Death by Coffee

by Alex Erickson

  And then it happened, witnesses be damned. Paul leaned over and gave me a peck on the side of the mouth. I think he’d been going for my cheek, but I’d turned into it. I wasn’t sure if it was an accident or if I saw him coming and had been hoping for more. It was all kind of a blur.

  “I’ll talk to you soon,” he said, sitting straight again.

  “Yeah.” I was leaning toward him like a dope. We weren’t teenagers anymore. He wasn’t going to push me into the seat and make out with me for the next hour.

  Still, I was sort of depressed we didn’t end our date with a little more flourish. The rest of the night had been over-the-top exciting, so why not end it that way?

  “I should probably get back,” Paul said, glancing into his rearview mirror like he expected to see John Buchannan back there, watching us. That, or perhaps his mom cheering us on, pom-poms and all. “I’ll need to smooth things over back at the station. I’m hoping we can keep Mr. Lawyer from pressing charges.”

  “Do you think someone will tell him?”

  Paul gave me a reassuring smile. “Even if they do, I’ll make sure to spin it so that he thinks we saw something and had gone in to check it out. There was no harm done, so there is little reason to make a big deal about it.” He shrugged. “This sort of thing often blows over here.”

  I really hoped he was right, though I did wonder if that was why they classified something that, to me, was clearly a murder as an accident. Were there so few crimes in Pine Hills that no one was willing to consider that an actual murder might have happened?

  “Well, good night,” he said when I didn’t say something right away.

  “Night.”

  I got out of the car and leaned in for one last kiss on the cheek. I closed the door and then stepped back as Paul pulled out of my driveway and drove away. I really hoped he managed to keep Officer Buchannan from smearing our names all over the place.

  Then again, why would he need to? I was doing a good-enough job of that myself.

  With a sigh I turned and headed inside for a good long cuddle with my cat.

  14

  I woke up the next morning with absolutely no desire to go to work. There was just something about the day that made me want to crawl right back into bed and sleep for a good ten hours. Perhaps it was my little brush with the law the night before that did it. Maybe it was Brendon Lawyer’s death that was getting to me. Or it could just be the cloudy sky that gave no indication it was ever going to clear up.

  Whatever the reason, it wasn’t enough for me actually to stay in bed. Maybe by the time I finished my morning routine, I’d be in a much better mood and would be able to get to work with a smile on my face.

  Yeah, right. Like that was ever going to happen.

  By the time I was out of the shower, dressed, and working on my second cup of coffee, I was positive I wasn’t going to be able to make it through the workday. Even the mushy cookie in the bottom of my mug couldn’t cheer me up.

  I glanced at the clock and grimaced. I was supposed to have been to work ten minutes ago. We weren’t officially open, but by now, Vicki would have finished the morning setup. She was probably wondering where I was.

  With a sigh I reluctantly picked up the phone and dialed the shop.

  “Death by Coffee!” Vicki answered cheerfully. It sounded so sickeningly sweet—I wanted to stab her in her happy glands.

  “Hi, Vicki, it’s me,” I said, squashing the thought. Homicidal tendencies weren’t conducive to a long and happy life.

  “Hey, what’s up?”

  “Do you think you’d be okay without me today?” I winced as I spoke, knowing how it had to sound. “I’m not feeling too hot and am afraid I might fall asleep in the middle of my shift.”

  “Oh no,” she said, sounding genuinely concerned. “Is everything okay?”

  How did I answer that one? I felt like a royal jerk for calling in sick. This was supposed to be our dream job together; and after only a few days, I was already making excuses as to why I couldn’t come in. At least I was calling, I suppose. It’s more than you can say about a lot of other people.

  But what was I to tell her? That I got arrested last night on my date? That I was still thinking about Brendon Lawyer’s death? Or that I was worried about how we never got any customers and I feared we were going to have to close the store by the end of the month?

  I settled on “Yeah. I’m just feeling really tired.” Sue me.

