Rocky Road & Revenge

by Erin Huss

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  ROCKY ROAD & REVENGE

  Cambria Clyne Mysteries book #2

  by

  ERIN HUSS

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  Copyright © 2018 by Erin Huss

  Cover design by Anna Snow

  Gemma Halliday Publishing

  http://www.gemmahallidaypublishing.com

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  FREE BOOK OFFER

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BOOKS BY ERIN HUSS

  SNEAK PEEK

  To my best friend Katie Ledesma. Love you!

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  A huge thank you to Gemma Halliday and everyone at GHP for bringing Cambria back to life. This has been a dream come true.

  To my loving and supportive husband, Jed, thank you for…well…loving and supporting me. Natalie, Noah, Ryder, Emma, and Fisher, you are my motivation in all things. I love you.

  A big thank you to my go-to defense attorney, Cody Christiansen, for the lawyer talk, and Detective Can't-Be-Named for the cop talk. Thank you to my beta readers—Andria Huss, Barbara Stotko, Dayna McTavish, and Julie C. Gardner.

  I have amazing readers who aided in the naming of characters. Thank you, Kate Murphy, Genienne Hernandez, Ashley Manis, Jessica Hughes, and Jessica Billings (rent or run dot com). To all the followers at The Apartment Manager's Blog—thank you for sticking with me all these years. My Artist's Way Group—Angie, Brooke, Holly, Kim, Michelle, and Michaela. You're all in my circle.

  A massive shout-out to The Apple Store at The Oaks Mall in Thousand Oaks, California who recovered (most of) my book after my daughter spilled a glass of milk on my laptop. Sorry for hysterics. Thank you for calming me down. I've almost recovered.

  Most of all, thank you to my family (Huss, Hogan, Raynaud, Stotko). I wouldn't be here without you.

  Hi, Mom!

  *waving*

  * * * * *

  PROLOGUE

  We all lie. You know it. I know it. If we're being watched by shape-shifting Lizard People, like every conspiracy theorist on Hollywood Boulevard thinks we are, then they know it too. Most are the daily lies we tell ourselves—I can eat this cookie now because I'm starting a diet on Monday, or I'll shave my legs tomorrow, or two Diet Cokes for breakfast is totally normal.

  Other lies are disguised as secrets. Like when Tam in Apartment 7 tells his wife he's going for a run but really he's behind the maintenance garage playing Clash Royale on his phone. For me, it's the stash of Thin Mints I have hidden in my nightstand under Pride and Prejudice, which I've never read, never plan to. I watched the movie, once. Just so I could hold my own should I find myself in a social situation where Mr. Darcy is the topic of conversation. Which has yet to happen. Nineteenth-century literature doesn't do it for me.

  For the record: eating Thin Mints does.

  Some lies are earth-shattering. Like Trent's in Apartment 23. Every workday at exactly 11:15 AM a brunette in tight pants knocks on his door. Trent answers, plunges his tongue down her throat, let's her inside the apartment, and she exits an hour later looking quite pleased and mighty disheveled. Trent is married to a blonde. A blonde who thinks he's at home working all day.

  Then there are the deadly lies. I'm talking if-you-knew-the-truth-I'd-have-to-kill-you type of lies. This is what makes my job interesting. As an apartment manager, I'm privy to all the secrets, all the omissions, and all the lies my residents tell. Whether I want to be or not.

  It's not a job for the squeamish, hotheaded, or those with a heart condition. It's a job for me…or at least I thought it was, until I had to crawl through a burning building with a dog on my chest and bullets whizzing over my head.

  Now, I'm not so sure.

  I hear phlebotomy is a nice profession.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Property manager (n): the person charged with the care of a real estate property.

  See also: Firefighter

  There was an urn on my desk. It wasn't one of those giant vase-looking urns, like the one my Grandma Ruthie's ashes were kept in. This one was subtle, looked more like a decoration than an urn. It was a shiny mahogany box engraved with Mom in swirly letters along with little flowers—forget-me-nots, if I wasn't mistaken. Ironic, since Mom had most certainly been forgotten.

  I'd found the urn early that morning after a move-out inspection. Steph Woo, the now former resident of Apartment 17, was supposed to meet me at 7:00 AM for a walk-through but never showed up. Probably because her walls were painted Pepto pink and the place smelled like corn. There was little hope for a security deposit refund. She'd left the urn in her carport cabinet. I didn't know what else to do with it, so I put it on my desk and left Steph a message to come pick it up.

  My name is Cambria Clyne. I'm an on-site apartment manager slash caretaker of the cremated and forgotten.

  "Congratulations. You're now cursed," Amy said when I called later to tell her about my latest move-out find.

  I leaned close to my computer and plugged one ear to better hear Amy over the residents passing through the lobby. "How am I cursed?"

