“Cara,” said Jason, taking my hand in his. His gaze was steady and reassuring. “Don’t take it personally. That cop heard you two had words, so he needed to see your reaction. That’s it; that’s all.”
Jason reached over and gave my fingers a tiny squeeze. I should have pulled my hand away, but the warmth in his eyes, the kindness there, made me feel better. I left my fingers tucked inside his.
“Here’s Jackie!” MJ joined us, holding a wriggling Chihuahua. She set my dog on top of me.
Jack licked my chin before I could grab him.
“Looks like to me like you’ve got yourself quite a fan club, Cara Mia,” said Jason, getting to his feet. “I think you’re in good hands. If you’ll excuse me, ladies, I better get back to the gas station. My work crew will be arriving any minute.”
“No reason to rush off,” said MJ.
"Sorry about the delay," I said.
“Not your fault.” A half-grin worked magic to transform his features from serious to cute. "Like your friend said, don’t even go there.”
8
~Lou~
"Female victim. Dead at least overnight," the Medical Examiner confirmed.
"We’ll want to haul the Toyota in so we can get her out and go over the vehicle with a fine tooth comb,” said Detective Sergeant Lippet. “The crime scene techs will need to process the area surrounding the car.”
"I figured as much," said Lou. He turned to his partner, Detective Ollie Anderson. “Not much more for us to do here until the uniforms finish canvassing the area. Our DB is probably Kathy Simmons. You read the missing person report, right?”
“Right,” said Ollie, scratching at a bump on his neck. “You saw there was a break-in at her apartment on Tuesday night?”
“Yeah,” said Lou. “We’ll have to pull that report. Maybe our killer was looking for something, huh? Could be our motive.”
“Maybe. What else do we have to go on?” Ollie wondered.
“Kathy Simmons and Cara Mia Delgatto got into a disagreement at the media event on Monday. Not only did Ms. Simmons insist on buying something that Cara didn’t want to sell, she also threatened Cara. She brought up Cooper Rivers and Jodi Wireka. Even threatened to write about the corpse that Cara had found when she bought the building—and to cap it all off, she said she’d write about Cara’s problems back in St. Louis.”
Ollie gave a low whistle. “Geez. You know all this how? From Skye, right?”
Lou blushed. “Let’s just say it’s been confirmed. I need to talk to Cara a little more, and then we need to chat with Kathy Simmons’ roommate. I know that she called in a missing person’s report and the break-in, but she could have been trying to throw us off track.”
“Right,” Ollie said, as he scribbled in a notebook.
“So here’s the timeline as it stands,” said Lou. “First, Kathy Simmons attends the media event at this store. Quarrels with Cara. Cara sells her an item and sends her packing with a plastic container of food as a peace offering. Cara walks Kathy to this car. Kathy doesn’t come home. Her roommate calls the station, but it’s too early to file a missing person’s report. Kathy Simmons’ story appears in the Shoreline News the next day, Tuesday. And here it is Thursday morning when Kathy’s car shows up in a tow-away spot behind Dick Potter’s gas station and adjacent to Cara Mia Delgatto’s shop.”
“We don’t know for sure where Kathy Simmons went after she left the media event,” said Ollie. “She could have filed her story remotely or she could have gone back to the newspaper office. That means we need to check it out, right?”
“Uh-huh,” said Lou. “If she did go back to the newspaper, other people might have seen her there. A co-worker might have been the last person to see her before she vanished.”
“What’re you thinking about for motive?” Ollie asked. He had been a homicide detective for five years. Lou had worked on homicides nearly three times as long.
“Too early to tell. You’re the person who’s been reading up on profiling. What’s your take on all this?”
Ollie rubbed his blond eyelashes. He took a minute to gather his thoughts. “Stuffing her in the trunk of her car shows lack of respect. The car was parked here probably because someone didn’t think it would be found quickly. The gas station has been closed for several weeks. That also tells me it’s someone local, someone who knew the Gas E Bait was abandoned, waiting to be torn down. The condition of the body might tell us whether Kathy went with the killer willingly. There might be signs of a struggle. She probably didn’t go home first because there’s food in the car. Whatever happened to Kathy Simmons must have taken place shortly after she attended Cara’s media party.”
