"Yes. Don't worry about me," Portia replied giving her no hint of her usual smile. "Besides, without doing the visitations today, there's not really much going on. And I think you could probably use the break after everything that’s happened."
I knew Karen well enough to know that there was not going to be any kind of breaks involved while Lisa's killer was on the loose.
Chapter 7
About twenty minutes later I stepped out of Karen's little hatchback, having parked outside the local café near the souvenir shop, Stephanie's Café. Every time I saw the little sign with the steaming cup of coffee on it I was tempted to go in and enjoy one of her delicious baked goods, or creamy coffees, sitting at one of the tables by the window and watching the world go by.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t really had that much down time since moving to Rosemary Creek, and today was no different. Karen and I had come here with the intention of finding out as much gossip as we could about Lisa Lim, in the hopes of finding out who might have wanted her dead.
According to Karen, Stephanie’s Café was the town watercooler; if you ever wanted to know the local gossip, this was the place to be.
The inside of the coffee shop was basically exactly what my dream coffee shop looked like. A long, black counter lined the entire far wall, behind which the menu was written on three different blackboards hung on the exposed bricks. Covered cake displays showed off slices of cheesecakes, pies, muffins and other delicacies, while the industrial-style doors had been altered to be almost wholly glass, allowing tons of the low, mid-autumn light to flow through into the space. A large antique-style chandelier hung from the ceiling, casting a warm glow over the space, and a handful of tables and booths haphazardly spread around the space were half-filled with patrons – a mix of tourists and locals, some of whom I recognized from Creekside Trinkets. I waved at a few regulars, who stopped by to see Barbara fairly often, seated in a booth in the back before Karen and I took our seats at a small round table for two, complete with a little tea light in a decorated mason jar.
"Good morning, ladies," Stephanie called out as she whisked over to us, notepad in hand while pulling out a pen from somewhere in all that blonde hair piled high on top her head. "I'm sure you heard the terrible news by now. It happened at Gilly Mills, didn't it?"
"Yes. We’re actually the ones who found her," Karen replied. "It's still hard to believe she's gone."
A genuine frown crossed Stephanie's face as she nodded along in agreement, licking her thumb to flip to the next page in her notebook. "Don't I know it. I've known Lisa for many years. I just feel so bad for her two girls. I know they’re grown, but they’re still in their early twenties. That’s far too young to lose your mother."
I had completely forgotten someone mentioned she had two daughters. My stomach was suddenly filled with lead. I knew exactly what it was like to lose your parents so young, and it was something I would never wish upon even my worst enemy.
"Absolutely," I nodded.
Karen and I had an unspoken agreement to avoid mentioning that we were doing our own little investigation on Lisa's behalf, and I could just tell this was the perfect opportunity to dig for something more. "I definitely feel bad for her whole family. Right Karen?" I nudged her foot under the table.
Karen quickly cleared her throat. "Yes, absolutely. They must be going through a very difficult time right now. Jeannette, Gabrielle, and her husband, too."
Stephanie let out a snort, leaning in toward Karen and looking around to make sure no one else was paying attention to her. "I hardly think James Lim is crying over his wife's death."
Leave it to Stephanie to get the rumor mill going, despite all her claims to the contrary. There was a reason this place was the local gossip hotspot, and this was exactly the kind of information we were looking for. Of course, Barbara had already told us about James Lim’s philandering, but it was always good to get as much information as possible.
"Really?" I asked innocently, pressing her for more. "What makes you say that?"
Stephanie hesitated for a moment, looking between the two of us and down at her notepad again before continuing.
"Well, he's not exactly unhappy, is he?" She leaned in even further, dropping her voice to barely above a whisper so that only Karen and I could hear, her tone turning conspiratorial. "The day before this all happened, James Lim's side-piece girlfriend was in here with a group of her little friends, giggling about how James was going to divorce Lisa and marry her instead. She was downright bragging; acting like she had not a lick of sense in her."
