“Together?” Thorn asked as we went down the stairs.
“Well, I want both, but I’m not planning on mixing them,” I said.
“Did you find out anything from Josh?” Thorn asked.
“Pepper got around,” I said. “But he didn’t seem to think any of her male dalliances were anywhere near serious enough that they would have gotten jealous. They were all on the same page about where things stood. The same as with Tucker, except that nobody mistook them for an item.”
“So, you didn’t get anywhere?” Thorn asked. “That’s okay. You did your best. Maybe we should leave this up to Jeremy.”
On the other side of the parking lot from the apartment building was a grassy area and a copse of trees. Standing between two large pine trees was the ghost of Pepper Howard.
The look in her now completely black eyes sent a chill down my spine. “I don’t know about leaving it up to Jeremy, but I think I’ll sleep on what to do next...”
My plan had been to send Thorn off to find some specialty item while I was at the store. That would have given me time to speak to some of the female employees and see who was friends with Pepper. The problem was that fibbing to Thorn made me feel dreadful.
“What is it, sweetie?” Thorn picked up on my shift in mood.
“I’m lying,” I said. “I’m sorry. I mean, I would really like some rum raisin ice cream and spicy sausage now. It sounds good now that I came up with it, but it was a ruse. I wanted to go to the store and send you off to find some impossible item so I could talk to some of the female employees.”
“What? Why?” Thorn shook his head.
“Because I appreciate you helping me and protecting me through all of this, babe, I really do, but they’re not going to talk to me when they see you with me.”
“So you did learn something from Josh?” Thorn asked.
“Not really, but based on his complete lack of knowledge of her female friends, I’m guessing her work is the first step in finding a friend who might know anything about any problematic men in her life,” I said. “He said she might have had friends at work. That’s what I’m going off of. Sorry. I don’t want to lie to you, but you cannot follow me around the store if I’m going to get anyone to spill.”
“I’ll stay in the car,” Thorn said.
“I could take you home first,” I said.
“No, it’s okay. I’ll stay in the car,” Thorn said. “Unless you don’t want me in the car.”
“I’m not trying to leave you out of things,” I said. “Well, I am, but it’s not because I don’t want you there.”
I wanted to tell him that we could just go home. That I would drop the entire thing. But we’d already gotten in the car, and when I glanced in the rearview mirror, I could see Pepper’s spirit standing in the parking lot a few feet behind the car.
She was getting closer, and from the looks of it, angrier. I noticed that her spirit was no longer in the clothes she was wearing when she died. Instead, she wore an elf costume. It was like the one she would have worn had she lived and been able to work at the Santa house.
It made a statement. I just wasn’t sure what that statement was supposed to be.
I did end up taking Thorn home before I went to the grocery store. He decided he felt like an obsessed clinger sitting out in the car while I went into the grocery store.
His truck was interesting to drive. It sat up very high, so I felt like the queen of the road as I cruised through Coventry’s streets. I avoided the square because I knew there would still be tourists out and about. The trip would take less time if I just drove on the outskirts of town, and then I could get back to my new husband.
I pulled into a parking spot near some other cars and got out. The glow of the light from inside the stores shining through the huge front windows seemed warm and inviting. There were Christmas lights and huge wreaths hung on the front of the building as well. The wreaths were placed on either side of the store’s giant name sign.
Inside was a massive Christmas tree decorated with red and gold ball ornaments. Its tiny white lights seemed to sparkle in time with the Christmas music playing over the store’s speaker system. The smell of fresh baked bread and cookies from the bakery hit me, and suddenly I was longing for a cup of eggnog and an evening in front of the fire with Thorn. Our first Christmas together as man and wife.
But, there was work to do.
I wasn’t sure where to start, so I just walked around until I found an employee putting potatoes onto a special display. It had a cutout of a giant bowl of mashed potatoes dancing in elf shoes. Since I didn’t know how to approach the matter subtly, I just came out and asked. The young man putting the potatoes on the display looked bored enough that he might just answer me as a way to escape the doldrums of potato stacking.
“Hi,” I said.
“How can I help you?” he asked as he wiped his hands on his apron. I was right. He was dying to do anything other than potato rearrangement. I could see it in the enthusiastic look on his face, but I was about to crush that. I wanted to talk to someone else.
“I know this is going to sound strange, but I was wondering if there was anyone working in the store who was close to Pepper Howard? I’m a friend of the family, and I need to find someone who can help me with a few things in regard to her estate.”
“Oh, okay, sure,” he said. “Uh, she was good friends with Micah in the bakery. She should be able to help you.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Is she working tonight?”
“She is. She’s there until close, but she’s the only one in that department tonight. So, if you don’t see her, it probably because she’s in the back taking stuff out of the oven.”
“Thank you so much,” I said.
