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

by Kathi Daley

  Hunter’s expression grew serious. “I know. I will admit that seeing you with Kyle is tough, although I do actually like the guy and consider him a friend, which makes it both harder and easier to know that he now has what I once had.”

  I felt my heart squeeze just a bit. Hunter had been in my life for a long time. I couldn’t bear it if he didn’t continue to be in my life in some capacity. “I’m sorry that my being with Kyle is hard for you. I can understand why it might be. But we did talk about our relationship and decided that what we had was wrong for both of us long before Kyle and I got together.”

  Hunter let out a breath. “I know. And I remember that I am the one who actually started dating first, and I remember that it was hard for you as well. We’ve been friends for a long time. It is important to me that we are able to remain friends in the future. I’ll text you sometime. Maybe I can take the girls to a movie or your dad for a drink.”

  “They’d like that.”

  We exited the elevator at the lobby. I continued on toward the front door, and Hunter continued down the hall. Love and friendship. The best life had to offer, but more often than not, the most complicated as well.

  Chapter 3

  I called Grandpa once Kyle and I made it back to his house. He informed me that he and Doc would be right over. I knew in my mind that Kyle should probably rest for a few days before tackling the latest deaths in Serenity but it had been two days since the explosion, and I knew that most everyone in the community was on edge waiting for the bomber to be caught. Kyle and I had always worked well with Roy, although things had become tricky since his new partner had come to town. Still, given the importance of the investigation, we’d decided to invite him to meet with us as well.

  “Any updates to the situation?” I asked Roy once we’d all assembled.

  “Not really. The crime scene unit has determined a bomb and not something like a gas leak caused the explosion. The blast originated from the south side of the building near where Harriet and Lloyd were sitting. We don’t know how the bomb came to be in the building or why no one seemed to have noticed it prior to the explosion. Kate and I have canvassed the area surrounding the town offices and have spoken to every individual who might have seen something. So far, we haven’t found a single person who noticed anyone loitering with a backpack. We’ve checked with the USPS as well as FedEx, DHL, and UPS, and none claim to have delivered a package to the town offices in over a week. At this point, we are operating under the assumption that the bomb was brought to the building by an individual who either dropped off a package or broke into the town offices and planted the bomb which was set to go off either remotely or on a timer.”

  “The crime scene guys don’t know which?” I asked.

  “Not yet. They are working on it, but there was so much damage to the building that they haven’t been able to access much of the rubble. We’ll know more once they are able to stabilize or tear down the remaining walls and the team can get in and do a thorough search. I know you both had just arrived when the bomb went off and wouldn’t have had time to see anything. I spoke to Jeff who didn’t remember seeing a box or backpack, but I am hoping that either Bookman or Hank might remember seeing something if they wake up.”

  “When they wake up,” Grandpa corrected.

  Roy nodded. “Yes, when they wake up.”

  “So what have you come up with in terms of motive?” I asked. “Are you thinking that the council as a whole was the target or that one of the individuals on the council was the target and the others were just collateral damage?”

  “I wish I knew. At this point, I don’t even know where to start in terms of a suspect list.” Roy looked at Kyle. “Tuesday wasn’t a regular council night. Why were you all there, anyway?”

  “Tj and I were out trick or treating with the kids when I received a text from Harriet that an emergency meeting had been called. The text sounded urgent, so we handed the kids off to Jenna and headed over.”

  Roy frowned. “Was it normally Harriet who called these extra meetings?”

  Kyle nodded. “If any of the council members wanted to schedule a closed-door meeting and it wasn’t urgent, they would tell Harriet, and she would set a date and time and notify everyone well in advance, usually via email. If a council member had an urgent request and a meeting was needed right away, then Harriet would usually call or text everyone.”

  “And are these secret meetings part of the town’s bylaws?” Roy asked.

  “Yes, and no,” Kyle answered. “There is a provision in the bylaws for the council to meet behind closed doors. This provision, I believe, was included to provide a way for the council to deal with situations that were sensitive and confidential, and therefore not appropriate for a public forum. Prior to Mayor Harper’s death, I only remember attending two closed-door meetings in the two years I have been on the council. Since Harper’s death, it seems to me that these closed-door meetings have become the norm. Personally, I have a problem with the fact that so much of the town council’s business is being conducted behind closed doors. I have spoken to the other town council members about it on several occasions. Bookman tended to side with me, but both Hank and Lloyd felt that our discussions relating to several sensitive issues currently being looked at by the council were too controversial to be debated in an open forum.”

  “And Jeff?” Roy asked.

  “He is new to the council, having taken one of the two empty seats. I don’t think he felt comfortable choosing sides until he knew more about it.”

  “So Harriet called this last minute on Tuesday, and during that meeting, a bomb went off killing the two people closest to the bomb including Harriet. If the meeting was called on the fly, how did the bomber even know that the council was going to be in the building when it exploded?” Doc wondered.

  “Good question,” I said.

  “I suppose that the bomber might have been the individual behind the emergency meeting,” Kyle suggested.

