Mrs. Fix It Mysteries: The Complete 15-Books Cozy Mystery Series

by Belle Knudson

  “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.

  “Did you get the doorknob on well enough?” she asked.

  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.

  She gave Carly one more call with no answer, then started up her truck. It wouldn’t be easy getting to sleep tonight, so before she drove off she sent Scott a text message asking him to please get in touch when he found out what was going on, no matter how late.

  When she got home she suddenly wished her boys were there. They were both at Penn State, and during the academic year she rarely saw them. She was proud they were doing so well and knew she must have done a decent job raising them, since they were achieving high marks and thriving in their independence. Yet she really wished she could be around them now. They calmed her and reminded her of what was really important in life. She realized Ken’s death had cut very close to home. It was reminding her of when Greg had disappeared and the years she spent with her boys, worried and wondering where her husband had gone, what had happened, if he was dead. They’d spent months trying to reconcile the worst of it, wrapping their heads around the daunting possibility that he really was dead.

  Carly would soon be told that her father was dead, and Kate dreaded that her best friend would be filled with a sense of anguish similar to the kind that had once consumed Kate.

  Kate went into her kitchen, found a bottle of red wine in the cabinet, and uncorked it. She poured a generous glass then went into the bathroom and drew a hot bath. Getting to sleep wouldn’t be easy, but this should help, or so she hoped. She kept her cell nearby on the counter and within reach just in case Carly or Larry called her back. Most of all, she hoped Scott would call. He hadn’t responded to her text yet, but that was understandable. Her highest hope was that Ken had died of natural causes. Her greatest fear was that he hadn’t.

  Chapter Three

  The next day, Kate woke with a start well before her alarm went off. Lifting out of stressful dreams about Carly, Ken, and Celia’s chilly lack of emotion, it took her a moment to get her bearings and remember that she was only in bed and not desperately running around Rock Ridge in search of her best friend.

  The sun had barely pierced the sky and her bedroom was dim. These days, with autumn in full swing, she awoke to a cold room and dreaded getting out from underneath the warm covers, so it took her a moment to muster up the nerve to dash to her closet where her thick robe was hanging. Next, she slipped her feet into her slippers and grabbed her cell phone from the nightstand. There were no missed calls, no new text messages, which concerned her, but perhaps Scott would get in touch today. It was only 6:00 a.m. after all. He was probably still sleeping if he’d been up all night.

  In the kitchen, she put on a fresh pot of coffee, and while it percolated she reviewed her day calendar. She’d gotten so busy over the past month that she now kept a small calendar-book, each page was a day with time slots in rows. Justina’s business, Carnegie Real Estate, had also been booming, and, because of it, Kate had a lot of homes to stage. She was still learning the ropes and getting a knack for how best to stage the homes. Too much furniture was off-putting, too few flowers and accents caused a home to look dreary. It was all about striking the right balance. She noted she had to stage Jessica Wentworth’s house. Though Harvy Stuart and his wife, Kendall, had been interested, they were both now in jail, and Jessica’s house had been sitting on the market untouched. The difficulty was that it was quite costly since it was one of the largest estates in Rock Ridge. Curiously, Kate wondered if perhaps Jessica would want to move back in with Dean now that he was the mayor, but she reasoned against it. There were probably too many memories there for Jessica to feel at peace.

  Kate poured her coffee into a mug and drank it black while staring at her cell phone. Grayson
’s Hardware would be open soon, but Kate was more interested in swinging by the library to pick up a number of books she’d reserved on decorating homes for the real-estate market. Unfortunately, the library wouldn’t open for another hour, and when it did, she was fairly certain Mrs. Briar would be there. Kate didn’t exactly get along with Mrs. Briar.

  She felt like she’d been lazing about a bit too long once she’d drank her second cup of coffee, so she hopped in the shower and then got dressed in her usual fair: overalls with long johns and a long-sleeved shirt underneath, work books, and a flannel. She pulled on her heavy Carhartt coat and was out the door.

  Bean There, her favorite coffee shop, was the only business open at this hour. Clara, who owned the shop, was in the habit of getting in at 5:00 a.m. and opening the doors an hour after that.

