A Fatal Competition (A Rose Harbor Cozy Mystery Book 1)

by Ella White

  “That’s what I’m guessing.”

  Maura was quiet for several minutes, taking in all the information Lydia had shared with her. She glanced around the office, and Lydia thought it was almost as if she was feeling regret for moving all of Meredith’s things out so quickly. Her face was still relatively pinched, but Lydia could at least see a little bit of grief mixed in with it. Maybe she had a little bit of humanity in her after all.

  “Are you all right?” Lydia asked her at last.

  “I think so,” she replied. “Or I will be, eventually.”

  “I’m really sorry for your loss,” Lydia granted. Maura just gave her a questioning look. “No, really, I am sorry.”

  “Pardon me if I find that hard to believe,” the other woman declared.

  “I never got along with Meredith, I’m sure you know that,” she insisted, “but that doesn’t mean I ever wanted her dead.”

  “Even though it would remove your main competition?” Maura inquired.

  “Even if it would remove my main competition,” Lydia answered. She turned to let Maura look back through the door to the rest of the store. “And clearly her death has not eliminated the competition at all.”

  Maura couldn’t help but giggle at the joke, even under the sad circumstances in which Lydia had made it. She took a drink out of her water bottle, let out a sigh and looked back at Lydia.

  “I was the one who told Bethany about PestBeGone,” she informed Lydia, “and how it’s the best to keep beetles away from her plants. Do you…do you think I might have helped her with killing Meredith by telling her about it? Did she ask me because she was actually going to use it to kill my cousin?”

  “I can’t say. I don’t know what Bethany was thinking,” Lydia confessed. She had her suspicions about Bethany killing Meredith, but Lydia couldn’t exactly read her mind. “But if you hadn’t suggested using PestBeGone, she probably would have either found it out from someone else, like even Meredith herself, or she would have found something else to use…presuming she actually is the killer.”

  “It’s just…if I was responsible for telling Meredith’s killer about the kind of pesticide that ended up being the murder weapon…” Maura said quietly. “I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  “I guess I have mixed feelings about it.”

  “How so, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Well Meredith and I…weren’t exactly always on the best of terms,” she carefully admitted. “We were raised like sisters almost, with our parents all living together in practically the same house for years. We had to share with our grandparents too.”

  “Times were tough, I take it?” Lydia asked.

  “Well, it’s not like we had nothing, and the house was pretty big,” Maura elucidated. “But it always felt kind of cramped, and as kids we didn’t always get the things we wanted.”

  “A lot of people go through that.”

  “I’m not saying we were different in that way,” she continued, “just that our parents had to pick and choose what we got, and sometimes Meredith got special treatment because she was older and, well…”

  “More than a little insistent that she get the best of the best?” Lydia suggested.

  “To put it lightly, yes,” Maura confirmed, smiling just a little. “She was always like that. She insisted that she got everything first and foremost, and our parents went along with it. She was always the favorite.”

  Lydia frowned. “That would explain a lot about how she acted as an adult.”

  “She practically got what she wanted, when she wanted it,” she grumbled, her hands clenching into fists. “And I got the leftovers, like some kind of pet they only gave a second thought to.”

  “I’m sorry, Maura,” Lydia sympathized, lowering her eyes. “I was on the receiving end of Meredith’s arrogance more than once myself.”

  “That’s why I feel so conflicted about it,” Maura continued. “On one hand, I’m really sad that I’ve lost my cousin, my almost sister. We grew up together, and although we didn’t always get along, we loved each other. But on the other hand, I’m sort of glad I’m going to get the opportunity to get the recognition from my family that I never really got.”

  “So basically,” Lydia tried to summarize, “you feel bad that you don’t feel worse than you really do?”

  “I guess so.”

  “I don’t think you need to worry about that.”

  Maura snapped her head up to her. “What?”

  “Do you think I’ve forgotten how angry you were when you stormed into my own flower shop this morning?” Lydia questioned. “I don’t think anyone could be that angry without feeling real grief.”

  Maura stared at Lydia for a few moments, a smile slowly but surely breaking onto her face.

  “Thank you, Lydia,” she said at last. “I know you and Meredith never got along, but maybe we can have more of a friendly rivalry than you had with her?”

  “That would be good, for both of us, I think,” Lydia agreed. “Thanks for meeting me halfway.”

  The phone on the desk rang, and Maura quickly picked it up and said hello. There was a pause as she listened, and her eyebrows rose.

  “Of course. Let him in!” she ordered. She quickly hung up the phone and turned her attention back to Lydia. “The chief’s here. He says he wants to talk to me.”

  “Chief Wyatt?”

  “Yes?” Lydia turned around at the sound of his voice, and sure enough he was standing in the open doorway, giving her a glare. “I didn’t know you would be here.”

  “I was just chatting with Maura, but I can leave you alone if you need,” Lydia explained. She nodded to Maura and waved. “Thanks for agreeing to talk with me. I’ll see you later.”