  "Harboring an urn that doesn't belong to you disturbs the deceased and causes bad luck," she said, as if this were public knowledge.

  "Are you sure that's a real thing?"

  "It's most certainly a real thing. You should have left it where you found it or put it in that closet by the pool. The one with all the other crap people forgot when they moved."

  "If I were dead, being shoved into a storage closet would disturb me more than being placed on a desk."

  "Well, you're not dead, and you have no idea how these things work." Aside from being my best friend, Amy was also an actress. She had recently landed the role of the sultry medium, Page Harrison, on the prime-time drama Ghost Confidenti
al and spent much of her spare time researching the hereafter in the name of character development.

  "I'm sure Steph will be back shortly to claim her mom, and all will be right in the spiritual world again," I said.

  "Let's hope so. The last thing you need is bad luck."

  This was true.

  "Also, who forgets their mom?"

  "Maybe she set it on the shelf while she loaded the car, and forgot it?" I said.

  "See, that's the problems with urns. They're too portable. For the record, when I die, please have me buried at Westwood Memorial. I can't risk being misplaced."

  "You don't want to be buried back home?"

  "Are you kidding me? Do not bury me in Fresno. I belong in Los Angeles," she said. "There's better weather here."

  "I don't think weather matters too much when you're dead. Also, Westwood is where Marilyn Monroe is buried, and Hugh Hefner, and Natalie Wood, and Farrah Fawcett and—"

  "Are you on Wikipedia?"

  "Maybe." Yes. "It sounds like a pricey place to decompose."

  "That's fine. Pick a space no one wants by the fence or the freeway."

  "Why are we even talking about this?" I asked. "Are you planning to die soon?"

  "No, but one can never be too prepared." She exhaled into the receiver. "Anyway, I'm done shooting for the day. I'm coming by. I have to tell you about what happened to me last night, and I'll see what I can do about the urn situation."

  "You realize you're not a real medium, right?"

  The line went silent.

  "Hello?" I glanced down at my phone's home screen: a picture of my daughter, Lilly, and me on New Year's Eve with party horns in our mouths.

  Amy was gone.

  I attempted a sigh. Except the dress I had on didn't offer much give for things like bending or moving or breathing or sighing. I wore it because the rusty color looked good against my pale, freckly skin, accentuated Einstein (my nickname for the dark mass of craziness springing from my head), and made my blue eyes pop.

  OK, fine.

  I typically wore jeans, Converse, and a T-shirt to work, but it was laundry day, and the dress was the only clean item in my closet that fit—and I use the word fit loosely. Or should I say tightly. I'd been eating my feelings as of late. I had a lot of feelings to get through. My feelings tasted like rocky road ice cream.

  Whatever. I didn't have time to worry about belly rolls, spirit disturbances, or silly superstitions. I had work to do. There was a property inspection coming up, and everything had to be perfect.

  Once I had a year of property management under my belt, I planned to apply for a position at a more prominent complex, one with hundreds of units, leasing agents, a full maintenance staff, and a golf cart. In my mind, if you need a golf cart to get from one end of the property to the next, you've made it.

  The best way to achieve golf-cart-status was to impress the property trustee with my reports and pristine grounds and, of course, make my boss look good. These were Patrick's exact words when he called the day before to remind me that "The McMills own ninety percent of my company's portfolio. This meeting on Thursday must run smoothly. I don't want any surprises. Please make Elder Property Management look good." I got the message loud and clear and was happy to report everything was in order. The meeting would run smoothly. I would impress the trustee. All I had to do was keep it together for the next forty-eight hours, and that golf cart was as good as mine.

  Next on my to-do list: the lobby.

  I fluffed the couch pillows, adjusted the armchairs just so, wiped down the glass coffee table until I could see my reflection, and vacuumed the carpet. The lobby had been decorated sometime in the late eighties and not touched since. Lots of florals. Lots of stripes. Lots of neon colors. Busy wallpaper. Teal carpet. Yellow linoleum. Eucalyptus branches.

  The eighties was not a good decade for home furnishings.

  I'd put together a proposal to redecorate. My plan was to fuse the patterns and colors from the seventies with the deco furnishings found in many Los Angeles homes today. I thought it was an ingenious design (if I do say so myself). We were located in Los Angeles, and the building was constructed sometime in the seventies.

  In my proposed revamp we'd have sleek furniture, abstract art, palms, and an orange accent wall. Patrick nearly fainted when I showed him the design. He told me it wasn't in the budget and even if it were, he'd never paint a wall orange.

  So I was stuck with teal carpet and an overstuffed peach couch.

  At least the lobby would smell good. I'd bought a wax warmer at Walmart and plugged it in next to the couch. It was in the shape of an owl and came with three scents. Cinnamon, linen, and apple pie.

