Anna Denning Mystery Series Box Set: Books 1–3

by Karin Kaufman

  “What did he do?”

  Grace pressed both palms to the counter and leaned forward, keeping her voice at a whisper. “Talked about demons. Demons eating cupcakes.”

  “What?”

  “It made no sense to me, either. He leered at me the whole time he talked. It was obvious he was trying to get my goat.”

  Anna gently set the bag on the counter. “What did you say?”

  “I told him I wasn’t impressed, that he could take his nonsense and leave, and if he wanted to enter my Buffalo Café again, he could shape up or I’d have every right to assume he’s inebriated and refuse service.”

  “Good for you.” Anna was proud of Grace—she was “one tough cookie,” as Gene called her—but she would never forgive herself if she didn’t caution her about Paul. Zoey wouldn’t listen to her warnings, but Grace would. She glanced to her left to make sure no one could hear, then said, “He and his wife worship demons.”

  Grace gave a derisive snort.

  “It’s nuts, but they take it seriously, Grace. And it’s possible one or both of them murdered Russell Thurman, the man who died last Saturday.”

  “The man found outside that old house, I remember.” Grace grabbed a dishcloth and started wiping down the already-clean counter. “I can’t believe the police haven’t arrested anyone. I’m afraid someone’s gotten away with murder.”

  Anna had no reply. As far as she knew, and she had the latest word from Liz, the police weren’t even close to arresting someone. That only fueled Zoey’s reckless behavior. To her, the police seemed to have forgotten about Russell and the Elk Valley Historical Society. They were far more interested in Ruby Padilla’s murder.

  Instantly Anna thought of Ruby, picturing the poor woman on her own kitchen floor, her arms and legs splayed, fixed to the floor by tent spikes. Each arm sliced once. But that wasn’t how Ruby had died. Why then did that image spring to mind? Because she wasn’t convinced that there were two murderers with two separate motives, she thought. That’s why. Her instincts were screaming.

  “I’ve never seen you so distracted, Anna.” Grace said. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m missing something.”

  Grace looked to the counter. “Your change, hang on.”

  “No, I mean . . .” Anna waved a hand then picked up her bag, being careful to keep a hand under it per Grace’s instructions. “Never mind me, I’m thinking out loud. Keep the change.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Absolutely. Don’t work too hard.” Anna flashed what she hoped was a gritty, self-assured smile, headed back to the front of the café, and pushed her way out the door.

  Sunset was almost an hour away, but dark clouds overhead blanketed the dying sun. Up and down Summit Avenue the streetlights were already on. At the curb Anna looked across the street to Frontier Wear, the western clothing company that had moved into the building once occupied by What Ye Will, the witchcraft store where Jazmin had worked. The closing of that store, and Gene inviting Jazmin to work for him at Buckhorns, had been more than small victories. They were miracles, and she needed to remember that when she became discouraged over something as trivial as the color of Jazmin’s nails.

  After the traffic passed, she crossed the road, opened the door to her Jimmy, and hoisted herself behind the steering wheel, setting the cupcake bag on the passenger seat. When she looked up, she saw Alex, his hands clasped behind his back, studying Frontier Wear’s window, seemingly riveted by a selection of cowboy hats on a hat tree. He wasn’t the cowboy hat type. Far from it.

  As she watched him, a wild thought raised its head. Alex was thinking of retaking the store. Reoccupying the lost land. She shook her head. Nonsense. Ridiculous thoughts brought on by Halloween and stormy skies. And anyway, she told herself, what Alex thought or did wasn’t her business.

  Like hell. She smacked the steering wheel with the palm of her hand. Where Jazmin was concerned, Alex was her business.

  She exited the Jimmy and strode to wear Alex stood, still gazing through the shop window. “Hello,” he said, his upper body pivoting her way. He had seen her reflection in the store’s window, Anna knew, and had been biding his time until she approached, waiting for the opportunity to show her he had eyes in the back of his astral head.

  “Alex,” Anna said simply.

  “Cowboy hats,” Alex replied. He pivoted back to the window.

