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

by Kathi Daley

  “We don’t need to sign them up. I just figured it would be an ice breaker.”

  “We should go now. I need to pick my sisters up from school at three.”

  Chapter 21

  Sweet Perfection was a cute shop I supposed if you were into pink and green. I was pretty sure that Ashley would adore the décor, but personally, it wasn’t my taste. Still, the aroma of cookies baking when you walked in the front door could not be denied. If Jennifer was buying her baked goods in the valley and then reselling them, she was smart enough to have something in the oven to provide a wonderful aroma for atmosphere.

  “Can I help you?” A short woman with short blond hair standing behind the counter asked.

  “Everything looks wonderful,” I honestly said, as I inventoried the selection displayed in the glass case. “I understand that your baked goods are made from family recipes.”

  The woman nodded. “My grandmother was a wonderful baker. When she passed away, she left my sister, Lacy, and I each a file box full of family recipes. The recipes were so delicious and so unique that we decided to open a bakery.”

  “So Lacy works here with you?”

  The woman shook her head. “No. Lacy works at the first Sweet Perfection Bakery in Carson City. We opened it together a year ago and did so well that we decided to branch out and add a second store here in Serenity.”

  I glanced at Kyle. It sounded like Jennifer had been buying the pastries she resold from her own bakery. “I guess having two kitchens must allow you to offer more of a selection.”

  Jennifer nodded. “The bakery in the valley is much larger. I live in the valley, so I make a lot of what I sell in this store in the kitchen down there. At least for now. Lacy has help running the counter, but so far, it is just me at this location, which makes baking and running the front at the same time pretty tricky. The pastries are all fresh, however. If you can’t decide, I have a sampler tray.”

  “That would be great. We’ll take a sampler and two coffees.”

  So much for Harriet’s juicy piece of gossip. It wasn’t even true. Well, I supposed technically, it was true, but given the situation, it was far from shocking, and the pastries were to die for. In all fairness to Harriet, Kyle had only found notes pertaining to the bakery. There was a chance that Harriet would have looked into things further and not printed the piece about the bakery had she lived.

  “So I wonder if the rumor about Girard and Will is equally yawn-worthy,” I wondered after we had left the bakery with a takeout box filled with donuts.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. But to be honest, I sort of doubt it. I’m not even sure how to handle the interview. Do we simply come out and ask Girard if it is true and if he blew Harriet up because of it?”

  I frowned. “No, I don’t think that would be the way to approach it. Girard owns that taxidermy shop next to Guns and Roses. I guess we’ll just stop by and talk to him. Maybe he will volunteer something or create an opening for us to bring it up.”

  Kyle frowned. “Seems unlikely, but I’m game to try. I’m not sure we want to do or say anything to get on the guy’s bad side.”

  “I totally agree. The guy is about as scary as they get. In fact, every boogeyman I ever imagined when I was a kid looked pretty much like him.”

  “The guy does seem formidable.”

  After we pulled up out in the front, I began having second thoughts. “Maybe we should let Roy handle it. He does have a gun, and we don’t.”

  “Do you really think he is dangerous?” Kyle asked.

  “We do suspect him of blowing up a building with seven people inside. Yes, I think that in the right circumstance, he could be dangerous.”

  Kyle looked at the building. “I guess we could talk to Will first. Get a feel for things.”

  “Yes,” I said, “let’s do that.”

  Of course, it was at that moment that the man walked out and approached the car. The windows were up, so he knocked. Kyle lowered the passenger side window halfway, which had me scooting toward the middle of the seat.

  “I noticed you sitting out here, staring at my shop. Can I help you with something?” Girard asked.

  “We were debating whether a taxidermist works with family pets that have passed on and not just hunting trophies,” I blurted out the first thing I could think of which was incredibly gross and made me want to puke.

  “You want to stuff your little fluffy friend?”

