Ready, Aim, Under Fire (Lexi Graves Mysteries, 10)

by Camilla Chafer

  “Yep,” I said, not entirely sure what I was agreeing to.

  “Alternatively, the kids might agree to watch Star Wars. Call me when you get something on Debby.”

  I agreed I would and hung up, wondering if I should be as excited about wedding planning as my niece. I hadn’t given a lot of thought to it since our engagement party a couple of weeks ago. My sister, recently engaged too, had given a lot of thought to it but she had the experience of a previous wedding under her belt, as well as a desire to make things perfect for both her future husband and her. I had no doubt she had already selected her venue for both the ceremony and the reception, honed down her list of welcome cocktails, taken audition tapes for DJs and bands, sampled menus, and booked appointments at every single Montgomery bridal salon. All before I’d even discussed with Solomon the options and themes for our wedding.

  The door to Solomon’s office opened and my mother stepped out. “Hi!” She waved.

  I frowned, looking from her to Solomon but I rose and walked over to greet her. “Hi, Mom. What’s going on?”

  “Can’t a mother just drop in to visit her future son-in-law?”

  I opened my mouth to say not without a reason but decided against it. I’d prefer to know what the reason was first. “That’s so nice,” I said.

  “I know. I brought these,” said Mom, handing me three thick, three-ringed binders. My knees almost buckled with the weight. “They’re organized into churches, from large to small, depending on numbers. Then reception venues starting with informal to formal. After that are the decor ideas with fifty-two different themes.”

  “Fifty-two?” I whispered in disbelief.

  “Seventeen are romance-oriented,” Mom explained. “There’re all the categories: food, beverages, florists within a fifteen-mile radius; and I think you’ll be very excited about the man who makes sculptures out of balloons!”

  “So excited!” I squeaked.

  “That’s the first binder. The second is very exciting. That covers music selections with all the top choices over the past twenty years, and a review of each one of your relative’s weddings, including your siblings and all their suppliers. We didn’t include Daniel’s first wedding because I like to pretend that didn’t happen.”

  “What about Serena’s?” I wondered out loud.

  Mom frowned before reaching for the binder. She rifled through it and tore out a page. “Let’s pretend that one didn’t happen either. Did you see Lexi’s bridesmaid dress, John? Didn’t she look pretty?”

  “Very,” said Solomon, firmly eyeing me and not the binder that she dumped into his hands.

  “You will love the third binder.” Mom took the remaining two binders from me and dropped one on my desk before she opened the other. “There’re ten years of bridal gowns divided into ballgown, mermaid, trumpet, strapless… You’ll see! I think you’ll find it very useful.”

  I reached for the edge of my desk, gripping hard before my knees gave out and I sank to the ground.

  “Your father and I would like to pay for your dress because we’re very, very relieved that you’re getting married. At last! To a man.” My mother neatly stacked all three binders and placed them in my hands, wrapping her arms around me in a bear hug. Then she kissed my cheek and waved as she walked past. “Did I mention I’m taking a class in wedding planning at the Adult Ed center? I’m going to be your dream planner!” The door banged shut.

  “Did she leave?” I whispered.

  “Did you say something? I can’t see your face,” said Solomon.

  “Don’t laugh, please don’t,” I wailed, launching the binders in what I hoped was his direction. “Why me? Why?”

  “Your mom means well.”

  “She just said she was relieved I was marrying a man!”

  Solomon raised his eyebrows. “Aren’t you?”

  I looked at Solomon, adoring his handsome face, deep brown eyes, clean-shaven jaw, and a physique that made me forget his question. “Hubba-hmph, what?” I mumbled.

  “When you look at me like that, I want to do unprofessional things with you in the office.”

  “Okay,” I gasped.

  “But I won’t because I’m a professional. Also, because I don’t know how I would explain it to anyone if they walked in and saw you and me draped across your desk.”

  “You’re the boss. Call it a rigorous assessment!”

