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

by Belle Knudson

  But she was able to continue. “It was Becky who tried to stop it. And two days later, she was abducted.”

  “My God,” said Kate, her voice a whisper.

  “I’m sorry I suspected Jason, but I don’t trust anyone. No one in Rock Ridge is safe, and no one can be trusted. And I’m telling you, these convicts getting out of prison and taking these lowly positions around town...they’re the bottom of the same food chain. They all have something to do with it. This town is rotting from the inside out.”

  “But what role could Tommy have possibly been playing?”

  “If I knew I would tell you. All I know is that I didn’t kill him.”

  “But Amelia, you don’t have an alibi.”

  She fell silent. When she finally spoke, her voice was a thread. “Lance was in the hospital. I’ve been drinking a lot. I’m fairly certain I was either on my way to the hospital after being at the house or vice versa, but I really can’t remember.”

  “Why won’t you tell Scott any of this?”

  “Kate, I can’t! You don’t know how dangerous these people are! They could be anywhere. They’re everywhere! And I’m not afraid to tell you that I’d be safer in prison than walking down the sidewalk in broad daylight should they ever find out I spoke with the police. It’s bad enough we accepted Scott’s help for the ransom exchange, and it’s also no wonder it went badly. You have to promise me you aren’t going to tell him any of this. Not one word.”

  “I can’t promise that.”

  “You have to! Or it’ll be my life! Lance’s life! God only knows what they’re doing to Becky at this very moment! Please!”

  Kate didn’t have the heart to affirm she couldn’t keep a secret like this, or any secret, for that matter, from Scott...not for long, anyway. So she said nothing and offered Amelia a sad smirk, telling her it would be okay.

  To avoid lying to Scott, she walked through the back of the building rather than return to the homicide floor. Though it was hard to imagine, she actually believed every word Amelia told her. It made far more sense than assuming the Langleys were a pair of kingpins running a drug trafficking ring.

  But who was behind the ring? And what did it have to do with Tommy Barkow’s murder?

  She was shaken from the thought when she saw Becky pass along the sidewalk at the other end of the alley.

  Becky?

  Stunned, Kate took off running through the alley, desperate to catch up to the young woman who had been the center of so much controversy.

  Chapter Seven

  As Kate rounded onto the sidewalk, spying Becky eight yards up the sidewalk, she slowed her pace to a brisk walk so as not to draw attention to herself. There were a number of people about, strolling lazily down the block and pausing to glance in store windows.

  Weaving her way through pedestrians, Kate closed in on Becky, who she noticed was dressed differently than her usual style. Rather than wearing a sundress or skirt, which was her preference, Becky donned jean shorts and a loose-fitting, though trendy, tee shirt. Her hair looked a bit different, as well. Its brown shade wasn’t quite as dark as Kate remembered.

  Becky reached Harriet’s Hairdos and stilled on the sidewalk to glance at her wristwatch, giving Kate just enough time to catch her before she could duck inside the salon.

  Grabbing her arm from behind, Kate said, “Becky?” The young woman whipped around, startled and confused.

  “Excuse you!” she objected, yanking her arm free, just as Kate flinched at the sight of her.

  Now that she was staring at the woman—her bright blue eyes, the particular scoop of her button nose, the grimace on her face that couldn’t hide the fact that her mouth was much narrower than Becky’s—Kate realized she hadn’t found her son’s fiancée at all, but a random stranger.

  “I’m so sorry,” Kate stammered. “I thought you were someone else.”

  “Well I’m not,” she snapped, put off by the interruption.

  Shifting her tone, Kate said, “I’m sorry, but you look like Becky Langley.”

  The woman stared at her a beat, as though Kate had two heads, and then reached for the salon door but didn’t yank it open. Kate was still holding her arm.

  “I’ve seen you around.”

  The woman didn’t look amused.

  Kate unhanded her, but immediately asked, “Why were you at the amusement park when that bomb went off?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I’m late for my hair appointment.”

