Mint Chip & Murder

by Erin Huss

  "No, he didn't…necessarily."

  "So that would be a yes."

  "No, I can ruin things all on my own," I said indignantly. "Plus I can't just go around marrying people, Amy. This is a big decision, and it's not just me. I have to consider what is best for Lilly."

  "What is best for Lilly is what is best for you. If you're in a miserable relationship with Tom, then she's going to grow up to have a miserable relationship as well. Look at you."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Your parents got pregnant, decided to get married, had a horrible relationship, which totally screwed you up, and they ended up divorced. Now you have a stepmother who you hate and a mother who is slightly obsessive."

  "I am not screwed up." OK, maybe I was. Crap.

  The thought of Lilly having this exact conversation with her best friend in twenty-five years gave me indigestion. Or maybe it was the alarming amount of carbs I'd consumed that day.

  Either way, I pulled open my drawer and grabbed my bottle of Tums. It was empty. Dang it.

  Note to self: Go to Costco and buy a new case of Tums, ASAP.

  Instead, I grabbed the Advil bottle and shook two into my palm. I swore the new employment package for any job in this industry should say, "Welcome to the world of property management. I hope you like ibuprofen."

  "Cambria." Amy put her hands on my shoulders and looked me straight in the eyes. "I watched you pine over Tom for years, and I watched your heart break when he didn't reciprocate the feelings. Chase loves you."

  "I know." And after everything I'd put him through, I had no idea why. "I love him, too."

  "Then marry him. Because we all know Tom will never get down on one knee."

  Technically, she was right. "I don't know what is happening with Lilly and Chase, though."

  "You and I both know Tom put ideas into her head."

  "He said he didn't."

  "I don't believe him for a second."

  "Tom is many things, but he isn't a liar."

  My phone rang. A number I didn't recognize flashed on the screen, and I answered. "This is Cambria."

  Amy put her finger under my chin and forced me to look at her. "We'll resume when you're done," she said and stalked back into my apartment, closing the door behind her. I knew her well enough to know she was already on Pinterest looking up bridal schemes.

  "Cambria, it's Marlene. I know you said the screaming was goats, but I just saw a woman running out of Apartment 14B. Isn't that place empty?"

  "Yes, it is." I wracked my brain, trying to remember if I'd locked the door this morning. Typically, I'd leave the vacant units unlocked with applications on the kitchen counter. The building was small, traffic was light, and there was no point in me sitting there all day waiting for a prospect to pop in. But Apartment 14B wasn't ready to show. Not with the crusty oven. I hadn't even scheduled the cleaning yet—I'd been so preoccupied with the barrel. For the life of me, I couldn't remember if I'd locked the door or not. I was sure that I'd left the fan in there. Shoot.

  "I'll be right there," I told Marlene.

  * * *

  I called Chase, asking him to meet me at the Burbank building, and we arrived at the same time. Parking was nonexistent on the apartment-lined street. I deemed this an emergency, double parked my car, and turned on the hazard lights. Chase didn't need hazards. He had a flashing red and blue mount grill light on the driver's side roof.

  I'd asked for one for Valentine's Day.

  He gave me flowers instead.

  Whatever.

  Chase greeted me with a quick peck on the lips. "Before you ask, I haven't looked at the information you texted me. This isn't the only case I have going right now, and it's been a crazy day."

  "You need to look at the info, pronto. One of the former residents in an attic access apartment has a violent criminal history."

  "How'd you find this out?"

  "Tom ran a background check."

  Chase always tensed a little at the mention of Tom's name but never said anything. At the end of the day, Tom was part of the package. Chase knew this. It's what happens when you date a single mother.

  Chase and I stepped into the courtyard. Marlene was waiting outside her apartment, biting at her nails. When she saw me approaching, she dropped her hand and ran over. "The woman was up in there screaming." She pointed to Apartment 14B.

  "You sure it wasn't the goats?" I asked.

  As if they heard us talking about them, the goats let out a scream, followed by Fox telling them to "shut the hell up!"