  Solomon smiled broadly. “Good to know you’re already thinking of a plausible reason.” He paused, then asked, “Rigorous?”

  “What were you and my mom talking about?” I asked, distracted by the array of binders. How had my mother amassed so much information?

  “Our wedding.”

  “Do I want to know more?”

  “Your mom came by expecting to find you here and since you weren’t and I was, I kept her company. She is very excited about the wedding and wants to be involved. I think it would be nice for her to help.”

  “Does nice mean scary to you?”

  Solomon smiled. “Let her be involved.”

  “I’m not not letting her,” I pointed out. Solomon deposited the binders on my desk and we both edged away. “We haven’t even talked about our wedding.”

  “You want to talk about it now?”

  “I want to talk about it sometime. Maybe not now. This is the office.”

  “Who’s being a professional now?” asked Solomon, still smiling. “Take a look at the binders. Maybe you’ll find some inspiration. I can give you any kind of wedding you choose, you just have to decide what.”

  “We have to decide,” I corrected. “I am not turning into a bridezilla! Oh! Did Mom offer to buy me a dress?”

  “She did.”

  I paused, and smiled up at him. “We’re really getting married?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll look through the binders,” I told him. “I’ll take them home tonight. It’ll be a pleasant distraction from this case.”

  “I have to see a client but I will join you later. We can resume our discussion at home.” Solomon leaned in, kissing me lightly. “Take it easy. It might be a rigorous evening.”

  I was smiling as he left and I returned to my desk. Ten frustrating minutes later, I had to admit my tolerance for Debby’s records was gone. Without Debby’s emails to peruse, I didn’t have a lot left to examine. Now I had some background, but what I needed to know was more about Debby now. What was she doing in Montgomery when she wasn’t with her parents? Whom was she seeing? Where did she go?

  I tucked my laptop away into my desk drawer, extracting the zoom lens camera I stored there, packing it into my purse. I hoisted the binders into my arms. Carrying my load, I struggled downstairs to the parking lot and tossed the binders onto the floor. It was time to stake out Debby.

  Since I hadn’t stuck any tracer on Debby or her car, I started with the place I guessed she’d most likely be: her hotel.

  After a short cruise around the lot, I found her car and parked next to it. I hopped out, placing the back of my hand on the hood. It was cold, telling me she had been parked there for some time. Unless she got a cab or a ride somewhere else, she still had to be in the hotel. I just wished I knew where.

  Hopping back into my car, I tapped the hotel name into my phone’s web browser and called up its contact information. I hit the link for the phone number and waited for the call to be picked up. “This is the Montgomery Hotel and Conference Center. How may I help you?” asked the receptionist.

  “Hi, this is Blooming Flowers. We have a delivery to go to, uh, let me see—” I paused as if I were reading an order “—yes, here it is. Debby Patterson. I’m just checking we have the correct address for delivery. I have it down for the Montgomery Hotel and the room number is, oh, it’s, um, let’s see…”

  “Room 324?” supplied the receptionist.

  “That’s right! Room 324. We’ll attempt to make delivery tomorrow.”

  “Just come in the front door,” said the receptionist. “Thank you for ca
lling.”

  “No, thank you,” I said as I hung up, smiling.

  Previous experience of the overall layout told me room 324 was at the rear of the hotel. I fired up my car and drove around the hotel to the side lot. Parking up in the far corner, I had a good view of the back and almost certain privacy.

  I grabbed my camera and zoomed into the third floor, tracking each window until I narrowed it down to one of four. Two rooms were empty, and housekeeping would be pissed at the condition of the second room. The third window showed a lady working at a desk and the fourth was the jackpot. I watched Debby moving across the room, a hand pressed to her ear. No, not a hand: a hand holding a phone. I watched her mouth moving and wished I could read lips. A couple of minutes later, she hung up and tossed the phone on the bed before picking up a magazine and curling up on a big armchair.