  “Are you thinking of buying one?”

  “The much-vaunted cowboy hat? No, not at all.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “But they’re almost obligatory, aren’t they?”

  “I wanted to talk to you about Jazmin.” Anna waited for her words to work their way through Alex’s hat-induced fog.

  “Yes?” He rotated at the waist again, swinging halfway back to her, making it clear that his full attention would not be bestowed.

  “I want you to understand that under no circumstances are you to teach Jazmin astral projection.” That did it. He released his hands and turned the rest of his body.

  “This concerns you how?”

  “She’s my friend.”

  “Well, throttle it back a bit, dear one.”

  “I’m very serious. Find someone else to teach. Just not Jazmin—ever. You don’t need to drag her into that stuff.”

  “You’ve rather rashly put yourself out on a limb. Don’t let it snap beneath you, sending you crashing to the earth.”

  As always, the angrier or more insistent Alex got, the more convoluted his speech. If the conversation had been less important, Anna couldn’t have stopped herself from laughing. She looked him square in the eye. “You have enough students. You don’t need her. If you contact her again, I will take steps.”

  “And do what?” There was a gleam in his eye. He found her insistence both amusing and pitiful.

  “Whatever I have to.” Anna pulled herself to her full five feet ten inches. “It means that much.”

  He twisted back to the window. “You’ve got the wrong end of the stick, as they say. But then, you know that.”

  “I’ve got just the right end.”

  Anna started for her car but stopped and circled back when Alex shouted, “She came to me! Purposefully! You don’t think I’m aware of that?”

  Heads turned. Shoppers on the street paused a beat before moving on.

  “What do you mean ‘purposefully’?” She moved closer to him in hopes he would lower his volume.

  “I set her straight,” he said, jutting out his chin. “What is it precisely that you want from me?”

  “You may find this hard to believe, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You and your circle of spies, that’s what I’m talking about.” He was quieter now, his voice a growl. “I cannot believe you would have the gall to accost me like this.”

  “I don’t have spies.”

  “Zoey and Jazmin.”

  “Jazmin?”

  Alex cackled. “I note you omit Zoey from your objections.”

  “Why do you call Jazmin a spy?”

  “She’s your toady. So you keep her away from me,” he said, jabbing his thumb at his chest.

  Suddenly it didn’t matter to Anna that Alex had misread Jazmin’s interest in him. So he didn’t like the girl. So he thought she was an astral spy. Good. Job done. “Fine, Alex. You stay away from her, she’ll stay away from you. Deal?”

  “Most certainly.” He sealed their agreement with an imitation of a smile, all teeth, stiff lips, and flared nostrils.

  Anna repressed a shiver and headed for her Jimmy, refusing to pause or reply when Alex called out, “I wish you the very happiest of Halloweens!”

  Anna saw Gene’s SUV parked on the far right side of her driveway when she drove up. After much coaxing over a period of many months, he had finally agreed to use the house key she’d given him so he could drop Riley off or wait inside for her when she called to tell him she’d be late for dinner.

  J
ackson and Riley met her at the inside garage door, their tails doing twirls, their nails clipping on the kitchen floor. She dropped her car keys and purse on the counter and bent to give them both a scratch behind the ears.

  “Hey, you’re early,” she said as Gene got up from the couch and crossed the living room.

  “I decided to take the night off after I locked up. No bookwork tonight.”

  She wrapped her arms about his neck and held tight as his arms encircled her waist.

  “You’re tired,” he said after a moment.

  “I’m beat.” She decided on the spot not to mention her odd conversation with Alex. “Oh, shoot.” She threw her head back. “I forgot the cupcakes in the car.”

  “Cupcakes?” His eyebrows rose. “Let me,” he said, kissing her and making an enthusiastic dash for the garage.

