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

by Belle Knudson

  Once she parked, she took a moment to thumb through the stack of documents Walter had instructed her to bring and made sure they were all there. She’d also brought Greg’s MasterCard statement, the one she’d found in his office. If Greg had an additional credit card she’d never known about during their marriage, Kate wondered what other secret accounts he might have had. Maybe Walter could look into it. She felt a momentary twinge of guilt at the thought. Scott had volunteered to track Greg down and was also using the MasterCard statement. Kate knew Scott preferred to work on these types of things solo, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

  With the documents in hand, Kate climbed out of her truck, made sure to lock it, and then started into the building.

  She quickly checked the marquee in the lobby to remind herself which office Walter was in then ventured down the hallway to Room 114.

  The door was ajar when she rounded the corner, so she eased it open and noticed classical music playing faintly in the anteroom. The receptionist’s desk was vacant, but there was a plastic sign that said, “Back in five minutes.” Rock Ridge was a sleepy town, and it didn’t surprise her that the receptionist had wandered off with the door wide open. She only hoped that knocking on Walter’s office door wouldn’t launch him into a sour mood. The man was sour enough as it was.

  But when she glanced over at Walter’s door, which had a placard with his name on it, she noticed it too was ajar.

  No matter, she figured. She knocked on it.

  “Mr. Miller?” she called out. “It’s Kate Flaherty.” She felt a bit silly shouting at a wooden door, but he hadn’t responded, so she clarified her reason for being there. “I have a ten o’clock appointment to get my divorce underway. Mr. Miller?”

  Kate eased the door open and took in an impression of the room. It was a handsome office. The furniture was polished oak. The desk was topped with a shiny sheet of glass that matched a coffee table where a leather couch was positioned across the way. The attorney obviously did well for himself, but he wasn’t here.

  Or at least that was what she thought until she saw a hand on the floor poking out from behind the desk.

  It stunned her, then her heart skipped a beat and began pounding hard in her chest.

  She crept around the desk, eyes locked on the hand, and soon a body came into view.

  Motionless on the ground, an overweight man lay on his back. His eyes were white all around, and the sight of him sent a chill through her.

  “Walter!”

  Kate rushed to him, knelt down, and placed her fingertip along his pudgy neck. He felt warm, but there was no pulse.

  Her attorney was dead.

  Chapter Two

  Kate sat in the anteroom and nursed a dull cup of coffee she couldn’t even taste while police officers swarmed Walter Miller’s office.

  The receptionist, Margaret Boisey, a young, polished looking woman in a peach blouse and gray pencil skirt, busied herself doling out coffee for the officers, as though the task could rid her mind of the jarring fact her boss had died when she’d stepped out to make a personal phone call. Or at least that was what she’d told the cops. Kate was just glad she hadn’t been the last person with Walter.

  Scott hadn’t emerged from Walter’s office yet, but Kate’s mind had already leapt to the worst conclusion. Had Walter been killed? There was a lot of that going around Rock Ridge in the past six months, and the fact that she’d once again stumbled on a body set her teeth on edge.

  Like a mantra, she kept repeating, Please be a heart attack, please be a heart attack, over and over in her head, but when Scott stepped into the open doorway and met her gaze, his expression told her it had been anything but.

  His brown eyes were rounder than usual and conveyed a hint of apology mixed with trepidation, as he lumbered towards her. He sat and plowed his fingers through his snow-white hair.

  He kept his tone quiet as he explained, “He was shot.”

  “Shot?” The image of Walter flashed through Kate’s mind. She didn’t recall a drop of blood. “How was he shot?”

  “In the back,” Scott said with regret. “He must have fallen immediately.”

  “From his chair?” Kate asked, confused. There wasn’t much space between the chair and the windows behind his desk and Walter was a rotund man.

  “You didn’t hear a gun go off?” Scott asked, avoiding her question.

  “No.”

  Scott mulled that over, as Margaret appeared with a Styrofoam cup of steaming coffee and offered it to him.

