performance, and that’s all it was because as Jerry’s eyes met mine, they were bone dry, cold, and unsmiling despite his wide, idiotic grin. “I’m sorry you’re being stalked for real now. That must be awful. And by a clown.” He continued to grin at me. “I know some people are afraid of clowns. Are you?”

  “No.”

  “Holmes!” called the girl behind the counter.

  I rose without another word, went to the counter, and said quietly, “Are your security cameras working?”

  Her eyes widened. “Yes. Why?”

  “You need to preserve the footage of the last ten minutes. In fact, since I walked in. The guy who’s sitting at my table is violating a restraining order. The police are going to want to see those frames.”

  Her eyes went wider still. “Okay.” She looked past me and said, “He’s watching you.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s what he does.” I took the square pink box and departed.

  Before the glass door closed, I glanced back at Jerry, but for once he wasn’t watching me. He was studying the girl behind the counter.

  I didn’t like his expression.

  I was still shaking when I got home.

  Partly that was due to the brisk hike home—I hadn’t been getting my workout in the past few days—partly it was altitude. Who the hell came up with the idea to build a city on a series of hills? Why wouldn’t the people of the north simply razor off the hills and build cities in the dust like we do in the Southland?

  Mostly, though, it was abject terror.

  The whole walk home I had expected Jerry to come racing after me or, however unlikely this was, for a clown to jump out of the shrubberies and grab me.

  I could hear the shower running overhead, and I shoved the cake in the fridge and went upstairs. I sat on the foot of the bed, waiting.

  After a few minutes of tuneless humming, gargling, and flushing, the door opened and J.X. wafted out on a cloud of bath gel scented steam. Distressed as I was, I couldn’t but admire the bronzed width of his shoulders and the muscular length of his legs. I’d never known a guy who could wear a damp bath towel like J.X.

  “Hey,” he greeted me. “Where did you go?”

  “The bakery. It was supposed to be a surprise, but I ran into Jerry.”

  All trace of cheerfulness vanished. His face grew stony, eyes fierce. “You mean he followed you? Is he outside?” He dropped the towel and reached for his jeans with the air of an Old-West gunfighter buckling on his holster.

  “No. I don’t think so. I don’t know if he followed me there either. Maybe not. Maybe it was a ghastly coincidence. He claims he was picking up cupcakes for his girlfriend’s Halloween party. Anyway, he believes the restraining order won’t stand. In fact, he seemed to think it had already been dismissed.”

  J.X. swore, finished buttoning his Levi’s, and went to the phone.

  There followed a few nail-biting minutes of tense and terse conversation before he threw over his shoulder, “They’re contesting, but the hearing hasn’t been held yet.”

  I had a million questions, naturally, but he was already punching new numbers into the phone.

  “Izzie? That asshole Knight confronted Christopher at a bakery this morning.”

  Another terse conversation followed before J.X. put Izzie on speakerphone.

  Izzie’s deep voice boomed, “Yo, Christopher. How you holding up?”

  “You know me. Like the Parthenon after the Venetians got done with it.”

  Izzie laughed heartily. “Tell me exactly what went down at the bakery.”

  The what went down sounded so dangerous and streetwise, whereas the actual encounter had been sort of pedestrian and suburban. I was approached whilst purchasing pastries! I felt silly by the end of my recounting—although I had not found it remotely silly at the time.

  J.X. didn’t seem to find it silly either. “Jesus Christ. This dude is a brazen-assed candidate for the psych ward.”

  “He doesn’t seem impressed by my winning personality, that’s for sure,” Izzie agreed.

  “What do you think?” J.X. asked.

  That sounded innocuous but was clearly code, because Izzie made a soothing nn-nn sound.

  J.X. was not soothed. “What about this broad he’s shacked up with?” he demanded. “Is there a way in through her?”

  This was an eye-opener. Not that I didn’t know J.X. had to have a harder, more cynical side than the one I usually saw, but I realized there was a whole side to him that was a stranger to me.

  “Violet Sanderson? No way. There’s nothing on her besides the fact that she’s a weirdo. She was adopted by the Sandersons when she was eleven. Private schools, debutante ball, the whole deal, but after her adoptive parents died, she went into seclusion. She turns up at the occasional charity do, dressed like Aunt Esther, and drops a shitload of cash when she’s in the mood. That’s all I could find on her.”

  They discussed the vagaries of rich white ladies for a minute or two while I debated whether to tell them Sanderson had called the house two nights earlier. I didn’t want to, didn’t want J.X. any more worked up than he was, but I also thought they’d better be prepared.

  I broke into their conversation. “Violet Sanderson called here the other night.”

  “She what?” J.X. stared at me. Izzie was silent on the other end of the phone.

  “She phoned to say I was not going to get away with harassing and bullying Jerry. And that her friends in high places beat my friends in high places.”

  “How fucking dare she,” J.X. said, and the deadly quietness of his tone was kind of unsettling.

