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

  “When did she give this to you?”

  “The same day she bought it. She wrote up her article about your store and text-messaged me. Told me she was giving Adrian a ride home.”

  “Adrian? Her boss?” I decided not to tell her that she’d missed him by minutes. I wondered if he’d gotten to work without being soaked. It sure was coming down. In the distance, thunder rolled like a bass line in a pop song.

  “Yeah, he’s such a creep. Kathy told me that they’d swing through the drive-up window at Wendy’s, where I work on the way to his apartment. I guess he offered to buy her dinner to thank her for the ride. After they got their order, she told him she needed to pee. Kathy left Adrian in the car while she ran in and handed this photo to me. Told me to hide it. Said I should give it back to you if anything happened. That you’d know what to do with it.”

  Now I shivered. “Those were her exact words? ‘If anything happened’?”

  “Uh-huh. Are there more?” She pointed to the crumbs on her plate.

  Why, I wondered, was Kathy so intent on getting that photo back to me?

  The only reason I could think of was that Kathy had told me that the photo was a gift for her mother. Maybe she expected me to make sure her mother received it.

  I filled a plate with quiches and shoved them into the microwave. “Darcy? What sort of mood was Kathy in?”

  Darcy frowned. “She was, like, excited. Really excited. Nervous, too. She said she was following up on a big story. A really big deal. But she didn’t have time to talk with that jerk of a boss of hers was waiting in her car.”

  “You must have been frantic when she didn't come home.”

  “I knew she’d been working on this one idea for a long time. Done a lot of research. It started with this letter she had. See, the letter proved something. But it was tricky because it involved someone very important.” A tear rolled down Darcy’s face.

  I handed her a box of tissues. Could that important person have been Cooper? I couldn’t go there. I picked up a paper towel and carefully blotted the plastic bag. It had protected the picture so far, but I didn't want to take any chances.

  A loud boom of thunder shook the building. The lights flickered. I could hear the wind whipping up outside.

  “That stupid rain,” said Darcy. “Most people come to Florida for sunshine, but Kathy was different. She loved the rain. I can’t get it out of my head, you know? I stood there at Wendy’s and watched her running through the puddles to her car. Wearing that old scarf and that silly raincoat."

  41

  ~Cara~

  “You should tell Detective Murray about this. All of it.” I tried to sound firm but kind.

  “Don’t like cops." She watched me take the quiches out of the microwave.

  "He seems gruff, but he's really a good guy." I slid all but two of them onto her plate.

  "Ha. He and his friends wouldn't even go out and look for Kathy when I called in. If they had, maybe she'd be alive right now!" Darcy’s face grew more animated and her voice picked up strength. "Then our apartment gets broken into. Yeah, can you believe it? The cops smirked as they walked around. I heard one guy saying, 'Why would anyone break in here? This place is a dump.'"

  I nodded. "The job gets to them."

  “Yeah, sure, so I should forget about how they didn’t care that Kathy was missing? And how they thought it was funny that someone broke into our place in broad daylight? Yeah, yeah. Now I’m supposed to trust them to find Kathy’s killer? Ain’t no way."

  She was right. Sometimes the police let their prejudices get in the way of doing their job. But didn't we all? Every one of us makes judgments on a daily basis, and we adjust our behavior accordingly. We size each other up. Decide if the other person had anything to offer, and then mentally dismiss him if he doesn’t. Wrong or right we jump to conclusions, and once we make a decision, backing up and starting over is nearly impossible.

  "Kathy said you’d been around the block. She said you’d had your own tangle with authorities.”

  “How’d she know that?”

  “She googled you before she came to your media party. Showed me the stuff in the papers about how you bonked your ex-husband over the head. He deserved it. We agreed.”

  I groaned. I needed to hire one of those internet privacy firms that could bury your unsavory information so far down in the search engine that it never came to light again.

  “Darcy, I really, really think we should get Detective Murray over here and—"

  "No! I know what they do! The cops took my brother and put him in jail when he had one measly ounce of dope on him. He gotten beaten up in jail, and he’s never been the same. Broke my mother's heart.”

