Cold Feet (Five Star Mystery Series)

by Karen Pullen

  COLD FEET

  A STELLA LAVENDER MYSTERY

  COLD FEET

  KAREN PULLEN

  FIVE STAR

  A part of Gale, Cengage Learning

  * * *

  Copyright © 2013 by Karen Pullen.

  Scripture taken from the New King James Bible: Deuteronomy 22:5

  Five Star™ Publishing, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  Publisher’s Note: The recipe contained at the back of this book was supplied by the author. The Publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The Publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipe contained in this book.

  No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced, transmitted, stored, or used in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including but not limited to photocopying, recording, scanning, digitizing, taping, Web distribution, information networks, or information storage and retrieval systems, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  The publisher bears no responsibility for the quality of information provided through author or third-party Web sites and does not have any control over, nor assume any responsibility for, information contained in these sites. Providing these sites should not be construed as an endorsement or approval by the publisher of these organizations or of the positions they may take on various issues.

  * * *

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Pullen, Karen.

  Cold feet : a Stella Lavender mystery / Karen Pullen. — 1st ed.

  p. cm

  ISBN 978-1-4328-2637-6 (hardcover) — ISBN 1-4328-2637-9 (hardcover)

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4328-2823-3 eISBN-10: 1-4328-2823-1

  1. North Carolina. State Bureau of Investigation—Fiction. 2. Drug enforcement agents—Fiction. 3. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 4. Secrets—Fiction. 5. Mystery fiction. I. Title.

  PS3616.U46C65 2013

  813′.6—dc23 2012032741

  * * *

  First Edition. First Printing: January 2013

  This title is available as an e-book.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4328-2823-3 ISBN-10: 1-4328-2823-1

  Find us on Facebook– https://www.facebook.com/FiveStarCengage

  Visit our website– http://www.gale.cengage.com/fivestar/

  Contact Five Star™ Publishing at FiveStar@cengage.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 17 16 15 14 13

  To my creative, loving, compassionate daughters Adrienne, Heather, and Melissa

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  * * *

  This first novel has a team behind it. On my team were Stonecoast faculty members who asked questions that made my writing better: Clint McCown, Elizabeth Searle, Suzanne Strempek Shea, Julia Spencer-Fleming, and James Patrick Kelley. Ellen Neuborne and my writing group—Sam Brooks, Mary Bastin, Joanna Catherine Scott, Laurie Billman—read drafts and offered helpful critiques. John Bason of the NC Department of Justice provided complete answers to a lengthy list of my questions. Shirley Burch, retired undercover drug agent for the NC State Bureau of Investigation, allowed me to use her experiences and kept me from egregious mistakes. (Shirley and John are not responsible for the liberties I have taken with SBI protocol and procedures.) Elizabeth Trupin-Pulli’s belief in the book was invaluable. My weeks as a writer-in-residence at the Weymouth Center in Southern Pines provided a distraction-free and beautiful space for writing. My family gave love and support. Thank you all.

  CHAPTER 1

  * * *

  A Saturday in October

  I sagged onto a rocker on my grandmother Fern’s porch and fanned myself with an old issue of Police magazine. My head ached and my joints creaked. Fern was sixty-two and I was twenty-six but you’d think it was the other way around, thanks to my perpetual adrenaline hangover. I’d been working nights, buying drugs undercover for the government.

  Today promised to be a welcome distraction. Fern and I were going to an outdoor wedding. I was looking forward to mingling with people who weren’t in the market for coke, crack, smack, ice, pot, or pills. Employed people, who paid taxes that eventually ended up in my bank account for a too-brief stay. I’d even left my SIG-Sauer P225 at home. A shoulder holster would have spoiled the look of my floaty rose-print dress with a sweetheart neckline.

  The screen door squeaked open. “Hello, darling,” Fern said, planting a lavender-fragrant kiss on my cheek. Her sundress, watermelon-pink like her lipstick, clung to her curves like green on grass. Fern is sexy, charming, and young at heart. It’s hard to believe we share DNA.