“You’re welcome. I don’t suppose there’s anything else I can do for you? Maybe you need to find something in the store or perhaps you need some potatoes,” he said. He was trying to delay going back to his task, but I couldn’t help.
“No thanks,” I said.
I hurried off to the bakery to find Micah. When I got over there, she was putting cakes into the self-serve display cooler near the counter. I checked her nametag and confirmed it was her before I broached the subject.
“Hello,” I said and she jumped a few inches in the air. Micah had been so focused on putting a round black forest cake, that I suddenly wanted, into the cooler that she hadn’t seen me walk up. “Sorry,” I said as she slid the cake into its slot.
“You’re fine,” she said. “I get so focused sometimes that I don’t see people. I apologize. What can I do for you?”
“I was actually looking for you,” I said. “A guy over there,” I said and pointed in the general direction of the new holiday potato display, “said that you were friends with Peppermint Howard. I need to talk to someone about her.”
“I was,” Micah said and let out a sad sigh. “We were good friends both at work and outside. What’s this about?”
“This is going to seem really strange to you, but I’m trying to figure out who killed her.”
“Are you a cop?” she asked. “I was wondering if you were ever going to come talk to me.”
“I’m not,” I said. “I’m… Let’s just say I’m a concerned citizen. I’m sort of doing my own investigation adjacent to the one the sheriff’s office is conducting,” and then I thought of the ultimate excuse. “I’m working with the Coventry newspaper. The new one. We’re doing some investigative journalism.”
“Oh, okay,” Micah visibly relaxed as soon as she knew I wasn’t just some creeper or a murder tourist. “Well, what do you want to know?”
“Do you know of any guy problems she was having?” I asked. “I’m working the angle that perhaps one of the men she was seeing took their relationship too seriously and got jealous.”
“None of the men she was seeing could have possibly taken anything seriously. She wasn’t dating any of them. Not like you’re thinking. The only one Pepper ever even went on dat
es with was Tucker, and that’s why people thought they might be an item. The rest she just invited over to her place for… interludes. We’ll leave it at that.”
“I see,” I said. “That’s exactly what Josh told me.”
“Josh?” Micah asked. “Her neighbor?”
“Yes. He said they were really close. Even described her as his best friend,” I said.
That made Micah actually burst out laughing. “Look, maybe she let him think that so he’d take care of her cat or float her some cash when she was short, but they were not friends.”
“What?”
“It’s an easy mistake to make if you talk to him. I’ve met him before, and he asked me out too. I was going to say yes, but Pepper told me to stay far away from him. I didn’t know what was up because he’s not a bad-looking guy. He seems sweet too, but she said he’s a little off. Not like dangerous or anything, but the kind of guy who’s looking for a wife. But not just any wife. The kind of wife who takes care of him like mommy did. She said he was boring and clingy too. Pepper said I wouldn’t like him, and if I gave him a chance, I’d never get rid of him. Like feeding a stray dog.”
“That is a very different version of their relationship than he told me,” I said.
“I’m not surprised,” Micah said.
“So, do you think that...” I started to say.
“No, not Josh. No, I don’t think he killed her,” Micah said with a slight chuckle. “He’s a little off, but not like that. Besides, I think he liked their little arrangement, and I don’t think he knew how she felt about him at all. If he did, there’s no way he’d keep taking care of that cat and giving her money for rent. She was always blowing her paychecks on makeup and new clothes. Josh would bail her out. He has plenty of money. Whatever he does for a living, it pays well. Maybe that’s why she didn’t want me to date him. She had to know there was no way I’d let any man of mine keep paying some other chick’s rent.”
After I left Micah, I stopped by the freezer section to get my ice cream and the refrigerated section to grab a couple of packages of sausage. The house probably would have provided that stuff for me, but I wanted to make sure I had it. The craving was getting stronger, and if I’d gotten home and Hangman’s House didn’t bless me with rum raisin ice cream and spicy breakfast sausage, I would have had to send Thorn back to the store.
I went through the self-checkout and headed back to Thorn’s truck. The sentry mode had activated, but I assumed it was because someone had gotten in or out of their car. The cars on either side of me were different than when I’d gone in, and the sentry thing in Thorn’s truck was too sensitive. Just like mine. Half the time, I didn’t even bother checking the sentry events, and that was one of those times. I’d gotten myself in a hurry to get home and eat, and I’d forgotten that someone had slashed my tires the other day.
“I’m going to need you to take your hands off the wheel,” a man said from my back seat.
It was then that I wished I’d brought Thorn along to stay in the vehicle while I went into the store. I also wished I’d bothered to at least check the sentry event.
“How did you know I wouldn’t check the sentry event?” I asked.
