“If you’re surprised,” he started, “you are not more surprised than I am, trust me.” He laughed more and studied the keys with a bizarre sense of wonder as though he was trying to figure out whether or not this was a dream. “I mean, who the heck voted for me?” he asked humorously. “I almost didn’t come, because I’m swamped at work.” Once he sobered up a bit and became somewhat grounded, he said, “I believe in this town. I see its goodness, and under my tenure I promise you the best parts of Rock Ridge will prosper and get better, and those aspects that are crippling our town will be modified and improved upon. I take this honor very seriously, and I will not let you down.”
The crowd of residents broke out into applause. Some were reserved in their clapping and others hooted and hollered.
“Now,” said Marshall, reclaiming the microphone as Dean, in a daze, stepped aside. “There’s quite a bit to attend to and we’ll get right to it.”
As Marshall dove into the agenda, Kate turned to Scott and whispered, “I wasn’t planning on staying. Did you want to come over in a bit?”
Distracted by the first item on the docket, Scott said, “A few hours. All the hoobaloo about that stoplight.”
“Right,” she said, giving him a squeeze on the leg. “Come anytime.”
Careful not to cause a disturbance, Kate eased out of her chair and kept her head ducked, moving down the row until she spilled out into the aisle. Only a few residents muttered “hey!” angrily as she passed through. Before she knew it, she was stepping out into the late September chill.
The moon overhead shined in a crescent and the stars pierced through the dark dome sky that reminded her of camping with her twin boys. Jared and Jason were at Penn State, and she missed them with each passing day. She knew one day soon their short summers at home and those brief holiday breaks that flew so fast would soon be replaced by the empty-nest feeling. Her sons were busy foraging their way in the world. They’d soon be graduates. They’d have their own apartments and separate lives. Maybe they would come home for Christmas, if she were lucky. My how time flies, she thought.
And that camping trip. As many years ago as it had been, she remembered it still. Her boys were skipping about, collecting kindling, Greg was fretting over insignificant details that revealed a deep sense of anxiety, which at that time she couldn’t place, reason, or even fathom. After everything she’d learned about her husband in the past six months, Kate was starting to get a better idea of why he’d been so on edge that weekend, pitching the tent and thumbing through bird identification books that Jared had brought along.
Greg hadn’t been the man he’d pretended to be. He’d been involved in a secret mission, whether for the US government or a much darker organization was still unknown to her, but the fact of the matter was that he’d disappeared with a large sum of money intended to fund the Anarchist Freedom Network in a land deal that, at the time, hadn’t gone through. The very campground they’d ventured to with the twins all those years ago turned out to be the site where the anarchists were now building some kind of development, headed by Clem Tully’s construction company, no less.
Greg had had ties with the president of the anarchists. That much she’d learned thanks to Scott and with the help of her deceased friend Meghan Tully, the former librarian. Her last divorce attorney, Walter Miller, was somehow also in the mix. As many pieces as she’d discovered, they still didn’t fit together. Funny how gazing at the stars could bring to mind a world of turmoil.
As she made her way to her vehicle—her pride and joy that had recently been spruced up with a shiny new paint job and the words Mrs. Fix It stenciled on the side—she was suddenly startled when someone behind her uttered, “Kate!”
Her quickened breath subsided when she saw Celia Johnson rushing towards her. Wrapped in a rhinestone shawl and looking far too dressed up for the town meeting, Celia stepped in front of her and smiled strangely.
As much as Kate had a fondness for Celia, Kate had recently developed serious reservations about Celia’s husband, Detective Ken Johnson. Scott worked with Ken closely, and though Scott trusted the man, and Ken had undoubtedly been a pillar of this community, there had been far too much mention of Ken in regard to the anarchists’ land deal. People had died, Walter Miller being the last to have been murdered, and Clem Tully had, more than once, mentioned Ken as an ally in the dark siege to overtake Rock Ridge.