  “Thanks,” he grumbled, and Margaret had the good sense to pad off and take a seat at her receptionist desk. “Kate, I’m going to need you to make a statement.”

  “All right, but I didn’t see anything. I came in at ten o’clock sharp. No one was here. There suite door was ajar and so was Walter’s office. I let myself in and found him then called you.”

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll write that up, then you can sign it.”

  “I need to get back to Hazel Millhouse’s house to finish some work,” she explained. “If we’re still on for lunch, I can sign it then.”

  “I might still be here,” he said. “I’ll let you know.”

  Kate rose to her feet when Scott stood.

  “I’m going to have to find a new attorney.”

  He frowned, and she caught the disappointment in his eyes. No one wanted Kate’s divorce to go through more than Scott did. He’d exercised patience and remained considerate in his hope she’d take steps to get the ball rolling, and now that she had, it seemed all for naught. A terrible coincidence, or had Walter’s murder cut even closer to home than she realized?

  Scott wavered back into cop mode, Kate’s least favorite side of him, as he gave her a curt nod then started over towards Margaret, who would also need to give a statement.

  Kate took a moment to study the young woman. If she’d learned anything in the past half year, it’d been that killers came in all different shapes and sizes, and she wondered if the dainty receptionist had played a role in Walter’s death.

  Scott wouldn’t appreciate her curiosity, so she tore her gaze from the woman before he could take notice of her staring and left the office.

  When she got to her truck, she set her stack of documents on the passenger’s seat and checked the time. If she left for Hazel’s now, she’d be much too early, and the coffee Margaret had given her far from hit the spot, so she decided to head over to Bean There for a proper cup.

  The coffee shop was hopping with late morning customers who were eager to get their caffeine fix, but the line moved quickly, and soon Kate was smiling at Clara, the young barista who also happened to own Bean There.

  The rich aromas of dark roast and pastries hit her senses as she stepped up to the counter.

  “I heard there’s quite a hullabaloo over at the commercial complex on Main Street,” said Clara.

  Word got around fast in Rock Ridge, but Clara had heard about Walter Miller in record time, which had Kate taken aback.

  “I was just there, unfortunately,” she managed to say when she realized Clara’s widening eyes indicated she was eager for the inside scoop. “It looks like he was shot.” Kate was sure to keep her voice quiet. She liked Clara and wouldn’t want to leave her hanging, but with the recent string of murders, a plague of reporters had swarmed their quiet neck of the woods, and Kate could never be sure one wasn’t lurking in plain sight ready to report no matter how unfounded the gossip.

  “You’re kidding?” asked Clara, then she quickly added, “I heard Walter Miller represented all sorts. As long as the client could pay, he didn’t ask too many questions.”

  “I thought he mainly did divorces,” said Kate, who hadn’t thoroughly researched Mr. Miller’s practice.

  “Oh no,” said Clara, as she poured a cup of dark roast for Kate. Kate’s daily coffee order was more than predicable, so Clara didn’t have to wait to hear it. She plucked a bear claw from the rack next and slipped it into a paper ba
g for Kate as well. “The big name for divorce around here is Arthur Joseph. No, Walter Miller has been doing criminal defense and also real estate deals, filing the paperwork. Don’t ask me how one relates to the other, but that seemed to be his niche.”

  In Kate’s haste to throw herself into the divorce, which she’d decided to approach like ripping off a Band-Aid, she hadn’t bothered to look into Walter. She made a mental note to go with Arthur Joseph if he was known for divorce proceedings, as she scooped up her coffee and handed Clara a five.

  “Then Scott has quite a task on his hands,” Kate mused. “Who wouldn’t want to kill a lawyer?”

  Clara offered her a smile then made change, which Kate told her she could keep.

  “Thanks for mentioning Arthur Joseph,” she said before turning to go. “I’ll give him a call.”

  “I’m glad you’re going ahead with a divorce,” said Clara. “You deserve to move forward with your life.”

