Kiki Lowenstein Books 1-3 & Cara Mia Delgatto Books 1-3: The Perfect Series for Crafters, Pet Lovers, and Readers Who Like Upbeat Books!

by Joanna Campbell Slan

  That shut me up. But not for long.

  “I wondered what that bumpity-bump-bump-bump noise was.”

  “That was the sound of a once sturdy four-by-four being dragged down a city street.”

  “Argh,” I groaned and rested my forehead on my arms again. “That’ll be an expensive fix.”

  “Not really. Robbie and the neighbor discussed the damage. Seems that the neighbor had been wanting to put up a brick mailbox stand for years. Robbie offered to help. You’re in the clear, Sunshine.”

  I groaned again. “Dodie, do you think there’s only one person in the world for each of us? A soul mate? Just one?”

  She fiddled with her Coke can. “That’s what I tell Horace. That he’s my one and only.”

  “Then you do believe it.”

  “No, but I’m a good liar. Especially when it counts. There’s no reason for Horace to think he’s replaceable. He’s not. And I’m not about to go looking. But do I really believe we each have one soulmate? No. There are millions upon millions of people in this world. I think you could love and live with at least a handful.”

  I wiped my eyes and took a big drink of my Dr Pepper. “A handful. That many?”

  “At least. Now get to work. I’m not paying you to sit around and wax philosophical.”

  She’d almost made it back to the stock room when I called out, “Dodie? Thank you.”

  “It’s okay, Sunshine. My therapist’s license never came through. The advice I gave you is worth exactly what you paid for it.”

  54

  My cell phone chimed to tell me I had to change out of my nice top into the tee shirt I’d brought for another afternoon at Marla’s Messy Mansion. I’d no more than turned the ringer off than the front door flew open and in walked Mert. Her hair was wet and slicked back into a ponytail, but she was nicely dressed in her usual “show off the merchandise” low-cut top and tight cropped pants.

  “Uh-oh,” I said to myself. This couldn’t be good news. If she wasn’t working, that meant that Ali Timmons had fired us. Slowly, I rose from the stool where I’d been sitting, collating, and stapling project sheets for tonight’s make-and-take.

  But before I could hail my friend, the door opened behind her and in walked Robbie Holmes.

  Now I was really, really curious. Had he come to tell me I owed him for the busted mailbox?

  “Good news,” he said.

  Mert didn’t slow her pace. She pulled up the stool opposite of mine. I couldn’t tell by her face what she was thinking, so I asked her, “Do you agree that it’s good news? Whatever it is?”

  “Sort of.” She shrugged.

  “We found Trudy Squires.” Robbie continued, “She’s alive. Scared. Shook up, but alive.”

  “You can say that again,” muttered Mert.

  “Where was she?”

  “In a house of horrors,” said Mert. “Fred Ernest had her tied up in his basement. He was waiting for us to finish at Marla’s before he…”

  Mert and Robbie exchanged long glances. He rubbed his neck.

  “Kiki? You can’t breathe a word of this. Let’s go someplace private.”

  I ran back to tell Dodie that I was stepping out for a minute. Then I accompanied Robbie and Mert, climbing into his big police cruiser. He turned on the engine and cranked up the A/C. When we were settled, he said, “You were right and wrong about the meat in those bags.”

  “It weren’t no deer. It was ground up people,” said Mert.

  I gagged.

  “The missing women,” clarified Robbie.

  “How on earth?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “That creepy Fred Ernest was helping Marla Lever, all right,” said Mert. “He used her cats as bait. See, he’d take one with him in his car when he went looking for women to prey on. Then he’d let the cat out and tell the woman it was a stray and he needed help capturing it.”

  “That’s how he lured the women into his car,” I said. “And that’s why they didn’t fight him or take their purses along with.”

  “Exactly,” said Robbie. “Once they got close enough, he’d chloroform them. The only question is how long did he use this method? I understood that her hoarding cats was a recent development, right?”

  “Right,” I answered, “but I’ve seen her calendars going ten years back. She’s owned cats for a decade.”

  “Got it,” said Robbie.