Karen frowned. "Who was this? That’s awful."
"Anya White," Stephanie replied. "She lives right outside of Rosemary Creek, I think. Her grandmother lives here, down the road a bit. She comes in every now and then to visit. I guess James figured that since Anya doesn't technically live here, no one would be the wiser. Either that or he simply just didn't care if Lisa knew."
"Sounds like the latter," I muttered. My stomach growled as if to reply back. "While you're here Stephanie, would you mind ordering us a couple of lemonades and BLTs, if you don't mind? Oh… I mean, one BLT and one… LT? What do you get when you come to eat here, anyway?" I asked, looking over at Karen’s face when I accidentally ordered her a BLT. I had only discovered a couple of days earlier that my new roommate was actually a vegetarian, and it was taking some getting used to.
Karen sat back in her seat, folding her arms out in front of her with a grin. "A salad. Stephanie makes the best salads in California. Maybe in the country." She turned and looked at Stephanie with a smile. "I'll just take my usual, Steph, if that's okay."
I thanked Stephanie and waited for her to walk away before turning to Karen. "I don't know how you can go without bacon, I really don't."
"Less worrying about my eating habits, more worrying about important things. Like, looking for a killer?" she replied, looking around the room. Everyone else seemed to be deep in conversation, and I was willing to bet I knew what it was about.
"So now we know who the mistress was," I said, drumming my fingers on the table. "And so we’ve actually got a pretty decent list of suspects. Definitely this Callie lady, who wrote the threatening letter. And probably Lisa's husband, James, too. And the girlfriend, Anya. Although if James Lim said he was going to divorce his wife to marry her, she may have simply waited for that to happen rather than try to um, speed up the process.”
As Karen and I discussed the likelihoods of each of our suspects having committed the crime, the one that I kept coming back to was Lisa's husband.
"Divorces aren’t cheap, and people with tons of money like that tend to not want to let go of any of it," I said as I sipped my lemonade after Stephanie dropped off our food and drinks. "What if he thought it would just be cheaper to murder her? Or have her murdered?"
Karen wiped at the dressing from the corner of her mouth. I had to admit, the Mediterranean chickpea salad Stephanie had brought her looked pretty good.
"That would be one way of doing it, I suppose."
"Is it just me or does this town have a problem with cheating husbands? Just something I've noticed," I joked.
Karen laughed, rolling her eyes. "Definitely not just you, trust me. Anyway, I’ll be right back. I need to go to the bathroom.”
Karen stood up and made her way to the back of the café while I dug into the rest of my sandwich. No wonder Stephanie’s Café was so popular; this was easily one of the best BLTs I’d ever had, and when it came to this particular sandwich, I was a bit of a connoisseur. When Karen came back a moment later, she sat down hurriedly and leaned forward.
“Don’t make it super obvious you’re looking at her, but Callie Lansdowne is here. She's the one in the purple sweater down that way," Karen said, carefully tilting her head to the right, in the direction of a group of women sitting at a large table about ten feet away.
Trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, I pressed my chin into my hand and casually glanced over my shoulder, watching
as Callie, in the purple sweater, gestured wildly around.
"Can you hear what she's saying?" I asked Karen.
She just nodded, her eyes narrowing in their direction. "Yeah. Hold on."
I half expected Karen to do some sort of spell so she could hear better — I knew there was one I'd recently been taking notes on from Barbara — but instead of using her magic, Karen pretended to excuse herself and headed toward the restroom once more, which just so happened to be right next to where the large group of women were seated.
By the time Karen came back, there was a stony expression on her face and she plopped down in the chair. "I guess I really shouldn't be surprised, but she's over there talking about Lisa as if they were best friends or something." Karen shook her head slowly. “Some people, I swear."
I looked back over my shoulder again. "What else did she say?"