  “Officer Hunky keep you out all night?”

  Boy, I was glad I was home alone so no one could see the blush that instantly rushed up my neck. “Not really,” I said, really hoping I didn’t sound guilty. “I think it’s just a combination of everything—new job, stress. I think I need a day to clear my head and then I’ll be as good as new.”

  “Okay, sure.” Vicki sounded just as chipper as she had when she’d answered the phone. “I can take care of things here. Just get better.”

  “Thanks, Vicki. I owe you one.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” There was a faint tinkle. “Oh! I’d better go. First customer of the day!”

  I hung up, feeling a little better. Now that the pressure of actually having to work was gone, I felt as if I could face the day without breaking down into a sobbing puddle.

  Misfit sauntered in from the laundry room just then. He plopped down next to me and gave me a look that quite clearly asked, “What are you still doing here?” I guess he’d already gotten used to this being his alone time.

  “I’m taking a day off,” I told him, which earned me an irritated tail swish. “Do you think I should get back into my pj’s and veg out in front of the TV?”

  His ears pinned back and he swished his tail a few more times. Clearly, he didn’t like the idea as much as I did.

  “You’re probably right,” I said with a sigh. If I wanted to break out of my little mental funk, daytime TV sure wasn’t the way to do it.

  I glanced over at the box sitting beside the island counter. I could always spend the day unpacking. In reality, I knew, I should have finished it up days ago, yet I just couldn’t seem to find the energy for it. Unpacking meant going through all of my old things, which, in turn, meant bringing back all of the memories of things I’d prefer to forget.

  Like Robert.

  I ground my teeth together. Why should it matter to him where I was? We weren’t together anymore. I had no intention of crawling back to him, no matter how lonely I might get.

  Okay, so unpacking was out. It would just rile me up, or perhaps depress me even more. Maybe once I had another cup of coffee in me, I’d start to get motivated.

  Misfit followed me across the room as I rinsed out my mug, put in a fresh chocolate chip cookie, and then filled the mug with the last of the coffee in the pot. I carried the mug—a white one with an orange cat snoozing on it—over to the counter, set it down, and removed a Sudoku puzzle. Misfit leapt up onto the counter, presumably to try to play with my pen as I worked.

  Puzzles were my way of escaping. Whenever I had some deep thinking to do, out came a puzzle—any sort of puzzle. I could work on them, putting piece after piece together, whether it was words or numbers or actual puzzle pieces, and it was like my mind reacted, putting my thoughts in order. I got it from my dad, who believed writing was like a puzzle. He believed that as long as you carefully placed each piece of the story onto the page, no matter how little those pieces seemed to go together, you’d eventually get a complete story that made perfect sense.

  And my life really was starting to feel like a giant puzzle. You have Death by Coffee. Then you add a little Brendon Lawyer, some peanut dust, and swirl them around, adding a mysterious death, a missing EpiPen, and multiple mistresses. Sprinkle that with a wife he was about to divorce, yet kept a picture of—front and center—on his desk. And you can’t forget the brother, who appeared to be getting a little too cozy with the wife, or the father, who didn’t seem too broken up over his son’s death.

  I wasn’t quite sur
e how it all came together, but I was determined to figure it out.

  With a heavy sigh I opened the Sudoku book and found a puzzle I hadn’t yet started. I picked up my pen—something I steadfastly believed in. If you used a pencil, it meant you weren’t sure you were doing it right—and got to work.

  Misfit watched my pen move across the page, but thankfully didn’t try to bat at it. There were more than a few marks across my puzzle books where he’d timed a strike just right. I’ve had to abandon a couple of puzzles because I could no longer read what I’d already written.

  The coffee in my mug slowly dwindled and the puzzle was falling into place, yet I wasn’t feeling any better. I’d made a few minor mistakes, which irked me to no end, and was reduced to writing in the margin. I’d done countless number of these things and hated it whenever I made a wrong mark. It wasn’t like me.

