“But how?” Grandma Dean asked.
Detective Owen leaned closer to her. “This is just between us right now, but it looks like he took his own life.”
Grandma gasped and covered her mouth as a tear slipped down her face.
“He had a note in his hand. He admitted to the whole thing—the fire, the stolen boxes. He said he’d been sneaking in your shop at night and taking things for a while now.” He looked at Grandma, his brows furrowed. “Did you have any idea what he was doing?”
Grandma looked at me and then at the ground.
“Grandma Dean! Did you know Perry was breaking in to your old shop?”
“I didn’t know for sure,” she finally said. “I had a feeling someone was. Things were moved around occasionally and sometimes the back door was unlocked when I knew I had locked everything up the night before.”
“Why didn’t you ever say anything?” I asked. “Or call the police?”
“Nothing was ever taken,” she said defensively. “And I was never positive it was him.” She looked at Detective Owen. “But why would he have started the fire? And why would he kill himself over it?”
Owen’s face flushed a little and he cleared his throat. He suddenly looked uncomfortable.
“The note said he was obsessed with you.” Before he could say anymore, Owen was called away.
Grandma Dean turned to me as Owen walked away. “Obsessed with me? Did you see the note?”
“It was in his hands,” I said, picturing the moment I walked over and saw him. “I let the police take it from him and I read it over their shoulder.”
“What exactly did it say?’
I let out a long breath. “It’s just like Owen said. And at the end, he said he was sorry he hurt you.”
“I just can’t believe it,” she said, wiping the tears from her face. “I can’t believe Perry would kill himself.”
For some reason, I couldn’t believe it either.
Detective Owen walked back over to us, his face serious and his voice deep. “I think you two should come with me.”
Grandma was indignant. “Oh no you’re not! You’re not arresting us! We had nothing to do with this. It was bad enough when I was suspected of arson. I’m not about to let you arrest me for murder!”
Owen let out a little laugh. “Geraldine, I’m not arresting you or Nikki. I have some officers at Perry’s house right now and they found something I think you should see.”
“Oh,” Grandma Dean said, trying to regain her composure. “You should have started off with that.”
Perry lived in the middle of town in a tiny light blue house with white shutters. The yard was immaculate—flowers carefully pruned, bushes all the same size, perfectly straight edging along the sidewalks. The inside, however, was a different story.
“Watch your step,” Officer Garcia warned when we walked in. “It’s practically a death trap in here.”
The officer walked us through the dark, little house. Each room was full of boxes, trash, and clothes. Perry was a hoarder. Garcia led us to a back bedroom, and even though the room was a fairly good size, there was very little room for the four of us to stand.
“It’s in there, sir.” Officer Garcia motioned for Owen to open a closet door. Owen squeezed past us and opened it. His jaw dropped a little and his body went stiff.
“What is it?” Grandma Dean and I asked at the same time.
He stood aside and we inched forward to peek inside. We couldn’t believe our eyes.
The closet was completely void of clothes. The only thing in there was a table that had been pushed up against the wall. Candles with hardened wax that had dripped down their sides were lined up in a row at the back. In front of them were odds and ends—a hairbrush, a tube of lipstick, a napkin.
But it was what was hanging above the table that gave us chills: a large picture of Grandma made out of all the tiny little items he had been purchasing from her shop. Buttons, earrings, paper clips, sequins—they all came together in a collage to create her portrait. If it hadn’t been so creepy, it would’ve been beautiful.
Grandma took a step forward. “These are my things,” she said quietly, pointing to the items on the table. She looked up at Detective Owen. “He really was obsessed with me.”
The ride back to Grandma’s shop was a silent one. Grandma Dean looked outside, lost in her own thoughts. It started to rain and I watched the water slide down the window, some drops colliding with others, others landing at the same time and chasing each other to the bottom of the window.
When Detective Owen pulled up in front of the shop, he finally spoke. “I’m really sorry about all of this, Geraldine. We’ll get everything cleaned up and you’ll be able to reopen in no time. We’ll also wrap up the investigation in your other shop. You’ll have access to that one by the end of the week.”
“I’m not opening either one,” she said, still looking out the window. “At least not for a while.”
Detective Owen nodded like he understood and got out of the car, opening Grandma’s door so she could get out too.
We heard yelling from behind us and turned to see Hattie and Irene running across the street toward us. “We just heard what happened!” Hattie said, pulling Grandma in for a hug. “Are you okay?”
Grandma shrugged. She was clearly not okay.
“What are you going to do now?” Irene asked.
Grandma Dean sighed and looked at me. “I think Nikki and I are going to take a little vacation, get away from all of this for a while.”
Grandma booked us a room at a spa hotel about thirty minutes up the coast. We were packed and headed that way within the hour. Grandma Dean sent Detective Owen a text to let him know where we were staying, in case he had any more information or needed something from us.
The light drizzle continued as we left town.
“I can’t believe this has happened,” she said solemnly. “Poor Perry.”
The windshield wipers tried to move across the window, the rubber scraping against the glass in a noise more annoying than nails on a chalkboard.
“Grandma, there was something weird about Perry. I pointed it out to Owen, but he seemed to shrug it off.”
