Mandy clicked off the camera, then slumped into her chair. ‘I need to get the envelopes out the door. Then I can mark everything processed in the shop.’
‘I can walk them to the mailbox,’ Vellum said. ‘Then I need to do homework.’
‘OK. I’ll clean everything up, and if we do get more orders, I’ll get them done and drop them in the mailbox later today.’
‘Sounds good.’ Vellum kissed the top of her head and walked into the dining room.
Mandy stayed at her pretty desk, staring at the half-used sticker sheets and the matching pink and black pens they had used for their weekly spreads. She’d zigzagged a swatch of pink across the top and neatly calligraphed February, with that week’s dates.
A bolt of inspiration hit her. Why couldn’t she use her organizational strength to solve Ryan’s murder? Almost mystical connections occurred in her brain when she wrote things down. Once they were in writing, it was as if the task had been released and her brain was free to focus on details, new information.
Resolutely, she pulled a red marker from the clear box and carefully wrote ‘Murder Spread’ on a blank page. As she always did, she went back over the outline of her red calligraphy with a thin black marker, to accentuate the words. She added suns around the words, meaning to indicate to herself that she was making insights, but when she set her pen down and looked at the page, she saw that the red pen suns looked like nothing more than blood splotches. Her stomach rumbled uneasily, but perhaps nothing was more appropriate.
She grabbed a template from a stack in another clear box and drew a circle in the center of her journal page. Inside, she wrote her cousin’s name, Ryan Meadows, and underneath, she added basic details: age forty-two, single, no kids, janitor, alcoholic.
Those were the bare facts of her cousin. They ignored his handyman and gardening skills, the way he’d stood up to bullies for her, his strange charisma that sucked both women and men into sexual entanglements.
But in these bald facts, the reason behind his death must be hidden.
She’d never done anything like this before, so she used her template to create symbols that would add meaning. Drawing a diamond, she added the word ‘family’ beneath, then, in smaller circles vertical on the page, she wrote Jasmine, Mandy, Vellum and Barbara, noting the relationship of each.
Then she added a rectangle and wrote ‘co-workers’ underneath that. The names that went in those circles were Reese, Kit and Fannah. She didn’t know the names of Ryan’s fellow maintenance techs because they didn’t frequent the coffee bar. Instead, she wrote ‘Maintenance Dept’ in another circle.
She moved to the right after glancing at her template and catching sight of a heart. She added the word ‘lovers’ and in the circle boxes wrote Dylan, Alexis, Crystal and also Kit. Kit did double duty here. Frowning at her spread, she erased Kit from the co-worker list to avoid confusion. She added another circle to the right and placed Aiden next to Crystal. Who knew what that kid was capable of?
Up at the top, she drew a shield emblem and wrote ‘neighbors.’ Here she put only Linda, since Crystal, Reese and Barbara were already listed.
Ryan’s family, co-workers, lovers and neighbors were all intertwined.
What else might go on a murder spread? She added a banner close to the top, under one of the bloody suns, and wrote ‘weapons’ neatly across. Those were stairs, journal, hammer, and alcohol. Nothing helpful there. Anyone could have had access to any of those items. They didn’t help.
Mandy turned the page and drew her diamond, shield, rectangle and heart emblems again, this time intertwined. She wanted to see who fit into multiple categories. Her mother and herself she ignored, but Reese was a neighbor and a co-worker, Crystal was a neighbor and a lover, and Kit was a co-worker and a lover.
It made all too much sense that Crystal or Reese had the most opportunity. Theoretically, whoever had killed Ryan had only a few minutes to get inside, those minutes after his friends had left and before Mandy heard the fall. Reese and Crystal were the obvious suspects.
But Crystal seemed too uninvolved, and she was actually starting to like Reese. Also, she hadn’t caught her out on anything after spending more time with her in the past few days. Mandy stared down at her paper. That meant her murder spread was telling her that Kit, the co-worker who didn’t want a security camera, and ex-girlfriend who’d been cheated on, was Mandy’s person of interest.