  "I'm positive," Marlene said.

  "Was she with anyone else?" Chase asked.

  "Not that I could see."

  Chase went up the stairs to Apartment 14B, and I stayed with Marlene. She hugged her waist, looking pale. "I'm freaked out about what I overheard Fox say yesterday before the goats chased me away. Was there a dead body in the attic? Is that what the police found?"

  I hesitated. Only because I knew how fast rumors spread through communities. By this time tomorrow, instead of one dead woman in a barrel, it would be a triple homicide with a serial killer on the loose.

  But I didn't want to lie to Marlene. Not when she appeared so upset. "Yes," I said. "Unbeknownst to any of us, the victim had been up there for many years. You don't have to worry about your safety. It was an isolated incident, a heinous crime likely committed by someone the victim knew personally."

  Marlene twisted her mouth to the side and peered first up at Apartment 14B, then back at me. She did this several times. I suspected she was about to tell me she was moving, or she was going to ask for a discount on her rent since she'd been living under a corpse.

  Instead, she cleared her throat and said, "I think my apartment is haunted."

  Oh. Well. Didn't see that one coming.

  "I know it sounds crazy," she said. "Sometimes the lights just turn on. One time I saw a woman at the foot of my bed just staring at me."

  Uh…OK. "Did you ask her to leave?"

  "No." Marlene lowered her voice. "She was a ghost. It was freaky as hell."

  I bet.

  "What did the ghost look like?" I asked.

  "She was young, with dark hair."

  "Did she have all her teeth?"

  Marlene gave me a look, as if my question were ridiculous. Even though we were currently talking about a creeper ghost watching her sleep. "I didn't look."

  Here's the thing. I didn't believe in all that paranormal, evil spirits, curses, and ghost stories…that much. However, I couldn't deny the fact that Marlene did live in 11A, the same apartment all the women from El Salvador lived in, as well. I also couldn't deny the fact that Trevor had said on multiple occasions there was a disturbance there.

  "Do you think the woman who screamed in Apartment 14B was a ghost?" I asked.

  "I don't know."

  "What did she look like?" I asked.

  "She had on black pants, white tennis shoes, and she had a big straw hat on. I didn't see her face, but she walked with a limp."

  "Can ghosts limp?" I asked.

  Marlene had no idea, so we Googled it.

  Google didn't know either.

  Shoot.

  Chase returned and pulled me aside. "The apartment was unlocked, and the attic door was open."

  Great. "I'm not a hundred percent positive if I locked the front door. I did close the attic." It was an awkward door to open and close, and I remembered making sure it was sealed tight before I left. "Marlene said her apartment is haunted by a woman. The ghost was young with dark hair."

  Chase blinked. "What does that have to do with anything?"

  "Read your text messages. There was a group of women from El Salvador who lived in Apartment 11A around the time the victim was killed. They ranged in ages from twenty to late thirties. None of them have move-out inspections, and some lived here when Alvin and Sherman did. By the way, I sent you their last names, social security numbers, and birthdates. Sherman is the one who has a criminal reco
rd."

  "Interesting. I'll look at the information right now."

  "What about this woman who ran screaming from Apartment 14B?"

  "Someone was clearly in the attic. I'm going to request patrol to come around here in case she returns."

  "You don't think my residents are in danger, do you?"

  "Not unless one of your residents is a killer." The goats screamed again, and Chase cocked his thumb to Fox's apartment. "That guy might be in danger. I'd kill him if he were my neighbor."

  "Don't even joke about it. I'm maxed out on homicides," I said, rubbing my chest.

  Note to self: Buy Tums before you go home.

  "Have you talked to Patrick?" Chase asked.

  Ugh. Right. That. I'd almost forgotten. "Yes, he's getting out of property management all together."

  "I'm not buying it," Chase said. "He's dodging us."

  "He said you were playing phone tag."

  "Phone tag insinuates that he has called us back."

  "That doesn't make sense. It's Patrick."

  "You need to accept the possibility that your boss may have been involved."

  "But he's married and has kids and dogs."

