Assignment Denver: The Case of the Eccentric Heiress: Jae Lovejoy Cozy Mystery One (Jae Lovejoy Cozy Mysteries Book 1)

by Lucey Phillips

  “Thanks,” I said. “So I wanted to ask you, how involved are you in the police investigation?”

  “Well, of course, we’re offering our full cooperation,” Edgar said.

  “Do you have any thoughts on motives or enemies Miss Malone might have had?”

  “Well, you know, Bunny was a bit of an eccentric lady. I mean, she lived in that little apartment instead of the mansion she had. She never did any of the society-type functions that were expected of her,” Edgar said. “And yes, she did have enemies—no friends, really. That happens sometimes when people have her kind of wealth. They feel like everyone who gets close to them just wants a piece of the fortune.”

  He continued, “And then she lost her husband at a very young age, after only one year of marriage. They say she really started isolating herself after that, never remarried. Frankly her collections, her antiques, were her only real friends.”

  “What about Gus? And her nephew, Pat?”

  Edgar gripped his pen tightly in his fist. “Off the record, Miss Lovejoy, the name Pat Malone is a four-letter word in this office.” Edgar’s cheeks went from pink to an angry shade of purple as he continued. “That man is always up to something. He’s been calling here almost every day, pestering me about the will.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard about his business ventures,” I said. “I have to admit they seem …”

  “Half-baked,” Edgar interrupted. “And don’t get me started on the gold-digging. Some of those women he’d latch on to were old enough to be his grandmother.”

  “The police don’t seem too worried about him though,” I said.

  “Nah. I don’t think he killed her. Don’t get me wrong, he always had one eye on the money, but he doesn’t seem capable of violence. Bunny never told me she was scared of him.”

  “Would she have admitted it if she were?”

  Edgar looked at the ceiling for a moment and sighed. “I guess not. Very independent, obviously.”

  “What about Gus?” I asked.

  Edgar looked puzzled for a moment, then asked, “Oh, Gus Grubler, her neighbor? Bunny never said much about him. But Pat complained about him a couple times, thought maybe he was after her money. Then it seemed like Bunny and Gus stopped spending time together. Pat never mentioned it again.”

  “I’m pretty sure they were still seeing each other,” I said. Then I hastily added, “That’s the impression I got when I saw the detectives questioning him.”

  Edgar didn’t need to know I’d seen flowers when I’d broken in to his client’s apartment.

  “But it’s a moot point, right?” Edgar said. “They arrested Mitch Evans. I knew his feathers were ruffled over the whole rent situation. Then Bunny backed out of the contract to sell the building to him— I did advise her against doing that. She was one stubborn lady. But for him to go and murder her—I never would have imagined that.”

  “I think they got the wrong guy,” Colin said, speaking for the first time since he had said hello.

  It’s not that I forgot Colin was there, but, for some reason, the sound of his voice surprised me. Edgar looked a little taken aback, too. Maybe he had actually forgotten Colin was there. Photographers are really good at blending into the background, almost disappearing.

  Just as Edgar was beginning to say something about DNA evidence, his office door opened and his white-haired mother walked in.

  “Sorry to interrupt, sweetie, but this came out of your printer machine and it looks important.”

  She sidled up to me and held the paper about six inches from my nose as she attempted to hand it to Edgar. It was a list.

  It was a page long, but I could only see part of it. It read, “1904 pocket watch with gold fob, eight one-ounce American Gold Eagle coins years 1916 and 1917, one sheet of 32 cent Richard M. Nixon stamps.”

  “I think it’s from the insurance company,” Rosalind said.

  Edgar stood, leaned across his desk, and took the paper. He quickly set it face down on his desk, then slid a large envelope over it.

  I didn’t bother trying to hide my gawking. I am a reporter, after all. “Is that from the break-in at Bunny’s shop?”

  “I can’t talk about it. The investigation is still open and the police don’t want me saying anything that could, you know, tip off the thieves. They’re watching the pawn shops.”