  “Oh, did she?” Izzie boomed his deep, melodious laugh, though he didn’t sound particularly amused to me. “Well, we’ll see about that.”

  J.X. said, “You should have told me, Kit.”

  “It’s not like we don’t already know she’s on Jerry’s side.”

  “She threatened you.”

  I sighed. “Yeah. I get that a lot.”

  Izzie said, “Okay. Now we know. First thing I’m going to do is see if the bakery has security cameras.”

  “They do, they work, and I asked the girl at the counter to make sure nothing happened to that footage.”

  J.X. threw me a look of surprised approval. “Outstanding,” Izzie rumbled.

  “Any chance we can arrest this guy now on violating the TRO?” J.X. asked.

  “Iffy,” Izzie said. “We can try, if that’s the way you want to go, but Sanderson hired John Kestenbaum to contest the TRO, so I’m guessing Bo
zo will be out again about fifteen minutes after we slam the door.”

  I had never heard of John Kestenbaum, but J.X. swore quietly, so apparently Kestenbaum for the defense was liable to prove a worry.

  Izzie said, “I know, man. It might be better to play it cool. Hide our hand until we’re ready to make our play.”

  J.X. glanced at me, and I said, “I agree with Izzie. Keep ’em guessing.”

  J.X. was unsatisfied with this, but he accepted being outvoted. “You’ll keep me informed?”

  “You’ll be first to know, bro.”

  Izzie hung up, and J.X. turned to me. “Kit, you can’t keep that kind of thing from me.”

  “I don’t. I wouldn’t. Seriously, she wasn’t saying anything we didn’t already know—and you’ve already been distracted enough by this.”

  “I’m supposed to be distracted by my boyfriend being—”

  The phone rang, cutting him off.

  This time it was Detective Dean.

  “Mr. Holmes, were you able to locate that contact info for Zachary Samuels?” she demanded.

  “Was I supposed to?” I asked blankly.

  I mean, even taking into account my solving four-plus homicides in a year, God help the county of Los Angeles if the cops were relying on me to do their work for them.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Because I really don’t remember you—”

  She cut me off. “We’ve been able to locate Mr. Samuels’ brother, but he tells us there was a riff between himself and other family members.”

  “Rift,” I said. “Unless you’re talking about the Partridge Family.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Nothing. Go on.”

  “Were the Partridges particular friends of Samuels?”

  “No. Please continue, Detective.”

  “Samuels was aware their sister passed away several years ago, but was unable to provide any information regarding either his niece or his brother. In fact, he wasn’t aware he had a niece.”

  “I’m not surprised. I recall there was some kind of falling out between the siblings,” I said. “But here’s the thing, the people you need to be looking at for this crime are Tip and Etta Coopersmith.”

  “Who?”

  “The couple who owned the house before Zag bought it.” I began to regale her with the alarming tales I’d heard from Zag and Felicity.

  “Mr. Holmes, is there some reason you neglected to share this information with me until now?” Dean broke in just as I was getting to the part about the dead fish in the wall.

  “I didn’t neglect to tell you; you weren’t interested,” I objected. “You cut me off when I brought it up. You were too busy trying to frame Zag.”

  “Kit,” J.X. exclaimed.

  I jumped guiltily, having forgotten he was in the room. I scowled at him.

  “You can’t say that to her.”

  I nodded, although I had just done so. Dean, meanwhile, was voicing her objections loudly on my choice of phrase—my term, not hers.

  “Look, call it what you want,” I said, “but in my opinion you made your mind up from the start that whoever was living in the house at the time the body was buried is your perp. First it was me. Now it’s Zag.”

  “Why are you getting into this with her?” J.X. was saying in the background. “How does antagonizing her help?” This from the guy who five minutes earlier had been asking whether we could get to Jerry through one of the richest women in San Francisco.

  “I realize you write mysteries, Mr. Holmes, but real-life police work is different from the fictional kind. In real life, crime is usually not complicated. The most obvious solution is usually the correct solution.”

  “How convenient,” I said. That was payback for her same comment during our first meeting, but really it made no sense because in this case she was right. However, I had to take my frustrations out on someone, and Detective Dean had built up quite a pile of IOUs with me.

  She was venting her own frustrations when a thought suddenly occurred to me—a thought which should have occurred before then.

  “Have you tried to reach Felicity?” I interrupted.

  “Felicity who?” Dean cried.

  “Felicity Dann. Zag’s girlfriend. Maybe she knows whether Zag’s—what happened with Zag. Or at least she might know his niece’s whereabouts.”

  “Until this moment I was unaware Mr. Samuels had a girlfriend,” Dean said in that tight voice women get when they are trying very hard to show they are not about to scream at you, though you are certainly asking for it. “As I was unaware of the Coopersmiths and the Partridges.”