  "Do you know how many men I've put away who are married with kids and dogs at home?" he asked.

  I shook my head. Patrick wasn't a killer. Sure, I'd entertained the thought, but only for a moment. I knew him. There's no way. Not buying it. "The person running from Apartment 14B was a woman, though. Patrick is a man."

  "He has a wife, right?"

  "Yes."

  Note to self: Check if Patrick's wife has a limp.

  "I need to finish talking to Marlene. Before I go, I'd really appreciate it if you went to dinner on Friday with me. Hampton is my partner, and that is a very important relationship."

  There weren't enough words in the English language to express how deeply I did not want to go out to dinner with Silvia Kravitz. But I loved Chase, and he loved his partner, and his partner loved Silvia. What else could I say but, "Are you sure we have to go?"

  "Yes."

  "Fine," I said with a sigh.

  "Thank you, Cambria." His words were laced with relief, and he gave me a quick kiss. "I'll make it up to you tonight."

  Oh, boy.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Exceptional researching skills

  I stopped at Costco for a four-pack of Tums, grabbed a smoothie from the food court, and went home. No new messages waited for me in the office, and I sat behind my desk and wiggled the mouse to wake up the computer. My mind went back to what Marlene had said about the ghost in her apartment. I felt a little ridiculous for even entertaining the idea…but what if? Who's to say what happens after we die? Maybe the woman in the barrel was stuck in a purgatory, waiting for someone to come along and discover her body?

  I decided to Google purgatory and, wowza, there was a lot of information on the internet regarding the intermediate state between life and death. After an hour of research, I was pretty confident Los Angeles was one giant purgatory. Luckily, my phone rang and saved me from the rabbit hole I'd found myself in.

  A number I didn't recognize flashed across the screen, and I answered. "Hello."

  "Cambria Clyne, this is Alvin Leo," said the caller. "I received your message on Facebook. You found something of mine in the attic?"

  OK, I may have been vague in my message to Alvin, asking him to please call me regarding the personal effects I'd found in the attic. Not really a lie, more so a…fine, that was a lie, and I felt bad. But I had a hunch he wouldn't have called me back if I'd told him why I was calling.

  "Yes, thank you for calling me back. I appreciate it. We did find a something that I think could have belonged to you. Since I have you on the phone, I was hoping you could give me information about your former roommate."

  "What did he do now?" he said with groan.

  "Did he have a relationship with any of the women who lived in Apartment 11A?"

  "Sure, he dated Larissa for a few months."

  Aha! I silently celebrated with a fist pump. I was close. I could feel it. With Alvin on speaker, I pulled up the name and pictures of the women from Apartment 11A, except there wasn't a Larissa on file. "Are you sure she lived in Apartment 11A?"

  "I'm pretty sure. It's been at least forty-something years."

  Then the timing wouldn't work. The name Larissa did sound familiar, though.

  "What items of mine did you find?" Alvin asked.

  Oh. Right. That. Shoot. "I found…a-a pillow."

  "A pillow?"

  "Yes, a pillow. I heard you had a friend who slept up in the attic a few times. Maybe it's his? Do you have his name and number?"

  "We didn't have a friend sleep up there. That was Sherman. He'd run into financial trouble and sublet his room, and he decided to sleep in the attic before management found out."

  I wrote this down on a pad of paper. If Sherman slept in the attic, then he had plenty of time to hide the barrel up there.

  "About the pillow," Alvin said. "You can go ahead and toss it."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Positive."

  Good, because the medical examiner had confiscated the pillow anyway. I would have gone to buy him a new one if he'd really wanted it.

  "Also…um…about the black bags," I said. "I heard you had quite a few up there as well."

  "What about them?"

  "What was inside?"

  "Props. Wood. Stuff for the set. We worked on a show over at the lot."

  I figured "the lot" meant Warner Bros. Made sense, and I had serious doubt he'd tell me if there was a body in any of them. But it couldn't hurt to ask. "There didn't happened to be a dead body in any of those black bags?"

