When she finally reached the counter, Clara looked frazzled. Her barista assistant, Mary-Beth, was in no better shape.
“Hell of a day,” said Clara, wiping her brow with her apron and making no attempt to smile. “The explosion drew them in and I cannot wait for these reporters to get the hell of out town. What’s good for business isn’t always good for sanity!”
Kate couldn’t agree more, as someone shoved her from behind. When she turned to glare at the culprit, she found a weasely young man with tortoise-shell glasses and a mortified look on his face.
“I’m so sorry. Someone knocked into me.”
Furtively, Kate stared him down until he shrank then returned her gaze to Clara, who had already poured a tall, dark roast for Kate and set it on the counter. “Please tell me Scott’s making headway on finding whoever was behind that explosion. The sooner he solves the case, the faster these vultures will fly back to wherever it is they came from.”
All she could say was that Scott was doing his best, then added, “I need to ask you...when Clifford was staying at Over the Moon...he got a discount. Did he ever mention who did him the favor?”
Exhaustively, Clara sighed, planting her palms on the counter. “Kate, we’ve been over this. I already told you all I know. Can’t you get obsessed with the current crime and not dwell on past ones?” Kate only held her gaze, and soon Clara understood current and past crimes might be one in the same. “No way.”
“Not the explosion,” she clarified in a quiet voice. The coffee shop was plagued with reporters. If ever there was a place not to talk about Tommy Barkow, this was it. “But Clifford was staying at Over the Moon, and…well...”
Under her breath, Clara said, “Don’t tell me...”
Kate merely lifted her brows to confirm what they both were thinking.
“Who?” Clara asked.
Leaning over the counter, Kate whispered, “Tommy Barkow.”
“Tommy?”
“You knew him?”
“Everyone in town with a small business in need of a website knows Tommy. He put together Cookie’s site and one for Bean There, as well.”
“Did Clifford know him?”
Turning defensive, she snapped, “You need to get off Clifford’s case. He’s dead. There’s nothing to investigate.”
“I think Tommy was killed because he found out who gave Clifford that discount at the inn.”
“Kate, I love you, but you’re pushing it. I already told you what I know.” She pushed Kate’s to-go cup of coffee across the counter in request she pay up and be on her way. In response, Kate supplied her with the cash and turned, but Clara stopped her, saying, “At least the explosion is throwing the amusement park off schedule.”
“Is it?”
“How could it not?” she countered. “The cops have taken over the area. Dean must be freaking out.”
As Kate thanked her and turned for the door, it suddenly occurred to her that the botched ransom might have been botched for reasons she hadn’t considered.
What if the kidnapper hadn’t thrown the bomb as a means to kill Lance? What if the entire setup hadn’t been a ploy to get Lance alone at the site? What if a third party jumped on the opportunity and blew up the amusement park as a means to stop its development?
It made her head reel just thinking about it. The more Kate found out, the less sense it all made, and her chest felt tight because of it.
She drank her coffee as she walked to her truck. The temperature was climbing, which wasn’t a good sign for Jared’s office unless the maintenance crew at the municipal building had gotten around to fixing the broken AC. Assuming the problem hadn’t yet been solved, she sent a quick text to Jared, explaining that she would come by to finish his office in the early evening once it cooled off.
As soon as she was settled behind the wheel, her cell vibrated with her son’s quick reply. No problem, can’t blame you.
It crossed her mind to give Jessica a heads-up call that she was on her way, but Kate couldn’t stand to sit in her truck for a moment longer. The air was hot and muggy, and unless she got rolling, she would be in danger of sweating herself into puddle.
Kate had to watch her speed while driving to the Wentworth’s house. The faster she went, the more the wind blew through the truck, which felt so good she couldn’t help but step on the gas to maximize the relief.
When she reached Jessica’s house, she checked the road was clear in both directions then swung out, threw her truck into reverse, and backed up the driveway so that her supplies in the truck bed would be as close as possible to the front door.