  I drained the last of my coffee and set the mug aside. I kept thinking of Paul and what we’d found in Brendon’s office. Why hadn’t Heidi come to get his things? Why hadn’t his father cleaned out the office if the police were done? Or were they? Was this whole “classifying it as an accident” thing some sort of smoke screen and they were closing in on the murderer even now?

  A faint sliding sound tried to break through my thoughts, but I was so deep into trying to piece things together, it was only background noise. I’d stopped working on the Sudoku puzzle, but was staring at the page as if I might be able to find the answer in the numbers somehow. I knew Brendon hadn’t accidently consumed peanuts on the very day he’d forgotten his EpiPen. He was getting a divorce. His mother-in-law hated him. His brother and father didn’t seem too broken up over his death. He’d had not one, but two mistresses. There seemed to be no end to the amount of people who might want him dead. I mean, the guy did insurance work for a living. How many people did he screw over in his time on the job?

  The sliding sound picked up speed. I glanced over just in time to see an orange paw finish pushing the near-empty coffee mug off the counter. I made a grab for it, but I was too slow. It hit the floor with a definite crack. Mushy cookie splattered everywhere.

  “Misfit!” I shouted as he leapt gleefully from the counter and bolted out of the room and down the hall toward the laundry room. No wonder he hadn’t played with my pen; he wanted me to forget about him so he could take out a bigger, more satisfying target.

  “I’m going to trade you in for a dog!” I shouted after him. I think I heard a kitty snicker from down the hall, but it was likely just my imagination.

  With a groan I went to the sink for paper towels. This wasn’t the first time I’d cleaned up a mess the cat had caused on purpose and I seriously doubted it would be the last. I was really starting to wonder if his entire purpose in life was to make me miserable.

  The cookie was ruined. It looked more like something a cat would hack up than anything I’d actually eat, spread across the floor as it was. I wiped it up, tossed the paper towels into the trash, and then carried the mug over to the sink. There was a crack that ran most of the way down the side, but other than that, it didn’t look too damaged. A line of superglue might keep it sealed well enough to use again. It was one of my favorite mugs. I wasn’t going to give up on it so easily.

  I froze, mug hovering under the faucet, where I’d been about to rinse it out.

  That was it. That was what I was missing.

  I set the mug down and started pacing.

  Brendon and Heidi Lawyer were getting a divorce because he’d cheated on her, not with only one woman, but two. Heidi was ready to break it off with him, but someone, perhaps her mother as Raymond believed, had interceded.

  I glanced at the mug, mind racing. It was cracked, but still usable. I could put it back together and, really, it could be just as good as new.

  Could their marriage have been the same?

  I should have seen it before.

  Brendon had kept a picture of his wife facing him, front and center, on his office desk so he’d look right into her eyes as he worked. Would you do that with a woman you were about to divorce? Raymond had said someone had interfered with them breaking up, but I’d dismissed it, thinking there was no way Regina Harper would have wanted her daughter to get back with her husband, but what if it wasn’t because of her? What if someone else was involved in restoring the spark they’d once had?

  I could see how it fit, even if I didn’t have the entire picture. Maybe Regina Harper decided to kill Brendon instead of letting her daughter go through with a divorce, not knowing the two had worked things out. If Heidi would have been left with nothing by leaving her husband, but inherited everything upon his death, instead, maybe she decided to stay with him so she wouldn’t lose everything.

  Or could they actually have come to some sort of understanding and someone decided to put an end to their reconciliation?

  I needed to talk to Heidi Lawyer.

  The problem was, I didn’t know where she lived. The last time I’d seen her, she’d been at Death by Coffee. I seriously doubted she’d come strolling in for a cup of joe just because I wanted her to do so.

  The phone book. I knew I had one around there somewhere. I’d been sure to pick it up the very day I’d arrived in Pine Hills, but I couldn’t remember where I’d put it.

