After sliding Josie into her carrier, Kate turned for the entrance door and noticed the mayor rushing inside the building. Perhaps Scott had questioned Dean, but came up dry, or maybe her husband was taking his time to gather more evidence and build an airtight case around the mayor.
But had he really done it? Or had he been at Bobbie Hamden’s home that night for another reason? Maybe Joe Swenson knew in his heart that Dean hadn’t killed Bobbie, and that was why he had returned the photos, dumping them outside of Dean’s house.
Kate found Carly seated in the first row. Her best friend waved her forward, though Kate would’ve preferred to sit much farther back. As she walked down the aisle, she noticed the reporter, Wanda, seated in the middle row, which annoyed her, but Amelia was also there. It was good news for Carly. With Amelia in attendance, they would have a better shot of suggesting a last-minute vote on the issue of her offensive murder tour.
From the table at the front of the hall, Dean banged a gavel, bringing the meeting to order, which prompted Carly and Kate to sit quickly.
Kate tried to be as quiet as possible as she positioned Josie on her lap and rested the carrier by her feet, which her neighbor to the right didn’t seem to appreciate. The older woman scowled and then shushed her when Josie gurgled.
Just as Dean was launching into the agenda, Carly boldly sprang to her feet. “I have an issue I’d like to add to the agenda.”
Dean stared at her confusedly. “Uh, can I read through the agenda first?”
“No,” she asserted. “This is an important matter that affects all of us.”
“Make it fast, Carly,” he said.
“I think the town should vote on whether or not Amelia Langley should be permitted to run her murder tour.”
The residents in attendance broke out into alarmed murmuring that to Kate’s ears sounded like relieved agreement.
“Amelia has been profiting from our misery,” Carly went on. “But the real issue at hand is that her hideous tour bus has been trespassing on private property. It has blinded me personally with its glaring spotlight. And half the things her tour guide says aren’t even true, which means she’s defaming our good names.”
The residents broke out into applause and Amelia sprang to her feet, shouting, “It’s a free country! Freedom of speech! I can say whatever I like, which by the way, is all true! And if you don’t like it then you should stop murdering each other!”
Dean banged his gavel several times to quiet the room and bring order.
“Clearly,” he began, “most of you are passionate about this subject, so I say we do put it to a vote.”
“You have no right to put it to a vote!” Amelia objected. “This is my business! It’s my livelihood!”
“Oh pipe down,” said Carly. “Your inn and that mustard factory are your livelihood, and for the record, I noticed your tour bus isn’t stopping off at your husband’s factory even though that particular location was critical in the drug ring that plagued our town years back.”
“It’s called the murder tour, not the drug-ring tour,” she stated, as she folded her arms. Suddenly, she glared at Kate, and though Dean was talking loudly, she said, “Don’t you dare vote against me.”
Kate gulped, but she wasn’t about to be intimidated by anyone.
“Let’s put it to a vote,” said Dean, rising to his feet.
“That’s not fair!” yelled Amelia. “There are barely one hundred people here! If you vote, then you have to include the entire town!”
“Not for a preliminary vote that is required in order for us to proceed. We need to know if a formal vote is worth printing the amount of ballots that we would need. You know we’re under immense budgetary constraints.”
Carly yelled, “The only people who would vote for you are tourists and they can’t...because they’re tourists.”
Kate urged her best friend to sit so that Carly’s emotions wouldn’t tie her tongue any further.
Dean said, “All those in favor of Amelia Langley continuing her murder tour, raise your hands.”
Kate glanced around the room. No one had raised their hand except for Amelia.
“All opposed?” Dean asked.
Immediately, everyone’s hand shot into the air and Amelia frowned. “This is still America, isn’t it? What is the matter with you people?”
Banging on his gavel, Dean told her to quiet down and have a seat and soon the meeting progressed. At times, Carly whispered in her ear the various ideas she had about getting the word out around town to vote against Amelia at the formal vote.
An hour later, the meeting wrapped up. Dean rose from his chair and the residents stood as well, stretching and murmuring their opinions on the topics discussed.
Kate kept her eye on Dean as he shook hands with the town council members. Carly asked her about whether or not she had eaten.
“I need to speak with Dean,” she said, helping Josie into her carrier, smiling and praising her all the while that she had been so good and quiet. As soon as she had Josie secured on her back, she started for the front of the hall.
She approached Dean just as he was turning up the aisle.
“When is this vote going to take place?” she asked him.
“In a few days most likely,” he said easily.
It wasn’t what she wanted to ask him, so she said, “Can we talk privately?”
He stared at her a moment, and then offered, “I can walk you out.”
“Privately, Dean,” she insisted, glancing over her shoulder at the residents who were slowly filtering out of the hall.
“Sure,” he said, still confused.
They walked outside. The residents were mingling in a crowd in the parking lot and making slow work of getting to their vehicles. Dean indicated a lamppost at the side of the building where no one was standing, and once they reached it, she immediately said, “I saw the photos.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, confusedly. “What photos?”
“Of you leaving Bobbie Hamden’s house the night she was murdered.”
He looked stunned and said nothing.