  I zoomed in a little closer and saw she was reading a travel magazine. Was that where she got her travel bug? Or the true source of her travel stories? As I thought about those possibilities, I wondered how to verify her travel itinerary. With over a decade of information and no sources in the travel industry, I wasn’t sure I could. I knew one thing: Debby never even once touched her credit cards or dipped into her savings from any foreign location. There had to be another account somewhere; maybe she set up a new one in another country. I wondered how easy it would be to set up an account abroad.

  For more than two hours, I stayed in position, despite the light dimming as I waited for Debby to do something more interesting than reading another magazine, using the bathroom, or making a coffee. A tap at my window made me jump and swallow hard. I glanced at the torso filling my passenger window and scrambled for a cover story that didn’t involve explaining why I was surveilling a target. Fearing it was hotel security, I nearly gasped when suddenly the body stooped, and a head came into view. I clasped a hand to my rapidly beating heart.

  Then, smiling with relief, I lifted the locks on the car.

  “You started locking the car,” said Maddox, climbing in. He smiled warmly and leaned over to hug me, a waft of his familiar cologne teasing my senses.

  “Hello to you too!”

  “Do I want to know what you’re doing?” he asked, nodding toward my camera.

  “Nope. Not asking you either,” I said, waving a finger at his own camera. “I thought you were out of town?”

  “I was supposed to be but my plans changed and the assignment I was expecting to tackle was slightly postponed.”

  “So, here we are. Just two people hanging out in a deserted parking lot for no reason.”

  Maddox grinned. “You got it!”

  “I’m watching room 324,” I confessed. “She’s presently reading a magazine.”

  “What happened? Did you pull the short straw in your caseload at work this week?” he wondered.

  “Nope. This is a strange one.”

  “Anything to do with that murder over in Harbridge?”

  I didn’t have to ask which one he meant; there was only one. “Actually, yes.”

  He huffed a laugh. “I knew you had to be involved!”

  “It might be a coincidence but… Wait! Are you following me?”

  “No!” Maddox shifted his feet on the floorboard and picked up one of my mom’s binders. He opened it before I could snatch it from his hands and hurl it out of the car. “Nice dresses. Didn’t ever imagine you in this,” he said, turning the binder so I could see the page he opened it to. A white dress, slashed to the navel, looked like it was glued onto the model’s lithe body.

  “That’s my mom’s! See the big ‘no’ written next to it?”

  “Ah, I see.” Maddox turned the page, his eyebrows rising. “Is your mom renewing her vows?”

  “No, she’s trying to plan my wedding.”

  “Interesting choices,” he said, tapping his finger over a terrifyingly daring dress apparently constructed from all the lace ever made, and featuring visible shoulder pads.

  “I think that’s another ‘don’t pick’,” I told him, feeling somewhat hopeful.

  “I want to agree with you but there’s a question mark next to it. I think it’s still in the running. Speaking of running…”

  “I’m not becoming a runaway bride!”

  Maddox bit back a laugh. “I was not going to suggest that but if your mom tries to make you wear this, I will aid in your getaway.”

  “Do you promise?”

  He made a cross over his body. “Absolutely.”

  A thought popped into my head. “Could you find out someone’s past travel itinerary? Airplanes, trains, hotels, that kind of thing?” I asked.

  “I can find out if someone sneezed seven years ago in Bogota,” he said.

  “Weird. I just need to know if my target was where she says she was. She says she traveled a lot over the past ten years and I need to verify it.”

  “Do you have her passport information?”

  “No.” Not yet.

  “Give me her name and date of birth and I’ll look into it.”

  I reached for my notepad and wrote down the information. “What would I ever do without you?” I asked him as I handed it over.

  “Pray you never have to find out.”

  “Anything I can help you with?” I asked. My curiosity niggled at me and I was dying to know what really brought Maddox and a camera to the hotel.

  “Too dangerous to divulge,” he said.

  “Since when did you become the man of mystery?”