  I rushed from the kitchen into the dining room. There were boxes stacked in here, just as they were everywhere else. Most of them were still taped shut. I passed by them and went to the nearly empty hutch. It was where I normally kept my phone book.

  At first glance I didn’t see it. Papers were tossed on the shelves—mostly bills, which had already found their way to me. I shoved them to the floor in my scramble to find the book. I feared that even if I found it, I would arrive too late, that Heidi would have up and left town. I needed to talk to her before something else happened.

  And then there it was, lying askew at the back of the bottom shelf. I snatched up the phone book, flipped through the pages until I got to the L’s, and then ran my finger down the page.

  There it was: Brendon and Heidi Lawyer.

  I scrawled the address on the back of a bill envelope, grabbed my purse, and headed out the door.

  15

  Pine Hills was situated among a smattering of small hills dotted with many different types of trees, pine predominant among them. It was where the town got its name, obviously. Most of the residential areas were built near the hills, probably because of the view. Death by Coffee, like most of the other businesses, sat in the flatter valley portion of town.

  Heidi Lawyer’s house was nestled within the shadow of one of the small hills. It was clean, white, and was surrounded by well-tended hedges. The driveway was paved and looked to have been done recently. My tires made a pleasing hum as I pulled up behind a little blue Toyota parked in front of a two-car garage.

  I didn’t get out of the car immediately. I’d come here on a whim, and I really sort of expected her to have gone in to work or perhaps to be off talking to her lawyer in an attempt to get things settled. I mean, she had all of these details to take care of—the funeral among them—that it was highly unlikely I’d find her at home.

  But I was here, and, apparently, so was Heidi. A curtain moved and a face appeared and disappeared so quickly, I didn’t get a good look at who had peeked out at me. Whoever was inside knew I was sitting there. So the only thing I could do—besides turning tail and running—was to get out and do what I’d come to do.

  I shut off the engine and got out of my Focus, taking my purse with me. I didn’t believe Heidi would attack me the moment I started asking questions, but you couldn’t be too safe. If she really was the murderer and suspected I knew something, she might come at me. I didn’t have a gun or anything, but ask any woman: Most purses have weight behind them. I was pretty sure I could fend her off with it long enough to get to my car.

  A walkway led to the front door. Square stones had been placed a few inches apart rather than a solid sidewalk. The sound of my footsteps on th
e stones sounded loud to my ears and I kept wondering what Heidi might be doing inside. Was she getting a gun? Grabbing a knife? Or perhaps she was calling the police and they’d be here at any moment, ready to haul me right back down to the station, where I’d earn another reprimand from the mother of the guy I had the hots for.

  Ugh, my life . . .

  A ceramic frog by the front door held a sign: WELCOME! It was hard to imagine Brendon allowing such a thing, but I guess I really didn’t know much about his life. He’d spoken all of six words to me, so it wasn’t like I’d had a chance to get to know him and his tastes. He might enjoy sipping martinis while practicing ballet, for all I knew.

  But none of that mattered now. The guy was dead. It was the murderer I had to watch out for, if indeed there was a murderer.

  The front door opened before I could knock. Heidi peered out at me, face red and swollen. A tissue was balled in hands that visibly shook. She quite clearly had been crying.

  “Excuse the intrusion,” I said, hoping I sounded official. I had no idea how I was going to get anything out of Mrs. Lawyer. I wasn’t a cop. She could slam the door in my face and there was nothing I could do about it. I just had to hope she didn’t remember me from the coffee shop. “Could I ask you a couple of questions?”

  Heidi looked me up and down, sniffed, and then stepped aside. I was thankful she didn’t appear to recognize me because as I stepped inside the house, I noticed the baseball bat leaning just inside the door. If she’d killed her husband, I doubted she would have any reservations about clunking me upside the head with it.

  She turned away and headed into the living room. I closed the door behind me and followed after her. I was so busy trying to come up with what to say, I didn’t notice we weren’t alone until the sharp bark of a voice next to my ear very nearly scared the life out of me.