“Hi, Celia. Ducking out of the meeting?” she asked, keeping things light. “Can’t blame you. Once they announced Dean Wentworth as mayor, I had no reason to stay.”
Celia quirked her mouth into a peculiar smile.
“Oh, no, I’m all for Dean!” she clarified. “It’s just that I’ve had a long day and don’t need to sit through a bunch of town votes.”
“Right,” said Celia. It dawned on Kate that Celia might not have been in attendance at the meeting. She seemed to mull over the name Dean Wentworth as though it gave her a bad taste in her mouth. “Actually, I need a bit of help.”
“Okay? What about?”
“Darnedest thing,” she explained, “our back door? Well, the doorknob has been a problem for a while now—loose in its socket, you know. And it finally sprung off. I know it’s late, but if you could swing by, I’m sure all it needs is a screwdriver and an expert’s eye. I’d ask Ken to do it, but he’s been laid up with the flu for the past three days. I hate to think of him sick at home with the back door wide open for anyone to walk in. You can never be too careful these days.”
“Right,” said Kate, who took a moment to remember her toolbox was in the bed of her truck. She glanced at her watch. It was half past six and it wouldn’t take long to screw in the doorknob. “I’ll head over.”
“Thanks a million. I really appreciate it. Ken’s upstairs in bed, so just go around the back of the house. I should be there soon, but well, could be a bit.”
“And the doorknob’s there? Or should I pick up a new one?” she asked, troubled that Grayson’s Hardware was surely closed by now. She thought she spotted Larry, the owner, at the town meeting seated beside Celia’s daughter, Carly. They’d been dating and things had been going very well between them.
“No, the doorknob's there, resting on the ground near the shoe rack. You can’t miss it.”
“Consider it done,” she said with a smile.
Kate climbed into her truck and turned the engine. Considering she was off to do a quick fix-it job, she could certainly use a cup of coffee, but surely Clara was at the town meeting. It was safe to guess all of Main Street had shut down for the town meeting, so she bit her lip and started off for Celia’s Johnson’s house.
The Johnsons’ house was a brick, two-story home with a red front door replete with s lion knocker and lustrous shrubs potted on either side of the entrance. She pulled up to the curb directly in front of the house and noticed there was a black SUV in the driveway. At first she assumed it was Ken’s vehicle. He was, after all, home sick, but as she walked around the side of the house to get to the back door, she remembered Ken drove a Mazda sedan. Maybe Celia had bought a new car, but if that were the case, wouldn’t she be driving it?
Kate put the thought out of her mind when she reached the back door. Just as Celia had indicated, there was a hole where the doorknob should have been. She eased it open and felt around the interior wall for a light switch. It was deeper along the wall than she would’ve imagined, but once she found it she flipped up all three switches on the panel.
Scanning the shoe rack just inside the entryway, she spotted the doorknob resting on its side, but in a flash her gaze darted to something much more jarring.
A body.
A man.
Kate approached using quiet steps. The man lain on his side. His left arm was draped over his face. His knees were bent nearly into the fetal position. She didn’t see any blood, and when she angled her gaze over the man—his hair, brown and buzzed short—a terrible feeling began to grow within her.
Carefully, she rolled hi
m onto his back, causing his arm to fall limp from his face.
She gasped. It was Ken Johnson. She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself, as she kneeled beside him and felt for a pulse along the side of his neck. Feeling for it, she reminded herself he’d had a fever. Perhaps he collapsed. Perhaps he was only unconscious, but her greatest fears were realized when feeling, pressing, feeling in a different spot, she determined he had no pulse.
Ken Johnson was dead.