“Good points,” said Lou. “How's it coming with the statements?"
“Checking out the nearby merchants,” Ollie said. “That Valerie Blaze is a real ball of fire.”
“Right,” said Lou. Valerie Blaze was a fresh-faced newbie with a lot of ambition. Lou had seen this sort of gung-ho attitude before, and he had mixed feelings. Either these over-eager types burned out quickly, or they matured into good officers. He wasn’t sure which way Valerie was heading, but he knew that Detective Sergeant Davidson had high hopes for the young woman. Davidson had said, “It would be good for us to have a female on the squad. Rounds us out, and gives us a different perspective.”
“Sounds like you’ve got everything under control, Ollie. I'm going over to The Treasure Chest. I need to remind everyone there to keep their mouths shut. We don’t want word of this leaking out until we contact Kathy Simmons’ next of kin.”
9
~Lou~
Skye answered when Lou rang the bell at the store’s back door, but she didn’t invite him inside. Instead, she blocked the entrance and stared at him angrily. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, Lou.”
“Can I come in? I don’t want to stand out here and talk.”
“Be my guest. You’re the big man with the badge.” Instead of walking away, she flounced. He’d never seen someone flounce before, although he’d read about it.
Skye had definitely flounced.
“Where’s MJ?” he wondered as he looked around the back room.
“Upstairs with Cara. I ran back down here to get a chewie stick for Jack,” she said. “Can you believe that Jason carried Cara all the way up those stairs? And that he’s hanging around to make sure she’s all right. Just goes to show you what a good guy he is.”
“What makes you say that?” asked Lou.
“He obviously cares about someone other than himself,” said Skye, as her eyes darkened in anger. “I had you all wrong, Lou. I thought you were different. Not like all the other men in my life. They only cared about what was important to them. I thought you might actually care about me. My feelings. My friends. My life.”
“That’s not fair,” said Lou, as he crossed his arms over his chest. The posture didn’t feel natural. It felt weird. Defensive. He uncrossed his arms, but couldn’t decide where to put them. Finally he shoved his hands deep into his pockets.
“Look,” he tried to sound conciliatory, “I’ve got a job to do.”
“That’s your excuse? Pretty weak. You’ve got a job to do? And that includes using my words against my friends? Taking advantage of our friendship—yours and mine—to further your career? Don’t you have any decency?”
Our friendship? The words stung Lou. He’d thought of Skye as his girlfriend. Granted, he’d never asked her to take on the role. In fact, he’d never taken her out on a proper date. But didn’t she know how much he cared about her?
Now Showalter weighed in with, “How could she know how you feel about her? You’ve been too much of a wuss to tell her!”
Lou felt the heat rise in his neck. “Decency? You want to talk about decency? I’ve got a dead woman stuffed in a car trunk out there, Skye!”
“Look. You know that Cara has not left this store for days because I told you as much. So you cannot possibly believe she had anything to do with this.”
“First of all, you’ve been at Pumpernickel’s, working your shifts, so I hardly think you can swear to what Cara’s been doing. And second of all, I had to hear what she had to say. Had to make sure that’s the car she saw Kathy Simmons climb into. Establishing a timeline is important. Especially when I have a murder on my hands.”
“But you guessed that girl was in the trunk of the car, didn’t you? You wanted to watch Cara’s reaction, didn’t you? What a jerky thing to do!”
He’d never seen Skye so angry. His collar seemed two sizes too tight. The temperature in the room seemed to have gone up ten degrees. But he couldn’t bring himself to apologize. His dad used to say, “I’m not sorry because I know I’m right. Even if I’m not, you’re wrong!”
“I’m a detective working a case and Cara is a suspect.”