  “You look dazzling. Is that silk?” I asked.

  “Polyester. Wal-Mart was having a sale so I bought a couple yards. You cleaned up nicely yourself, Stella.”

  We buckled up and set off along the gravel lane that wound through towering loblolly pines slowly being strangled by kudzu.

  My Civic’s air conditioning struggled mightily against the sweltering heat of a summer that had refused to tilt her sails and float away gracefully.

  “Thanks for coming with me.You might even enjoy yourself,” Fern said. “I was going to take Ricky but you’re just as much fun.”

  I didn’t bother to ask who Ricky was. Fern knew so many men that I’d given up keeping track. “You’re the one who hates weddings,” I said. “I’m fine with them. Dress up, free food, open bar. What’s not to like?”

  “You know.”

  I did. Eight months ago I’d been planning my own wedding. Until one night, while searching online for the perfect invitation paper, I discovered Hogan’s cyber-chat with a stupid-dot-com slut. I returned the ring to Hogan and my dress to the store. It was okay. I didn’t adore the sleeves.

  “Anyway, marriage is a terrible idea,” said Fern. “The state doesn’t belong in your relationship.”

  “So why are we going to this wedding?” I waited for a Coke truck to pass, then pulled onto the highway, heading east toward Verwood.

  “I have to schmooze. The groom’s mother is a new client. Tricia Scott—do you know her? She wants me to illustrate a book cover for her.”

  Aha. I understood perfectly. Fern never had much money. She’d raised me with mostly bare cupboards, an near-empty propane tank, and school clothes from the thrift shop. A client was precious, and attendance at invited events was mandatory.

  As for me, I had mixed feelings about going along as Fern’s escort. My inner princess was fascinated by over-the-top weddings such as this was sure to be, at a faux Scottish castle in the middle of a tobacco field. My inner cynic wanted to avoid all weddings for the rest of my life.

  “Who’s getting married?” I asked.

  Fern opened the invitation. “Tricia’s son Mike Olmert is marrying Justine Bradley. Tricia’s remarried so his last name is different from his mother’s. Serial marriages, new names and all that. Not an issue for us Lavender girls, is it?”

  “None have dared to change our name,” I said, merging with traffic in the circle around the courthouse and heading north. Outside town limits, the highway expanded to four lanes and we zoomed into a rural landscape dotted with rolls of hay. After a few miles, a castle rose from the landscape like an apparition.

  Rosscairn Castle Bed and Breakfast was a 1915 millionaire’s folly, a sized-down replica of Bonny Prince Charlie’s summer home, with g
ray stone walls, turrets, and battlements. Fern and I were greeted by a stout red-faced man in full Highland garb—white shirt, black jacket, black bowtie, plaid kilt exposing hairy knees, and a small purse dangling from his waist. A dagger was tucked into one knee sock. He smelled, appropriately, like Scotch. I expected a Scottish burr and was looking forward to being called a wee lassie garrrl. But Wyatt Craven—the innkeeper, according to his name tag—was from Kentucky, he informed us. “Come along, I’ll seat y’all.You’re late but it hasn’t started yet,” he said.

  We followed his large personage as he trotted briskly along a brick path to a sweep of green lawn where a white tent sheltered about fifty wedding guests and a trio sawing at their violins, filling the air with baroque counterpoint. Under a second tent, tables set with dark red linens and bowls of white roses encircled a gushing fountain.

  I sat down next to a woman about my age wearing a cornflower blue dress and a round straw hat trimmed with black ribbon. She had long straight flaxen hair, like Alice in Wonderland, and looked utterly fetching in the hat. I felt a pang of jealousy—that hat on my mane would resemble a pot lid on a volcano. Ignoring me, she twisted in her seat and clicked away on a camera.

  “Who do you know?” I whispered to Fern.