Chapter Two
It was an hour before the ambulance arrived. Kate had called from the kitchen phone. The call had rang and rang until finally the 911 operator picked up. She’d sounded bewildered and disoriented, and Kate had imagined her listening to the local radio in some tucked-out-of-the-wayside room, trying to keep up with the broadcast of the town meeting. She’d assured Kate she’d send an ambulance, but the medics, like most of the doctors and nurses at the Rock Ridge hospital, were at the town meeting. It seemed not only had Main Street shut down, but the entire town had—emergency responders, as well. This was certainly the worst time to die, or, Kate considered, the most opportune time to kill someone. As much as she tried to wrestle that notion down (after all, she had no reason to believe Ken had been murdered with no proof or even blood present at the scene), she couldn’t help but assume the worst. She’d come across too many bodies to be naïve.
When the ambulance did arrive, she’d been waiting out front in her truck and puzzling over the Johnsons’ driveway. The SUV she’d discovered when she’d gotten there earlier in the evening hadn’t been there when she’d walked back out to her truck.
“He’s in the back,” she told the two medics, who both barely looked to be in their twenties. One wore a baseball cap snugged low on his brow and the other was still listening to the town meeting, which could be softly heard coming from the radio receiver on his shoulder. As they started after her, she paused and mentioned they might need a body bag. “He’s definitely dead.”
Collecting the gurney and body bag and rolling it after her, she also mentioned that, according to his wife, Ken had been suffering from a fever. “The flu. He's been sick in bed for three days.”
“He’s in his fifties?” one of the medics asked and Kate confirmed that he was. Nodding, he noted, “Too young to die from the flu.”
Kate had to agree. Even the most severe virus usually only killed very young children and the elderly.
“We’ll take it from here,” the one in the baseball cap said when they reached the back door and swung it open to find Ken on the carpet where she’d first found him.
“Are the police on their way?” she asked.
“They should be,” said the other. “A lot of us at the town meeting had silenced our cell phones. Give them time. I know Miranda had driven over to the town hall to get Gunther and Garrison.”
Gunther and Garrison were two police officers who were quite friendly with Scott. They’d even joined his band, The Law, and played at Carly’s birthday party last month.
Kate’s heart sank. Carly. How was she going to take the news that her father had died?
Kate hadn’t been able to reach her. She’d called her cell phone three times and every time it had gone straight to voice mail. Kate hadn’t left a message, though, other than to say please call me back. She thought leaving a message that her father had died would be completely insensitive, not to mention an act of cruelty. This kind of bad news had to be delivered in person.
Though it made sense that Carly was unreachable since Kate had seen her with Larry at the town meeting, she couldn’t reconcile why Celia’s phone had been shut off, as well. Celia certainly hadn’t been heading back into the town hall. She’d mentioned, what had it been? An errand? She needed to take care of something? She’d be a few hours, she’d said. She’d been fairly dressed up in that rhinestone shawl. Far too fancy for the town meeting, and for a Monday night it didn’t make a whole lot of sense. What had she been doing and where was she now?
Seated as she was behind the wheel of her truck, she finally saw a police cruiser roll down the street. Its lights were flashing, but its siren didn’t blare. Behind it she saw Scott’s pickup truck. It was never a good sign when the police chief, himself, was a first responder. His arrival usually indicated suspicions of murder. However, the fact that Scott and Ken were close, having worked together and socialized quite a bit, she decided that could be the reason he’d come.
She stepped out of her truck and shut the door just as the cruiser pulled up to the curb with Scott’s pickup behind it. She half expected to see Celia in the passenger’s seat, but Ken’s wife was in neither vehicle.
She met Scott, as he stepped out of his truck.
“I’m in shock,” she said, hugging him. When he urged her back she added, “Celia told me that Ken had the flu for the past three days.”
“Yeah, he hasn’t been at the precinct.”
“But I found him just inside the back door. Why would he venture to the back door if he were sick? I could see him going into the kitchen, maybe, or even spending time in the living room to watch TV, but why would he go down the hallway? There’s nothing down there but shoes and winter coats.”
“Why were you here?”
“Celia caught me outside the town hall just after I left you. She needed the doorknob reattached on the back door. Apparently, it fell off.”