  “Thanks to you too,” Maura responded.

  Lydia moved to walk past the chief and back into The Purple Petal, but as she was doing so, Chief Wyatt grabbed her roughly by her arm. Lydia let out a gasp, as she was sure his grip would leave a few bruises.

  “What you need to do is leave Maura alone,” he decreed. “Leave her, and this investigation, alone. Do you understand?”

  Lydia nodded, but more so to get him to release her arm than in actual agreement. She left the shop as soon as she could, all the while rubbing her sore arm. Although her conversation with Maura seemed to have gone well, she really didn’t like that she encountered the chief while she was there.

  All she wanted to do now was go home and pet Melvin.

  Chapter Six

  Lydia opened the door to her house and walked inside, taking off her shoes, dumping her bag on the floor and rubbing her arm where Chief Wyatt had grabbed her. She was more than a little annoyed at how he had treated her.

  “Ouch,” she whined as she looked at the spots on her arms that would soon become bruises. “I bet I could get him for police brutality…. Really, what kind of officer treats someone like that?”

  She heard the telltale sound of cat claws pitter-pattering against the hardwood floor, and she looked up from her arm to see Melvin approaching her, looking up at her with his bright eyes. He meowed in a way that she imagined was sharing her concern and displeasure.

  “Hey there, Melvin,” she greeted her cat. “I thought you were with Gwen.”

  He meowed in response before walking up to her and rubbing his face against her legs. Lydia laughed as he tickled her a little.

  “Well, I know you go wherever you want sometimes,” she said as she went farther into her house. “Or maybe Gwen dropped you off here. Bet you’re hungry, huh?”

  Lydia’s home was a lot like her and her flower store: organized, with everything in its right place. She kept many photographs on her fireplace and hanging on the walls, many of which were of the various cats and college friends. There were others of her own family, including her parents, but not a single one of her ex-boyfriend. She had plenty of her own plants around her home, which she watered and trimmed religiously. While she had
plenty of flowers outside in her garden, both in the front and back yards, she kept the plants that were more accustomed to warmer climates inside in pots. In her kitchen were a couple of pots with herbs in them, including peppermint and rosemary.

  Melvin meowed a few more times, trying to get Lydia to pay attention to the fact that it was his dinnertime. He hadn’t been able to catch any rodents or lizards that evening, so he was quite hungry.

  “Okay, okay. Hold your horses,” Lydia told him. She grabbed some of his food out of the bag and put it in his bowl. Making sure he also had plenty of water in his other bowl, she set the food down on the ground. “Here you go.”

  Melvin wasted no time in starting to gobble down his food. He didn’t even notice when the doorbell rang and Lydia went over to answer it.

  The sun was just setting, so Lydia made sure she looked through the peephole in her door before opening it. Looking through, she saw that it was Gwen at the door, carrying what looked like bags of Chinese food. After the day she’d had so far, some comfort food sounded like exactly what she needed.

  “Hey, Gwen,” she said as she opened the door and let her in. “Is that General chicken I smell?”

  “Among other things,” Gwen confirmed, holding up the bag. “Thought you could use some comfort food after the day we’ve had.”

  The two women headed for the kitchen. Lydia took out a few plates while Gwen set out all the different boxes, filled to the brim with a variety of Chinese food. Like Lydia had smelled, there was General Tso’s chicken, but along with that was Beijing Beef, Kung Pao chicken, and sweet and sour pork, as well as eggrolls, fortune cookies, and fried rice. Lydia took out a bottle of wine for them to share too.

  Once he was done with his own meal, Melvin jumped up onto the table with every intention of grabbing some of the delicious-smelling food. Lydia, however, being used to her cat’s behavior, stopped him and shooed him back down to the floor before he had a chance to get anything.

  “Sorry, Melvin,” she said. “This is way too spicy for you.”

  The cat meowed in protest but headed off to another part of the house.

  Gwen took a few bites of her share of the meal before looking at Lydia with a serious expression.

  “So, Lydia, I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

  “It’s about Meredith’s murder, isn’t it?” Lydia presumed, taking a sip of her wine. “Okay. What is it?”

  “Bethany can’t be the killer,” Gwen informed her after a pause. Lydia swore under her breath. “Her alibi checked out. You know Noah Schalit? He owns the bakery on Seventh Street?”

  “Yeah. I’ve been there plenty of times,” Lydia remembered. “I get my sesame bagels there.”

  “Well, I called all the people who own the places where Bethany said she went on her walk,” she explained. “Mr. Schalit said he saw Bethany strolling around Seventh Street at the time of the murder.”

  “And that’s on the other side of town,” Lydia recalled, setting down her chopsticks and putting her head in her hands. “Great. So now what?”

  “Now we try to figure out what we’ve missed,” Gwen told her. “Whenever a detective or investigator runs into a dead end, he or she goes back through the evidence to see what other evidence might be around that they missed the first time.”

