Nosy Neighbor: All 7 complete Nosy Neighbor cozy mysteries PLUS: 2 short Christmas stories (A Nosy Neighbor mystery)

by Cynthia Hickey

  He paled. “Don’t leave me with the body.”

  “Fine. We’ll both go. Stay close to me.”

  The first room we stepped into was an office lined with computer monitors and book shelves. Instead of books, the shelves were filled with discs. Bingo. “Find the most current.” I headed for the book shelf, Dakota for the computers.

  “I doubt he’s transferred the new stuff yet,” he said, sitting at the desk. “I’m right. I’m going to save and then transfer to a jump drive, so we can let the cops find the information on their own.”

  “You’re brilliant!” I leaned over his shoulder and watched the genius boy work.

  Five minutes later, I heard soft steps coming down the hall. I held my gun back at the ready. “Hide the recording.”

  I cocked the gun and took my stance.

  3

  “Seriously, Stormi?” Officer Wayne Jones shook his head. “You really need to stop pointing your gun at me.”

  I lowered my weapon. “How did you know we were up here?”

  “I heard you moving around. Stop snooping and get back downstairs. You’re contaminating a crime scene.”

  Unfortunately, I heard that phrase way too often. I motioned my head at Dakota to follow Wayne and took a glance around the office to make sure we were leaving it as we found it.

  “Hand it over.” Wayne turned as soon as we entered the kitchen.

  “What?”

  “Whatever you found.”

  “We didn’t have time to find anything. Not even the killer.” I narrowed my eyes. “He, or she, might be hiding on the second floor. We didn’t make it that far.”

  He made a noncommittal sound in his throat and turned his attention back to poor Mr. Dixon. “The authorities are on their way. Why don’t the two of you have a seat so someone can take your statement?”

  That, too, was an all too familiar phrase to my ears. I pulled out a chair at the table, Dakota doing the same next to me, and we watched Wayne punch in numbers on his phone as he walked around the body.

  It felt strange to sit in a dead man’s kitchen in the middle of the day. The harsh sun through the windows lit everything in glaring detail. I much preferred the scene seen through the television monitors at Gadgets and More. That scene was in black and white. Not that this was my first dead body, quite the contrary, but I definitely couldn’t get used to the sight.

  Sirens split the air outside. Minutes later, a flock of people wearing navy jackets, and Michael Barker, Maryann’s squeeze, entered the kitchen.

  Wayne barked a few orders, set the rookie Michael on the task of securing the scene, then sat across from me and Dakota. He pulled a small pad of paper from his shirt pocket and exhaled sharply. “You know the drill. Spill. Wait.” He held up his index finger. “Matt has been gone an hour. You arrived home early this morning. How in the world did you get involved in a murder so quickly? Honestly, I’m baffled.”

  “That would be my fault,” Dakota said, crossing his arms with a grin.

  “You think this is funny, son? We have a dead man lying on the floor behind me.”

  His smile faded. “No, sir. I chose to forget that my boss is dead with a knife in his back.”

  “Explain how this is your fault.” Wayne speared him with a sharp gaze.

  “Mr. Dixon has, had, been acting strange the last week or so. I started following him and spying when he checked the security cameras at the store.” He nodded at me. “I learned those things from Aunt Stormi. I’m her assistant, you know. Anyway, when I saw footage this morning of this kitchen and Mr. Dixon like…that, I texted Aunt Stormi to meet me at the store. She did. Then,” he took a deep breath, “when we determined he wasn’t playing a sick joke on me for spying on him, that he really was dead, we came here to check it out. Whew. That’s it.”

  “Then, I called you,” I said, not wanting to be left out of the interrogation. “We didn’t touch the body, the weapon…nothing.”

  “You hesitated.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  He gave me ‘the look’. “If you aren’t honest with me, I’ll have to call Matt.”

  “Why? I haven’t done anything to warrant you bothering him while he’s on what is possibly a dangerous assignment.” Really, the man knew how to push my buttons. Other than bulging muscles, I didn’t know what my sister saw in him.

