“Ah, complicated. Not good. I don’t know,” he said, rubbing his eyes. Then he pushed his keyboard aside, seeming to give up on whatever he was wrestling with. “Cleaning up the mess of two corrupt mayors is daunting.”
“Any luck with halting that development out east?” she asked, hoping the question would get him to reveal what was really going on now that Lily was in the picture.
“They got more funding,” he said, just as she’d expected. “If you ask me, Clem has already checked out, but now he doesn’t have the financial excuses to put the project on hold.”
“I’d heard something similar,” Kate admitted.
“Yeah, well, leave it to family to swoop in at the eleventh hour and save the day.”
“Family?”
Dean snorted as though he was beyond fed up. “That woman who bought Jessica’s house, which, I have to say, has made me more conflicted than anything else I’ve ever experienced. Jessica is thrilled she sold the house. She loves Lily van der Tramp because of it. However, Lily is making my life a living hell. Sorry to vent,” he added. “But I can’t exactly vent to Jessica. She’s Lily’s biggest fan now.”
“Lily is family to...who?”
“The head of the project out east, Mike Waters.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Van der Tramp is her married name. She’s a widow.” Dean started typing on his keyboard then said, “Here, look.”
Kate set her roller down in the paint tin and circled around Dean’s desk to see his computer. A website was open, but at first all she could see was the anarchist symbol. Then she realized that the symbols were decals on gothic-looking, draping outfits.
“Lily’s clothing line,” he stated. “Cleverly called Killer Klothing.”
As Dean clicked through the thumbnails of various designs, a particular black shawl caught Kate’s eye.
“Hold on,” she blurted out. “Go back.”
“What?”
“That shawl,” she said, pointing to the one with rhinestones. “I know that shawl.”
“Her designs are very popular,” he said.
“No, it’s not that. I saw Celia Johnson wearing this shawl the night Ken was killed.”
“You did?”
“Yes, and I saw Lily’s vehicle at Ken’s house that night.” Kate suddenly got chills. “What if Celia knows more than she’s letting on.”
“Hey, as your friend, you better have some concrete evidence before you bark up that tree. The wife of a cop who was murdered? Tread carefully, Kate.”
She certainly would.
Kate kept an eye on the time as she painted Dean’s office, and she was especially careful when working on the wall around the window behind his desk. As she was wrapping up the final area, Scott texted her that he’d picked up Thai food and was headed home. She’d be on time, but wouldn’t be able to shower and change at home.
“Looks good,” he said, eyeing the walls closely.
“If you leave the window open, it’ll dry. I can do a second coat tomorrow.”
“You think it needs it?”
“Hard to say,” she said, glancing at the overhead light. “Once the daylight hits it, we’ll see if it’s patchy. I’d recommend a second coat either way.”
“Okay,” he said, “tomorrow it is.”
“Can I tuck these cans in your closet?”
“Sure.”
Dean helped her carry the remainder of the cans into the closet, and then Kate collected her materials.
“Really, Kate,” he said before she could leave, “tread carefully.”
She smiled her acknowledgment then headed down to her truck.
After loading her materials into her truck bed, she realized she had a missed call. It was her divorce attorney, so she called him right back.
“Just a quick update,” he began when she said hello. “I’ll be filing the divorce with the courts tomorrow, and we’ll have a date issued to us.”
“Great, thanks so much.”
“Not a problem. Have a good evening.”
Scott’s apartment was one of the larger buildings on Pennsylvania Boulevard where it was always tricky to park. He’d moved into the apartment after his ex-wife, Jackie, had been murdered, feeling he couldn’t bear to live in a house where someone’s life had been taken. As tough as he was as a cop, he was still superstitious about things like that, and so he’d been living in his apartment for a little over two months.
Kate found a spot, but it was a tight squeeze to parallel park. By the time she climbed out of her truck, she realized she was starving, but more than anything she could use a cup of coffee. Hopefully, Scott was well stocked with dark roast and she could make a pot.
Scott greeted her at his door on the fifth floor. His snow-white hair looked damp and he was already in his sweats. She was envious that he’d had a chance to shower.
“Katydid,” he said, urging her inside. “You look like you could use a cup.”
“You said it,” she said, pleased to smell fresh coffee in the air.
He led her through to the kitchen and served her a hot mug.
Though his apartment wasn’t large, it was handsome, and he’d certainly taken the time to straighten up. For all his excuses that his place was overwrought with case files, she didn’t see a single one in sight. The living room was neatly organized. The leather couch was clear, as well as the glass coffee table in front of it. His desk in the corner of the room was neatly organized, and she saw he had the sliding glass door to the terrace wide open. A crisp breeze blew in that wasn’t cold.
He invited her to have a seat on the couch then went back into the kitchen and set out the Thai food on plates. She took a moment to herself, drinking coffee, as he placed dinner on the coffee table. She liked the casual nature of eating at his place.
As they ate dinner, the fresh air breezing through his apartment, Kate had to hold herself back from bombarding him about the case. Instead, she struck up a far more pleasant conversation.
“Arthur gave me a call right before I got here. He’s filing the divorce tomorrow with the court, and I should have a court date soon.”