  “Did Kathy tell you about this big story? What it was about? Who was involved?”

  “She said the less I knew the better. The man involved has a partner, and she’s nasty. Really mean.”

  Now that sounded exactly like my sister! Kathy must have known what Jodi was holding over Cooper’s head. If it came out, then maybe he’d finally be free.

  “How about if I call Detective Murray and explain—” I started.

  “No!” The reaction was swift; the pitch of Darcy’s voice climbed higher. “You can’t! You have to promise! Look, someone killed Kathy and I don’t want them coming after me. I am so out of here. I just had to wait for my paycheck and make sure Luna was all right. Kathy loved that cat. If I left Luna alone in the apartment, animal control would come get her and put her to sleep. That’s the way it is, right? Everybody wants kittens, or a cat that’s special, not anything ordinary. It’s the same with people. If you’re pretty or smart, you matter. If not, people kick you to the curb.”

  I didn’t want to admit it, and I would have denied it in a public forum, but she was right. I changed the subject. “Why not stick around for Kathy’s funeral? It’s only a few days away.”

  “Kathy's ma hates me. She goes off on me whenever she can. Thinks I’m to blame for…whatever. Besides, what difference would it make? It’s not like I can say goodbye. Kathy’s gone. She’s not in any old casket. She hated small spaces. Hated them. And she wasn't in that there morgue. She left. She's gone. I could tell by looking. It’s like they’ve got this wax dummy that’s a leftover, but it sure isn’t Kathy. Not even close.”

  Big tears splashed down Darcy's face. The dinger on the dryer sounded. I pulled out her warm, dry clothes. Grabbing them from me she ran into the bathroom to change, but she left the door slightly open as she did so she’d know if I tried to call Lou. I thought about it, but I couldn’t bring myself to betray Darcy. I knew how it felt to be on the wrong side of the law.

  “You’re right. Kathy’s not in that casket, but you might want to say goodbye to her,” I said, as Darcy walked back out of the bathroom. The way her fingers fumbled with her buttons gave her a curiously child-like quality. My heart went out to her. She had nowhere to go and little chance of being successful in life, because she had neither the tools nor a support network. No family. And now no friends. I said, “Funerals can be comforting. Believe me, I know.”

  “No way. Kathy kept saying things would get better, that she knew she’d get her big break. But things didn’t get better, did they? Not for her and not for me.”

  “Where will you go? What will you do?”

  “I’ve got enough for a bus ticket to Miami. I speak a little Spanish. I’ll get another job in fast food.”

  “Where will you stay?”

  “I’ll figure that out when I get there. I can hang around the bus station until they kick me out. There are lots of nooks and crannies in parking garages. They’ll give me a uniform at work, and I can use the john at the restaurant to change. I’ll make do.”

  The hopelessness of her situation overwhelmed us both. She added in a brave voice, “I’ve done it before. Nothing to it.”

  I withdrew two one-hundred dollar bills from under the drawer of the cash register. Because we had stayed open late the night before, I hadn�
��t had the chance to make our usual deposit.

  “Take this,” I handed the money to Darcy, as she struggled with her jacket. “Consider it payment for the photograph. That’s what Kathy paid.”

  I lied, but what else could I do?

  “Thanks.” Darcy’s eyes grew wide as she reached for the money. She self-consciously yanked down the sleeve of her jacket, but she couldn’t cover the tattoo on her arm fast enough. It read: Darcy+Kathy4Ever.

  42

  ~Lou~

  9:30 a.m. on Saturday

  The Shoreline News

  “Don’t even think about leaving town,” Lou said to Adrian Green. “We’re done here for now.”

  Green pouted like an angry child.

  It was still raining lightly when he and Ollie walked to their cars.

  “I’ll meet you back at the station,” he told Ollie.

  “Take your time. I’ve got plenty to keep me busy,” said his partner.

