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

by Kathi Daley

  Helen looked at Bookman.

  “My memory is still pretty fuzzy, but that seems right,” he confirmed.

  “If the bomb was in Harriet’s purse, wouldn’t she have realized it was there?” Helen asked.

  “Perhaps, but it is possible that the bomb had been slipped into her purse and she hadn’t noticed. Roy shared with me the fact that the bomb was about the size of a softball and weighed less than five pounds. An extremely powerful explosive was used, so we know this was no amateur job. Someone with munitions experience had to have built the device.”

  “It just seems that if a five-pound object was placed in Harriet’s purse, she would have noticed the minute she picked up the purse,” Helen insisted. “Maybe you are wrong about the bomb being in her purse.”

  Frannie gave Helen a look that seemed to be an attempt to encourage her to tell what she knew, but she shook her head and then turned away. I knew I needed to let Helen take the time she needed to tell us what Frannie was ready to tell.

  I looked at Helen and offered her what I hoped was a sincere look of sympathy. “We don’t know with a hundred percent certainty that the bomb was in Harriet’s purse but based on the evidence the crime scene guys turned up, it does look that way. Add in the tight timeline, and it seems likely, but I do understand what you are saying about Harriet noticing the change in weight. Maybe Harriet did know the bomb was in her purse, but maybe it was disguised as something else.”

  “Like what?” Helen asked a frown on her face.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it was wrapped. Maybe someone gave her a gift with instructions to open it later. Or maybe she was given a wrapped package and asked to give it to someone else she planned to see later in the day or in the week. We can’t really know at this point, but I don’t think we should assume that it wouldn’t be possible for Helen to have agreed to transport the bomb without knowing that it was a bomb.”

  I glanced at Bookman, who was frowning but hadn’t said anything else. Helen was as white as a sheet, and Frannie looked as if she was going to pass out at any moment. “I know this is hard on both of you,” I said. “But with the timeline between Harriet calling the meeting at five and the bomb going off at six, it really does seem as if the bomb was already in Harriet’s purse before the meeting was even called. Frannie told me that Harriet would have been home at six on a normal Tuesday, but the Tuesday in question was Halloween and she planned to attend the event being held at the library. In my mind, that means that either Harriet was the intended victim or the event was the intended victim. We need to figure out which.” I couldn’t help but notice that Frannie glanced at Helen, who narrowed her gaze. I glanced at Kyle and Bookman. “I’d like to speak to Helen and Frannie alone.”

  Both men agreed and retreated to the other room. I hated to see Bookman so frail, but I was happy to see that he seemed to be on the road to recovery.

  “I know your instinct is to protect your friend,” I began once the men had exited the room, “but if Harriet was the intended victim, then knowing what was going on in her life is going to be the key to finding her killer.” I looked at Frannie. “When we spoke in the library, you indicated that if Harriet was the intended victim, you might know why. I need you to tell me what you know.”

  Frannie looked at Helen, who looked as if she was going to refuse to cooperate, but eventually, Helen began to speak. “Something was going on with Harriet that might have gotten her killed. She had a really tough time dealing with Mayor Harper’s death, which is understandable since not only had the two been friends for decades but after Judge Harper took on the role of mayor, they worked long hours side by side to get the town back on track after Mayor Wallaby destroyed confidence in the town council and the role of mayor.”

  Helen paused. She glanced at Frannie, who continued on her behalf.

  “Initially, Helen and I tried to be understanding and supportive of Harriet’s odd mood and somewhat erratic behavior. While it was true that the entire town was in shock after the accident which killed Mayor Harper and put your dad in the hospital, we knew that Harriet was closer to him than most, and therefore it was natural that his death seemed to hit her the hardest. We hoped that time would heal her grief, but as time went by, instead of working through her grief, she seemed to channel that energy into anger.”

  “Anger?” I asked.

  “When she found out that the events leading up to Mayor Harper’s death were the result of a secret he’d kept, she became fixated on secrets as being the root of all evil,” Frannie provided.