“Why did Joe Swenson drop those photos into the dumpster outside your house?”
Dean seemed to slip into deep thought and a worried look came over his face.
“You were at Bobbie’s house that night?”
He said nothing.
“Who took the photos?”
“Joe did,” he admitted, but when she waited for him to elaborate, he again fell silent.
“Dean,” she said firmly. “I have to ask you, because this looks really bad...did you have something to do with her murder?”
His lips parted as if to answer her, but before he could, Scott charged toward him with Detective Kilroy and two uniformed police officers in tow.
“Dean Wentworth,” began Scott, “you’re under arrest for the murder of Bobbie Hamden.”
“What?” Dean’s eyes snapped to Kate as the police officers apprehended him, pulling his hands behind his back and slapping handcuffs around his wrists. “I didn’t do this.”
“You have the right to remain silent,” Scott went on, which prompted the mayor to press his mouth into a hard line.
As Scott continued reciting the Miranda Rights, the officers carted Dean off toward a police cruiser that was idling in the parking lot.
Kate hurried after them, and though she kept shouting questions, “You really think he killed Bobbie? Who have you spoken with? Did you find his prints on the tire iron?” Scott ignored her until he had shut the rear door, securing Dean inside the police vehicle.
“Go home,” he said. “I won’t be back for a good long while.”
Carly rushed up to them, staring in disbelief at Dean, the blazing cruiser lights, and Scott. “What’s going on?”
“There’s nothing to see here,” said Scott.
“Nothing to see? You’ve arrested the mayor,” she protested.
But Scott was already stalking off toward his truck. The poli
ce officers hopped into the cruiser and as it pulled out, driving through the parking lot and onto the street, Scott followed behind in his truck.
“What was that all about?” Carly asked her.
She swallowed a carefully measured sigh and stated, “He thinks Dean murdered Bobbie Hamden.”
“Did he?”
Kate thought for a long moment before saying, “I really don’t know.”
“God,” said Carly. “You think you know a person.”
They looked at one another and Kate wondered if she’d made a terrible mistake telling Scott about those photos. Should she have investigated on her own and gotten a better feel, one way or the other, for Dean’s guilt or innocence. She could’ve spoken with him. She could’ve spoken with Joe Swenson and found out why he had dumped the photos there. She could’ve waited longer, discovered more, and been absolutely certain before handing it all over to Scott.
“Do you need help getting Josephine home?” Carly asked.
“No, thanks, I’ll be okay,” she said as they crossed through the parking lot to Kate’s truck.
Carly lent a helping hand with getting Josie situated in her car seat, and after she set the baby carrier in the passenger’s seat and shut the door she said, “Call me if you need anything,” and then started off toward Larry who was leaning on their car.
As Kate drove off, the magnitude of Dean’s arrest hit her. If Dean was convicted—if he really had done it—then Rock Ridge would be in quite a predicament. Who would take Dean’s place? And would their intentions be good or self-centered. Dean had done right by this town. He was honest and hardworking, and his efforts to bring money and job opportunities into Rock Ridge had been successful, though the town was still recovering from the long winter.
She tried not to get ahead of herself as she pulled her truck to a stop in front of her house. The air felt cool and damp as Kate climbed out of her truck and around the rear. She popped the door open and scooped Josie out of the car seat, grabbed the baby carrier from the passenger’s seat, and unlocked the front door when she reached it.
She noticed the Rock Ridge Tribune rolled in a sleeve of plastic at her feet so she picked it up before stepping inside.
The house was dark except for one lamp in the living room. After shutting and locking the door behind her, she turned on lights as she went into the kitchen. She was craving coffee and figured a hot cup of decaf might satisfy the urge, so she settled her daughter in a baby seat on the table and put on a pot of coffee.
As the coffee maker began brewing, she sat at the table and pulled the newspaper from its plastic sleeve. The headline on the front page read, Another Day, Another Murder, and beneath it was a photograph of the back of the inn with the balcony in mid-construction. Kate noted the reporter who had written the article was Wanda Levin. As she read on, she realized that the article wasn’t so much a report on Eddie Jackson’s bizarre death as it was an advertisement for Amelia Langley’s murder tour. Even the quotes Wanda had pulled from interviewing Zack Bristow seemed skewed to promote Amelia’s side business:
“In Rock Ridge, you never know who will be next.”
“There’s a lot of dark history in this town.”
And, “Rock Ridge is becoming known for the multitude of people who are killed here.”
Kate got a strange feeling as she set the paper down on the kitchen table. Amelia had invited Wanda to the inn to report on Eddie’s death, and she clearly influenced Wanda to believe it was in fact a murder. It made Kate wonder about Amelia’s motives.
No one had benefitted more from Eddie’s murder than the innkeeper.
Chapter Nine
The morning sun was beating down and heating up the asphalt as Kate walked briskly down the sidewalk. Josie had balled her little fists around Kate’s hair from where she jostled in the baby carrier on Kate’s back. She should’ve pulled her hair into a ponytail, she thought, as she used her free hand to loosen her daughter’s grip. She slowed, took a sip of decaf coffee from the thermos she was carrying, and handed Josie a baby rattle to get her to let go of Kate’s red locks. It seemed to do the trick, but as Kate continued on toward the Rock Ridge Tribune, having parked a good six blocks away, her daughter began tapping the rattle against Kate’s head. She sighed. It was just going to be one of those days.