  “You’re a horrible liar, Stormi. What did the two of you find?”

  I took a deep breath, hoping I wouldn’t let it slip that we’d taken a jump drive with the very information I was going to tell him about. “Dakota found the security footage from this morning on the computer, but you arrived before we could look at it.”

  “Barker! Go get the victim’s computer. Now,” he said, pushing up from the table, “that wasn’t so hard, was it? Telling the truth?”

  Dakota and I shook our heads like matching bobble head dolls.

  “Good. Now go home before Angela has all our heads.” He turned away, dismissing us.

  Not being able to wait any longer to see what was on the jump drive, Dakota and I made a fast beeline for my car. “We might be able to solve this crime today.” I slid into the driver’s seat.

  At home, we were in such a hurry to get to my office, we tried entering the room at the same time and were temporarily stuck. I laughed and stepped back. “You first. It’s your case, after all.”

  “Case for what?” Mom stopped a few feet away, her arms loaded with folded laundry.

  “I thought you went to Heavenly Bakes.” Now, she’d want to know everything that had gone on that morning.

  “I did. Greta has a good handle on things, so I came home to finish the laundry. What have you two been doing?”

  I explained in as few words as possible while Dakota loaded the security footage onto my laptop. “Now, we want to see whether the killer was caught on film.”

  Mom dropped the laundry on a chair next to the desk and crowded next to me behind Dakota. “It sure didn’t take us long to find a new mystery to solve.”

  “You have a business baking. I have a PI license and write books. Let’s each stay to our own thing.” Had she forgotten already that she’d almost died by a bullet? Mom was fifty. I couldn’t let a woman of her age be in the same danger I seemed to be unable to avoid.

  “You’re thinking I’m old! I can see it on your face.” Mom frowned. “I’ll have you know I’ve got a boyfriend.”

  “You do?” Dakota and I said in unison.

  “Why haven’t you said anything?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “After the fiasco with Robert, I wanted to make sure Jerry wasn’t doing anything illegal or shady. Matthew and Wayne checked him out for me and we went to dinner a few times while you were in Louisiana.”

  “When can I meet him?”

  “When can you give him the third degree, you mean?” She lifted her chin. “He’s coming to dinner tomorrow night.”

  “We’re loaded.” Dakota rolled back far enough from the computer screen so Mom and I could see.

  The images were in black and white. Mr. Dixon mixed coffee grounds into a coffee pot, then leaned against his kitchen island while it perked. Something attracted his attention off to the side. His eyes widened, and he took a few steps away from what he was looking at.

  With my heart in my throat, I watched as a thin figure in black, wearing a ski mask, stepped into the camera’s view.

  Mr. Dixon shook his head, said something, then held up his hands in defense as the black clothed person charged. When Mr. Dixon turned to run, the killer plunged the knife into his back.

  “My goodness.” Mom staggered back. “He didn’t even try to fight back.”

  “Yeah.” We’d all seen the aftermath of murder, but I, for one, had never seen one take place.

  Once Mr. Dixon was face down on the floor and no longer moving, the killer stepped back out of the camera’s view. Then, for a reason we couldn’t see, the person darted across the kitchen and out the back door.

  “
That could be anyone,” Dakota said, turning off the computer. “I want to hire you, Aunt Stormi, to find out who killed my boss, why, and bring them to justice. I have three hundred dollars in my savings account.”

  “That’s all?” Mom crossed her arms. “You’re supposed to be saving for a car.”

  “I bought a few gadgets.”

  “Let’s not stray off topic.” I perched on the corner of my desk. “You don’t have to pay me, Dakota. I’m involved in this now.” After witnessing someone’s death, there was nothing I wanted more, other than marrying Matt, than getting justice for the victim. “That killer could be anyone. I have no idea where to go from here.”

  I hopped off the desk and paced my office. “Did Mr. Dixon have any family? We need to find the reason someone would kill him.” I chewed on my thumb nail. “Had he had any irate customers lately?”

  Dakota shook his head. “Everyone loved him.”

