“The coffee is brewed,” said Marla from the counter.
Kate had heard the pot percolate but had slipped into deep thought.
“Thanks,” she said, giving the washer one last twist before sliding out from under the sink.
When she got to her feet, she could smell the strong aroma wafting up from the mug of dark roast that Marla was holding out for Kate to grasp.
Kate took a sip, thankful to be getting a quick boost of caffeine before the long evening ahead, then explained, “It should hold for the night, but I’ll need to come back tomorrow to fix it once and for all. You need a new pipe, and since you called right after Grayson’s closed for the night, I did what I could, but it’s temporary and won’t hold longer than a day.”
“Okay,” she said, considering the information. “I’ve got to work tomorrow. Can you come around five in the evening? Will it hold that long?”
Kate took a moment to consider while she drank her coffee.
“It could go either way. I’d rather get here in the morning, but if that’s not possible, then what you need to do is check it first thing and set a pot under it if it starts dripping. I’m less concerned with the pipes, and more concerned about water damage. Pipes are relatively inexpensive, but if you get a mold problem that could really cost you.”
“I see,” she said, setting her own mug down on the kitchen table in favor of her checkbook.
“No need, Marla,” she said as soon as she saw the woman begin to write a check. “I’ll write you up an invoice as soon as it’s fully fixed tomorrow.”
“Can you give me an estimate?”
“Sure.”
Kate lifted her tool kit from the floor and set in on the kitchen table then pulled her estimate note pad from the box and drew up the projections for materials and labor. When she handed it to Marla, the woman smirked.
“It’s less than I would’ve thought.”
“I get a pretty good deal at Grayson’s,” she mentioned, closing her tool kit. “Just give me a call as you’re leaving work, and I can meet you here as soon as you’re home. And remember, set a pot under the sink if you notice it dripping tomorrow.”
“Will do!”
Marla walked Kate to the front door, passing her teenaged daughters who had finally settled down. They were seated on the couch and flipping through magazines while an entertainment news program murmured from across the room.
Kate waved at Marla over her shoulder then walked down the driveway. She had parked her truck at the curb, and even though dusk was gradually falling, the brightly stenciled ‘Mrs. Fix It’ lettering across the truck’s side was clear and visible.
Setting her tool kit in the truck bed, she pulled her cell phone from the pocket of her overalls and cued up Scott’s number.
For a summer’s night, it wasn’t too hot, she noticed, as she climbed in behind the wheel and composed a text message.
‘Should I pick up a bottle of wine?’
It only took a moment for her cell to buzz with his response.
‘I’ve got everything here so no need. See you soon!’
After texting him back with ‘Great, thanks!’ Kate started up her truck and set off towards her quiet neck of the woods, driving along Main Street and cutting through the sleepy center of town before veering east to her windy driveway where her two-story house was tucked deep in the woods.
Scott had proposed to her a few years ago, right after Greg’s brief and fleeting return to Rock Ridge. The moment she had locked eyes with her husband, it felt like time stopped, and yet, in the next second, he was shot dead. Now she had a new husband, and while she knew no one in this world was more right for her than Scott York—they had dated in high school after all, and she never really stopped thinking about him—being married once again and being a wife who had a man to come home to, was vaguely bizarre.
Kate had been independent for years and really enjoyed her solitude. And because of this, she still felt like she was getting used to sharing her house.
After their wedding, Scott had moved into Kate’s home. It had a state-of-the-art security system that a police chief could appreciate, and since Scott had undergone a costly divorce years ago and had been living in an apartment in the center of town, the logical choice had been for him to move in with her. She was glad he had, but at times, she missed coming home to an empty house, a bottle of wine, and the sweet silence of knowing no one was around for miles and miles.
Kate was lifted from her reverie when she saw a vehicle stopped on the shoulder of the road a mile from her home. Its hazard lights were flashing, and it was parked at such a crooked angle that she instantly got a very bad feeling.
She slowed her truck, veering onto the shoulder, and as she neared the vehicle, which was a red VW bug, she realized it was Cookie Halpert’s car.
Everyone in town knew and loved Cookie for her baked goods, which she sold out of Bean There, the local coffee shop. And as Kate came to a stop, leaving her headlights on so she would be able to see, she hoped that nothing was seriously wrong.
“Cookie?” she called out, as she approached the driver’s side door. “Are you having car trouble?”
Kate didn’t see any damage to the vehicle, and she noted that the tires on its left side were intact.
But when she reached the driver’s side window and found Cookie draped over the steering wheel, her long, brown hair spilling over the dashboard and her arms hanging loosely, she got a very bad feeling.
Cautiously and using as little force as possible, she pinched the door handle then pulled, and the door sprang open.
“Cookie?”
The woman was motionless, and as Kate stared down at her back, the epic stillness told her the baker wasn’t breathing.
Had this been a car accident? Had Cookie hit something in the road and gone unconscious during the impact?
Quickly, Kate padded around the front bumper, but like the back of the car, she found no damage, no sign of a crash.
Nearing Cookie again, Kate leaned in and gently grasped her shoulders. Her body felt limp and heavy, but she managed to pull Cookie against the seatback. It was then that she saw that the baker’s chest was covered in blood.