“Okay,” he said. His eyes were fixed on the medics who were rolling Ken on a gurney towards the back of the ambulance. “Go home,” he told her, as he rushed off towards the medics. “Don’t move him! We haven't had a chance to investigate!”
“But,” they stammered, “he died.”
“We don’t know why he did,” he pointed out.
“It didn’t look like anything suspicious,” one of them objected.
“You don’t work in law enforcement. You wouldn’t know one way or the other!”
“Should we put him back?”
“No, no, just stop. Let me look at him.”
Kate watched the scene unfold and felt a bit lost. How was she supposed to simply go home? Go to sleep? She was too riled up and there would be no way to rest peacefully knowing her best friend Carly, as well as Celia, had yet to learn about this latest tragedy.
She sat down in her truck and kept the door open. The cold, fresh air helped her to keep her head straight. Her thoughts kept locking on to the fact that Ken had played some kind of role in the anarchist land development out east. Maybe he hadn’t been a part of the project, but according to what she’d overheard Clem Tully say over the phone, at the very least Ken had a hand in assuring those behind the deal not to worry. The deal had gone through, so maybe they didn’t need him anymore. He might have known too much, just like Meghan Tully, who had also been killed. Kate also couldn’t help but obsess over the uncanny timing of it all. Dean Wentworth had gotten voted in as mayor, and now Ken was dead? The previous mayors, brothers Dudley and Harvy Stuart, had both voted in support of the anarchists’ land deal. Maybe the anarchists felt that Ken had a responsibility to them to get the right person elected as mayor, and when he failed his life had been taken.
She had to stop this. She was driving herself nuts. So she grabbed her cell phone out of the front pocket of her overalls and tried Carly once again.
As her cell bleated its ringtone in her ear, she hoped Carly would pick up. Surely the town meeting had adjourned by now. Again the outgoing voice message came on. She hung up, sent a brief text saying that Carly must call her, and then dialed up Larry, who she hoped was with Carly.
Her call to Larry also went through to voice mail, but she left a brief message and sent a text. Then she tried Celia again as a last ditch effort before she went home.
“Kate?” Celia asked after picking up.
“Celia! I couldn’t get ahold of you!”
“Yes, sorry about that. I must not have heard my phone ringing in my purse.”
She sounded so calm that Kate dreaded telling her the bad news.
Kate thought she heard a man say something in the background, but it was too garbled to tell.
“Well, no. Look…” She sighed, trying to find the words, but there was no good way to say it. “I think you should come to the house.”
“Oh?”
Celia sounded completely natural, and Kate hated to blindside her.
“Has Scott called you?” she asked. She could assume he hadn’t or else Celia probably would’ve been in a ball of tears, if not on her way over.
“No, why?”
“Ah,” she groaned. “I hate to be the one to tell you this...” When she trailed off, Celia didn’t become urgent or demand to know what was going on. “When I came in through the back door, I found Ken on the ground.”
“On the ground.” It sounded like a statement, and Celia remained calm.
“He’s dead, Celia. I’m so sorry.”
There was silence on the other end.
“Celia?”
“Well, it sounds like I should get over there,” she said easily.
“I’m sure Scott would appreciate that,” Kate said, though in the back of her mind she wondered why Celia hadn’t flipped out. Maybe she was just being stoic. Sometimes devastating news took a while to hit a person. She might just be stunned. “Are you okay to drive? I mean, this is terrible news. I could pick you up—”
“No,” she interjected. “No, I’ll be fine. I’ll be there soon.”
“Scott asked me to leave, but I can wait for you, if you like.”
“No, no, that won’t be necessary.”
“I haven’t been able to get in touch with Carly—”
“I’ll call her. You’ve done enough, Kate, thank you.” Again, her tone was without a shred of distress, as though she was thanking Kate for cleaning her garbage disposal.
Kate then said, “If there’s anything you need—”
But she heard a click. Celia had hung up.
Mrs. Fix It Mysteries (5 Cozy Mystery Books Collection) Page 39