  “Yes, Zag and Felicity were together. Well, off and on. But they’d been off and on for years. I met her a couple of times. They were planning to move in together, but according to the niece, Felicity bailed after Zag’s stroke. I’m not sure if that’s a fair assessment. Nobody knows how they’ll react in circumstances like that. We all hope we’ll do the right thing.”

  My gaze wandered to J.X., who was listening to all this with an exasperated expression. As I studied his face, realization struck me. I’d stand by you. Whatever happens, I’ll be there for you.

  It was kind of shocking. Because it was true. Naturally, I would have wanted to be there for David too—back when I loved David—but I had never felt this kind of strength, this kind of certainty before.

  In sickness and in health. Till death do us part.

  They weren’t just words. It wasn’t just a formality.

  Not that I’d ever viewed them as a mere formality, but that sudden strength and certainty? That was largely due to J.X. The way he treated me. The way he trusted me. The way he loved me.

  I smiled at him, and J.X. blinked as though a constant star had suddenly flared up.

  On the other end of the line, Dean was still talking, but I didn’t care anymore. Maybe she would solve her case. Maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe the Coopersmiths would be stuffing dead fish in walls from here to eternity. It didn’t matter. I was out of it now. I had a new life and a new love, and the past was just practice.

  Chapter Seventeen

  According to Amazon, Zag was alive.

  On impulse, I’d gone online to see how my backlist was faring these days, and while studying those dismal results, it occurred to me to compare—er, check—Zag’s backlist.

  The results were staggering.

  At the time Zag had suffered his stroke, he’d written eighty books under the pen name Sophie Snow for Millbrook’s Prime Crime list. A lull of five years followed Double Dutch Demise and then boom! A new Sophie Snow mystery: Murder with Sprinkles on Top.

  Zag was back—and he’d started writing again.

  And how! In nine years he’d written an additional one hundred and twenty mysteries. Over thirteen books a year. Not only was he exceeding his old whirlwind production schedule, he appeared to have dumped Millbrook and turned to self-publishing. All his self-published titles were in Kindle Unlimited—and doing very well.

  I was happy for him. I was relieved that he had not only survived his illness, he was thriving.

  I scrolled to the abbreviated author bio. Because Zag was using a feminine pen name, he had chosen an avatar for his author photo—a variation on the classic pink and black Nancy Drew logo—so that was naturally unchanged. The bio itself had been updated.

  Sophie Snow loves tending her garden, baking cupcakes, and, of course, reading mysteries.

  She is married and lives in the quaint town of Sunol, California, with three cats, two dogs, and a parakeet named Tweety.

  Sign up for Sophie’s newsletter at: http://eepurl.com/b19qzz

  You can contact Sophie with questions and/or comments at: sscozygirl@gmail.com

  Not exactly a mine of information, but it mirrored the bios of most of the other cozy authors I glanced at. Nor was it exactly accurate either. I remembered the bird—how long did those things live anyway?—but Zag had been allergic to animal dander. Then again, allergy medications had
improved a lot in the last fourteen years, so maybe he was able to have furry pets now.

  I debated for a minute or two—and then another minute or two—and then shot off an email.

  Hey there!

  Remember me? So glad to see you’re up and around and back to writing. I feel bad about not getting in touch for so long. I’m living in the Bay Area now, but if you’re ever in town, let me know. I’d love to catch up.

  Christopher (Holmes)

  I’d love to catch up?

  But yeah, I did want to catch up with Zag.

  For one thing, I felt terrible about not ever having gone to visit him all the time he was sick. No, not even that so much as how easily I’d forgotten all about him. That was not okay. J.X. would never be so callous.

  But also, I was kind of curious to see what Zag had to say about the body being discovered in his old backyard. As a fellow mystery writer, I knew he’d be as intrigued as I was, and I wanted to get his take before Detective Dean got hold of him and swore him to silence.

  Minutes passed.

  When I caught myself checking my email for the third time, I was amused. Was I really expecting an immediate reply? No. It took me days if not weeks to get around to answering fan mail. Especially after Jerry.

  Instead, I tried phoning Joey again.

  Once again, I got the house answering machine.

  This time I gave in and left a message stating I was an old friend of Dicky’s and was hoping Joey could help me get in touch.

  Now what?

  I gazed about my immaculately organized office and considered what to do next.

  The obvious thing was to begin the first Miss Butterwith proposal. The holiday Butterwith story. I’d never done a specifically holiday story, so this was going to be fun.

  No, really. It was.

  I was eager to start. And yet…I was also a little nervous. Gazing at Amazon page after Amazon page of unfamiliar authors and book titles had thrown me. Who were all these people? With the exception of Sophie Snow, I hadn’t recognized a single name.

  Did Miss Butterwith and I even belong in this brave new world of .99 books and boxsets? And why the hell were so many of these amateur sleuths witches? Was that a Halloween thing? What had happened to my beloved genre while I was away solving real murders?