  “Well, not really,” I admitted. “We just noticed the shop which a friend of ours mentioned and the subject came up. For future reference only,” I added quickly, “we don’t actually require the services of a taxidermist at this point.”

  “And who friend might that be?” Girard asked.

  “Will. Will Colter.”

  The man smiled, showing off smokers’ teeth that were more brown than white. “You know Will?”

  “Not well,” I answered. “But well enough to have overheard him mention this place. Another friend, Harriet Kramer, mentioned it as well.”

  I watched as the man’s smile faded into a scowl. “If you are friends with that liar, you are not a friend of mine. Now get along. Both of you. And don’t darken my door again.”

  Kyle pulled away from the curb. “Well, the man certainly doesn’t like Harriet.”

  “The fact that he called her a liar seems to indicate that he might know her secret identity.”

  “Or they could have come to heads over something else,” Kyle pointed out. “He does own a business, and Harriet had been in charge of such tasks as collecting business license fees. Maybe she claimed not to have received his payment when he knew he had paid, so he figured she was lying. We don’t know enough to come to any hard conclusions, but I do agree that the man should be interviewed by someone with a gun. We’ll talk to Roy about him when he checks in with us later.”

  I scooted back to the passenger side of the vehicle and clipped on my seatbelt. “Since we seem to have hit a dead end, how about we hit up a couple of the lunch places where Harriet may have met JM on the day she died. Maybe someone saw her and can tell us who JM is.”

  Kyle started the engine. “Roy was going to look into it, but if he hasn’t had the chance yet, I’m game. I’ll call him and ask him what he has been able to find out so far.”

  A call to Roy confirmed that he had checked four restaurants near the town offices and hoped to check The Antiquery today, but he’d been held up with another case. Kyle assured him that the two of us wanted to grab a sandwich and that we’d ask the staff about Harriet and her lunch with JM while we were there.

  “It feels odd to be heading to The Antiquery. I haven’t eaten there since Jenna and Helen sold the place, but I hear the food is still good, so maybe we’ll grab a bite while we are there. We did just eat all those pastries, so maybe something small, like a sandwich.”

  “We could even order something to go. It would give us a chance to chat with the hostess while we wait for our order.”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  While the establishment looked much the same as it had before Jenna decided to sell it two months ago, knowing that I wouldn’t find Jenna in the kitchen made the experience feel a bit different. Jenna had sold to a group of her own employees, which meant that very little had changed on the surface, and most casual customers might not even realize that the restaurant was under different ownership.

  “Kyle; Tj. How are you both?” The hostess, a fortyish woman named Natalie who had worked at The Antiquery for about three years and was part of the group that bought Jenna out, greeted.

  “We’re good. We are actually here for two reasons. The first reason is to grab a sandwich to go, and the other is to ask the employees if anyone remembers Harriet having lunch here on the day the town hall blew up.”

  “She was here. She sat in a booth in the back with a woman I’d never seen before.�
��

  A woman. That was interesting. For some reason, I was expecting a man. “What did the woman look like?”

  “Short. No more than five feet tall. She was thin, yet fit looking. She had long black hair. Down to her waist, yet it was sort of raggedy and untrimmed. If I had to guess, she grew it out for convenience and not to make a fashion statement.”

  “Do you remember her eye color? What she wore?”

  “Dark eyes. Brown. She wore jeans and heavy boots. She had on a black t-shirt, and she wore something on a gold chain around her neck. I guess it was a necklace of some sort. I didn’t get a good look at it because after she came in, she tucked it under her t-shirt, but it wasn’t a dainty diamond. It was bulky.”

  “Like a medallion of some sort?”

  “Not really. It wasn’t solid like a medallion. It’s hard to describe.”

  “Could you draw it?” I asked.

  Natalie shrugged. “I’m not much of an artist, and I didn’t get a good look at it, but I can try.”

  “Did you notice any other distinguishing features? A tattoo? Scar? That sort of thing.”

