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

by Kathi Daley

  I called my dad and told him what was going on. He agreed to pick the girls up from school and to help Gracie get ready for the play if I didn’t get home in time. Once that was arranged, I called Kyle, gave him a brief overview, and let him know I was on my way over. As it turned out, the conversation we were about to have with Gina was even more absurd than any of the scenarios my imagination had come up with during my drive to Kyle’s place.

  “Thanks for going to all the trouble to have a secure discussion with me,” Gina started off.

  “No problem. What’s going on?”

  “I have something to tell you, but you have to promise not to get mad.”

  God, I hated discussions that began like that since the chances were that mad was exactly what I was going to be. “Okay. I promise. What’s up?”

  Gina took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay, so you remember last summer when I was working for Bristow, and we were trying to get approval for his development.”

  “Yeah. So? We both know that I was a bit ticked off that you were working for that snake, but I got over it. What does that have to do with this?”

  “Well, you see,” Gina hemmed and hawed. “We sort of needed some information that was unavailable to us that we felt could nudge a few of the holdouts on the committee onto our side. Since the information was not public record, we couldn’t just request it, so I sort of hacked into the town’s records.”

  “You hacked into the town’s records to help Bristow?” I was almost speechless. I’d hated Bristow for trying to blackmail Mayor Harper before he died, and I really couldn’t understand why Gina would have agreed to work for him even if she did need the money, but to break the law for him. Sure, Kyle hacked into stuff all the time, but that was different. He was one of the good guys, and he used his superpower to make the world a better place. “So what does this have to do with Harriet?” I eventually asked.

  “Well, you see when I hacked into the town’s system, I realized that I might very well need to get back into the town’s records at some point in the future, so I created a back door. I figured it would cut down on the amount of time needed to hack back in.”

  “You created a back door to the town’s files?”

  “I did,” Gina admitted. “Actually, I have backdoors into lots of places, but I guess that isn’t the point. The point is that I don’t necessarily want other hackers to use my back door, which if found, they certainly could do, so I set up alarms.”

  “And I set off the alarm when I tried hacking in,” Kyle said.

  “Yes, you did. I figured it was you, and I wasn’t overly concerned. I’d even planned to tell you how to get in, but then you managed to get in yourself. Tj told me that you found the passcode in Harriet’s personal files. Anyway, I realized that I really should close the back door I had created and get out of the system altogether, so I went in to remove the alarms and found that someone else had hacked into the town’s files since I’d last been there.”

  “Someone else?” Kyle asked. “Who?”

  “I don’t know who tried to hack in specifically, but I do know that the person who tried to hack in, did so from a computer housed within the South Shore office of the Paradise County Sheriff.”

  “DuPont,” I breathed.

  Chapter 23

  “I cannot believe how adorable Gracie and Kari look,” I whispered to Jenna that evening while we watched the school play. Both the Jensen and Elston families had turned out for the event, so it was a group of twenty who all sat together.

  “The little boy who is playing the turkey is so funny,” Grandpa, who was sitting behind me, leaned forward and whispered in my ear. “He keeps tripping over those much too big feet, but he seems to be rolling with it just fine.”

  “I think he might be tripping on purpose for comic effect,” Dennis, who was sitting on Jenna’s other side whispered. “No one can be that clumsy naturally.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Doc, who was sitting in the row behind me, countered. “The look on his face as he starts to fall seems to be unrehearsed to me.”

  “We are almost to Gracie’s lines,” Kyle shushed us.

  “I hope she doesn’t blow it,” Ashley mumbled.

  I held my breath as Gracie said the lines that she had been rehearsing for days. I only let it out when the lines were delivered flawlessly.

  “That’s our girl,” I heard my dad say.

  “She really is very good at speaking clearly so as to be understood,” Rosalie added.

  I glanced at the group gathered around me and smiled. It felt good to be in the center of a large family who cared about each other and the everyday moments of their lives. I was sad that my mom had died early in life, but I was also happy that Ashley and Gracie had been given the opportunity to grow up in a nurturing environment.

  “Doc and I are going for pie,” Grandpa said to Bookman and Helen after the play was over. “Would the two of you like to join us?”

  “Actually, I think we’ll just head home,” Bookman said. “I’m getting a little tired.”

  “Tj? Kyle?” Grandpa asked.

  “The girls are going to the home of one of their classmates for a sleepover. I think that Kyle and I are going to head over to his place. Just so you do not worry, we have Echo.”

  “Rosalie and I will go with you,” my dad responded to Grandpa’s query.

  “Jenna? Dennis?”

  “Date night.” Jenna hugged her handsome husband’s arm.

  “And I have a sermon to prepare,” Pastor Dan said, as he smiled at Bree, who was holding onto his daughter, Hannah’s, hand. “I will see you all on Sunday.”

  “It was nice that everyone came out for the play,” Kyle said as we walked hand in hand toward the parking lot.