  Lou needed coffee to think. He stopped at the Starbucks at Monterey and Federal Highway and treated himself to his secret favorite, a Tall Skinny Vanilla Latte, a drink he never ordered in front of the guys. When he got back to his desk, he noticed that Ollie was concentrating on his computer screen while he held a phone to one ear. Instead of bothering him, Lou double-checked the inventory sheets from Kathy Simmons’ apartment. The only art in the apartment was a poster of Miley Cyrus that had been stuck to the wall with tape.

  On a notepad, he wrote:

  ESTABLISH TIMELINE!

  Could KS have gone back to the apartment before heading to the newspaper?

  Need to confirm KS/AG visit to Wendy’s and Winn-Dixie.

  Any sightings of KS after she dropped off AG?

  Could the motive for the murder be a story KS was working on?

  Did KS threaten anyone other than Cara?

  Where is the photo that KS purchased from The Treasure Chest?

  What was KS's relationship with her co-workers at the paper?

  What did KS have on Cooper Rivers?

  He also wrote down the list of Known Associates and their contact information.

  “You got anything to add?” he asked as he tossed the pad onto Ollie’s desk. The other cop looked up from his desk. As always, the surface was littered with food byproducts. Crumbs of sourdough bread from Panera and flakes of sugar from Dunkin’ Donuts. Ollie's empty mug smelled of hot chocolate.

  “Yeah,” said Ollie, after looking the notes over. “Actually, I do.”

  “What did you learn from Kathy Simmons’ co-workers?” Lou pulled up a chair.

  “They liked her, except when she mooched off of them. Owed everyone money. Small sums. A buck here and there. Not enough to kill her over.” Ollie picked at a couple of red spots on his neck.

  “What about Adrian Green?”

  “No love lost there. In the words of one woman, Mr. Green thinks his stuff don’t stink.”

  Lou nodded. “What about his relationship with Kathy Simmons? He told me she had the hots for him."

  “Doubtful. He might think he’s a player, but everyone else thinks he’s a weasel.”

  “Anything else?”

  Ollie thumbed through his notebook. “Supposedly he’s writing a book. Says it’s sure to be a New York Times bestseller. Then he’s blowing this popcorn stand. He likes to hobnob with the rich folks on Jupiter Island. Goes to events at the Tangerine Theatre.”

  “Tangerine Theatre? What’s that?”

  “Beats me. It’s on Jupiter Island. They have speakers during Season. Authors, politicians, musicians.”

  “How was he toward Kathy Simmons?”

  “He was mean to her. Always putting her down. Making her rewrite pieces that were fine.”

  “Any idea why? You’d think he’d get rid of her if he wasn’t happy with her work.”

  “Adrian Green was just too lazy to replace her. One guy speculated that it was because he was so busy with this book deal he’s got going. All the others said Kathy worked hard. Did a lot of assignments that Adrian should have done. She was there in the office almost all the time, when she wasn’t turning in a story.”

  “How come? Seems weird for her to hang around in the office if Mr. Green didn’t like her and she didn't like him.”

  Ollie picked at his neck and flipped to another page. “I asked about that. Seems their computers are set up to log into data bases that the paper pays big bucks to join. Kathy spent a lot of time on the Shoreline News computers, doing research.”

  “She couldn’t do that from her own computer?”

  “Green refused to give her the passwords. Another example of him being a jerk. The computers in the newspaper office were on a network. Green plugged the passwords into the network, but they never showed up on the screen. The databases could only be used from the newspaper office.”

  “Interesting,” said Lou. “Maybe that’s how she found dirt on Cooper Rivers. Maybe that’s what she was investigating on all those databases.”

  “Green liked spying on all the employees,” said Ollie. “But he really kept an eye on Kathy. Once or twice, he trashed the story she was writing. Then he stole her work and sold it somewhere. Made money on the side. She caught him at it. They went around and around.”

  “A motive for her murder? Kathy gets fed up with Adrian Green’s BS. They quarrel, and he kills her?” Lou asked. “I haven’t checked out his alibi yet.”