I looked up into the rearview mirror, and my heart sank. It was Josh, and he was wearing the same hoodie as the person who’d slashed my tires the other day. Micah had been wrong about his level of creepiness. Pepper had most likely ignored any warning signals he put off because he was giving her money.
“Are you why she was in the police station before she died?” I asked as Meri snuck out of my bag. It was on the passenger seat, and he couldn’t see my familiar skulking out. Not that he would have been worried about such a tiny kitten. It wasn’t like I had a Rottweiler tucked away in my bag, but oh, Meri could be so much worse.
“She suspected someone was stalking her, but she had no idea who. She never suspected me,” he said and thrust something forward into my back through the seat. He was holding something behind me, and I suspected it was a gun because I didn’t hear the leather ripping.
“Is that a gun or a knife?” I asked. I was trying to distract him until Meri could pounce.
But when Meri did pounce, something unexpected happened. Josh caught him off guard and fired a perfect shot. It hit Meri, and his little body fell back onto the passenger seat and rolled to the floor.
“Meri!” I called out.
I tried to use magic to freeze Josh in place, but nothing happened. Maybe he slowed down a little bit. Josh’s face looked a little confused, but I certainly didn’t freeze him in place. I tried again, and while my magic made Josh look uncomfortable, it wasn’t stopping him.
Meri was out cold from being shot, my magic wasn’t working, and Josh moved the gun to point at my temple. He was behind me with his arm reaching around the headrest.
I tried magic again, and Josh made a little moaning sound like I was causing him some pain, but he held the gun steadfast. I was completely screwed.
And then there were lights and sirens. All of Coventry’s deputies, and Thorn’s cruiser right behind them, sped into the grocery store parking lot.
“What?” Josh asked. “How could they?”
I didn’t answer as Thorn and his deputies jumped from their cars and trained their guns on Josh, but I knew. I ignored the sentry reports from our vehicles, but that’s not something Thorn would ever do. In fact, the reports from his truck went to his phone.
Josh must have slipped into the back seat of the truck right as I was coming out of the store. It may have taken Thorn a minute or so to see it. Perhaps he was in the bathroom or making a sandwich, but when he did, he called it in. Then he raced across town in his cruiser to get to me.
Once they had Josh safely in handcuffs, I had to ask him. “Why? Why did you kill her? Why were you helping her and then killed her that way?”
“He’s been advised of his rights,” Thorn said to me.
“But he can answer if he wants to, right?” I asked.
Jeremy stepped over. “Just go home, Kinsley. Let us do our jobs.”
“No, I’ll tell her,” Josh said. “I think maybe she already knows. I heard her tell you.”
I thought about it for a moment. Pepper had never told me anything, so who was the “her” he was talking about? Maybe he’d been following me in the store? Perhaps he’d been right around the corner the whole time.
“Micah?” I asked. “It was about Micah?”
“The perfect woman,” Josh said. “Perfect for me anyway. She was going to be my future life’s happiness. I thought for sure she’d go out with me too. Surely, Pepper would put a good word for me.”
“You killed Pepper because she told Micah not to go out with you,” I said. “You really think that was a reason to take her life?”
“Like I said,” Josh spat back. “Micah was my future life’s happiness, and Pepper stole that from me. After everything I had given her. I was an idiot and a fool. She had to pay.”
“So you poisoned her and then suffocated her?” I asked. “That was all you?”
“I was trying to make it look like she got sick and died, but I got tired of waiting. I followed her that night. She and Micah were standing outside making fun of me before they went to their cars. Peppermint was bragging about getting more money out of me to pay her rent so she could buy some cocktail dress to wear for one of her many male friends. One that was going to take her out for the holidays. Some rich guy she’d allow herself to be seen in public with for once. So, I followed her to the Santa house, and when she went inside to drop off the cookies, so did I.”
“All right, that’s enough,” Thorn said. “Jeremy can you get this guy down to the station and get that confession in writing, or should I do it?”
“You take your wife home, sheriff. I’ll call you if I need you,” Jeremy said.
I had Meri in my arms, and he finally began to stir as Thorn helped me into the truck. “Are you sure you want to drive home?” he asked. “I can take you h
ome in the cruiser and we can come back for the truck tomorrow.”
“I’ve got to work tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll be fine on a five-minute drive home.”
“What about the cat? Is he okay?”
“He’ll be fine. He’ll be fine,” I said “Remember, he can’t be killed until the last of the Tuttlesmith and Skeenbauer lines die. We’ll give him some extra dinner.”
“I can hear you,” Meri groused.
“Oh, good. Welcome back,” I said.
“What happened to your magic?” Meri asked drowsily.
“What does he mean?” Thorn asked as I laid Meri down in the seat and buckled in.
Yule Be Magical (Familiar Kitten Mysteries Book 8) Page 11