  “You were there,” she pressed, holding the door closed with her palm to bar the woman’s entry. “I saw you on a surveillance monitor. You were hiding behind a stack of pipes. What were you doing there?”

  “It’s a free country.”

  “It isn’t,” she countered. “And the police had cleared the entire park that night.”

  “Oh, sure,” she said sarcastically. “Give the ex-con a hard time. Did it ever occur to you that all of us are staying out of trouble and turning our lives around?”

  It hadn’t, but stating as much would likely end this conversation, if Kate could call it that.

  Instead, she asked, “What’s your name?”

  Skeptically, she said, “Gillian. Gillian O’Reilly. Now let me through.”

  “Tell me what you were doing there that night.”

  “And you’ll let me in?” She snorted a laugh. “What makes you the gatekeeper?”

  Kate cringed at the thought of playing a bully, or worse, using her marriage to intimidate, but she had been spotting this Becky imposter around town for weeks. The moment was too precious to let it slip through her fingers.

  “I’m the gatekeeper, if you want to call me that,” she stated frankly. “I’m the police chief’s wife, so you can either tell me what you were doing there or you can tell Scott York. Either way, you’re not getting around this.”

  Gillian folded her arms and took a step back, sinking into her hip like a sulking child, who knew she wouldn’t get her way.

  “I didn’t have a choice, all right?”

  “Why?” Kate tried to ignore the knots that were twisting in her stomach. No choice? There seemed to be a lot of that going around.

  “I was supposed to get the cash.”

  Stunned, Kate asked, “Are you a part of the kidnapping?”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” she quickly interrupted. “I just do what I’m told. It wasn’t easy getting released from prison. You could say I made a back-alley deal. I just do what I’m told when I’m told. That’s it.”

  “Who tells you what to do?”

  “Anonymous notes left at my apartment.”

  “What else have you done?”

  “Nothing bad...that I know of. I don’t ask questions. It’s not like I interface with these people. Mainly I’ve been doing things for Tommy.”

  “Who was killed.”

  “I know he was killed. He was a slave.”

  “Stop being vague,” Kate ordered.

  Gillian stared at her for a long moment. “You might not be aware of it, but Rock Ridge has a hell of a drug problem. It gets sold elsewhere, but manufactured right here. And Tommy was making it.”

  Suddenly, Tommy’s chemical engineering degree from MIT made a great deal of sense.

  Gillian went on. “I don’t know anything, not for sure, but I would guess the higher-ups lost money on a shipment. Maybe someone storing the product got rid of it, and I would guess that someone is Becky Langley. So they took her and got nowhere. So they tried to get the money from her parents. All I know is that I was supposed to get the cash and that explosion was completely unexpected. I’ve been worried sick these past few days that they’d come after me to kill me because of it.”

  “Was Becky there that night?” Kate wasn’t sure why she needed to torture herself like this, but it was killing her that Becky could’ve been within arm’s reach, yet the police failed to grasp hold.

  Gillian frowned. “No. No one was there. As far as I could tell,
whoever’s behind this, whoever is at the top of this twisted pyramid had no intention of upholding their end of the deal. Which is why I wouldn’t cross them. And if you tell your police chief husband about any of this, I’ll deny it outright. I’m not going back to prison. And I sure as hell ain’t getting killed for it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get my hair dyed.”

  Gillian thrust the door open and disappeared inside the salon.

  If Tommy was the chemist making the drugs and even Gillian didn’t know who was controlling her, then it stood to reason Kate might never find out who killed him. And in the same vein, she might never find out who had taken Becky.

  Jason might never get Becky back.

  It was with a heavy heart that she walked back to her truck, opened the door, and plopped behind the wheel. Drawing her cell phone from her overalls, she considered what she might tell Scott. The only concrete information she had gotten from Gillian was that Tommy was making the drugs, which was a huge piece, but didn’t allude to who he had been working for, presumably the same person who had taken Becky.

