Mrs. Fix It Mysteries (5 Cozy Mystery Books Collection)

by Belle Knudson

  She had begun to wonder if she still loved her husband. If he were dead, she could forgive him. If he had just run off, however, then she had every right to be mad. Only time would tell.

  “Why are you asking questions? Didn’t they arrest Scott for the murder?” Carly asked.

  Like mother, like daughter. She would probably get mad if Kate voiced those thoughts. Carly insisted she was nothing like her mother. The apple had not fallen from that tree. “Why is everyone so quick to think Scott did it?”

  Carly eyed her with a shocked look on her face. “You don’t know why he left the Philly PD?”

  “No, and it isn’t my business.”

  “You might want to make it your business. He was in a fight with another cop—a violent fight.”

  There were as many stories about Scott leaving the Philly PD as there were people in this town. She wouldn’t believe anything until she heard it straight from Scott. Not that she was going to ask him outright. She maintained that it was none of her business.

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “That’s what everyone’s been talking about.”

  Kate shook her head. She guessed that she hadn’t yet talked to whoever constituted “everyone” because that was one story she hadn’t heard.

  “I better get that shelf started. Show me again where you want it,” Kate said.

  “Back here in the storage room.”

  Kate brought her coffee with her as Carly described what she wanted. Part of Kate’s mind was listening. The other part was puzzling over why Scott’s ex-wife had come to town. That might be the key to her murder.

  ***

  Just as she finished up at Carly’s Florist, Kate’s phone rang. Scott. Again.

  “Hello, Scott. No, I’m not joining you for any meal.”

  He chuckled. “I guess I’m persistent. No, actually I just wondered if you had my house on your list of chores for today.”

  She mentally went through her schedule. She could do it and put one or two things that weren’t dire off until tomorrow. It might be better to get his repair over with. Then she wouldn’t have to spend so much time with him.

  “I can be there in ten minutes.”

  When Kate arrived at Scott’s house, he was standing behind the screen door as if he’d been waiting for her. He pushed it open to let her in.

  “I can unload your truck,” he said.

  He looked a little worse for wear after being in jail. She wondered if it was the first time. “I’ve got everything. All I’m doing is sanding and painting. It’ll be a mess.”

  He nodded. “Mind if I sit and watch?”

  She shrugged. “Whatever.”

  She didn’t want him to watch. She wanted him in another room because he was making her nervous. She knew he shouldn’t. He was just Scott, and she was a married woman. Maybe repeating that in her head would remind her. Scott was just Scott except that he looked even better now with his snow-white hair than he had in high school.

  Not fair. She was sporting some extra pounds and wasn’t dressed to look nice. She was dressed for work in overalls. Not that she had any real fashion sense anyway.

  She began to sand the spackling she’d done before she found the dead body.

  “Does Ken still think you did it?”

  Scott settled himself on the third step of his hall stairs. He leaned his forearms on his thighs. He was tan and must have just come back from vacation. Maybe he’d taken time off before he arrived in Rock Ridge.

  She had decided she wasn’t going to ask. It was too personal, too intimate, but his presence had her nerves on edge.

  “I’m getting the impression that Ken doesn’t like me,” Scott said.

  “Probably not. He was up for your job, but didn’t get it.”

  Scott nodded. “That happens.”

  “The mayor wanted Ken also.”

  Might as well give him the lay of the land.

  “Good to know. I probably don’t have an ally in him,” Scott said.

  “No, you don’t. Sorry to say. It’ll make your job harder,” she said.

  She sat back and admired her handiwork. She ran a hand over the wall. It was as smooth as she could make it. Her father had told her she had the right touch for spackling. He’d had her help him when he needed to do it in their house.

  “No harder than the Philly PD.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Corruption. Bad cops. This is a much gentler place to have obstacles.”

  He surprised her with that statement. Scott hadn’t been able to get out of Rock Ridge fast enough. He must have gone through a rough time in Philadelphia to want to come back here.

  “I’ll take your word for it. I never made it to the big, bad city.”

  He smiled sardonically. “You could have come with me.”

  She sighed. They’d had that argument more than once. Then he’d left and not looked back. She had no desire to rehash this. “Do we need to do this right now? I’m working.”

  “And I’m going out of my skull. Hopefully, tomorrow we’ll have an exact time of death on Jackie and I can be cleared.”

  “No one reports anyone suspicious here during the time she might have been here. In fact, Carly saw someone that looked like her alive earlier that morning.”

  Kate glanced over her shoulder. The look on his face could scare the dead. Not that it scared her.

  “Are you sticking your nose into this case?”

  “Just asking some questions. Ken already had you convicted. I don’t want to see you railroaded.”

  He laughed. “So you do care.”

  She turned back to her work, shaking up the quart of paint in her hands. “I don’t want to see anyone railroaded.”

  Scott’s ego was the size of Pennsylvania. It hadn’t been dimmed by whatever had happened in the City of Brotherly Love.

  “Are you going to tell me about your husband?” She’d expected it to come up sooner or later. Scott, the cop, would be curious. Scott, the man, would wonder if Greg was competition even in his absence. “You have access to the police reports.”

