A Whole Latte Murder

by Caroline Fardig

  “Like a donation toward funding the sleep study?” I asked, not quite following.

  “No, reproductive donation.”

  “What?”

  “Becoming an egg donor. Young women are handsomely compensated these days—to the tune of several thousand dollars. You’d be especially desirable, given your unique hair color. It’s natural, isn’t it?”

  “Uh…yes.” Egg donation? Seriously?

  “Well, it can be something for you to think about when you can’t sleep.” She chuckled at her own joke. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist. You’re all set. Don’t forget to make that appointment on your way out.”

  “I will. Thank you.”

  I went through the motions of making my appointment and driving to Mallory’s house, but the whole time my mind was reeling over the egg donation thing. In reality, I was of the age that it was time to start using my eggs myself, not give them away. Not that I particularly wanted to have children. In that case, I supposed my ovaries were just sitting there going to waste. Was it selfish of me to hoard my eggs when I wasn’t sure I’d ever even use them at all? And the money. Holy hell, the money. Several thousand dollars could pull me out of the financial hole I’d been in for over a year. I could move out of my shitty apartment. I could buy dishes that weren’t made of paper. I could take an actual vacation. It was certainly worth giving it some thought.

  —

  Maya was waiting in her car outside Mallory’s house. When I arrived, she hurried over to me. “How are you feeling today?” she asked.

  “Better. Sort of.”

  She glanced toward Mallory’s house. “What is it with this woman? All signs point to her husband being a world-class wanker, and she decides to hire me to find him some reasonable doubt for the murder of his practically jailbait mistress?”

  “Wow, Maya. Tell me how you really feel.” With her lilting British accent, even an angry outburst sounded polite.

  “I feel like maybe I won’t be so interested in helping this guy when I find proof he’s connected to Brooke’s attack. Did you think of that?”

  I frowned. “Yes, I did. Look, I’ve known Mallory for a long time. She’s a good person, and she believes her husband is innocent. I think he’s innocent of the murder but maybe guilty of something else or at least so deep in something else he can’t find his way out of it. She promised me that if we unearth anything, even if it points the finger at Jack, she’ll turn it in no matter what. Trust me, she’ll keep her word.”

  “Fair enough. But if I find out he had anything to do with Brooke’s attack, I’ll bury his sorry ass.”

  “And I’ll provide the shovel. I want the truth, even if it hurts.” After hesitating a moment, I said, “Ryder and Jack both said something odd today. Jack told Mallory to go on and live her life and not to worry about him—that it was the only way. Then not five minutes later, Ryder said I should go on about my life and forget him. When I called him on it, he nearly exploded and told me to leave the station immediately. I don’t get their sudden urge to push Mallory and me away.”

  She contemplated what I’d said for a moment. “Maybe there’s more danger out there we don’t know about. Jack’s arrest may only be a piece of a larger puzzle.”

  “I don’t doubt it. During his rant, Jack told me I was in over my head and that this thing was bigger than I realized. And speaking of the bigger puzzle, Kira went missing again last night.”

  “That’s certainly troubling.”

  “And Jack had absolutely nothing to do with it, because it happened after he got arrested.”

  Maya shook her head. “I don’t like this. If things get messy, I’m pulling the plug.”

  We went up to the front door, where Mallory greeted us with a nervous smile and invited us in. I’d never been to her home before, and it was lovely. It was one of the beautifully restored arts and crafts bungalows in the university area. Her décor was as cheerful as she usually was—a sharp contrast to the cloud of worry that hung over her today. She’d ordered sushi for us and had it waiting on her kitchen table. Maya shot me a look but said nothing as Mallory sat us down and graciously served us.

  I knew Mallory well enough to know that she was keeping herself busy so she wouldn’t fall apart. She would do the same thing in college. If she worked the night before a big test, she’d be flitting tirelessly around the coffeehouse, doing everyone else’s work for them. Once she’d taken on the loathsome task of cleaning the exhaust hood over the grill—even though it was my turn—the night before a notoriously GPA-destroying chemistry final.

  I smiled at the memory of when Mallory and I were so young and relatively carefree. Back then, the biggest things we had to worry about were tests and who got stuck cleaning the icky parts of the coffeehouse. Granted, I still had to deal with cleaning the coffeehouse, but that was now the least of my worries. We didn’t realize we had it so good back then. Adult problems sucked.

  During lunch, Maya had Mallory tell her everything she knew about Jack’s arrest and about any odd behavior he’d been showing lately—basically what she’d told me earlier. Then when we left the table and went to sit in the comfier seating of the living room, Maya asked Mallory a list of pointed questions about their work and personal life. I admittedly drifted a bit, tiring of the minute details of Jack and Mallory’s life, and feeling a bit like I was listening in on something that wasn’t my business.

  I got out my phone, forgetting I’d turned it off inside the sleep clinic office. When I turned it back on, I found I had a barrage of texts and calls. The calls were mainly from unknown numbers, which meant reporters, but the texts were a series of increasingly frantic messages from Pete. He evidently thought I’d stay at his house all day, which he should have realized I had no intention of doing.

  I excused myself and called him. He answered on the first ring.