  Helen jumped in. “That might be a grandiose statement for what was going on, but while Frannie and I were unaware of it at the time, at some point, Harriet decided to channel her natural inclination to gossip into a brand new hobby that both Frannie and I tried to talk her out of once we finally realized what was really happening.”

  I frowned as I tried to understand what the women were trying to communicate to me. “New hobby?” It was true that Harriet had always been the number two source for the latest gossip, second only to Helen. Of course, once Helen married Bookman, and she was no longer hanging out at The Antiquery all day, Harriet had pretty much moved into the number one position.

  “In the past, Harriet liked to gossip, but it was all pretty harmless,” Frannie said.

  “But then, Mayor Harper died, and Harriet’s gossiping began to take on a policing quality,” Helen added.

  My eyes grew wide, and I gasped. “Harriet was the author of Sinful Secrets.”

  Helen nodded.

  Sinful Secrets was a blog that had shown up in email boxes around town beginning in late July. The blog was a gossip rag that focused on revealing the secrets of anyone and everyone the author of the blog chose to pick on. The blog had started with the tone of any other gossip rag, but as time went by, the content of the blog had become downright mean. As a motive for murder, the blog fit the bill perfectly.

  “But the August issue of that blog seemed to be a direct hit at you,” I reminded Helen. “The three secrets revealed were: the plot and working title of the book Bookman had just completed and wanted to keep secret until the big reveal party, the fact that Bree had been locking lips with Pastor Dan in spite of the fact that she had also been working as his nanny, and the fact that Jenna and Dennis had been having marital problems since his promotion to Captain. Why would Harriet pick on the people you loved the most? She was your best friend.”

  Helen blew out a shallow breath. “I don’t know why she decided to write what she did. At the time the blog came out, I was livid that someone would pick on my family that way. Keep in mind, I didn’t know that Harriet was behind the whole thing at that point, and the two of us even talked about how mean and inappropriate the person behind the blog was, and how they needed to be punished. Harriet even made a comment about the person being a coward since she was clearly hiding behind her anonymity. When I finally found out that Harriet had been writing the blog all along, I wanted to wring her neck. I confronted her and asked her about her motive for being so evil and she reminded me that I had been the queen of gossip in the area for decades and that the secrets she had revealed about Bookman’s book, Bree’s relationship with Dan, and Jenna’s marital problems were really no worse than the sort of things I had whispered into the ears of town residents for years before marrying Bookman and retiring from the gossip game.”

  “But Bookman is your husband, and Jenna and Bree are your daughters. How could she do that to you or to them?”

  Helen bowed her head. “I don’t know. Of course, I was very upset about what she had done, but the fact that she knew about the plot and title of Bookman’s book, Bree and Dan’s relationship, and Jenna and Dennis’s marital problems was because I’d told her. It really was my own gossiping that came back to bite me. Harriet and I were never close after I found out what she had been doing, but she didn’t deserve to die.”

 
; “That may be true, but not all the secrets revealed by the Sinful Secrets blog were harmless,” I pointed out. “The blog is responsible for Nancy Johnson filing for divorce after Sinful Secrets revealed that her husband, Jimmy, had been seen heading into a motel room with an unidentified woman with long blond hair.”

  Helen cringed. Both she and Frannie looked as guilty as if they had written the blog themselves.

  “The blog not only caused Jenna all sorts of grief with Dennis, but I know of at least two other relationships that were destroyed by what was revealed,” I continued. “Why didn’t you tell someone what Harriet was doing? The person behind that horrible blog has been the biggest mystery to hit the town of Serenity in decades.”

  “We didn’t know until recently,” Frannie said.