  “I know that, but did you learned that from your books?” Lydia asked.

  “And watching mystery TV series.” Gwen smiled. “So let’s start from the beginning,” she redirected.

  “Hey, before we start, listen to this recording from my cell phone,” Lydia interjected. As they listened to the recording, Gwen’s face grew stale in disbelief.

  “Is that Maura?” Gwen asked in shock. “Oh my gosh! She’s going to the top of our list!” Gwen continued.

  “We know that Meredith was last seen publicly at the Annual Flower Arrangement Competition, where she argued with you, me, Nancy Hartshorn and Bethany Reed, and the judges,” Lydia explained. “So basically with everyone,” she joked, trying to lighten the mood.

  “Yeah. She was killed by PestBeGone, a pesticide used by gardeners and horticulturalists,” Gwen continued. “She was then dragged by her neck to The Scented Blooms flower shop and dumped in the alley nearby. And now Maura is acting real odd. That’s the gist of it.”

  “Chief Wyatt thinks I did it because I’ve had such an intense rivalry with her, and because I only tied with her during the competition yesterday,” Lydia elucidated. “Meanwhile, we thought Bethany could have done it because Meredith broke off their contract a few months ago and Bethany was having financial backlash, which she blamed on Meredith.”

  “But she has an alibi,” Gwen restated.

  “Meredith also fought with Nancy at the competition, and we know they weren’t on the best of terms,” Lydia described. “But she was at an Irish restaurant and bowling alley at the time of the murder.”

  “Which, I forgot to mention, I also confirmed with the manager at the restaurant,” Gwen notified. “Her credit card and signature both match the ones used there. She wasn’t anywhere near Meredith at the time.”

  “She doesn’t even really have a motive anyway,” Lydia added, “unless you count just not getting along with Meredith to begin with.”

  “If we add everyone who Meredith pissed off at some point to the suspect list,” Gwen spoke, “we would probably have to put everyone in town on the list.”

  “So that leaves just me, with all the evidence pointing toward me, however circumstantial, and no alibi.”

  “Where were you last night?”

  “Here, with Melvin, but I have no one to prove that.”

  “Unfortunately Melv is not a reliable witness.”

  Lydia let out a deep breath. “Chief Wyatt is going to have my hide before I know it, solid evidence or not.”

  How could this have happened? What occurred over the course of just one night to change Lydia’s life so much? Meredith was not a nice woman by any stretch of the imagination; in fact, Lydia was overall pretty sure there were plenty of people who would be happy to see her dead. That didn’t mean she actually wanted her rival dead though. It was just too bad that no one, especially not the chief of police, believed her.

  Chief Wyatt was becoming more and more of a problem, not only for Lydia at the moment, but for everyone involved in the police force as well. The man was getting on in age, although he would never admit it himself. This in and of itself was not really a bad thing. On the contrary, Lydia admired people who continued to work a job after retirement age…when they were passionate about their job. Robert Wyatt, however, seemed to only become more and more bored with his job. He acted more interested in just having power as the chief than actually protecting the citizens of Rose Harbor.

  “Sometimes I just want to knock some sense into that guy,” Gwen commented, stabbing her Beijing Beef a little harder than necessary. “Just last week he ignored Mr. Stan when he called about someone breaking into his bookstore, and the week before that Judy Smith reported her missing brother, but the chief said he probably just ran away.”

  “How do you know about all that?” Lydia inquired.

  “I’m a reporter, remember?” Gwen joked. “When the police don’t do anything about people’s problems, they come straight to the Rose Gazette Newspaper, and I’m one of the journalists who makes sure that kind of thing gets in the paper.”

  “Does that happen often?”

  “More than I would like to admit.”

  “I think I remember reading some of those events,” Lydia recalled. “Lots of people were talking about the time Lorie Cellier was assaulted last year. They never caught the person who did it.”

  “Yeah. I interviewed Lorie that day too,” Gwen said sadly, looking down at her food. “I’m not sure she ever got over that, but it really didn’t help when Chief Wyatt just ignored her.”

  “Is there anything we could do to get him off the police force?” Lydia theorized. “Something that could get him to retire or get him fired
so there could be a new police chief?”

  “Unless there was some big scandal? I doubt it,” the other replied. “Trust me, I’ve thought of that too.”

  “What if he attacked someone?” Lydia presented. “You know law better than I do.”

  “I guess it would depend on the circumstances,” Gwen offered. She gave Lydia a hard look. “Why? Do you know something?”

  Lydia began to roll up the sleeve on her left arm, although she didn’t need to do so very much in order for the spots on her skin to show. She turned so Gwen could get a good look at the injuries. The bruises were still in the early stages, but they made up the unmistakable shape of a large hand. Gwen instantly dropped her utensils and gently grabbed Lydia’s arm, carefully turning it so she could get a good look.