  “But that’s a list of Bunny’s missing stuff,” I said stupidly, pointing to Edgar’s desktop.

  He raised and lowered his eyebrows as if he wanted to tell me more, but couldn’t.

  “That place was a mess! I thought she didn’t keep records.”

  “She didn’t—except for the expensive stuff,” Edgar said. “When it came to money, Bunny Malone knew exactly what she was doing.”

  “How did you know what was missing from all those piles of junk?”

  “She took Polaroids of all her big-ticket items and sent them to her insurance agent. It was actually pretty easy to figure out what had been stolen.”

  “Chamberlain didn’t tell us stuff was missing.”

  “She probably didn’t know at the time. I think they thought the killer was coming back, maybe trying to cover up evidence? But now it just looks like a burglary.”

  “And they don’t know who did it,” I said, mostly to myself.

  “If the burglar knows that we have a list of the missing items, they’ll be more careful in selling it.”

  “Yeah, I can see that. Don’t worry, Edgar, I’ll keep that out of my story.”

  Colin and I said goodbye and left. As soon as we were out of Edgar’s office, I leaned against the brick wall, took out my pen and notebook, and began scribbling down everything I could remember from the list.

  Colin peeked over my shoulder and smirked.

  “What?” I said, a mischievous smile taking over my face. “I wasn’t lying—I’m not going to publish this. I just think something about this robbery could help Mitch.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I said as I pushed the notebook back into my bag and started walking to the car. “But I definitely need Gus’s alibi for the night of the robbery, maybe Pat’s, too. And Mary’s, I guess.”

  “It could be totally unrelated to the murder,” Colin said. “Her death made national news. Everyone knew she was rich. It’s not surprising that someone decided to come around and help themselves.”

  “But the locks weren’t broken. The windows weren’t broken. What if it was somebody who had a key?”

  “Or just someone who knows how to pick a lock.”

  “What happened to quiet Colin?”

  He shrugged, smiled, and opened the passenger door for me. I felt like telling him he didn’t have to do that. Despite what happened before we left the flea market, I’m not a fragile woman.

  “Where to now?” Colin asked after he started the ignition.

  “If you don’t need to do anything, I could go back to the hotel and finish up my travel story,” I said. I wanted to be alone, maybe to call the hospital to check on my mom, but I wasn’t interested in telling this to Colin. “Then I’d like to swing by the police station and see if I can read over the robbery police reports, see if they have any suspects.”

  “You got it,” he said. “But let’s eat first. Flea market food doesn’t do much for me.”

  “Okay. You pick the place.”

  “That’s easy,” Colin said. “Mexican food truck. I saw one a few blocks from the hotel.”

  Colin insisted on paying for our lunches. Even though our employer would reimburse him, the gesture wasn’t lost on me.

  When he opened my can of Coke before handing it over to me, I decided that was too much. Opening doors, getting the food, now this. Either we were on a date and I didn’t realize it, or he felt sorry for me because of my mom. Whatever his deal was, I wanted him to stop.

  I tried to make it into a joke.

  “Thanks, but, despite my generalized incompetence at life, I can manage my own Coke can,�
� I said.

  “Oh. Okay,” Colin said. Then, after a short silence, he said, “My brother had a problem with pills. He seems to be doing better now though. He did an inpatient treatment last fall.”

  “That’s good,” I said without taking my gaze away from my food.

  “I’m just saying that, because I know it’s hard when someone you love has trouble with substance abuse.” He was talking faster now. “I mean, I’m sure it’s totally different when it’s a parent. That’s got to be hard.”

  “I don’t love her,” I said. This time I was able to look him squarely in the eye.

  He nodded. “Fair enough.”

  We finished the meal in silence.

  When I got to my hotel room, I showered before I started working on my travel story. Myles was such a great subject, the flea market sidebar practically wrote itself.

  When I was done, I pulled up the call history on my phone. I’d spoken with Nurse Inez five hours ago. The conversation lasted four minutes.