“That’s great,” he said, drinking his beer.
“And I heard Larry is out on bail.”
Too soon?
Scott’s brow fell into a straight line and he sighed.
“You really think he did it?”
“You know I can’t talk about this,” he said and took another sip of his beer.
“Larry told me he made that soup for Ken. He doesn’t deny it, but the ingredients were already in the kitchen. There’s no way he would’ve done it on purpose.”
“But you see why my hands are tied, right?”
“So you don’t think he did it?”
“Of course I don’t think he did it. But what can I do?”
“Drop the charges.”
“Letting him out on bail was the best I could do,” he said. “And it went against precedent since it looks like he killed Ken premeditatedly. Do you have any idea how much flack I’m getting from the entire department, letting a cop killer even have the option of bail?”
“Did you speak with Celia?”
“Several times.”
“About those ingredients, I mean.”
“Kate, are we going to enjoy our dinner?”
“That depends,” she said indignantly. “Did you talk to Lily van der Tramp, whose SUV was parked outside Ken’s house when I got there?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And?”
“She said she was lost.”
“She wasn’t in her vehicle, Scott. What if she was in the house?”
“What if she was walking up the block to get a better look at the house numbers? She’s in town buying a house, you know.” Again, Scott sighed. “You have to trust me that I’m not going to put the wrong man in jail for this.”
She nearly objected that he already had, but held her tongue.
“But you have to let me go
about this my way.”
Kate pushed her chicken curry around on her plate, watching the white rice soak it up.
“I’ve also been digging deeper into what happened to Greg,” he said, changing the subject. “I found out Walter Miller was keeping a file on him, though it took long enough going through Walter’s office to find it.”
Walter Miller was Kate’s first divorce attorney who was murdered last month. The prior mayor, Harvy Stuart, had killed him when Walter backed out of his investment for the anarchist development out east—the investment that Lily had stepped in to fulfill.
“What did the file contain?” Kate asked. Her heart was in her throat.
“By the looks of it, Greg was spying on the anarchists, posing as an ally and reporting back to the US government since the Anarchist Freedom Network was suspected of domestic terrorism.”
“So Greg was one of the good guys?” She wanted to feel relieved, but when it came to Greg, nothing was a relief.
“You could say that. Apparently, Walter was keeping tabs on it. Perhaps Mike Waters didn’t trust Greg, and since Walter was working with the anarchists, Mike probably engaged him to spy on Greg.”
“What was Greg’s role or title, rather, in the government?”
“It looks like FBI. I’ve put a few calls in to the nearest bureau. I can only hope they’ll get back to me. The good news is that if Greg had nothing to do with the FBI, I have a feeling the FBI would’ve told me that outright. The fact that they’re stalling leads me to believe Greg is somewhere out there, perhaps working undercover. Maybe on a different mission. Maybe on this one. I’ve hit a wall. All I can do is wait for someone in the department I contacted to get back to me with something concrete.”
Chapter Seven
The following day, Kate woke bright and early at her house having decided not to spend the night with Scott. They both felt they had too much to do at work and their overnights tended to get late. After stopping off at Bean There for a large to-go cup of coffee and a yogurt muffin, which she was getting fast addicted to, Kate drove out of Rock Ridge towards Ikea. Based on thumbing through the interior design books she’d gotten from Hazel at the library, she was feeling confident about the pieces she could buy on Justina’s budget.
Once there, she bypassed the exceptionally long and windy showroom floor, heading straight for the warehouse at the side entrance. Using a large cart, she worked her way through the warehouse and pulled the boxes she needed from the industrial shelves. By the time she was loading up her truck, she had a dining room table, a desk, a bed frame and mattress, as well as a couch, each in their own box. Each would need to be assembled.
Meredith Joste’s house looked like five off-kilter cubes stacked at a precarious tilt on its right side, with rotund pillars on its left. Its many windows were large, and in a lot of ways the house looked as if it were made of glass.
She spent the greater part of the morning assembling the various pieces and placing them just so. She’d planned to pick up a number of bouquets from Sunshine Florist, but now that she had the rooms staged, she felt the overall appearance was much too futuristic for flowers. She’d give Justina a call and get a second opinion, she thought, as she collected the empty boxes and foam core and carried them out to her truck where she set them in the bed. She could swing by the dump on her way in to see Carly. She’d called her cell a few times as she worked, and finally Carly had picked up and agreed to lunch at Celia’s.
Depositing the trash at the dump was a quick stop, and soon Kate was pulling up to the curb in front of Celia’s house. As far as Kate had heard, the autopsy on Ken had taken longer than usual, which pushed the family’s funeral arrangements off. For Carly, it had become a big problem. Keeping busy was the only thing helping her to function, and the idle days had sent her plummeting into depression, or at least that was Kate’s take on the situation.
“Hi Kate,” Carly said gloomily when she opened the door. Her eyes were still pink and puffy and it looked like she was wearing the same sweatpants as the last time Kate had seen her. “Come on in.”
After giving Carly a hug, she followed her friend into the kitchen where Carly had a fresh pot of coffee waiting.
“This seems to be all I eat these days,” she said, as she poured Kate a steaming mug then another for herself.
