Tj Jensen Cozy Mystery Boxed Set 2: Books 6-10

by Kathi Daley

  Gracie hesitated. “Will Uncle Kyle be there again? I heard him talking to Willow about volunteering this summer.”

  I tucked a lock of Gracie’s hair behind her ear as I processed this bit of information. “I’m not sure what Uncle Kyle’s plans are for tomorrow. We’ll have to ask him, but I kind of think he was planning to return the moving van to Charleston tomorrow. Would you want to go to the camp even if he doesn’t go?”

  “Is Ashley going?”

  “I haven’t asked her yet.”

  “If Ash goes, I will too. Simon said he might show me the best place to catch frogs.”

  “That sounds like a lot of fun.”

  I kissed Gracie on the forehead and began to get up.

  “Tj…”

  “Yes, honey?”

  “Do you think Papa misses us?”

  Papa was what Ashley and Gracie called my dad.

  “Yes, I’m sure he does.”

  “Do you think he’s sad that we all left?”

  Did I? I honestly wasn’t sure. “I’m sure he misses us, but he has Rosalie with him. I think he’s very happy he’s living with her after all this time, and it’s nice for them to have the house to themselves for a while.”

  “Why?”

  I leaned back against the wall and pulled Gracie into my arms again. “When people first move in together they need to have time to learn how to live together as a couple. While it’s possible to do that with a house full of other people, I think it’s easier when the new couple have only their own needs to think about.”

  “What’s going to happen when we go home? Will Papa and Rosalie still be learning?”

  Good question.

  “I wish I knew what was going to happen at the end of the summer, but I don’t yet. At this point I’m just taking things a day at a time. But I want you to know that whatever happens, you and me and Ash are a family and we’ll always live together. Well, at least until you’re much older and want to move out on your own.”

  “I’m never moving away from you.”

  “I know that’s the way you feel now, but things change when you become an adult and start to think about building a life of your own.” At that moment, I couldn’t believe how much the thought of Ashley and Gracie growing up and moving out someday depressed me.

  “What about Grandpa? He’s part of our family. Is he always going to live with us?”

  “Yes, he’s a part of our family, but he isn’t connected to us in the same way you and me and Ashley are connected. As far as I’m concerned, he’ll always be welcome to live with us unless there comes a time he doesn’t want to for some reason. But I don’t want you to worry about that.”

  “But what if you get engaged like Papa? Will you need for me and Ash and Grandpa to move so you can learn to be a couple?”

  “Absolutely not. You and Ash and I are like the Three Musketeers. No one is going to come between us. I promise.”

  “I hope not.”

  I could feel Gracie’s wet cheek against my chest. I held her tight while she worked through the worries caused by all the changes in her young life. In spite of the assurances everyone had been giving me, maybe dragging my sisters across the country had been the wrong thing to do. It had seemed to make sense at the time, but it had only been three years since our mom died and I clearly hadn’t stopped to consider what upending their lives again would do to their sense of security. I held Gracie until she fell asleep, then tucked her in and headed to Ashley’s room.

  In contrast to Gracie’s tears, Ashley actually seemed to be in a good mood. She reported that she’d also had fun at camp and had made some new friends. She definitely wanted to go back the next day and was looking forward to the movie on Wednesday. For the first time since we’d been on the island I was beginning to feel that Ashley might settle in and enjoy the summer after all.

  Both Grandpa and Kyle arrived back at the house shortly after I finished tucking Ashley into bed. Kyle seemed relaxed and casual, as if his dinner with Willow really was nothing more than a meal between new friends, which I had to admit, left me with a feeling of relief.

  “So we’re saying Deputy Savage is for some reason lying about the fact that Buck Barnes was murdered?” Kyle clarified after we’d all settled onto the deck overlooking the ocean with glasses of wine. It was a beautiful night with a warm breeze that felt like a giant hug as it caressed my skin. The sound of nocturnal creatures rustling through the nearby shrubs competed with the soft crashing of the gentle waves, lulling me into a state of deep contentment.

  “That’s the way it seems,” I answered as I tried to let the stress of the day evaporate into the night.

  “But why?”

  I shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  “Do you think Savage might be being bribed to close the murder investigation before it even begins?” Kyle asked.

  “I hate to say it, but not all cops are good cops,” Doc said. “I don’t know Deputy Savage, nor have I heard anything about his reputation one way or the other, but I’d be willing to stake my own reputation as a coroner that Buck Barnes died as the result of being hit on the left temple. I did some checking while I was waiting for you and Ben to come home and I was able to ascertain that Barnes listed a man named Colin Walton as his power of attorney. It was Walton who signed off on the paperwork to have Barnes cremated.”

  “Who is this Colin Walton?” I wondered.

  “He runs a nursing home on the island. It isn’t uncommon for older folks with no next of kin to assign people like Mr. Walton the authority to make end-of-life decisions for them. From what I can gather based on the limited information I was able to obtain, Mr. Walton is very highly regarded in the community. It appears he used his own money to open the home and he makes it a point never to turn anyone away based on the inability to pay.”