  Helen nodded. “When the first blog came out in July, it was light-hearted and funny. Sure, it picked on some of the town’s favorite citizens including you and Kyle, and it made a few folks mad, but all in all, it seemed that most of the town’s residents found the blog to be entertaining. Then the second blog came out at the end of August, and it was focused on my family. And yes, I was angry. Livid in fact. But I didn’t know who was writing the blog, and it didn’t seem that enough harm had been done to spend a lot of time trying to figure it out. Then when the September blog came out, and Jimmy’s affair was revealed, along with a few other gasp-worthy revelations about other folks in town, I could see the opinion of many folks in town begin to change. There were those who felt that the blog was causing more harm than it ought to, and perhaps the blogger should be stopped. I found I agreed and I even made noise about tracking down whoever was responsible and making them pay, but I had no idea who the blogger was or how to track down the identity of this very hurtful person.”

  Frannie continued after Helen paused. “Then the October blog came out, and the author of Sinful Secrets revealed that Margie Holden’s husband, Carl, was not, in fact, the father of their middle daughter, but that she had been conceived during a brief affair between Margie and her tennis instructor. No one knew Margie’s secret except for Helen, who Margie had confided in.”

  “I unwisely shared this information with Harriet after a girls’ night out, and the next week, Margie’s secret was revealed in the blog.” Helen bowed her head. “Of course, not only were both Margie and her husband hurt by this bit of news being made public, but Margie’s seven-year-old daughter found out that Carl was not her father, as did her classmates, and the fallout nearly destroyed the young girl. It was then that I figured out that Harriet was the author of the blog. I confronted her, and she promised to stop publishing it. The damage from the blogs she had already published could not be undone, and she promised not to write any new ones, so I didn’t see the value in ratting her out, even though I knew our relationship had been damaged beyond repair.” Helen wiped a tear from her cheek. “Perhaps if I had ratted her out, she’d be alive today. Perhaps Lloyd wouldn’t be dead, Hank wouldn’t be crippled, and Bookman wouldn’t have almost died.” Helen glanced at me. “I’m sorry. This whole thing is my fault.”

  “It’s not your fault. I probably wouldn’t have said anything either once Harriet promised to stop what she was doing. I still can’t believe that Harriet would do such a hurtful thing.”

  “I don’t think she meant it to be hurtful,” Frannie said. “At least not in the beginning. I think that she honestly believed after Mayor Harper died as a result of his secret, that secrets were dangerous, and the telling of them could very well save lives.”

  “I think Harper’s death messed with Harriet’s mind more than any of us really understood. If I had to guess, she sort of lost it after his death, but since she seemed to be dealing with things, at least on the surface, no one really knew how it had affected her,” Helen added.

  “I don’t blame either of you. I even sort of understand why Harriet might have felt justified in doing what she did, but now that I know about the blog, Harriet as the target of the bomb makes sense. Why didn’t you bring this up before?”

  Harriet and Frannie glanced at each other. Neither spoke at first, but eventually, Helen replied. “As far we know, Frannie and I are the only two who know that Harriet was behind the Sinful Secrets blog. We knew we didn’t plant the bomb, so we didn’t think the blog was the motive. In fact, until today, we just assumed that the council as a whole was the target and the motive was something the council was working on.”

  I supposed I could understand that. I hadn’t suspected that Harriet was the intended target until today either, and I’d been digging around in the incident. “I marked the blog as spam after the first one, and never even read any of them after that, although I have heard quite a bit about the content from those affected, especially Jenna. Still, I think reading what was said could be important. Do you have copies?”

  Both Helen and Frannie admitted that they didn’t, but they suspected that the blogs were saved on Harriet’s home computer.

  “I’ll call Roy and see if he has her computer. In the meantime, the two of you need to keep this conversation between us. If someone from the blog did plant the bomb in Harriet’s purse, I don’t want them getting wind that we are onto them which would give them the opportunity to disappear before Roy can identify and arrest them.”

  Chapter 11

  After the meeting, Kyle and I headed to his place. I called Roy, who headed to Harriet’s to get her computer. At this point, it seemed to me that the key to finding the killer was to identify those individuals who’d been injured by Harriet’s tell-all blogs.

  “I’m still having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that Harriet is the person behind the blogs,” Kyle said as he made a pot of coffee.