  “So you think the bomber might have created a situation where an emergency meeting would be called, and then planted the bomb to go off once everyone arrived?” I asked. “It seems unlikely. If you stop to think about it, the likelihood of the person who planted the bomb being able to anticipate the timing of the council members arriving would be close to impossible.”

  Kyle shrugged. “It does seem unlikely, although I suppose it could have happened that way. At this point, there is no way to know for sure one way or the other.”

  Grandpa leaned forward onto his forearms. His expression grew thoughtful. “If the last-minute meeting hadn’t been called, would the building have been empty when the bomb went off?”

  Kyle nodded. “The town offices close at five. The bomb went off around six.”

  “What if the bomber didn’t intend for there to be human casualties?” Grandpa asked.

  Doc furrowed his brows in an expression that seemed to convey confusion. “Why would anyone blow up an empty building?”

  “Maybe someone wanted to destroy something within the building, such as contracts, minutes of past town council meetings, copies of notes or other documents,” Grandpa replied.

  “Isn’t everything in the cloud these days?” I asked.

  “Everything current is, but not everything from the past has been entered,” Kyle answered. “In fact, getting the archives uploaded into the cloud is one of the projects I’ve been meaning to get to but somehow never found the time to deal with.”

  “So the target could have been any of the six people who would be expected to attend the meeting, the town council as a whole, or the building and its contents,” Roy concluded. “It’s going to be hard to know which to focus on. I guess all we can do is systematically look at every possible angle and eliminate scenarios that don’t fit the evidence.”

  “Where do we even start?” I groaned, as the fatigue of the past two days suck
ed the last of the energy from my body. At this point, the task in front of us looked to be insurmountable.

  Roy looked at Kyle. “What had the group gathered to discuss on the night of the bombing?”

  Kyle narrowed his gaze and slowly shook his head. “I don’t really know. The text I received was vague and only said that my presence was required at the town hall. The text didn’t explain why the meeting had been called, but we’ve had a number of emergency meetings lately, so I wasn’t all that surprised by the request.” Kyle furrowed his brow as if trying to remember. “I hadn’t been part of the discussion prior to the building coming down since I was late to the meeting. I suppose Jeff might know.”

  “I’ll ask him. In the meantime, what would you say are the hot topics the council has been dealing with as of late?”

  Kyle leaned back in his chair. He momentarily closed his eyes and lifted his arms over his head in a move that made it appear as if he was trying both stretch out his sore muscles and center his jumbled thoughts. I felt so bad for him. Not only was he physically injured, but I knew that the enormity of trying to put the town back together had fallen on his shoulders. I really wasn’t sure how one person was supposed to deal with such a huge task, but I knew that if anyone could, it would be Kyle.

  “I suppose the number one hot topic in the past few months has been finding a full-time mayor,” Kyle eventually answered Roy’s question. “Bookman agreed to fill in temporarily after Mayor Harper died, but he made it clear since day one that he has no desire to take on the job permanently, and he has been very vocal about the fact that his willingness to assume the role is approaching an end.”

  “So what’s the holdup with appointing someone?” Roy asked.

  “The bylaws state that the mayor will be appointed by the town council and that a minimum of five of the six town council members must agree on the individual appointed. At this point, we only have five town council members, but there has been a general agreement that if four of the five agree, we can move forward.”

  “And you can’t find a candidate that four of the five can agree on?” Roy asked.

  Kyle shook his head. “This is new territory for everyone involved. Mayor Wallaby was the acting mayor for more than two decades, so the need to appoint a new mayor never really came up. After he resigned, there was a bit of discussion, but Judge Harper seemed like an obvious choice, so there was actually very little debate about the matter. Now, however, there doesn’t seem to be a clear option. If Bookman wanted to do it long term, I think everyone would have gotten behind him, which would mean that the council would only be tasked with finding an additional council member to replace him, but he has made it clear that he is much too busy to take on the full-time position. None of the other town council members are interested in the job, which means that we are looking for an appointment from outside the group. In a way, I think it could be a good thing to bring in some fresh blood and a new perspective, but it seems as if everyone has their own idea as to who should be considered for the job and so far, we as a group, have been unable to reach a consensus. In fact, we are so completely divided that I am beginning to wonder if we’ll ever find a candidate the group as a whole approves of.”

  “What about changing things up so that rather than the town council appointing the mayor, an election is held and the residents are given a voice?” Doc queried.

  “That has been suggested as well, but in order to change the bylaws to allow for the mayor to be elected rather than appointed, the council would have to vote to do so, and, at this point, there hasn’t been consensus on that either.”

  I knew that Kyle had been feeling some pressure to take on the position, but he’d made it clear that while he was happy to serve on the town council, running the town was not how he wanted to spend the majority of his day.

  “Okay, moving on from the appointment of a new mayor, what other sorts of items has the council been dealing with that might be considered to be hot topic items?” Roy asked.

  “James Kingston has been creating a lot of grief for the council,” Kyle answered after considering the question for a moment.