  Kate pulled up to the curb out front and glanced in through the windows. Clara had decorated the shop with autumn leaves and pumpkins, the fall spirit in full swing, which Kate appreciated. Some of the bigger chain stores had already put up Christmas decorations. It was downright ridiculous.

  “You’re up early,” said Clara behind the counter. She was setting out pastries under the glass display from a large plastic bin. “Are you blown away about our new mayor?”

  “Surprised, certainly. But I think Dean will do an excellent job.” Kate watched Clara pour dark roast into a large to-go cup for her, which she then set on the counter.

  “Fresh bear claw?” she asked. “Oh! Cookie dropped off yogurt muffins! You have to try one.”

  “Yogurt muffins?”

  “Yeah, instead of using butter, she uses yogurt so the muffin is healthier, more protein, less fat. And you’d never know it. They’re so fluffy. I have chocolate chip and blueberry.”

  “I’ll try the blueberry,” Kate said, happy to have anything even remotely healthy. “Hey, let me ask you,” she began, but when she popped a corner of the top off the muffin and tasted it, she was momentarily speechless. “Wow, this is great!”

  Clara beamed. “Cookie’s working on a lot more healthy breakfast options, and I’m thinking about getting bagels in here, too. Nothing like a bagel with your coffee. What were you going to ask me?”

  “Do you happen to know anyone in town who drives a black SUV? A souped-up one? I’m not sure they make.”

  Clara took a moment to think it over. “I’m really not sure. This is more of a pickup truck kind of town.”

  “I know,” Kate said, thrown. The only other person she’d known with an SUV was Kendall, who was in prison. Besides, the vehicle she'd seen at the Johnsons’ last night couldn’t have been Kendall’s, because it didn’t have those gaudy hubcaps—the gold-rimmed ones.

  Before Clara could ask why she had inquired, Kate paid her for her breakfast, thanked her, and was out the door.

  As Kate made her way to her truck, a disturbing realization took hold. What if Kate had been in the house with the killer? The SUV had been in the driveway when she showed up, and was gone by the time she left. She kicked herself for not looking at the license plate, but it hadn’t occurred to her.

  When she got to Jessica’s house, intent on rearranging the furniture according to some Internet research she’d done a few nights back, she noticed the morning paper was rolled in a plastic sleeve and resting against the front door. She grabbed it then let herself in.

  Jessica’s house was chilly, so she kept her coat on. She sat on the living room couch, which was positioned awkwardly in the corner. Kate had read about placing certain furniture pieces in the corner of rooms, facing them towards the center. It rounded off the hard corners, she’d read, and made the flow of the room more appealing. But Jessica’s couch was much too long to make sense here. She’d realized that two seconds after she’d dragged it over. She’d have to move it back under the windows and perhaps set the bookshelf in this corner. The bookshelf was narrow, though tall, and if she set a small, potted plant atop it, it could do the trick.

  In the meantime, she drank her coffee and opened up the paper. She’d gotten in the habit of flipping to the back whenever the paper arrived at her house. It was a compulsive need to see her ad space. Her divorce attorney, Arthur Joseph, had instructed her to run a notice of divorce in the paper for three weeks to publicly notify Greg of the divorce proceedings. Of course he hadn’t responded, and soon Arthur would take the next step and file the actual divorce papers with the court. That day was fast approaching.

  There it was in the back: a small two-by-three-inch ad. She read Greg’s name. It was as surreal as ever, but at least it was running. Then she closed the paper and set it on the coffee table, which was also set awkwardly, to the side of the couch. It reminded her of how much work she had to do before Justina could have a second go at showing the house.

  As soon as the paper landed on the table, the front page caught her eye. There, in the upper-right corner, was a black-and-white photo of Ken—a classic cop in full uniform regalia. The headline said Rock Ridge’s Finest Found Dead. Gosh, she hoped this wasn’t how Carly would find out.

  Munching on her muffin, she began to read. Her heart skipped a beat when she found her name, but of course she’d be mentioned in the article. She’d been the one to find Ken, after all. She hadn’t seen any reporters last night, however, and she couldn’t help but feel somewhat irked that one of the officers had mentioned her to a reporter.