  That’s when it hit me. “So that hoist in the garage, where we thought one of the Levers was field-dressing deer…”

  “Correct,” said Robbie. “As you know, we sent a bag of what we thought was venison to the lab last night. This morning, when we learned it was human, Mert reminded us about the hook. Originally, of course, we used luminol in the garage and got a hit, but we thought the blood was from animals. So we sent the techs back in to check it out.”

  “It gets worse,” said Mert. “You remember that woodchipper? That NorthStar brush chipper we found in the garage? It can take anything up to six inches wide. That monster was feeding his victims through that machine. Then he’d give most of the ground meat to Marla to feed to her kitties.”

  “That’s why we couldn’t find bags of cat food!” I shook my head in wonder.

  “All the missing women were all thin, because he needed to shove their limbs into the chipper,” said Mert. “That also explains why his lawn was so gorgeous. He’d drag that wood chipper over to his house, haul it into his backyard, and because he’d blocked all the sightlines, no one knew what he was feeding into the hopper.”

  “How did you find Trudy? Why did Fred give Trudy the phone number for Allen Lever?”

  “Because they were working together,” said Robbie. “Alfred Ernest and Allen Lever. A homicidal duo. It’s not that uncommon. In fact, Fred groomed Allen to be his little helper. Oh, my gosh.”

  Robbie and Mert explained the rest, but I quit listening about halfway through as I fixated on the perils of being a single mom. Marla Lever had trusted her kindly neighbor, Fred Ernest, to be a good role model for her son. After losing her other son, Marla must have fretted over Allen, possibly even ignoring any of his faults. Under Fred Ernest’s tutelage, Allen had exploited his mother’s weaknesses for years.

  “Allen or Fred Ernest hit Mrs. Newcomber with the baseball bat, right?” I asked.

  “You’ve got it in one,” said Robbie. “Thanks to that card you found with Allen’s phone number, the Belleville police were able to shake his tree. Once he realized he was on the hook for Trudy’s disappearance, he was more than willing to rat out his mentor.”

  “Thank God,” said Mert. “For his manifold and great blessings. Because if Allen hadn’t tattled on Fred Ernest, Trudy might not have made it outta there alive.”

  55

  One week later…

  “I baked a batch of pumpkin cookies.” Rebekkah opened a Tupperware container. “They’re for my going away party this evening, but you can sample them, Kiki. I know how you insist on making sure they’re worthy of our customers.”

  “You bet I do!” I bit into one and moaned with joy.

  “You aren’t really going away,” Dodie said to her daughter. “Not exactly. This is just the crop where you’ll take a bow and exit stage right as our Sales Mangler.”

  I giggled. So Dodie had caught the typo.

  “Even though you’re moving out of your parents’ house, we’ll still need you at the store,” I said as I “sampled” my second cookie eagerly. I take my quality control job very seriously

  “School first, then family, and finally the store.” Dodie bit into her third cookie. Every quality control officer needs a good second in command. Dodie was right there with me, sampling the merchandise.

  She and I had decided that we would limit Rebekkah’s “helping at the store” to specific activities where she couldn’t ruin any craft supplies. Otherwise, Rebekkah typically trashed more paper and products than a springtime flooding of the Mississippi River.

  “I can’t wait
to get my own place off campus in U City. My parents and I need a break from each other,” Rebekkah said.

  “Your father and I love you, but you’re probably right.” Dodie’s smile was colored with sadness.

  It was time for Rebekkah to go back to school and to get out of Dodie and Horace’s collective hair. Or what they had left of it. Their daughter had applied and been accepted to Washington University, with the goal of finishing her undergraduate degree and then attending the George Warren Brown School of Social Work as a graduate student.

  I was delighted that we’d found a good solution for Rebekkah, and I was thrilled because Clancy would be picking up more hours. Having my friend around would make it much easier for me to put up with Bama.

  “By the way.” Rebekkah slung an arm around her mother’s neck. “I called Rabbi Sarah yesterday. She told me there’s no prohibition against burying Jews with tattoos in Jewish cemeteries.”