  “Not everyone.” Mom ruffled his hair. “Think, smart one. There has to be something that happened at that store.”

  “Sometimes, he rented his equipment to customers. Do you think maybe he saw something he shouldn’t have?” Dakota glanced at me, then Mom. “Maybe someone didn’t erase everything on the recording when they returned the stuff.”

  “It’s as good a theory as any.” The problem would be finding out whether my nephew was on to something.

  The doorbell rang. The three of us looked at each other.

  “Let Angela get it.” Mom glanced at her watch. “She should be home any minute.”

  “Someone left a box on the porch!” Angela yelled up the stairs.

  Mom grinned. “See? That girl is predictable.”

  “The box is meowing!”

  Strange, but better than ticking. I headed downstairs to where Angela stared at a box on the living room coffee table.

  “There’s no address label or anything,” she said. “Should I open it?”

  “If it is a cat, we can’t leave the poor thing in the box.” I grabbed a pair of scissors from the counter and slit the tape. I unfolded the box and peered into the face of a black kitten with yellow eyes. “Hello, cutie.”

  “Close it!” Angela slapped the box closed, then gathered it into her arms and headed for the back door.

  “Wait. Stop. What are you doing?” I grabbed her arm.

  “It’s a black cat, Stormi. An unknown person left it on your doorstep.”

  “So?”

  She stared at me as if I’d grown a third eye. “This morning, you found a voodoo doll in your suitcase. Now, this cat.”

  I must be dense because I still didn’t know where she was going with it. I shrugged.

  “Voo. Doo. Duh. Someone is out to get you.”

  I didn’t believe in such things, but my sister might have a point. Between the eerie gifts and Mr. Dixon’s death, it looked as if I’d have plenty of things to do while Matt was gone.

  The trick would be not getting killed while doing them.

  4

  “You aren’t tossing the kitten out like garbage.” I took the little darling from her and set it free in the house. Ebony and Ivory might not like little Midnight at first, but they’d get used to him or her. “I don’t know of a single person who dabbles in such stupidity.”

  “We did just come from New Orleans. Who did you make mad while we were there?” She kept a wary eye on the kitten who attacked my shoelaces with playful vengeance.

  “Nobody. I stayed with the group and minded my own—” Matt’s ex. Would such a modern woman really rely on superstition to prevent me from marrying Matt? The Ozark country had its share of superstition steeped in tradition, but no one had thought to bother me with it before. “I have enough to worry about without playing games.”

  “The person sending you these things may not be playing.” She took a wide berth around the kitchen in order to avoid Midnight and skedaddled up the stairs, calling out, “I can’t live here if that cat stays! One black cat is enough.”

  “Ebony was here first and Midnight is a baby!”

  “What’s with all the yelling?” Mom made a beeline for the coffee pot. “Who is our new friend?”

  “Someone dropped it off on the front porch. Angela thinks its voodoo.”

  “Really? Looks like a kitten to me.” Mom dumped the old remaining bit of coffee down the sink and filled the pot with fresh water. “It’s going to be a long day. Greta just called. We got in a rush order for some big corporate party. Don’t wait up for me.”

  “Okay.” I’d be occupied trying to figure out who had a reason to kill Mr. Dixon. “Don’t make coffee for me. I’m heading over to Delicious Aroma.”

  “Good idea. If anyone knows anything about what’s going on around town, Norma will.”

  I agreed. My former prostitute friend turned business owner seemed to know almost everything that went on in Oak Meadows. Folks in town liked to talk over their coffee, and Norma had good ears. Plus, no matter how sexy she dressed, she miraculously disappeared when sitting at the back corner table with her laptop and accounting books opened.

  Suddenly struck with emotion over yet another dangerous mystery, I wrapped my mother in a hug and kissed her cheek. “Wake me when you get home if I’m in bed.”

  “I love you, too, dear.” Mom patted my cheek. “Now, go find a killer, but save some of the fun for me.”

  I stopped by my office looking for Dakota. Not finding him, I headed up the stairs to his bedroom. I knocked on the door. When he didn’t answer, I walked in.