  “Where in the hell are you?” he barked.

  “I’m at Mallory’s house.”

  “What? Is she keeping you there against your will?”

  I fought the urge to snicker. “No, she came to me this morning and apologized about last night. She needs…a friend. So I’m hanging out with her today.” Why didn’t I tell Pete what I was really doing? Because he’d have an aneurysm. He was convinced Jack was to blame for everything that had gone wrong lately.

  “Oh. Well, I guess if you’re resting, it doesn’t matter if you do it at my place or at hers. Are you actually resting, though?”

  “Right now I’m getting reamed by you, so not exactly.”

  He sighed. “Sorry, Jules. When I got home and you weren’t there, I freaked. I heard you went to the coffeehouse this morning, so I know you haven’t been resting all day.”

  “Busted.” Good thing he didn’t know about me going to the police station and the sleep clinic, too.

  “How did you get there?”

  “By car,” I said evasively.

  “Whose car?”

  I sighed. “Mine.”

  “You’re not supposed to be driving right now.”

  “Hmm. Neither are you.”

  He chuckled. “You got me there. When will I see you?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll stay here as long as she needs me.”

  “You’re a good friend.”

  I cringed, thinking I wasn’t being a good friend to him for not telling him the whole truth. “See you tonight.”

  “Later.”

  I hung up with Pete and scrolled through my messages again, hoping I’d received one from Kira. I’d tried texting and calling her on and off today in between my running around town, but she hadn’t responded. I tried calling her again, but it went straight to voicemail. I left yet another message and texted her again. I didn’t know what else to do. I knew from experience that physical searching was for the most part useless, especially when only one person was doing it. I felt helpless, and I could only hope this time she wasn’t being abused, or worse. I called Stafford to find out if he’d been working on her case.
/>   “Hey, Juliet,” he said as a greeting.

  “Hi. I hate to bother you, but I wondered if you’d found out anything about Kira.”

  He sighed. “No, not yet. I’m hoping she’ll turn up soon.”

  “Me, too. Thanks for trying.”

  “Sure. Hey, one thing—why did you visit Jack Beaumont in jail this morning?”

  Ooh. I wondered if Ryder had put him up to this, but then again, those two didn’t seem to get along too well, so I wasn’t convinced.

  “I went with his wife. She’s a friend of mine.”

  I could hear the smile in his voice. “That didn’t fully answer my question.”

  He was questioning my motives—that was for sure. I didn’t think I should tell him everything we were up to, so I gave him the same song and dance I gave Pete. “She needs a friend right now, and that’s what I’m being.”

  “Funny, neither she nor her husband had a lot of good things to say about you when I spoke to them yesterday.”

  “She’d been drinking. She explained everything.”

  “Did she explain how she doesn’t have an alibi for the time Kira went missing last night?”

  “What?” I hissed. “Are you insinuating she—”

  “I’m telling you to watch your back, Juliet.”

  I peeked around the corner at Mallory and Maya sitting on the couch, still deep in conversation. I didn’t believe for a second that Mallory could be a part of this. I’d known her for a long time, and people didn’t suddenly become cold and calculating enough to kidnap young women. I understood people snapping and committing murder in the heat of the moment before they even realized what they were doing. I didn’t condone it, but it at least made sense. Kidnapping was a whole other level of crazy.

  I said, “I’ve known Mallory since I was nineteen. I’ll be fine.”

  “Are you planning to do anything I need to worry about?”

  “I never plan to do stupid things, you know.”

  “That’s all the answer I’m going to get, isn’t it?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  His voice was rough as he said, “Be safe, okay?”

  “I will.”

  After we hung up, I went back to join Mallory and Maya a little disconcerted. I didn’t like Stafford’s suggestion that Mallory had something to do with Kira’s latest disappearance.

  Maya looked up when I sat down gingerly on the overstuffed chair next to the couch. “I think I have all I need to begin my investigation. What I want you two to do is have a look around the house and find all Jack’s personal stashes, wherever he might have jotted something down or kept a record of anything. I want calendars, receipts, notes—anything that might point us to who he’s been around and in contact with. I’ll start looking into his financials and phone records.”

  Mallory rose slowly from the couch. The strain was starting to show on her face and in her posture. “Come on,” she said to me. “We’ll start with the kitchen. Pick a drawer.”

  I followed her to the kitchen, feeling weird about pawing through her personal things right in front of her. We both took a drawer, going through and pulling out any random pieces of paper and receipts we found. We moved throughout the kitchen, quietly working at our assigned task. Once we’d searched every drawer, we ended up with a small pile of papers, which we deposited next to Maya’s laptop on the coffee table. She didn’t look up from her work.

  Mallory then led me into another room. “This is the home office I share with Jack. If he was doing something he didn’t want me to know about, he probably wouldn’t have any record of it here. We’re always misplacing or doodling on each other’s notes and important papers. It’s a joke between us.” Her voice was low and throaty, as if it hurt to say the words out loud. She paused to stifle a sob. “But we should probably still look.”

  It depressed me to see her this way, especially because she might as well have been a mirror image of me when Pete was arrested. I knew exactly what she felt, and it sucked. That alone was reason enough for me to want to help her in any way I could.