  Dodie rolled her eyes to the heavens and muttered a prayer in Hebrew.

  “You aren’t planning your own burial already, are you?” I asked Rebekkah. “You’re awfully young.”

  “I promise that I’m not going anywhere until I help you prep for your crop tonight. You do need help, don’t you?” Rebekkah asked.

  “Of course I do. I’m going to teach a couple of new Zentangle designs and show our students how to use the designs in jewelry.” I didn’t bother to add that after all the 24/7 news about Allen Lever and Fred Ernest’s killing spree, I hungered for more zen in my life. As it was, I had nightmares about that stupid wood chipper.

  Rebekkah must have read my mind. “What did I hear on the news? Twelve women?”

  “Twelve and counting.” Clancy walked up behind us. Because this was Rebekkah’s last official crop, Clancy had decided to join us for the evening. As usual, Bama bowed out, explaining that she had another commitment.

  Clancy continued, “Part of the deal to avoid the death penalty was that Alfred Ernest would come clean on all the women he’d killed. His career as a serial killer had started before he got poor Allen Lever involved. I have a hunch the number of victims might grow.”

  “There’s Marla’s death, too,” I said. “Fred Ernest is responsible for that.” Shortly after Detweiler and Hadcho had arrested her son, Marla Lever suffered another massive stroke and died in the hospital. In my heart of hearts, I believed that Marla finally knew she could move on, and so she did. Clancy, Dodie, and I had attended the memorial service for our friend. As we stood by Marla’s open grave, I prayed the poor woman would finally get a measure of closure. The death of her youngest child, Anthony, had left a gaping hole in Marla’s psyche that the years had never healed. She had tried to fill that pain by hoarding. Now Marla and the child she’d lost would be reunited.

  Was it possible that Dodie considered her own death as a chance to see Nathan again? That would be a comforting thought. Maybe it made the possibility of cancer more bearable. Whatever she was thinking, she steadfastly refused to discuss seeing a doctor about the lump she’d found. Every attempt to push her to make an appointment had resulted in her getting angry with me. Reluctantly, I’d come to the conclusion there was nothing more I could do.

  While I was thinking about Dodie, the conversation had moved along.

  “There’s also the vandalizing of your home.” Clancy handed me a napkin and pointed to crumbs on my face. “Can you believe that Fred Ernest talked Allen Lever into doing that? Talk about being under someone’s spell!”

  “That’s how it must have been for years,” I said. “Robbie says it’s not that uncommon in homicidal duos. There’s always a leader and a follower. Fred would tell Allen what to do, and Allen looked up to the man, so he’d trot off and do it. That’s why Allen agreed to meet Trudy in the parking lot over in Soulard. Fred didn’t trust her to keep her mouth shut after she’d snooped around at his house. As an insurance policy, he told her that Allen had mentioned he’d love to take Trudy out.”

  “She was so eager to find Mr. Right that she kept chasing Mr. Wrong,” said Clancy.

  An uncomfortable silence followed. All my friends were aware that I’d told Detweiler I didn’t want any more contact with him. He wasn’t Mr. Wrong, but he was Mr. Unavailable. Telling him that I’d rather he not stop by my house or the store was the hardest thing I’ve done in years, but I did it. Dodie, Sheila, and Clancy backed me up in my decision. They all pledged that if the handsome cop dropped in and tried to ask about me, they’d nip the conversation in the bud.

  “Did Mert ever get paid?” asked Dodie.

  “Yes, but she had to hire an attorney to threaten Ali Timmons.”

  The Lever house in Ladue had since been razed. Instead of building two houses, the Timmons sold it to a developer.

  Pamela Bertolli told me all about it, adding, “They never did hire that fancy agent after all. He refused to work with them. As soon as the check clears, they’re moving to another state.”

  My boss promised we’d never have to do another crop at a remote location unless I had the chance to vet the place.

  “That reminds me,” said Clancy, “Remember how I got ink on my purse the day we showed up at Marla Lever’s house? Look at it now.” Where there’d once been a plain white leather hobo bag, there was now a cool purse covered with designs done in black ink—a Zentangle dream!