  “You’ll never know,” he said as he winked. He leaned over and kissed my cheek, then got out the car without a backward look.

  I watched him in the rearview mirror and seconds later, lost him. If he still remained in the parking lot, I couldn’t find him. I had no idea if he even watched me when I picked up my camera and checked in on Debby again. I observed her a little longer until she closed the curtains and turned out the light. With dusk falling and the moon already high in the sky, I figured she’d gone to sleep. Feeling disheartened at her lack of criminal activity, I went home, ready and willing to cocoon myself in my own bed.

  Chapter Nine

  I slipped out of the house at dawn, cursing that I had to slide out of my warm bed where a sleepy Solomon was running hot. My plan was to catch Debby as soon as she left the hotel so I could spend the day following her. I needed to find out what she did with her time but first, I wanted to make a few checks into her alibi.

  Another thought crossed my mind while I was getting dressed. Though Debby said she only returned because she was homesick, I needed to know if there were another reason. Not only that, but what did she expect to find here? It was hardly as glamorous as the French Riviera, and sadly lacking the history of Italy, or the cuisine of Greece. If she were truly homesick, she could have stopped in for a visit of days or even weeks but with the apartment hunting Debby showed every intention of staying here. Something must have attracted her and I had to know what it could be.

  Debby said she picked up takeout from Dan’s Deli and took it to Fairmount Park at six-thirty. Armed with the restaurant name, I parked on the same block and hopped out, looking around. No surveillance cameras could be seen on the street but luck was working in my favor today. The restaurant was open for breakfast, but thankfully hadn’t any queue yet for coffee, pastries, and other tasty items from the hot counter. I grabbed a sugary raspberry pastry and an apple (just to be healthy), taking both to the counter before ordering a coffee.

  Behind the counter, I spotted a small camera mounted above the door to the back room.

  “Can I get you anything else?” asked the cheerful clerk as she rang up my items.

  “I hope so. A friend of mine came in a few days ago to pick up some food to go and she went to the park but she got the feeling someone was following her; and she’s a little freaked out,” I lied smoothly. The clerk’s jaw dropped, and she seemed slightly appalled. “She mentioned you had a camera and asked me if I could find it in the records? She’s been a nervous wreck
since it happened,” I added, laying it on thick.

  “That’s awful. The camera doesn’t record but maybe I’ll remember her. When did your friend come in?”

  “Two days ago, around six-thirty,” I said, describing Debby.

  “I was working that shift and I do remember her. Let me see,” she started, wrinkling her nose. “She ordered the chicken special and fries and I think she got a Coke too. She wore a trench coat and had a tan leather purse.”

  “That’s her. Great memory!”

  “Thank you. I don’t remember anyone else hanging around. We get a lot of workers usually between five-thirty and six and then it gets a little quieter until seven. I think I remember a mom coming in with two kids but that doesn’t sound like any stalker.”

  I agreed it didn’t and thanked her kindly for her time. Two parts of Debby’s alibi held up. That didn’t mean she actually ate in the park, even though her dad said she called him from there. She could have been calling from anywhere.

  Taking out my coffee and snacks, I left the shop and walked in the direction of the park, reaching it only minutes later. A couple of years ago, the city added surveillance cameras to the park, perching them atop street lamps. I had no idea where Debby would have been sitting to eat, but I figured if she drove there, she probably wouldn’t have strayed too far from her parking space. It made sense that she would have parked near where she picked up the food.

  I sent a text to Lucas asking if he could find any sign of Debby being in the park in the region where I now stood. If she were caught on film, there would be almost no way she could have left the park, gotten across town, and murdered Fiona.

  Almost immediately, a text pinged back. Issue with city cameras over last two days. Film not recording.

  “Just great,” I said to the air. That might have worked in Debby’s favor if she were the true killer but the timing didn’t jive. I knew where she was at six-thirty. If the hotel confirmed she returned there at seven-fifteen, then stopping by Harbridge just to turn over a house and murder its owner was too tight a time frame.