  “I only read the first one which included a comment about you and me locking lips, and a comment about Rita Halliwell having a temper and slapping the new flower delivery guy when he tried to make a move on her. There was also something about Mark Riverton being a secret hoarder who’d kept everything he had ever owned. The blog was written in a lighthearted tone that wasn’t really cruel, but it did seem like the author was just trying to stir things up, so I marked the blog as spam and any additional blogs sent to my email would have ended up in my spam folder.” I frowned. “I wonder if they are still there.”

  “Do you delete your spam?”

  “Not very often. I have my laptop, I’ll take a look.”

  Unfortunately, the only blog in my spam folder was the most recent blog, which was sent out in October, but it was a place to start.

  “Read me what it says, and I’ll jot down the names of those affected,” Kyle suggested as we settled in at the kitchen table with our coffee.

  The blog contained just three paragraphs. There wasn’t a lot of text in any of the paragraphs, but there was enough to cause a lot of damage. I began to read. “Sinful secrets can easily turn into sinful lies when matters of the heart are at stake, and sinful lies, as we all know, can lead to all sorts of unforeseen tragedy. It was discovered this week by Sinful Secrets that for the past two months, Brandy Baldwin’s Monday night book club has really been Brandy Baldwin’s Monday night booty call. Reliable sources have confirmed that Brandy’s husband, Walter, has been biding his time at home with the twins while Brandy has been getting a little something on the side from local boy-toy, Ryder Walton.” I glanced at Kyle. “Ouch. That is downright mean.”

  Kyle nodded. “I agree. This blog doesn’t have the same lighthearted and funny tone as the first blog in July. Whether this is true or not, I can see both Brandy and Walter as having the motive to want revenge against the blogger who filled the entire town in on their marital woes.”

  “What about Ryder?” I asked.

  “Ryder is single and proud of the fact that he gets around. If I had to guess, he was thrilled that everyone knew that he’d managed to bag a good-looking woman like Brandy.”

  I raised a brow. “Bag?” />
  “I’m sorry. That was rude. But you know what I mean?”

  I nodded. “I do.”

  Kyle wrote Walter and Brandy Baldwin down on his list. “What’s next?”

  I looked down at the blog and continued to read. “It seems that lust has run wild in Serenity, both currently and in the past, and Sinful Secrets is here to reveal it all. With a tiny bit of research into classified records, it has been confirmed by Sinful Secrets that Serenity’s most respectable housewife and mother has been keeping a shameful secret of her own involving the real father of her middle daughter, Haley, who Sinful Secrets has discovered, does not belong to her husband, the tireless, Carl Holden.” I glanced up at Kyle. “I can’t believe Harriet wrote this. Even if she was grieving, even if she went a little bit over the edge with Harper’s death, this whole thing is just so mean.”

  Kyle bobbed his head. “Yeah. It’s pretty bad. You said there were three paragraphs?”

  I looked back at my computer and began to read the third paragraph. “And finally, when it comes to lustful thoughts and deeds, it seems worth mentioning that Sinful Secrets has uncovered the fact that our own Hank Hammond was seen grinding pelvises with the newest waitress at The Beef and Brew, Fiona Walton, who by the way, is barely out of her teens and almost two decades younger than our esteemed restauranteur and town council member.”

  Kyle frowned. “Why on earth would Harriet print that? First of all, Hank is single, and it isn’t really a scandal for him to have intimate relations with whomever he wants, and it appeared to me that Harriet really liked Hank. I never saw any indication that she was out to get him.”

  “Helen was her best friend, and she devoted the entire August blog to tell-all posts relating to her husband and daughters.”

  “True.”

  “Helen didn’t seem to think that Harriet’s intent was evil, at least not at first. She said that it was her opinion that Harriet actually believed she was keeping those with secrets from future harm by revealing their secrets before the secret led them to harm. Of course, that reasoning is crazy, but I’m beginning to think that perhaps, in the end, Harriet really had gone over the edge.” I glanced at Kyle’s list. “While we have some viable suspects from the October blog and we know the content of the July and August blogs, we do need to get ahold of the September blog. If they aren’t on Harriet’s computer, I’ll see if I can find someone who saved them.”