  “I did notice that this woman had a long thin scar over her right eye. The scar wasn’t really distracting since it ran along the brow line, but it was noticeable.”

  “Do you know what Harriet and this woman talked about?” I asked.

  Natalie shook her head. “They were quiet, and they stopped talking whenever anyone approached.”

  “Did you notice if the woman carried a package?”

  Natalie furrowed her brow. “No. I don’t remember a package. Or even a purse. Harriet was already here when she arrived. The woman walked in, approached the hostess desk, and asked for Harriet. I waved Ginger over, and she took her to Harriet’s table. I don’t remember that the woman was carrying anything. I’m pretty sure her hands, arms, and back were empty, so no package, purse, or backpack.”

  “Is Ginger working today?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Hang on, and I’ll get her. She is working in the back room.”

  Kyle and I asked Ginger all the same questions we asked Natalie, and she answered with the same responses. She also agreed that the woman didn’t have anything in her hands when she arrived. We confirmed that Harriet paid for the lunch with a credit card and that both women left at the same time, but in different vehicles.

  “Okay, what should we do now?” I asked.

  “I guess we will head back to my place, eat our sandwich, and wait to hear from Roy. Hopefully, he will be able to talk to Kate, and we can eliminate her from the suspect list.”

  Shortly after we returned to Kyle’s, Roy called and asked to come by. Once he arrived, he shared that he’d spoken to Kate and that their conversation had left him feeling even more uncertain than before he’d called her.

  “So what’s going on?” I asked, after Kyle, Roy, and I were gathered around Kyle’s dining table with fresh cups of coffee.

  “As we discussed, I called Kate and told her about the notes Harriet had in her file. I guess I was expecting denial, but instead, she told me that her life before coming to Paradise Lake was none of my business, and it would serve me well to remember that. She was short and impatient during the entire conversation, and after only a brief exchange, she told me that she was needed and had to hang up. And then she did. Just like that. No offer to chat later or to check in. No offer of a timeline for her return to work. Nothing. I could sense that she was stressed.”

  “Her behavior does make her seem guilty,” I said. “Still, I can’t see her blowing up an entire building to keep the fact that she had been arrested in the past from coming out. It’s not like she killed anyone. Assault is a serious charge, but not that serious.”

  Roy shook his head. “I don’t know what was behind her behavior, and I agree that she seems guilty based on her response. Maybe there is more going on than we’ve managed to figure out so far. I don’t want to think she would hurt anyone unless a show of force was absolutely required, and maybe that is naïve, but I agree with you, I can’t see that she had a good enough motive to blow up an entire building. Something feels wrong. If Harriet was the intended victim as we now suspect, why wouldn’t the person who wanted her out of the way simply shoot her? Or stab her? Or do anything other than setting off a huge explosion.”

  “Those are the exact same questions I have asked myself over the course of the past two weeks. I know we have dug into this from a number of different angles, but I still feel like we are missing something.”

  Roy nodded. “I agree. There has to be more to this. Kate wouldn’t do such a thing.”

  “That is the same thing we both thought about Tim.” I reminded Roy about his previous partner, who had turned out to have done exactly what it had looked like he’d done.

  “I do remember what happened with Tim, and I do think we need to move Kate to the top of our suspect list, but I also agree that something feels off about this whole thing,” Kyle said. “There is that one secure file that I found amongst Harriet’s files, and there are the anomalies I noticed in the town’s records. Maybe getting to the bottom of both will help us figure things out. I’ll work on it and see what I can come up with.”

  Roy nodded and thanked us both. I felt so bad for the guy. He not only looked exhausted but totally defeated as well. I wasn’t a huge fan of Kate Baldwin, but for Roy’s sake, I really did hope she’d turn out to be innocent.