Her phone rang, pulling her from her thoughts before she could consider further. She closed her notebook and took the call.
On Monday, all signs of Valentine’s Day had vanished from the coffee bar. Fannah kept Mandy and Kit busy in between customers, hanging four-leaf clover cutouts and a ridiculously oversized cardboard decoration of a pot o’ gold with a rainbow leading into it. At least they’d been spared the leprechaun images.
Finally, Fannah went on her break. The surgeons had finished their morning rounds of short surgeries. She’d had a friendly chat with Dr Burrell about an art exhibit he’d seen at the Seattle Art Museum. Dr O’Halloran had arrived, very business-like, with a resident and two interns, and bought a round of coffees for all four. Nurses had streamed by, volunteers, moms with babies having their wellness checks at the pediatrician’s office, the elderly visiting specialists, most of them ordering coffee instead of fancier drinks. It was the kind of gray day that required basic caffeine to regroup after a sugary holiday.
Kit washed used milk jugs in the little sink while Mandy ran into the back and put a tray of fresh chocolate chip cookies into the oven. Afterwards, Mandy checked the front. They had a lull.
She took a deep breath, preparing herself to interrogate her person of interest. Walking up to Kit, she stood at her elbow.
‘What?’
‘Why weren’t you at the funeral?’
‘Whose funeral?’ Kit asked without turning around.
‘Your ex-boyfriend. Ryan?’
‘That was over the weekend?’ Her tone was careless.
‘Yeah.’
‘Sorry. I mean, I know he was your cousin, but I hate funerals.’
‘Yeah, it wasn’t a lot of fun for me, being called a murderer and all.’
Kit turned off the faucet. ‘Who did that?’
‘His sister. She claimed not to know his drinking was out of control.’
Kit glanced at her. ‘Who spilled?’
‘His creepy friends, Dylan and Alexis. Were they around when you were dating?’ Mandy pressed.
‘Never heard those names.’
Mandy tilted her head. ‘Do you know anything about Ryan’s coin collection?’
Kit started putting everything she’d washed away. ‘What coin collection?’
‘I’m not sure if it was actual collectibles or if he just rolled all his change before taking it into the bank, but Dylan seems very intent on gaining possession.’
Kit shrugged, her back turned to Mandy. ‘Dunno. But want to duck into the back for a minute? I have something to tell you.’
‘OK.’
Kit went into the back room. Mandy leaned against the wall so she could see Kit and the counter. ‘What’s up?’
Kit stared at her. She had dark shadows under her eyes, almost like bruises, but probably just exhaustion. ‘I’m planning to quit this job soon.’
Mandy’s brows lifted. ‘Why? Because of the thefts?’
Kit shrugged again. ‘I’m already working a second job at Starbucks. It’s not such a dead end, working there.’
Mandy tried to force her brain to work like a detective’s.
‘Anyway, don’t tell Fannah, OK?’ Kit added.
‘No, you need to choose your own time,’ Mandy agreed. ‘I guess you don’t need a reference or anything.’
‘No, I’ve already been working there for a month. I work Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday.’
A bell sounded in Mandy’s brain. ‘Wednesday evening?’
‘From six until close, yeah. My shift here ends at five on Wednesdays because
Fannah works the late shift for doing inventory. And since I work the earlier shift here on Tuesdays, I go to work at Starbucks at four that day.’
Mandy’s thoughts rearranged themselves. ‘I know what the schedule is around here.’ That’s why Fannah had never been a suspect, even if she’d had some kind of motive. But Kit could have killed Ryan, or so she’d thought. ‘You were at Starbucks when Ryan died?’
‘Yeah, that’s my regular shift, after work here. It’s an exhausting day, a shift and a half. I’m working seven days a week.’
‘No wonder you’ve got circles under your eyes.’ It hadn’t been guilt keeping her up, but endless hours on her feet.
A couple of nurses appeared at the counter. Mandy nodded sympathetically at Kit and went to take orders.
Only twenty minutes later, when she’d finished with the customers and was putting the cooled cookies onto a tray, was she able to process the fact that Kit had an alibi for the murder. Now what? Who was left?