  While I perused the papers on top of the desk, she went through the drawers. It was easy enough to distinguish Mallory’s loopy script from Jack’s chicken scratches. I pulled out several pieces of paper Jack had scribbled on.

  When we were finished in the office, Mallory said, “I guess the bedrooms would be next.”

  “Are you sure you want me going through your personal stuff?”

  She sighed. “I have a feeling my personal life is no longer going to be personal. I might as well get used to it.”

  I insisted on letting Mallory go through the bedroom she shared with Jack alone. I looked through a guest bedroom and another bedroom converted into an exercise room with no luck. Mallory came out of her bedroom empty-handed, her eyes red-rimmed. I had to choke back the lump forming in my own throat. The sooner we figured this out, the better.

  Mallory and I plopped down in the living room next to where Maya was going through the receipts and papers we’d found.

  Maya said, “I think we should take a look around Jack’s medical office.”

  “Have the police been through it yet?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Mallory said. “After they searched my home yesterday they were headed that way.”

  “Did they find anything there?”

  “If they did, they didn’t bother to tell me.”

  Maya was nearing the bottom of her pile. After studying one piece of paper for a moment, she showed it to us, pointing to one corner. It was a credit card bill with “A 2 24 K 3 03” in Jack’s handwriting at the top.

  “Mallory, what does this writing mean?” she asked.

  Mallory looked at it and shrugged. “Beats me.”

  “Is it maybe some kind of code Jack uses? Some way he marks whether or not a bill has been paid?”

  “No, I do all the bill paying.”

  Maya eyed the writing again, then set the paper into a different pile. She stood, saying, “Ladies, it’s time for a field trip.”

  Chapter 31

  Maya drove us over to the Genesis Building, and Mallory let us into Jack’s office with her keys. The place looked like a tornado had gone through. Drawers were open or even pulled out completely, chair cushions were thrown around, and papers were strewn everywhere.

  Maya whistled. “Damn. The MNPD doesn’t usually leave such a frightful mess.”

  “They were much more respectful at my home. It didn’t look like this at all,” said Mallory.

  Walking around and surveying the damage, Maya shook her head. “Something tells me this isn’t the police’s handiwork. Looks like we have some work to do. Chop, chop.”

  The three of us straightened up the office as we searched, but there was nothing to be found. Aside from what had been spilled from the patient files, there was no extraneous paper of any kind. No calendars, no notepads, no receipts, no bills—nothing. And the computer towers were conspicuously missing.

  Maya said, “Either your husband kept no business or personal records whatsoever, or someone’s already beat us to the punch. There’s nothing here.”

  Being in the Genesis Building got me thinking about the two nights of escapades Pete and I had here, and I couldn’t help but smile at the memory. Even dangerous, ridiculous, and embarrassing things were fun when I was with Pete. Another thought popped into my head, though, about Kira.

  “Mallory, the other night you said you knew Kira. Where do you know her from?” I asked.

  Her forehead wrinkled. “I said that?”

  “During your drunken rant.”

  Her cheeks flushed. “Oh. I only know of her, actually, from when we searched for her.”

  “How well did Jack know her?”

  Mallory frowned. “I’m not sure. But then again, I didn’t know about her roommate being his mistress, either. What has she got to do with him being in jail?”

  “I haven’t quite figured that out, but the police seem to think everything going o
n with Amelia, Chelsea, Kira, and even Brooke is related. What I do know is that Monday night, when Kira asked off work to go to her study group, she came to this building instead.”

  “To see Jack? Not on Monday. We had a late dinner with his parents Monday night.”

  “Then she was here for another reason she didn’t want anyone to know about. Pete and I followed her because we knew her study group had been cancelled and she’d lied to us. All we saw was that she came in through the back door. No idea where she went after that.”

  Maya said, “If we want to know where she went, we’ll have to figure it out through the process of elimination. There are several offices in this building. I could ask around and try to find out if Kira’s ever been to one of them.”

  Grimacing, I admitted, “I’ve already done a little legwork for you.”

  “Oh?” Maya asked, a bemused expression on her face.

  “She hasn’t been to the escort service or the talent agency.”

  Maya was trying not to crack a smile. “How did you find that out? Were you sleuthing again?”

  “Let’s call it creative interviewing.”

  “You say potato, I say next time I need a partner for a job, I’m coming to you.”

  I blushed. “Oh, I’m hardly good at it.”

  “That’s not what Hamilton says.”

  “Seriously?”

  Smiling, she nodded. “He’d never admit it to you in a million years, but he told me you’ve got quite the knack for investigating.”

  Wow. I was floored.

  She continued, “So what’s left in here? I saw an STD testing clinic and a lawyer…what else?”

  “A bail bondsman and whatever Genesis is,” I replied.

  Mallory piped up, “It’s an egg donation clinic, but I think it’s kind of shady. They only work after hours.”

  “Egg donation. Is that a big thing, or what?” I dug into my purse and found the envelope containing the information I’d received this morning.

  “It’s huge in college towns,” Mallory said. “They want young, intelligent, beautiful girls who are hard up for money.”