  “Was Buck living there?” I asked.

  “No, but he did odd jobs for the home, and in exchange Mr. Walton allowed Barnes to live in a small rental he owned. I think we might want to pay Mr. Walton a visit tomorrow to see if we can gain any additional insights, although, as I’ve already said, we’ll need to tread lightly.”

  We fell into silence as we tried to make sense of a series of events that, when considered in their entirety, really didn’t make sense. Buck Barnes seemed to be a popular fixture in the community. Everyone we’d spoken to seemed to care about the man the residents of the island seemed to have adopted. The fact that Colin Walton would agree to have him cremated without a thorough investigation seemed to indicate that he trusted Savage’s conclusion regarding the cause of Barnes’s death.

  “I still can’t believe the deputy is lying.” Kyle shook his head.

  “What if Deputy Savage saw something when he was in the attic that led him to the identity of the killer?” I asserted. “And what if the killer, as it turned out, was someone the deputy had a strong reason to protect?”

  “Like who?” Grandpa Ben asked.

  “Like a sibling or parent, perhaps even a child,” I answered.

  “I guess that would make sense,” Grandpa agreed. “The deputy finds a clue in the attic that points to a specific person. After the body is removed, Savage comes back to clean up. Then Savage returns to say he died of natural causes, thereby eliminating the need for a thorough investigation.”

  “The man from the mortuary must realize Savage was lying,” I pointed out. “He sees a lot of dead bodies. You’d think he’d be able to discern between those who die of natural causes and those who don’t. Maybe the deputy and the man from the funeral parlor are friends. It’s reasonable they would be, and I also suppose it’s possible that one would cover for the other.”

  “If that’s true I don’t see how we’re ever going to prove it,” Kyle stated. “We really have nothing except our recollection of what we saw. It would be easy enough for a trained professional
to turn around everything we think we remember so that our testimony won’t hold water in court.”

  “Are you saying we should drop the whole thing?” I asked.

  “Not at all. But I am saying that if we decide to pursue this, we’re going to need to stay mindful of our limitations. We won’t be helping Buck Barnes or ourselves if we end up making everyone mad.”

  “Sounds like we need a plan,” Ben suggested.

  “Sounds like we do.”

  Later that evening Kyle and I shared a moment of relaxation alone on the deck. It had been a really long and somewhat emotional few days, and it felt so nice just to sit and not worry about all the little things that I probably should be worrying about.

  Kyle leaned back and looked up at the stars. “This is really nice. I love Paradise Lake, but there’s no way we’d be sitting outside after dark without both a jacket and a fire if we were at home.”

  “I do like the warm nights, but I think that after a while I’d get sick of the heat. Most years by the time fall rolls around I’m ready for some snow.”

  “I do like having four seasons.”

  “I spoke to Jenna today. She is having a hard time with all the hours Dennis is putting in with his new job, so I tried to convince her to close the restaurant for a couple of weeks and come out here for a visit.”

  “Do you think she will?”

  Echo put his head in my lap. I adjusted my position so he would be comfortable before answering. “I think she might. It sounds like her girls miss our girls and have been giving Jenna their own sort of grief.”

  “Our girls?”

  I smiled. “You know what I mean.”

  “I do. And I see why they’re upset. It has to be hard when your best friend is so far away. It seems you would miss not only the friendship but the support you’d come to depend on.”

  “Like calling your best friend to come over and kill the spider that’s crawled under your bed,” I teased.

  “It was a big spider!”

  “It was harmless. You just pretended to be scared so I’d come over and take care of you when you were sick.”

  Kyle winked. “Maybe.”

  “Is that why you gave up everything to follow me across the country?” I asked. “Because you were afraid you’d get sick and there’d be no one around to make you soup or fluff your pillows?”

  Kyle turned and looked at me with a serious expression, very much unlike the teasing I was expecting.

  “I came with you because three months without you seemed intolerable.”

  Kyle leaned toward me just a tiny bit. I was positive he was going to kiss me. Just then, Gracie’s scream pierced the silence of the night. Kyle and I both jumped up and ran into the house.

  Someone must have left Blackbeard’s cage open, because he was chasing Cuervo around the room, screeching, “Kill the cat, kill the cat.” Cuervo was darting across furniture to avoid the sharp talons that were threatening to pierce his back, knocking everything that got in his way onto the floor.

  Grandpa came running toward the sound of the chaos. “What’s going on?”

  “It looks like Blackbeard was really trying to kill the cat,” I responded as I grabbed Blackbeard and put him back in his cage.

  He chuckled as he began picking up pieces of broken glass from a vase that had crashed onto the tile floor. “Maybe we should be protecting the cat from the bird rather than the other way around.”

  Chapter 8

  Tuesday, June 20

  The next morning I took Ashley and Gracie over to the kids’ camp while Kyle logged onto his computer and began a search for Destination Properties. Kyle had inherited a lot of money a couple of years earlier and no longer needed to work, but prior to his inheritance he’d been a software developer, and a good one at that. He knew his way around a computer and the internet. In the past, I’d learned to trust that whenever we really needed a piece of information, Kyle would find a way to get it.

