Pulling into the parking lot in front of Alvin’s, Kate drove into the closest parking spot she could find so that she wouldn’t have to walk too far in the heat. The store looked like a warehouse, and as she climbed out of her truck she wondered how many residents actually bought fireworks. How could a place like Alvin’s afford to stay in business?
It was muggy inside the store, which wasn’t what she expected. The industrial fans pitched near the cash register did little to cool the space. Behind the counter was a teenaged guy who seemed enthralled with his comic book. She had to clear her throat twice before he lifted his eyes.
“Yeah?” He asked and clicked his teeth against the metal lip-ring at the side of his mouth.
“I’m here to pick up an order for Dean Wentworth.”
“Ah, right,” he said, setting his comic on the counter and flipping through a binder that contained countless purchase orders. “Where are you parked?”
“Out front. Is there a loading dock I should drive to?”
“Nah, it’s cool. I can carry the boxes out. Sign here.”
She took the pen he was offering and signed her name on the signature line of the purchase order.
“Do me a favor,” he added. “If you could back in toward the entrance door?”
She wasted no time getting out to her truck, and as the warm, summer air hit her skin, she realized it had actually been hotter inside Alvin’s.
It was a matter of seconds before she had backed in toward the door, and as soon as she set her truck in Park, the kid carried the first box out. Quickly, she lowered the hatch for him to slide the box into the bed of the truck.
When he shoved the final box next to the five others he had loaded in, she caught sight of his nametag—Maxwell.
“I’m sorry,” she said abruptly. “Are you Maxwell Stone?”
He shot her a crooked smile, saying, “Yeah, that’s right.”
Thrown, she studied his face. She could’ve sworn he was a teenager, but that didn’t make sense. He should be in his early thirties if he was fourteen years old nearly two decades ago. Upon closer inspection, however, she discovered that he only dressed like a teenager. In fact, his skin and the glazed-over boredom in his eyes revealed his true age.
“I’m Kate,” she said, suddenly noticing the awkward silence that had built.
“Yeah, I know. You signed the P.O.”
“You spoke with the police about Mrs. Hyatt...you gave them photos that led to her arrest.”
He turned serious. “I’m not a fan of gossip.”
“Neither am I,” she told him. “But do you really think she killed that woman?”
“Look, lady, I already spoke with the police, and you have your fireworks.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“That’s the point.”
Maybe she could provoke him into opening up. “I think your father was having an affair with Doris Chestnut. I think that’s why you were taking photos of her.”
“That doesn’t mean Mrs. Hyatt didn’t kill her.”
Suddenly, it seemed more plausible who Amy’s real father might be—Mr. Stone. Maybe Doris hadn’t gotten involved with the construction worker after moving to Rock Ridge. Maybe she had been involved with him before and he was the reason she chose Rock Ridge as a town to escape to.
“Are you friendly with Amy Roberts?”
“Are you?” he countered, a bad attitude flaring in his tone.
“Not exactly. She fired me from working on that house.”
He snorted a laugh. “Everyone around here likes to buy into that urban legend.”
“Including Amy and Jack?”
“Including that reporter.”
“You mean Olivia?” she asked, holding her tongue on correcting him that Olivia was the editor and not a reporter. “Since you were watching that house long enough for Mrs. Hyatt to step outside alone, did you see anyone else go in?”
“No,” he stated definitively.
It gave Kate an idea, one she hadn’t considered before.
“Did you see Doris come out?”
His eyes shifted.
“She wasn’t killed there was she? She was killed somewhere else and brought back to the house.”
He said nothing.
“Do you have more photos?”
“No,” he said. “Look, I didn’t tell the police Mrs. Hyatt did it. I only turned over the photos and they made their own conclusions.”
“But you didn’t tell them Doris left the house alive,” she stated, but it was really a request for him to confirm.
“You said it yourself. My dad was sleeping with her.”
“So, he did it?”
“So, I’m not going to do or say anything that incriminates him,” he corrected.
“Between you and me, who do you think killed her?”
“Between you and me?” he asked. Kate nodded emphatically, widening her eyes. “Between you and me, I can’t stand working at Alvin’s Fireworks. I’m one hell of a contractor, though. Dean won’t hire me at Wentworth. He says I don’t project the image of someone who would work for the mayor even though Wentworth Contractors has nothing to do with the mayor’s office. He offered me a job helping kids on and off those rides at the amusement park, like that would actually be a step up from selling fireworks.”
“Are you telling me you’ll clue me in as to who killed Doris if I offer you a job?”
“Do you need an apprentice?”
His proposition told her two things. The first was that his father probably hadn’t killed Doris Chestnut. There was no way he’d trade his father’s freedom for a part-time job. The second, and even more bizarre, was that Maxwell could very well prove useful. She had been plagued with exhaustion. Until she got back on her feet and felt normal, he might be a great deal of help.
“I’m not sure I can afford to pay you—”
“I make minimum wage now and only work twenty hours a week. I can do all of your heavy lifting, and I’m great with power tools.”
“Who killed Doris?”