  “According to her co-workers, it made her pretty hot under the collar,” said Ollie, “but she learned a way to hide her stuff from him. That’s what I’ll be looking for on her computer. A code or password to secret files.”

  Lou nodded. “We need to nail down what happened between the time she stopped at Green’s apartment and when I found her car.”

  "I'm on it. I’ve got uniforms bringing in the CCTV footage from the Winn-Dixie, the plaza in Hobe Sound, and the front door of Adrian Green's apartment building,” said Ollie. “I saved the best for last. Kathy Simmons used her SunPass after she dropped him off."

  "Her SunPass?" Lou repeated.

  "Yes. According to her SunPass, Kathy Simmons drove all the way to Miami last Monday night.”

  "How could a girl drive her car up and down the turnpike when she’s locked inside her trunk?”

  “Beats me,” said Ollie.

  Lou shook his head in disbelief. “I need to talk to Faraday again. His theory that she was drugged and held captive can’t possibly be right."

  43

  ~Cara~

  9:30 a.m. on Saturday

  The Treasure Chest

  “Just what I need. Another mouth to feed,” I told Luna, after Darcy Lahti had left my store. “You might as well meet Jack, since you two are going to be roommates. At least temporarily. I plan to find you a new home.”

  The gray cat turned yellow eyes on me, but she didn't protest when I lifted her. The scent of urine clung to her, and I thought I saw flea dirt in her fur. She was terribly thin. Cautiously, I carried her closer to Jack’s crate. The transference of fleas didn’t worry me, because I gave him a monthly treatment. But I wasn’t sure that she had had her shots. I couldn’t quite read her tags without my glasses. Jack sniffed at the kitty and wagged his tail. Luna acted bored but not frightened.

  I didn’t want to push my luck. I decided to leave Jack in his crate until I had a better idea of how the two would get along.

  Should I call Lou? Should I tell him about Darcy’s plans?

  I thought back to how he’d grilled me about my fight with Kathy Simmons. Okay, so he had a job to do, he could have talked to me nicely and asked questions. Instead he’d treated me like a suspect. Was it really my responsibility to share with him what I’d learned? All I had to offer was hearsay. Didn’t I have enough on my plate without reporting to him?

  In the end, I decided that keeping track of Darcy wasn’t my problem. Besides, the girl didn’t need another hassle in her life. It was up to Lou to do his job without my help.

  As I pondered a
ll this, Luna sniffed around. I wondered if she needed a litter box. Yet another problem to be solved! I couldn’t leave the store until someone else arrived. I wondered if Luna could hold it.

  Probably not. Time to get creative.

  I took a cardboard box out of the recycling pile. After cutting it low enough for Luna to step over, I dumped in the entire contents of my paper shredder. When I set Luna on top of the confetti, she immediately grasped the purpose and did her business accordingly.

  That settled, I went back to my spreadsheets. We’d turned merchandise in all our sales categories. Overall, things looked good.

  Really good.

  “That still doesn’t mean we’re going to be able to survive the summer,” I told the cat and dog. “The Old Florida Photo Gallery idea worked, but now it’s up to me to come up with some other event to move merchandise.”

  I had just finished lecturing the fur babies when Honora came through the back door, shaking out her umbrella. “Finally slowed up, but it’s still raining. I reckoned that you’d get an early start. You seemed like an early bird to me. My, my! Where did that cat come from?”

  I explained about Darcy Lahti’s visit.

  “Sad situation. I’m glad she didn’t walk off and leave that poor creature.”

  “Would you like to become the proud owner of this cat?”

  “Laws, no. EveLynn would never tolerate the mess. She’s too obsessive-compulsive. What a shame, because that’s a pretty kitty.” Honora smiled at Luna, her eyes bright as twin blue jays behind her bifocals. Then she asked, “What are you working on, Cara, dear?”

  “Sales figures. Let me show you how we did,” I said, handing over the spreadsheets.