Grandma’s eyebrows perked up. “What was it?”
“He had cuts on his hands…both of them.”
Grandma shrugged it off. “That could’ve been from anything,” she said, turning back to the road.
“But they were clean and straight.” I paused, thinking about how ridiculous I sounded. Grandma was right—he could’ve gotten them from anywhere.
By the time we checked into the resort, it was nearly lunchtime but neither of us were hungry.
“What do you want to do?” Grandma asked, looking through a brochure.
I looked at her for a minute. She looked exhausted and troubled.
“Should we get a massage?” she asked. “Maybe one of these other spa treatments?” She handed the brochure to me.
I took it and looked it over. Chemical peels, cold laser facials, micro needling—all things I was sure would appear on a brochure from an overseas terrorist training camp. Not exactly the way I wanted to spend an already stressful day.
“Wanna go to the beach?” I asked. “Maybe we could just relax for a while. The rain stopped and the sun is out.”
Grandma perked up. “That’s exactly what we need!” She looked at me skeptically. “Did you bring a swimsuit?”
“I have a pair of shorts and a t-shirt,” I said, dreading what was coming next.
“Nikki, this isn’t summer camp for fat kids. You need a real swimsuit! We’ll go down to the little shop by the lobby and buy one.”
I saw that little shop when we were checking in and there was no way I was going to wear any of those so-called swimsuits. I was sure even Kitty Purry’s swimsuit had more material than those did.
Before I could object, Grandma Dean was already on to the next, even more disturbing topic of conversation.
“Now,” sh
e said, putting her suitcase on the bed. “Don’t freak out, but we need to have a serious conversation before we head to the beach.”
I cringed. Please don’t let this be a conversation about bikini waxing.
She opened her suitcase and pulled out what looked like a paint sprayer. “You need a quick tan.”
“I don’t need a tan!” I objected. “I’m fine how I am!”
“Nikki, you’re so white that if we turn off the lights, people will still see you.”
Ouch.
“I don’t care. I’m not letting you spray me with that.”
Grandma Dean’s face fell and for a minute, I felt bad. She’d had a rough day. If spraying me with some brown paint made her feel better, shouldn’t I let her do it? I looked at the sprayer and all the tubes and bottles Grandma had pulled out of her bag. Nope. I couldn’t do it.
“How about I wear lip gloss instead?” I suggested hopefully.
Grandma thought about it for a minute. “Well, I guess it’s better than nothing.”
We made our way down to the little shop and flipped through the bikinis, which I turned down no matter how “cute” Grandma Dean thought they were. Finally, we came to a rack in the corner that had three one-piece swimsuits. One was black and two had a vibrant tropical theme in oranges and pinks. Grandma handed me the black one, but of course I liked the colorful ones.
I tried on the black one and looked in the mirror. Not bad. With my eyebrows done, a little bit of lip gloss, and the cute swimsuit, I could almost go out there with all the other beach-goers and not completely hate myself.
I bought it then we ran upstairs to change. Grandma Dean stepped out of the bathroom in her 1950s style swimsuit. It was a flattering cut in red with white polka dots. She looked adorable with her sunglasses on top of her head. At over seventy years old, her legs still looked better than mine. She had the perfect tan, which seemed to hide any imperfections, and for a second, I thought about giving in and letting her spray me down.
When we got to the beach, we put our towels on loungers that faced the water. Someone came over and asked if we wanted an umbrella, but we decided we’d rather lie in the sun.
I lay there and closed my eyes, listening to the waves lap the shore. I could hear seagulls and occasionally people talking, but for the most part it felt like it was just me and the water. The air smelled sweet with the random scent of dead fish and the sun felt warm on my skin. For just a moment, I thought I could forget the awful things that had happened that day, but images of Perry, dead on the floor in Grandma’s shop, filled my mind.
I looked over at Grandma and she was already asleep, evident by the low hum of her breathing. I couldn’t believe how awful she had looked on the ride here. I had never seen her like that. She hadn’t even reapplied her lipstick before she got out of the car to walk up to the resort. That was how you could judge if Grandma Dean was okay or not—was she wearing lipstick?
I turned my face back toward the sky and closed my eyes. I let the sun melt away my worries and stress. I could feel my muscles relaxing and my breathing grow shallow. Just as I was about to succumb to sleep, I had an image of Perry’s hands. I bolted upright. I knew what would cause that! And it wasn’t something he could’ve done on his own.
“Grandma!” I screamed. She flew out of the lounger and landed on her feet, her arms out like she was ready to use karate on whoever was standing next to her.
“It’s okay,” I said, grabbing her arms. “We have to go back to town. I know what happened to Perry!”
I explained everything to her on the way to town. “Remember that box I took from your shop?” I asked. “There were two of them on the shelf. I took the one that had scuffed edges and I left the one that was in better shape. They had a metal ledge that went all the way around it. If Perry was holding that and someone ripped it out of his hands, it would’ve sliced through them and left marks just like the ones I saw on him.”
“Let’s go see if that box is still in the shop,” Grandma said. “If it’s not, then it proves Perry wasn’t alone last night.”