“A suspect?” Skye shrieked at him. “Lou! Do you hear what you’re saying? You’re accusing Cara, my friend—yours, too—of doing what? Killing someone she’s barely met? Lifting a woman twice her size into the trunk of a car? Hello? How did Cara do that? It’s not like she’s on steroids. When would she have done it? Huh? You are jumping to conclusions because I told you about her argument with Kathy Simmons. And I told you that because I trusted you! Boy, oh, boy, what a dumb bunny I was!”
With a flick of her wrist, Skye brushed away a tear.
That nearly did Lou in.
“You aren’t a dumb bunny. Even if you hadn’t told me about Cara getting ticked off, I would have questioned her. You aren’t only person who heard Cara having words with Kathy Simmons. MJ was there, wasn’t she?”
“Okay, so I wasn’t the only person who heard their quarrel. MJ was there, too. But I was the only person who was dumb, stupid, naïve, and trusting enough to share that information with you. I ratted out my best friend to you! You can bet that’ll never happen again!”
10
~Cara~
Although I couldn’t hear exactly what Skye and Lou were saying to each other, I could hear the angry tone of their voices. It was clear that the others heard it, too, because none of us dared to look at each other.
MJ puttered around in the kitchen. Jason checked his watch. I concentrated on keeping Jack happy with loads of affection.
Lou’s footfalls echoed loudly on the wooden stairs. A board creaked in the second floor hallway. After a brief courtesy knock, he let himself into my apartment.
“Cara? We need to talk.”
“I’m going downstairs,” said MJ.
“Me, too,” said Jason.
“Thanks again,” I told them, as they closed the door and left.
Lou pulled a notebook out of his back pocket and took the metal folding chair that Jason had vacated. “Cara, can you tell me when you had your last contact with Kathy Simmons?”
“So you’re sure that’s Kathy?”
“No comment.” He tried to get comfortable in the chair and couldn’t.
“Was she murdered?”
“Most citizens don’t crawl into the trunks of their cars and die.”
“Oh, crud,” I said, burying my face in my hands. I sighed and lifted my head. “Is this an official inquiry? If so, I need a lawyer,” I said.
“A young woman is dead. There might be a killer out there on our streets. I’m trying to create a timeline. If you can help me, I’d appreciate it.”
“Lou, I don’t know how I can help! I haven’t been out of the store except to take Jack out to go potty. MJ and Skye can vouch for me. So can Sid.”
Sid Heckman was my newest hire. All of eighteen, favoring a head-to-toe black wardrobe and wearing a decidedly Goth hairstyle, Sid was a bona fide computer guru. I’d brought him onboard to create our website, manage our customer lists, send out e-mail blasts, and computerize our inventory.
“That’s good to know,” said Lou, as he squirmed in the metal folding chair. He crossed and uncrossed his legs. “But I still need help. What can you tell me what you did after Kathy Simmons left? You walked her to her car and then what?”
“I came back to the store and helped put away leftovers. Tidied up. Stacked the folding chairs.”
“Did you have any further contact with Ms. Simmons?”
“She called me a few hours later on my cell phone. Around ten o’clock.”
“Tell me about that.”
“She said she was at the Shoreline News office. Her editor, Adrian Green, had a few questions concerning her story. She put him on the line.”
“And those were?” Lou’s pen hovered over his notebook.
“Adrian wanted to know where we got the pictures for our Old Florida Photo Gallery. I explained that we work with a lot of auctioneers. We’re willing to buy boxes of leftover auction items for next to nothing. It’s like playing the lottery. Once in a while, we find a piece or two that we can definitely sell. Most of the time, we have to be creative. Lately, we’ve been getting a lot of old photos. The trick was to find a way to make them enticing.”
“Is that all he wanted to know?”
“Pretty much. I answered his question and he handed the phone back to Kathy. She apologized for the inconvenience. She explained he likes to double-check her work because she’s a stringer, a contract employee. Then she got downright chatty. Told me that she hopes to work for a bigger paper someday. Covering politics. I think she was trying to get back on my good side after being so demanding.”