Fannah returned and gave Mandy her break. Mandy took her journal and a small cup of intellect-boosting dark roast coffee over to one of the pair of sofas in the corner, out of sight of her co-workers. She decided she needed a color code for her murder spread. Since she had a couple of highlighters in her purse, she decided yellow would be ‘no alibi’ and pink would be ‘alibi’. That way she could color pink over the yellow if the status changed.
She made her key in a corner and then colored a strip of pink over Kit’s name. After staring at the list, she colored a strip over her name and Vellum’s. Finally, she added pink to Fannah, who had never been a suspect. While she didn’t have proof Fannah had worked her normal Wednesday shift, she hadn’t heard the coffee bar had closed early, and on the rare occasions something went wrong with their hours, people usually complained the next day.
If only she knew all the facts the police did. Based on her update, that made Reese her person of interest. And being honest with herself, she didn’t like that one bit. Especially since Reese would have had a better reason to kill her. But if Reese felt like a bad suspect, who was the right one?
She spent the rest of her break monitoring Crystal’s social media, but from last month to this, she didn’t see much change. In fact, Crystal had done a phone check-in at Snappy Dragon at 5:03 p.m. the night Ryan died. That was practically an alibi since the notification picked up her location from GPS. She added pink above Crystal’s name.
At 3:25 p.m., just before the end of her shift, Dr O’Halloran, looking like a model in blue scrubs that brought out the light in his eyes and showcased his muscular chest and legs, arrived and asked for a quad shot Americano. Mandy smiled brightly at him. Business had been down ever since she’d embarrassed him with her demand that he pay for the ‘stolen’ biscotti in front of people, and she was grateful that he hadn’t stopped patronizing them.
‘Where are all your co-workers?’ he asked as he swiped his card. ‘Could I get a little vanilla powder on top?’
She could have told him to do it himself, since the vanilla was available on the customer side of the counter, but mindful of his surgeon status and their incident, she went to get it and sprinkled until he held up his hand. ‘Kit closes tonight, so she’s on break, and Fannah only works late on Wednesdays.’
‘What night do you work late?’
‘Tuesdays. Which is nice, because I can be home with my daughter the other four nights. On Tuesdays she spends time with my mom.’
‘But she’s old enough to be home alone.’
‘Of course, but most fifteen-year-olds don’t think about making themselves a healthy meal.’
‘She must be responsible.’
‘In some ways I’m very lucky. I haven’t had to remind her to do her homework for four years.’
‘College bound?’
‘Definitely.’ She didn’t want to run on about her daughter, given his lack of children. The doctor was certainly chatty this evening.
He ran his tongue over his teeth. ‘Any super-fresh cookies hiding in the back?’
‘Just some brown-on-the-edges ginger thins. I couldn’t put them out for sale.’
He smiled disarmingly. ‘I’ll take them off your hands. They should get me through my workout.’
As he’d no doubt expected, she glanced at his arms. Under his scrub top he wore a long-sleeved performance athletic shirt that molded to his biceps in a way that would have made anyone single and not dead-below-the-waist very excitable. Even in her uninterested state, she became aware of how skimpy her USea shirt really was as he gave her the once-over.
‘Better than the garbage can,’ she said, taken aback. There were a few cookies still in the glass case. Why wouldn’t he just pay for some of those? Smiling thinly, she said, ‘But remember I didn’t sell them to you.’
He winked. She went into the back and grabbed the best three of the slightly burned treats and dropped them into a bag, then handed them to him over the counter.
‘Why don’t you have dinner with me tonight?’ he asked. ‘I’ll be done with the gym at six. I could meet you at six-thirty, give you time to run home and put on something pretty. Art of the Table?’
She blinked at his naming of the expensive, artisanal restaurant. Straightening her shirt so that her cleavage was better covered, she said, ‘Thank you, but I need to go home and get on with my second shift.’
‘It’s a fantastic restaurant,’ he wheedled. ‘I have a cousin who works in the kitchen.’