  “Aunt Stormi!” He bent over something on the floor. “Knock first. What if I were naked?”

  “Nothing I haven’t seen before, and I did knock. What are you hiding?”

  He sighed and straightened to reveal some very high tech looking equipment. “What I’ve spent my paychecks on.”

  “Which is?”

  “Recording and surveillance equipment. What I let you use when Cherokee was kidnapped was nothing compared to this stuff. Seriously, we could open up our own office.”

  “What are you doing with it now?”

  “I’m going to try and hack into Mr. Dixon’s computer files.”

  Impressive. “I like the way you think. I won’t tell your mother. While you work on that, I’m heading downtown to talk to Norma. Is Cherokee at work?”

  He nodded and continued hooking this line with that. I was effectively dismissed. No problem. I’d rather he snooped from the safety of his room than out on the street.

  I really didn’t know about my new need to say goodbye to my family before leaving the house. Maybe Angela’s talk of voodoo had spooked me more than I thought.

  Grabbing my purse from the foyer table, I set the alarm on the front door and headed to my car. Less than ten minutes later, I was parked in front of the coffee shop. Before I got out of the car, Mom had pulled behind me at the bakery. We tossed each other a wave and went into our prospective shops.

  “Welcome back,” Tyler, Norma’s son called out the moment I stepped inside. “Your usual coming right up. Mom’s in her office today. She’s feeling a little down.”

  Maybe talking about a new crime would cheer her up. I headed for the back of the shop and knocked on the door marked ‘Manager’.

  “Come in.”

  I poked my head in. “It’s me. Heard you were down and came to pick your brain.”

  “That’s a scary thought. Too much going on in there.” She waved at an empty chair in front of her desk.

  “What’s up?” I set my purse on her desk and speared her with a stern gaze.

  Her eyes welled with tears. “It’s so silly. I feel like a girl in high school where the girl from the wrong side of the tracks has a crush on the star quarterback.”

  Uh-oh. “I didn’t know you were interested in a relationship.”

  “I thought it was time. My past life has been just that…my past life, for a long time.”

  “And this man found out what you used to do.”

  “Yeah.”<
br />
  I stretched across the desk and put my hand on hers. “You’ll find the right guy, Norma. Just give it time. There’s a man out there now who will love you for you, not what happened a long time ago.”

  “Maybe.” She snatched a tissue from a nearby box and wiped her eyes. “Your turn.”

  I explained about Mr. Dixon and what we saw on the tape. “Have you heard anything?”

  “Come here.” She opened the door and pointed to the counter. “See that new girl?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s…was…dating him. Her name is Jordyn Townsend. She keeps to herself.”

  “Any sign that something is up today?”

  “Nope.” Norma closed the door. “She probably doesn’t know yet.”

  “She seems too pretty to date an old man like Dixon.” Still, I’d seen, and heard, stranger things.

  “Well, I don’t judge my employees by their personal lives,” Norma said, resuming her seat, “but I’ve heard the girl gets around. That Dixon might not have been the only name in her rolodex, if you get my drift.”

  I got it loud and clear. The gal serving coffee with Tyler might look like the girl next door with her bouncy ponytail and fresh skin, but looks were often deceiving. Take Norma for instance. She might not be a hooker any longer, but she still had a heavy hand with the makeup and showed more cleavage than me and Angela put together. Still, I’d never met a nicer person and was proud to call her friend.

  “Do you think she’s a killer?”

  “No.” Norma smiled. “But Mr. Dixon did a lot of side work spying on people. Find out who his customers were, and I’ll bet one of them killed him. He probably saw something he shouldn’t have.”

  “That’s exactly what I thought.”

  Tyler entered without knocking and handed me my drink. “Jordyn is driving me crazy.” He backed out of the room and slammed the door.

  Norma grinned. “That’s one boy she can’t seem to charm. They’ve clashed since day one.”

  “She doesn’t have enough facial piercings for your son and is at least ten years older.”

  She laughed. “You’re probably the only person I’d allow to say something like that about my baby’s fashion sense.”