  “Yes. We do tend to take up more than our share of the seats at these types of events, but I know how much the girls love being part of a big family. I’m sorry your mom was out of town this weekend. I think she would have enjoyed it.”

  “She would have come, but since she plans to be with us for Thanksgiving, she wanted to have an early Thanksgiving with my aunts and uncles this weekend.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  Kyle helped me into the car and then walked around to the driver’s side. He pulled out of the parking lot and into traffic. My stomach knotted when we passed the rubble that had been left by the explosion that destroyed the lives of so many of my friends. The walls that had remained after the explosion had been torn down, but the site still looked like a war zone.

  “I’m not sure I’m ever going to be able to drive past this spot and not feel like throwing up,” I said.

  Kyle blew out a breath. “Yeah. I know what you are saying. I drove over and really looked at the place a few days ago. As I stood staring at what was left of the building I had spent so much of my time in, it struck me how amazing it was that while the town offices and the council chambers are totally destroyed, the bank next door and the sheriff’s office directly behind are barely damaged.”

  The fact that the explosion was as contained as it was really hadn’t struck me as odd until right now, but Kyle was right, the explosion did seem to have been controlled, which indicated to me that the person who planted the bomb knew what they were doing. If Harriet did have the bomb in her purse, as the investigator suspected, then there would have been no way the bomber would be able to control the situation to the degree it seemed he had. Something seemed wrong with the scenario as currently presented, and I said as much to Kyle. “So what if the investigator was wrong about the bomb being in Harriet’s purse? What if the bomb was in the drawer where she placed her purse, not in her purse? What if the bomber intended to destroy the building but not to kill anyone? In any other circumstance, the building would have been deserted at six o’clock.”

  Kyle pulled onto the lake road that led to his estate. �
�If that is true, then it is likely that we are barking up the wrong tree in terms of suspects.”

  “I agree. If Harriet was the intended victim, then looking at the victims of her blog as potential suspects makes sense, but if the intended victim really was the infrastructure all along, then those hurt by the blog really don’t come into play.”

  Kyle pulled up in front of his house. I slipped out the passenger side door while Kyle headed up to the house to open the front door and let Echo and Trooper out. Kyle and I stood on the deck and watched as they ran up and down the beach.

  “Okay,” I asked after a minute. “If the building itself was the intended victim rather than the occupants of the building, then who, out of everyone we’ve looked at so far, do we still suspect?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the heavily secured file will provide a clue. Maybe we should head inside and see if my program was able to get through the security.”

  “It’s cold out here anyway.” I whistled to Echo, who seemed to have been having fun but responded immediately.

  Once we returned to the house, Kyle checked his phone for messages. There was one from Roy, so he called him back. “I’m going to put the phone on speaker, so we can both listen in,” Kyle said once Roy picked up.

  “Hey, Roy. It’s Tj. Did you find anything?”

  “I think I might have. I did some checking after my very odd conversation with Kate relating to the assertion that she’d attacked a woman named Jackie Leman. The copy of the police file Harriet had in her personal files which related to the incident is not part of Kate’s employee file. In fact, it isn’t part of any file that I could find. It is as if the assault never occurred.”

  I frowned. “Maybe it didn’t. Maybe the file Harriet had is a fake.”

  “Initially, I thought that might be true, so I did some digging, and I managed to find a current cellphone number for Jackie. She agreed to speak to me over the phone. She confirmed that Kate had indeed attacked her, and at the time, she had been arrested. Jackie told me that Kate blamed her for the death of her father. She also assured me that, while she was at the scene where Kate’s father was shot, she was in no way responsible for what happened to the man. After I spoke to Jackie, I did some additional research. I may be wrong, and all I have at this point is hearsay and not proof, but it appears that Kate used family connections to make the police file relating to her assault of Jackie Leman disappear.”

  “Family connections?” Kyle asked.

  “Not only was Kate’s dad a cop who died in the line of duty, but two of her uncles are high ranking detectives, and another of her uncles is a judge. In other words, she is connected.”

  “So how did Harriet find out about the assault if Kate’s file, and I imagine her police record, were scrubbed?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “So are you saying that you think Kate blew up the town hall?” I asked.

  “No. I don’t think she was behind the bomb. I think that Harriet figured out a way to get private information that no one else seemed to have and that she used that information to tell truths others did not want to be told. I think her blog was hurtful and spiteful. I think that Kate realized that her career was on the line, but I have to believe that even if Kate had decided to eliminate Harriet, which is not what I’m saying she would have done, but even if she had come to such a conclusion, she wouldn’t have risked so many innocent lives.”

  “Does Kate know that you know all this?” I asked.

  “I’m really not sure what she knows. What I do know is that Kate is MIA. She is no longer answering her phone, and I spoke to her mother who said she took off and she has no idea where she is.”

  I glanced at Kyle whose brows were knit so tightly as to create a valley. “How did Harriet find out all this information?” he asked. “Sure some of it could have come from observation or local gossip, but if Kate had somehow managed to have her arrest and all traces of her arrest scrubbed, how on earth did Harriet find out about it?”