It took some clever maneuvering to get her toolkit and the boards she would need. Realizing she would have to make a few trips, she started for the front door. As she did, she heard Jessica yelling inside the house, but couldn’t make out what she was saying. She set her toolkit on the ground in favor of knocking on the door, as Bradley began arguing with his mother.
“Just wait until Dean gets home!” yelled Jessica as she opened the door.
Before Kate could greet her, Bradley stomped through the living room, shouting, “He’s not my real dad!” Then he raced up the stairs.
“Sorry about that,” said Jessica. “Teenagers.”
Was he? Technically, Bradley was eighteen, but if memory served Kate correctly, and it often did, he was a bit too old to throw a hormone-induced fit.
“Not to worry,” she said, brushing over the display. “I’m here to fix your table.”
“Of course, come in.”
“You can leave it open,” said Kate before Jessica could close the door behind her. “I’ve got a few more things to bring in.”
Leading Kate into her fashion studio that was set off from the living room, Jessica offered her a cup of coffee.
“I won’t turn you down,” she said with a smile, even though she was still hopping from her last cup of coffee.
Kate set her toolkit down and began examining the faulty table leg right as Bradley took to stomping around upstairs.
In an instant, Jessica snapped her eyes to the ceiling and yelled, “Quiet!” Then she apologized to Kate, once more.
“You guys were getting along great, I thought.”
“We were, and are,” she said with a long sigh. After taking a deep breath, she neared Kate and disclosed, “I happened upon some...items in his room. Now we’re in the midst of a cliché fight.”
“Items?”
“He says it’s not his.” Jessica rolled her eyes at how trite the conflict was. “Yeah, like I’ll buy that. Oh, but please don’t tell anyone.”
Kate shook her head, indicating she wouldn’t.
“It’s just that Dean is going through so much right now. And with all those reporters in town and his high hopes of being reelected...we can’t survive a scandal.”
Dean had been doing a fine job as mayor, but at the end of the summer, all of Rock Ridge would take a vote on whether or not he could serve another term.
“His whole plan with the amusement park,” she went on, “was to get Rock Ridge back on financial track. Clearly, that’s going to be a challenge, thanks to the recent destruction. Dean was up all night worrying he would lose the residents’ confidence, and if word gets out that Bradley is selling drugs—”
“Bradley is selling drugs?” she asked, alarmed.
Again, Jessica sighed. “I don’t know that he’s selling, but I found a large box filled to the brim with what appeared to be white powder packed in plastic bags. Why would he have that kind of quantity if it was a recreational habit?”
“My God,” said Kate, absorbing the magnitude of the situation.
It sounded an awful lot like the drugs Daisy had dropped off at the Langleys’ mustard warehouse.
Chapter Four
After a solid night’s sleep beside Scott, who had actually made it home in time for dinner, Kate woke with the sun five minutes before her alarm sounded, showered and dressed, and was out the door.
The
plan for the day, which had been much easier to devise than it had been yesterday, was to finish up Jared’s office before the temperature rose and then swing over to Meredith Joste’s house. Justina of Carnegie Real Estate was proceeding to sell Meredith’s art deco house, but with all of the foot traffic passing through during her open houses, there had been damage to the upstairs bathroom. Though it was only Justina’s guess, one of the youngsters of a wealthy couple had thrown a waste bin against the bathroom mirror, cracking it straight down the center.
Using her time wisely, Kate drove to Grayson’s Hardware and hunted through the bathroom aisle for a mirror that matched the photo Justina had sent to her cell phone.
As she honed in on one that suited Justina’s specifications, Larry trailed after her.
“I heard about Tommy Barkow,” he commented as if to get Kate to spill details she might know. “He did Grayson’s website, you know.”
Facing him, she asked, “You have a website?”
“It was one of our larger expenses last year. No one uses it, though.”
It didn’t surprise her. Most contractors spent their days out on jobs and not hunched over their computers making online orders.