  Kate smirked as a parting gesture. She was one to keep to herself and not participate in the rumor mill, so it didn’t entirely sit right with her that Clara had spoken so intimately of her personal life when they weren’t close friends, but what could she do?

  She made her way to her truck. The day was heating up a bit and the crisp chill of this morning was barely a hint in the air, but she enjoyed the warmth as she climbed behind the wheel. Autumn would be in full force soon enough. Rock Ridge was located in central Pennsylvania, and when the season turned it usually turned hard and fast, and the long winter months dragged on. She might as well savor the momentary swells of heat when they billowed up.

  The spackle on Hazel’s wall should be dry, but Kate had to swing by Grayson’s Hardware Store to pick up some primer before she painted over the sheetrock she’d laid. She started along Main Street and looked forward to seeing Larry.

  Larry had taken over the hardware store when his father Carl, the prior owner, had been arrested for killing Jackie York, Scott’s ex-wife. Larry had been dating her best friend, Carly, which had come as a huge relief to Kate since Larry had been pursuing her romantically and she didn’t reciprocate his feelings. In some ways, she’d lost her best friend. Carly had been spending more and more time with Larry and less time with her, but she couldn’t hold that against her friend.

  She smiled to herself, as she pulled into the parking lot in front of Grayson’s. Rock Ridge was a small town, and it kept getting smaller.

  “Hi Larry,” she said when she found him pouring over a stack of invoices behind the cash register. “I need a can of primer.”

  Larry’s dark eyes darted up to her, and he straightened his back. He was a tall and lanky man, but not unattractive. Carly had done well for herself to strike up a romance. He was a good man, who still carried the shame of his father, though Kate wished he wouldn’t.

  “No problem, Kate. I’ll put it on your tab.”

  As Larry punched in the charge and made the necessary adjustment to her running tab, Kate set her checkbook on the counter.

  “Let’s see if I can’t knock that out. What’s the damage?”

  Larry told her the balance, which she tried not to cringe at. It was a bit higher than she expected, but she wrote a check for nearly half of it and handed it to him.

  “Business has been steady,” she told him. “I might be able to drop a check for the remainder later this week.”

  Larry smiled and told her not to sweat it. “Carly’s birthday’s coming up this Saturday.”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” she said with a smile. It warned her that Larry had his thumb on the pulse of Carly’s special day. He was good to her like that. “Should I bake a cake?”

  He chuckled. It was no secret that Kate wasn’t very skilled in the kitchen. “If you show up with a bottle of wine that ought to do it,” he said.

  “Consider it done.”

  Kate headed down one of the aisles—she knew Grayson’s like the back of her hand—and made a beeline for the paints and primers. When she found a gallon can, she slid it off the shelf and made her way through the store.

  “I was thinking about getting Carly some exotic bulbs,” he said, catching her before she got through the door. “But then I thought, why would a florist want more flowers?”

  “Good point,” said Kate. Carly worked at Sunshine Florist where she spent her days making floral arrangements and delivering bouquets around town. “Can’t go wrong with jewelry.”

  He smirked as though it would’ve never occurred to him. Men are dense at times, she thought, but Larry makes up for it being sweet and considerate. “See you later.”

  She set the can of primer in the bed of the truck then started off for Hazel’s. With any luck, Hazel had convinced Mrs. Briar to drop off Meghan’s files along with the books Hazel had requested, but Kate knew it was wishful thinking. She’d probably have to swing by the library, which meant her day was starting to fill up. She had to paint Hazel’s wall, check in with Justina Anastasi, the real estate agent at Carnegie Real Estate who’d been getting Kate work staging houses for sale, head over to Clem’s office and install a new shelving unit, squeeze in a quick lunch with Scott if he had time for it, and try to make an appointment with Arthur Joseph to see if she couldn’t get this divorce underway. Sometimes there weren’t enough hours in the day.

  Hazel’s teacup labradoodle, Mitsy was yipping about, darting around the front yard when Kate got out of her truck. She grabbed the can of primer from the truck bed and noted Hazel was tossing a red ball for the dog. He leapt to retrieve it.