  She composed a text message to Scott and sent it through. His response was a call and she picked up right away.

  “You left without telling me what Amelia said.”

  Kate sighed. “She’s terrified. Lance and she are being threatened. I doubt she killed Tommy.” As Kate detailed the ins and outs of her conversation with Amelia and explained Gillian O’Reilly’s role, she turned the key in the ignition and left her truck idling.

  Once during their call she heard a call-waiting beep, but ignored it in favor of listening to Scott’s take on the situation. One thing was for certain. The more they learned, the less it all made sense.

  When finally he let her go, she listened to the voice-mail message that had come in. It was Bobbi Hamden in the permits department telling her she had been cleared to put in a window at the mayor’s office.

  Kate took a deep breath, trying to shake off the mysteries that swarmed her. At least she would be able to spend a little time with Jared. The thought was just enough to keep her going, as she drove to Grayson’s Hardware, making a mental inventory of the supplies she would need to tackle the complex job of knocking out part of a wall to install a window.

  By the time she arrived at Grayson’s and noticed Larry in the gardening aisle helping a few customers decide on the best fertilizer, she knew exactly what she needed to buy. She made a beeline for the dollies beside the register and took to the window aisle.

  Larry called out, “I’ll be with you in a sec, Kate!”

  “Take your time!” she said, as she began eyeing the various window options. When she found one she liked, she eased it off the shelf, setting it gingerly on the dolly.

  Larry jogged towards her and wiped his brow, as he came to a stop.

  “I got the go-ahead to knock out Jared’s office wall to put in a window, so I’m going to need to rent an electric saw and possibly a handheld jack.”

  “Christ, did you get the blueprints to avoid electrical wiring?”

  “They’re in Bobbi Hamden’s office.”

  Larry whistled. “It’s a big job. The municipal building is brick and mortar, literally.”

  “Hence the jackhammer.”

  “Doesn’t sound like a one-woman job to me,” he mused.

  Until he had said it out loud, she had been denying the possibility.

  “Damn,” she grumbled. “You’re right.”

  “I’d get that skilled son of yours to help.”

  “Pull him away from the amusement park? I don’t want to get him in trouble with Dean.”

  “Dean’s doing great,” he countered. “You didn’t hear?”

  Hear? No, she hadn’t. It seemed the mayor’s mood rose and fell as starkly as the roller coaster his park was attempting to build.

  “They’re back on track,” Larry went on. “They got new funding, hired three times as many laborers. That park’s going to be open by the end of the summer.”

  “Great,” she said dryly. Just what Rock Ridge needed—a booming autumn tourist season right when unknown drug lords were flooding this town with cocaine.

  “You don’t sound happy,” he observed. When she shrugged, he offered his two cents. “I decided it’ll be a good thing, having the amusement park. Happiness is a choice, you know?”

  “That’s one way of looking at it.”

  “Let me get you squared away with the rental equipment,” he said. “Bring your truck around back?” He took the dolly from her. “You need a window frame.”

  “Yeah, it’s higher than I can reach,” she said, indicating the frame she wanted.

  Carefully, Larry drew it off the shelf and delicately set it beside the windowpane. “I’ll get all this on your tab.”

  “Thanks, Larry,” she said, glad she didn’t have to ask.

  As Larry made his way down the aisle, pushing the dolly towards the register, Kate jogged ahead, climbed in her truck, and drove it around the side of Grayson’s where she left it idling and lowered the drop-door, ready to help Larry load her up as soon as he appeared with the rental equipment.

  Passing through the back door with the equipment on a dolly, Larry made slow work of nearing the back of her truck. Together they lifted the handheld jack into the bed, followed by the rest of the equipment. The window frame and pane were last in the truck bed, and soon Kate drove off through the center of town.

  Larry’s suggestion for her to get Jason’s help installing the window was a good one, but she would prefer Dean approve it first and foremost, which was why she asked him right away as soon as she stepped into the anteroom.

  “He’s just starting to get back on track,” Dean grumbled, glancing up from the report in his hand.