“He was a nice guy. Young,” he went on, ruminating the finer points of Tommy’s characteristics. “He went to MIT, I heard. He should’ve been a chemical engineer and not stuck in Rock Ridge making a living doing tech support.”
“I never met him,” she said. “Did he grow up here?”
Larry shrugged, implying Tommy had, which was the only logical reason he would stay in Pennsylvania after graduating from the world-renowned technical institution in Massachusetts.
Pulling a large mirror off the shelf, she said, “This one looks good.”
“I’ll get that rung up for you.”
“Hey, Larry?”
He rested the bottom edge of the mirror on his work boot and gave her his full attention.
“Would it be possible to start another tab with you?”
He chuckled. “Sure.”
She had been doing fine with her finances and splitting expenses with Scott ever since they’d gotten married. It had lifted a huge weight from her shoulders. But Jason hadn’t been working consistently. Dean had agreed to give Jason a day to shake off the blow of the botched ransom exchange, but one day of recovery was no guarantee her son would bounce back. He might need a little help with his bills.
Larry scanned the mirror into his computer and then typed away on the keyboard, entering the item under a new tab. “Need help getting that out to your truck?” he asked, as he slid the mirror from the counter, Kate gripping its sides to help him.
She tested the mirror’s weight then decided, “I can handle it. Thanks again!”
After opening the drop-door at the back of her truck, she gingerly slid the mirror into the bed. It wasn’t exactly resting flat since there was a shallow pile of wood beneath it, the materials she hadn’t needed to fix Jessica’s table yesterday, but Kate figured if she drove slow, the mirror wouldn’t crack.
The mayor’s office was quiet when she stepped into the anteroom with her toolkit. Dean was tucked in his office with the door open just a crack. She could hear him speaking, and it sounded like he was on a stressful telephone call.
As she passed through, glancing at the empty receptionist’s desk, she found Jared at his desk in the hallway.
“Oh thank God,” he said, popping out of his chair to give her a hug. “Please tell me you’ll be done in a few hours, so I don’t have to work in the hallway anymore.”
“I’ll do my best,” she said, as she felt cool air breezing through. “They fixed the AC?”
“Miracle of miracles.”
She set her toolkit beside the furniture pieces she would need to assemble in his new office.
Itemizing the boxes, Jared said, “All you have to do is the shelving unit, and I bought these two smaller ones. Also, I found this on the sidewalk.” He gave a coffee table a little kick with his foot and Kate smiled.
“You’re going to need a couch,” she commented, visualizing how to make his office cozy as well as an adequate workspace.
“Shocks me what people toss on the curb for the garbage man,” said Jared. “If you need anything, I’m right out here.”
“Oh hey,” she said, catching him. When he met her gaze, she asked, “How’s Jason doing?”
Jared pressed his mouth into a hard line and she was sorry she asked. “I don’t know how he’s doing. I can tell you what he’s not doing—answering my calls, responding to my texts, coming to the door when I stop by the house.”
“Please tell me that’s because he’s busy at work at the amusement park.”
“Not by a long shot. Truth be told, I don’t know where the hell he disappears to.”
“Okay, look,” she said, nearing him. “I don’t want him to get behind on his bills.”
“How are you going to prevent that?”
“I was thinking of swinging by the bank and paying for his upcoming mortgages. Maybe sending a check in to cover a few months of the electric and gas.”
“Mom, you shouldn’t have to do that.”
“I’m not going to let his life fall apart.”
Jared grasped her shoulders and offered a weary smirk. “I’m not sure anyone cares more than you. It’s your Achilles’ heel, you know that, right?”
She laughed but it wavered badly. “Yeah, I know.”
When Jared left her, she used a box cutter to strip away the packaging on one of the smaller shelving units and got to work.
In a matter of hours, she assembled all three units and then helped Jared carry his desk into the room. He seemed impressed, walking around his new office and taking in the overall feel of it.