  “Come in,” said Hazel, once Mitsy had brought the ball back. “We were just getting a bit of exercise.”

  Kate smiled as the dog tore through the entryway past her. Tuckered out, she flopped on her dog bed in the corner of the living room.

  “You said you had a can of eggshell white?” Kate asked, as she set the primer down in front of the wall and tapped her finger to the spackle to test how dry or tacky it was.

  “In the closet,” said Hazel, who began inching in that direction.

  “I’ve got it.” Kate walked swiftly up the hall and found her paint in the bottom of the closet.

  As Kate got to work, bending the primer can’s top off and mixing it with a stirring stick, Hazel eased onto the couch.

  “Mrs. Briar has frazzled my last nerve,” she stated in a huff. “She acted like the library was in peril because she had to come by with my books, and of course, she didn’t bring Meghan’s files.”

  It wasn’t a shocker as far as Kate was concerned, and her day would certainly get a bit tighter because of it.

  “Then she had the audacity to complain about Mitsy. The poor little thing was excited to have a guest and jumped up on Mrs. Briar. And can you believe the woman, she said Mitsy scratched her.”

  People who didn’t like dogs were not to be trusted in Kate’s book.

  “So I’m sorry. I tried,” Hazel concluded.

  Kate shot her a thankful smirk then stroked the primer over the square of sheetrock. They shared a cup of coffee as it dried and Hazel caught her up on all the goings-on along the block. There was a new house on the market up the street and Kate made a mental note to ask Justina if Carnegie was at the helm of that sale. Soon the primer was dry and Kate rolled on a thick coat of eggshell white paint, making sure there were no seams or drips. She prided herself on a job well done, and her business depended on customers like Hazel. Leaving them happy was her top priority.

  “Looks good,” Hazel noted. “What do I owe you?”

  Kate did some quick math and wrote up an invoice that only included the cost of materials. She liked to discount Hazel as much as possible, and every third job she omitted the cost of labor.

  When she handed the invoice to Hazel, Hazel wrote out a check and walked her to the door.

  With her materials in hand, Kate mentioned, “Keep the windows open and it’ll air out fast.”

  By the time she was climbing into her truck, she felt her cell phone vibrate in the
front pocket of her overalls. Kate swiped the screen and opened the new text message. It was from Scott.

  The case is developing quickly. Can’t make lunch.

  She texted right back.

  My day is filling up anyway. Dinner?

  She turned the key in the engine, but her cell vibrated again before she could back out of Hazel’s driveway.

  Now who’s courting who?

  She had to smile. Scott had certainly worked his way back into her heart, taking the fastest route possible…through her stomach. Countless times he’d shown up on her doorstep with bags of takeout, relieving her from the chore of throwing a meal together. Often she’d turned him down for little favors like this, but resisting had soon become a greater effort than giving in. She liked that about him. In so many ways, he’d rekindled who they used to be together in high school. And more and more she saw Scott with those old schoolgirl eyes. It had been a challenge to let go of her lingering animosity that Scott had abandoned her for college all those years ago. But one day she’d woken up and the lingering resentment wasn’t there, only a true affection for him. Realizing that, gradually, Kate had been the one to suggest lunches and dinners. She’d shown up on his doorstep with take-out, so he wouldn’t have to trouble his weary mind with the task of cooking for himself. Theirs was becoming an equal partnership, both invested in seeing where the new romance might lead.

  It was all the more reason to give Arthur Joseph a call. She wanted this divorce now more than ever.

  She texted back simply, Mexican?

  And he responded with a smiley face.

  The Rock Ridge Library was set between two buildings that made a triangle with a courtyard in-between.

  After parking, Kate glanced at her reflection in the rearview mirror. She’d looked better, that was for sure. Her red hair was sticking up at strange angles, which she smoothed down with her hands. And she had a streak of white paint across her cheek. It took some scrubbing, but she smeared it off then started through the courtyard to the library.