  James was a real estate developer and one of the richest men in the area.

  “James has bought up so much property in the past two decades that I suspect he collects it the same way my mom used to collect Franklin Mint Collectible plates,” Roy added. “I seem to recall he turned most of that property into vacation rentals.”

  “He has. Unfortunately for the council, one of the main things on Bookman’s agenda during his brief tenure as mayor has been to pass a bill which would outlaw the use of single-family homes as vacation rentals within the town limits. The debate has always been a volatile one. On one side of the argument are the men and women who bought up single-family homes and then turned around and made a lot of money renting them to both families and groups who wanted an alternative to commercial lodging properties. On the other side of the argument are the residents who don’t want to deal with the noise often associated with a vacation property, as well as the owners of the existing lodging properties who see the vacation rentals as a new source of competition. James Kingston has made a lot of money from his rental properties, so it was not surprising that he would clash with the interim mayor, who firmly believes that vacation rentals and the noise and the increase in the crime rate that come with them should not be allowed in neighborhoods where families who work and raise their children live.”

  “Do you think that James would blow up the entire town council over this issue?” Roy asked Kyle.

  “Honestly, no, but there is a lot of money on the table so I suppose the issue, in general, could have caused someone involved to go over the edge.”

  Roy jotted down James’s name. “Anyone else?”

  Kyle dug his forefingers into his temple. I suspected that the headache he’d been dealing with since the explosion was back. Hunter had given Kyle pain medication for those times when the pain was at its worst, but as far as I could tell, Kyle had declined to take it.

  “I don’t know who else might have a motive,” Kyle eventually answered. “If I stop to really think about it, I’m sure I can come up with a short list. It’s so hard to know what will set someone off. As angry as James seemed to be when he realized that the acting mayor wanted to change a law which would end up costing him millions of dollars over time, I think that Elsa Winter was even angrier over the issue relating to her dog.”

  “Dog?” Doc asked.

  “Elsa Winter’s dog keeps getting out of her yard in spite of the fact that she has gone to quite a lot of trouble to keep him inside,” Kyle explained. “The dog is not only clever and determined, but he is also aggressive and unruly and is basically terrorizing the neighborhood. The neighbors living closest to Elsa got together and signed a petition which would require Elsa to either get rid of the dog or move. When the petition was presented to the council, their approach to the situation was divided, which seemed to anger everyone. Bookman told me later that one of the more vocal neighbors threatened to kill the dog if it wasn’t dealt with.”

  “That seems overly drastic,” I pointed out.

  “I don’t disagree,” Kyle said. “I’m just using the situation to make the point that, as far as I could tell, Elsa was just as angry about her dog, as James was about the money he would lose if the law was changed. When gauging who might funnel their anger into an act of violence and who might not, I’m not sure you can measure the potential for violence based on the dollar value of what is perceived to be lost.”

  I shrugged. “That makes sense. I’m sure Elsa values her dog even more than James values his money.”

  Roy groaned and put his little notepad in his pocket. “I can see this isn’t going to be easy. Let’s just all make a list of whoever comes to mind and then take it from there.”

  After Roy, Doc, and Grandpa left, I wandered into the kitchen to d
ig up some dinner for Kyle and me. My dad and his fiancée, town veterinarian, Rosalie Tyler, had agreed to keep an eye on my sisters, Ashley and Gracie, for a few days so that I could stay with Kyle and help him out should he require any help as his ribs healed and his strength returned.

  “I think we might need to order a pizza,” I said to Kyle after taking an inventory of his meager supplies.

  “Pizza is fine. In fact, after eating hospital food for two days, pizza sounds pretty darn good. I could use some fresh air. Let’s just head over to Rob’s and eat there.”

  “Sounds good to me.” Rob’s Pizza was a comfy joint with vinyl booths, red-checkered tablecloths, team pictures on the walls, video games, and the best pizza west of the Rockies. I loved coming to Rob’s. Besides the fact that he made the best pizza around, Rob provided a cozy atmosphere, with a lived-in, hometown feel.

  “I think this is just what I need,” Kyle said as we slid into a booth in the back.

  I looked around the room which had been decorated in anticipation of the upcoming holiday. “It looks like Rob has already traded out his Halloween decorations for garland and white lights.”

  “I guess it is November.”

  “I can’t believe it will be Thanksgiving in a few weeks. I guess that even under normal circumstances, once Halloween arrives, it seems like it is a mad dash toward Christmas.”

  “Speaking of Thanksgiving,” Kyle said, “I wanted to ask what you think about throwing a big dinner at my place? It will be our first major holiday as a couple, and I want it to be special.”

  I hesitated before I answered. “While I do love that idea, the resort is closed over the Thanksgiving holiday, so we usually have a huge dinner out at Maggie’s Hideaway. I don’t think Dad would mind passing off hosting duties if you really want to do it, but we usually invite a good thirty people. Sometimes more. Everyone pitches in buffet style, which makes it doable.”