“I think you’re right about the couch,” he remarked. “Oh, and I know your schedule might be hectic, but I put in a request for a window.”
“You did?”
“It’s getting bureaucratic, but management told me if I get a building permit, I can knock out a square in the wall right here and install a window.”
“You mean I can, if I get a permit,” she teased.
“Do you have time?”
“It’s a big job,” she said. “I’d need to check with the town to see if there’s asbestos in the wall. You might be looking at at least a week out in the hallway.”
“It’ll be worth it,” he said. “I’m excited about my new office, and I don’t want it to feel like a dungeon.”
She couldn’t agree more, and as she lifted her toolkit she told him she would get the ball rolling.
Kate took her time passing through the anteroom. Her eyes were glued to Dean’s door and her ears pricked up, overhearing his conversation. It sounded like the mayor was pleading with an investor, and after the long night he must have had, coming home and learning of Bradley’s foray into selling drugs, Kate did not envy him one bit.
It seemed more lives than one were falling apart.
When she reached her truck, she gave Justina a quick call.
“You know where the key is,” she said in a rushed tone on the other end of the call. “I haven’t scheduled any open houses for the rest of the day, but would like to show the place around six. Can you be squared away by then?”
“Unless something unforeseeable happens.”
Justina grumbled about unforeseeable happenings being the trend around here, then hung up.
The drive to the art deco house across town was irksome. Every time the road cleared of traffic, a news van would cut in front of Kate’s truck and slow to a snail’s pace as if breaking news were happening on the shoulder. Several times she tried barreling up the double yellow to pass one of the trucks, but only once did she succeed.
When she finally reached Meredith’s house, her nerves calmed, but only by a fraction. It unnerved her to anticipate setting foot in the same place where she had found a murder weapon. But she reminded herself that Meredith Joste was in prison for her involvem
ent with Daisy’s drug ring, the more prominent characters of which had yet to be discovered. Daisy had been incarcerated, as well, but Rock Ridge felt no safer because of it.
Shaking off her anxiety, Kate climbed out of her truck and rounded to the bed where she pulled on a pair of work gloves. With the mirror in her hands, she walked to the front door, found the key after propping the mirror against the house, and unlocked the door.
Once she placed the mirror in the upstairs bathroom, eyeing the cracked one on the wall—it looked like a kaleidoscope—she doubled back for her toolkit. As soon as she had it in her grasp, a white sedan pulled up along the curb on the opposite side of the street.
Thinking little of it, Kate made her way back through the house. When she reached the bathroom, she used a Phillips-head screwdriver to loosen the fixtures framing the damaged mirror.
She jolted, hearing a woman call up from the foyer. “Hello?”
Muscling a chunk of the mirror to the ground, Kate cursed herself that she had forgotten to shut the front door.
“Hello?” the woman called out again, her high heels clicking across the wooden floor. “I saw the for-sale sign in the front yard, is anyone here?”
“Hang on!” Kate said, stripping her work gloves off. Quickly, she padded down the hallway and descended the stairs to find a polished-looking woman standing in the living room.
By Kate’s estimation, the woman appeared to be in her mid-thirties, and she wasn’t dressed for the weather. Instead, she wore a dark, designer suit that seemed as fashionable as it was crisp.
“Are you with Carnegie Real Estate?” she asked, gesturing towards the door. “That’s who’s selling the house, correct? It’s on the sign out there.”
“I don’t work for Carnegie, no,” said Kate, taking a few shy steps towards the stranger. “I’m doing a little fix-it job upstairs. The house won’t be open to show until tonight, around six.”
“I’m here now,” said the woman with a quick blink. “Donna Kramer.”
“Nice to meet you, Donna.” Kate made an awkward attempt to shake Donna’s hand then shuffled back. “Like I said, Justina from Carnegie will be here at six.”
Mrs. Fix It Mysteries: The Complete 15-Books Cozy Mystery Series Page 69