  I imagined my mom lying in her hospital bed. She was probably hooked up to the bright yellow bag of IV fluids. They always give that to alcoholics because it contains all the vitamins their inflamed stomachs can’t absorb.

  And Mom probably had one of those orange tubes hanging from her nose. For a second, when I was picturing her pale, skinny body mounded in with rumpled white bed sheets and blankets, I thought I could smell the actual hospital smell—the mix of bleach and toxic cleaning chemicals designed to annihilate even the most virulent germs.

  I was tempted to call, just to talk to a nurse and see how my mom was doing. But there was always the chance my call could get routed straight to my mom’s room. I couldn’t deal with that. She always acted extra irrational and emotional when she was detoxing.

  I decided to call Quinn instead.

  “I was a wreck and then he hugged me,” I blurted when Quinn answered the phone.

  “Ooohh! What did he smell like? What did it feel like?” she asked. “And why were you a wreck? Are you okay?”

  “Good, good, and yeah.”

  “Um, yeah, I’m going to need more details.”

  “My mom’s in the hospital with a GI bleed. When the nurse called me, I was walking through this field, hot and sweaty. I had to tell her about my mom, then I told her I’m not responsible for her.”

  “Oh that’s good, Jae. Boundaries! I’m proud of you.”

  I rolled my eyes at her use of a therapy word. And at her tone—as if I’d just peed in the big-girl potty. Also, even though setting boundaries is the right thing to do with someone like my mom, it never feels right. Usually it feels cruel.

  “Anyway,” I said as I heaved out a sigh. “The nurse offered to take my name out of Mom’s chart, but I told her no. If she like, dies of something, I want to know.”

  “Yeah. I get that,” Quinn said. “I’m just glad you have enough sense not to go running home to her rescue anymore.”

  “I probably wouldn’t have gotten upset if Colin weren’t there. Somehow having an audience just made it feel real, you know? Anyway, I ended up kind of weepy and sniffly and he hugged me.”

  “Oooh, office romance at the flea market! Sexy!”

  “Shut up, ass,” I said with a laugh. “There was way too much mucus and sweat for it to be even remotely sexy.”

  “Don’t ruin my fantasy with words like mucus.”

  “How’s your love life?” I asked. “Still giving the online dating a whirl?”

  “Always,” she said. “But those men are like bubble gum. They start out sweet and pretty and fun. Then somewhere between the second and fourth dates, I’m like what am I doing with this bland piece of gray putty that’s suddenly impossible to mold to my liking?”

  “Yuck.”

  “No kidding. It’s rough out there,” she said. “Oh I almost forgot to tell you—you’re a big deal around here now.”

  “What?”

  “Have you checked the comments section after your stories?”

  “No way. Too many trolls.”

  “Well, it’s been blowing up. That article about the arrest got so many hits and comments, it crashed the server. And every time I see Lance, it’s ‘Jae this, Jae that.’ I think his girlfriend must hate you.”

  “Sweet!” Even though I said that sarcastically, I was smiling.

  “They want you back on news.”

  “Pfft. Absolutely not.”

  “And maybe Lance wants you back on him.”

  “Shut. Your. Mouth. I was never on him, creep,” I said, before changing the subject. “Did you decide about Vegas?”

  “When do you go again?”

  “Tomorrow night.”

  “Oh. Maybe next trip,” Quinn said. “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” I said.

  And I meant it. It felt like Colin and I were finally finding our dynamic. I didn’t want to disrupt that now.

  | Fourteen

  Iwas digging through my suitcase, trying to put together a funeral-appropriate outfit for the next morning, when I heard a familiar knock on my hotel room door. I knew it was Colin; always four fast knocks, always on the quiet side.

  I checked the peep hole. He was wearing his jacket and had his camera bag over his shoulder. Luckily, I hadn’t changed into my pajamas yet.

  “I got a text from Autumn,” Colin said when I opened the door.

  “Oh, okay.” Had he come to my room just to tell me he was going out with Autumn? Knowing they were texting each other made me feel a pang of, well, of something I didn’t like. Something I definitely didn’t want to label.