Karen sighed, picking at her salad. "Why don't I just let you hear for yourself? Amplo Sonusroa." It was as if everything in the room had suddenly become ten times louder, and everything I was vaguely aware of before was suddenly hammered into my head — the sound of feet squeaking across the floor in the kitchen, the sound of someone turning on the faucet in the bathroom, and everyone's voices chattering over each other all throughout the café. I quickly covered my hands over my ears, squeezing my eyes shut.
"A little advance notice would have been nice," I said through clenched teeth. “Is this what being a dog is like?”
When I opened my eyes back up again Karen was just smirking at me. "Oops."
Ignoring her little jab, I tried to focus on picking apart each sound, each conversation. I had to separate the sounds into the ones which were important, and the ones that weren’t. It took me a couple minutes to really filter through all of it, especially when I had absolutely no desire to listen in on Albert grouching over his latest hemorrhoid cream failure. I shuddered, trying to repress that memory as quickly as possible.
"Oh my, Callie. How absolutely horrible! Weren't you two close?" Yes! This was the conversation I wanted.
There was a small sniffle. "She was a dear friend. And she did so much for so many. For not a thing in return," the other female voice — obviously Callie's – replied, her tone dripping with the sort of mock sadness that made me want to strangle someone.
Mutters of agreement came from all the other women around the table, forks and knives slowly moving again as they continued to eat.
I could hear the entire conversation at the other table so well that it was as if I were sitting there right along with them. It was kind of eerie, in a way. Magic was so cool – and it definitely came in handy - and yet it was definitely taking time to get used to.
"It's a good thing you're the vice president of the school board, Callie. You'll be able to make sure everything goes smoothly with the transition, now that Lisa is no longer on the board," one of the other women said between sips of their straw.
Callie drew in a slow, dramatic breath and flipped her hair over her shoulder. "It is my duty to step into the position temporarily, yes, at least until we can find the right person for it. I haven't given it too much thought, though I suppose I could look into running for president of the board myself. Lisa left such big shoes to fill, of course. But that's just a thought, and in the middle of the chaos that I'm sure is taking place at the Lim's residence, I don’t want to worry about any of those small details just yet. There will be lots of time to consider those kinds of options after we’ve all had the proper amount of time to grieve for Lisa."
A general hum of agreement reached my ears, and even some hands rubbed and patted Callie's hands as they all seemed to reach forward to console her. In my head I could picture Callie dabbing at the corner of not-at-all wet eyes, trying to put on what looked like a brave face for everyone else. This performance she was putting on would have been funny if it hadn’t been over such tragic circumstances.
Having read the letter she wrote to Lisa, my blood was practically boiling when the sound faded back to normal a few minutes later.
"I really can't stand people like that," I mumbled to Karen, finishing my lemonade. "I don't get why she has to lie like that. Are people really buying it?"
Karen didn't answer right away. "Unfortunately, yes. Hook, line, and sinker. She's got them wrapped around her finger, look at that."
I ventured another subtle look to see the women all looking at Callie with rapt attention, as if she was some sort of miracle come from the heavens.
"Well, I wonder what they'd think if they knew about the letter."
"Who knows?" She took another bite of the salad, and I realized I was still hungry, despite having already eaten a sandwich. I supposed I had skipped breakfast that morning. I thought about ordering something small to go with another glass of lemonade.
"Do you think we should say something? To Callie?"
Karen raised a brow at me. "You want to go down that road again? Really?"
"Publicly this time. She's got her whole posse or whatever around her. I bet they'd just love to hear how she really felt about Lisa." I waved Stephanie down from behind the front counter and she made her way over.
But Karen shook her head. "I don't think that's a very good idea. Or at least we shouldn't say anything to her in front of others. It wouldn't look good for people to know we're out here making accusations,” she pointed out. Not when we were the only people at the shelter when Lisa was killed.
"Then let's wait until she leaves. We'll follow her outside and say something there. That way she's still technically in public, but no one else will hear what we're saying. Who knows, maybe with the element of surprise we’ll learn something useful," I countered. "I'll take another one of these delicious lemonades, please,” I said to a smiling Stephanie as she came by, holding up the empty glass.