  “First row, big brown hat? My client, Tricia Scott. She’s a—what do you call it—life coach? She has a lot of business gigs.” Tricia was thin and elegant, with a spray-hardened bundle of dark hair. Fern pointed to three tuxedoed men standing together in front, next to a man in the black robes of a minister. “Fellow in the middle is the groom, Mike Olmert, Tricia’s son. Her husband is the minister. Scoop Scott.”

  All four men had similar serious expressions, as if they’d eaten something indigestible. Perhaps they were uncomfortable in their formal outfits, or impressed by the solemnity of the occasion, or hung over. Mike Olmert had thinning blond hair and the bulk that comes from hours of weight-lifting. One of the groomsmen wore a white cervical collar that immobilized his neck; he’d left his shirt and bow tie loosely open around it.

  Above his black robes, Scoop’s complexion was the deep red of high blood pressure and a wicked temper. He gnawed on an unlit cigar. My boss Richard smokes cigars, and my theory is it’s to balance out his handsomeness and fashion-plate attire with something wet and stinky. However, Scoop wasn’t handsome. Maybe he just liked wet stinky things in his mouth.

  “Tricia said he has a cyber-church. You know, a website. That’s where they sell her books, too.” Fern pulled out the invitation. “This says one o’clock. They’re running behind. It’s one-thirty.”

  I turned to my neighbor in the straw hat. “Fashionably tardy, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “Never would be soon enough for me.” Despite her smile, tension lined her face.

  “Never? Are you going to speak up?”

  “Hold my peace, I guess. It’s too late, isn’t it?” She seemed serious. She stood abruptly and snapped a picture of the four waiting men.

  “I’m Stella Lavender.” I held out my hand and she gripped it firmly.

  “Gia Mabe. I’m an old family friend.”

  “Which family, his or hers?”

  “Oh, his, of course. She has no friends.”

  A young woman, a bride, with no friends? Gia had to be exaggerating and I was about to ask her why when a young woman in a strapless red dress came flying off the Castle’s back porch. She was rectangular all over, with a Christopher Robin haircut, boxy shoulders, and a flat chest. Even her dark-rimmed glasses had ninety-degree angles. She stopped at the last row, whispered to the innkeeper urgently, then tugged at him until he got up from his seat and followed her back into the inn.

  “That’s Ingrid, the maid of horror,” Gia said.

  Besides that curious comment, something felt wrong. The ceremony was more than thirty minutes late, and a distressed-looking bridesmaid had just dragged the innkeeper inside in a flurry.

  “I’m going to find the ladies’ room,” I whispered to Fern.

  “The wedding is about to start.”

  “I’ll be right back.” I nudged past her.

  In the back hall of the Castle, slouched against a doorway to the kitchen, a teenaged boy in a stained apron smoked a cigarette and thumbed a phone. He wore earbuds and twitched to music only he could hear. Except for the scythe-wielding ghoul on his tee-shirt, he was a cuddly-looking fellow with brown curls and pink fuzzy cheeks.

  “Excuse me,” I said. He pulled out one earbud and raised an eyebrow, the one that wasn’t sporting a silver stud. “Where did Wyatt go?”

  He pointed up and went back to his texting. I walked through the hall and started up the stairs. Black Watch plaid carpet, inky green wallpaper, dark wood molding. Swords hung everywhere, some rusty, others shiny and ceremonial. The overall effect was formal, aggressive, and gloomy. Agitated voices came from a room at the end of the hall, the Falkirk room, according to the brass plaque on the door.

  The door was unlatched, so I pushed it open and slipped inside.

  CHAPTER 2

  * * *

  Saturday Early Afternoon

  “Dead” and “bride” don’t belong in the same sentence, but this bride was dead.

  She lay on the floor, impossibly contorted. Her head nearly touched her heels. Some lethal agent had drawn her head back, arched her spine, clamped her jaws shut, and pulled her facial muscles into a grin. Her skin was a mottled bluish-gray, a horrible contrast with her creamy satin dress and the pearl beads elaborately woven into her dark hair.

  The bridesmaid Ingrid was crouched by the body, tugging on her shoulders, ineffectually trying to straighten her. Wyatt stood over them, hands on hips, his face beet-purple.