  So Alvin hung up on me, and I immediately called Chase.

  "How exactly did you get this information about Sherman Varner?" he asked.

  "Kevin and I looked through the archives." I picked up a paperclip and began unwinding it.

  "I've got a detective from Lompoc going to see him today. And these women are the ones from El Salvador who you told me about?"

  "Yes."

  "I went ahead and ran all the names. The three women who stood out to me are Gabriela Lopez—she moved in September of 1991, but there is no record of her after. Same with Lupita Gomez. She moved in on September 5, 1994, and there is no record of her either. Maria Lopez left the country in 1979, moved back to El Salvador, and then she moved back to the States in 1993 and listed the Burbank building Apartment 11A as her address, but there is no record of her after."

  "Did you happen to find any information on a woman named Larissa?"

  "You didn't send me her info."

  "Sherman dated her in the seventies."

  "The body hasn't been there that long," Chase said.

  That's right. But, dang, the name Larissa sounded familiar.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Proficient in the art of self-defense

  Even though I had called in sick, I went ahead and worked until six o'clock. Tom had Lilly for the night, and I had Amy and Kevin curled up on my couch. Kevin with the first Zankla book and Amy with the second. I could have pranced around in a pony costume and they wouldn't have noticed. They were completely lost in the world of Borbank.

  "Reena's book signing is in an hour. Would anyone like dinner?" I asked from the kitchen, pulling out leftover pizza.

  "Mmmhmmm," both Amy and Kevin said.

  "I'm making split pea soup with a side of peanuts. Sound good?"

  "Mmmhmmm."

  They were obviously not paying attention. Kevin hated peas, and Amy was allergic to nuts. Whatever. I wasn't going to waste my cold pizza on those who wouldn't fully appreciate it. Not that Amy consumed carbs anyway.

  I sat at my kitchen table and ate in silence. Every few minutes Amy or Kevin would gasp or laugh. At one point, Amy had tears slithering down the side of her cheeks, carving grooves in her makeup. I felt like an outsider, sitting there with my pizza, watching them read.<
br />
  I finished my dinner, rinsed my plate, and changed my clothes. "We're leaving in twenty minutes," I said.

  "Mmmhmmm."

  "You two get ready. I'll be right back."

  "Mmmmhmmm."

  I walked to the third courtyard and up to Mr. and Mr. Nguyen's apartment. I could hear the faint hum of the television. At one point, they were both hard of hearing, and they'd have the TV up to max volume. After Mr. Nguyen landed the job, Patrick paid for hearing aids for them both. A beautiful gesture from a man with a good, non-murderous heart.

  Mrs. Nguyen answered and frowned. "You're too pale. Come in."

  I stepped into her apartment, and she locked the door behind me. They had a one-bedroom unit. In my opinion, the one-bedrooms were the best floor plan in the community. Big kitchen, spacious living room, hall bathroom, and a bedroom with two walk-in closets. They were easy to rent, and I'd miss showing them.

  "Is Mr. Nguyen here?" I asked.

  "No, he went to Home Depot to pick up a part for something. That man never stops working. I tell him to come home at five, but he won't step foot through that door until everything is done. Why? What's wrong?"

  I fidgeted with my fingers. "Patrick is quitting."

  "How can he quit if he owns the business?"

  "He's closing."

  For a moment, Mrs. Nguyen was silent. "What does this mean for us?" she finally asked.

  "It means a new management company will take over, and they'll likely bring their own staff with them."

  Mrs. Nguyen sat on the table and folded her hands.

  "But there's still a chance that Mr. Nguyen will stay," I quickly added and slid into the seat beside her. "He's so good at what he does. Anyone would be lucky to have him."

  "No one will hire a man of his age. They want young things."

  "No, that's not true." OK, that was true. It would be harder to get a maintenance job as a sixty-something. Crud. I felt even worse.

  "I was worried about this," she said. "Last time I talked to Patrick, he sounded too tired. I told him he should eat more meat, but he didn't listen to me." I loved how she felt upping your protein intake would solve any problem.