  “What did you find?” I asked after I returned from my errand.

  Kyle sat at a desk that held his laptop. He leaned back in his chair and looked at me. “On the surface, Destination Properties is a legitimate company. It owns resort properties in most of the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central and South America. Most of their places are the all-inclusive kind that provide vacationers with stress-free trips where everything is paid for and taken care of ahead of time. They’re fairly high end and seem to attract a more affluent clientele.”

  “Okay, so why would a huge company like that even be interested in Garrett’s little piece of land?”

  “My sense is that the company wants to expand into properties within the United States. Based on my research, they were looking at a location in Florida that didn’t pan out, so they turned their sights to Gull Island. Garrett’s property is actually larger than you’d think based on the buildings contained on the resort.” Kyle pulled up a map. “If you look at the property lines on record, the land Garrett owns includes this entire part of the island.” Kyle drew a circle with his finger.

  “Wow. I had no idea.”

  “If a large company with deep pockets got hold of the property my sense is that most of this land, which at this point has been left natural, would be developed.”

  “Which would be catastrophic for the wildlife that live here,” I said.

  “It would seem so.”

  I already knew I wanted to stop Norton in his campaign to force Garrett to sell his property to Destination Properties; now I just had to figure out how I could use this new information to my advantage. “Bev said the company was known for buying distressed properties, and her opinion was that Destination Properties was responsible for causing the problems in the first place. I wonder if Norton has plans to sabotage Turtle Cove.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the case. I found a property in Mexico that Destination Properties had its eye on. The owner wanted top dollar because there was existing infrastructure that could be used for lodging. Destination Properties insisted they weren’t willing to pay for the buildings because they didn’t plan to use them and were interested in the land only. The property owner decided to look elsewhere for a buyer and received another offer, but there was a fire and the main structure burned to the ground. The owner had been in trouble financially prior to putting the property up for sale and had let the insurance lapse. The new buyer wasn’t interested in the property without the lodging facility and Destination Properties ended up buying the land for less than their original offer.”

  “Sounds suspicious.”

  “There’s more. I found an instance where Destination Properties had arranged to buy a piece of oceanfront property in the Bahamas, but before the deal was finalized it was discovered there had been a chemical spill on the grounds. The owner couldn’t afford to have the spill cleaned up, and there are very few buyers who are willing to take on such a liability, so the property ended up selling to Destination Properties for a fraction of their original offer. Of course,” Kyle qualified, “there’s no way to prove these things weren’t simply coincidences, though I’d be surprised if they were.”

  I sat back and looked out the window. I couldn’t help but remember my theory that perhaps Buck had been out at Garrett’s house looking for the map when he saw something he shouldn’t have. Was it possible Buck had run into Norton while he was tampering with the property in some way so as to assure that he’d end up winning the bid to buy the land? I hadn’t noticed anything odd from a cursory look, but it seemed prudent that we took a closer look around.

  “I’m beginning to think that Buck’s death and Norton’s bid to buy Garrett’s land are linked in some way, but I really have no way to prove it.”

  “I’ll keep looking,” Kyle offered. “If we can find enough instances where Destination Properties just happened to buy a valuable piece of land for pennies on the d
ollar due to some sort of an unfortunate incident, maybe we can make a strong enough case for people to stop and take notice.”

  Kyle went back to his search for additional case studies to use against Destination Properties while I went into the kitchen for some coffee. I had several goals for the day. The first was what Kyle was working on, finding out what he could about Destination Properties in the hope of coming up with ammunition I could use against Greg Norton and his campaign to take Garrett’s land; the other was to refine my suspect list by speaking to anyone I could, and hopefully narrowing the pool. There was no way I was prepared to believe the deputy’s assertion that Buck had died of natural causes in spite of how much everyone we talked to seemed to love the guy.

  I took out my notebook and considered the entries. I currently had Toby Upton in the yellow zone. I hadn’t had a chance to speak to either Adam or Beth Joyner, so I’d yet to add a color to their names. Greg Norton was firmly in the red zone until I could prove otherwise. I hated to do it, but ever since Deputy Savage had announced that Buck’s case was closed I had to consider him a suspect, so I added Savage to the yellow zone as well. If he’d been the one to kill Buck himself, he would most likely have had the presence of mind to move the body long before we arrived on the island, but I couldn’t help but feel he was covering for whoever had, which made him a suspect of sorts.

  I’d also added a column for people I wanted to interview. Meg had originally been on the list, but now that I’d spoken to her I crossed her off and added Mamie Sue and Digger. Meg mentioned that Digger was off work on Mondays and Tuesdays, so unless I happened to run into him on the beach my talk with him would need to wait. I remembered that Mamie Sue owned a shop that rented bikes, so I called Gertie and asked for directions and then headed into town to see what, if anything, I could find out about Norton’s presence on Garrett’s property.

  Once I arrived at my destination I let myself into the colorfully decorated shop and walked up to the rental counter.