“And you’re pretty sure she was at the newspaper office?”
“She said she was. Adrian left the event early. He told me he was going back to the Shoreline News office. I have every reason to think they both were there.”
“Tell me again about why you didn’t want to sell the picture. I thought you were in the business of selling stuff,” he said.
I felt like rolling my eyes and saying, “Well, duh.”
Instead, I counted to ten. I sounded calm when I said, “Look, Lou, I had just stood there and told all the reporters that we were not selling any of the pictures, not until the middle of next month, and then along comes Kathy. She insisted that she couldn’t wait. Had to have that particular picture right away. She forced me to give in and go back on my word.”
“Why was it so important to hang on to the photos?” Lou arched an eyebrow.
“The idea was to drum up interest in the display—and for your information, it worked. You must have seen all the news coverage we got.”
“So why’d you get so hot under the collar? Was it because she asked you about Cooper Rivers?”
“She was blackmailing me, Lou. Civilized people don’t threaten each other when they don’t get what they want. Wouldn’t that make you angry?”
“This isn’t about me. That’s why I’m asking questions,” said Lou.
“Okay, yes. She got my dander up. First, she overstayed her welcome. The party was over. Everyone else had left. Second, she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Third, she planned to tell everyone about my problems with the law back in St. Louis. So sure, I was ticked off. On top of all that, it had been a long day. Kathy was trampling on my last nerve.”
I paused until he glanced up from his scribbling. “Come on, Lou! I wanted to get rid of the woman, not kill her! You can’t possibly think I had cause to hurt her! Why are you asking me all these stupid questions?”
He gave me a half smile. “What you’re saying gives me insight into her character.”
“Speaking of which, one of the reporters mentioned he didn’t like her.”
“Did he say why?”
“He told me that Kathy didn’t know when to quit.”
“Yeah, well, she’s definitely quitting now.”
11
~Cara~
Because I was still a little light-headed, Lou helped me go down the stairs. He took one arm while I carried Jack under the other. Passing through the sales floor, we entered the back room, which is usually alive with happy chatter. Instead, everyone was silent.
MJ was sipping a cup of coffee, Skye was stringing bead
s on a bracelet, and Jason was sending a text message on his phone.
“I hope you aren’t telling anyone what we found this morning,” Lou said to the project manager.
“Of course not,” said Jason.
“Okay, listen up, people,” said Lou. “You need to stay quiet about anything you saw or heard this morning. You can’t talk about it to anyone. I have an investigation to conduct. The less information that’s out there, the better my chances of finding the person who did this.”
“Are we safe?” asked Skye.
“I think so. Most people are killed by someone they know, not by a stranger. But once in a while the scumbag returns to the scene of the crime. So if you see anything hinky, don’t hesitate to dial nine-one-one,” he said. “Keep your cell phones on you and charged at all times. But don’t say a word about this to anyone. Especially not until we notify the family."
"Does Kathy Simmons even have family?" MJ asked. "She reminded me of Little Orphan Annie.”
"She does,” Lou said.
“But we’ll have to tell Sid something,” said Skye. “He’ll be here any minute. Even though he can’t talk about this, he’ll need to keep his eyes open.”
Lou nodded. “For right now, just tell him that there was a suspicious vehicle parked on Dick’s lot and we towed it away. Have him call the station if he sees anyone poking around over there.”
"What a day for this to happen," muttered MJ, patting her ponytail. "We’ve got that VIP event tomorrow night. Are you and Detective Sergeant Davidson still planning on attending?”
“We’ll have to see how things go. Now I’ve got to get back to work,” said Lou.
“I’ll walk you out,” said MJ. “I need to grab something from my car anyway.”
Kiki Lowenstein Books 1-3 & Cara Mia Delgatto Books 1-3: The Perfect Series for Crafters, Pet Lovers, and Readers Who Like Upbeat Books! Page 95
