Ridiculous!
She pushed the notion from her mind and drove off toward the center of town where she stopped in at Grayson’s Hardware. She had every right to resume working on the old Victorian house and also fulfill Detective Kilroy’s request, but not for the reason he had asked.
Since the police now knew who the murder victim was, they wouldn’t need to date the asphalt she in which she had been entombed. However, Kate might be able to figure out where the killer had bought asphalt if she could ascertain what it was made of and cross-reference it with hardware stores around Rock Ridge as well as contractors who worked in the area at the time.
Though Kate wasn’t Mrs. Hyatt’s biggest fan, she had a hard time envisioning the woman, who would’ve been in her sixties at the time of the murder, mixing and pouring asphalt in a basement.
“Morning, Larry!” she said, approaching the hardware store owner as he was pouring over the morning paper behind the counter. When he lifted his eyes, she asked, “Do you have any oxidization kits?”
“Ah... I believe so.” Stepping out from behind the counter, Larry led her to the very back of the store, asking, “You’re back to work at the Roberts’ house?”
“Sure am.”
“How’s that jackhammer working out?”
“Well,” she started, suddenly wondering if she would need it anymore. Her plan for the day was to reinforce the brick wall where it was leaning precariously, after testing the asphalt.
Larry plucked a kit off the shelf and handed it to her.
“Hey, was Grayson’s in operation about fifteen years ago?” she asked since it was before she had begun her fix-it business.
“Without a doubt,” he told her, as they returned to the counter.
“Do your records go that far back?”
“If you count being in a box somewhere...probably. Why?”
She might not have to buy the kit. “How bothersome would it be to pull up all the asphalt sales from about fifteen years ago?”
Larry widened his eyes and scratched his head.
“That bad, huh?”
“It’ll take some time, but I can tackle it in between customers.”
“I would need records of any individuals who purchased it,” she clarified. “Not contractors who bought in bulk.”
“Is this about that body that was found in the Roberts’ house?” When she nodded, he asked, “I thought Scott caught the killer, that elderly woman, Mrs. Hyatt.”
“She may have done it,” said Kate. “But I wonder.”
“Oh, hey, are you feeling any better?”
Kate cocked her brow. “Carly tells you everything, doesn’t she?”
Larry let out a breathy laugh. “She does, but actually Olivia Tartt mentioned you were in the midst of a health scare.”
“What?” she asked, outraged. “When did she mention that to you?”
“I was standing in line behind her at Bean There. She had very little tact, I might add. She spoke loudly and a bunch of people overheard.”
Kate realized she had balled her hands into fists, but she managed to say, “I’m fine. In fact my doctor called me this morning and I’m in tip-top shape.”
“Glad to hear it. So, the kit?”
“Might as well. What’ll it be?”
After paying for the kit in cash, she started for her truck. Visions of annihilating Olivia Tartt formed at the forefront of her mind, and they didn’t subside until she was pulling up along the curb at the Robert’s house, where she immediately noticed a white SUV in the driveway.
Recognizing the vehicle, she hopped out, grabbed the oxidization kit and her toolbox from the truck bed, and hurried through the front door, which was open.
Amy Roberts seemed deep in the throes of a tense conversation with her husband, Jack, in the living room, but they both hushed when Kate entered the room.
The 27-year-old woman looked as polished as ever in her tailored Chanel suit. Her blonde hair was slicked back in a low bun, giving her a professional appearance, which her husband didn’t at all match. Jack was a full-time writer, though his novels had never done well, and he looked the part in rumpled khaki’s, a stained buttoned down shirt, and corduroy jacket with patches on the elbows.
“Such horrifying news,” said Amy, as she clicked her way over to Kate to shake her hand.
“I was certainly stunned,” she agreed.
Quickly, Amy stated, “The police have finished their business here so I’m hoping you can resume renovating and we can stay on schedule?”
“That’s why I’m here,” said Kate. “Why are you here?”