  “I do, but I want to hear it from you, first.”

  She sighed. The last two days hadn’t been fun. She didn’t want to rehash old news about Greg right now. She opened the paint can on the drop cloth she’d spread out. She took her favorite paintbrush out of her toolkit. She was stalling.

  “Katydid.”

  Again, there was that nickname that used to make her melt. Some part of her melted a little now, but she wasn’t going to let Scott know that. She didn’t need him to have a hold over her.

  “Scott.”

  “Tell me. It’s just two old friends catching up.”

  She laughed as she stroked paint onto the wall she’d sanded and put primer on. The paint would blend well. Hard to do when the walls were white. “We weren’t friends, Scott.”

  “No? I didn’t tell you all my hopes and dreams?”

  “We were lovers, and that brings with it more baggage than being friends.”

  She had to get them back on the right footing or she wouldn’t be able to do this. She wouldn’t be able to run into him at the grocery store and be okay with it. That she wasn’t okay with it spoke to her loneliness, not any lingering feelings about an old boyfriend.

  Her painting finished, she packed up her things.

  “I don’t want you investigating or getting involved in this investigation, Katie,” Scott said finally. “Leave it to the experts. It’s Ken’s job, and even though Ken isn’t a fan, he’d have to prove a whole lot to prove that I killed my ex-wife.”

  “How long were you married?”

  Damn. That slipped out before she could run it through a filter. She grimaced.

  “Eight years.”

  “No kids?”

  “No kids. Jackie didn’t want to ruin her figure.”

  “Are you sad she’s dead?” That was a deeply personal question. She held up her hands. “Don’t answer that. None o
f my business.”

  He spread his arms out to his side. “My life is an open book, Katie. Ask me what you really want to know.”

  “And what is that?”

  Can he read my mind?

  “You want to know why I’ve come back. You want to know what happened in Philly that has me back in the hometown I swore I’d never come back to.”

  She cleared her throat. “I have some other jobs today. I can’t shoot the breeze with you all morning.”

  He laughed. “Running away? That’s not like you, Katydid. You always stood up to me. Toe-to-toe. You did that with any man, no matter the size.”

  She wasn’t that woman anymore. Her husband’s disappearance had taken something out of her. Something she thought was lost forever. It didn’t matter. She had a murder to solve and some more jobs today before she could hang up her tool belt.

  She ran through the rest of her day, prioritizing based on who she needed to talk to. “I have to make a living, Scott.”

  “What do I owe you?”

  “I’ll write up a bill.”

  Kate loaded her truck and then wrote up the invoice. She needed a moment to get away from the tension and Scott’s overwhelming presence. No matter what happened to him in Philly, he still had that aura of power about him.

  It would suit him well in leading the Rock Ridge Police Department. The power was no longer raw as it was when they were in high school. Instead, it had a greater intensity and focus to it. She got the impression that it would be directed at her for a while. Hopefully he’d find more productive pursuits and leave her alone.

  She strode back into his house. He hadn’t moved; he seemed to be lost in thought, waiting on the steps. She handed him the bill.

  “I’ll write you a check. I promise it won’t bounce.”

  Chapter Five

  Kate moved her truck several houses down to Mayor Dudley Stuart’s house. It was by far the largest home on the street—quite possibly the biggest house in Rock Ridge. Dudley considered himself a celebrity, having been elected by a landslide four elections in a row.

  Each time he’d won, he added on to the house. The latest addition was just about done, and Dudley had asked Kate to do the final painting. She had a good hand at it and some of her jobs were just for painting, not fixing anything.

  Kate found painting therapeutic. The steady brush strokes soothed her. And today she was in need of soothing. Her talk with Scott had unnerved her, and she got the impression that he watched from his front window as she drove to the mayor’s place.

  Hopefully he’d be back at his job in no time and they’d both be busy with work. That was what she needed.

  The mayor’s wife, Jessica, answered the door when Kate rang the doorbell. She resisted the urge to glance back at Scott’s house. He would be stealthy if he were observing her.

  Kate smiled at Jessica.

  “Hello, Kate. Come in. Dudley is working from home today, and his office is next to the new addition. I hope he doesn’t mind you working in there.”

  “If he does, I can come back tomorrow. My schedule is usually flexible.”

  “Well, come in and we’ll talk to him.”

  Jessica led her past some of the most garishly decorated rooms she’d ever seen. It was true what they say, money did not buy class. A real estate agent would have a nightmare trying to sell this house. Everything would have to be repainted.

  This reminded her that she had to stop in and see some of the town’s real estate agents to remind them that she was available for painting and repairs of their rental properties. Hopefully, she would have time for that after this painting job.

  Dudley sat behind a large wooden desk that looked like it had been stolen from the set of a movie. She couldn’t imagine that he’d purchased it from the local furniture store. No, he’d probably had it custom-made. The bottom had woodcarvings in it as if someone had taken a trunk of a tree and made it a square before etching out animals.

  Kate tried not to grimace as she looked at it.

  “Dudley? Kate is here to paint the addition. Will that disturb you?”