We parked down the street and entered through the back of shop from the alley.
“This place is still a crime scene,” Grandma said as we walked in. “So don’t touch anything.”
We left the lights off and used the flashlight on Grandma’s phone to guide us to the front of the store.
“The boxes were over here,” I said, pointing to the right.
We walked over and sure enough, the second box was missing.
“What would someone want with that box?” Grandma asked. “Did you look at the one you took home? Was there anything special about it?”
“Nothing,” I said. “It was lined with red silk… Do you think there was something hidden underneath it?”
“I don’t know.” Grandma stood there for a minute, thinking things over. “You know, I think I have another one of those in the back.”
We made our way to the back where she had a few boxes stacked in the corner. She flipped the light on. “There aren’t any windows so no one will be able to see from outside that the light’s on.” She opened a box. “Yes! I remember now! There were three boxes, but I didn’t see any reason to put all three out. I put two on the shelf and then held this other one back. I figured if the others sold, I’d put it out, otherwise I’d give them all to Bev to sell in her shop.”
She took out the third box that matched mine. “Where did you get these?” I asked. “Were they from an estate sale?”
Grandma Dean shook her head. “I can’t remember. Sometimes people drop things off at the shop…” She looked at me and we both had the same thought. Someone wanted it back.
We held our breath as Grandma lifted the lid from the box. Our eyes went wide when we saw the folded papers inside. I took out the top one and opened it, leaning close to Grandma Dean so we could both read it.
“Well, I’ll be,” Grandma whispered. “Looks like we’ve solved our little mystery.”
“I’ll take that,” came a voice from behind us. We spun around and came face to face with the last person either of us wanted to see at the moment.
Mitzie McCreedy.
She snatched the paper from me and waved it in one hand while she waved a gun in the other.
“How could you do it?” Grandma asked her. “How could you kill Perry?”
Mitzie laughed nervously. “The same way I’m going to kill the two of you—with my eyes closed, so I don’t have to actually see it.”
“You did all of this to protect your secret, a secret that no one would really care about!” Grandma was nearly shouting and I tried to put my hand on her arm to quiet her down, but she just shook it off.
“No one would care about?” Mitzie scoffed. “I care about it! And I’m sure the mayor would’ve cared about it. Certainly his wife would have!”
“So that’s why you left town,” Grandma said, pulling out another paper from the box and opening it. “The mayor paid you off after he found out you were pregnant.”
Mitzie’s face turned cold. “You don’t understand,” she said. “He gave me a lot of money to raise my son somewhere else. But our agreement was that if anyone ever found out, I’d have to pay it all back. There’s no way I can afford to return that money.”
Grandma looked at the paper she held in her hands and her eyes bugged out a little. “That’s a lot of money.”
“It was!” Mitzie snatched the paper from Grandma. “It was enough that I could raise him comfortably.”
“So let me guess,” Grandma said, shaking the box a little. “When you first came to town and you stopped by my shop, you were looking for this box. When you couldn’t find it, you burned it down.”
“My stupid brother started giving her things away before she even died!” Tears filled Mitzie’s eyes. “My mother was the only one who knew the truth. I gave her the papers before I left town all those years ago just in case…in case something ever happened to me and it was suspicious. I wanted
someone else to know the truth. She put them in that box and it stayed on her dresser for twenty years. And then Andrew decided to take a bunch of her things to your shop!”
Mitzie started crying.
“Why didn’t you just ask me for them?” Grandma asked, kindness returning to her voice. “You know I would’ve given it all back to you.”
“I didn’t want to draw attention to them and you’d look inside.”
“So you burned down my shop,” Grandma said flatly. Then her eyes lit up. “And let me guess, you’re also the person behind all the bills from the city that Detective Owen found that day.”
Mitzie wiped the tears from her eyes and stood up straight. “You can’t prove that.”
“You broke into city hall and somehow you did something to my account so it looked like I owed the city a bunch of money.”
Mitzie’s face took a prideful look. “Not much has changed in twenty years,” she said. “I expected it to take a bit of time for me to break into their system, but it was the same system I used twenty years ago.”
“I have a question,” I said from behind Grandma Dean. “You set the fire and forged city documents to make it look like Grandma was delinquent… Did you also steal her things from her storage shed?”
“I went in to visit Bev one day and she told me you were opening another shop. She mentioned you had a storage unit where you kept your overflow and that you were going to use it to open your shop. I panicked, thinking what if the boxes had been in there the whole time and not in your first shop. I went over there and the unit’s door was wide open. I threw what was in there in my car and when that box wasn’t isn’t there, I came here last night and there it was! In Perry’s hand!”
I shuddered. Poor Perry. I didn’t know what he was doing in Grandma’s shop in the middle of the night, but whatever it was, he didn’t deserve to die because of it.
“How did you get him to write the note,” Grandma asked quietly. “The police said it was in his own handwriting.”
Mitzie laughed. “I told him to. I gave him a piece of paper and a pen and told him exactly what to say. He didn’t even question me! Can you believe that? He just did what he was told.”
Up in Smoke (Glock Grannies Cozy Mystery Book 1) Page 10