“Oh, the police had a few questions.”
Kate eyed Jack for a moment. His expression wasn’t nearly as reserved as his wife’s was. “I was sorry to hear it was your mother.”
Amy’s smile turned stiff then slid off her face. “It came as quite a surprise. I always thought she ran off when I was twelve.”
“So, you heard Mrs. Hyatt was arrested...”
Jack stepped up, offering, “We’re just relieved the entire matter is resolved.”
Questioning their blind faith, she asked, “You’re certain she did it?”
“You’re certain your husband is wrong?” Amy countered.
Kate found it curious that Amy had purchased the very house her mother had been murdered in. “Was your mother close with Mrs. Hyatt?”
“Not that I can recall, but I was only twelve. My perspective was limited.”
“Have you spoken with your father at all?”
“If what you’re getting at is that my father may have done it, I doubt that. He was a violent man. If he were going to kill my mother, he would’ve beaten her to death. Poisoning wasn’t his style. Now, if you’re finished minding my business instead of your own, I’d appreciate it if you could finish this house so we can flip it.”
Poisoned? Kate absorbed the detail as she apologized and made for the cellar stairs. But when she reached them, she turned. “You knew I’d find your mother’s body in the basement, didn’t you?”
“If you’re insinuating I killed my own mother when I was a skinny, twelve-year-old girl, you are certifiable.”
“I’m not insinuating that. I’m wondering who told you.”
“In fact, it was Mrs. Hyatt.”
“So she incriminated herself?”
“Apparently. She wanted me to burn this house to the ground.”
Kate suddenly realized that Amy would’ve been approximately the same age as Maxwell Stone, the kid who had taken photos of Mrs. Hyatt with Doris Chestnut. “Were you friendly with Maxwell Stone?”
Amy glared at her. “No. I wasn’t.”
Thinking on her feet, she asked, “Do you happen to remember what Maxwell’s parent did for a living?”
“I’m not interested in indulging your curiosity, Mrs. Fix It—”
“Wouldn’t you like to feel certain that the police have caught the right person?” she challenged.
Amy let out a frustrated sigh. “His mother was a homemaker and his father worked in construction. Why?”
“Did you ever suspect your mother was having an affair?”
Bursting with sudden anger, Jack yelled, “You’re fired! Get the hell out! You’ll not badger my wife! She’s already spoken with the police. Get the hell out!”
Kate held her head high and walked confidently out of the living room, her fatigue once again having disappeared in the face of adversity.
But rather than climb into her truck when she reached the sidewalk, she glanced up and down the street, and then quickly jogged to the other side where she hurried up the walkway of the house where she presumed Maxwell Stone and his construction-worker father had lived.
After glancing over her shoulder to be certain that Jack hadn’t followed her out, she knocked on the front door, tool kit in hand.
Calling faintly from deep within the house, a man shouted, “Who is it?”
She went with “Kate Flaherty,” to avoid associati
on with the Police Chief, “local handy woman.”
A moment later the door opened, drawing inward on an older gentleman with light-gray hair and spectacles on his face. Judging from his posture, he looked strong as an ox, though he was dressed in casual summer wear.
“Hello, Mr. Stone?”
“That’s right. What is this about?” He was staring at her tool kit and most likely assuming she was there by mistake.
“I’ll be honest with you, I have a few questions about your son, Maxwell, and to sweeten the deal, I’d like to fix something in your house.”
“What?” he asked.
“Whatever needs fixing.”
He seemed to mull her offer over and mentioned, “The kitchen sink has an irritating drip. I placed a sponge under it but it still aggravates me to no end.”
“Lead the way.”
As he did, Mr. Stone explained, “I’m not sure what you want to know, but I probably won’t be much help.”
Since Kate was less interested in Maxwell than she was in his father, she begged to differ, but only in her head.
As she produced her wrench from her tool kit and opened the cabinets beneath the kitchen sink, she asked, “Maxwell was quite the young photographer.”