  “She said something’s going on at the Tin Pan Saloon. Mission Lager House got a big influx of customers from there because they closed early and kicked everyone out. Supposedly a forensics van is parked in front of the saloon and police cars are blocking the alley.”

  “Huh, that’s interesting.”

  “I can’t tell if it has anything to do with the murder investigation, but I thought you’d want to go down there,” Colin said.

  “Okay, sure,” I said scrambling for my jacket and shoes. “Thanks.”

  My hands felt a little shaky as I got ready. Had someone finally decided to look into Grubler as a murder suspect?

  While we drove, we listened to the police scanner through Colin’s app. There was some random chatter throughout the city including domestic dispute just north of us, an alarm activated at a pharmacy downtown, and a barking dog complaint. Other than one radio call from a male officer to open the intake bay—they had someone going to jail—nothing interesting seemed to be happening.

  The Mission Key neighborhood was crowded that night. The only parking spot Colin could find was a couple blocks away from the saloon. When we walked past the lager house on our way to the Tin Pan Saloon, Autumn waved to us from the other side of a window before she came running out to meet us on the sidewalk.

  “They’re dropping the charges—I just heard,” Autumn said as she ran up the sidewalk toward Colin and threw her arms around him.

  “What? You mean Mitch?” I asked.

  “Yeah, he’s being released,” Autumn said. She stepped away from Colin and clasped her hands together, a childlike glint playing in her eyes. “We’re going to be okay.”

  I remembered Mitch telling us the business was barely hanging on financially. Obviously Autumn didn’t know that. I tried to smile, to let her enjoy the moment of relief.

  Colin smiled, too, but it seemed like an empty gesture. Maybe he was thinking the same thing.

  We told Autumn we would be back after we checked out the saloon. When we rounded the corner, the forensics van was still there. Colin took photos while we walked.

  One man in a police baseball cap and t-shirt carried a cardboard box, with the word “Evidence” printed on the sides, out of the saloon and toward the van.

  I looked in through the front window. Illuminated by harsh florescent overhead lighting, the place looked gritty and cheap. Rolling red and blue lights, from
a cruiser parked behind the forensics van, danced off of the window glass. Nobody was in the bar area.

  “Maybe everyone’s downstairs in the office,” I said quietly to Colin.

  “Careful,” he said. “You’re not supposed to know there’s an office downstairs.”

  “Right,” I said, beginning to feel a little sick about my and Jennie’s adventure in Gus’s office the other day. I glanced down at my arm where Gus had grabbed me. The bruises were still dark, shaped exactly like a hand.

  “Woah,” Colin whispered as he stared at my wrist. “I didn’t notice that before. Is that where he—”

  “Shh,” I hissed.

  A woman was walking through the bar now, toward the front door. When she passed under the lights, I could see it was Detective Chamberlain. Her gaze seemed riveted to the floor in front of her. She came outside, spoke briefly with the man standing at the back of the van, then approached us, her clunky heels noisy on the sidewalk.

  “You got here fast,” Chamberlain said. She sighed. For the first time, she seemed reserved. She’d dropped the usual pushy, bitter approach she’d taken with me.

  I looked at her without responding.

  After a beat of silence, during which the detective looked blankly out at the street, I asked, “So, what happened here?”

  After another heavy sigh, she explained. “We got an anonymous tip that Gus Grubler had the murder weapon, for Malone, obviously.”

  I looked down at my notepad and pen, struggling to keep my expression neutral. I was thinking of Jennie and wondering if she’d been the tipster.

  “We found Bunny’s lanyard, the one with all the keys on it, in Gus’s desk. It’s going to forensics for fingerprint analysis. They’re also going to analyze the string and see if it matches the ligature marks and fibers from the victim’s neck,” Chamberlain said. “To the naked eye, it does look like a match.”

  “Did you take Gus in?”

  “Yes. Charges are pending,” she said. “We’ll probably send out a press release in an hour or so. We still need to talk to the DA, and it will take some time to get the results from the analysis of the lanyard.”