  On hearing the Jimmy’s door open, she kicked off her shoes and shuffled her way to the couch, sinking into a cushion and planting her heels on the coffee table. Much as she wanted to, she couldn’t allow herself to fall asleep. There was work to do. What had struck her with certainty in the Buffalo—that she was missing something, overlooking something—had to be examined. Books from the Sadler library were still in her Jimmy. If one of them contained just one piece of the puzzle, she might be able to see the larger picture. Who was Emerson Sadler and what was his fascination with bees? Why did he fire Walter Root and hire a mere boy, Peter Toller, to work his hives? And why did Alex share his fascination?

  “I’m in the mood for something sweet after dinner,” Gene said as he returned with the bag. He watched Anna from the kitchen as she sank deeper into the couch.

  “They’re Halloween cupcakes,” she said, fighting to keep her eyes open. “But from the Buffalo.”

  “Grace is baking now?”

  “No, just selling. She gets a percentage.”

  “A good cause, then. Let’s order pizza. I’ll feed the dogs.”

  “Excellent idea.” Her eyes closed. Five minutes, or so it seemed to her, passed before the pizza arrived. She roused herself and trudged to the table, her energy renewing itself as she ate and told Gene about her talk with Zoey and, belatedly, the sigil on Esther’s house.

  “Zoey thinks Alex carved it to please Maddy,” she said. “He owns the land behind Esther’s house and now he wants Esther’s house itself.”

  “Maddy’s actually married to Paul, isn’t she?”

  “Not for long, I think.” Anna lifted another slice of pizza from the box. “Maddy and Alex are very open about their affection for each other. Either Paul is the blindest man alive or he doesn’t care.”

  “They didn’t seem happy together when we saw them in a booth at the Backcountry.”

  “Maybe they have an open marriage.”

  “An oxymoron.”

  “True, but it would explain a lot. Alex and Paul seem friendly enough. Not friends, but friendly.” She took a bite of pizza, running over in her mind the two times she’d seen Paul and Alex together. They weren’t buddies, but neither were they antagonistic toward each other.

  “Maybe Paul and Alex have an agreement,” Gene said.

  “You mean Paul loans Maddy out?”

  “Like a queen bee to a hive’s drones.”

  “You’ve been reading.”

  “I have.” He put his hand on the box. “Last slice?”

  “You take it.” Anna finished chewing, wiped her hands with a napkin, and tossed the napkin into the pizza box. “I keep wanting to go back to the beginning. Why did Russell Thurman want to hire me? If I figure that out, all these clues will fit, I know it. They’ll make sense. The thing is, Russell barely scratched the surface in his research. It worried him that he couldn’t find any records of Paul or Zoey, that’s all, and when they voted to take Esther’s house, he couldn’t stand the unfairness of it.”

  But he must have found something, Anna thought. Something that wasn’t in the papers Clovis gave her, something that got him killed.

  Gene dropped his napkin into the pizza box. “You’ve gone far beyond genealogy again.”

  “I’m worried about Esther. And Zoey.”

  “Why Zoey?”

  “Alex knows who she really is, and I think he told the others. Now she’s going to the Gilmartins’ Halloween party. Apparently Paul and Maddy like to conjure demons on such occasions.” She stood and took the box and their plates to the kitchen, running the plates under water but leaving them in the sink. They could wait until morning. “I need to do some research tonight,” she said, turning back to Gene.

  He had swiveled in his seat and was watching her, a frown forming on his face. “Do you mean they literally try to call demons?”

  “Esther told me they did it last year. I know Alex and Maddy have something planned for midnight on Halloween, and they’ll be at the party.”

  “How long is Zoey staying?”

  “She wants incriminating photos of the Gilmartins doing their thing, so . . . midnight? At least?”

  Gene’s frown deepened.

  “I don’t like it either,” Anna said. “I need to get some books out of my car.”

  “Want your laptop?”

  “Please.”

  In the garage, she gathered the Sadler books from the floor of the Jimmy’s back seat. Maybe the something that Russell had found was in one of the books. Clovis had said he spent a lot of time in the library poring over the contents of Sadler’s crates.

  Back at the kitchen table, she divided the stack of eight books into two shorter stacks and flicked on her laptop.