Waiting until Stephanie moved on to the next table across the room, Karen nodded. "Okay. After she leaves."
Chapter 8
We decided to wait until we saw Callie and her group of friends begin to stand, reaching over one another in an effort to make sure each woman hugged everyone else before making our move.
I nodded to Karen. "Looks like she's getting up to leave. Ready?"
Karen stood up effortlessly and slid her arms back into her gray jacket. "No time like the present. Come on, let's go."
I stopped over at the register where Stephanie was counting out the cash in her till, and I slid her some cash with a smile. "Thanks for the food and lemonade, Stephanie. I think I'll probably pop in for lunch tomorrow, so I'll see you then."
"No problem, hun. Thanks for stopping in and I'll see you tomorrow," she replied, placing the money inside the till with a sparkly blue wink.
I turned back to Karen, but she was already well on her way out the door. She wanted to make it look like we were already outside by the time Callie finally left the cafe, most likely.
"Wait up!" I called out to her, hurrying to catch up. I zipped up my jacket, fighting the blustery winds that pulled it this way and that once I stepped outside. My hair quickly turned into a frenzy of red tangles, whipping around my face and obscuring my vision, and I nearly tripped and fell against the light pole as I spit the hair out that wound up in my mouth and stuck to my chapstick. I was just the picture of elegance right now.
"Here she comes, here she comes," Karen whispered when I finally got myself under control and spotted her, standing in front of the windows of the florist next door, as if she was window shopping. I looked out of the corner of my eye just in time to see the door to Stephanie's Cafe flying open.
I was sure Callie would have been surrounded by at least half of the group of women from her table, the way she'd been holding court inside, but instead, just a couple of her friends leaned in to give her one last hug before turning and heading down the opposite end of the block.
Callie was finally alone.
I knew we didn't have much time as she pulled out her car keys and strode towards a late-model Audi, so I calle
d out to her.
"Callie?"
For a split second I thought she might just try and ignore me, but she looked around curiously, her eyes landing not on me, but on Karen.
"Oh, hello, Karen."
Before we left the cafe, Karen had mentioned to me that Callie was one of those PTA moms who were also a big PITA. She had been vying for the president's seat on the school board for as long as Karen could remember, and each time she got selected as the vice-president, instead, with Lisa getting the top job.
Callie's sensible heels click-clacked against the sidewalk as she made her way over to us. "How are you, sweetie?"
If I knew one thing about Karen, it was how much she hated being spoken to like a child. With her petite stature and big brown doe eyes, it was a pretty common occurrence. Most people didn’t realize there was a very, very fiery grown woman behind that cute little exterior.
"Hi, Callie,” Karen said between clenched teeth. “We wanted to talk to you. Do you have a minute?"
Smoothing her hand over the long coat draped over her arm, Callie pasted on a smile. "Sure," she replied, looking over at me with question marks in her eyes, but she didn’t introduce herself or ask who I was. "Now, what can I help you girls with?"
"I overheard you talking about Lisa Lim," she admitted, her eyes narrowing at Callie. "Taylor and I were the ones who found her body yesterday morning." Ok, Karen was apparently going with the straight-to-the-point method.
Callie clutched at her chest dramatically. "Oh my. That must have been a terrible experience for you. Poor Lisa, who could have possibly wanted to hurt such a wonderful pillar of the community?" I resisted the urge to roll my eyes; after all, I had been the one who had read the note, and unless there were two Callie M. Landsdownes in town, I knew Callie Lansdowne’s true feelings on the topic of Lisa Lim all too well.
"It was," I agreed. "Karen was telling me all about how Mrs. Lim was a prominent figure in town, always helping with the local charities. She was a big part of helping fund Gilly Mills Animal Sanctuary, where Karen works."
Poison and Pinot (A Paranormal Cozy Mystery) (California Witching Book 2) Page 4