The Tribune offices looked sleepy, Kate noticed, slipping through the entrance door. It was just after eight and though the receptionist was stationed at her desk, the majority of desks throughout the newsroom were vacant.
Stepping toward the young woman who looked both frazzled and half asleep, Kate asked, “Is Wanda Levin in yet?”
The receptionist turned her big, brown eyes up at Kate. “She’s talking with the new editor-in-chief. I can let her know you’re here when she gets out. What’s your name?”
“Kate Flaherty.” She hesitated to have a seat on the bench across from the receptionist’s desk. “Let me ask you,” she said, leaning toward the woman and speaking quietly. But she didn’t get the chance to continue.
The receptionist was smiling and making funny faces at Josie. “She’s so cute,” she said.
Pleased, Kate asked, “You can tell she’s a girl?”
“Of course. My parents always dressed me in gender-neutral colors when I was growing up. I had a bowl-cut until I was thirteen,” she said, laughing. “But it worked in my favor, I think. In grade school my teachers didn’t tell me to smile or comment that I looked pretty, like they did to the other girls. That crap has an effect on a young person, you know.”
“Your parents sound very thoughtful,” said Kate, while in the back of her mind she thought that Josie’s choice of dress wasn’t her doing but her daughter’s. “I wanted to ask you about Wanda Levin’s front-page article that was printed yesterday, the one about Eddie Jackson.”
The receptionist rolled her eyes. “The chief hated it,” she said, shaking her head.
“He did?”
“People don’t realize that with the financial downturn, the paper has been affected as well, and we couldn’t turn down the extra income.”
“Income?”
“It wasn’t an article,” she explained. “We call them ‘advertorials’ and we usually put them in the back of the paper. They’re advertisements written as an article, ‘advertorials’... get it?”
“I see,” she said, putting the pieces together. “Amelia Langley paid the Tribune to write that article?”
The young woman sighed. “She practically wrote it herself. And she paid five times our going rate to get it on the front page.” She became suddenly distracted when Wanda strode out from the editor-in-chief’s office. “I bet she just got chewed out for it some more,” she commented. “Amelia contacted her about another article. I guess the town is trying to shut down her murder tour, so she came in two seconds after I got here to try to buy another front page advertorial.”
“And the chief doesn’t want to print it,” Kate surmised.
“Wanda doesn’t want to print it. We’re a small paper but we still take pride in what we do.” The receptionist stood and waved Wanda over. “Kate Flaherty here to see you.”
She started over, saying, “I really don’t have time.”
“Just a few minutes?” asked Kate. “I’m not here to give you any trouble.”
“I tried,” she stated, planting her fists on her hips and continuing with remarkable intuition. “I tried to get your statement and statements from your contractors. I tried to get some cold, hard facts from Zack Bristow. I’m just as annoyed by that article are you are, I’m sure, but when a customer pays they have final say about the content.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” said Kate urgently. “I think this story could be much bigger.”
Interested, Wanda’s eyebrows shot up to her forehead. “How?”
“I think it’s connected to Bobbie Hamden’s murder.”
Wanda snorted a laugh. “Tell me you have proof.”
Fru
strated, Kate pressed her mouth into a thin line then said, “I’m sure you’ve heard Mayor Dean Wentworth has been arrested for Bobbie’s murder.”
“I did. It’s front page news, which is why I don’t have time for this conversation.”
“I’m not so sure he did it.”
Wanda sized her up for a long moment. “If you can get me something tangible, I’ll print it. The chief is dying to bump the next Amelia Langley advertorial. But it has to be solid.”
“Okay,” said Kate.
“Who do you think did it?” she asked, curious. “Who would want both Bobbie Hamden and Eddie Jackson dead? As far as I could tell from my research, the two didn’t even know each other.”
Kate was reluctant to speculate so she simply said, “I’ll be in touch.”
“I’ve got to hand it to you,” said Wanda before Kate could turn for the door. “You’ve got some serious guts.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, your husband arrested Dean, and now you’re going to try to dismantle his case?”
Kate smirked. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
Outside, she walked briskly, getting her heart rate up further with each block she crossed. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky overhead, and she made a mental note to put a sunbonnet on Josie as soon as she reached her truck. Today was going to be a hot one. The dregs of leftover snow that had been lining the grassy planters along the sidewalk had completely melted, and if this kept up, the landscape wouldn’t be soggy much longer. Why did spring have to be such a short season? She wondered, but was jarred from thought when she noticed a folded note tucked under her truck’s windshield wiper.
She rushed and grabbed the note, glancing around before reading it. There was no one in sight, only the occasional car driving down the street.
Had she been followed?
She opened the note and read, ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
She stared at it and tried to process the threatening insinuation. Was someone going to come after her?
Mrs. Fix It Mysteries: The Complete 15-Books Cozy Mystery Series Page 120