  “A crime solved, an item repurposed, and—” I plucked out the newest member of my family out of his cat carrier “—a kitten rescued. All is well, isn’t it?”

  I did my best to smile. Okay, so the guy of my dreams was married. I still had reasons to be happy. Martin snuggled under my chin, and the ache in my heart eased a little.

  ***

  KIKI’S STORY CONTINUES WITH…

  Photo, Snap, Shot: Book #4 in the Kiki Lowenstein Mystery Series

  Tear Down and Die

  Book #1 in the Cara Mia Delgatto Mystery Series

  Prologue

  Late August…

  St. Louis, Missouri

  As if he were looking out into the future, the light faded in Sven's brown eyes, and his weight settled in my arms. A sob burst from me, as I whispered, "He's gone, isn't he?"

  The vet, a grizzled man near retirement age who had a habit of clicking his dentures, pressed the stethoscope to my dog's chest. After what seemed like an eternity, he nodded.

  "I killed my dog," I said to my friend Kiki, as her fingers gripped my shoulder. "I killed him!"

  With surprising strength, she grabbed me and turned me so that we faced each other. "You did not kill him. He's been having seizures for the past eight hours. You released him, Cara Mia. You gave him peace."

  I threw my arms around her neck and cried. I choked and sputtered and moaned and keened while all the sadness of the past year heaved up inside me and overflowed onto the shoulder of my friend. Kiki Lowenstein simply held me, patting my back, making soothing sounds.

  When I was nearly cried out, the vet asked, "Do you want to take your pet?"

  Kiki's fiancé, Detective Chad Detweiler made a move to bundle Sven in a blanket, but I said, "No. Please cremate him. I plan to leave the area. I want Sven to go with me."

  The rest of the visit was a blur. The staff murmured their condolences as we walked through the office. Other clients looked away. They understood instinctively what had happened.

  The tall detective opened the door for us, and we climbed into Detweiler's big police cruiser. Kiki and I sat in the back seats so she could hold me. We'd made quite a fuss on our arrival. Detweiler had used his flashing lights to speed us through the city traffic as I watched Sven convulsing on my lap. Silently, I thanked my lucky stars for having friends who dropped everything to come to my aid at a moment's notice. Leaving St. Louis would be hard, but it was time. My parents were both gone, having died within six months of each other, and my son was off to college.

  Now this.

  "I am never, ever going to own another dog," I said. "Ever."

  For a long portion of the
ride, Kiki said nothing. She put her arm around my shoulders and let me cry, leaking tears now rather than sobbing.

  When we pulled up to my house, she walked me inside while Detweiler waited for her in his car. I appreciated how he gave us a bit of privacy. After she got me settled on my sofa and made me a cup of peppermint tea, Kiki sank down next to me and said, "Now you listen to me, Cara Mia, and you listen good. Of course you'll get another dog. Of course you'll love again. I know you and I know that you believe in second chances. We both do. That's what makes life worth living. And if you forget how important they are, if you start to doubt that they are worth the heartache, remember this—"

  She pressed my fingertips to her belly so I could feel her baby kick. "Second chances," she said. "That's what life's all about. Don't you ever doubt it."

  1

  Early September

  Sometimes you need to go backwards to move forwards. Especially when you doubt yourself and don't know what to do next. All my packing was done. Boxes that would go into storage formed an untidy wall around me.

  "Where you moving to?" asked one of the men from the van lines, as he flicked the butt of a Camel cigarette onto my lawn. Except it wasn't my lawn. Not anymore. So why worry?

  "I haven't decided yet."

  That pretty much summed up my life. I was at a crossroads, a spot on the map between emptiness and confusion—and I didn't know which way to turn. Watching the workers load up my stuff only made me feel more unsettled. I signed the paperwork for the movers, hopped in my car, the black Camry I've named Black Beauty and drove to a familiar parking lot.

  "Cara Mia Delgatto! I've been thinking about you." Kiki stood at the back door of her scrapbook and crafting store, Time in a Bottle. A red dog leash connected her to her rescue pup, Gracie, a harlequin Great Dane.