“He lives over on Rock Ridge Boulevard, you know. You could ask him yourself.”
“Your impression will do,” she said, getting to work with tightening a bolt that secured the cold water pipe in place.
“Sure, he took some shots,” he allowed, just as his wife strode into the kitchen.
In a singsong tone, Mrs. Stone asked, “What’s going on?”
But the man quickly ushered her out of the room, explaining how he was having the drip fixed. “Keep knitting. It’s too warm in the kitchen, you know that.”
When he returned, Kate straightened up from the floor and ran the faucet then shut it off, checking that it would no longer drip.
“Did Maxwell take an interest in Doris Chestnut?”
Mr. Stone turned serious. “Is this about those police across the street? I read the paper. Maxwell was only trying to help.”
“I’m sure he was,” she said quickly. “But why would he take photos of her on that particular night?”
“I’m sure you can ask him that yourself.”
“You work in construction?”
“I used to. Where are you going with this?” he asked, but he didn’t allow her to answer. As soon as he caught sight of the faucet, he stated, “Thanks for your help, now if you’ll excuse us.”
As he ushered Kate to the front door, she peered into the living room where Mrs. Stone was wringing her hands and pacing.
“Do you believe in the House of Slaughter legend?” she asked before stepping outside.
Definitively, he said, “No,” and shoved her out onto the landing, and then slammed the door in her face, giving Kate the distinct impression that he was hiding something.
Undeterred, she jogged across the street and hopped into her truck, feeling strangely alive. She had never been one to thrive in the face of confrontation; in fact, she generally avoided it. But once again her fatigue had been dispelled. She didn’t exactly want to commit herself to being in arguments for the rest of her life, but until her doctor figured out the precise source of her fatigue, she was strangely happy to have found a method for alleviating it in the meantime.
As she drove back toward the heart of Rock Ridge, a disturbing notion occurred to her. What if being angry wasn’t simply a method to lift her fatigue, but a symptom of the Victorian house taking hold? Though she knew it was insane logic, she couldn’t help but consider it. The house had made her tired, as Mrs. Hyatt had pointed out. Then came the nightmares, and gradually she had understood that getting riled up made her feel oddly better. Was that what had driven the killer to murder?
She hated that she was buying into such nonsense, but couldn’t deny that it made the worst kind of sense. But why her?
And how could the emerald ring help?
She reasoned that it couldn’t, and she told herself to stop being ridiculous as she pulled into the parking lot in front of the precinct where Mrs. Hyatt was being held in a jail cell.
The last thing she needed was for Scott to catch her sneaking down to the jail, but there was a fairly good chance he would be in his office, if not meeting with his officers in the bullpen, so she hopped out of her truck, feeling suddenly tired all over again now that she’d had a chance to cool off during the ten-minute drive.
As soon as she pulled the entrance door open, her eyes were locked on the receptionist whose desk stood between the door and the detectives’ stations. The woman seemed engrossed in a telephone call and behind her the room looked quiet. Walking quickly toward the stairwell opposite the receptionist, Kate kept her head down and didn’t breathe until she was safely hurrying down the stairs.
When she reached the guard outside the jail cells, she made quick mention of needing to speak with Mrs. Hyatt, but didn’t elaborate her reason. Recognizing her, the guard didn’t give her a hard time, and soon she was on the other side of the door.
The cells were mostly empty except for a few drunks sleeping off their inebriation. As she inched along, she found Mrs. Hyatt seated on a bench in the third cell to her left.
The woman looked so small and exhausted. She could barely lift her eyes to meet Kate’s gaze.
“”If you’re done playing games, I’d like to help you,” she stated.
“Help me how?”
“I don’t think you killed Doris.”
“I don’t either.”
Kate wrapped her hands around the bars not only to get as close to Mrs. Hyatt as possible, but because she feared she might faint again if she didn’t.
“You gave Doris that ring and you led her into that house that night,” she pointed out. “Maxwell Stone took photos of you.”