Kate brushed the brown hair from Cookie’s face then placed her fingers to her throat, checking for a pulse, but there wasn’t one.
Cookie Halpert was dead.
Chapter Two
“What do you mean Cookie is dead?” Scott sounded alarmed, and she could hear Jason and his fiancée, Becky, laughing in the background.
“I mean I found her car on the shoulder of the road, and she was slumped over the wheel. When I pulled her upright, I saw her chest was covered in blood and she didn’t have a pulse.”
“You couldn’t have picked a worse time to be a Good Samaritan,” he commented, but she could tell he wasn’t mad, only confused and possibly more so than her. “Why didn’t you call the police?”
“I did. I called you.”
“Alright,” he said, grumbling. “It sounds like she got into an accident and the other driver left the scene.”
Kate wished that were the case, but she doubted it.
“I’ll call dispatch and send a cruiser over to check it out. Can you hang on until then? I’ll let them know not to question you. We can deal with that later. You’ve got to get back here, or you’ll be late.”
“I know. Okay. Good plan,” she offered.
She was standing in the car door, which was still open, and gazing out at the darkening night. She knew she should be home by now. As well as Scott got along with Jason and Jared—her twins loved him in fact—he wasn’t the best host when it came to entertaining the soon-to-be in laws. All told, she wasn’t either, but together, they made a decent team, chatting up Lance and Amelia Langley—Becky’s parents.
“Did you happen to see the wound? The cause of the bleeding?” he asked her.
“You want me to look for it?” she asked, apprehensive. She might be good with a paintbrus
h and an electric drill, but examining a body made her woozy. She nearly laughed at the thought. She had certainly happened upon enough bodies in her lifetime. Maybe she should be used to it by now, but she wasn’t. Not by a long shot.
“A stab wound will be a slit. A bullet wound will be circular.”
Hearing just that much caused her legs to turn rubbery.
“How about you call that cruiser and let them tell you.”
“I’m dialing on the landline,” he said then quickly set his cell down to talk to the Rock Ridge 9-1-1 Dispatch, relaying the details and location as he understood them. Then he was back on his cell. “They’re on their way.”
“Thanks.”
“Hey, Kate, are you all right? You sound quiet over there.”
Am I? “Yeah,” she managed to say, but the fact of the matter was that she couldn’t be sure.
She closed the driver’s side door and walked back to her truck, finding a sliver of comfort in having Scott in her ear.
This was another drawback of now having a supportive husband who loved her. She had lost her edge, her toughness, and the part of her that could shut down after encountering a body and keep a stiff upper lip. There was something about being fiercely independent that kept her hard, cool, calm, and collected—since she had no one to hold her up. Now that she did, she found she was more apt to be affected by things, both big and small. Not in a bad way, it was just a difference she had noticed that made her wonder. Though it was possible that as her life had eased up, gotten easier, she might have also evolved. Having a husband missing for years, her sons gone year round, and dead bodies cropping up week after week could’ve also been the cause of her toughened attitude. It had been years since anything tragic had happened. And quite frankly, she was no longer used to it.
She heard sirens blaring and turned over her shoulder to find a police cruiser pulling onto the shoulder behind her truck. When the officers stepped out, she told Scott they were here then relayed it was Gunther and Tolland. Tolland was new to the force, having recently graduated from the police academy. He was the same age as her boys. They had all gone to high school together, and though she felt Jason could do better for himself than work in construction, she was glad neither of her sons had ever considered becoming a cop.
“Evening, Kate,” said Officer Gunther. “Cookie Halpert had a fatal accident?”
“I don’t know how much of an accident it was, but she isn’t breathing.”
“We’ll take it from here,” said Officer Tolland, who offered her a sympathetic smirk. “I’m told you’ve got an engagement party to get to.”
“So I’m told,” she said, thanking them before stepping up into her truck.
She waved to them, as she carefully rounded Cookie’s car, making her way into the lane, and then drove off.
Poor Cookie, she thought before a scarier one entered her head. She hoped this wasn’t the start of something big.
As soon as she started up her long and winding driveway, easing her truck over the bumps and bends in the road, she felt remarkably calmer. Scott would handle Cookie’s death. Hopefully it hadn’t been foul play.
She parked her truck beside Scott’s and took a deep breath, as she spied through the windows. Jason’s car was parked on the far side of her driveway near the garage, and Jared’s was beside it, but she didn’t see the Langley’s Cadillac, which meant she was still on time.
Inside, Jared and Scott were in the kitchen, setting an assortment of cheese onto a platter of crackers, and Jason and Becky were canoodling on the living room couch, nursing their glasses of wine and marveling the engagement ring on Becky’s finger.
“Hi guys,” she said, tiredly, as she padded through the living room and into the kitchen.
“Mom,” said Jason, catching her attention. “Tell me you’re going to change.”
“I’m going to change,” she assured him, taking a moment to glance down at her overalls, which she rarely parted with.
In the kitchen, Scott offered her a glass of red wine, saying, “Take a load off.”
“You think I can drink this in the shower?” she teased, taking a sip.