  Chapter 22

  Friday, November 17

  I hadn’t seen Kyle since Wednesday, but we’d spoken on the phone, so I knew that both Doc and Greg had agreed to give the town council a shot. Kyle had put an ad in the paper for a new town clerk/mayor’s secretary and had over twenty applicants reply, most of whom on paper seemed to be fairly qualified. The new town council was set to meet at Bookman’s house next week to go over the applications and make a decision.

  After a ton of man hours tracking down those affected by the blog, it didn’t look as if a single person really stood out as a strong suspect other than Kate, who still wasn’t talking. Add to that the fact that the bomb was said to have cost the person who purchased it a pretty penny, and it really narrowed down the suspect pool to, well, to no one. Besides the cost, the whole thing made no sense. If Harriet was targeted by an individual she hurt in her blog, why on earth would they buy an expensive bomb and plant it in her purse? Why wouldn’t the killer, as we’d all asked multiple times, shoot her, stab her, or even poison her? Killing her in such a very expensive and unmanageable fashion made no sense, no matter how you looked at it.

  There had to be something important that we were missing. Something that made the how make as much sense as the why. We knew that finding the person who did this terrible thing was not going to be easy, so Kyle and I both decided that while we needed to continue to look for answers, we needed to live our lives as well.

  “Okay, listen up,” I said in a loud voice to get the attention of my sixth period class. “As I’m sure you are aware, we are off for fall break next week. All after school sports practices will be canceled as well, so relax and have a wonderful Thanksgiving.”

  Ah freedom, I thought to myself as the girls from my last class filed out into the hallway. An entire week to sleep in, spend time with Kyle, and of course, dig into the investigation that seemed to have everyone stumped. Not that I was necessarily going to have any more luck than Roy and Kyle had had during the course of the week, but at times a fresh pair of eyes and a new perspective could make all the difference.

  I picked up the few items I planned to bring home just in case I decided to work on my lesson plans, which I highly doubted. I loved my job, but with everything else that was going on, I really was pretty excited to switch gears for an entire week.

  “Ms. Jensen, you have a call on line one,” The secretary from the front office said over the intercom.

  “Thank you.” I pic
ked up the line. “Coach Jensen,” I answered.

  “Tj, it’s Gina.”

  “Gina? Oh my god, how is everything? Do you love your new job? Your new home? How is your hottie boyfriend?” Gina Roberts was a total genius who used to teach math at the high school, but after being kidnapped this past summer and reconnecting with an old flame who lived on the east coast, she’d decided to quit her job at Serenity High and take another chance on love.

  “The job is great, and Jeremy and I are doing fantastic. I really do want to catch up with you about all that, but I’m calling for another reason.”

  I frowned. “Oh. What’s on your mind?”

  “I heard about what happened. With Harriet and the town hall.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It was pretty awful. We still haven’t found out who is behind the whole thing.”

  “Which is why I am calling. I understand that Kyle has been working on gaining access to the town’s files.”

  “He has, and he was having no luck hacking in, but then he managed to hack into Harriet’s personal files, and she had a list of passcodes which he used to get into the town’s files. Why are you asking? Did you hear about Sinful Secrets?”

  “Sinful Secrets?”

  “Never mind. Go on. You were asking about the files?”

  “Yes, well,” Gina paused. She took a moment and then continued. “Is there another landline you can use to call me back? One that isn’t part of a larger system?”

  “I can call you back when I get home,” I offered. “Or if this is really top secret, Kyle has a secure line.”

  “Actually, I’d like to speak to Kyle as well. If you don’t mind calling me back from his secure line, I’ll give you a number to call.”

  “Okay. Hang on.” I opened my desk drawer and took out a piece of paper and a pen. “Okay, go ahead.”

  Gina gave me the number. “When you call, you will hear a double click. Don’t hang up. That will just mean that your call is being rerouted.”

  I frowned. What on earth was going on with Gina? Yes, she did work for a company that dealt with supersecret tech stuff, but the level of security she seemed to be after, combined with her questions about Harriet had me completely stumped.