He pressed his mouth into a hard line. “Do we have a deal?”
“Do you actually know who killed her?”
Again, he pressed his mouth shut, fretting. “I can’t tell you who killed her. But I can tell you where she went after leaving the Victorian house.”
“Where?” she insisted.
“Do we have a deal?”
“You tell me where and I’ll hire you for one week. If what you tell me gets Mrs. Hyatt out of jail, then we have a deal.”
He debated, pacing away and plowing his fingers through his spikey hair. As soon as he circled back he said, “Deal.”
She raised her brows at him.
“I followed Doris to Celia Johnson’s house. I mean, back when Celia was married to Ken.”
“What?”
“I’m telling you.”
“Celia Johnson...?”
“Doris was in that house for a long time. Ken’s car wasn’t in the driveway. And when she finally left, she didn’t walk from the house. She ran.”
Chapter Six
Kate squeezed the brakes, rolling to a stop at the admissions gate of the amusement park where a plucky teenaged girl sat in a booth. After rolling her window down and greeting the girl, Kate mentioned the fireworks in her truck.
“It’s five dollars for an hour or twenty-five for the day,” said the girl.
“What? No, I’m hauling in the fireworks.”
The girl blinked, and then screwed her face up, repeating, “It’s five dollars for an hour.”
“There’s no way the mayor expects me to pay for parking when I’m working,” she objected, finding it a challenge to keep her tone friendly.
“I work here and I pay twenty-five dollars for every shift,” she said dryly. “Welcome to Six Flags.”
Appalled, Kate found five dollars in her wallet and forked it over.
“You can always park a half mile down the street and walk ov
er,” the girl suggested.
“With six boxes of fireworks?”
The teenager didn’t immediately see the flaw of her suggestion and pressed a button within her booth. The green bar blocking Kate’s truck lifted and she drove through, eyeing the various rides and tents in hopes that the loading area Dean had mentioned would jump out at her.
The place was massive. She had avoided coming here for years, and in that amount of time it seemed the amusement park had swelled to gargantuan proportions.
As she drove deeper through the parking lot, she spied several trucks that were on the edge of the park where it met with asphalt, so she angled her truck around a row of parked cars and came to a stop as soon as she reached what appeared to be a loading area.
She had texted Dean just before she left Alvin’s, but he hadn’t gotten back to her. She gave him a call so she wouldn’t have to ask around as to where she should deliver the boxes.
“Yeah, Kate?”
“Dean!” she said, glad to have him on the line. “I just paid five dollars to get past the gate—”
“Yeah, I know,” he said apologetically. “Be sure to pay the other twenty so you don’t get a ticket.”
“What the hell, Dean?”
“It’s not me! Six Flags has its own rules and regulations. I’m just a franchise owner and a partial one at that. I’ll reimburse you.”
She grumbled, but it seemed like a good enough solution.
“So, where should I drive these things?”
“Do you see the red and white tent?”
It took her a moment to scan the area for it, but she did and told him as much.
“Drive past it, and then hook around to the right. You’ll be driving on grass, but that’s fine. Go straight until you get to the field, and then come all the way back. I’m here with a few of my guys.”
Following his directions, which weren’t as cut and dry as they had sounded, Kate veered around vendors and rides, making her slow way toward the very back of the park that spilled out into a twelve-acre field spanning the lake. The area was pretty, and she could almost see the campground that it used to be. Once night fell and fireworks were popping over the smooth surface of the lake, it truly would be a beautiful spectacle, she thought, as her truck bounced with the bumpy terrain.
Dean was standing near a table where the field ended and the forest began. He raised his hand in the air and waved her over to a row of parked vehicles. Once she came to a stop, she killed the engine and hopped out.
“We can set the boxes on the table,” he instructed, popping the latch on the truck bed.
A few of his guys sprang to action, grabbing boxes and carrying them over to the table, which was lucky for Kate. There wasn’t a box left for her to carry.
As soon as Dean began opening the fireworks boxes to check that his order was complete, Kate angled in, saying, “Do you have something against Maxwell Stone?”
“Who?” he asked, distractedly.
“Maxwell Stone, he’s thirty-something but dresses like a skateboarder. He wanted to work at Wentworth Contractors, but you didn’t hire him.”
“Oh, Max. Yeah, I got a weird feeling from him.”
“Dean, you employed ex-cons to build this park. There’s no way one oddly-dressed young man could be that much weirder.”
Dean paced away from the table, giving Kate his full attention. “I told him he could work here at the park. Why do you care?”
“Because...apparently, I just hired him.”
Dean laughed. “That’s on you, then.”
She held her hand out. “I’ll take my twenty-five dollars now.”
After fishing his wallet out of his back pocket, Dean reimbursed her for parking and explained, “Celia is in charge of organizing the decorations so you can report to her.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, why?”
Shrugging, Kate said offhandedly, “I thought she had her hands full at the Tribune.”
“She volunteered. I think the Tribune gets a little stuffy, both literally and figuratively. She wanted some fresh air.”