“Maxwell Stone is a little—”
“I think his father killed Doris,” she interrupted before the woman could call Maxwell a terrible name. “He worked in construction. He could’ve easily mixed asphalt. He would’ve been strong enough to bury her. But Doris was poisoned.”
“If you say so.”
“You don’t want to get out of here?” she challenged.
“I can’t hurt anyone if I’m locked behind bars.”
“You couldn’t hurt anyone anyway, look at you.”
Mrs. Hyatt frowned.
“And you haven’t hurt anyone in all your years in Rock Ridge,” Kate pointed out.
“The police would disagree.”
“Have you asked for a lawyer at least?”
Grumbling, the elderly woman mentioned a public defender, which Kate knew would do very little to get her acquitted of all charges. Finally, Mrs. Hyatt rose to her feet, bracing her walker, and began inching toward the bars. When she reached them, she said, “I loved Doris. I felt a kinship with her. But I also suspected she killed my son. That’s why I brought her into that house: to talk and to confront her, to tell her to leave town. I didn’t kill her, but I did leave alone that night. If the police knew this, they would view it as all the more reason for me to poison Doris.”
“Why would Doris kill your son?”
“Because he wanted the ring back. I gave it to Doris to protect her from the house, to prevent her from killing. But my son thought I should be wearing it. He saw my giving the ring away as an act of suicide. And when he demanded it back, she killed him, thinking there was no other way to escape the curse. But she didn’t escape it, did she? She did kill, and then she was murdered as well.”
“By Mr. Stone,” she supplied.
“I really don’t know.”
“Is there anything you can tell me, and please, no games?”
Mrs. Hyatt pressed her wrinkly face between the bars. “The nightmares have started, haven’t they?”
“Oh, would you stop with all of that?”
“Kate, I’m not playing games. I’m telling you what you want to know. The rin
g holds the answers.”
“You’re going to die in here; you realize that, don’t you? I’m trying to help you and you’re fighting me.”
“The ring...”
Frustrated, Kate backed away from the bars, shaking her head. Maybe the old woman should be locked up, but even if she was, Kate wasn’t going to rest until the real killer was caught. She wasn’t going to go to bed every night knowing a murderer was living in Rock Ridge. She just wasn’t.
After making her slow way up the stairs and stopping several times to catch her breath, she spilled out into the precinct lobby where Detective Kilroy spotted her as he emerged from the bullpen.
“Kate!” he exclaimed, approaching her quickly.
“Yes, Kilroy?”
He placed a warm hand on her shoulder and stared down at her empathetically. “How’re you feeling?”
She glared at him. “Let me guess, Olivia?”
Kilroy shot her a sly grin, which told her Olivia hadn’t so much tracked the detective down to spill the beans, but rather she might have mentioned it as pillow talk.
“Please tell me you’re smarter than I think you are,” she said dryly. When he cocked his brow, she said, “If she’s dating you, it’s only to get a story.”
“Dating? Oh, no, I’m not dating her.”
“Then you’re a bigger idiot than I thought.”
“Hey, now,” he objected, but she was already marching through the lobby. She whipped the door open, suddenly filled with a burst of energy from the confrontation and it didn’t drop until she was pulling along the curb outside of the Rock Ridge Tribune.
She stormed into the building, fighting her plummeting energy, and scanned from face to face looking for Olivia who was dictating verbatim as she hovered over one of the rookie reporters.
Wasting no time, Kate barreled through, advancing on the woman and feeling deep down like she might drop, all the while reminding herself: ‘get angry and you’ll get your energy back!’
“I need to speak with you, Tartt,” she demanded.
An easy smile came over Olivia’s expression. “Yes, I imagine you do.”
Kate held her tongue until they were tucked inside the editor’s office, but the second the door was shut behind her she let her grievances fly.
“How dare you?”
Mrs. Fix It Mysteries: The Complete 15-Books Cozy Mystery Series Page 99