  I took a deep breath. “Did you call an ambulance?” I knelt and felt the bride’s neck for a pulse. Her skin felt clammy and her hazel eyes stared fixedly, sightless. I had no doubt that she was dead.

  “Of course,” said Wyatt. “Get out. We don’t need gawkers.” His imposing bulk moved toward me but I didn’t budge.

  “I’m police. State Bureau of Investigation.” I pulled out my ID.

  “SBI? It gets worse by the minute.” His eyes were bloodshot and the smell of alcohol stronger than before.

  “I’ll try CPR,” Ingrid said. Trembling, she leaned toward Justine’s frothy grin to puff into her mouth.

  I reached out to stop her. “No.You don’t know what’s caused this.”

  She pressed on the satin bodice. “I can’t get her mouth to open. I can’t straighten her out either. It’s like she’s frozen.” Her voice rose in a near-shriek. “What should I do?”

  I turned to Wyatt. “Go find the minister and tell him that Justine’s ill. Keep everyone outside.” Something in my tone, or perhaps it was the twisted body on the floor, convinced the innkeeper that he should do as I said, and he left.

  “You found her like this?” I asked.

  “Yes. I could hear her moaning but the door was locked. I had to get him to open it.” Ingrid’s eyes were magnified behind the harsh black frames of her glasses. Mascara mixed with tears ran down her cheeks.

  “Come. Sit up here.” I led Ingrid to a chair, away from the body. I thought about all the drugs I knew of—legal and illegal—and couldn’t recall any that would cause sustained muscle contractions like these. I pulled out my cell and dialed. The dispatcher said she’d send someone from the county sheriff’s department. If Justine’s death was a homicide, it would be their case to solve, because this property was in an unincorporated area.

  “You’re a friend of hers?” I asked.

  “Her best friend. I’ve known her since elementary school. We did our nurse’s training together. We work together.” She stared at the grotesque twisted body of her friend. “Can I cover her? She looks horrible.”

  “Sorry, no.” I looked around. The room was a pleasant space with yellow-painted walls, a hand-carved cherry wood dresser, and a four-poster bed canopied with lace. Plaid curtains and pillows added a Scottish touch. On
the bedside table was a glass half-full of water, and I leaned over to sniff it. It smelled like water.

  The bathroom floor was strewn with damp towels. Jumbled on the counter were a half-eaten scone, hair gel, makeup, jewelry, an electric kettle, a small carton of soymilk. A nearly empty mug smelled chemical and bitter.

  Ingrid came into the bathroom. “I need to wash my hands,” she said. She had calmed down.

  “No. Don’t touch anything in here.” I put my hand up to the kettle—it was warm. Next to it was an open box with Chinese writing containing teabags and the bitter smell again. “Phew.”

  “I know. It’s some special cleansing tea,” Ingrid said. “She drinks it all day long. She had some around noon when I was fixing her hair. Do you think it made her sick?”

  “Well, did it? Did she complain after drinking it?”

  Ingrid shook her head. “She didn’t say anything. She seemed fine.”

  I shivered. On the surface I’d slipped into my professional self with a job to do. But some perversion had taken Justine’s life, minutes before her marriage ceremony. She’d died in a cloud of J Lo and sweat. It didn’t help that her eyes were wide open. It must have been an agonizing death.

  The wail of a siren grew louder then abruptly stopped as the ambulance rolled along the Castle’s long driveway. Two EMTs rushed into the room, and I went downstairs to find Justine’s family. As I passed by the arched opening to the parlor, a young woman stopped me. She had pale blue eyes and aquiline features, softened by wispy blond hair and a trio of tiny black moles on one cheek. A dark-red strapless gown, a bridesmaid’s dress like Ingrid’s, showed off her strong neck and shoulders.

  Bridesmaids are either family or a close friend. “I need to talk to you,” I said, motioning her back into the parlor, trying to appear calm, though inside I ached for her, for what she didn’t yet know. I showed her my ID.