He explained where she could find Celia, and Kate started through the field, her gaze locked on the red and white tent in the distance.
When she reached it, she found a crowd of amusement park employees hustling around and carrying strings of colored lights. Celia was reviewing her clipboard and instructing a pair of employees on what to do with a giant banner.
Kate hung back and as soon as the employees started off through the park, she approached the woman who had spent hours with Doris Chestnut all those years ago.
“Kate! Great to have you,” she said, scanning her clipboard.
“Thanks,” she said dryly.
After a moment, Celia sighed and set her clipboard on a table where dozens of Gatorade bottles were floating in ice water. “Olivia was glad to have met with you.”
“Was she?” Kate glared at her, and then added, “Thanks for tricking me into that, by the way.”
“What? She definitely needed that shelving unit.”
“Not as much as she needed to strong-arm me into making a statement.”
“Which was off the record.”
“Which wasn’t exactly a statement.” They stared at each other a moment. “What did you tell her?”
“What do you mean? What would I have to tell her?”
Kate’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline.
“You’re implying something,” she stated, “but quite frankly I have no idea what.”
A cluster of employees barreled in between Kate and Celia, grabbing Gatorade bottles from the bucket and mentioning they had finished stringing up lights around the food court.
“Wonderful,” said Celia, as she handed them another bundle of colored lights. “Can you get these up around the carousel?”
“The carousel already has white lights—”
“So swap them out,” Celia told the young woman who had objected. “Go, go, there’s much more to do.”
After they shuffled off, Celia turned to Kate. “Don’t get bent out of shape over Olivia.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Here,” she said, changing the subject by handing Kate a plastic banner, which Kate presumed read, ‘Happy 4th of July’ though it was folded. “There are a number of ladders over there. Staple guns are right here,” she explained, indicating the table.
Kate grabbed one of the guns and tucked the banner under her arm. “I know you spoke with Doris Chestnut that night.”
Celia’s smile dropped.
“Ken wasn’t home. It was just the two of you. What did you say to her?”
“I don’t know why you think—”
“Maxwell Stone saw you,” she shot back. “He also saw Doris running from the house hours later, so I know you didn’t kill her. But what happened?”
When she answered, she spoke in a low and serious tone. “I am not going to be scandalized. After Ken’s murder and after...” she trailed off, overcome with emotion. “And after Eric’s role in that horrible conspiracy two years ago...it was a nightmare, watching his arrest—”
Kate wasn’t about to feel sorry for her and said as much, “You knew he was hiding Becky Langley.”
“Fine. It was still a nightmare, and it still took me over a year to recover. No one trusted me. My name kept coming up in the paper. I can’t go back there. I can’t go back to a life of having to prove I’m a good person.”
“It’ll stay between you and me,” Kate said encouragingly.
She let out a deliberating sigh. “Doris was paranoid. If you ask me, she wasn’t right in the head. She came to the house because she trusted Ken. She wasn’t there to talk to me. She wanted to speak with Ken, but he was out at the precinct. I told her to go there if she wanted to see him. But...she wasn’t making sense. And she refused to go to the station.”
“What was she saying that wasn’t making sense?”
“Oh, you think it’s going to make sense
to you? If I couldn’t understand it, what makes you think you will?”
Kate leveled with her, insisting, “Just come out with it already.”
“She kept saying that the house, that old Victorian house, wanted her to kill. She said it was her punishment for getting involved with a married man; but Kate, she wasn’t making sense. At times she said her lover was the father of her child, and I couldn’t wrap my head around why being involved with the father of her child would cause her so much guilt. She told me that Mrs. Hyatt had given her a way out. And she kept twisting this gaudy ring around her finger. It was as if the ring itself was her way out, which obviously made no sense. She wasn’t afraid someone was going to kill her,” she reiterated. “She was afraid she would be the one doing the killing.”
“And how would Ken have helped her?”
“I’m not sure he could’ve. I’m not sure anyone could’ve. I honestly think she was mentally ill.”
According to Mrs. Hyatt, the ring should’ve protected her. Clearly, it hadn’t, unless the only way to prevent her from killing was to take her own life. But how could a ring accomplish that? Not to mention the fact that Doris had been poisoned.
“Did she eat or drink anything at your house?” asked Kate.
Celia thought for a moment then said, “No, not unless she did it in the bathroom, but in that case, it could only be tap water from the faucet.”
“Did she mention where she was going? Do you have any idea where she ran off to?”
“I assumed the precinct since Ken was who she was dying to speak with, but I don’t know for sure.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police?”
“And admit I might have been the last person to see her alive?” she asked. “I was a cop’s wife. I knew better.”
“But you didn’t tell Ken when he finally got home?”
“What would I tell him?” She shook her head. “I assumed she had gone there and spoken with him.”
Celia strode over to the row of ladders and began dragging one out for Kate.
“Doris was mentally unwell,” she concluded. “And if you ask me, so is Mrs. Hyatt, and it’s a good thing that old woman is off the street.”
Mrs. Fix It Mysteries: The Complete 15-Books Cozy Mystery Series Page 101