‘How nice, Doctor O’Halloran, but I’m afraid I have a policy of not dating anyone in the hospital.’ She didn’t really, though of course she never had, but she was afraid he’d expect free food and coffee if they dated. She needed her job more than a date with the hospital’s Dr O’Hottie.
His expression changed. A noise came from her right and she glanced over her shoulder. Kit was back from break. She hoped her co-worker would come out to have her back.
‘I’m not used to being turned down,’ he said, brows furrowed in a rather adorably confused way, like the hero of a rom-com who’d just been rejected. His floppy hair reminded her of the same sort of film cad.
Four nurses appeared from the elevator bay, heading in her direction for their coffees. They were a bit late, and must have been having a unit meeting. She saw another pair descending from the elevator, including Reese. Some of the offices must be done for the day, too.
‘I’m sorry, Doctor,’ Mandy said as Kit hurried out. ‘I’m afraid I have to get going. Fannah doesn’t like me to clock out late.’ She would hide in the back for a few minutes until she knew he was gone.
‘I get what I want, Mandy,’ he announced.
‘I’m not a product we sell at the coffee bar,’ she replied, forcing what she hoped was a disarming smile over the sound of her pounding heart.
But his expression hardened. He hadn’t taken her comment in the way she’d hoped. He leaned in. ‘Listen here,’ he snapped.
The nurses converged behind him, forming a line, their mouths open and eyes wide. Kit stepped to the counter, shoulder-to-shoulder with Mandy, looking fierce.
Dr O’Hottie, no fool, could read Kit’s protective body language if not the reactions of the women behind him. He narrowed his eyes at Mandy, then relaxed his face, picked up his cup and strode away. Mandy watched him head out the door toward the parking garage. None of the women spoke for a second.
‘I’ll get your orders,’ Kit said quickly. The first two in line always ordered the same thing.
Mandy rang them up quickly, figuring she could defend a few minutes of overtime to Fannah given the run on the coffee bar.
Reese was next in line and stood in front of Mandy as the first nurses stepped to the side. ‘What was that all about?’
‘He asked me out,’ Mandy said in a low voice.
‘He’s been very irritable lately,’ said the nurse behind Reese, while her friend, a decade older than the others, put her hand over her heart, displaying her wedding ring.
‘Maybe he ju
st needs to get laid,’ Reese said.
The nurses waiting for Kit to finish snickered.
Mandy rolled her eyes. ‘You can have him. Although I doubt he’s a Hindu.’
‘I’ll take him,’ said the sentimental nurse.
Her friend bumped her shoulder. ‘What would your husband say?’
The half-dozen nurses all laughed. Mandy quickly rang up the rest of the orders while Kit made them, then she went into the back and clocked out, only seven minutes late.
In the back, she grabbed her coat, purse and planner, but instead of leaving while the nurses were still out there, sat in Fannah’s office chair and decompressed. What a strange end to the day.
She opened her planner and took a look at her murder spread. While she needed to think some more about Reese, she added Dr O’Halloran to her co-worker list, given his temper. Maybe Ryan had infuriated him at work somehow. She needed to find out if something had happened between them.
Scrolling through her phone, she looked for Scott’s number, but it appeared that she’d never had it. She peeked out of the back room. The nurses had dispersed.
‘Kit,’ she called in a low voice. ‘Do you have Scott Nelson’s number?’
‘Why?’
‘I want to ask him a work question.’
Kit gave her a suspicious glance, then pulled out her phone and read out the number.
‘Thanks,’ Mandy said. Was she right? Had Kit had a fling with the maintenance supervisor? Before she thought too hard about it, she typed out a text. Hi Scott, this is Mandy from the coffee bar. Do you remember if my cousin ever had a run-in with Dr O’Halloran?
FIFTEEN
When Mandy arrived home, she found an unfamiliar car at the end of her driveway, effectively blocking the entire entrance. She snapped a photo of the Washington State plates with her phone and drove around the block so she could park in the front of her house. Her thoughts churned. Vellum could have a friend over, but she didn’t have any friends who had their licenses and permission to drive with fellow teens in the car.
Journaled to Death Page 17