  “Not at all,” Dudley said, smiling from under his thin moustache.

  He had thinning brown hair and he’d always struck Kate as someone who would be bothered by that. He wore a button-down shirt but no tie and no suit jacket.

  “Thanks, Mayor,” Kate said.

  Jessica disappeared as Kate unloaded her supplies. The color they’d chosen was a lime green. She wasn’t sure what the room was going to be used for, but it reminded her of a hospital.

  She was glad she didn’t have to live with it; she just needed to apply it to the walls.

  With drop cloths down, she put tape up around the windows and doorframes. She heard the mayor talking on the phone. She could only hear a muffled voice, not that she was interested in listening. She imagined running a trucking company wasn’t that interesting.

  She had forgotten her radio, so she worked in silence punctuated occasionally by the mayor’s phone ringing.

  She’d completed one wall with the roller and knew she would have to do a second coat. This job would help her replenish her truck fund. It was too bad she’d have to use the cash for repairs and not to buy a new one.

  However, she spent less on repairs than she would on a new car payment, that freed up funds for more important things, like tuition. She would rue the day her truck finally died.

  Kate reached a good stopping point and was about to head out to her truck for more paint. Just then, the mayor, whose office door was open, began to talk louder.

  “I don’t care what she said before she died. Jackie York was a liar.”

  Kate stopped in her tracks. She glanced out the door of the new room, but didn’t see Jessica anywhere. Maybe Kate could listen for a minute undetected.

  “I know. I know, but she is no longer a complication now that she’s dead. We can go ahead with things.”

  What things? Kate stood very still so the mayor wouldn’t know she was just outside his office door.

  “It’s a bonus that Ken thinks the new chief did it. I want Ken in that job. He could be useful to us.”

  Useful? In what way? Ken was a good guy. She didn’t see him doing anything but the best job he could for the town. What plans would the mayor have for him?

  “Anyway, she’s gone. We might even be getting rid of the new chief and his straight-up ways. Two birds, one stone, you know? Sometimes things work out, and then we’ll all be rich.”

  Kate needed to sneeze. Damn. She gripped her nose and the feeling passed, but it was only a matter of time before it came back. She couldn’t listen anymore without being discovered. She strode out of the room as if she hadn’t been standing by the door.

  She waved at the mayor as she went by. If she hadn’t heard his conversation, she wouldn’t have noticed that he’d gone a little pale. Not pausing, she kept going. He’d think nothing of it when she came back in with paint cans.

  His door was closed when she returned and his voice had quieted. It looked like she wouldn’t get any more information out of him. She couldn’t deny that he’d piqued her curiosity. Mayor Stuart had known Jackie York. In what capacity? Perhaps she had invested money for him.

  Maybe Kate needed to do some research on Jackie York and her connections to Rock Ridge. Kate didn’t remember ever meeting her, but if she’d gone to the private school outside of town, they probably never would have crossed paths.

  St. Pius was a boarding school for wayward girls. The sign didn’t mention it, but Kate knew it to be that way. Some were pregnant, some had just gone afoul of the law. Though if Jackie had gone to St. Pius, Kate couldn’t imagine what had a cop like Scott would have seen in such a woman.

  Kate shrugged.

  Truthfully, Scott and his past lovers had nothing to do with her future. She had to stick to the case at hand and leave those thoughts behind. They only served to distract her.

  Back to painting, Kate had time to mull over what the
mayor had said. Whom had he been talking to? He hadn’t said a name. He’d referred to them all making money. How many people were involved? she wondered.

  The conversation brought up more questions than it answered. Finally, Kate finished for the morning. She would let the paint dry overnight. Maybe she’d get to snoop in the mayor’s office if he wasn’t working from home tomorrow.

  If Jessica left her alone, she’d get the painting done, and then see if she could find something that revealed the mayor’s relationship to Jackie.

  That was a task for tomorrow.

  ***

  Before Kate could leave, Jessica appeared out of nowhere. Even when the woman was at home, she dressed well. Kate always looked like a slob next to her, even with her best dress on.

  “I just made a pot of coffee. You want some?”

  Maybe Jessica could shine some light on how the mayor knew Jackie. Besides, she had a few minutes before her next job. “Sure, sounds good.”

  They sat in a bright kitchen at the back of Jessica’s house. Kate looked around and estimated that they’d easily spent six-figures on their renovations. Granite countertops sat on custom cherry cabinets. It was the only tastefully decorated room she’d seen, and Kate suspected that Jessica had good taste, but her husband did not. He must make the choices since he made the money.

  Kate sat at an eight-foot duel-level island. One side was a preparation area. The other side was for eating. The Stuarts didn’t have any kids, and she guessed they rarely ate in the formal dining room.

  The coffee smelled almost as good as the cup she’d had at Carly’s shop. This one had come from one of those coffee makers that made only one cup at a time. She sipped from a stoneware mug as Jessica put out a plate of muffins.

  “I baked them this morning.”

  “They smell delicious.”

  Breakfast had been hours ago, and she still had to complete another job before lunch, so Kate dug into it. Moist and fruity. Jessica had a real talent for baking.