Celia didn’t appear to be home, but then Kate heard someone walking around on the second floor.
“How’s your mom doing?” She asked.
Carly shrugged. “She’s been out a lot,” she said finally.
“Doing what?”
“Who knows,” said Carly a bit snappishly. “I’m glad to have the house to myself, if I’m being honest. I don’t know what I was thinking all but moving in here. But I guess my own house reminds me too much of Larry, and I couldn’t bear it.”
“He’s having a really hard time,” she said, but tried to be delicate about it. The last thing she wanted was for Carly to feel guilty on top of her mourning.
“Yeah, I know,” she said. “The more I think about it, the crazier it seems that he would’ve done anything to hurt Dad. But,” she added, “the evidence is the evidence.”
Just then, Celia made her way into the kitchen. Interestingly, she was still wearing the black shawl she’d worn the night Ken died. It seemed a bit out of place for broad daylight, but it was chilly. In that sense, a shawl made sense.
“How are you doing, Celia?”
“Getting on. Going for a lot of walks. Trying to get back into my usual routine,” she said, though she directed the last statement to her daughter.
“I can’t just go back to my regular routine as though nothing’s happened, Mom,” said Carly, annoyed. “It’s not like you went back to work.”
“But I had a reason not to. You love working at the florist. There’s no sense in avoiding the things you love to do.”
Carly seemed to consider her point, as she sipped her coffee.
“I’m just glad the police are gone,” said Celia. “They mean well, but they made an utter mess of the kitchen.”
“You know that designer moved to town,” said Kate offhandedly, nodding towards Celia’s shawl. “She bought Jessica’s old house.”
“The designer of this shawl? How do you know that?”
“I came across her website. Do you happen to know Lily van der Tramp?”
“No,” she said, thinking about it. “Ken gave me this shawl.”
“He did?” asked Carly, surprised. Kate gathered from Carly’s reaction that Ken wasn’t one to give those sorts of gifts.
“I assume he did. I found it gift-wrapped on the table with ingredients and a recipe for Gazpacho soup. He was trying to spice things up, I figured.”
“When was this?” Kate asked, alarmed that a recipe with ingredients for soup had been left on Celia’s table and she hadn’t questioned it.
“The late morning of Ken’s final day,” she said easily.
“But Celia,” Kate said, trying to remain polite, “Ken had been sick for days. You think he went out and bought you gifts?”
Not to mention it didn’t seem likely that Ken would provide Celia with poisonous ingredients.
“Oh, I have no idea,” she said, laughing it off. “I didn’t even think about it.”
“Did you tell Scott?” she asked.
“It didn’t seem relevant. I mean, it’s a gift.”
“But Ken’s soup was poisoned,” said Kate.
Carly added, “Larry must have found it on the counter and thought to make him soup.”
Celia looked shocked, but Kate was even more so, mainly because it was hard to believe Celia could be so clueless.
“Celia, the real killer had to have gotten into the house and left those there.”
She was dumbfounded. “But—”
“And the back door was wide open. Anyone could’ve gotten in,” said Carly in an accusatory tone.
“Not necessarily,” said Kate. “They’d have to have known the back door was
wide open. Who knew that? Did you tell anyone?”
Not answering the question, Celia rushed off, speaking over her shoulder as she went, “I’ll call Scott right away.”
“She’s getting up there in age,” said Carly, but it was a halfhearted excuse.
After a moment, Carly asked her what she felt like eating for lunch.
“Maybe we could drive over to Bean There,” said Kate, the thought of eating anything from the kitchen that had held poisonous ingredients making her squeamish.
“I’ll follow you.”
It wasn’t the healthiest lunch, but once they got to Bean There, Kate got another large coffee and muffin, as well as a bagel with cream cheese now that Clara had stepped up her game and stocked her café with more substantial options. Carly got the same and they found a table near the windows.
“I heard you got into a little fender bender,” said Carly, breaking off a piece of her muffin.
“Unfortunately,” said Kate.
“It was one of those anarchists, wasn’t it?” she asked, shaking her head. “My dad worked so hard to keep an eye on that development. He was afraid the anarchists would spill over into town, wreak havoc, and I’m afraid they are.”
“How do you know it was one of the anarchists?”
Carly leveled her gaze on her and asked, “Did you know the kid?”
“Well, no, I didn’t recognize him.”
She lifted her brows as if that were her point. “Rock Ridge is a small town. At this point, if you encounter someone you don’t recognize, it’s an anarchist. Did you know that by the time the development is finished they'll outnumber the residents two to one?”
“Is that right?” Kate swallowed hard. She didn’t like the sound of that.
“Trust me, the kid who hit you is one of them. I heard he refused to go to the hospital. He made the ambulance pull over, shouted all kinds of threats that they couldn’t take him against his will. Then he called for a cab, got his car, and drove off like nothing happened.”
Kate wondered how he could’ve driven his car with the front end crushed in, but maybe the damage was more superficial than it had looked.
“Well, well, well, Mrs. Flaherty,” said Eric, as he stalked towards their table.
Mrs. Fix It Mysteries: The Complete 15-Books Cozy Mystery Series Page 44