  “What’s your plan?” Gene asked from the kitchen.

  “You’re making herbal tea?” she asked hopefully.

  “Autumn Spice,” he said.

  “Bless you.” She watched as her laptop booted to life. “I don’t really have a plan.” Like Zoey, she was kicking and poking here and there, hoping to stir up something. Unlike Zoey, she would do so from the safe confines of her own home, with Gene feet away in the kitchen.

  She cracked open the first book, another local Colorado history. This one, written in 1980 by a woman named Deanna Golden, had an entire chapter on Emerson Sadler, his honey enterprise, and his mansion. Flipping first to the photo gallery in the middle of the book, Anna searched for photos of Sadler and his home and found six rather good ones. High-resolution black-and-whites printed on glossy paper, unlike the photos she’d seen in other books.

  “Can I help?” Gene asked, handing her a mug and taking a chair at the table.

  She grinned. He meant it. He wasn’t being kind—though he was kind—he was intrigued by the puzzle. “Sure.” She slid a stack of books his way. “I’m looking for information on Emerson Sadler and two of his head honey guys, Walter Root and Peter Toller.”

  “Peter Toller is Jennifer’s husband?”

  “Right.”

  “Walter Root? Liz mentioned him last night.”

  “Alex’s grandfather.”

  “Curiouser and curiouser.” Gene dug in, and Anna went back to the photos in her book.

  The first photo in the gallery was of the honey facility in 1968, Walter Root front and center, smiling and hand scraping honey and wax from a hive’s frame. On the next page, in a photo taken in 1979, Peter Toller stood proudly next to a stainless steel extractor. Was that why Walter had been fired and Peter hired? Had Peter wanted to modernize the facility? But a skim of the chapter on Sadler put an end to that line of thought. The extractors went back to Walter’s day.

  “Here’s something,” Gene said, looking up from his book. “This writer says Walter Root was fired at a time when Sadler’s Mountain Gold honey was becoming a phenomenon. Sadler hired Peter Toller in Root’s place, and within a year sales were down.”

  “Does the writer say why Sadler fired Root?”

  “He says no one at the time knew why and they still don’t. He calls it the worst business decision the Elk Valley has ever seen and a death knell for Sadler’s honey.” Gene flipped to the next page, skimmin
g it. “That’s all, just that one paragraph. But here’s a photo. Was Sadler a sailor?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because that’s one heck of a tattoo.” He held the book out.

  Anna’s eyes grew wide as she took hold of it. In the photo Sadler’s sleeves were rolled up, exposing a large tattoo on his left forearm, two inches from his wrist. Without a doubt it was the sigil of Asmodeus. “That’s the same tattoo Maddy and Paul have. Asmodeus. The same symbol carved into the fieldstone at Esther’s house.”

  “Is there anything in the caption about it?” Gene asked.

  “Nothing,” Anna said, skimming the short paragraph below the photo.

  “Does Peter Toller have a tattoo?”

  “Not in any photo I’ve seen. Doesn’t this sound like there was a secret society in Elk Park? And maybe Walter Root didn’t want to be part of it. Why would you fire someone who’s making that much money for you?”

  Gene reached for another book. “It’s possible Sadler didn’t like him. Sometimes it comes down to personalities rather than secret societies or smart business moves.”

  In the photo gallery of her book, Anna found a full-page shot of Emerson Sadler at the table in his library, this time without the beard or walrus moustache. Behind him were part of a bookcase and half a stained-glass window. Except for the books on the shelves and the chair Sadler sat in, which was more ornate than the historical society’s reproduction chairs, the library looked then exactly as it did now.

  Dated 1962, this was the earliest photo yet of Sadler. “He looks better without the shaggy, unkempt beard,” she said, angling the book so Gene could see it.

  Gene studied the photo.

  “His moustache was outrageous in the last photo I saw of him,” Anna continued. “He looked like a Civil War veteran.”

  “You can see why he grew it, though,” Gene said. “I have a friend who lets his beard grow for the same reason.”

  Anna drew the book forward. “Why?”