  If she read any further, she was sure she’d lose her appetite, so she stopped, noting the reporter who’d written the article—Eric Demblowki. The name wasn’t familiar. Was he new in town? Perhaps he was an out-of-town reporter who’d drafted and submitted the article to the Rock Ridge Tribune. But if he was from out of town, and Kate felt certain he had to be, why on earth would one of the responding officers tell him anything? Then again, word traveled fast. If Gunther said anything to his barber, the news was sure to spread like wildfire. Still, between last night and the wee hours this morning, there would’ve been no time for gossip to spread. Even Clara at Bean There hadn’t mentioned Ken’s death, which could only mean that she hadn’t heard about it yet.

  The morning sun was inching up the sky and brightening the room, which inspired Kate to hop to it. She threw away her muffin wrapper and empty to-go cup in the kitchen, and began rearranging the furniture. She liked how creative staging homes could be, but she wasn’t naïve to the fact that she was still pretty green. After forty-five minutes and a lot of sweating and cursing, she realized the furniture was exactly where Jessica had placed it when she’d lived here. Ugh, Kate grunted. Well, if that’s how it looked best, then that’s where she’d keep it, but it’d be hard to justify to Justina her bill when technically she hadn’t changed a thing. She reasoned that more fresh flowers would spruce the place up, figuring Sunshine Florist would be open by now, and, at the very least, Kate needed to connect with Carly who worked there. She was about to head out when the doorbell rang.

  It crossed her mind that it could be Justina at the door, but Justina usually called or texted when she needed to see Kate.

  Kate opened the door and found a strange woman standing under the portico. In a word, the woman looked like money. She wore a sharply tailored skirt suit that reminded Kate of tea in the queen’s palace, as well as a wide-brimmed hat. Her makeup was precise and her hands were gloved. She was head-to-toe white, though her skirt suit had black trim.

  “Can I help you?” Kate asked, trying to recall what time it was.

  “I’m Lily van der Tramp,” she announced in a well-articulated, sing-song tone. “I noticed the realtor’s sign on the lawn and I’d like to see the house.”

  Lily looked Kate up and down then frowned.

  “I’m Kate Flaherty,” she said, feeling embarrassed in her overalls. “I’ve been fixing the place up. Did you call the realtor, Justina Anastasi?”

  “Did I say I called the realtor?” she said curtly. “Now step aside, I’d like to see the property.”

  Kate didn’t move, she was so taken aback by Lil
y’s rudeness.

  “Excuse me, do you know who I am?”

  “Lily van der Tramp,” she said dryly.

  “The famous designer,” she stated then again looked Kate up and down. “No, of course you don’t know who I am. Why would you?”

  Lily was not the kind of resident Rock Ridge needed.

  “I think we can both assume,” Lily went on, “that the owner of this house would like to sell it. I’m interested. What’s the problem?”

  Though the woman was unpleasant, Kate couldn’t argue with her logic, so she stepped aside.

  Lily boldly crossed through, taking her gloves off as she went into the kitchen. Kate trailed behind her.

  “I’m still in the process of staging the house, so you’ll have to excuse it if it seems in disarray,” Kate explained.

  “I don’t care about that,” she said. “I care about the architecture, the land taxes, the neighbors.”

  “Let me give Justina a call then,” said Kate, knowing she wasn’t actually equipped to answer such questions. “Justin knows every last detail about this house.”

  Ignoring her even though Kate had her cell to her ear, Lily asked, “Who lived here prior? The former mayor?”

  “Well, technically the mayor before the former mayor. Dudley Stuart and his wife at the time.”

  “Ah, that’s right. And how much are they asking for it?”

  “Well, it’s only Jessica who’s asking—”

  “I don’t care about that,” she interrupted without so much as glancing at Kate. “I care how much they want.”

  “Right, well, Justina will know.”

  As Lily wandered into the living room, turning her nose up at various details, Kate walked towards the front door, which she realized she’d left open, and hoped Justina would pick up.

  “Good morning, Justina!” she said urgently when Justina came through the line. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “Not at all.”