  Cinnamon was too Christmassy. Linen smelled like deodorant. Apple pie reminded me of, well, an apple pie.

  Who doesn't love apple pie?

  I placed three wax cubes on the tray and watched them turn to liquid. The sweet artificial scent filled the room. I grabbed my water bottle from the desk, took a seat on the ugly couch, and crossed my legs. It was quiet. Lilly had gone with her dad, Tom, for the day, and it was near closing time, which meant most residents would use the pedestrian gate instead of walking through the lobby.

  I threw my hands behind my head, sat back, and had a look around. Sure the lobby was offensive to the eyes, but it was home, and the perfect setup for a single mom like myself. To the right was my enclosed office with a waist-high counter (also teal, also ugly) overlooking the lobby, where I could work and chat with the residents who walked through. The door behind my desk opened to my attached two-bedroom apartment. I could be working one minute, turn around, step into the kitchen, and make— That doesn't smell right?

  * * *

  Random fact: if a wax warmer catches on fire, dousing it with water causes a bigger fire. Also, 1980s furniture is quite flammable.

  The emergency service personnel hustled to and from the wreckage while I watched the scene unfold from the street. "Mom" was safe in my hands. I'd wrapped the urn in a sweatshirt for protection before I rushed out of the building. If moving an urn disturbed the deceased, then lighting one on fire could have eternal consequences. Not that I really believed in all that.

  It didn't take long for a group of residents to congregate on the driveway. Their breaths huffed out in white clouds against the darkening sky as they chattered about their manager, who had just burned down the building. Which technically wasn't true. The building was still erect. The lobby was just a bit crispy now. However, Silvia Kravitz stood in the middle of the crowd with her parrot, Harold, perched on her shoulder, and by this time tomorrow I'd be a pyromaniac who burned down the building.

  Silvia was the Mayor of Rumorville, with Harold as her deputy. She'd started a rumor last year that I had a threesome with the retired couple in Apartment 22. You could read all about it on Yelp, Apartment Ratings, Rent or Run dot com, and Superior Senior Living.

  So now I was a pyromaniac with a geriatric fetish.

  Meh.

  I'd been called worse.

  I approached the group of residents on shaky legs. My nerves were fried. Silvia folded her arms and tapped her foot. Silvia Kravitz was a retired actress who looked like the seventy-year-old love child of Gollum and Joan Rivers. And she only wore lingerie: no matter the time of day, the occasion, or whether or not the sun was at the perfect angle to blast through the sheer fabric.

  "A faulty wax warmer caught fire, and the damage was contained to the lobby," I said to them. "No apartments were involved."

  "What about smoke inhalation?" Silvia said with a theatrical wave of her hand.

  Harold turned his backside to me. Everyone standing around her nodded and whispered "good point" to each other.

  "Excuse me?"

  Silvia draped an arm around Shanna, the new resident in Apartment 15. "This poor young dear has an audition tomorrow, and how is she to sing with smoke-filled lungs?"

  Shanna let out a dainty cough.

  Heaven help me. I had too many
actors in my life.

  I assured everyone the best way to avoid smoke inhalation was to go home and close the doors. Two out of fifteen residents listened to their property manager. Which was about the national average.

  As the firefighters left and the trucks disappeared, the crowd eventually thinned. Residents lost interest and went back to their apartments. Which was good, because I still had to call Patrick.

  He freaked.

  "Look at the couch!" I had him on FaceTime so he could see the damage for himself. The fire inspector had deemed the structure sound and allowed me back in. The office was smoky but not charred. My apartment was smelly but fine. Other than that, it wasn't so bad.

  OK, fine. That's a lie.

  It was terrible. I had the trustee inspection in two days, and I'd just burned down the lobby! The back wall was singed, the couch unrecognizable, the beams were exposed, ash rained down, the once teal carpet was black, and firefighters had busted one window.

  At least no one was hurt, and the lobby would get a new look after all?

  I had to find the silver lining to keep from crying.

  "It's a nightmare!" Patrick wasn't a silver-lining kind of guy. "You'll need to board the window and call the insurance, and we'll need a restoration company out there tonight."

  "Done. Done, and done," I said. "The restoration company will be here in an hour. I left a message with the claims department, and Mr. Nguyen is out buying wood for the window." Mr. Nguyen was the maintenance man. We couldn't pronounce his first name, so we kept it formal. "You don't have to worry. I'll take care of everything." I gave what I hoped was a reassuring smile.

  Patrick responded with a grunt. We hung up with a promise that I wouldn't burn anything else down.

  I sighed the best I could in my restrictive clothing. What a mess. I picked up a seared throw pillow with my forefinger and thumb. My eyes cut over to "Mom." She was back on the desk, sitting between the stapler and the ancient answering machine. I thought about what Amy had said…