  “I don’t know,” Roy admitted. “And now that Harriet is gone, we may never know. What I do know is that Kate is going to be in a lot of trouble once she is tracked down. I’m sure her career is over, and I have to admit I feel sad about that. I don’t know if Jackie Leman contributed to the death of Kate’s father as Kate seems to think, or if Kate was misinformed as to what had gone down. And I don’t know why Kate attacked her. I suppose she might have been provoked. If that is true, I don’t even blame her for that. But if she found a way to scrub her file and erase her arrest, and then lied to pursue a career in law enforcement, then that is all on her.”

  I had to agree with Roy. It sounded like Kate might have started out as a sympathetic character, but in the end, she had made a choice, and that choice had changed things.

  “So, what now?” I asked.

  “The sheriff has been notified. Kate will need to face what she has done. Still, in spite of the fact that Harriet and her gossip rag threatened something Kate cared about very much, I still don’t think she is our bomber.”

  “I don’t either,” Kyle agreed.

  After we hung up with Roy, Kyle logged onto his computer. We decided it was best to go over everything again. We pulled out all the notes related to the explosion we’d developed to date, including the suspect list we had compiled. We decided to make a second list which only contained those suspects who would fit a scenario where the bomb had been in Harriet’s desk and not in her purse. We both felt that if the bomb was placed in the desk and had been set to blow after everyone had gone home, then more likely than not, the intended target was the building, or more likely, the contents of the building. Of course, if the bomber really had intended to destroy the building and only the building, why not simply set the bomb to go off at two in the morning. Why six o’clock when there would be people still out and about? And why on Halloween when more people than usual were on the street? That part of the scenario didn’t fit our new paradigm where the building or its contents were the intended victim, but Kyle and I decided to explore that option anyway.

  “Okay, so I have eliminated all the blog victims from the suspect list with the exception of Kate,” Kyle said.

  “Yeah, it does seem as if something is going on there.”

  “We should also add Deputy DuPont. We haven’t been able to confirm that he argued with Harriet on the day prior to the explosion, but I see no reason to think Margie would have lied.”

  “I agree.” I glanced at the list and paused to roll this new information around in my head for a while. “While I think it is significant that the blast seemed to have been so controlled, we do need to remember that Harriet’s home office was tossed. If the bomb had been placed in her desk drawer and not her purse, and the intended victim was the building and not the woman whose desk the bomb was planted in, then why was her home broken into?”

  “Good question. It does seem that something isn’t adding up. For every theory that we’ve come up with, there seems to be a piece of the puzzle that doesn’t quite fit that theory.” Kyle leaned back in his chair. He closed his eyes and let out a long breath. “I’m exhausted, and this is complicated. What do you say we call it a night and pick this up tomorrow?”

  “I’m good with that. My brain is pretty fried at this point. Did you ever check to see if the program you left running was able to get into the heavily secured file?”

  “It looks like the program is eighty percent of the way there. I’m sure we’ll be able to get in by tomorrow. I keep hoping that whatever Harriet had locked away will give us the clue we need to figure this whole thing out.”

  Chapter 24

  Saturday, November 18

  As it turned out, the program Kyle had left running had managed to get into the file by the following morning. Inside were several documents including a missing persons report from eighteen years ago, a police report relating to a woman
who had been arrested for drug trafficking, a contract for a large amount of concrete that appeared to have been poured eighteen years ago, and some scribbles in Harriet’s handwriting that, at this point, made no sense to either of us.

  “The missing persons report in the file is associated with a man named Robert Edmonton,” Kyle explained to Jenna and me after joining us in his kitchen where we’d been going over our plans for the food for Thanksgiving.

  Jenna sat forward slightly, wrapping her hands around her mug of coffee. “I remember hearing about this. Robert Edmonton owned the Serenity Community Bank. He was last seen at the bank where he planned to work late. He never came home, so his wife filed a missing persons report, and the whole town set out to look for him, thinking he had met with foul play. He never did show up, but it was later discovered that a large amount of cash was missing from the vault. Once the cash was found to be missing, the popular opinion changed from possible abduction to midlife crisis, which most assumed played out with the man stealing from his own bank and taking off.”

  “Robert Edmonton went missing a long time ago. We were still in high school. How do you remember all of this?” I asked.

  “My dad was good friends with Edmonton. His disappearance hit both my parents hard. I remember that my parents and their friends spent a lot of time debating the different theories as to what had most likely occurred. There were those who thought he’d taken off, which seemed to be what the sheriff and his team thought, and then there were those who figured he was dead.”

  “Okay, so what does this mean?” I asked. “Are we thinking the explosion at the town hall is in some way associated with this missing person?”

  Kyle shrugged. “I have no idea. I really don’t see how it could relate unless Harriet stumbled across evidence that Edmonton hadn’t simply taken off, but had been murdered. That would be a juicy tidbit for her blog, even if the murder occurred almost two decades ago.”