“I think you can drink it quickly,” he countered, then leaned in, kissed her cheek, and whispered, “Try not to dwell on it. I’ll get to the bottom of things with Cookie.”
Heeding his advice, she nearly drank the whole glass then set it on the counter, kissed Jared on the cheek—though he was fully focused on making melon balls—and then started for the bathroom.
Her shower was short and rushed, and she should’ve used the time to figure out what she wanted to wear, but her mind kept going blank. The Langleys couldn’t be more different from her and Scott, who identified as hard-working, blue-collar residents of Rock Ridge. Lance Langley had inherited his family’s mustard business decades prior, Langley’s Best, which was considered an empire. And Amelia ran an inn called Over the Moon on the north side of town. They were nice people, but Kate had nothing in common with them…except that they all loved Becky.
She decided on a purple cotton dress she was sure she had worn at least a hundred times. She didn’t bother blow-drying her hair. It was warm enough that her red locks would dry on their own. But she did take a moment to stroke on a bit of mascara. Jewelry crossed her mind, but the notion was laughable. She didn’t have any of those things, and why would she? If she couldn’t wear it to paint a house or lay bathroom tiles, why buy it?
Satisfied that she looked respectable and wouldn’t embarrass Jason, she slipped her feet into a pair of flats that looked lady-like and joined everyone in the living room.
Just as Scott handed her a fresh glass of red wine, the doorbell rang and Jason hopped up from the couch.
“I’ll get it,” he said, padding through the living room and answering the door.
It never ceased to amaze her how much her boys looked and acted like Greg. The older they got, the more she could see it in their faces, hear it in their cadence, and detect it in their gentle strength. Greg had been a good man, and she had loved him, but his many secrets ultimately caused her to realize she might never have known who he really was. With Scott York, what she saw was what she got, and there was no fear his past would creep up and snatch him.
“Lance, Amelia,” Jason said from the doorway. “Come in. It’s so nice to see you.”
Jason led them into the living room, but Jared quickly mentioned, “We’ve set everything out on the back deck. It’s cooled off. Should be nice out there.”
As Jared led them through the back door that opened up onto a tiled patio, which Kate had laid down herself years ago, she gave Amelia a little squeeze then hugged Lance, happy to see them.
The evening unfolded easily. Becky was quick to bring out the various plates she had made with Jason for dinner, and Jared was mindful to refill anyone’s glass if it got low on wine.
Kate hung back in her chair. She was more comfortable listening and asking an occasional question than she was speaking freely about how her business was doing or how she was enjoying having her twin boys back in Rock Ridge for good, but when the Langleys asked about those areas, she answered lightly, kept her responses brief and pleasant, and quickly turned the tables back on them.
Scott excused himself a number of times from the meal to take calls and respond to text messages, all of which Kate sensed were in regard to Cookie Halpert.
Rock Ridge had virtually no crime, and ever since the Anarchist Freedom Network had been driven out of town, there had been no murders or serious crimes. Before tonight, Scott rarely left the dinner table for a call, because he didn’t receive many.
After dinner, Becky was going on about the wedding arrangements. Often she shot Jason a loving smile, taking hold of his hand and teasing him that he was more or less lost when it came to picking out paper for the wedding invitations or deciding on what flowers to choose for the floral bouquets. They had set the date for early autumn, which didn’t leave them much time, not that Becky seemed da
unted. She hadn’t been working ever since moving in with Jason in his house on the other side of town, so she felt it would be no problem to fully focus and pull this wedding together in just a few months.
For the fourth time that evening, Scott excused himself after his cell phone started vibrating.
“I’ll bring out another bottle of wine,” he mentioned, before slipping through the door and into the house.
Kate excused herself as well and shut the door. When she reached the kitchen, she found Scott huddled into a secretive hunch over the counter, listening to whoever was on the other end of that call.
Making herself useful, she found a bottle of Merlot in the wine rack and opened it. By the time she pulled the cork out, Scott returned his cell to his pocket.
“Well?” she asked, eager to hear about any developments.
Scott sighed, gazing at the floor, and when he looked up and met her eyes, she knew what would come next.
“It isn’t good,” he said.
“Murder?” she whispered.
In a discreet tone, he confirmed as much, saying, “Shot in the chest.”
“So someone ran her off the road and shot her?”
“I don’t know what happened,” he admitted. “It’s getting complicated and I’m afraid I’m going to have to head out.”
“Complicated how?”
He tilted his head in a manner she was all too familiar with. It was what he did to caution her out of his business, but Kate felt she had a right to know.
“I found her,” she pointed out.
“Like you said, there was no damage to the vehicle. So if she was run off the road, she didn’t put up much of a fight. Also, it’s peculiar that she was slumped over the wheel having been shot in the chest. I’m not sure how the killer would’ve managed the angle, placing a gun to her chest with the steering wheel six inches away.”
“Do you think she was killed elsewhere then placed in her car?”
“There’s no sense in guessing,” he said, dismissing her question. “I have to get over there.”
“I can’t imagine why someone would kill her,” she said.
Mrs. Fix It Mysteries: The Complete 15-Books Cozy Mystery Series Page 48