  “It simply isn’t a one-woman job,” she countered as if she was between a rock and a hard place. “Two hands aren’t enough to fit a window into the frame. I could drop it onto the sidewalk.”

  “How long would you need him?”

  “I’ll prep everything by myself,” she said, quickly calculating. “Maybe just an hour?”

  “Plus driving here and back,” he added, thinking out loud. “What time would you need him?”

  “Don’t make him do this on his lunch break.”

  “I’m not cruel, Kate Flaherty,” he said with a chuckle.

  “Then right after his lunch? Say, around one?”

  “Fine. One o’clock, one hour. Make it work.”

  As soon as Kate stepped inside Jared’s office, he rose out of his chair.

  “Jason’s going to help?” he asked, as he neared her, rolling up his sleeves. “Need help with the supplies?”

  “Honey, your desk can’t be there,” she said, noting he had positioned it right in front of the wall where the window would be going.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. I just wanted to enjoy it for a day.”

  It took three trips to bring all of her materials up to his office. After organizing them and her tools on the floor, she called Jason and listened to his ringtone blaring in her ear.

  Jared said quietly, “I doubt he’ll pick up.”

  “I’m his mother,” she said impatiently. “He’ll pick up.”

  “I like your confidence.”

  Surprisingly, he did. She kept the call brief, and though he bitched and moaned, he agreed to swing by in the early afternoon.

  Kate worked tirelessly until then, carefully scrutinizing the blueprint Bonnie had faxed up to the mayor’s office, aiming her tools with precision so as not to clip the electrical wiring, and hammering out a square in the wall. Just as she was finishing up sanding the perimeter of the square hole, Jason stepped into the doorframe, which prompted Jared to rise from his desk.

  “What do you think of my new office?” he asked his brother.

  “Looks good. I like this yellow.”

  Kate set the electric sander on the ground and gave him a hug.

  “Let me guess,” Jason went on, “yellow was your idea?”
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  “I thought he’d like it,” she said in response to his teasing tone.

  With a jab to Jared’s shoulder, Jason said, “He would.”

  Jason seemed to be in good spirits, and she couldn’t be happier to spend time with both her boys. While Jason assisted her in angling the metal frame into the hole, Jared offered directional pointers, and soon they had wedged the frame flush inside the perimeter. The windowpane was next, but with Jason’s natural strength, they easily fit the pane into position and clamped it, tightening the bolts around the metal frame.

  Just as they were finishing up, Kate noticed a buzzing sound coming from Jason’s slacks.

  His high spirits plummeted, as he scrambled to answer the call. As soon as he pressed his cell to his ear, he walked briskly from the office.

  Kate padded after him, peering around the corner, and saw him yank the anteroom door open and step out into the corridor.

  “What was that about?” she asked when Jared stood beside her.

  “I’d say that’s Dr. Jekyll. Mr. Hyde is far less mysterious and often resembles my brother.” Kate met his gaze and he added, “Watch, he won’t come back and no one will hear from him for the rest of the day.”

  It worried her.

  Kate gathered her tools and Jared helped her carry the heavier items down to the parking lot, but when they started for her truck, the blonde reporter she had encountered at Over the Moon chased after her.

  Turning her head just as the reporter broke from the fray of journalists crowding the municipal building entrance, eager to question detectives and cops heading in and out of the precinct, Kate told Jared, “Let’s be quick. I think she wants to talk to us.”

  As quick as they were, the perky blonde reporter thrust her microphone in Kate’s face and the cameraman flipped on a bright light attached to the top of his camcorder.

  “Kate Flaherty,” she asserted. “What is your response to allegations that Amelia Langley murdered Tommy Barkow?”

  “No comment,” she said, throwing her truck door open.

  “Your son is engaged to Becky Langley, the missing woman, is he not?” When Kate said nothing, but climbed up behind the wheel, the reporter shouted, “Are the two crimes connected, in your opinion?”